SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- President Obama's "second coming" to the Whitte House speech was subject to many speculations, not only by his fellow Americans, but by people around the world who are very much aware of the huge impact of his decisions on the daily life of ordinary people in distant foreign societies.

The winners as highlighted by the inauguration speech were climate change, gay rights, immigrants, as well as advocates of gun control. While environmentalists worldwide have lost their faith in Obama ever since the disappointing initiative he took at the 2009 Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, which was understood at the time as undermining the multilateral approach to global warming taken by the United Nations System. Then, at home, Obama was not able to convince the United States Congress (although this is not his fault) to enact federal laws designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by introducing cap and trade mechanisms. Such a market-based policy had already strong criticisms from many environmentalists following the largely negative experience of the European carbon market.

Yet, the good news is that despite the federal regulatory failure, the GHG emissions of the United States significantly declined per capita, partly reflecting the economic recession and increased gas prices, partly state level initiatives, partly alternative energy use, and partly energy conservation measures. This gives hope that the US will come close to fulfilling its 2009 Copenhagen pledge, reducing the GHG emissions before 2020 by 17 percent as measured against 2005 levels. This American commitment although far from being a deal maker was at least a small step in the right direction. During the domestically and internationally very damaging eight years of George W Bush's presidency, there was a dearth of good environmental news emanating out of the United States.

Walking the walk

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama's silence about climate change was troublesome, and his several trips to coal mining states seemed hardly reassuring. Environmentalists lost confidence in Obama on climate change policy, and for that reason, the emphasis in his inaugural speech came as something of a surprise. Perhaps, it should have been expected.

Just a few days before election day in early November of last year, superstorm Sandy devastated a portion of the East Coast of the United Sates, and thanks to public officials in New York and New Jersey, Obama was given a fresh opportunity to show leadership and bipartisanship in relation to an environmental crisis. This catastrophic event that comes with more than an $80 billion price tag affected a region that was already struggling to get out of an economic recession. It convinced many Americans, at least briefly, about the seriousness of climate change and its responsibility in the rising frequency of extreme weather events.

Right after Sandy, a nationwide poll conducted by Rasmussen showed that 68 percent of American voters see global warming as a serious problem, an increase from 46 percent in 2009. Moreover, just a few days before the inauguration, the "2013 Draft National Climate Assessment Report" - a domestic version of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports - was released by the Federal Advisor Committee, and supported through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) setting forth a bleak account of the adverse impacts of climate change in the United States. According to the report, July 2012 was the hottest month of more than 1,400 measured since 1895.

These impacts take the form of drought, flood, extreme weather, and as a consequence, cause significant damage to American agriculture and the overall economy.

Backed up by convincing scientific evidence and the fact that the American public now expects reasonable attention to climate change from its government, Obama's emphasis on climate change as a growing threat to "future generations", might be interpreted as nothing very special. Many Americans and the international public now expect Obama to take some concrete steps, and only then will they will be truly impressed with his willingness to assume the mantle of environmental leader. In effect, Obama must now convince the world that he is not only talking the talk but walking the walk.

Battling the naysayers

Conservative media, sectors of the political establishment, and climate change deniers have been quick to respond, calling Obama an "environmental extremist", which while wildly off the mark, may be a tad closer to reality than were the earlier attacks that labelled him a "socialist".

The conservative bloc promised its followers that they will never allow Obama to sacrifice jobs or cause the American economy to decline due to his irresponsible proposals put forward to deal with climate change. Moreover, these critical voices immediately raised doubts about the validity of claims about the alleged causal links between extreme weather events and climate change.

President Obama for his part contended in his speech that climate deniers are confusing the public in damaging ways. These deniers are posing a significant obstacle to needed environmental action, and are often in the pay of powerful oil, gas, and coal lobbies that are doing all they can to block every responsible initiative undertaken to meet the challenge of climate change in the United States.

Considering all these difficulties, Obama has several issues on his policy agenda that will test the resolve of his administration in coming months. The most urgent and internationally important of these issues is the multi-billion dollar Keystone XL Pipeline Project. This calls for a single, big, symbolic decision by the President Obama that will be treated as a strong signal at home and to the world about the direction being taken by American environmental policy.

This highly proposed controversial pipeline carrying shale oil has a route that would run the length of North America starting in Alberta, Canada and passing through several states until it ends up in Texas. The approval of the pipeline is being ardently promoted by many members of Congress, including some who belonging to Obama's political party. Environmental activists are organising major demonstrations scheduled to take place on February 14.

The prominent environmentalist, writer and activist, Bill McKibben insists that if Obama is serious about a commitment to climate change he must demonstrate it by rejecting the Keystone Pipeline Project.

Restoring environmental leadership

This pipeline controversy is a clear example of the clash of competing economic and environmental interests: on one side, the promise of job creation, cheaper oil and natural gas, and energy supplies that will free the United States from its dependence on Middle Eastern sources of oil; on the other side, environmental destruction, a heightened risk of destructive oil spills, and more importantly, an increase in GHG emissions. There is intense countervailing political pressures being directed at Obama by advocates of these two opposing positions.

At the national level, members of Congress, who are long known for their environment friendly agenda, have recently announced the formation of a "Bicameral Climate Change Task Force". They urged the President to focus on three priority areas: (1) fulfilling the 2009 pledge made at Copenhagen to reduce GHG emissions by the pledged amount; (2) support the development of innovative clean energy technology; (3) give priority to the protection of the most vulnerable regions in the country  that are being most harmed by and at risk due to climate change. The first issue is the most controversial for anti-globalist Republicans and oil and gas company lobbyists.

