Colombo (News1st) – Sri Lanka is the top-ranked country in the world in terms of public sector misappropriation and corruption according to Auditor General Gamini Wijesinghe.
He noted that the term Good Governance has been sullied at present, but continued to emphasize the need for it.
Gamini Wijeysinghe believes that Good Governance and the honesty of state sector workers are the most important factors in creating a fully functional and efficient state sector. The Auditor General noted that he has been vested with a great deal of responsibility in ensuring that the state sector is directed towards this path.
Keith Noyahr, the journalist from the now defunct Nation newspaper was abducted, tortured and assaulted on the 22nd of May 2008, when former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was in office. It is now evident through reports to Court and the media that Keith was released by his abductors after then Minister in Rajapaksha government Karu Jayasuriya telephoned President Mahinda Rajapaksa around 11.30pm on that fateful day, having heard from Lalith Allahakkoon, Editor of the Nation newspaper of the abduction. Strike one for former President Mahinda Rajapaksa for initiating the release of Keith Noyahr, who may well have been murdered.
But that is not how events should have unfolded. The sordid drama that is best served with a prosecution and conviction is being turned in to a joke by the former President. Readers will recall that the Criminal Investigation Department revived the dormant investigations in to the multitude of attacks on journalists that even escalated leading to the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge, the Editor of The Sunday Leader. The revival of the dormant investigations took place only after the Rajapaksa regime was defeated. There was not a hum from the Rajapaksha camp till evidence was being unearthed. Lo and behold the oldest excuse in the book in the form of “Political Victimisation” is now being used by Mahinda.
The government and the investigating arms must be rapped for the shoddy and tardy manner in which the revived investigations have been handled. Perhaps the Yahapalanaya big wigs felt it was enough to defeat the Rajapaksa juggernaut with nary a thought given to the families of victims and the impact such criminal acts had on the island nation. With the results of the last local government elections, the Yahapalanaya set with their political futures in mind have set the ball rolling at speed to bring the Rajapaksa clan to book. Twisting Law, Order, and committing Murder,Plunder et al, by an individual or group is low life criminal activity. When it is committed by politicians in power,it becomes a bigger crime. Any self respecting Nation owes it to the people, that her rulers uphold the law. A lackadaisical attitude towards rulers getting away murder, abduction has brought upon degradation and a negative impact on the collective psyche of the Nation. Do they want the Rajapaksa’s back in power ? Shame on those who do.
Mahinda was questioned by the CID at his Official Residence. Why? He has to be equal before the law. Somapala and Sriyalatha, would have been summoned to the 4th floor. Let us not fool ourselves that some are treated more equal than others. Even worse was to witness the carnival like atmosphere with every Tom, Dick and Dirty Harry, gathering at the official residence in support. The newsmen gathered outside were not better than a subservient mob. Mahinda was questioned on the evidence given by present Speaker of the House Karu Jayasuriya. Karu Jayasuriya said on record that he called Mahinda around 11.30pm to protest strongly over the abduction of Keith Noyahr and that he would have to consider continuing in Government if anything untoward was to happen to Keith. Evidence with the CID sleuths show that Mahinda called two minutes after Karu Jayasuriya’s call to Gotabayawho in turn called Intelligence Chief Hendawitharane who called Maj General Amal Karunatilleke. Maj Gen Karunatilleke called Major Bulathwatte who answered the call at a site in Dompe ( now known to be the site that held Keith Noyahr) and thereby Keith was set free.
Mahinda has been afflicted with the same sickness of Duminda Silva, Ravi Karunanayake and Daisy Archchi. “I cannot remember Karu Jayasuriya’s call”, said Mahinda to the CID. Does any sane Sri Lankan believe him? One of his Senior Ministers call him almost at midnight to complain that a prominent journalist has been abducted and unless he is set free the Minister would leave Government, and Mahinda cannot remember such call? That he called his brother who at the time was Secretary Defence, near midnight to follow up and that too cannot be remembered?
That on the following day all newspapers and electronic media in banner headlines addressed the Abduction, torture,assault and the release of Keith Noyahr, and Mahinda cannot recall the mid night call of Karu J and his call to his brother Gotabaya? Is he really fit to be a member of Parliament ? He has amnesia or he is an out and out LIAR. Either way he seeks to dodge the truth which should render him unfit to hold any public office.
The journalists who gathered at his office failed miserably too. They simply thrust the microphones at Mahinda and asked him to sing hymns. Surely there should have been at least one professional journalist around? Why did they not question Mahinda along the following lines,
1. Do you take credit for having saved Keith Noyahr’s life?
2. How many calls do you get at midnight from a Minister threatening to resign?
Head of the National Police Commission (NPC) P. H. Manatunga said no powers were vested in the NCP to take punitive action against the IGP in the event he does not implement recommendations made by it.
If IGP Pujith Jayasundera fails to implement NPC recommendations, the latter does not have any legal power to take punitive action against him, he noted.
