Cabinet removes consultancy firm for Rs. 40 b Defence HQ

Defence headquarters in Akuregoda

By Uditha Jayasinghe -Thursday, 23 June 2016

Cabinet has decided to remove the architect consultant firm for the Rs. 40 billion Defence complex headquarters in Akuregoda after a Government report recommended an investigation into large-scale payments earmarked under the project as well a budget reevaluation for the venture.

The construction of the Defence headquarters in Akuregoda, Battaramulla has been under a corruption cloud for several years. Former Defence Ministry Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa proposed the state-of -the-art defence headquarters and in 2011 Parliament approved Rs. 20 billion for its construction. At the time the former Government announced it would be completed by 2013.

However at the time the main Opposition United National Party (UNP) spearheaded by Deputy Foreign Minister Dr. Harsha de Silva alleged that the defence headquarters would be funded by money collected from selling property along Galle Face to two foreign companies.

Former Economic Development Deputy Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena in June 2015 disclosed in Parliament that the Government was successful in selling the 10-acre land to Chinese State-run Company China National Aero Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC) for $ 136 million while the second plot was sold to Shangri-La for $ 125 million.

Faced with intense pressure the former Government headed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa subsequently cancelled the CATIC deal on Galle Face and said separate land would be allocated elsewhere on a 99-year lease basis.

After the change of Government last year Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake on 18 March 2015 ordered an investigation into the project, which was approved by the Cabinet. The committee was tasked with submitting a report on the entire project including its scope, total cost, operational time frames and awarding of consultancy contracts. At the time Karunanayake described the plans of the defence headquarters to be “bigger than the Pentagon” to reporters.

The report ordered by the Finance Minister was submitted to Cabinet on 5 August 2015 by the Defence Minister. Subsequently the Cabinet made a request to the Secretary of the President to appoint a second committee to look into the consultancy firms appointed for the project and re-evaluate their payments.

This second committee appointed by the President’s Secretary submitted its report to Cabinet this week recommending that the architectural consultancy firm should not be considered for consultancy services of the project in future. The report also called for cost estimates to be redone and consultancy fees appropriately adjusted. The Cabinet paper seen by Daily FT was signed by President Maithripala Sirisena and also calls for Central Engineering Consultancy Bureau (CECB) to be given the consultancy role.

“The report found this architect firm is run by someone who is not even a qualified architect and is not even a credible firm. But they were to be paid Rs. 2.2 billion as consultancy fee. Therefore Cabinet has decided that they will be removed,” Cabinet Spokesman Dr. Rajitha Senaratne said.

He also defended the previous award of the contract alleging the true state of the consultancy firm was withheld from the Cabinet and details were not accurately noted in the Cabinet paper.

“The previous Government made a habit of handing out contracts without calling tenders and this was discussed by members several times. But preferential treatment was given for defence matters and no one dared question them. This is how the controversial MiG aircraft issue was created as well,” he said. 

Manilal by granting bail to Thilina Gamage unlawfully proves again, only travesty of justice that can be expected from courts

(Lanka-e-News -22.June.2016, 7.30 PM)  Colombo High Court judge Manilal Waidyaratne by granting bail to elephant rogue Thilina Gamage unlawfully has once again insulted the judiciary and confirmed that  the judiciary of SL is most unreliable when it comes to dispensing justice and upholding the rules of law despite the fact it is the judiciary of a country that should respect and revere the legal norms and traditions most. That is, as long as judges like Thilna ,Manilal ,Kansihka are (dis)gracing the bench, justice will always be a travesty and a mockery.

On the 2nd of June Gangodawila magistrate Kanishka Wijeratne delivered a most rudely  shocking  judgment that the elephant calf in the illegal possession of Thilina is not public property. However based on the revised application made by the Attorney General (AG) to the High Court on the 13 th , Thilina the culprit was ordered by High court judge Manilal to be present in court yesterday (21).

Accordingly when Thilina appeared before the high court , the judge decided that the magistrate court verdict given earlier that the elephant calf is not public property , is not in order , and held the elephant calf is indeed  public property. Despite this decision , Thilina was granted bail and the high court judge released Thilina on a cash bail of Rs. 1 million and two surety bails of Rs. 2.5 million each. In addition, Thilina was barred from  foreign travel , and was also ordered  to report to CID every Sunday .

