About 100 kg of heroin in 3 machines

Another record drug bust

By Madura Ranwala -July 21, 2014

Customs High Risk Unit at Gray Line 1, cargo terminal at Orugodawatta yesterday detected three plastic moulding machines containing about 100 kilos of heroin with a street value of Rs. 700 million.

Four suspects were arrested when they came to clear the consignment.

"We opened the container carrying three machines in front of the four suspects, the importer, two wharf clerk and another involved in clearance," Deputy Director of the unit, U. G. Kulathilake told The Island yesterday.

The Customs had retrieved 31 kilos secreted in one machine by last night and they were in the process of opening the other two.

Kulathilake said there could be as much as 100 kilos of heroin concealed in all three machines. He said the exact amount would be known after a few hours.

The machines had been imported from Pakistan, the Customs said.

The heroin found in the first machine was packed in polythene bags, each weighing one kilo.

Kulathilake said that the main suspect, an importer from Colombo, had brought down the three machines in one container.

The suspect had cleared two consignments containing the same type of machines earlier and it is believed that they, too, may have contained narcotics.

Officers of Police Narcotic Bureau, who arrived there last night, said that they would apprehend the suspects and take the machines into custody.

Superintendent of customs A. N. Galahitiya, Deputy Superintendents Appraiser M. A. U. Dharmaratne and C. P. J. Punchihewa detected the heroin consignment.

Where Eagles Dare….

By Ravi Perera -July 22, 2014 

Ravi Perera

“The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright brothers. Indeed, if a far-sighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favour by shooting Orville down”- Warren Buffett, famed investor known world over as the oracle of Omaha

“Sri Lankan Airline…you are our world…” Sri Lankan Airline advertisement

Sri Lankan Airlines | File photo

Obviously among our population there are only a handful that can claim a sound knowledge of business or economic realities. On the contrary, many seem to have a distorted vision of how and why things happen.  The vast majority in this country would have no concept of how public money, which is collected through various taxes on the people, is utilized and accounted for. That every telephone call made from a government owned telephone to every car used by the government is paid for with his money is an idea which will appear far-fetched to the average Sri Lankan  who according to statistics earns only  about US$ 3000 an year ( In fact many would envy  an annual income amounting to $ 3000 !). He little realizes that the parliament, to which he elects a member   periodically, is the ultimate authority in accounting for public money.

                    Read More

PM Modi’s paisa

 July 22, 2014 

Regionally, India’s economy is so big, that what happens in India affects all of us in South Asia. On 10 July, Arun Jaitely, the Minister of Finance in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new Government, presented a new Budget. Expectations were high. The Mumbai stock market on Dalal Street was up by a fifth. A hitherto shaky rupee had steadied and consumers, who had the money, seemed to be on a spending splurge.

PM Modi’s paisa by Maria Anderson

Why Israel is losing the social media war over Gaza 
When Shujaiya was attacked by the Israeli Defence Force, killing dozens of civilians, the first I heard about it was via Twitter, early Sunday morning. 

Monday 21 Jul 2014

An activist on the ground I follow tweeted: “people running out of Shujaiya, bodies lying on ground”.

Why Israel is Losing the Social Media War Over Gaza by Maria Anderson

Guilt By Insinuation

How American propaganda works

| by Paul Craig Roberts

( July 22, 2013 , Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) Why hasn’t Washington joined Russian President Putin in calling for an objective, non-politicized international investigation by experts of the case of the Malaysian jetliner?

Guilt by Insinuation by Maria Anderson

The Case Against Vladimir Putin

The White House's indictment for the MH17 shoot-down relies on secret satellite photos and intercepted phone calls -- but also on Twitter and YouTube.

• BY SHANE HARRIS- ELIAS GROLL-JULY 21, 2014
  ER

BY SHANE HARRIS- ELIAS GROLL-JULY 21, 2014

In brief remarks at the White House Monday morning, President Barack Obama pressed his case that the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin armed and trained the pro-Russian separatists responsible for downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and needed to force the rebels to provide access to the crash site in war-torn eastern Ukraine.

The Case Against Vladimir Putin by Maria Anderson

Bodies, black boxes handed over from Ukraine crash site

1 OF 3. A train carrying the remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine arrives in the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine July 22, 2014. Almost 300 More...

BY ANTON ZVEREV AND PETER GRAFF

Tue Jul 22, 2014

(Reuters) - A train carrying the remains of many of the nearly 300 victims of the Malaysia Airlines plane downed over Ukraine arrived in Ukrainian government territory on Tuesday as a separatist leader handed over the plane's black boxes to Malaysian experts.