According to recommendations made by the Constitutional Council (CC), the appointment of the IGP is vested with the President. However, Manatunga stated that based on the 19th Amendment, the IGP or any other person could not challenge recommendations made by the NPC.
He was responding to a query made by Ceylon Today that some Media reports had stated that the IGP had failed to carry out certain recommendations made by the NPC.
“Whenever the IGP fails to carry out our decisions, the plaintiff can always file an FR petition in the Supreme Court. Also they could lodge a complaint with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT).Through each of these instances, the public have the chance to put into effect decisions given by the NPC and which have not been activated by the IGP,” the NPC head said.
Citing the instance where SSP Palitha Siriwardene, who was recommended by the NPC to be promoted, but was not promoted by the IGP, Manatunga said the IGP had to adhere to a Supreme Court Order and give the victimized officer the promotion. Similarly, he said victims could take their case to Courts and get redress.
Manatunga said if either a politician or any other party exerts pressure on the NPC and if such charges were proved by a High Court, those guilty of the offence could be given a seven-year jail term.
Meanwhile, he said if complaints are lodged with the NPC on allegations that a special Police unit had been set up to tap private telephone conversations of politicians and journalists, they were ready to conduct a probe into such complaints.
Based on article No. 155 Section G (92) of the Constitution, the NPC has been vested to probe complaints lodged by the public.
“There have been some reports regarding this issue. If a complaint is lodged, then we can initiate an inquiry into it as we have the powers to do so. No one has the right to tap phone calls,” he said.
He added that the NPC continues to receive over 500 complaints, from the public annually, connected to partiality, bias of police officers and their failure to mete out justice to the masses.
“Monthly we receive around 40 to 50 public complaints against the Police. Hence, we have decided to install an office in each Province to look into complaints. Retired top government officers have been recruited to each of these offices,” he said.
Those retired officers are not Police officers and they are to be paid a monthly remuneration by the NPC.
He further said the public could always lodge a complaint with the NPC.
According to the sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka, the top officials of the ministry have not paid serious attention towards this matter. It is revealed that a number of top officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and their wives are holding dual citizenship or “green cards.”
by Our Diplomatic Editor-
( August 20, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sri Lanka has been appointing dual citizens as its envoys since many years. These appointments are political in nature and controversial in terms of the purpose. The question of appointing dual citizens to the posts of ambassadors, high commissioners, consuls general and of other diplomatic post has been highlighted on numerous occasions. This is because on the one hand as these appointees are citizens of other countries such as the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada, and the European Union, their loyalty has always been not with Sri Lanka. Therefore, Sri Lanka cannot expect better performance from them, when they confront with a question of their allegiance on crucial matters. On the other hand, according to the rules and regulations of these countries, it is the duty of their citizens to cooperate with the relevant agencies on matters of security and national issues. Therefore, obviously these citizens many be used to gather information related to many matters and a diplomatic portfolio would be highly useful for them to serve his “country.” For example, no one can deny that part of the duty of a diplomat is to gather vital intelligence of the countries of accreditation. Therefore, no one can deny the fact that even those countries would request these envoys to engage as double agents in issues such as Sri Lanka’s relations with China and Chinese involvement in Sri Lanka. Considering the nature of duties of diplomats, other nations do not appoint dual citizens as diplomats and do not allow their diplomats to marry foreigners and accept dual citizenship as well as residence visa of foreign countries.
To the contrary, Sri Lanka has not imposed any restrictions on its diplomats on these matters and there are a number of dual citizens among the career diplomats. Some even have married to foreigners and even one diplomat has been allowed to marry a diplomat of another country. This is something strange in view of the concept of diplomacy. However, according to the sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka, the top officials of the ministry have not paid serious attention towards this matter. It is revealed that a number of top officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and their wives are holding dual citizenship or “green cards.”
Recently, this matter was raised by the members of the high post committee, when a dual citizen of Australia has been nominated as the Sri Lankan Ambassador to Norway. It was the view of the committee members, if dual citizens cannot enter parliament, the government should review its policy on appointing dual citizens as Sri Lanka’s envoys. This is a sensible observation. Of course, considering the sensitive nature of the work entrusted to an envoy, such appointments should not be given to dual citizens.
According to the section 07 of the Sri Lanka Foreign Service Minute adopted in November 2016, to enter the Foreign Service, a person “should be a citizen of Sri Lanka (Those who have dual citizenship should rescind their foreign nationality in the event they are selected to the SLFS and should not acquire the nationality of any other country during their Service.)” If this is condition is applicable to diplomats, the government cannot appoint dual citizens as Sri Lanka’s envoys too.