Though bail cannot be granted in a case in which an elephant calf has been held captive , Waidyatileke enlarged Thilina on bail on a most bizarre  consideration. Waidyatileke who granted bail disregarding the State counsel representing the AG , said , he is granting bail because Thilina is a former judge , and that  he had been of assistance to the CID and the courts…..

It is where Manilal despite being a high court judge erred most grievously and recklessly

The actual position  is Thilina had not been of assistance to the CID or the courts. On the contrary he had been a ‘resistance.’ When the CID asked him to arrive and record his statement on three occasions , he evaded citing various reasons and on the fourth occasion he went missing from his house.

Thilina who appeared before the Gangodawila court of his bosom pal arrived at the CID and  recorded  his statement only after bail was illegally granted to him by his bosom pal . Hence , anyone who is not  right in his head only would say Thilina assisted the CID.

Manilal has committed an unpardonable illegality by  granting bail to Thilina when he had not made such an application

The revised application for bail that was taken up for hearing yesterday was filed by the AG. Nowhere in the world is there a law which permits the  granting of bail to an accused while there is an  application made by the AG , for , the AG requests a revision only when  the bail granted by the lower court is incorrect.

Therefore Thilina should have made an application for bail. In the circumstances , it is a most perturbing issue to the law abiding people whether Manilal has sought to dispense justice or lethal poison killing justice while being on  that hallowed bench.   

Unbelievably Thilina the accused and rogue entered the court yesterday through the judges’ entrance which is most deplorable . In other words the judges by permitting this entry have clearly admitted there is no difference between themselves and the accused. Indeed justice is so perverted now , identifying a judge from the accused is extremely difficult.

The verdict of Manilal only  conferred one benefit. That is it deprived the elephant rogues of the opportunity they  had to escape from the arms of the law citing the grounds that  elephant calves are not public property .

No matter what , Manilal Wiadyaratne’s obnoxious decision afore-noted  granting bail underlines one fact … In this country two standards are practiced when dispensing justice in respect of the  accused who commit abuse of  public property. This is a country where each judge delivers verdicts capriciously to serve his/her  own injustice  and not in the best interests of  sacred established justice .

* Judge  Thilina Gamage the elephant rogue was granted bail without even taking him into custody.

* Elephant rogue Uduwe Dhammaloka the monk was arrested and remanded . He was granted bail after a day on the ‘special grounds’ that he had to attend a funeral.

* Muzammil was remanded without bail for several weeks. 

* Even after the AG has given instructions to arrest four State officers ,these officers are still free without being arrested.

Under these portentous circumstances ,what won’t they do to you and I ?

By simply changing the chief justice , the judiciary that was made corrupt during the whole of the nefarious decade of the Rajapakses cannot be restored to its original state.

( In the photo is  Thilina Gamage  entering court )
Photo – courtesy Lankadeepa

---------------------------
by     (2016-06-22 14:19:15)

Corruption Has Become The Norm

By Vishwamithra1984 –June 22, 2016

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”  ~Benjamin Franklin

Many of our rural folks have been conditioned and brainwashed with a notion that poverty is caused mainly by exploitation of one class by the other. The influx of Socialist Marxist thinking, in addition to the sheer arrogance and insensitivity of the ruling class which was dominated and spearheaded by educated, English-speaking elites who were clustered around big cities in the country, advanced the acceleration process instead of reduction or elimination of the impoverishing progression of the masses. In addition, with Sri Lanka gaining independence from the British in the mid Twentieth Century– at the height of the Cold War- that Marxian-based propaganda had a penetrating effect on the unsophisticated intellect of the poor men and women who did not know any kind of socio-political governance except nearly five hundred years of foreign dominance and being subjugated to a feudal system and as serfs of an emerging mercantilism-enriched class in the Nineteenth Century.