This agenda needs significant regulatory action. This will help Obama to take over global environmental leadership in November 2013 at the important Warsaw Conference of the Parties meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Considering the Republican allergy to climate change related regulations, Obama most likely will have to rely on executive actions to circumvent Congressional resistance to his environmental agenda. This is not going to be an easy path, as Democrats harshly criticised reliance on such executive powers during the Bush presidency in relation to contested measures taken on behalf of the war on terror. This new confrontation over presidential authority threatens now to turn into a war over climate change.

The Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is already one of the public institutions that Republicans do not miss any opportunity to attack, even planning to shut it down completely if their candidate had been elected last November. The EPA was given the legal responsibility following the 2007 US Supreme Court decision to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. Implementation of this decision was put on hold during the Bush presidency, but now the EPA seems ready, and politically able, to take on the job.

Besides the EPA, the State Department role on global climate change policy and the Energy Department approach to energy related issues are likely to be subjected to harsh attacks from anti-environmental true believers, starting at the confirmation hearings for each of the appointed heads of these organs of government. At the end of the day, Obama is likely to have a tough time whichever path he decides to follow as recourse for the promotion of environmental goals to either executive power or legislative authorisation is likely to encounter strong resistance.

There are sure to be stumbling blocks on the path to the kind of global environmental leadership that the international community has long needed. Arguably ever since the historic 1972 Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, the US lost the legitimacy of its effort to provide environmental leadership in global level. It will not be easy to reclaim it, but if Obama succeeds on this environmental battlefield first in the national level, and then pursues environmental protection goals at global level, the reputation of his presidency will rise significantly, and the prospects for a meaningful response to the challenge of climate change will greatly improve.

www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Will upcoming elections in Jordan change the country?

That is what the Jordanian government says will happen - not immediately, but longer-term. And in the end, it says, a stronger parliamentary system should take shape.

At the heart of it all is a new parliament, to be elected under a new election law. The new law and elections were announced by the king after unprecedented demonstrations on the heels of subsidy cuts the government said were needed to stave off a budget crisis.

But the demonstrations also reflected a longer running feeling of distrust and discontent. Many protesters were detained and there were allegations of torture. 

But many in Jordan think the election laws are unfair and refuse to participate. Why are opposition groups boycotting the elections?

The new parliament will be a mixture of local and national representatives. The allotment of local candidates, however, does not take into account each district's population density, thus causing a disproportionate representation. 

Critics also say the new system is in effect rigged - to give local candidates over-representation at the expense of national candidates who might appeal to constituencies that are not limited to a particular geographic area, such as Jordanians of Palestinian descent.

The law gives national candidates 27 seats in the new parliament. They will sit side-by-side with 108 members who represent just local districts.

Criticism of this law has been especially fierce from leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and they say they will never gain a foothold in the new parliament to reflect their true support. 

The challenges that Jordan is now facing are among the most serious the country has ever had to deal with. It is the job of the country's prime minister to deal with those challenges and to lead the country through a transition to a new political era.

Abdullah Ensour was appointed in November by the king - the third prime minister in seven months. And even he says the election law needs to be fixed.

"This is democracy. I was in the opposition and I voted against the law but as the law was drafted and passed, it should be applied, we have no option. Nobody is stopping me [from changing the law] except it's not possible legally to stop the elections because there are times and dates that are drafted by the law ... Let's go to the elections, let's meet in the parliament and in the parliament we debate the law and if there is a majority then it will change. I personally will side with those who ask for more than one-man vote," he says.

On this episode of Talk to Al Jazeera, we sit down with Abdullah Ensour, the prime minister of Jordan, to discuss the future of politics in his country, the role of the opposition and the role of the king.

www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – The planet keeps getting hotter, new data showed this week. Especially in America, where 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded, by far. Every few years, the U.S. federal government engages hundreds of experts to assess the impacts of climate change, now and in the future.

From agriculture (pictured) to infrastructure to how humans consume energy, the National Climate Assessment Development Advisory Committee spotlights how a warming world may bring widespread disruption.

Farmers will see declines in some crops, while others will reap increased yields.

Won't more atmospheric carbon mean longer growing seasons? Not quite. Over the next several decades, the yield of virtually every crop in California's fertile Central Valley, from corn to wheat to rice and cotton, will drop by up to 30 percent, researchers expect. (Read about "The Carbon Bathtub" in National Geographic magazine.)

Lackluster pollination, driven by declines in bees due partly to the changing climate, is one reason. Government scientists also expect the warmer climate to shorten the length of the frosting season necessary for many crops to grow in the spring.

Aside from yields, climate change will also affect food processing, storage, and transportation—industries that require an increasing amount of expensive water and energy as global demand rises—leading to higher food prices.-www.shfaqna.com/English

Source: Nationalgeographic

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Crystal Piquette is 31 and ripped, her biceps and flat tummy a testament to the rigours of her factory job. Her life seems ordinary – she has a boyfriend and five cats, does handicrafts and dreams of buying a home – but it’s a quantum leap for someone who ran away from home at 17 to live on the street. Back then, whatever she earned as a panhandler, or as one of Toronto’s infamous “squeegee kids” washing windshields, went toward drugs, “wino drinks” and a man far older than she was.

And yet her troubled background fascinates the woman with her, who has wanted to hear about it for years. “She’s kind of my hero,” Kathy Moreland Layte admits, dabbing her eyes.

And while Ms. Piquette has no friends, she thinks highly of Ms. Layte: “I wish she was my mother.”

The two were brought together by parenthood. They are both mothers of two young children – the same young children. Ms. Layte, 52, has adopted the son and daughter born to Ms. Piquette during her previous life. Alexis was conceived under the viaduct near the Air Canada Centre, and her mother says that during the pregnancy, she and the father “didn’t have a roof over our heads. We had to beg for food.”