In this regard, two issues can be identified. First, whether the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has taken suitable action to identify whether there are any dual citizens among the Foreign Service officials in terms of the said minute. Second, what action it would initiate to against the violators of conditions stipulated in the Foreign Service Minute. However, according to the Foreign Ministry sources, in replying to the High Post Committee’s inquiry on this issues, Foreign Secretary, Prasad kariyawasam has submitted a letter stating “applicable public service regulations at present do not prevent any Sri Lankan with dual nationality holding a high post in public service, though the 19th Amendment to the Constitution established a condition that Members of Parliament cannot hold dual nationality.” This statement of the Foreign Secretary is against the conditions stipulated in the Foreign Service Minute. However, it is not the Foreign Secretary; it should be the law makers who should address the issues after obtaining the views of the legal experts.
It was learnt that there strong reasons for the Foreign Secretary himself to support the idea of appointing dual citizens as Sri Lanka’s envoys. It is also surprising to note that as a senior ex Foreign Service officer, he should be able to weigh the pros and cons of the issue and advise the law makers on the accurate picture drawing examples from other countries without simply dragging two contradictory views to weaken the argument of the High Post Committee members, who are very much concerned about “Divided loyalty” of the envoys holding dual citizens. Apparently, it also raises the question of the resourcefulness and insightfulness of the top official of the Foreign Ministry.
Local social media has been giving huge publicity to a recent San Francisco Federal court judgement in favour of a plaint filed by a groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson in California claiming that his illness, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), a cancer, was caused by glyphosate. He had been regularly applying the weed killer, in school playgrounds. A government toxicologist, Dr Charles W. Jameson was a key witness for the prosecution. He gave evidence supporting Johnson and his testimony was that “To a reasonable degree of scientific certainly”, glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides are likely to cause cancer in humans, particularly at real-world exposures including the levels farm workers and others face when using the weed killer.
Interestingly, this toxicologist was a member of the team that declared in their report to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015 that glyphosate is” probably cancer causing” leading to placement of this chemical in Class 2 A of the carcinogenicity classification. However, there are apparently some 300 other studies that are contrary to the IARC finding, and refuting the contention that glyphosate is cancer causing. Chief among these are two studies, the Joint WHO and FAO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) which categorically states that there is no evidence that glyphosate is either carcinogenic or genotoxic. Even more comprehensive is the American Health Study with some 90, 000 farmers using glyphosate over a period exceeding 25 years and published in November, 2017. It too concludes that there is no evidence that glyphosate is carcinogenic. In this background, therefore, the San Francisco Court judgement is difficult to comprehend.
Contradictory judgements
The San Francisco Chronicle August 13 argues that despite this verdict ‘courts will differ on Monsanto’s herbicide’ in regard to the numerous plaints filed against the company claiming damages by the herbicide applicators. Despite a judgement by a California court early this year, that Glyphosate products should carry a warning label consistent with the IARC pronouncement that it is ‘probably cancer causing’, it would appear that the verdict had been annulled. Subsequently, a federal judge in Sacramento has prohibited California State from requiring such a label. He had concluded that a “heavy weight of evidence” showed that the herbicide glyphosate was safe. In his judgement he had cited the report of the US Environmental Protection Agency and that of other regulatory bodies in Europe that the herbicide, glyphosate, was safe! Contradictory judgements therefore imply that there is no final proof that the herbicide is cancer causing or ‘probably cancer causing’ as determined by IARC.
Moreover, causation in epidemiology is a highly complex subject, and mere association does not necessarily imply causation. In other words, Dewayne Johnson’s association with glyphosate does not necessarily mean that the latter caused him NHL. In epidemiology, there are eight universally accepted criteria known as the Bradford-Hill criteria at least several of which should be satisfied for establishing causation, only one of them being the strength of the association. It would appear that the jury’s decision was substantially conditioned by the terminal illness of Johnson with his body,
virtually totally covered in lesions and welts! Probably an element of sympathy influenced the decision. Further, the question should be asked whether a jury of ordinary layman without expert knowledge in the subject could make a decision on a matter of this nature. We, however, have no information on the competence of the jurors on the subject. Monsanto is expected to appeal against the judgement. Let us wait for the outcome.
Meanwhile this news has caused, as to be expected, much euphoria among the anti-glyphosate lobbyists both here and overseas. One of our chief lobbyists is a Buddhist monk, who has no notion of science or agriculture, but has been vehemently opposing conventional agriculture, agrochemical use and actively promoting organic farming in the course of which he has promoted a fertilizer concoction, “Pivithuru Pohora” of which he is also the chief architect. This fertilizer has failed to show any response in the Agriculture Department’s trials, but has been vigorously promoted among Mahaweli System B farmers, some of who have been paid compensation by the Mahaweli Authority for loss of crop consequent on its use! On enquiry, one farmer told the writer that he was paid Rs 12,500 as compensation last season .The other is a pharmacologist who has been shouting hoax that glyphosate is responsible for the kidney disease, CKDu, and even had come up with a hypothesis that glyphosate complexing with metallic elements in the hard water in the NCP is probably the cause of the disease.
This hypothesis has not been supported by any other researcher and has been severely criticized by several reputed chemists in the country that it is utterly faulty! He, together with the monk, has also been insisting that the government should not lift the ban on the weed killer.
