Two bomb explode in Tayran Square, the most serious attack in the capital since PM declared victory over Isis
Two suicide bombers have blown themselves up at a busy market in central Baghdad in back-to-back explosions that killed at least 38 people, Iraqi officials say.
Kareem Shaheen-Mon 15 Jan 2018
The bombings were the most serious attacks in the capital since the prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi, declared victory over Islamic State a little over a month ago, capping a three-year campaign to reclaim territory from the terror group in Iraq.
It raises questions about the government’s readiness to deal with the security challenges posed by the group’s retreat to its insurgent roots, ahead of elections expected in May of this year.
The attackers struck during rush hour on Monday morning in Tayran Square, which is usually crowded with labourers seeking work. The explosions wounded at least 105 people, the officials said.
The death toll has grown since earlier reports from the health ministry, which said 26 people had been killed, and the interior ministry, which said 16 had died. Both said dozens had been wounded.
Ambulances rushed to the scene as security forces sealed off the area. Slippers could be seen scattered about on the blood-stained pavement as cleaners hurried to clear the debris. Photographs posted on social media showed dead bodies and body parts.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but it bore all the hallmarks of Islamic State, which has claimed many such atrocities in the past.
There have been significantly fewer large attacks in Baghdad and other parts of country since security forces retook nearly all territory once held by Isis militants.
Iraqi and US officials had warned that Isis would continue with insurgent-style attacks even after the Iraqi military and US-led coalition succeeded in ousting the group across the country.
The cost of victory has been nearly incalculable as the three-year Isis insurgency devastated much of northern and western Iraq.
On Sunday Abadi announced a new political coalition, the Victory Alliance, to contest the upcoming elections. The coalition includes groups close to Tehran.
Iran commands great influence in Iraq through proxy militias that have taken part in the campaign against Isis, and which form the core of the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU), also known as the Hashd al-Shaabi, formed from volunteers after the initial Islamic State advance in 2014.
Abadi is credited with leading Iraq and rebuilding the country’s military during three tumultuous years as premier in which the government slowly clawed back cities such as Ramadi, Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul from Isis.
But now he faces great challenges in rebuilding the cities devastated in the military campaigns, ensuring that his government’s policies do not alienate the country’s Sunni minority, and addressing the central authorities’ relationship with the Kurds, who voted overwhelmingly last year for independence from Baghdad in a non-binding referendum.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that the 20 countries under its jurisdiction must enact marriage equality if they haven't already done so.
An international court has ruled that 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries must enact marriage equality.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in San Jose, Costa Rica, ruled Tuesday that all its signatory countries must grant same-sex couples the same rights as opposite-sex ones, reports Costa Rica’s Tico Times.
The order covers Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Suriname, and Uruguay. Some of them already have marriage equality, including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, and some parts of Mexico, but most do not. Some of them offer civil unions, but the court said a separate arrangement for same-sex couples is not acceptable.
Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis, who had promised to expand LGBT rights in his nation, had asked the court two years ago to rule on marriage equality, and today’s decision is its response, Reuters reports. The Costa Rican government praised the ruling, with Vice President Ana Helena Chacon telling a press conference, “The court ... reminds all states on the continent, including ours, of their obligation and historical debt toward this population,” according to Reuters. There were celebratory rallies in Costa Rica and throughout the region.
The court recommended that nations that do not yet have marriage equality enact it by decree while working out legislative changes, the Tico Times reports. It acknowledged that there may be faith-based opposition to same-sex marriage in these heavily Catholic countries, but said that “in democratic societies, there should exist mutually peaceful coexistence between the secular and the religious.”
The court is part of the Organization of American states. The countries affected by its ruling are all signatories to the American Convention on Human Rights, a multilateral treaty adopted in 1969.
A collapsed structure inside the Indonesian Stock Exchange building caused dozens to be evacuated from the building. (Photo: Merdeka)
15 Jan 2018
JAKARTA: More than 70 people were injured after a mezzanine floor at the Indonesia Stock Exchange collapsed onto the building's lobby on Monday (Jan 15).
Police cordoned off the complex as people fled the building in panic. Many of the injured were university students who were on the mezzanine floor when it collapsed.
"There was a rumbling noise but it wasn't an explosion. It was like something had fallen, and suddenly the floor we were standing on fell away," said student Alfita, 20, who uses one name. She escaped with light bruises.
Dramatic CCTV footage that emerged on social media showed a floor shearing away in a matter of seconds under the students.
Police ruled out a bomb as a cause of Monday's collapse.
"I can definitely confirm there are no deaths," director of the Indonesian stock exchange, Tito Sulistio, said on Metro TV.
Those hurt mostly had injuries to their legs and arms, Jakarta police spokesman Argo Yuwono said.
"The accident happened at the first floor ... It's a floor where many employees pass through ... There are some victims but they have been taken to a nearby hospital," Yuwono told reporters.
A far-right party has entered Germany's parliament, with uncertain consequences for the country's democracy.
Jan 13th 2018
AFTER China, where next? Over the past two decades, the world’s most populous country has become the market qua non of just about every global company seeking growth. As its economy slows, businesses are looking for the next set of consumers to keep the tills ringing.
