Singing of national anthem in Tamil

Step towards reconciliation

By Latheef Farook

President Maithripala Sirisena’s decision to provide official sanction for the singing of the National Anthem in Tamil language is cheerful development for the country battered due to racist politics of the two main political parties-the United National Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

Singing of National Anthem in Tamil by Thavam Ratna

Gota made 41,000 desert Army

THURSDAY, 26 MARCH 2015

There are about 41,330 Army deserters and they would be given two weeks amnesty period to resign from the Army stated Army spokesman yesterday (25th).

The amnesty period would be till 10th April and after this date raids would be conducted to arrest the deserters added the Army spokesman.

After the end of the war a large number of Army personnel were deployed in former government’s projects and many had towork as labourers in construction works that insulted the dignity they had earned as fighters for the Nation causing many to desert the Army.

Former Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa made Army personnel in uniform sell vegetables, clean drains, pave roads, work as sanitary workers and labourers in ‘palaces’ built for his brother, the former President. They were also deployed for various projects of the Urban Development Authority headed by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and were paid only the Army salary they were entitled to. Such arbitrary moves of the former Defense Secretary depressed soldiers and made them desert the Army.

Video: President Sirisena’s Speech At Boao Forum For Asia In China

President Maithripala Sirisena’s speech at the Opening Plenary of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2015, Boao, Hainan Province, China, March 28, 2015.

March 28, 2015

Good morning,

Your Excellency Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, Honourable Yasuo Fukuda, Chairman, Boao Forum for Asia, Mr Zhou, Wenzhong, Secretary-General Boao Forum for Asia, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.

It gives me great pleasure to participate in this August assembly, which brings together world leaders as well as the global business community upon a common platform for a constructive and mutually beneficial dialog. Such a meeting is most appropriate in the context of achieving our collective goal of prosperity and development for the people of Asia. Today Asian enterprise is a key driver in global economic development as Asian economies continues to grow they have also become more complex and more integrated with each other and with the rest of the world. The theme of this year’s forum Asia’s New Future: Towards a Community of Common Destiny is relevant and timely. The wealth of Asia is measured in GDP per capita terms differs wildly among and within stages even as Asia has the majority of the world’s population accounting for nearly sixty percent of the estimated 7.2 billion, it is also home to majority of the world’s poor.

The rising prosperity many of our Asian countries is evident in the high consumption and high expenditure. There is an ever-growing disparity among the people. In my address to the nation last month, on the national day, I highlighted this issue and made a sincere promise to reduce the income gap and eliminate poverty as a key objective of my government.

Excellences, ladies and gentlemen

There remains a notable disparity in the decree of intra-regional integration. This calls for a new thinking on Asian growth strategy and more cooperative partnership among the community of Asia. Simplified trade and reducing non-tariff barriers is vital in order to enhance connectivity.

The Asian region is also still largely dependent on extra-regional markets for its final exports and lacks significant counterparts within the region. In such a scenario, how do we achieve a community of common destiny for Asia? The answers needs developing appropriate public policies, strategies to respond to these challenges while taking into consideration the specific differences in respective countries. Sri Lanka is committed to such cooperation and collective action within the community of Asian nations. The people of Sri Lanka on the 8th of January gave me an overwhelming mandate to take the country on a path of progress, as nation welcoming a new dawn of democracy, good governance, the rule of law and equal opportunities for all.

Toward this end, my government is implementing ambitious hundred day programme, inclusion of constitutional reforms to usher in a new political culture, as well as achieving lasting national reconciliation among all communities.

Sri Lanka as a maritime nation with natural ecological advantages will work in tandem with friendly countries to maintain cooperation in the maritime age. Sri Lanka is currently identified as a country with relatively high growth among emerging market economies. The country’s growth in per capita terms in recent years is comparable to middle income economy levels. We are hopeful that our FTA with China, currently under negotiations, will provide further inputs for value addition and economic cooperation in the region.

Our inbound tourism from China has increased significantly, and Asian countries rank among the top investors in Sri Lanka.