He even clamoured over the TV following the San Francisco judgement, that he too is filing litigation against Monsanto for ‘glyphosate causing’ CKDu! The writer has gone this far on these highly biased personalities to give an indication of the magnitude of damage that they cause to poor farmers and the misinformation spread in the public mind. The ban on the herbicide was, however, lifted recently at least for two crops tea and rubber thanks to the valiant efforts of the Minister of Plantation industries. Ideally it should have been lifted for all crops because it was banned on the false premise that it caused the kidney disease.
Many main stream scientists and the Pesticide Technical Advisory Committee have requested the government to do so. Despite the ban illegal glyphosate is being used across the country virtually on every crop at great cost to the farmer as it is exorbitantly expensive. The farmers using it at any cost are indicative of their dependency on it to control weeds. The government should do well to lift the ban for all crops. There is now convincing evidence that CKDu is associated with the source of potable water and not any agrochemical.
Adequate precautions
In conclusion, glyphosate is the most widely used pesticide both globally and locally. The quantity used is more than that of the cumulative total of all other pesticides! In comparison to most other pesticides its toxicity is relatively low, its acute reference dose (ARfD) is as high as 0.5 mg/kg of body weight, and the acceptable operator level (AOEL) is set at 0.1 mg /kg body weight per day. Despite such low toxicity indicators, given, the emerging evidence of possible risks, the government should have wide farmer and public training on its safe use.
Our farmers often spray pesticides bare bodied for want of strict advice and rules. It would appear that Johnson, the California groundskeeper has been very frequently spraying the weed killer. By contrast in arable crops here it is usually applied once per season prior to planting. In tea, however, the regular applicators apply more frequently, and their exposure probably higher. On the other hand vegetable farmers apply insecticides of much higher toxicity such as carbosulphan, propanophos and diazinon many times per season which could be more risky than glyphosate. Further, given our magnitude of exposure to other toxins such as vehicle exhaust fumes and emissions from the coal power plants many of which are Class 1 carcinogens, the risk of glyphosate should be negligible providing adequate precautions are taken. The Johnson fiasco should be an eye opener to the authorities for vigilant training of farmers in pesticide use as also for enacting rigid rules and regulations.
Given the vital need of glyphosate in weed management in farming and the fact that no other country has banned it despite emerging concerns, we hope the government will not rush again into ‘throwing the baby away with the bath water’ The health authorities should, as a precautionary measure, undertake a study on the status of glyphosate residues in farmers who spray it regularly, especially of the tea estate applicators.
I was sitting behind my desk in my family’s supermarket in Khan Younis on 14 May when my cousin Ali approached.
There was going to be another gathering in al-Faraheen for that day’s Great March of Return protest, he said. Would I join him?
“No, I prefer the one in Khuzaa where we usually go,” I said.
Ali insisted to go to al-Faraheen and decided he would do so with his friend Saed. He stayed with me until I closed the shop and we went our separate ways. I called my friend Ahmad to go to Khuzaa.
At the protest, we found the usual: tear gas canisters falling thickly, leaving us barely able to breathe or talk; ambulances and paramedics fanning out everywhere; and the sound of live bullets whizzing past.
The sound of a bullet elicits contradictory feelings. All of us know that it will hit someone. But if we hear it, we are safe, just like when we hear shelling it means it has exploded but not on us.
Critically wounded
Then my phone began to ring. I saw my brother’s name on the screen. Before I had a chance to say anything, he urged me to come to the European Hospital, “Now! Ali was shot.”
I started running without thinking. Ahmad followed and we rushed over to the hospital in a taxi. There we made our way through the crowds, the screams, the blood on the clothes and beds, the men and women weeping.
“Ali Firwana?” I gasped to the woman behind the reception desk.
“Second floor in surgery,” she replied.
The whole family, Ali’s friends and everyone, were there waiting, fearful and worried. Time seemed to speed up. Everything moved fast. The paramedics came through with wounded people on stretchers, bustling from room to room. A doctor would appear at regular intervals urging people to give blood. “We need blood! Those who can donate blood, follow me please!”
We had already donated but they never stopped asking.
Finally, a doctor came out of the operating room. “Ali’s condition is critical. Be patient and pray for him.”
After several hours, they transferred him to the intensive care unit. He was taken to the ICU where we were not allowed to join him.
The author’s cousin, Ali Firwana, at an earlier protest (Abdalrahim Alfarra)
Paralysis
Ali stayed in a coma for about a month. When he woke up, he was in shock, gazing at the feeding and breathing tubes stuck in his body, unable to speak. He did not believe at first that his coma had lasted a full month. He told us he had only been asleep for a day.
It was several days later, when the diagnosis of paralysis was confirmed, that we had to tell Ali that he would no longer be able to move his legs.
I cannot imagine what my reaction would have been if this had happened to me. Certainly, I would lose hope. Yet Ali was hopeful and brave. He encouraged me to continue participating in the protests. When a classmate who came to visit him at the hospital asked if he would go back, he answered, without hesitation. “Absolutely!”