The train carrying around 200 body bags arrived in the eastern city of Kharkiv, which is in Ukrainian government hands. The bodies will then be taken back to the Netherlands to be identified.

The train left the crash site after the Malaysian prime minister agreed with the separatists for recovered bodies to be handed over to authorities in the Netherlands, where two thirds of the victims came from.

The handover and reports by international investigators of improved access to the wreckage of the airliner four days after it was shot down, came amid calls for broader sanctions against Russia for its support for the rebellion, although Western leaders are struggling to agree on a response.

Early on Tuesday, senior separatist leader Aleksander Borodai handed over the black boxes in the city of Donetsk.

"Here they are, the black boxes," Borodai told journalists at the headquarters of his self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic as an armed rebel placed the boxes on a desk.

Colonel Mohamed Sakri of the Malaysian National Security Council said the two black boxes were "in good condition".

Shaken by the deaths of 298 people from around the world,Western governments have threatened Russia with stifferpenalties for what they say is its backing of pro-Russianmilitia who, their evidence suggests, shot the plane down.

At the United Nations, the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution demanding those responsible "be held toaccount and that all states cooperate fully with efforts toestablish accountability".

It also demanded that armed groups allow "safe, secure, fulland unrestricted access" to the crash site.

"We owe it to the victims and their families to determine what happened and who was responsible," said Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Australia lost 28 citizens in the crash.

The Kremlin said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin spoke to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte by telephone, with both giving a "high assessment of the resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council on the investigation into the catastrophe."

Meanwhile, European Union foreign ministers were scheduled on Tuesday to discuss further penalties against Russia, but the most they are expected to do is to speed up implementation of sanctions against individuals, and possibly companies, agreed in principle last week before the plane was brought down.

France is under pressure from Washington and London over plans to deliver a second helicopter carrier to Russia.

Diplomats say more serious sanctions against whole sectorsof the Russian economy will depend largely on the line taken bythe Dutch, because of the high number of Dutch victims. "It is clear that Russia must use her influence on theseparatists to improve the situation on the ground," the Dutch prime minister said.

'WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO HIDE?'

U.S. President Barack Obama said it was time for Putin and Russia "to pivot away from the strategy that they've been taking and get serious about trying to resolve hostilities within Ukraine."

He said Putin and Russia had a direct responsibility to compel separatists to cooperate with the investigation, and that the burden was on Moscow to insist that separatists stop tampering with the probe, he said.

"What are they trying to hide?" Obama said at the White House.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott described what was happening at the scene as a cover-up.

"After the crime, comes the cover-up. What we have seen is evidence tampering on an industrial scale and obviously that has to stop," Abbott told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

Russia's Defence Ministry has challenged Western accusations that pro-Russian separatists were responsible for shooting down the airliner and said Ukrainian warplanes had flown close to it.

The ministry also rejected accusations that Russia had supplied the rebels with SA-11 Buk anti-aircraft missile systems - the weapon said by Kiev and the West to have downed the airliner - "or any other weapons".

Putin said the downing of the airliner must not be used for political ends and urged separatists to allow international experts access to the crash site.

His ambassador to Malaysia said the rebels did not trust the Ukrainian government and that was why they did not want to hand over the black boxes to them.

"This situation is quite unique, the area is a war zone. I think the international community should be flexible about that and act in a way acceptable to all sides," Lyudmila Vorobyeva said in a news conference.

The International Air Transport Association said governments should take the lead in reviewing how risk assessments for airspace are made after airlines called for a summit to discuss the downing of the airliner.

RECOVERY EFFORTS

European security monitors said gunmen stopped theminspecting the site when they arrived on Friday, and Ukrainianofficials said separatists had tampered with vital evidence.

But the spokesman for the European security monitors saidthey had unfettered access on Monday, and three members of aDutch disaster victims identification team arrived at a railwaystation near the crash site and inspected the storage of thebodies in refrigerated rail cars.

Peter van Vliet, whose team went through the wagons dressedin surgical masks and rubber gloves, said he was impressed bythe work the recovery crews had done, given the heat and thescale of the crash site. "I think they did a hell of a job in ahell of a place," he said.

As they went about their work, fighting flared in Donetsk,some 60 km (40 miles) from the site, in a reminder ofthe dangers the experts face operating in a war zone.

Four people were killed in clashes, health officials said.