Dr. Kumari Jayawardena

Kumari Jayawardena in her book, ‘Nobodies to Somebodies’, most vividly spells out the chronology as well as the social structure that lent itself for the rise of a class of wealthy landowners and traders in Colombo and other big cities, mainly Jaffna, Galle and Kandy. She writes thus: “Members of another group of Sri Lankans, who were to form an important part of the emergent 19th century bourgeoisie, were landowners, whose holdings provided them with a means of accumulation and later, a basis for expanded growth in the plantation era. Just as the monopolistic policies of the Dutch and the British had located a stratum of officials in the cinnamon industry and endowed them with a basis for growth, their administrative policies also created a group of Sri Lankan officials, called Mudaliyars. Peebles (1973:1) has defined them as an economic and social status group “mediating between the alien rulers and the bulk of the indigenous population” performing functions that the foreign rulers were “unable or unwilling to do”.

Graduating from Mercantilism to Capitalism did not happen overnight. Nor did it occur without any socio-economic costs to the various stakeholders of an Island-nation. Emergence of a middleclass with a reasonable amount of spending power and access to factors of production saw to it that this developing socio-economic class developed their own ambitions and aspirations that went beyond just comfortable living and hobnobbing with powers that be. Although Kumari Jayawardena describes the mechanisms and means by which this emergent Mercantilist class accumulated wealth and proximity to the colonial officialdom at the time, she stays away from looking deeper into the mechanics which were employed by the British civil servants who held deciding powers to award contracts to the would-be-dealers of arrack renting business which, according Kumari, the main means by which this accumulation of enormous benefits of a rising specter of capitalism. Yet the total absence of trickling-down effect of such accumulation of wealth and business knowhow to the bottom dwellers of our society contributed to the widening of the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, the long-term effects of which would manifest themselves much later in Sri Lankan society.

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How Anura Senanayake extorted from dust tea racketeers!

Jun 22, 2016

We bring this revelation in accordance with the promise given to expose instances of corruption during the Rajapaksa regime by that rogue of a former police officer Anura Senanayake, presently at Sri Jayawardenepura Hospital under remand custody.

On 03 December 2009, STF sub inspector Dharmapriya was informed that a certain gang was extorting money from dust tea racketeers.

A team comprising Dharmapriya led a decoy to the place in question, and four of the gangsters and their vehicle were taken in while in the act of accepting extortion money. The arrested have been identified as Ratnayake Mudiyanselage Nishantha, Parambabe Tilak Pushpakumara, Liyanwalage Malinga Prabhatha and Indika Suresh Anthony de Silva.

This de Silva was a SI serving at the DIG’s office of Senanayake. Searching the suspects, a pistol and 12 live bullets were found from that particular man’s possession. The pistol belongs to SI Premasiri of the CCD. Everyone in the police well knows that this Premasiri is one of the closest followers of Senanayake.

Further investigations were handed over to the CID, which was led by senior DIG Nandana Munasinghe at the time. He conducted investigations holding the suspects for two weeks under emergency laws. Then, the CID made submissions to the Colombo chief magistrate’s court under B 2096/1/2009.

Terrified by the arrest of his men, Senanayake immediately went to the then IGP Mahinda Balasuriya and pleaded with him to release them. But Balasuriya said, “This is secretary’s (Gotabhaya Rajapaksa) order. I cannot burn my hand by getting involved. The secretary personally told me to clean up the dust tea mafia. What you have done was to rob from them. If you can, go to the secretary. I cannot do anything.”

Senanayake managed to meet Gotabhaya and lied to him, “My boys were sent to catch the dust tea racketeers, but they had tricked the STF and gave them money by force.” Having big faith in Senanayake, Gotabhaya told the CID chief to release the suspects. Accordingly, making submissions to the the magistrate’s court, the CID has requested that they be released on bail. Therefore, from 2009 to date, the case remains pending. The released suspects are back in active service.

Lady doctor, lawyer arrested for biting two 

WPCs


2016-06-22


A lady doctor of a Government hospital, and a lady lawyer had been taken into custody by the Welikada Police for obstructing the duty of two women Police Constables by biting them.

 It is alleged that the lady doctor, who entered the Police station had compelled the Crime Branch OIC to arrest a suspect, who she believed had burgled her house and to recover the stolen goods. 

However, the Police officer explained that the suspect, who was discharged in 2012 by Court, when she, as complainant, failed to attend Court to give evidence, could not be arrested again.

 The lady doctor had abused the Police officer in foul language, held him by the uniform and assaulted her.