For Ali and myself, the Great March of Return was a dream. Here we were, Palestinians, together, all calling for the right of refugees to return to their homes and lands from where they were expelled by Zionist forces in 1948. All of us, together, were demanding the lifting of Israel’s blockade on Gaza, now in its 11th year. We were united against the US embassy move to Jerusalem.
I was most motivated by the need for the rest of the world to see the protests from a Gazan perspective. There aren’t enough activists here who can tell our story in English to people abroad and reveal how Israel’s terror and inhumanity impact our lives.
The Great March of Return has inspired thousands of Palestinians in Gaza to protest for our rights. But it has come at a great cost. More than 125 have been killed during the demonstrations, and more than 5,000 have been injured by live fire.
Hundreds face long-term disability, dozens have had limbs amputated, and as of 3 July, at least 10 protestors were left paralyzed as a result of their injury.
“I am dying”
According to the hospital neurologist, an exploding bullet had injured Ali’s spinal cord, caused the loss of two vertebrae and damage to his liver, diaphragm and lungs.
He was eventually moved to a Palestine Red Crescent Society rehabilitation center. Each Friday, when the clinic workers have a day off, we bring him home. I hear him crying, shouting and screaming in pain at night.
“Take me back to the hospital. I cannot take this pain. I am dying. Take me back please!”
I feel helpless. I do not know how to ease his pain. My heart tears with each scream.
Taking advantage of a moment of quiet, I once asked him what happened the moment he was shot.
“There was heavy gunfire,” he said. “We lay down on the ground to protect ourselves. The soldiers were looking at us and their weapons were aimed toward us. And there was a deceitful sniper who waved at us, telling us to leave the place safely.
“I made a decision I will regret for the rest of my life: I trusted him. When I stood up, the pain was like a bolt of lightning that burned the depths of my body. I felt that every part of my body was literally on fire.
“At that moment I was not afraid of death. It is my mother I was thinking of throughout all of this! My mother! Just my mother and nothing but my mother.”
Hope against hope
Ali is his mother’s only child; her husband abandoned her when she was pregnant. He was supposed to graduate from the Gaza Community/Training College with a specialization in motor mechanics this semester. That deceitful sniper had sabotaged his plans to dedicate his life to supporting his mother.
The day I asked Ali about being shot, we had gone to the house where he lived with his mother. My uncle opened their fridge to find nothing but a piece of cheese and frozen bread.
I was shocked to realize that they live in extreme poverty. They had never asked for help. We are poor too, but I feel the blame is on us for not asking about their situation.
Ali is now receiving medical treatment in Egypt. His mother and uncles are with him. They received help from a local charity as well as the government in Gaza.
Ali requires further surgery. He is still hoping to move his legs again. He is still hoping to defy the treacherous bullet fired by a heartless sniper, and a world that answers Israel’s crimes with shocking silence.
Abdalrahim Alfarra is a Palestinian activist from Gaza.
The former CIA director John Brennan is threatening legal action against Donald Trump, after he was summarily stripped of his security clearance in an unprecedented display of presidential pique.
Brennan took to the airways on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press and made clear that he had no intention of being cowered by Trump’s bombshell actionto deprive him of access to classified information. The unparalleled move has triggered an equally unparalleled blowback from 13 of the most revered national security figures in the country, who penned a joint letter decrying the move as “ill-considered and unprecedented”.
The man at the center of the billowing dispute has now substantially upped the ante by stating that he is considering legal action. Brennan said he had been contacted by a number of lawyers and was actively weighing his options.
He told NBC that in his opinion the revoking of his security clearance was Trump’s way of trying to scare other existing and former government officials.
“It was a clear signal that if you cross him he will use whatever tools he might have at his disposal to punish you,” he said.
Brennan called the move an example of Trump’s “egregious” approach to power. He said: “I am going to do whatever I can to try and prevent these abuses occurring in the future and if that means going to court I will do that.”
While the former CIA director has been busily doubling down on his criticism of Trump, the White House and its supporters in Congress have also been energetically mounting a campaign of character assassination against him.
Richard Burr, the Republican chair of the Senate intelligence committee, began the outpouring last week when he suggested that any comment by Brennan accusing Trump of possible collusion with Russia that had been based on classified information gathered since he left the CIA would constitute an intelligence breach.
On Sunday, national security adviser John Bolton echoed the claim when he told ABC’s This Week: “A number of people have commented that [Brennan] couldn’t be in the position he’s in of criticizing President Trump and his so-called collusion with Russia unless he did use classified information.”
Bolton was forced to admit he could point to no specific examples of any such breach. Instead, he further cast aspersions on Brennan by questioning his actions while in office as Barack Obama’s final CIA director.
“When he was CIA director I was very troubled by his conduct, by statements he made in public and by what I thought was his politicization of the intelligence community,” Bolton said, again without offering specifics.