To many, India feels like the heir apparent. Its population will soon overtake its Asian rival’s. It occasionally grows at the kind of pace that propelled China to the status of economic superpower. And its middle class is thought by many to be in the early stages of the journey to prosperity that created hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers. Exuberant management consultants speak of a 300m-400m horde of potential frapuccino-sippers, Fiesta-drivers and globe-trotters. Rare is the chief executive who, upon visiting India, does not proclaim it as central to his or her plans. Some of that may be a diplomatic dose of flattery; much of it, from firms such as IKEA, SoftBank, Amazon and Starbucks, is sincerely meant.
Hold your elephants. The Indian middle class conjured up by the marketers and consultants scarcely exists. Firms peddling anything much beyond soap, matches and phone-credit are targeting a minuscule slice of the population (see article). The top 1% of Indian adults, a rich enclave of 8m inhabitants making at least $20,000 a year, equates to roughly Hong Kong in terms of population and average income. The next 9% is akin to central Europe, in the middle of the global wealth pack. The next 40% of India’s population neatly mirrors its combined South Asian poor neighbours, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The remaining half-billion or so are on a par with the most destitute bits of Africa. To be sure, global companies take the markets of central Europe seriously. Plenty of fortunes have been made there. But they are no China.
Centre parting
Worse, the chances of India developing a middle class to match the Middle Kingdom’s are being throttled by growing inequality. The top 1% of earners pocketed nearly a third of all the extra income generated by economic growth between 1980 and 2014, according to new research from economists including Thomas Piketty. The well-off are ten times richer now than in 1980; those at the median have not even doubled their income. India has done a good job at getting those earning below $2 a day (at purchasing-power parity) to $3, but it has not matched other countries’ records in getting those on $3 a day to earning $5, those at $5 a day to $10, and so on. Middle earners in countries at India’s stage of development usually take more of the gains from growth. Eight in ten Indians cite inequality as a big problem, on a par with corruption.
The reasons for this failure are not mysterious. Decades of statist intervention meant that when a measure of liberalisation came in the early 1990s, only a few were able to benefit. The workforce is woefully unproductive—no surprise given the abysmal state of India’s education system, which churns out millions of adults equipped only for menial work. Its graduates go on to toil in small or micro-enterprises, operating informally; these “employ” 93% of all Indians. The great swell of middle-class jobs that China created as it became the workshop to the world is not to be found in India, because turning small businesses into productive large ones is made nigh-on impossible by bureaucracy. The fact that barely a quarter of women work—a share that has seen a precipitous decline in the past decade—only makes matters worse.
Good policy can do an enormous amount to improve prospects. However, hope should be tempered by realism. India is blessed with a deeply entrenched democratic system, but that is no shield against poor decisions. The sudden and brutal “demonetisation” of the economy in 2016 was meant to target fat cats, but ended up hurting everybody. And the path to prosperity walked by China, where manufacturing produced the jobs that pushed up incomes, is narrowing as automation limits opportunities for factory work.
All of which means that companies need to deal with the India that exists today rather than the one they wish to emerge. A strategy of waiting for Indians to develop a taste for products that the global middle class indulges in—cars as income per head crosses one threshold, foreign holidays when it crosses the next—may lead to decades of frustration. Only 3% of Indians have ever been on an aeroplane; only one in 45 owns a car or lorry. If nearly 300m Indians count as “middle class”, as HSBC has proclaimed, some of them make around $3 a day.
Big market, smaller opportunities
Companies would do better to “Indianise” their business by, for example, peddling wares using regional languages preferred by hundreds of millions of Indians. Pricing matters. Services proffered at the same price in India as Indiana will appeal to mere millions, not a billion. Even for someone in the top 10% of Indian earners, an annual Netflix subscription can cost over a week’s income; the equivalent in America would be around $3,000. Apple ads may plaster Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, but for only one in ten Indians would the latest iPhone represent less than half a year’s salary. The biggest consumer hits in India have been goods and services that offer stonking value: scooters and mobile telephony have grown fast, but only after prices tumbled.
The sharpest businesses work out which “enablers” will allow Indians to gain access to new goods.
Electrification drives demand for fridges. Cheap mobile data (India is in the midst of a data-price war that has hugely benefited consumers) are a boon to streaming services. Logistics networks put together by e-commerce giants are for the first time making it possible for a consumer in a third-tier city to buy global fashion brands. A surge in consumer financing has put desirable baubles within reach of more Indians.
Insofar as it is the job of politicians to create a consumer class, successive Indian governments have largely failed. Businesses hoping the Indian middle class will provide their next spurt of growth should be under no illusion. Companies will have to work very hard to turn potential into profits.
In Germany, every public issue eventually manifests itself in soccer, the country’s obsessive pastime. The questions surrounding the entry of a far-right party in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, are no exception.
Since 1961, the federal legislature has fielded an amateur soccer team, FC Bundestag — a vehicle for exercise and recreation but also cross-party comity and international good will. The team, which plays other parliamentary teams across Europe, has always stuck to its bylaws of turning a blind eye to party affiliation. This held true when countercultural Greens entered the West German parliament in the 1980s — Joschka Fischer (a center forward) took the field alongside conservative Christian Democrats — and even after reunification with East Germany, when representatives of various iterations of socialist parties were accepted as worthy teammates.
But that openness, like many other norms of Bundestag life, is up in the air after the nationalist populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party entered parliament last fall with an astounding 12.6 percent of the vote, the first time that a far-right party has held seats in the postwar institution. The new Bundestag includes 92 AfD legislators, which would make it the largest opposition party if the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) weld together another grand coalition, which seems increasingly likely after preliminary talks were concluded successfully last week.