She also had no medical care until just before the baby arrived, small and as fragile as a “porcelain doll.” Twelve years later, Alexis has difficulty with her hearing and speech and, unlike most kids her age, still plays with stuffed animals. Utterly without the guile seen so often in prepubescent girls, she seems warm and calm – a description rarely applied to her little brother.

Austin Layte picks up a piece of rope from the front yard of his house and bursts into piercing shrieks. It has pinched his hand.

“He’ll be fine,” says Ms. Layte, running in the house to grab an ice pack. “He just feels things a lot more than other children.”

Just 1 when adopted, Austin soon went from being a spirited toddler to having such poor control of his impulses that, by 18 months, Ms. Layte says, fear of consequences was no deterrence for his “unwanted behaviours.”

At daycare, he pushed kids down the stairs and wouldn’t stop throwing food; in Grade 1, he was caught climbing the curtains and was kicked out of nature camp for hitting a child with a stick. Bike treks with his mother were abandoned because he kept tearing out his sister’s hair. One day, he was nabbed on top of the refrigerator, reaching for scissors hidden in a cupboard so he could give the dog a haircut.

“He would head-butt me without batting an eye,” Ms. Layte recalls. “He hit me so hard in the face that I had a nosebleed.”

Yet he was so prone to anxiety that he needed someone with him wherever he went. His parents enjoyed little respite; babysitters rarely came twice.

For years, the source of his behaviour remained a mystery. How could he be so different from his sister? Why did punishment not work?

Doctors have finally pinpointed the cause: Austin, now 10, has partial fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). He is one of about 3,500 children born in Canada every year whose exposure to alcohol while in the uterus has caused irreversible brain damage.

The possibility of FASD had occurred to Ms. Layte, a former nurse practitioner who teaches at a nursing college. But a pediatrician discounted the notion, saying that, even if it were true, little could be done. Also, because children develop so differently, experts rarely diagnose FASD under the age of 8, unless they find the condition’s telltale facial features, such as Austin’s narrow eyes and flattened philtrum (the groove above the upper lip).

But now Ms. Layte has learned that sweet Alexis, as different from her brother as she may seem, suffers from the same affliction, and also “will need support all through her life.”

Almost four decades after researchers pinpointed the devastating effects of alcohol on the unborn child, the subject is only now garnering serious attention. Two scholarly publications (Journal on Developmental Disabilities and The First People Child & Family Review) have special issues in the works for 2013, and there is a private member’s bill before Parliament that would create a national strategy on FASD. Experts consider this vital because FASD children have long been misunderstood and badly treated, often landing in foster care or on the street.

“Sixty per cent of adolescents and adults with FASD have trouble with the law,” says John Rafferty, the NDP MP for Thunder Bay-Rainy River, who sponsored the bill. “If you think of prevention, that is an enormous cost.”

Of special concern to aboriginal communities, FASD challenges governments because it involves “virtually every social-service sector,” says pediatrician Charlotte Moore Hepburn, lead of child health-policy initiatives at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. “We have poor services for the children and little sympathy for the women.”

Western provinces have taken the lead, adopting strategies that make caring for FASD children a priority – Alberta, for example, has introduced dedicated clinics and a telephone help line. Elsewhere, however, it can be difficult even to have a suspected case assessed; according to research pioneer Sterling Clarren, the medical system currently can identify “something less than 2,000” cases a year – far fewer than the number being born.

“So we’re getting farther and farther behind,” says Dr. Clarren, scientific director of the Vancouver-based Canada FASD Research Network. “Most systems have not had to come to terms with the fact that they have to deal with kids with fetal alcohol.”

Adoption is one such system. FASD is generally thought to affect, to some degree, about 1 per cent of all newborns, but Toronto journalist Bonnie Buxton says that covers a “significant percentage of adopted children.”

She contends that “most youngsters available for adoption have been removed from dysfunctional, alcoholic families.”

After their adopted daughter was diagnosed, Ms. Buxton and her husband, Brian Philcox, founded FASworld Toronto, a charity that provides a monthly family-support group. Then, in 2002, she wrote an article urging prime minister Jean Chrétien to have his adopted aboriginal son, Michel, tested after the young man was charged with sexual assault (he was later acquitted).

She estimated that 300,000 Canadians struggle with FASD. “Each one will cost the public up to $2-million in his or her lifetime for special education, social services, extra medical care and possible involvement with crime.”

This surprised many of her readers, as it had her. “At the time we adopted, social workers knew very little about FASD,” she says. By 17, her daughter had gone through several social workers and psychologists, and landed on the street, addicted to crack.

Alerted by a TV report to what might be causing the problem, Ms. Buxton fought to find help and went on to write Damaged Angels, an acclaimed account of her struggle to rescue a young women now thriving in a solid relationship and with two children. Still, almost a decade later, Ms. Buxton says, people eager to adopt rarely consider the damage alcohol may have done to children in need of a home. “They can be so darn cute and cuddly, they can be absolutely adorable.”

Ms. Layte also was ill prepared for how her life turned out after March, 2003, when she and her husband received an irresistible offer. A young mother about to lose her children to foster care had chosen adoption instead, so she could pick the parents and arrange to stay in contact. In the Laytes, she saw people who were “stable, with good jobs” and could give Alexis and Austin “what I didn’t have, which is everything they have now.”

“I wanted to see them being raised,” Ms. Piquette says – but not the way she had been brought up. She was just 18 months old when her mother dropped her off with neighbours in farming country near Shelburne, Ont., saying she had to go to the bank. Instead, she vanished, and Ms. Piquette still knows little about her, except she was never happy, “drank like a fish” and had also been abandoned by her mother.