This important forum can play a significant role to achieve our collective vision of an Asian community of common destiny.

In conclusion, I take this opportunity to convey my best wishes for a successful and productive outcome for the Boao Forum for Asia 2015.

Thank you.

Sri Lanka fires fresh salvo at Chinese firm over Port City project

Sri Lanka’s finance minister Ravi Karunanayake. Photo: AFP

Debasish Roy Chowdhury

 Saturday, 28 March, 2015

Minister pulls up Colombo Port City company; says Xi Jinping sprang a surprise by telling Sirisena that China, Lanka and India should work closely in future

The Chinese company involved in the controversial US$1.4 billion Colombo Port City project has failed to furnish the necessary documents within the two-week deadline set by the new government, which is also reviewing other Chinese projects including a high-profile telecommunications tower, Sri Lanka's finance minister said yesterday.

In an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post, Ravi Karunanayake also said President Xi Jinping surprised the Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Thursday when he said China would like to have India as an important component of regional cooperation.

Karunanayake, in Hong Kong for a day to address the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference before heading for the Boao Forum, said the row over the stalled Colombo Port City project should not deter Chinese investors as Sri Lanka is only trying to ensure a business-friendly and clean atmosphere by cleansing a system that had become "deeply corrupt" under the former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa.

"We are telling Chinese companies that we are keen to have clean, transparent accountable investment. Port City should not be the benchmark. There are serious problems with that project that we are trying to fix. It has nothing to do with our attitude to Chinese investment."

Promoted by state-owned and Hong Kong-listed China Communications Construction Co (CCCC), Colombo Port City has become a bone of contention between China and Sri Lanka. The new government headed by Sirisena, who defeated Rajapaksa in January's elections, put it on hold earlier this month alleging large-scale irregularities.

The finance minister maintained the company did not have the requisite clearance from the government and had failed to come up with the documents to show that it was given the go-ahead to start the project.

A top executive of CHEC Port City Colombo, a subsidiary of CCCC contracted to undertake all reclamation and infrastructure works for the project, had earlier told the Post on condition of anonymity that the company had submitted all documents on March 9. It was served the suspension notice and set a two-week deadline on March 6.

Requests for comment from CHEC failed yesterday.

President Xi had urged Sirisena to protect the legitimate interests of Chinese companies when they met on Thursday, Xinhua reported. Sirisena, according to the report, said the current situation with Colombo Port City is “temporary and the problems do not lie with China”.

Taking a dig at CCCC, Karunanayake said: "They run full-page advertisements in newspapers justifying their actions, but when we tell them to submit documents, they draw a blank."

Artist's impression of Colombo's Lotus Tower. Funded by China, the 350-metre tower is to be the tallest in South Asia. Photo: SCMP PicturesThe finance minister has been tasked with renegotiating the billions of dollars Sri Lanka borrowed from China to finance infrastructure projects. The new government is struggling with the debt it has inherited, which now stands at 88.9 per cent of the gross domestic product, compared with 78.3 per cent in 2013.

The International Monetary Fund this month rejected a request by Colombo for a US$4 billion loan to restructure debt repayments on Chinese loans.

"The people should not be made to pay for sins of the past government. We have urged the Chinese to look at the loans compassionately," said the minister, who refused to divulge the status of debt negotiations with Beijing.

Karunanayake said the government is also re-examining Lotus Tower, among other Chinese-backed projects. Funded by China Exim Bank, the US$103 million tower - 26 metres taller than the Eiffel Tower and the tallest in South Asia - is being executed by China National Electronics Import and Export Corporation and Aerospace Long-March International Trade.

"There was overinvestment and we are examining if it can be done cheaper," he said.

On talks between Xi and Sirisena, he said: "The Chinese president took us by surprise when he said China, India and Sri Lanka should all work together to avoid any suggestions of regional animosity."

India is sensitive about China's growing engagement in its neighbourhood, especially since two Chinese submarines docked in Colombo last year.