Even without a new government in place, the Bundestag has already met several times, and the subject of the AfD’s impact on Germany’s national politics, as well as how the mainstream parties will treat the Euroskeptic, anti-immigrant party, is on the front burner. The established parties are still grasping for answers to the unprecedented procedural question that will shape the coming parliamentary term: How can they remain true to their principled democratic contempt for their new right-wing extremist colleagues without inadvertently fanning the populist flames that fueled their ascent? Should they engage, or rather ostracize, their new far-right colleagues? In short: What’s the best strategy to limit the damage posed by the AfD to German democracy?
These are questions the AfD itself, depending on its behavior in parliament, will have some role in answering. What’s already clear is that as the country’s third-largest party, the party will be the most prominent face of the opposition in the event of a grand coalition. It will have, proportionately according to its vote share, more time granted to its speakers on the floor of parliament and a greater number of committee chairs and committee members than either the liberal Free Democrats, the Left, or the Greens — presumably the other opposition parties. Only the CDU/CSU and SPD groups will have more power in the Bundestag’s official forums.
Thus, the AfD will be represented on the secret services committee, the responsibilities of which include monitoring right-wing extremism, as well as the culture committee, which promotes the values, such as tolerance, instilled in Germany as a consequence of Nazi rule and its atrocities. Berlin-based Jewish groups are already protesting that the AfD have a place on the board of the foundation for the national Holocaust memorial in Berlin, despite the fact that the party bemoans Germany’s determined remembrance of the crimes of the Third Reich. Last year, a regional AfD leader snapped, “Germans are the only people in the world who plant a monument of shame in the heart of the capital.”
Germany’s parliamentary committees are the gear house of its democracy, where the opposition can scrutinize the government’s work, debates its policies, and, using majority votes, modify or present official alternatives to bills. While the process of staffing the committees is currently at an early stage — their composition is as yet completely undetermined — the AfD will have members in every committee and head up at least two, perhaps three, of them.
How the AfD will approach its work in these committees — constructively or disruptively, radically or pragmatically — is another unknown. The party has taken various approaches in the regional legislatures in which it is represented, though generally the AfD has not had the policy expertise to make much of an impact at the committee level, often leaving seats vacant for months.
Vicious infighting has also paralyzed some of the party’s regional branches. A 2017 study by the Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research showed that the AfD had both temperate and extremist wings, which, although they both pushed subjects such as migration, security, and Islam in Germany to the fore, understood their democratic responsibilities differently. Much like the Greens of the 1980s, divided between pragmatic and fundamentalist factions, the AfD is split between hard-line völkisch nationalists who want to yank Germany off its postwar path, led by the likes of Alexander Gauland, and a group of Euroskeptic neoliberals who would be content with a more traditionally nationalistic, self-assertive Germany, which includes Gauland’s co-chair of the AfD Bundestag group, Alice Weidel. The former currently, though, has the upper hand.
“So far, it’s been the AfD’s better people, the more professional and astute members, speaking out [in the Bundestag],” says Niels Annen, an SPD parliamentarian. With a few notable exceptions, Annen says, the AfD has “done a reasonable job,” keeping blatantly xenophobic, neo-Nazi language to a minimum in the Bundestag itself. “But at some point the lesser talents in the second and third rows of the AfD ranks, and there are Nazis among them, are going to speak up too. And they’ll be on the committees. Over time they can’t hide their real character,” he told Foreign Policy.
Annen, though, doubts that the AfD will accomplish as much in the committees — where expertise is required and majority backing necessary for decisions — as it will during open parliamentary debate on the floor and through its brash use of social media. The AfD’s minor victories until now — which have helped raise its standing in polls by one percentage point since the election — have employed the Bundestag’s podium as a stage to ridicule the other parties. For instance, during a usually pro forma annual vote on adjusting parliament members’ salaries to cost of living increases, AfD members took the floor to accuse Bundestag members of padding their wallets at ordinary Germans’ expense, implying that they alone were prepared to make it public.
“They’re not talking to us but to their base when they claim we’re taking food out of the mouths of Germany’s poor,” says Annen, calling it grandstanding. “It’s immaterial to AfD voters that they didn’t propose to debate the salaries issue in our forums — they just hammered us with the cameras running. They avoid debates about detailed policies.”
Where the far-rightists will have a real opportunity, though probably infrequent, to swing German politics to the right is on controversial, traditionally conservative policy proposals. If Merkel tries to pass restrictive migration laws — laws that might not have the backing of her junior coalition partner, the SPD — she may need the AfD’s votes. The country’s conservative parties, the CDU/CSU and Free Democrats, don’t together have a majority — but they do with the AfD’s 92 votes. In such a hypothetical situation, the far-right would have leverage to alter policies to its liking – presuming the other parties are willing to cooperate with it.
That’s not strictly inconceivable, because at the moment, there’s no concord among the established parties when it comes to relations with the AfD in parliament — even when it comes to the soccer team.
The SPD’s Dirk Wiese, FC Bundestag’s co-captain, says the team is rooted in the German Constitution’s respect for civil liberties such as equality and thus rules out players with “right-wing nationalist, racist convictions.” The Greens’ Dieter Janecek, a right midfielder, counters that the team can’t ban the entire AfD — just as it can’t be kept off the Holocaust memorial board — but that explicitly racist AfD players were definitely persona non grata. Presumably this would thus exclude the AfD parliament member Jens Maier, who in a Jan. 2 tweet called the German tennis champion Boris Becker’s oldest son, whose mother is black, a “half-negro.”