Which is not unusual, Edmonton pediatrician and FASD consultant Gail Andrew says, echoing Bonnie Buxton. “A high percentage of [these] birth mothers were children in care themselves,” she explains, with “no significant person in their life there when they needed one.”

In June, 2003, the youngsters met their new parents for the first time: “Austin was given to my husband and Alexis was given to me,” Ms Layte remembers. “They both put their arms out. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, they’re beautiful.’ It was hard to believe they were ours.”

Ms. Layte says she knew the children had been exposed to marijuana, cigarettes and possibly cocaine in the womb, so “there was a risk they would have learning disabilities and maybe learning delays.” On the other hand, both were full-term babies, and “that was a good thing.” but it was years before she learned that alcohol was a factor as well, and only then when Ms. Piquette made a passing comment about how well Austin was doing, considering she drank while pregnant. Suddenly Ms. Layte realized the boy’s problems could be more serious than she had thought.

Ms. Piquette readily admits that, when she was living on the street, “drinking was around me at all times. I wouldn’t fall asleep and wake up – I’d pass out and come to,” but insists: “I cut back when I was pregnant.”

Drinking while pregnant has long been controversial, and only recently has Ottawa adopted guidelines saying total abstinence is the safest bet.

Alcohol remains the only consumer product known to cause harm if misused that is not required to carry a warning label. Last spring, Molson Coors added a logo to its beer packaging – a pregnant woman with a diagonal line across her – but is that enough to get the message across?

Laura Spero recalls she, too, drank “quite a bit,” largely on weekends, when she became pregnant at 20. “Nothing was ever said about it. I wouldn’t have people around me that smoked – but I didn’t know about alcohol.”

Now 48, she still goes to bars on weekends – as an FASD awareness and prevention educator in London, Ont. She hopes to keep young women from making the same mistake but finds that, even though almost three decades have passed, little has changed: Many still consider smoking their biggest threat.

At first, Austin’s good looks and personal charm made him popular at school, a daring boy with espresso-coloured eyes and a shock of brown hair. When his behaviour became an issue, it was attributed to attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder, but Ms. Layte was skeptical – and the ADHD medication did no good. His behaviour became even harder to control.

“Kathy was disadvantaged because for many years, she didn’t know what she was dealing with,” says friend Elspeth Ross, an educator who lives in Rockland, near Ottawa, and raised two boys with FASD now in their 30s.

“We had the advantage of being told that alcohol was a factor. Because our children are aboriginal, people thought about alcohol more.” However, “if you have a blond child,” she adds, “lots of people may not consider it.”

According to Ms. Ross, parents with a child with difficult learning and behaviour problems often go from one professional to the next without being put on the right track. Not only are they “often reluctant to even consider the possibility of FASD … because it is scary for them,” she says, “professionals feel the same way and don’t even mention it.”

Once she knew about Ms. Piquette’s past drinking – and even though her marriage was dissolving (not, she says, because of the children) – Ms. Layte got serious. “I had to become this intimidating, shrew-like creature in order to get him what he needed.”

Diagnosis is the crucial step to specialists such as Vancouver’s Dr. Clarren and Manitoba’s top FASD researcher, Winnipeg geneticist Ab Chudley, who says: “If no kids are diagnosed, there are no services developed. If you pay attention to identifying and counting these kids, governments and schools pay attention.”

Others, however, complain that assessments can be inconsistent – and are no guarantee of treatment. “You think, once you have the diagnosis, you will have the people who will help you,” Ms. Layte says. “Then you realize you have to fight for everything.”

She has discovered that the school system is not equipped to handle Austin, and even a special class run by Family and Children Services for students with severe emotional and behavioural issues wasn’t a good fit.

As government agencies have searched for a solution, she has scrambled to find child care so she can continue to work, more of a challenge now that Alexis has been diagnosed as well.

At 52, she describes her life as “a roller coaster. You think that things will settle down, but they don’t.” And now her children’s other mother suspects that she also may be wrestling with the demons of fetal alcohol.

Ms. Piquette studied the rules of the road to take her driver’s test, but she says “it won’t stay in my head.” Did her own mother’s drinking habit have anything to do with her troubled childhood? Adopted by the farm family she was left with, she too grew up no stranger to trouble. At 6, she set fire to wool in her parents’ room; at 16, weighing 200 pounds, she was kicked out of Grade 11 after skipping more than 100 classes.

Now, she thinks that perhaps she too should be tested for FASD. But of one thing she is certain: “I want people to know: Don’t do what I did.”

www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- THERE are a lot of good questions to consider about the internet and language. There are equally many good questions to be asked about the future of English now that a majority of its speakers are non-natives.  But last week's BBC Magazine piece on the future of English online is a dog's breakfast of confused concepts, true but misleading facts, and otherwise misguided attempts to make sense of many related, but distinct, trends in English.

Fortunately, Jane O'Brien avoided the tsk-tsking, declinist tone of so many articles like this. She talked to some relevant experts. But to take just one core example, she seems to have misunderstood what they told her:

In previous centuries, the convergence of cultures and trade led to the emergence of pidgin - a streamlined system of communication that has simple grammatical structure, says Michael Ullman, director of research at Georgetown University's Brain and Language Lab.

When the next generation of pidgin speakers begins to add vocabulary and grammar, it becomes a distinct Creole language. "You get different endings, it's more complex and systematised. Something like that could be happening to English on the web," he says.

Take Hinglish...

No, don't take Hinglish. It's not a creole. It's a broad term referring to either English with a healthy dash of unique Indian vocabulary, or the Indian languages spoken with English words and phrases thrown in, or the speech of Indians comfortable switching back and forth quickly between two languages.  But it's nowhere near a full creole, and so is not a good pointer to what is happening to English online.