"Xi said why don't we get India to work with us, which was seized upon by President Sirisena, who said that would be the best possible outcome. Both presidents agreed that India should be part of the equation."

Reading Weli Raju’s death the political way!

Saturday, 28 March 2015 

The global village is now reading through the internet, electronic and the print media about Buddhadasa Priyantha Sirisena alias Weli Raju, a brother of president Maithripala Sirisena, who died at dawn today.

Weli Raju’s death is getting various interpretations. From the government side, it is said the president had expelled him from the family around six to seven years ago, and that there had been no connection whatsoever between the two. But, Mahinda loyalists say there actually was a connection, pointing to his being airlifted to Colombo, and asking as to whether others meeting with accidents in Polonnaruwa are brought by helicopter to Colombo.

Priyantha Sirisena alias Weli Raju was actually a village thug. His livelihood was illegal sand mining using a business called Rajarata Builders as a front. Because of him, Maithripala Sirisena had become embarrassed on several occasions. Just because his elder brother became the president, Weli Raju did not change his ways. Until the JVP raised his illegal sand mining again, he had continued to engage in that unlawful activity. He was his former self, wearing a sarong and chewing betel, he frequented every village, junction and culvert at Pulathisipura. He did not forget to grin, showing his discoloured teeth, whenever he saw a village damsel. His daily routine ended with having a bottle or half a bottle of alcohol and spending the night at a ‘house known to him.’ That very habit brought his life to its end.

He did all these alone, not with the support of escorts, jeep backups or bodyguards. He did not use a pistol at least. That alone is enough to understand the connection between Weli Raju and his brother, the president. In the end, he had been brought by helicopter not at the request of his elder brother now in China, but due to voluntary action by those who are loyal to his elder brother, the president.

In our country, when the elder brother becomes the president, his younger brothers become the unofficial presidents. In actual fact, Weli Raju should have been in Las Vegas, playing casinos, or caressing the breasts of white girls, or licking pound notes and pasting them on the buttocks of those girls, or at least getting a body-to-body massage from a Thai girl in Bangkok. In the recent past, that was what we saw from the younger brothers and sons of the then president. Instead, what Weli Raju did was, as had been his years of practice, having a bottle and sneaking into his usual haunting place. The fellow in that place, unconcerned that he was the younger brother of the president, attacked him with an axe on his head. Still, that fellow, his wife and the parents remain unharmed. ‘Yaha Paalanaya’ did not burn down his home. The suspect was remanded. No one tried to score from the president by giving Lakmal ‘a return.’ Everyone is waiting for the law the take its proper course.

Mahinda loyalists say this all is due to the timidity of Maithri, that the younger brother wouldn't have suffered this fate had the elder brother stood firm. Those fools have forgotten how the former elder brothers and younger brothers ruined the country. These cannibals take the return of the rule of the law as timidity. In conclusion, we will quote from a printing mistake of ‘Lankadeepa’ newspaper. It said ‘Mahinda avasan buhuman dakwai’ (Mahinda pays last respects), at the funeral home of the slain Ratgama pradeshiya sabha chairman. But, many say the headline is having ‘ta’ (Mahinda-ta) missing. Anyone can interpret it the way he/she wants it to be.

Rift deepens in Aam Aadmi Party that challenged Modi

Arvind Kejriwal, chief of Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party (AAP), shouts slogans after taking the oath as the new chief minister of Delhi during a swearing-in ceremony at Ramlila ground in New Delhi February 14, 2015.

REUTERS/ANINDITO MUKHERJEE/FILESSat Mar 28, 2015

Sat Mar 28, 2015

(Reuters) - Two founding members of anti-establishment Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) were ousted from its top decision-making panel on Saturday, deepening the rift in the party that is seen as a potential challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The AAP, or Common Man party, stormed to power in local elections held in the capital New Delhi last month decimating Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and casting doubts on the Hindu nationalist leader’s popularity in the country.