The rebels’ military commander Igor Strelkov said on hisFacebook page up to 12 of his men died in Monday's fighting.

(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Natalia Zinets and Elizabeth Piper in Kiev, Jim Loney, Doina Chiacu, Ayesha Rascoe and Mark Hosenball in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Allison Lampert in Montreal, Lincoln Feast and Matt Siegel in Sydney, Al-Zaquan Amer Hamzah, Anuradha Raghu and Trinna Leong in Kuala Lumpur; William James in London, Julien Ponthus, Elizabeth Pineau and Emmanuel Jarry in Paris, and Gabriela Baczynska in Kiev; Writing by Anna Willard; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Israel hits hundreds of targets in Gaza as soldier is confirmed missing

• Israeli soldier captured during intense battle in Shujai’iya
• Palestinian death toll nears 600, with 27 Israeli soldiers killed
• John Kerry to meet UN chief and Egyptian mediators in Cairo
Follow all the live developments here

Smoke rises after Israeli shelling at Shujai’iya neighbourhood in the east of Gaza City. Photograph: Sameh Rahmi/NurPhoto/Rex

Haroon Siddique in London and Tom McCarthy in New York-Tuesday 22 July 2014 
Israel continued to pound Gaza overnight, including hitting 100 targets in Shujai’iya, the scene of the most intense fighting of the conflict, as the Israeli military confirmed that one of its soldiers was missing.
Hamas claimed on Sunday that it had captured an Israeli soldier during the intense battle in Shujai’iya.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) named the missing soldier as Sergeant Oron Shaul, 21, a combat soldier of the Golani brigade.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad reportedly agreed to a five-hour pause in the fighting. However, Haaretz quoted senior Israeli officials as saying a humanitarian ceasefire was “not on our agenda right now”.
Palestinians take cover after a warning of an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters

As diplomatic efforts to broker a halt to the conflict continued in Egypt, the Israeli military said its forces had struck almost 3,000 targets in Gaza over the past two weeks – almost half since the start of the ground offensive four days ago.

Twenty-seven soldiers have been killed in fighting, the IDF said in a statement. The Palestinian death toll in Gaza was climbing steadily towards 600, a third of whom are children, according to the UN children’s agency Unicef.

As the fighting continued, John Kerry, the US secretary of state, was due to meet the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and Egyptian mediators in Cairo. Barack Obama said on Monday that Kerry had been authorised to do “everything he can to help facilitate a cessation of hostilities”, in a sign that international diplomacy had been galvanised by the weekend carnage in Shujai’iya.
Bomb damage in the streets of Gaza City. Photograph: Ezz al-Zanoun/NurPhoto/REXKerry described Israel’s military offensive as an “appropriate and legitimate effort” to defend itself but added that the consequences were of deep concern.

He pledged that the US would provide $47m (£28m) in humanitarian aid to help Palestinians. He said: “Only Hamas now needs to make the decision to spare innocent civilians from this violence.”

Seven people, including four women from one family, were killed in an air strike early on Tuesday, according to Gaza paramedics.

On Monday, 25 members of the Abu Jame’ family were killed when Israeli forces struck a house near Khan Younis, apparently without warning, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem said. A Hamas militant was also killed.

The dead included 18 children and five women, three of whom were pregnant. The family was eating iftar, the meal that breaks the Ramadan fast.

B’Tselem called for an immediate ceasefire, saying: “Horrific developments in Gaza have reached intolerable heights: Israel is bombing houses with people in them, entire families have been buried under rubble, and streets lie in ruins. Hundreds have been killed so far, dozens in the last 24 hours only, many of them women and children. The number of refugees is rising: tens of thousands of people have nowhere to go and no safe haven.”

Ten Israeli human rights organisations have written to the attorney general to raise concerns about grave violations of international law in the conflict. They questioned the legality of Sunday’s operation in Shujai’iya, “in particular, the potential violation of the fundamental principles of the laws of war, specifically the principle of distinguishing between combatants and civilians”.

Israeli officials continued to say that Hamas was using civilians as human shields, and it was giving warnings to residents of air strikes.
John Kerry with Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shukri, in Cairo on Tuesday: Kerry described Israel’s offensive as an ‘appropriate and legitimate effort’ to defend itself Photograph: Stf/AP

A senior officer said there had been a significant decline in rocket fire from Gaza over the past few days, and that the scope of the rocket fire had decreased by 30% since the beginning of the ground operation.
In Cairo, Ban held talks on Monday with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and the head of the Arab League.