Janecek offers no specific criteria as to exactly what constitutes racism and who would do the judging. But he did suggest a way to encourage some self-selection; perhaps, he says, the FC Bundestag should start playing under a banner proclaiming, “For refugee aid and against racism.” That might work on the pitch — but the same option won’t be available in the Bundestag.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began writing the “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” in the margins of newspapers, on scraps of paper, paper towels and slips of yellow legal paper smuggled into his cell, where he was kept in solitary confinement after being arrested April 12, 1963, on charges of violating Alabama’s law against mass public demonstrations.
The day after his arrest, eight prominent white clergy members placed an ad in the Birmingham News, accusing King of being an outside agitator whose demonstrations were “unwise and untimely.” Infuriated by their words, King unleashed his literary wrath on the clergymen. Writing with the light from the sun that fell through the cell’s bars, King quoted from memory biblical passages and quotes from Socrates, Martin Luther, Thomas Jefferson, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine to bolster his argument. He wrote:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
On April 16, 1963, King’s powerful words were smuggled out of the jail by Clarence Jones, King’s legal counsel and trusted adviser. Jones took the notes to the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who deciphered King’s writing. “I was the only one in Birmingham who could read his chicken-scratch writing,” Walker would later explain. Walker’s secretary, Willie Pearl Mackey, then typed up the notes. The 20 pages of mimeographed copy were circulated first as a pamphlet and later published in the New York Post, Ebony magazine and in King’s 1964 memoir “Why We Can’t Wait.”
In “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” King offered a scathing critique of “white moderates” unwilling to do the right thing that still resonates today:
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
To read the whole letter, which is archived at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, go here. Or you can listen to a recording of King reading the letter here.
King would have celebrated his 89th birthday on Monday. He was gunned down in Memphis on April 4, 1968 at the age of 39.
A Rohingya refugee walks next to a pond in the early morning at Balukhali refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh January 10, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
JANUARY 15, 2018
YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar is building a camp to temporarily house 30,000 Rohingya Muslims targeted for repatriation after fleeing violence in Rakhine State, state media reported on Monday, as Myanmar and Bangladesh meet to discuss how to implement a repatriation deal.
More than 650,000 Rohingya have headed across the border to Bangladesh after a sweeping Myanmar army counteroffensive in response to Rohingya militant attacks on Aug. 25, 2017.
The crackdown has been described by the United States and U.N. as ethnic cleansing, which Myanmar repeatedly rejects.
Officials from Myanmar and Bangladesh meet on Monday to discuss a repatriation deal signed on Nov. 23. The meeting in Myanmar’s capital, Naypyitaw, is the first for a joint working group set up to hammer out the details of the agreement.
The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said a camp in Hla Po Khaung in northern Rakhine will be a temporary transition camp for people who are to be “accepted systematically” for repatriation.
“The 124-acre Hla Po Khaung will accommodate about 30,000 people in its 625 buildings,” the newspaper said, adding that some 100 buildings will be completed by end of January.
Aung Tun Thet, chief coordinator of Myanmar’s Union Enterprises for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development, told Reuters that the camp in Hla Po Khaung will be a “transition place” for Rohingya refugees before they are repatriated to their “place of origin” or the nearest settlement to their place of origin.
A Rohingya refugee child looks at the vill from a hill at Unchiparang refugee camp, near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh January 11, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
“We will try to accept all of those who are coming back to Myanmar,” he said, adding that to verify returnees’ residency, they will be sent to assessment camps in Taungpyoletwei or Ngakhuya before they are moved to the Hla Po Khaung camp.
Soe Aung, permanent secretary of Myanmar’s Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, said returnees will spend “at least one or two months” in Hla Po Khaung before their new homes are built.
It is unclear, however, how many returnees would qualify for citizenship in Myanmar. The authorities have said Rohingya Muslims could apply for citizenship if they can show their forebears lived in Myanmar. But the latest deal - like the one in 1992 - does not guarantee citizenship.
Myanmar government officials have said the 1992-1993 repatriation deal, which followed a previous spasm of violence in Myanmar, would accept those who could present identity documents issued to the Rohingya by governments in the past.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar has for years denied Rohingya citizenship, freedom of movement and access to basic services such as healthcare and education. They are considered illegal immigrants from mainly Muslim Bangladesh.
Bangladesh officials have said it was unclear when the first refugees could actually return as the two countries need to work out how to jointly verify the identities of returnees.
United Nations agencies and human rights watchers have voiced scepticism about the resettlement plans and demanded a more transparent process to safeguard the Rohingya’s voluntary return.
A lunar eclipse. (Photo: Facebook/Science Centre Singapore)
14 Jan 2018
SINGAPORE: Come Jan 31, moon watchers will get to witness a three-in-one moon - a "rare occurrence" which last happened 152 years ago in 1866.
According to Science Centre Singapore, the phenomenon is a supermoon, lunar eclipse and blue moon all at once and is described as a "super blue total lunar eclipse".
The moon on Jan 31 will be a supermoon, the centre said, which is a phenomenon that occurs when the full moon coincides with it being the closest to Earth.
It will also be the year's first lunar eclipse, which occurs when a full moon enters the Earth's shadow.
Finally, it is deemed a blue moon because it will be the second full moon of the month. "Most of the time, there is only one full moon in each calendar month," the centre said, adding that the blue moon gets its name from its rare occurrence (once in every two years and eight months) and will not actually be blue.