Brennan denied any intelligence breach, saying his criticisms of Trump had been fully based on the reports of a “free and open press”. He also said: “I don’t believe I’m being political at all – I’m not a Republican or a Democrat.”
The White House appears to be trying to turn the blazing controversy over security clearances away from Trump’s unprecedented action and on to Brennan’s character. To some degree, Brennan has offered Trump a helping hand by seeming to rein back on his most serious charge: that during his joint press conference with the Russian president Vladimir Putin in July, the president acted in a way that was “nothing short of treasonous”.
On Friday, Brennan said he hadn’t intended to say that Trump actually committed treason. He told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that “sometimes my Irish comes out and in my tweets”.
On the back of such remarks, Brennan has come under some criticism from even his allies. Former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who was one of the 13 senior figures who signed the letter opposing the removal of Brennan’s clearance, told CNN’s State of the Union his “rhetoric have become an issue in and of itself”.
He added: “John is sort of like a freight train, and he’s going to say what’s on his mind.”
President Trump suffered the kind of body blows this week that would have felled any other politician.
Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman revealed she had taped conversations with other senior officials, including in the highly secure Situation Room where cellphones aren’t allowed. She released a tape proving that Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, had offered her a $15,000-a-month job, financed by campaign donors, in an unsuccessful bid to buy her silence. She also claimed, so far without proof, that there was a tape of Trump using the n-word to describe African Americans and that the president had advance knowledge of the stolen emails released by Russian intelligence via WikiLeaks.
Trump added to the damage by lashing out on Twitter. He called Manigault Newman “a crazed, crying lowlife,” said he had only hired her “because she only said GREAT things about me,” and praised his chief of staff “for quickly firing that dog!” This led to well-justified charges that Trump’s words were, at best, unpresidential and, at worst, racist and sexist.
At a Bikers for Trump event at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., President Trump called former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman a "lowlife."(The Washington Post)
This was also the week when hundreds of newspapers published editorials denouncing Trump as a threat to the First Amendment.
And as if that weren’t enough: After Trump vindictively revoked former CIA director John Brennan’s security clearance, Brennan hit back in a New York Times op-ed, writing that Trump’s denials of collusion with Russia are “hogwash.” The charge was all the more powerful because Brennan was in office during the 2016 campaign, and he received briefings from European intelligence services that are said to have intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
Trump’s attempt to silence Brennan provoked a powerful backlash from normally apolitical intelligence and military veterans. Retired Navy Adm. William H. McRaven, who oversaw the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, wrote a Post op-ed comparing Trump’s tactics to those of Joseph McCarthy, while a group of 12 senior former intelligence officials who served under both Republicans and Democrats signed a letter of protest against Trump’s “inappropriate and deeply regrettable” act.
President Trump on Aug. 17 defended his action toward ex-CIA director John Brennan, warning former associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr could be next.(Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Pow! Wham! Ka-pow! Any other president would have been knocked out. But for Trump, it was just another ordinary week. He has been so beaten down for so long that it’s hard to see any visible damage from these additional blows. No matter how bad it gets, his approval rating never seems to fall far below 40 percent. (He’s currently at 42 percent approval in the FiveThirtyEight poll of polls.)
It is thus easy to say that none of this matters. Easy — and wrong. Previous presidents who were in office during times of robust economic expansion, with low unemployment and a roaring bull market, generally had average approval ratings well over 50 percent. Trump’s egregious misbehavior consistently costs him at least 10 points in the polls.
Yet it is also true that Trump’s approval rating has not reached Watergate levels (Richard Nixon was at 24 percent when he resigned), and he remains within spitting distance of the popular-vote margin he received in 2016 (46.4 percent). Despite everything that’s happened, he could, I’m sorry to say, win reelection. Don’t forget Trump’s top talent: tearing down rivals. A large part of the reason he squeaked out a slim electoral-college majority in 2016 was that he was so good at turning a distinguished and thoughtful former first lady, senator and secretary of state into a caricature known as “Crooked Hillary.” Right now, Trump is being judged in a vacuum. Wait till the Democrats nominate someone to run against him and he starts flinging insults.
What might prevent Trump’s tried-and-true Don Rickles strategy from succeeding? It won’t be the criticism he gets from retired security officials, which only feeds his crackpot conspiracy theories about the Deep State. It certainly won’t be criticism from the press; in one recent poll, 43 percent of Republicans want Trump to have the power to shut down news outlets “engaged in bad behavior.” I fear that even if an n-word tape is discovered, it won’t do the trick. As Jonathan Last argues in the Weekly Standard, Republicans are more likely to normalize the n-word than they are to turn on Trump.
But that doesn’t mean Trump’s standing is forever secure. Polls consistently show that only three-quarters of his supporters strongly approve of his execrable performance; a quarter are more lukewarm. What might make these less committed supporters turn on the president? If special counsel Robert S. Mueller III finds proof of collusion and obstruction of justice, that might do the trick — at least for some of them. Maybe.