Ms O'Brien is right that linguists call an improvised contact language a pidgin. It will typically mix the two groups' native languages. The almost magical transformation to a creole is when children born in the contact situation learn the pidgin as their native language. Only then do we see "different endings...more complex and systematised". Creoles are internally consistent, with a fully functional new grammar. (Typically they use fewer word-endings than the parent languages do.)  Such creoles can even be national languages, as in Haiti and New Guinea. The fact that such perfect languages arise from such imperfect circumstances has long been fascinating to psychologists of language. The story of Nicaraguan Sign Language, developed by neglected deaf children, is a particularly exciting example of a full-fledged language arising from no ingredients at all.

But this isn't what's happening to English online. Many non-natives write online in English. Some of them have distinctive varieties of English, but none are creolising the main body of English. Hinglish is not being learned or written by non-Indians. Singlish (from Singapore) is more like a real creole, an established dialect of English that is difficult for non-Singaporeans to follow. But again, it's not being learned by non-Singaporeans and thus changing standard English. Singaporeans use (usually quite good) standard English with non-Singaporeans. Many other non-natives are simply writing English full of the typical mistakes of a non-fluent speaker. But there are no children learning their first language from this broken English and regularising the mistakes into a new creole. The reason is obvious: children do not learn their first language from the internet.

Roughly, three things are happening. One is that we already know British and American English are seeding each other with new words and phrases (to the annoyance of some onboth sides). It's likely that this is increasing in the age of globalisation and the internet. As India rises and its many speakers of English spread their culture around the world, we're likely to see more Hinglish in standard English, too. Other English-speaking groups will contribute as well. But this will probably be limited to a few words and phrases. This is just plain old borrowing, not creolisation.

The second new thing is that improvised, speech-like forms of written English are proliferating on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. This means that non-standard dialects (Hinglish, Singlish, southern white English, black American English) are being written more than they used to. We might even see "standard" written forms of these, or something like them, emerge. But they will remain minority dialects, with Indians, Singaporeans, Cockneys or Brooklynites knowing they need to use standard English when writing formally for a wider audience.

The biggest potential change is the third. What could it mean that so many non-natives are learning and using English imperfectly? This has less to do with the internet. Non-natives are already interacting with each other in person, in English, all around the world. It's harder to forecast the structural changes that this could cause to standard English. But a few guesses are possible.

A few bits of English grammar are both tricky and non-essential. The contact between Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans probably caused the death of Old English's elaborate case system, as many adults and then their children learned the old language imperfectly. It's easy to imagine modern-day contact finishing off some of the last vestiges of that case system, like "whom".  (This is an easy call, since natives already fail to master "whom"; its decline is in progress.)  Probably many other such changes will take place. But it's hard to say what they'll be.  The tense-aspect system is one candidate. When to use "I speak", "I do speak" and "I'm speaking", "I have spoken", "I spoke" and such is hard to master. As the numerical advantage of non-natives over natives grows, changes to that system are possible. Maybe non-native speakers can tell us in the comments: what bits of tricky English do you ignore when you can get away with it (speaking to other non-natives, for example)?

English is undergoing a novel experiment. I can't think of a standardised living language that has been spoken by more non-native-speakers than natives for a long time. Natives consider the language "theirs", and will resist deep structural changes. The influence of foreigners is likely to cause annoyance. But such changes will come, inevitably, if slowly. Check back on this blog in five hundred years.

www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Chen Guangcheng has earned his stripes. Blinded by fever as an infant, the 40-year-old self-taught lawyer has been jailed for fighting forced abortions, confined to his home by thugs, intimidated, beaten and starved. He escaped from extralegal house arrest this spring and found refuge at the US embassy in Beijing.

His present couldn't be much different from his past. Since arriving in Manhattan in May, he has lived with his wife and two children in a three-bedroom apartment near New York University, where he studies law on a fellowship.

In New York, Chen has become a potent symbol of resilience and empowerment – the triumph of a dogged individual over a corrupt, oppressive state – and he plays the part with gusto.

"Chinese people have realised that the dictatorial regime is a source of social injustice – everyone knows this now," he said in a phone interview this week. People are gradually overcoming their fear. And when the number of people who have overcome their fear has reached a certain threshold, change is inevitable."

But how will things change, exactly? And when? Chen isn't sure. The proliferation of microblogs in China now allows information to travel faster than censors can contain it, and a once-in-a-decade leadership transition last month brought vague hopes of political reform.

Yet Chen's situation also brings the country's systemic injustices into sharp relief.

The ruling Communist party still controls the media and the courts; its officials act with shocking impunity. Chen may never be allowed back into the country, though no laws dictate that he must remain abroad.

Furthermore, his acrimonious relationship with authorities in his coastal Shandong province hometown is far from over. Linyi City authorities have imprisoned his 33-year-old nephew Chen Kegui for defending himself against stick-wielding officials and security agents on the night of Chen's escape.

They broke down his door and wrecked his furniture; he lashed at them with a knife, injuring three. Chen believes the case is retaliatory, but remains unbowed. "Intimidation and threats cannot alter our rules of conduct," he said. "The Communist party rulers are wrong if they think that imprisoning Chen Kegui will curtail my speech."

Last month, the people's court of Yinan county sentenced Chen Kegui to three years in prison for "intent to injury", drawing harsh criticism from the Obama administration and scores of international rights groups.