 Her sister, a lady lawyer, rushed to the Police Station on hearing that her sister had been arrested also behaved in an unruly manner and bit the hands of two women PCs. 

The unruly incident disrupted the functioning of the Police Station for about three hours.

 The two suspects were produced before Colombo Magistrate and were released on personal bail of Rs.500, 000 each. 

The two women Police Constables had undergone treatment at a Government hospital for the minor injuries. 

A senior Police officer said the suspect who burgled the doctor’s house and took away valuables in 2010, was produced in court and whenever the case was taken up, the complainant was absent to give evidence. 

The case was repeatedly called at times till 2012 and ultimately the suspect was discharged due to the absence of the complainant.(Muditha Dayananda) 

Gaza garbage puts public health at risk

A Palestinian boy rummages through a garbage dump east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, April 2015. Abed Rahim KhatibAPA images

Isra Saleh el-Namey- 21 June 2016

The view from Omayma Nasser’s home is getting uglier.

Huge heaps of waste — collected and thrown in an ad hoc landfill not a kilometer from her home in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza — dominate the view.

“The sight is killing me,” the 37-year-old mother of six said. The overpowering stench is acutely nauseating, especially in the summer: “The smells waft over earlier in the mornings than at any other time of the year.”

The rubbish mounds also attract hungry animals, including stray dogs that terrify children and parents alike. Nasser’s children refuse to go to school unless their father escorts them past the notorious landfill.

But the sight, pungency and inconvenience are just the noticeable effects experienced by those who live around what are increasingly common ad hoc landfills in residential areas in Gaza that officials say they simply have no choice but to create.

Far more pressing are the potential health risks. Due to a lack of resources, waste in Gaza is rarely sorted. Domestic, industrial, agricultural and medical waste can all be mixed in landfills, say experts. When these are burned, poisonous and sometimes carcinogenic fumes are released that pose a health hazard to those nearby.

And with no proper waste management facilities and limited space, garbage is encroaching on neighborhoods.

Some of Nasser’s neighbors have already left the area because of the landfill. As it grew, municipality workers would burn the rubbish to make room for more waste. Such open-air incinerations happen every 10 days now, and the thick, black smoke that results causes coughing and respiratory problems — pervasive complaints among residents.

Nasser says she has no choice but to stay and battle it out.

“It is our 10th year in this area, but we cannot leave. Where would we go?”

No space for the rubbish

She and three other families in the area have complained to the municipality, but officials say their hands are tied.

Gaza’s expanding population — almost 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are now crammed into its 365 square kilometers — and a nearly 10-year-old Israeli-imposed blockade are putting enormous strain on the coastal enclave’s aged and damaged public utility infrastructure.

Last week, the United Nations once again reiterated the damage done in Gaza by the Israeli siege that “continues to undermine livelihoods and prevent the realization of a broad range of human rights.”

Unable to bring in crucial materials and equipment to repair, replace or modernize waste management facilities, Gaza’s authorities have been forced to turn to landfills in populated areas to address the problem.

In Bureij, Mahmoud Issa, head of the municipality, said there was no option but to designate a piece of land as a landfill and make the necessary calculations to limit the environmental impact.

“We try to locate land where not too many people live. Instead of an area with hundreds of families who will suffer from the landfill, we choose areas with few families,” he said.

Mohammed Musleh, the director of the solid waste department in Gaza’s Environment Quality Authority, said the Israeli blockade was directly to blame for what he said was a crisis holding profoundly negative consequences for nearly all aspects of life.

There is a shortage of garbage trucks, trash containers and spare parts to keep what equipment is there functioning, he said, adding, “Israel prevents us from importing the equipment and materials we need to dispose of solid waste properly.”

There are plans to build a large waste disposal plant and foreign funding is available. Permission from Israel to bring through the equipment is not forthcoming, however.

“We have plans, but they cannot be implemented without basic equipment like diggers,” said Musleh.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Gaza generated 716 tons of household solid waste per day in 2015. There are three main landfills, all located in the east of the narrow strip of land and away from populated areas. Over the past few years, Musleh’s department has counted some 50 ad hoc landfills, of which some 16 are no longer in use. Most of those sites lie in or near residential areas.