Instead, it will likely be "red or coppery" - characteristic of a total eclipse.
SINGAPORE: Come Jan 31, moon watchers will get to witness a three-in-one moon - a "rare occurrence" which last happened 152 years ago in 1866.
According to Science Centre Singapore, the phenomenon is a supermoon, lunar eclipse and blue moon all at once and is described as a "super blue total lunar eclipse".
The moon on Jan 31 will be a supermoon, the centre said, which is a phenomenon that occurs when the full moon coincides with it being the closest to Earth.
It will also be the year's first lunar eclipse, which occurs when a full moon enters the Earth's shadow.
Finally, it is deemed a blue moon because it will be the second full moon of the month. "Most of the time, there is only one full moon in each calendar month," the centre said, adding that the blue moon gets its name from its rare occurrence (once in every two years and eight months) and will not actually be blue.
Instead, it will likely be "red or coppery" - characteristic of a total eclipse.
Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/a-once-in-a-blue-moon-occurrence-on-jan-31-9846270
SINGAPORE: Come Jan 31, moon watchers will get to witness a three-in-one moon - a "rare occurrence" which last happened 152 years ago in 1866.
According to Science Centre Singapore, the phenomenon is a supermoon, lunar eclipse and blue moon all at once and is described as a "super blue total lunar eclipse".
The moon on Jan 31 will be a supermoon, the centre said, which is a phenomenon that occurs when the full moon coincides with it being the closest to Earth.
It will also be the year's first lunar eclipse, which occurs when a full moon enters the Earth's shadow.
Finally, it is deemed a blue moon because it will be the second full moon of the month. "Most of the time, there is only one full moon in each calendar month," the centre said, adding that the blue moon gets its name from its rare occurrence (once in every two years and eight months) and will not actually be blue.
Instead, it will likely be "red or coppery" - characteristic of a total eclipse.
"The red or blood moon is possible because while the moon is in total shadow, light from the sun is filtered through Earth's atmosphere and is bent towards the moon. As white light from the sun shines through the earth's atmosphere, only red light makes it through, thus giving the moon a red hue," the Science Centre stated.
The centre said the moon can be seen in Singapore on the evening of Jan 31, starting with a partial eclipse at 7.48pm. A full eclipse is expected to show at 8.51pm, ending at 10.08pm. The partial eclipse will end at 11.11pm.
Special equipment is not needed, but viewing through binoculars or a telescope will "enhance the experience", it added.
The Science Centre, which is holding a special viewing session at 7.30pm complete with a Digital Planetarium show, said enthusiasts can try taking a picture of their shadow during the solstice and equinox to compare the shadow lengths.
The past year has been a treat for moon watchers. The harvest moon or the first full moon after the autumnal equinox was exceptionally bright last October, sparking a stream of ethereal-
looking photos from San Diego to Singapore.
The supermoon in November was predicted to be the biggest in the 21st century, while the last full moon of the year - also a supermoon - drew much social media attention.
Families of the disappeared in Vavuniya marked 324 days of their continuous protest on Saturday.
Protesters expressed criticism of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) politicians who protesters accused of trying to suppress the yearning of the families whose loved ones have been missing since the end of the armed conflict.
After the Christmas and New Year festivities, and amid all the campaigns and meetings in the run up to the February 10 local government polls, perhaps for the first time in decades, the entire Tamils of the country are engrossed simultaneously in the sensational democratic process, and the Hindus among them are celebrating the “Pongal” harvest festival, popularly known as Thai Pongal, celebrated in the first four days of the month of Thai in the Tamil-Hindu calendar.
One month ahead of this colourful festival, beginning from the first day of the month of ‘Margazhi” (mid-December), every Hindu household starts drawing ‘kolam’ in front of his house every day culminating on the day of the festival with more such drawings.
Banana trees with their bunches of fruits, sugar canes, tender coconut leaf buntings and decorations of mango leaves adorn the festival occasion. Kolam is a form of drawing, generally practised during religious festivities and other celebrations, by using rice flour/chalk/chalk powder/white rock powder often using naturally/synthetically coloured powder in Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu and many other parts of India, as well as in other countries where Hindus live. Decoration is not the sole purpose of a Kolam.
Throughout the month, front yards and entrances of houses are decorated with Kolam in colourful designs. Kolam is more than an art.It symbolizes happiness and prosperity. Insects and birds feed on the rice flour used for drawing the traditional Kolam. Thus, the Kolam represents man’s concern for all living creatures. Kolams were mostly drawn with coarse rice flour, so the ants would not have to walk too far for a meal.
The rice powder also invites birds and other small creatures. It is a sign of invitation to welcome all into the home, not the least of whom is Lakshmi, the Goddess of prosperity and wealth. The patterns range between geometric and mathematical line drawings around a matrix of dots to free form art work and closed shapes.
Traditionally, Thai Pongal is the festival of farmers who depend on Mother Earth, sun, rain, other natural elements and cows and buffaloes for a bountiful harvest of their staple food, rice. It is a time when the poor, the rich, the villager and the city-dweller offer thanks to the gods, worship the sun, the earth, the cattle and their bounty with devotion.
In Sri Lanka, the festival is celebrated predominantly in the North, the East, the Central Hill Country, and other areas where Hindus live.