But the party has faced internal challenges after it started governing in Delhi — some leaders have questioned how the party operates and called its chief, Arvind Kejriwal, a dictator.

On Saturday, Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, who have led much of the attack on the party’s internal functioning, were removed from the national executive. This could be a prelude to a sacking from the party itself.

Yadav said they were heckled, booed and called ‘traitors’ at the meeting on Saturday where bouncers got aggressive and man-handled some of the members. Other AAP officials denied these charges.

"The party’s top leaders are resorting to the kind of hooliganism that other political parties have," Bhushan told reporters after the meeting.

Bhushan said they had yet to decide if they would quit the party or seek a re-vote on their ousting.

While the two-year-old anti-graft party, that claimed to bring about fair and transparent politics in India, is not an immediate threat, its stunning victory has re-energised regional leaders who are bitterly opposed to Modi and are preparing for a clutch of state elections over this year and the next.

(Reporting by Aditi Shah; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Stephen Powell)

Co-pilot in jet crash said to have had depression

By Anthony Faiola and Michael Birnbaum-March 27 at 9:53 PM

MONTABAUR, Germany — On the day he appeared to fly a commercial airliner into a chilly mountainside in France, Andreas Lubitz was hiding a potentially deadly secret: a chronic medical condition that a doctor had determined was serious enough to keep him out of the sky.

Co-pilot in Jet Crash Said to Have Had Depression by Thavam Ratna

Iran and powers close in on 2-3 page nuclear deal, success uncertain

US Secretary of State John Kerry (L), US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz (2L), Robert Malley (3L), of the US National Security Council, European Union High Representative Federica Mogherini (C), Head of Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation Ali Akbar Salehi (2R),

BY JOHN IRISH, LOUIS CHARBONNEAU AND PARISA HAFEZI-Sat Mar 28, 2015

(Reuters) - Iran and major powers are close to agreeing a two- or three-page accord with specific numbers as the basis of a resolution of a 12-year standoff over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, officials have told Reuters.

As the French and German foreign ministers arrived in Switzerland on Saturday to join talks between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Western and Iranian officials familiar with the negotiations cautioned that they could still fail.

Kerry and Zarif have been in Lausanne for days to try to reach an outline agreement by a self-imposed deadline of March 31 between Iran on the one hand and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China on the other.

"The sides are very, very close to the final step and it could be signed or agreed and announced verbally," a senior Iranian official familiar with the talks told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Other officials echoed the remarks while warning that several crucial issues were still being hotly debated.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters on arrival: “I hope we can get a robust agreement. Iran has the right to civil nuclear power, but with regard to the atomic bomb, it’s ‘no’.”

"The talks were long and difficult," he added. "We have moved forward on certain points, but on others not enough."

18 MONTHS OF TALKS

The negotiations, under way for nearly 18 months, aim to hammer out an accord under which Iran, which denies any ambition to build nuclear weapons, halts sensitive nuclear work in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, with the ultimate aim of reducing the risk of a war in the Middle East.

Ahead of another meeting with Zarif on Saturday, Kerry said he expected the discussions to run late. Zarif added that the meetings would run through “evening, night, midnight, morning”.

The British and Russian foreign ministers were due to arrive in Lausanne over the weekend, along with a senior Chinese official.

If agreed, the document would cover key numbers for a comprehensive agreement between Iran and the six powers, such as the maximum number and types of uranium enrichment centrifuges Iran could operate, the size of uranium stockpiles it could maintain, the types of atomic research and development it could undertake, and details on the lifting of international sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

Two officials said it was likely that most of the outline agreement would be made public, though some said certain sections would be kept confidential.

Several Iranian officials denied that Iran was close to agreeing an outline document, but a Western diplomat who confirmed the Reuters story said the comments were aimed at a domestic audience.

COMPREHENSIVE DEAL BY JUNE

One of the key numbers is expected to be the duration of the agreement, which the officials said would have to be in place for more than 10 years. Once it expired, there would probably be a period of special U.N. monitoring of Tehran’s nuclear programme.