Health hazard

The closer to populated areas, the more hazardous the landfills are to public health. Children and the elderly are more likely to be harmed, according to Abdel Fattah Abed Rabbo, associate professor of environmental science at the Islamic University of Gaza.

“When waste is incinerated, hazardous gases like CO1, CO2, methane, dioxin and furans are released into the air, causing skin and respiratory diseases to those who are exposed,” he said.

Dioxins are particularly dangerous and are understood to be carcinogenic.

Compounding the problem, Abed Rabbo said, waste in Gaza is not sorted. Industrial, agricultural and medical products can all be mixed together and be found in landfills, increasing the potency of toxic gases being released into the air.

Hussam al-Amour, 32, started developing breathing problems a year ago. He lives with his extended family in an eastern neighborhood of Khan Younis, a city in the southern Gaza Strip. There, the problem is not landfills but trash containers dotted all over the neighborhood that are regularly set on fire, emitting noxious fumes.

Without proper waste management facilities, rubbish gets burned in trash containers, with the same unpleasant and dangerous results as landfill incinerations, if on a less intense scale.

“Too much trash in this area is destroying our lives. We have been suffering for ages, and our children will not escape this,” al-Amour said. He never invites colleagues or friends to his home. “It is embarrassing to have guests in my house with this putrid smell.”

The smell attracts rats and mosquitoes. Increasing numbers of wild dogs in the area, also attracted to the rubbish, have started to prey on the local livestock. Families like Amour’s make a living raising animals, but their sheep and chicken coops are now easy targets.

Landfills also attract rummagers, a growing phenomenon in impoverished Gaza. Landfills can yield a little money if they hold some metal or wood in decent condition. Some men bring their children along to inspect the trash, but sorting through the debris brings health hazards — from infected hospital needles to sharp objects.

Al-Amour asserted a safe and clean environment is a basic right, but one that does not obtain in Gaza today.

His concern is not his heavy breathing or constant cough: it is for his children.

“I am very worried about the future of my children if this continues. The notion that my children might suffer respiratory and skin problems terrifies me.”

Isra Saleh el-Namey is a journalist in Gaza.

Noted Pakistani Sufi singer Amjad Sabri shot dead in Karachi

Onlookers look into the car driven by Sufi singer Amjad Sabri, who was killed when unidentified gunmen shot at his car, in Karachi, Pakistan, June 22, 2016.REUTERS/AKHTAR SOOMRO---Bullet holes numbered by police investigators are seen on the windshield of the car driven by Sufi singer Amjad Sabri, who was killed when unidentified gunmen shot at his car, in Karachi, Pakistan, June 22, 2016.REUTERS/AKHTAR SOOMRO

Onlookers and journalists gather around the car driven by Sufi singer Amjad Sabri, who was killed when unidentified gunmen shot at his car, in Karachi, Pakistan, June 22, 2016.REUTERS/AKHTAR SOOMRO

ISLAMABAD | BY MEHREEN ZAHRA-MALIK

Motorcycle-borne gunmen on Wednesday shot dead an acclaimed Pakistani singer in the busy port city of Karachi, police said, two days after masked men kidnapped the son of a top provincial judge.

Karachi, a metropolis of about 20 million people, is home to Pakistan's stock exchange and central bank and is plagued by political, ethnic and sectarian violence.

Amjad Sabri, 45, was one of South Asia's most popular singers of the 'qawwali', Sufi devotional music that dates back more than 700 years.

Officials said two gunmen shot at the windscreen of Sabri's car as it drove off a bridge in the congested Liaquatabad area of the southern city, and a relative travelling with him was also injured.

"Two attackers riding a motorcycle intercepted his car and targeted Amjad Sabri, who was driving," Sindh police chief Allah Dino Khawaja told Reuters.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

"Amjad Sabri expired on the way to the hospital," police surgeon Rohina Hasan said. "He was shot three times."

Police gave no further details.

Violence is common in Karachi despite a sharp decline in murders since the Pakistani military launched a crackdown two years ago against suspected militants and violent criminals.

On Monday, a lawyer, the son of Sindh High Court Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, was abducted outside a city supermarket. The motive for the kidnapping was not immediately clear, authorities said.

In May, gunmen shot dead prominent Pakistani rights activist Khurram Zaki, known for his outspoken stance against the Taliban and other radical Islamist groups, in the central part of the city.