Egypt’s proximity to Gaza, its peace treaty with Israel and good relations with the western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have made it the focus of attempts to defuse the crisis, though its relations with Hamas – which it sees as an offshoot of the banned Muslim Brotherhood – are hostile.
Hamas rejected Cairo’s original ceasefire proposal last week, though a senior official said Egypt might be willing to alter its stance.

"Egypt does not mind adding some of Hamas’s conditions provided that all involved parties approve," the official told Reuters. Hamas is demanding an end to the blockade of Gaza, an end to hostilities, opening the border to Egypt, the release of prisoners held by Israel and other conditions in exchange for a truce.
Ismail Haniyeh, the former Hamas prime minister, claimed that Israeli forces were being beaten in Gaza. “The Palestinian resistance will meet the demands and expectations of the Palestinian people,” he said on Monday evening, adding that Hamas’s conditions were “the minimum demands” for any truce.

"Our people’s sacrifices are heading for triumph," he said in a pre-recorded TV broadcast. "We see the al-Qassam Brigades and the Jerusalem Brigades and all resistance factions beating the enemy and attack him again and again, under the earth and sea. The ground operation is a declaration of failure on the part of the enemy aerial war against Gaza."

IDF's Gaza assault is to control Palestinian gas, avert Israeli energy crisis

Israel's defence minister has confirmed that military plans to 'uproot Hamas' are about dominating Gaza's gas reserves

A Palestinian boy plays in the rubble of a house destroyed in an Israeli air strike on Beit Hanoun, Gaza. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP

Posted by-Nafeez Ahmed

Wednesday 9 July 2014 

Yesterday, Israeli defence minister and former Israeli Defence Force (IDF) chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon announced that Operation Protective Edge marks the beginning of a protracted assault on Hamas. The operation "won't end in just a few days," he said, adding that "we are preparing to expand the operation by all means standing at our disposal so as to continue striking Hamas."

This morning, he said:

"We continue with strikes that draw a very heavy price from Hamas. We are destroying weapons, terror infrastructures, command and control systems, Hamas institutions, regime buildings, the houses of terrorists, and killing terrorists of various ranks of command… The campaign against Hamas will expand in the coming days, and the price the organization will pay will be very heavy."

But in 2007, a year before Operation Cast Lead, Ya'alon's concernsfocused on the 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas discovered in 2000 off the Gaza coast, valued at $4 billion. Ya'alon dismissed the notion that "Gaza gas can be a key driver of an economically more viable Palestinian state" as "misguided." The problem, he said, is that:

"Proceeds of a Palestinian gas sale to Israel would likely not trickle down to help an impoverished Palestinian public. Rather, based on Israel's past experience, the proceeds will likely serve to fund further terror attacks against Israel…

A gas transaction with the Palestinian Authority [PA] will, by definition, involve Hamas. Hamas will either benefit from the royalties or it will sabotage the project and launch attacks against Fatah, the gas installations, Israel – or all three… It is clear that without an overall military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement."

Operation Cast Lead did not succeed in uprooting Hamas, but the conflict did take the lives of 1,387 Palestinians (773 of whom were civilians) and 9 Israelis (3 of whom were civilians).

Since the discovery of oil and gas in the Occupied Territories, resource competition has increasingly been at the heart of the conflict, motivated largely by Israel's increasing domestic energy woes.

Mark Turner, founder of the Research Journalism Initiative, reported that the siege of Gaza and ensuing military pressure was designed to "eliminate" Hamas as "a viable political entity in Gaza" to generate a "political climate" conducive to a gas deal. This involved rehabilitating the defeated Fatah as the dominant political player in the West Bank, and "leveraging political tensions between the two parties, arming forces loyal to Abbas and the selective resumption of financial aid."

Ya'alon's comments in 2007 illustrate that the Israeli cabinet is not just concerned about Hamas – but concerned that if Palestinians develop their own gas resources, the resulting economic transformation could in turn fundamentally increase Palestinian clout.

Meanwhile, Israel has made successive major discoveries in recent years - such as the Leviathan field estimated to hold 18 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – which could transform the country from energy importer into aspiring energy exporter with ambitions to supply Europe, Jordan and Egypt. A potential obstacle is that much of the 122 trillion cubic feet of gas and 1.6 billion barrels of oil in the Levant Basin Province lies in territorial waters where borders are hotly disputed between Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Cyprus.

Amidst this regional jockeying for gas, though, Israel faces its own little-understood energy challenges. It could, for instance, take until 2020 for much of these domestic resources to be properly mobilised.