The framework accord should be followed by a comprehensive deal by June 30 that includes full technical details on the limits set for Iran’s sensitive nuclear activities.

It remains unclear whether the framework deal will be formally signed or agreed verbally. The Iranians have expressed concern that a written agreement would limit their negotiating space when the technical details are worked out.

The officials cautioned that, even if such a preliminary deal was done in the coming days, there was no guarantee that agreement would be reached on the many technical details.

Some details have been out in the open for months. An Iranian government website said in November that Washington could let Iran keep some 6,000 early-generation centrifuges, down from nearly 10,000 now in operation.

Along with the timetable for the lifting of U.N. sanctions, officials say the biggest sticking point in the talks remains centrifuge research and development. They say Iran wants to conduct advanced centrifuge research at the underground Fordow site, but the Western powers dislike the idea of Iran operating centrifuges there.

The deal would call for U.S., European Union and U.N. sanctions to be lifted according to a specific schedule, though some could be lifted very quickly, the officials said.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

“Manufacturing Dissent”

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts-March 27, 2015

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is the author of many important books. His latest is The Globalization of War: America’s Long War Against Humanity. Chossudovsky shows that Washington has globalized war while the US president is presented as a global peace-maker, complete with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Washington has its military deployed in 150 countries, has the world divided up into six US military commands and has a global strike plan that includes space operations.

Nuclear weapons are part of the global strike plan and have been elevated for use in a pre-emptive first strike, a dangerous departure from their Cold War role.

America’s militarization includes military armament for local police for use against the domestic population and military coercion of sovereign countries in behalf of US economic imperialism.

One consequence is the likelihood of nuclear war. Another consequence is the criminalization of US foreign policy. War crimes are the result. These are not the war crimes of individual rogue actors but war crimes institutionalized in established guidelines and procedures. “What distinguishes the Bush and Obama administrations,” Chossudovsky writes, “is that the concentration camps, targeted assassinations and torture chambers are now openly considered as legitimate forms of intervention, which sustain ‘the global war on terrorism’ and support the spread of ‘Western democracy.’”

Chossudovsky points out that the ability of US citizens to protest and resist the transformation of their country into a militarist police state is limited. Washington and the compliant foundations now fund the dissent movement in order to control it. He quotes Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman about manufacturing consent. He lets Paul Kivel describe how funding of dissent by the elite results in the co-option of grassroots community leadership. The same thing is happening to environmental organizations. Black Americans also have lost their leaders to the elite’s money and ability to bestow position and emoluments.

Chossudovsky notes that progressive, left-wing, and anti-war groups have endorsed the “war on terror” and uncritically accept the official 9/11 story, which provides the basis for Washington’s wars.

Having accepted the lies, there is no basis for protest. Thus its absence.

As Professor Stephen Cohen has observed, dissent has disappeared from American foreign policy discussion. In place of dissent there is exhortation to more war. A good example is today’s (March 26, 2015) op-ed in the New York Times by neoconservative John R. Bolton, US ambassador to the UN during the George W. Bush regime.  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html?_r=0 

Bolton calls for bombing Iran. Anything short of a military attack on Iran, Bolton says, has “an air of unreality” and will guarantee that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey will also develop nuclear weapons in order to protect themselves from Iran. According to Bolton, the Israeli and American nuclear arsenals are not threatening, but Iran’s would be.

Of course, there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, but Bolton asserts it anyway. Moreover, Bolton manages to overlook that the agreement being worked out with Iran halts the Iranian enrichment program far below the level necessary for nuclear weapons. Bolton’s belief that Iran would be able to hide a weapons program if permitted to have nuclear energy is unsubstantiated. It is merely an implausible assertion.

The neoconservatives constitute a war lobby. When one war doesn’t work, they want another. They have an ever expanding war list. Remember, the neoconservatives are the ones who promised us a 3-week “cakewalk” Iraq war costing $70 billion and paid for by Iraq oil revenues. After 8 years of war costing a minimum of $3,000 billion paid for by US taxpayers, the US gave up and withdrew. Today jihadists are carving a new country out of parts of Syria and Iraq.