In April last year, prominent activist Sabeen Mahmud was shot and killed while travelling in her car.

(Writing by Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Debris found on Australian island is not from missing flight MH370 – officials

A waiter walks past a mural of flight MH370 in Shah Alam outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Pic: AP.

22nd June 2016 

DEBRIS found on an Australian island earlier this month is not from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, investigators said Wednesday.

The object found on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island was examined at Australian Transport Safety Bureau laboratories in Canberra, which found it was not from a Boeing commercial aircraft.

A still from video footage of the debris found on Australia’s Kangaroo Island. Image via YouTube.

The bureau, which is running a search for the plane in the southern Indian Ocean on Malaysia’s behalf, said Wednesday it had been advised by Boeing, the maker of the missing plane, that it was “not consistent with the manufacturing specifications of a Boeing commercial aircraft.”

 

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#MH370 Operational Update 22 June 2016. Investigators' analysis shows that Kangaroo Island debris is not from #MH370http://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370-pages/updates/operational-update/ …

1:03 AM - 22 Jun 2016

There was no word on where the debris came from.

The disappearance of flight MH370 remains one of history’s greatest aviation mysteries when it vanished with 239 people aboard on March 8, 2014, after flying off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Authorities believe the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.

Debris that authorities say is most likely from MH370 has been found on the shorelines of South Africa, Mozambique, and Rodrigues and Reunion islands in the past year.

SEE ALSO: Malaysia: Debris discovered in Mauritius and South Africa ‘almost certainly’ from MH370

U.S. lawyer Blaine Gibson, who is carrying out his own investigation into what happened to the vanished aircraft and who previously found debris in Mozambique, has said he has also discovered more objects in Madagascar, including personal items such as hand luggage.

There is still no confirmation whether a joint search of the South Indian Ocean funded by Australia, Malaysia and China will be extended, having found no evidence of the plane so far.

A decision on whether the search will be extended has been postponed until after the Australian election in July.

Capitalism will collapse because banks & political elite ‘allow poor to rot’ ‒ Tariq Ali

12 Jun, 2016 01:24

The banks behind politicians in the western world “have allowed the poor to rot,” and now the elites in those countries, especially the US, are facing a revolt, journalist and author Tariq Ali told RT America’s Chris Hedges in an exclusive interview.

“The elites who have run the United States and western Europe have proven incapable of offering even the smallest palliatives to their populations. They have allowed the poor to rot ‒ regardless of skin color ‒ and grow,” Ali said. “And so what we have is a protest against this center elite, which I call the extreme center because whether it’s social democratic or conservative, they unite to crush.”



Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has become a perfect example of this protest against the extreme center, he tells Hedges.

“They’ve found in Trump someone who airs their most crazed fantasies at the same time who attacks the banks, at the same time attacks these new treaties which are being carried through and promises some palliatives to the poorest section of the white working class,” Ali said.

The right and the far right are growing around the world, while the left has been weak. That is part of the reason that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wasn’t able to succeed, even though he also offers an independent voice to the working class.

“I don’t think that there’s anything on the radical left at the moment ‒ of course, these things are volatile, things can happen,”he said.

Ali cited an appeal that actress Rosario Dawson made to Sanders supporters as to why Trump is so popular at a widely attended rally in New York City at the end of March.

Both Hedges and him think that capitalism is heading towards a collapse and the banks and political elites are doing everything they can to stop it. An example of what they are willing to do to keep the status quo is what happened in the European Union when Greece was on the brink of default.

“Greece is kind of the perfect case study of the myopic thinking on the part of international elites, where they are squeezing everything they can out of this country, knowing full well that it’s ultimately not sustainable,” Hedges said in his first episode of ‘On Contact’ on RT America. “A lot of people in Greece are suffering, and a lot more are going to suffer.”

“They will, yeah,” Ali responded, adding that poor people in Greece were already suffering.

“The figures coming out of Greece were horrific: malnutrition in Greece, people dying for lack of food, people using barter to survive, pensions going down and down and down ‒ in a poor country,”Ali said. “At the same time as the ship owners, a plutocracy which has owned that country, carries on ‒ there’s no problems, as far as they’re concerned at all. They don’t pay taxes, they register their ship somewhere else, and even when they don’t, they don’t think it’s their duty.”