The court barred Chen's nephew from appointing his own lawyers. It gave his parents four hours' notice of the trial, and then forbade them from attending. "A few days ago, the spokesperson for the ministry of foreign affairs, Hong Lei, said shamelessly that China is a country ruled by law," said Chen. "But how can a law-governed state allow party leaders to conduct illegal activities in its citizens' houses?"

Chen grew up in impoverished Dongshigu village in Linyi city and began elementary school when he was 17. He audited law classes while studying acupuncture and massage in Nanjing (in China, blind people have limited career options).

In 2005, he filed a class-action lawsuit against Linyi authorities for their brutal enforcement of the one-child policy, which included forced sterilisations and late-term abortions.

The authorities fought back. The following summer, they sentenced Chen to four years in prison for "disrupting traffic and damaging public property".

After his release in 2010, security agents confined him to his home. They covered his windows with sheet metal, beat him, cut his electricity, deprived his family of food, even confiscated his six-year-old daughter's toys.

A stream of human rights activists and journalists attempted to visit Chen in confinement, but guards stopped them at the village entrance. Some were beaten, others robbed. Yet as word of Chen's condition spread on the country's popular microblogs, the stream turned into a river. The Batman actor Christian Bale drove to Dongshigu with a CNN crew while in China for a film premiere, but was physically assaulted and turned away.

Chen escaped once in April, while guards thought he was sleeping. He broke his foot climbing over the wall surrounding his home, stumbled through the forest and met up with a fellow activist on a nearby road.

She drove him to Beijing, his minders in hot pursuit, but he found sanctuary at the US embassy. After days of high-stakes negotiations between American diplomats (including the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton) and China's foreign ministry, the Chinese government granted Chen a passport. Within hours, he was on a plane.

Despite the language barrier, Chen is slowly adapting to American life. He studies English for four hours each week in between classes on the declaration of independence, the United States constitution and criminal procedure law.

Every morning before breakfast, he listens to the news. He's sceptical about newly appointed party secretary Xi Jinping's promises to crack down on corruption. "Every ruler talks about reforms after getting into power," he said. "What they say does not count. The only thing that counts is what they actually do."

Chen expressed admiration for Zhai Xiaobin, a blogger who was arrested last month for posting a sensitive joke to Twitter, and immense gratitude to western media, Bale, and the scores of "netizens" who tried to visit him while he was under house arrest.

"Despite the humiliations, they continued to visit the place again and again, until they had exposed this problem to the whole country and the whole world," he said. "This perfectly illustrates the kindness in the Chinese ethos. No matter how many thugs humiliate and torture people, this kindness will never disappear."

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SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- THERE are a lot of good questions to consider about the internet and language. There are equally many good questions to be asked about the future of English now that a majority of its speakers are non-natives.  But last week's BBC Magazine piece on the future of English online is a dog's breakfast of confused concepts, true but misleading facts, and otherwise misguided attempts to make sense of many related, but distinct, trends in English.

Fortunately, Jane O'Brien avoided the tsk-tsking, declinist tone of so many articles like this. She talked to some relevant experts. But to take just one core example, she seems to have misunderstood what they told her:

In previous centuries, the convergence of cultures and trade led to the emergence of pidgin - a streamlined system of communication that has simple grammatical structure, says Michael Ullman, director of research at Georgetown University's Brain and Language Lab.

When the next generation of pidgin speakers begins to add vocabulary and grammar, it becomes a distinct Creole language. "You get different endings, it's more complex and systematised. Something like that could be happening to English on the web," he says.

Take Hinglish...

No, don't take Hinglish. It's not a creole. It's a broad term referring to either English with a healthy dash of unique Indian vocabulary, or the Indian languages spoken with English words and phrases thrown in, or the speech of Indians comfortable switching back and forth quickly between two languages.  But it's nowhere near a full creole, and so is not a good pointer to what is happening to English online.

Ms O'Brien is right that linguists call an improvised contact language a pidgin. It will typically mix the two groups' native languages. The almost magical transformation to a creole is when children born in the contact situation learn the pidgin as their native language. Only then do we see "different endings...more complex and systematised". Creoles are internally consistent, with a fully functional new grammar. (Typically they use fewer word-endings than the parent languages do.)  Such creoles can even be national languages, as in Haiti and New Guinea. The fact that such perfect languages arise from such imperfect circumstances has long been fascinating to psychologists of language. The story of Nicaraguan Sign Language, developed by neglected deaf children, is a particularly exciting example of a full-fledged language arising from no ingredients at all.

But this isn't what's happening to English online. Many non-natives write online in English. Some of them have distinctive varieties of English, but none are creolising the main body of English. Hinglish is not being learned or written by non-Indians. Singlish (from Singapore) is more like a real creole, an established dialect of English that is difficult for non-Singaporeans to follow. But again, it's not being learned by non-Singaporeans and thus changing standard English. Singaporeans use (usually quite good) standard English with non-Singaporeans. Many other non-natives are simply writing English full of the typical mistakes of a non-fluent speaker. But there are no children learning their first language from this broken English and regularising the mistakes into a new creole. The reason is obvious: children do not learn their first language from the internet.

Roughly, three things are happening. One is that we already know British and American English are seeding each other with new words and phrases (to the annoyance of some onboth sides). It's likely that this is increasing in the age of globalisation and the internet. As India rises and its many speakers of English spread their culture around the world, we're likely to see more Hinglish in standard English, too. Other English-speaking groups will contribute as well. But this will probably be limited to a few words and phrases. This is just plain old borrowing, not creolisation.

The second new thing is that improvised, speech-like forms of written English are proliferating on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. This means that non-standard dialects (Hinglish, Singlish, southern white English, black American English) are being written more than they used to. We might even see "standard" written forms of these, or something like them, emerge. But they will remain minority dialects, with Indians, Singaporeans, Cockneys or Brooklynites knowing they need to use standard English when writing formally for a wider audience.