It is now a known fact that the neocon Bush regime’s Iraq war was totally based on lies, just as is every other neocon war and the current drive for war with Russia and Iran. Despite their record of lies and failure, the neocons still control US foreign policy, and neocon Nuland is busy at work fomenting “color revolutions” or coups in the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

Without the support of the New York Times, the neocons could not have got the Iraq War going. Now the New York Times, faithful to the neocons but faithless to the American people, is helping the neocons get a war going with Iran and Russia.

I have friends who are college presidents who still read and believe the New York Times. The wars with Iran and Russia that the New York Times is encouraging will be much more dangerous than the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan. Humanity might not survive them.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

The Blood Cries Out

In one of Africa’s most densely populated countries, brothers are killing brothers over the right to farm mere acres of earth. There’s just not enough land to go around in Burundi — and it could push the country into civil war.

BY JILLIAN KEENAN-PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARTINA BACIGALUPO

When Pierre Gahungu thinks about the small farm in the Burundian hills where he grew up and started a family, he remembers the soil—rich and red, perfect for growing beans, sweet potatoes, and bananas. He used to bend over and scoop up a handful of the earth just to savor its moist feel. To Gahungu, now in his 70s, the farm was everything: his home, his livelihood, and his hope. After he was gone, he had always believed, the land would sustain his eventual heirs.
The Blood Cries Out by Thavam Ratna

Maldives threatens migrant workers with expulsion over planned protest

Foreign workers, many of them employed by luxury resorts, have complained of discrimination and violence

Jason Burke in Delhi and Zaheena Rasheed in Malé-Thursday 26 March 2015

Tens of thousands of immigrant workers employed on luxury resorts in theMaldives have been told they will be ordered to leave the island nation if they go ahead with a planned protest against alleged discrimination and violence.

The demonstration has been organised following a series of attacks on immigrant workers, many of whom are employed on high-end resorts serving western tourists. Two men from Bangladesh have died from injuries in the last week.

Mohamed Anwar, the controller of immigration and emigration, said any protest by migrant workers would breach the terms of their work permits, and participants’ visas would be cancelled without further warning.

“The immigration department will not hesitate in penalising those who participate in protests,” Anwar said.

On Thursday the economic ministry repeated the threat. “We believe the planned protest by migrant workers is a premeditated attempt to undermine [the] Maldivian economy and businesses,” it said.

Last year’s national census found there were 58,683 migrant workers in the Maldives, of whom more than a third worked on luxury resorts. More than one million foreigners travelled to the Maldives last year.

A US government report has said the number of “documented and undocumented” foreign workers in Maldives could be as high as 200,000. Most are from India and Bangladesh.

Marouf Zaki, of the Tourism Employees Association of Maldives, said: “The current migrant workforce is very important for the economy but is facing a very worse situation. We are calling for a peaceful demonstration. We believe they have full rights to do that. To protest is a universal right.”

Ahmed Tholal, vice-president of the the Maldives’ human rights commission, said the country’s constitution guaranteed anyone on Maldivian soil the right to protest. “A clause in a migrant worker’s contract cannot override the constitution,” he said.

Tholal said the recent spate of attacks were “hate crimes” and there was a background of entrenched discrimination and “inhuman treatment” of migrant workers in the Maldives, who he said “make an immense contribution to the economy” but had no one to defend them.

The US state department’s Trafficking in Persons report last year claimed that migrant workers suffered forced labour, confiscation of identity and travel documents, withholding or nonpayment of wages, and debt bondage.

The report criticised local authorities for failing to “fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”, though it praised ongoing efforts to tackle the problem.

“The government [has] passed its first anti-trafficking law, opened its first shelter for trafficking victims, distributed pamphlets about rights to migrant workers in a number of other languages, blacklisted some companies for fraudulent recruitment practices, and convicted a trafficker, reportedly the first such conviction in Maldives,” the report said.