But at the end of the day, what would make the biggest difference would be an economic downturn. President Richard M. Nixon might never have been impeached were it not for the “oil shock” of 1973 and the resulting recession. While Trump might not care what newspaper editorial boards or even retired CIA directors think of him, he should care that two-thirds of business economists in a recent survey predicted a recession by the end of 2020. A growing economy has been the only thing saving Trump from a knock-out. He will hit the canvas for good if a bear market enters the ring.
Two mistakes, committed on President Barack Obama’s watch, were the triggers for the end of the long post-Cold War period of good relations with Russia. They were the attack on Libya by the US, France and the UK and the subsequent killing of its long-time dictator, Muammar Gadhafi. The second was the crisis in Ukraine.
Russia was very angry about the first. Having been persuaded by Western diplomacy that the reason for their would-be intervention was essentially humanitarian to forestall any more mass killing in the Libyan civil war, the US and Nato double-crossed Russia. After having gained Russia’s abstention in a UN Security Council vote on a resolution authorizing military intervention the Western powers set about hunting Gadhafi.
As Zbigniew Brezinski, a pre-eminent foreign policy advisor to presidents, told me, if George H.W. Bush had not been replaced by Bill Clinton these bad mistakes would not have been made and Russia probably would be firmly attached to the West
With the second, Ukraine, Russia felt undermined. This was the result of the twin policies of Nato expansion up to Russia’s border-which the US, Germany, France and the UK had promised would never happen- and EU enlargement. Nato declared that Ukraine would be a Nato member. For its part the EU had pushed too early and too hard for an association agreement with the corrupt government of President Viktor Yanukovych. When demonstrations erupted in Kiev the US and the EU lent support and assistance to revolutionary elements and to endorsing a clearly illegal oligarch-ultranationalist revolt in February 2014, despite an agreement made by some of the European powers and Russia that essentially ensured Yanukovych’s departure from the presidency in ten months’ time. Obama has confessed that Libya was his biggest foreign policy mistake. At least it helped lead him not to try and do the same thing in Syria.
But there are no mea culpas over Ukraine. The crisis continues into a fifth year with no end in site. The West appears to have ignored President Vladimir Putin’s suggestion of the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine. Gone are the fashioning of benign policies America created before- a new nuclear arms reduction treaty, agreeing at the UN to impose tough sanctions on Iran, which led to the denuclearization accord, jointly negotiated, managing Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organisation, the coordinated action to defuse violence in Kyrgyzstan, and Russia supplying engines for the US’s space rockets. There was also a vast expansion of the network used to transport American soldiers and supplies across Russia to Afghanistan.
But there are no mea culpas over Ukraine. The crisis continues into a fifth year with no end in site. The West appears to have ignored President Vladimir Putin’s suggestion of the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine
Under Obama the spirit of cooperation had nearly all gone. But President Donald Trump wants to bring the era of goodwill back again. Unfortunately, because of his erratic leadership, no one is quite sure whether to trust him. Moreover, he says one thing about friendship with Russia while his Administration increases sanctions and does a go-slow on arms control. This leads to wondering who’s in charge. Is it the so-called Blob, i.e. the senior people in the National Security Council, the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon who seem to be able, together with their allies in the press and academia, to out-fox their commander in chief?
It’s hard to believe that not very long ago Putin was entertaining the possibility of joining Nato. As Zbigniew Brezinski, a pre-eminent foreign policy advisor to presidents, told me, if George H.W. Bush had not been replaced by Bill Clinton these bad mistakes would not have been made and Russia probably would be firmly attached to the West.
An influential member of the Blob is Obama’s ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul. In a new book, “From Cold War to Hot Peace”, he pulls Putin to pieces. Although he confesses that before he joined the Administration he knew not much about the history of Russia nor about Cold War interactions with the country, he engaged in a campaign to persuade Obama to take a hard line with Putin.
The book is extremely one-sided. There are important omissions, such as Obama’s confession over the Libyan imbroglio. The Russian media is presented as monolithic and in Putin’s pocket. In fact in Russia if you want to know a different point of view, including Western ones, there are a couple of TV stations, a radio station and an up-market newspaper, all with nation-wide reach, who will give it to you. Russian bookshops have everything. The universities are fairly open-minded. The internet has free, uncontrolled, access. McFaul doesn’t mention that Obama didn’t have on his staff people who were knowledgeable enough to argue a counter point of view, for example the Harvard professor of international affairs, Stephen Walt, whose own book, “The Hell of Good Intentions” which will be published in October, provides that. Walt argues that “Few states have caused more harm to others in recent years that the US has, but not very many.” Finally, McFaul gives no space to the arguments of those who advocated staying friendly and engaged with Russia, whatever happened.
Let’s hope Trump means what he says about making Russia a friend again.
jonatpower@aol.com For 17 years the writer was a foreign affairs columnist and commentator for the International Herald Tribune/New York Times. See his new website: www.jonathanpowerjournalist.com.