The biggest potential change is the third. What could it mean that so many non-natives are learning and using English imperfectly? This has less to do with the internet. Non-natives are already interacting with each other in person, in English, all around the world. It's harder to forecast the structural changes that this could cause to standard English. But a few guesses are possible.

A few bits of English grammar are both tricky and non-essential. The contact between Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans probably caused the death of Old English's elaborate case system, as many adults and then their children learned the old language imperfectly. It's easy to imagine modern-day contact finishing off some of the last vestiges of that case system, like "whom".  (This is an easy call, since natives already fail to master "whom"; its decline is in progress.)  Probably many other such changes will take place. But it's hard to say what they'll be.  The tense-aspect system is one candidate. When to use "I speak", "I do speak" and "I'm speaking", "I have spoken", "I spoke" and such is hard to master. As the numerical advantage of non-natives over natives grows, changes to that system are possible. Maybe non-native speakers can tell us in the comments: what bits of tricky English do you ignore when you can get away with it (speaking to other non-natives, for example)?

English is undergoing a novel experiment. I can't think of a standardised living language that has been spoken by more non-native-speakers than natives for a long time. Natives consider the language "theirs", and will resist deep structural changes. The influence of foreigners is likely to cause annoyance. But such changes will come, inevitably, if slowly. Check back on this blog in five hundred years.

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SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- The negotiations, which have gone on for more than a fortnight, looked set to last for most of Saturday. But the marathon session left many delegates hopeful of rescuing a deal amid the frustration and confusion of the night.

"We have worked without a break and people realise we need to go home with something," said one delegate.

The EU is understood to have proposed a deadline of 3pm Saturday (12pm GMT) for adopting final amendments, but every deadline that has been set so far in the last days of talks has been breached.

Ed Davey, the UK energy and climate secretary, worked through the night, meeting with ministers from developed and developing countries in an attempt to secure a deal.

Rumours and counter-rumours were flying as ministers met in small groups and huddles of twos and threes to hammer out compromises. Some meetings were fractious, with delegates conscious of the need avoid a breakdown, which would be disastrous for the image of these talks with the eyes of the world upon the 195 governments meeting in Doha.

A deal to continue the Kyoto protocol beyond the end of this year, when its first set of targets expire, looked to be within grasp. In addition, an agreement to close down a parallel set of negotiations set up after the protocol came into force in 2005, at the behest of the US, which has always rejected Kyoto. Closing that strand would enable unified negotiations to begin work on a proposed new global climate change agreement, which would require emissions cuts from both developed and developing countries. It would be signed in 2015 to come into force from 2020.

Progress on other issues was still unclear on Saturday morning, including whether and how poor countries would be compensated for the damage done to them by climate change – the so-called "loss and damage" clause. Developing countries wanted a new institution and framework to deal with this, but the US was opposed to any new institution. However, a compromise was said to be possible that would allow the US to agree a new mechanism that fell short of the developing countries' strongest demands but would ensure the end results – of compensation and assistance to poor nations – were achieved.

Talks started a fortnight ago with a limited agenda and a deal on the key issues looked likely. But in the final three days, during the so-called "ministerial segment" when environment ministers arrive to take over from officials, the talks got out of hand. Countries turned their back on compromises and retreated to their entrenched positions. Many blamed the Qatari hosts for failing to take a firm grip and allowing the negotiations to get out of hand.

One participant said: "It's like the Qataris think it's a World Cup, but this is not a game of football – these are serious negotiations about the future of the planet. They have not taken this seriously – they have not got a grip."

Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defence Capital, said: "There's a cultural mismatch between the Qatari team and this process. They think deal-making is beneath them. They are not managing very well."

One delegate accused the Qataris of going home early on Thursday instead of working through the night on the draft texts, as hosts are expected to.

One problem is that, as the UK's negotiator put it, "nothing is agreed till everything is agreed". That means that the conference is unlikely to be able to rescue the Kyoto protocol unless the other items of business are also resolved.

The Qataris also came under fire for not putting forward their own plans for cutting emissions and providing money for poor countries. It had been hoped that as hosts they might galvanise the region, including Saudi Arabia, into doing more on climate change and using a small slice of their oil wealth to satisfy developing country demands for funds.

Qatar, the world's third biggest exporter of natural gas, is also the world's biggest per capita emitter of carbon – 50 tonnes a year, compared to 17 for the US and 1.4 for India. The country makes the majority of its $170bn annual income from oil and gas. Nick Mabey, chief executive of the green thinktank E3G, echoed the views of many: "We think the level of wealth of Qatar and their responsibility for emissions means that they should be contributing.

"It would add a lot of momentum to the talks if they made a financial pledge, and would encourage other countries in the region to show solidarity and help countries that are afflicted by the burning of fossil fuels."

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SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -  Evidence that global warming is man-made is getting stronger, the head of a U.N. panel of climate scientists said, in a further blow to skeptics who argue rising temperatures can be explained by natural variations.

Rajendra Pachauri spoke on the sidelines of a conference in Qatar where 200 nations are trying to reach a deal to cut emissions of greenhouse gases to avert floods, droughts, heat waves and mounting sea levels.

The influential U.N. climate panel said the probability human activity was the main cause of climate change was "at least 90 percent" in its last report in 2007.

Pachauri told Reuters late on Wednesday he expected the panel would raise the level of that likelihood even higher in its next report, due in 2013.

"We certainly have a substantial amount of information available by which I hope we can narrow the gaps, increase the level of certainty of our findings," he said.

"We will have a lot more information this time around on the melting of Greenland and Antarctica. I hope we will get a little more information on sea level rise," he added.