But this is the tip of the iceberg. A 2012 letter by two Israeli government chief scientists – which the Israeli government chose not to disclose – warned the government that Israel still had insufficient gas resources to sustain exports despite all the stupendous discoveries. The letter, according to Ha'aretz, stated that Israel's domestic resources were 50% less than needed to support meaningful exports, and could be depleted in decades:

"We believe Israel should increase its [domestic] use of natural gas by 2020 and should not export gas. The Natural Gas Authority's estimates are lacking. There's a gap of 100 to 150 billion cubic meters between the demand projections that were presented to the committee and the most recent projections. The gas reserves are likely to last even less than 40 years!"

As Dr Gary Luft - an advisor to the US Energy Security Council - wrote in the Journal of Energy Security, "with the depletion of Israel's domestic gas supplies accelerating, and without an imminent rise in Egyptian gas imports, Israel could face a power crisis in the next few years… If Israel is to continue to pursue its natural gas plans it must diversify its supply sources."

Israel's new domestic discoveries do not, as yet, offer an immediate solution as electricity prices reach record levels, heightening the imperative to diversify supply. This appears to be behind Prime Minister Netanyahu's announcement in February 2011 that it was now time to seal the Gaza gas deal. But even after a new round of negotiations was kick-started between the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and Israel in September 2012, Hamas was excluded from these talks, and thus rejected the legitimacy of any deal.

Earlier this year, Hamas condemned a PA deal to purchase $1.2 billion worth of gas from Israel Leviathan field over a 20 year period once the field starts producing. Simultaneously, the PA has held several meetings with the British Gas Group to develop the Gaza gas field, albeit with a view to exclude Hamas – and thus Gazans – from access to the proceeds. That plan had been the brainchild of Quartet Middle East envoy Tony Blair.

But the PA was also courting Russia's Gazprom to develop the Gaza marine gas field, and talks have been going on between Russia, Israel and Cyprus, though so far it is unclear what the outcome of these have been. Also missing was any clarification on how the PA would exert control over Gaza, which is governed by Hamas.

According to Anais Antreasyan in the University of California's Journal of Palestine Studies, the most respected English language journal devoted to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel's stranglehold over Gaza has been designed to make "Palestinian access to the Marine-1 and Marine-2 gas wells impossible." Israel's long-term goal "besides preventing the Palestinians from exploiting their own resources, is to integrate the gas fields off Gaza into the adjacent Israeli offshore installations." This is part of a wider strategy of:

"…. separating the Palestinians from their land and natural resources in order to exploit them, and, as a consequence, blocking Palestinian economic development. Despite all formal agreements to the contrary, Israel continues to manage all the natural resources nominally under the jurisdiction of the PA, from land and water to maritime and hydrocarbon resources."

For the Israeli government, Hamas continues to be the main obstacle to the finalisation of the gas deal. In the incumbent defence minister'swords: "Israel's experience during the Oslo years indicates Palestinian gas profits would likely end up funding terrorism against Israel. The threat is not limited to Hamas… It is impossible to prevent at least some of the gas proceeds from reaching Palestinian terror groups."

The only option, therefore, is yet another "military operation to uproot Hamas."

Unfortunately, for the IDF uprooting Hamas means destroying the group's perceived civilian support base – which is why Palestinian civilian casualties massively outweigh that of Israelis. Both are obviously reprehensible, but Israel's capacity to inflict destruction is simply far greater.

In the wake of Operation Cast Lead, the Jerusalem-based Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (Pcati) found that the IDF had adopted a more aggressive combat doctrine based on two principles – "zero casualties" for IDF soldiers at the cost of deploying increasingly indiscriminate firepower in densely populated areas, and the "dahiya doctrine" promoting targeting of civilian infrastructure to create widespread suffering amongst the population with a view to foment opposition to Israel's opponents.

This was confirmed in practice by the UN fact-finding mission in Gaza which concluded that the IDF had pursued a "deliberate policy of disproportionate force," aimed at the "supporting infrastructure" of the enemy - "this appears to have meant the civilian population," said the UN report.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is clearly not all about resources. But in an age of expensive energy, competition to dominate regional fossil fuelsare increasingly influencing the critical decisions that can inflame war.

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is an international security journalist and academic. He is the author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It, and the forthcoming science fiction thriller, ZERO POINT. ZERO POINT is set in a near future following a Fourth Iraq War. Follow Ahmed on Facebook and Twitter.