One 35-year-old migrant worker from Bangladesh, who said he would attend the protest despite the ban, said the community was “afraid to go out on the streets, they are stabbing us, beating us”.

The Bangladeshi high commissioner in the Maldives, Sarwar Hossain, said he had asked workers from his country not to demonstrate after receiving assurances from ministers, senior policemen and the president, Abdulla Yameen, that security for expatriate workers in the Maldives would be improved.

The island nation has been troubled by political instability in recent years.Mohamed Nasheed, the human rights and climate change campaigner who became the first democratically elected leader of the Maldives at polls in 2008, was sentenced to 13 years in prison this month.

Countries including India and the US have expressed concern about Nasheed’s treatment and trial.

Magna Carta Messed Up the World, Here’s How to Fix It

The “logic” of capitalist development has left a nightmare of environmental destruction in its wake.

(Milton Glaser)

Noam Chomsky -

March 23, 2015   

   This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here.

In a few months, we will be commemorating the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta—commemorating, but not celebrating; rather, mourning the blows it has suffered.

Magna Carta Messed Up the World, Here’s How to Fix It.odt by Thavam Ratna

Housing crisis protesters call for affordable homes

As thousands of people join the biggest-ever rally to protest against the shortage of affordable housing, film director Ken Loach tells Channel 4 News the shortage is crucifying people's life chances.

TUESDAY 17 MARCH 2015
The protesters have been occupying houses in the estate since last week. More than 20,000 people have signed a petition calling for a halt to evictions and the right to return for former tenants.

On Tuesday night, Russell Brand, one of the most high-profile supporters of the housing protesters, is expected to stage a sleepover in one of the occupied houses in support of the demonstrators.

The former residents say they have been forced into homes that are too small, too far from schools (meaning some of the children have had to miss school) and none have been told where or how they will be housed long term.

The remaining families have been given a deadline to leave. Barnet Homes says it is providing assistance "to whom it has a housing duty".

A spokesperson added: "43 households have been housing in the borough, 21 outside the borough, but in London, and one out of London, in Potters Bar.

"Wherever possible, Barnet Homes will endeavour to find households suitable alternative accommodation within the borough, but due to the shortage of properties this is not always possible."

'Illegally occupied'

A high court challenge by two former tenants failed to stop the evictions last month, as did a protest outside Barnet Council's offices.

In a statement, a spokesman for Annington property, which owns the estate, said: "Annington Property Limited became aware on Sunday, March 8 that a property it owned at 60 Sweets Way, Whetstone, had been illegally occupied by squatters.

"Annington has commenced court proceedings to obtain a possession order so that it can evict the squatters and take back possession of the property‎.‎

"These properties have long been earmarked for demolition and Annington advised tenants of this back in 2012. Since then Annington wrote again to tenants in July of last year to ensure that they were all aware of the need to vacate the properties in January 2015."

London rally

Meanwhile, in central London, more than 2,500 people gathered in Westminster to protest the housing crisis at the Homes for Britain rally. The protest, which included major developers, housing associations and charities, was called to warn that the lowest housebuilding levels since the 1920s meant demand for homes was outstripping supply.

The Housing Federation, which organised the event, says Britain needs 245,000 homes a year - but only 125,000 are being built.

The event received support from across the political spectrum, with speakers reportedly from leftwing film director Ken Loach to Ukip leader Nigel Farage.

Mr Farage said that tighter immigration controls would reduce demand, the Guardian reported, saying Ukip would build "a couple of hundred thousand homes" homes a year on derelict land as "a brownfield revolution".

In contrast, Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said: "Everybody, including migrants, has the right to somewhere decent to live."

"Politicians need to pull their heads out of the sand and realise that housing has become a major general election issue," Henry Gregg, of the National Housing Federation, said.

"We are calling on all the political parties to end the housing crisis within a generation and build the homes that young people desperately need."