Roads are now so dangerous for the occupiers that most movement must be by air. Taliban is estimated to permanently control almost 50% of Afghanistan. That number would rise to 100% were it not for omnipresent US air power. Taliban rules the night.
by Eric S. Margolis-
( August 18, 2018, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) After 17 bloody years, the longest war in US history continues without relent or purpose in Afghanistan.
There, a valiant, fiercely-independent people, the Pashtun (Pathan) mountain tribes, have battled the full might of the US Empire to a stalemate that has so far cost American taxpayers $4 trillion, and 2,371 dead and 20,320 wounded soldiers. No one knows how many Afghans have died. The number is kept secret.
Pashtun tribesmen in the Taliban alliance and their allies are fighting to oust all foreign troops from Afghanistan and evict the western-imposed and backed puppet regime in Kabul that pretends to be the nation’s legitimate government. Withdraw foreign troops and the Kabul regime would last for only days.
The whole thing smells of the Vietnam War. Lessons so painfully learned by America in that conflict have been completely forgotten and the same mistakes repeated. The lies and happy talk from politicians, generals and media continue apace.
This week, Taliban forces occupied the important strategic city of Ghazni on the road from Peshawar to Kabul. It took three days and massive air attacks by US B-1 heavy bombers, Apache helicopter gun ships, A-10 ground attack aircraft, and massed warplanes from US bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar and the 5th US Fleet to finally drive back the Taliban assault. Taliban also overran key military targets in Kabul and the countryside, killing hundreds of government troops in a sort of Afghan Tet offensive.
Afghan regime police and army units put up feeble resistance or ran away. Parts of Ghazni were left in ruins. It was a huge embarrassment to the US imperial generals and their Afghan satraps who had claimed ‘the corner in Afghanistan has finally been turned.’
Efforts by the Trump administration to bomb Taliban into submission have clearly failed. US commanders fear using American ground troops in battle lest they suffer serious casualties. Meanwhile, the US is running low on bombs.
Roads are now so dangerous for the occupiers that most movement must be by air. Taliban is estimated to permanently control almost 50% of Afghanistan. That number would rise to 100% were it not for omnipresent US air power. Taliban rules the night.
Taliban are not and never were ‘terrorists’ as Washington’s war propaganda falsely claimed. I was there at the creation of the movement – a group of Afghan religious students armed by Pakistan whose goal was to stop post-civil war banditry, the mass rape of women, and to fight the Afghan Communists.
When Taliban gained power, it eliminated 95% of the rampant Afghanistan opium-heroin trade. After the US invaded, allied to the old Afghan Communists and northern Tajik tribes, opium-heroin production soared to record levels. Today, US-occupied Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, morphine and heroin.
US occupation authorities claim drug production is run by Taliban. This is another big lie. The Afghan warlords who support the regime of President Ashraf Ghani entirely control the production and export of drugs. The army and secret police get a big cut. How else would trucks packed with drugs get across the border into Pakistan and Central Asia?
The United States has inadvertently become one of the world’s leading drug dealers. This is one of the most shameful legacies of the Afghan War. But just one. Watching the world’s greatest power bomb and ravage little Afghanistan, a nation so poor that some of its people can’t afford sandals, is a huge dishonor for Americans.
Even so, the Pashtun defeated the invading armies of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, the Mogul Emperors and the mighty British Raj. The US looks to be next in the Graveyard of Empires.
Nobody in Washington can enunciate a good reason for continuing the colonial war in Afghanistan. One hears talk of minerals, women’s rights and democracy as a pretext for keeping US forces in Afghanistan. All nonsense. A possible real reason is to deny influence over Afghanistan, though the Chinese are too smart to grab this poisoned cup. They have more than enough with their rebellious Uighur Muslims.
Interestingly, the so-called ‘terrorist training camps’ supposedly found in Afghanistan in 2001 were actually guerilla training camps run by Pakistani intelligence to train Kashmiri rebels and CIA-run camps for exiled Uighur fighters from China.
The canard that the US had to invade Afghanistan to get at Osama bin Laden, alleged author of the 9/11 attacks, is untrue. The attacks were made by Saudis and mounted from Hamburg and Madrid, not Afghanistan. I’m not even sure bin Laden was behind the attacks.
My late friend and journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave shared my doubts and insisted that the Taliban leader Mullah Omar offered to turn bin Laden over to a court in a Muslim nation to prove his guilt or innocence.
President George Bush, caught sleeping on guard duty and humiliated, had to find an easy target for revenge – and that was Afghanistan.
President Trump speaks to members of the media at the White House in Washington on Aug. 17. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Two mistakes, committed on President Barack Obama’s watch, were the triggers for the end of the long post-Cold War period of good relations with Russia. They were the attack on Libya by the US, France and the UK and the subsequent killing of its long-time dictator, Muammar Gadhafi. The second was the crisis in Ukraine. 