This year’s Thai Pongal is special to the Tamils of the North and East because a majority of them are back in their own villages and homes, engaged in their traditional professions, mainly agriculture and fisheries. Pongal is uniquely Tamil that it has been designated the ‘State Festival’ in Tamil Nadu. Unlike in Sri Lanka, in Tamil Nadu, Pongal festivities continue in the first four days of Thai.
Houses are cleaned, painted and decorated. People wear new clothes and cattle are gaily caparisoned with beads, bells and flowers – their horns painted and capped with gleaming metal.
The first day of Pongal is Bhogi, marked by feasting and merry-making. It is time for the new to replace the old. Huge bonfires are lit and all unwanted items around the house consigned to the flames. Traditionally, all old clay utensils were ritually broken and potters asked to supply fresh stocks. With the advent of plastics and steel, this ritual has now become symbolic.
Prosperity and happiness
Pongal is the only festival of the Hindus that follows a solar calendar and is celebrated in mid-January every year. Pongal has astronomical significance: It marks the beginning of Uttarayana, the Sun’s movement northward for a six-month period. In Hinduism, Uttarayana is considered auspicious, as opposed to Dakshinaayana, or the southern movement of the Sun. All important events are scheduled during this period.
Makara Sankranthi refers to the Sun entering the zodiac sign of Makara or Capricorn. House-to-house Bajan processions are held beginning from the lean hours of the morning and special Margazhy and Thiruvembavai poojas are performed in temples in the month preceding Thai.Thai is an auspicious period to begin new ventures after the gloomy period of Margazhy. There is a Tamil saying Thai Poranthal Vazhy Porakkum, which means with the dawn of the month, a way for prosperity and happiness will be paved.
Pongal signals the end of the traditional farming season, giving farmers a break from their monotonous routine.Farmers also perform pooja to crops, signalling the end of the traditional farming season. It also sets the pace for a series of festivals to follow in a calendar year. Pongal is the day when the pot of milk and rice must boil over.
Early in the morning, before sunrise, the women of the house draw intricate kolam outside their doors. Within the perimeters of kolam, firewood is used to cook the rice. This is the Surya Pongal, the Pongal for the Sun God. In Sri Lanka this and the following day’s Mattu Pongal or Pongal for the cattle are celebrated. The Pongal is set up in direct view of the Sun (East).Temple bells, drums, clarinets and conch shells herald the joyous occasion of Pongal.
To symbolise a bountiful harvest, rice is cooked in new pots until they boil over. Some of the temple rituals are, the preparation of rice, chanting of prayers and offering of vegetables, sugar cane and spices to the gods. Devotees then consume the offerings to exonerate themselves of past sins.The ritual of cooking rice and milk is done in the open, in the fields by farmers and in the courtyards and lawns of homes in the cities and villages at an auspicious hour.
Dedicated to cattle
The cooking area is decorated with flowers, sugarcane, plantain trees, buntings of flower garlands and rice paste. The boiling over of the contents is the auspicious sign that the family waits for and the women folk shout in high pitch “Pongalo, Pongal”. This is an offering to the Sun God and Mother Earth. The cooked preparation, Pongal (made of new rice, milk and jaggery) is offered to the gods along with preparations of vegetables and lentils, newly harvested sugarcane and bananas. Later the family sits down to a ritual meal.
The following day’s Mattu Pongal is dedicated to cattle, and is the day when the cattle are worshipped and given a day of rest. They are bathed, their horns painted in shining colours and then fed and taken to the village centre where the devotees offer them flower garlands.
A festival called Jalli Kattu is held in many places in Tamil Nadu, a taming or controlling of the savage bull for a reward for heroism with the participation by young men. Bundles of money are tied to the horns of ferocious bulls which the villagers try to retrieve. Everyone joins in the community meal, at which the food is made with freshly harvested grain. Mattu Pongal honours cattle
Many legends are associated with Pongal celebrations. The two most popular legends are stories related to Lord Siva and Lord Indra.
According to one, once Siva asked his bull, Basava, to go to the earth and ask the mortals to have an oil massage and bathe every day and eat once a month. Inadvertently, Basava announced that everyone should eat daily and have an oil bath once a month. This mistake enraged Siva who then cursed Basava, banishing him to live on the earth forever. He would have to plough the fields and help people produce more food. Thus, the association of this day with cattle.
The other legend says that during Lord Krishna’s childhood, he decided to teach a lesson to Lord Indra who became arrogant after becoming the king of all deities. Lord Krishna asked all cowherds to stop worshipping Lord Indra. This angered Lord Indra who sent forth his clouds for thunderstorms and three days continuous rains.
Lord Krishna lifted Mount Govardhan to save the humans.According to Hindu mythology, this is when the day of the gods begins, after a six-month long night. The festival is spread over three days and is the most important and most fervently-celebrated harvest festival of South India. A special pooja is performed on the first day of Pongal before the cutting of the paddy. Farmers worship the sun and the earth by anointing their ploughs and sickles with sandalwood paste. It is with these consecrated tools that the newly-harvested rice is cut.
Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, inventor of e-mail and tech guru has alleged pilferage of millions of dollars by Harvard University
“The fundraising effort in the name of setting up a Tamil Chair is a ruse that exemplifies Harvard’s habitual exploitation of indigenous people. This is an egregious example akin to a burglar asking you to pay money to buy a rickety ladder to rob your own home. Harvard is asking Tamilians to pay $6 million for a professorship that will be used to rob their own historic artifacts worth trillions of dollars representing the ‘Holy Grail’ of the world’s most highly-prized indigenous knowledge.” – Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai
NEW YORK (TIP): U.S. Senate Candidate, inventor of e-mail and tech guru Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai has exposed Harvard University’s attempt to pilfer trillions of dollars worth of indigenous artifacts through the sale of a “Harvard Tamil Chair” professorship.