Rising sea levels pose a particular threat to people living in low-lying areas, from Bangladesh to the cities of New York, London and Buenos Aires. They open up the risk of storm surges, coastal erosion and, in the worst case scenario, complete swamping of large areas of land.

The last report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave a wide range for sea levels, saying they could rise by between 18 and 59 cm (7-24 inches) by 2100.

Those numbers did not take account of a possible acceleration of a melt of Antarctic or Greenland ice, due to big uncertainties.

"KYOTO THE ONLY SHOW IN TOWN"

Some scientists and organizations have questioned whether gases released by industry and other human activity are the main causes of global warming, pointing instead to natural climactic variations and events like shifts in the sun's output.

They have also suggested warming may have flattened out, citing data showing 1998, 2005 and 2010 are tied as the warmest years since records began in the mid-19th century.

But a study released during the Qatar talks study backed IPCC projections that temperatures were creeping higher, and sea levels were rising even faster than predicted.

Pachauri said the panel would also gain wider understanding of the formation of clouds. The white tops of clouds at low altitudes tend to bounce heat back into space, cooling the planet, while high-altitude clouds often trap heat.

The Doha talks are struggling to extend the U.N.'s troubled Kyoto Protocol, which binds most developed nations to cut emissions by at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Russia, Canada and Japan are pulling out, saying it is now time for fast-growing emerging nations led by China and India to take on commitments. Under current plans, a new global deal is meant to be agreed in 2015 and enter into force by 2020.

Pachauri said that Kyoto still seemed a good idea. "It's the only show in town. Why give it up?" he said.

A U.N. conference two years ago agreed to limit any rise in temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times. But greenhouse gas levels hit a new record in 2011, despite the world economic slowdown. www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) - As China's new leaders prepared to take the reins of power earlier this month in Beijing, a shocking event was unfolding 2,000 km away.

In the mountainous region of western Sichuan, on the Tibetan plateau, three teenage Tibetan monks set themselves on fire on the eve of the Communist Party congress.

According to London-based activist group Free Tibet, the monks called for freedom in Tibet and the return of the exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. The youngest monk, a 15-year-old, died from his injuries.

Since 2011, over 70 Tibetans have set themselves on fire.

But during the 18th Party Congress - which approved China's once-in-a-decade leadership change - none of the country's top leaders spoke about the protests.

"The Chinese authorities seem to be playing down this issue, especially domestically," says Robert Barnett, the director of the Modern Tibet Studies Programme at Columbia University in New York.

"This represents a crisis in China's Tibet policy, and they must be reluctant for that to become apparent."

'Desperation'

China's leaders and the six million Tibetans they govern have had a strained relationship in recent decades.

In the 1950s, Beijing reasserted control in Tibet. Previously, the Tibetans had largely governed themselves. It was during this period the Dalai Lama fled into exile in India.

In 2008, there were violent protests in the city of Lhasa which quickly spread across the region. They were quelled by the Chinese authorities.

But last year, trouble flared once again when Tibetans - mainly monks and nuns - began setting themselves on fire in protest against what they see as political and religious repression. It has now become a disturbing trend.

Many of the self-immolations have taken place in western Sichuan, a mountainous area with a large Tibetan population, which until a few years ago had been relatively quiet. There have also been large-scale protests.

China has carried out an extensive security operation in the region and has largely prevented foreign journalists from reaching the affected areas. There has been almost no coverage of the events in the Chinese state media.

But the Tibetan blogger, Tsering Woeser, scours the internet for information.

She is routinely harassed by the Chinese authorities and told the BBC that she was told to leave Beijing in August ahead of the Communist Party Congress. She is currently in Lhasa.

Ms Woeser told the BBC that there was growing desperation among Tibetans and that was why so many were prepared to set themselves on fire. She said that the security measures put in place by the Chinese authorities were making the situation worse.

Earlier this month the top human rights official at the United Nations, Navi Pillay, said she was disturbed by reports of detentions, disappearances and the excessive use of force against peaceful demonstrators.

Beijing denounced the statement, saying it would not tolerate interference in its internal affairs.

During the party congress, Qiangba Puncog, legislature chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, while expressing sympathy for those who set themselves on fire, denounced the Dalai Lama.

"They are political victims," he said. "The Dalai Lama group are using these people. They have no concern for the advancements we made in living standards, improving facilities and making more and more people content and happy."

'Great courage'

China emphasis its development of Tibetan areas, saying its rule has brought huge economic benefits to what was a poor, feudal society.

Nonetheless the authorities appear unable to end the protests. The question now is whether there will be a change in direction under the leadership of Xi Jinping.

Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongxun, was a former senior leader well known for pursuing a more conciliatory approach towards the Tibetans.

In a recent BBC interview, the Dalai Lama said they were on "friendly terms" and that he had even given Xi Zhongxun a watch. He said it was too early to say whether his son would change policy.

But even if Xi Jinping wanted to change direction he would have to tackle a vast security and government apparatus that has been geared up to deal with the Tibet issue, says Bi Yantao, a professor at Hainan University.

Prof Bi says it is clear that the Tibetan government-in-exile is using Western media to pressure Beijing.

But he believes that both sides need to show more flexibility, describing the current situation as "deadlock."

Robert Barnett says there are suggestions that Xi Jinping has set an internal team to review Tibet policy and believes the possibility of a change in policy cannot be ruled out.

"It will take great courage, Xi Jinping will have to overcome heavy internal resistance," he says. "Any change is likely to seem small from an outsider's perspective.

"But in the current situation, even a slight change would have a significant effect among at least some of the Tibetan community in Tibet."

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