Hedges asked if Greece was destroyed to make an example of it, comparable to what then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger did to Chile and Salvador Allende during the Cold War: “The banking system has to destroy Greece ... to send a message to countries like Portugal, Spain, Ireland, whose economy is a mess, which is don’t try this,” the RT America host said.

Ali agreed with the analogy.

“This was a message to other countries where there is no armed struggle, no guerrilla warfare: ‘Don’t try coming to power like this and nationalizing industries and rapping us on the knuckles [because] this is how we’ll deal with you’,” he said. “That is what was done to Greece by the European Union and, you know, one has to be honest here… it’s had its effect. It’s pushed people back. The Spanish radical group Podemos stepped backwards. And so it’s had its effect.”

The journalist and author warned that the collapse is coming because the elite refuses to plan for the future.

“They do know that collapse is coming, and they’re trying to make sure that it doesn’t affect them. So the German banks are not prepared to allow the politicians to take any risks by bailing out Greece or bailing out other countries in trouble,” Ali said. “It was one thing bailing themselves out, the banks and the hedge fund system via the banks, but anything else, they say, is unacceptable because it will bring the collapse closer and our interest is to defend the banking system. It’s short-sighted, and they live for today as we know; capitalism and capitalists, by and large, don’t think of the long-term.”

DNC Hacker Dumps Trove of Clinton Documents

Gary Cameron/Zuma

AJ VICENSJUN. 21, 2016

A hacker using the handle "Guccifer 2.0" has released a new trove of documents apparently pilfered from the Democratic National Committee. The files, all related to Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, include opposition research documents and extensive talking points concerning various Clinton controversies, ranging from the 2012 Benghazi attack to the FBI's investigation into her use of a private email server.

The DNC hack was first reported by the Washington Post on June 14, when the committee acknowledged that its computer systems were "so thoroughly compromised [that the hackers] were able to read all email and chat traffic." ThePost reported that the hack was the work of Russian groups on behalf of the Russian government. Yet Vice News' Motherboard reported that Guccifer 2.0—a reference to the Romanian hacker who recently pleaded guilty to hacking the email and social media accounts of several American politicians—claims to be a lone "freedom fighter" aiming to "bring light to the people."

Guccifer 2.0's initial document dump included the DNC's opposition research file on Donald Trump, an exhaustive compendium of unflattering news reports about the presumptive GOP nominee. That release also included sensitive fundraising spreadsheets that included the personal data of some DNC donors, including phone numbers and email addresses. When the party first acknowledged the hack to the Post, it claimed that no personal or financial information had been breached. The release fueled suspicions from some supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders that the DNC had coalesced around Clinton from the start.

The 261 new documents were released Tuesday in a post on Guccifer 2.0's web page titled "Dossier on Hillary Clinton From DNC." Neither the DNC nor the the Clinton campaign responded to a request for comment.

Included are memos outlining Clinton's positions on issues such as Israel, Benghazi, LGBTQ rights, and the military. There's an opposition research clip file on Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, a book that claimed to detail how the Hillary and Bill Clinton used the Clinton Foundation to net hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign governments in exchange for favorable treatment by the State Department under Hillary Clinton. The document notes that Schweizer "has a history of aligning himself with the Tea-Party" and that he'd once accused former Republican House Speaker John Boehner of extortion in connection with the ways Boehner used to control the flow of proposed legislation.

One spreadsheet appears to document Clinton's use of private planes from March of 2001 to April of 2009.

Some of the documents in Tuesday's dump were already public, including contracts for speeches Clinton gave at the University of Nevada and the University of Buffalo. Guccifer 2.0 claims to have taken "thousands of files and mails [sic]" and provided them to WikiLeaks, which "will publish them soon."

Bloomberg news reported Tuesday that the Clinton Foundation, and perhaps the Clinton campaign, were also hacked by the same hacker(s) that breached the DNC.