Harvard sought to collect $6 Million from the Tamil Diaspora worldwide, who had no idea of Harvard’s business model of selling professorships to fund its $35 Billion hedge fund investments. Tamil is the oldest surviving language with the richest body of poetry, art, and literature known to humankind, along with hundreds of thousands of sacred artifacts codified in palm leaf manuscripts embodying the scientific, technological and medical knowledge spanning at least 5,000 years of the Tamilians, the indigenous people of the Indian subcontinent, who today primarily reside in Tamil Nadu in India.
According to Dr. Ayyadurai, “The fundraising effort in the name of setting up a Tamil Chair is a ruse that exemplifies Harvard’s habitual exploitation of indigenous people. This is an egregious example akin to a burglar asking you to pay money to buy a rickety ladder to rob your own home. Harvard is asking Tamilians to pay $6 million for a professorship that will be used to rob their own historic artifacts worth trillions of dollars representing the ‘Holy Grail’ of the world’s most highly-prized indigenous knowledge.” Harvard will then proceed to use access to those artifacts to rewrite and hegemonies Tamil history, an unfortunate and recurrent process that Harvard has done for far too long to many indigenous cultures.
Harvard’s financial statements reveal that the university is fundamentally a tax-exempt Wall Street hedge fund with cash and investments of nearly $35 Billion. In 2016 alone, Harvard’s capital marketing campaign raised $7 Billion, with its hedge fund in 2017 yielding $2 billion in gross profits. The operating budget further reveals that professors and administrators effectively serve as business development staff to attract wealthy donors to fund Chairs and professorships that finance their lucrative hedge fund. In 2017, as the Boston Globe reported, Harvard’s seven top hedge fund managers earned a total of nearly $58 million in compensation.
The reason behind the appointment of Naushard Cader, President – The Harvard University Alumni Financial Markets Forum as Special Coordinator with unlimited power has come to light now.
Ayyadurai said, “As these numbers indicate, Harvard is a hedge fund masquerading as a University, which perpetuates this facade by reinvesting large portions of its hedge fund proceeds to unleash propaganda that it is a ‘world-renowned’ institution of higher learning and scholarliness dedicated to advancing humankind. This branding attracts financing from well-meaning folks, compelled to ‘join the club’ so their children get preferential treatment when applying to Harvard and access to Harvard’s insider network. This dynamic is rarely discussed in the mainstream media.”
Nearly one-third of the students admitted to Harvard are beneficiaries of a well-documented legacy and preferential admission system that is not merit-based but on “who you know” or who donated money.
Dr. Ayyadurai’s leadership in opposing the “Harvard Tamil Chair” has led to significant discussions on social media. Questions are being raised about why Harvard exists. Does Harvard exist as a center of research and learning? Or, does Harvard exist to enrich itself through its hedge fund activities? Given the historic value of Tamil, why didn’t Harvard fund Tamil studies with its own $6 million, particularly given that the amount would be a paltry sum (which would be less than one-tenth of one-percent of the $7 billion Harvard raised from its recent 2016 capital campaign)?
Dr. Vijay Janakiraman, the co-founder of the Harvard Tamil Chair effort to raise the $6 million, claimed he was unaware of Harvard’s business practices until his recent phone conversation with Dr. Ayyadurai, who shared with him that Harvard is not only a hedge fund but also an institution that thrives on racism, corruption and exploitation of indigenous people. Dr. Janakiraman admitted he had naively believed that by donating money to Harvard, he was helping in the preservation and dissemination of the Tamil language.
Harvard’s abusive treatment of Dr. Subramanian Swamy further exemplifies how they treat an indigenous Tamil scholar, who was dismissed for challenging Harvard’s party line. In contrast, Harvard uses its hedge fund profits to hire and retain Elizabeth Warren, who has never challenged Harvard’s exploitative practices. In fact, it paid her an exorbitant sum of $350,000 per year for teaching just one course.
The Harvard Office of the President was complicit with Warren, who shoplifted Native American identity in order to not just advance her career but also to benefit Harvard from Federal grants by misleading the government that they had a Native American on their staff. Warren went on to increase her net worth to over $10 million while the average net worth of African-Americans, segregated in Warren’s and Harvard’s own backyard in Cambridge and Boston, spiraled downward,as reported by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, to a meager and unbelievable $8.
Dr. Ayyadurai’s timely involvement, fortunately, has been a relief to Tamilians worldwide, who are pleased that Dr. Janakiraman, after listening to Dr. Ayyadurai, decided to stop funding Harvard. Dr. Janakiraman told Dr. Ayyadurai, “You are the expert. Tell me what to do and provide me guidance.”
Dr. Ayyadurai’s plan involves galvanizing the Tamil population globally to build the first online Tamil University at TamilNadu.com, a media property Dr. Ayyadurai has owned since 1993 and will donate to the cause. The finest Tamil software engineers worldwide are volunteering to build a 21st century digital platform that will deliver the Tamil language to all who seek to learn it, across various skill levels. This approach will be far different than “Harvard Tamil Chair” that would have provided, at best, a rudimentary pre-kindergarten knowledge in Tamil language.