Colombian government, rebels reach a major milestone in peace talks

Cuban President Raúl Castro, center, with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, left, and FARC leader Timoleón “Timochenko” Jiménez in Havana last year. Cuba is hosting the Colombian peace talks. (Desmond Boylan/Associated Press)

By Nick Miroff June 22 at 4:34 PM

HAVANA — The Colombian government and FARC guerrillas have reached an agreement on a bilateral cease-fire and the rebels’ disarmament, two of the last major hurdles to ending 50 years of bloodshed.

The deal announced Wednesday is not a final peace accord, but it is a breakthrough that essentially amounts to an end to the fighting. It means the two sides have worked through some of the most sensitive aspects of their negotiations, particularly the nuts and bolts of getting 7,000 heavily armed FARC fighters to come down from the mountains, lay down their guns and begin a transition to civilian life under the protection of Colombia’s security forces, their lifelong enemies.

“After this accord, it’s very hard to imagine the government and FARC ever fighting on the battlefield again,” said Adam Isacson, a Colombia expert at the Washington Office on Latin America. “This was the last substantive item on the negotiating agenda, and they appear to have figured out the very thorny issues of managing FARC’s disarmament.”

Supporters of the peace process celebrated the news on social media with the hashtag #ElUltimoDiaDeLaGuerra, calling Wednesday “the last day of the war.”

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Timoleón “Timochenko” Jiménez will be joined by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other Latin American heads of state at a ceremony in Havana on Thursday to announce the agreement. U.S. diplomats also were en route to the Cuban capital, where the rebels and Santos’s negotiating team launched formal talks in 2012.

 

Embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has a sometimes-tense relationship with Santos, will attend Thursday’s ceremony. His country is one of the “observer” nations at the Colombia talks.

An informal cease-fire with FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, has already been in effect for six months, and despite scattered clashes, violence in rural Colombia has fallen to its lowest level in decades. But with Santos’s approval ratings sliding and Colombians growing increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of negotiations, the government has been under pressure to show progress and close out the talks.

FARC leaders are in less of a hurry and are deeply worried about their personal security as civilians, given the risk of retributive attacks by any number of enemies.

[Colombia’s rebels survived war. Now they worry about surviving peace.]

Santos said this week that a final peace deal could be signed by July 20, Colombia’s independence day. But previous attempts to put deadlines on the negotiations have been a bust. In September, Santos and Timochenko shook hands on a pledge to wrap up talks within six months, but that timetable broke down as negotiations dragged on.

Timochenko said on Twitter this week that the two sides should not repeat the mistake.

“Experience has shown that setting deadlines is damaging to the process, especially when we don’t have a deal,” he tweeted Tuesday. “We’re making progress, but there are still loose ends.”

 

Whatever deal the two sides reach will have to clear a significant final hurdle: approval by the Colombian public. The government has been pushing for a referendum that would subject the final peace accord to a simple yes-or-no vote. FARC hasn’t agreed on the form such a plebiscite would take, nor is it clear what would happen if the public — which dislikes the group by a wide margin — rejects the deal.

Campaigning hard against it is powerful senator Álvaro Uribe. During his 2002-2010 presidency, Uribe debilitated the guerrilla ranks and killed several top rebel leaders with help from the United States through the $10 billion Plan Colombia.

[Covert action in Colombia]

But Uribe was unable to finish off the rebels on the battlefield. He has become the biggest critic of Santos and the peace process, depicting it as a shameful capitulation to a terrorist group widely condemned for drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and other crimes.

Details of the latest agreement were not released Wednesday, and still unknown are the critical logistical elements of the FARC demobilization. The guerrillas have insisted all along that their emergence from Colombia’s jungles and mountains should not be treated as a surrender.

Instead, they will gather in “concentration zones” to begin handing over their weapons — but to officials from the United Nations, not the Colombian military. The zones will be in rural areas where FARC is a potent force and, in some cases, supplants the government.

The latest polls of Colombian attitudes toward the peace negotiations underscore the contradictory feelings the talks have stirred in a country whose entire modern history has been marred by civil war. Although Santos’s approval rating has slipped to about 20 percent and a majority of Colombians think the talks are “on the wrong track,” recent surveys indicate that once a peace deal is on the table, voters will take it, even if they have to hold their noses to do so.

The government also has entered talks with the ELN, the country’s second-largest rebel group. The ELN, or National Liberation Army, retains an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 fighters and has staged deadly ambushes this year against security forces.