The online video of Jonathan Ripley of Harvard University purportedly teaching Tamil language is evidence of this. The vocabulary in his lessons is limited to a few words — yes, no, this, that, what, hand, leg, tooth, stone, bag, and milk — which is nothing more than baby-talk. The TamilNadu.Com platform will further provide universal access to the ancient manuscripts to advance all humanity, in contrast to enabling Harvard’s predatory practices.
There is also growing evidence that people behind the Harvard effort appear to be Hebrew language chauvinists in academia and their allies who seek to deliberately cover up the preeminence of the Tamil language by ensuring that they control the historical narrative of Tamil and reduce it to some “goo goo ga ga” language. A comparison of the Hebrew script with the Tamil Brahmi script will confirm that Hebrew script is based on the older Brahmi script, an uncomfortable fact for the Hebrew chauvinists who suppress this fact. Dr. Ayyadurai stated,
“Harvard is a predatory institution that leeches of taxpayers and needs to be busted up and returned to the public to serve as a community college, as it was originally intended. Their teaching model is medieval and dead, relying on egomaniacal professors who think they know better than the rest of us. The Department of Justice must investigate the racial and religious composition of Harvard’s faculty to determine if any single group is overrepresented due to its chauvinist hiring practices.
The Pro-LTTE and anti-Brahmin Tamil outfit in the US- Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FeTNA) and Tamil Nadu Foundation that raises funds for several projects in Tamil Nadu have been on the forefront collecting millions of dollars in fund raising all over the US as they saw the Harvard project as revival of Dravidian culture in the US.
A. Shiva Ayyadurai is an Indian-born American scientist and entrepreneur notable for his claim to be the inventor of email, based on the electronic mail software called “EMAIL” he wrote as a New Jersey high school student in the late 1970s. Ayyadurai also produced two controversial reports: the first questioning the working conditions of India’s largest scientific agency; the second questioning the safety of genetically modified soybeans. Ayyadurai holds four degrees from
MIT including a Ph.D. in biological engineering, and is a Fulbright grant recipient. He is a candidate in the 2018 US Senate election in Massachusetts.
To raise funds to the tune of S 6 Million, prominent Tamils in the US have formed Tamil Chair Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (Tax-ID 47-5021758) registered in the state of Maryland (USA) that is currently working on fund raising for
Harvard Tamil Chair
The Board consists of – Dr Vijay Janakiraman, Hollidausburg,Pa; Mrs. Vaidehi Herbert, Kilauea, Hawaii; Sornam Sankar of Ellicott City, MD; Appadurai Muthulingam, Markham, Canada; Siva Illanko, Stouffville, Canada, Dr Sundaresan Sambandam, Cranston, RI; Paul Pandian, Dallas, TX; Kumar Kumarappan, Freemont,CA; Dr. Arumugam Murukiah, Chennai and Dr Varadarajan Raghuraman, North York, Canada. Mrs. Suja Chandrasekaran, Chief Information Officer at Kimberly-Clark and B.Karthikeyan Executive Director at Thriveni Earthmovers Private Limited, Salem, Tamil Nadu and G.Balachandran, a retired I.A.S officer of Tamil Nadu, probably biggest donors were made Members of the Advisory Council – Harvard Tamil Chair.
Over 4791 donors have given $5,310,556.24 of the total estimated collection of S4, 854,995.09. The major donors are: Government of Tamil Nadu $1,537,929.18; Vijay and Malliga Janakiraman $510,000; Sundaresan and Vijayalakshmi Sambandam $507,850; Paul & Geetha Pandian $ 203,685; Arumugam Murukiah ofHumetis Technologies $100,000; Sky Mining Services, LLC $100,000; Mr. V.P. Parama Lingam $75,376.30 and Fetna Tampa event $55,298.86; Bala Swaminathan $52,200; G Balachandran $41,200; Velammal Educational Trust of Madurai $38,473.93; Valluvan Tamil Academy $36,760.; Anbarasu Natchimuthu $25,000; Dr.Kanthilal $25,000; Dr. Sembu & Amutha Kanthilal $25,000;;
Prominent film personalities from Tamil Nadu have opened up their wallets – ; Actor Kamal Haasan $30,501.75, Actor Vishal Krishna $15,114.87; Actor R. Suriya -Akaram Foundation $15,293.63, director Rajanayagam Shanmugraja Mysskin $386.00.
Several Tamil associations and patrons from outside the US have donated and they include Delhi Tamil Sangam $3095, K.A.Manoharan, Tamil Valarchi Mandra Arakattalai, Hosur, Tamil Nadu $1,550; Tamil Nadu Teachers Cooperative Trust – (Asiriyar kootani) $1526. Tamil Arts and Culture Association Inc, Sydney, Australia $1025.29; Mr. Jawahaar Tirupapuliyur $499.
However, none of the top Tamil CEOs or Silicon Valley business leaders including Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsico, Tennis ace and Hollywood Producer Vijay Amritraj has donated a penny to set up Harvard Tamil Chair as they have understood the purpose behind the collection and how the funds will be deployed other than for promoting Tamil. Ranjon Tandon and his wife Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon, sister of Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi have donated $100 Million gift to support engineering at NYU.
Kareem Shaheen-Mon 15 Jan 2018
Kareem Shaheen-Mon 15 Jan 2018
Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) on November 22, 2017 in the Bundestag. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images) 
