450 Families Lose Their Homes In Trinco As Rajapaksas’ Woo China

July 30, 2014 

Over 450 families in Trincomalee are to lose their homes as a result of the Rajapaksa regime’s continuous wooing of the Chinese to remain in their good books.

Rajapaksa

The Australian media establishment ‘Green Left Weekly’ in an article on Monday has revealed that President Rajapaksa during his recent visit to China had signed an agreement to hand over 1200 acres of land in Trincomalee to the Chinese on a long term lease for ‘defense-related development’.

The land that has been promised to be given over to the Chinese is said to be occupied by temples, mosques, schools and houses and the majority among the 450 families who are affected are said to be Tamil speaking Muslims.

Several similar land transfers have been made to China recently by the Rajapaksa regime in a bid to curry favour with the Chinese government. Some 198-acres of land in Gampaha has been promised to a Chinese company in order to settle their losses in constructing the expressway under the build-operate-transfer scheme and another large land area has been promised to the Chinese in return for constructing a dam to prevent coastal erosion along Colombo South Port to Moratuwa.

VIDEO: Tense situation at National Hospital; police deployed

July 30, 2014
A contingent of police officers has been deployed at the Colombo National Hospital to prevent a clash between two groups of doctors, Police spokesman told Ada Derana. A tense situation has erupted after one group tried to conduct a public meeting outside the hospital and another group had come there in opposition to it.

British girl sexually harassed in Arugam Bay

 

Wednesday, 30 July 2014

Police have arrested a person on charges of sexually harassing a 20-year old British girl in Arugam Bay, Potuvil.

According to the office of the police media spokesperson, the incident had reportedly taken place in the Kudakalli area in Arugam Bay last evening (July 29).

The suspect is to be produced before the Pottuvil Magistrate court today and police have initiated investigations to arrest two more suspects.

Ranil alleges govt.’s forces of Buddhist monks

Wednesday, 30 July 2014 

The present rulers have created various forces of Buddhist monks in order to gain their political objectives, alleges opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe.

As a result, Buddhism has got affronted internationally, he told a meeting with the executive committee of the National Intellectual Council today.

Mr. Wickremesinghe said instead of obtaining advice of parliamentary committees, which have become dormant, the Buddha Sasana Ministry is being used to deal with matters of the Buddhist monks.

The various forces of Buddhist monks are functioning against the respective chapters and the Mahanayake Theras, he said.

Buddhist monks are today being labelled as advisers to so and so, despite their role to advice everyone, said the opposition leader.

All these are being done to get the Buddha Sasana to work according to their wishes, he charged, adding that it should be stopped.

Invisible architectures: Thoughts on Walking Path

• by Sanjana Hattotuwa 
• - on 07/30/2014 

You go to the city to see the law. Upon arrival outside the building, there is a guard who says “You may not pass without permission”, you notice that the door is open, but it closed enough for you to not see anything (the law). You point out that you can easily go into the building, and the guard agrees. Rather than be disagreeable, however, you decide to wait until you have permission. You wait for many years, and when you’re an old, shrivelled wreck, you get yourself to ask:

See photos from the production of ‘Walking Path’ in full screen here.

Invisible Architectures Thoughts on Walking Path by Thavam

Stopping robbery using MMA background came naturally to Mayura Dissanayake

Stopping robbery using MMA background came naturally to Mayura Dissanayake

USA Today

 July 30th, 2014
If you ask Mayura Dissanayake what he was thinking when he rushed from his post behind the cash register of a Houston gas station and straight into the teeth of a violent armed robbery in progress earlier this month, he’ll tell you it was simple.

“I wasn’t thinking,” Dissanayake tells USA TODAY Sports. “I just saw these two guys beating my co-worker up. I just ran outside without thinking about it.”

It helped that Dissanayake, 24, is an amateur MMA fighter with about six years of martial arts training. He began with Sanda, a form of Chinese kickboxing, which he learned growing up in Sri Lanka, and continued with the full compliment of mixed martial arts training that he took up shortly after moving to Houston two years ago.

All in all, Dissanayake estimates he’s had five amateur bouts, which is why he wasn’t afraid to jump in and help when thieves attacked his co-worker at the Little Buddy Fuel Depot on July 10. His co-worker was returning from a bank run with a sack full of cash when two men jumped out of an SUV and began beating him in the gas station parking lot, Dissanayake says.

Once Dissanayake looked out the window and saw the assault in progress, he sprinted outside and immediately kicked one assailant in the head before turning on the other with a punch combination that sent him staggering backward. Apparently realizing they’d gotten themselves into a situation they weren’t prepared for, the thieves began to retreat, but not before Dissanayake dropped one with a punch and subdued him with kicks as his fellow assailants fled without him. The story soon went viral and has garnered Dissanayake worldwide attention.

“I just wanted to help him, and I know I can fight,” he says. “While I was running out, I saw their hands, and it didn’t look like they had guns, so I wasn’t too worried.”

That nonchalant attitude comes as no surprise to Saul Soliz, who trains Dissanayake at the Metro Fight Club in downtown Houston. The Sri Lankan walked into his gym about a year ago, Soliz says, and told him he wanted to continue the training he’d begun back home.

“I don’t have a lot of guys from that region, so I didn’t know what to expect,” Soliz says. “But he had a pretty good skill set already when he walked in the gym. It was a pleasant surprise.”

Soliz trained Dissanayake for one bout in the Legacy Amateur Series back in March, and has been working with him for another amateur bout with Savarese Promotions in Houston on Aug. 23.

The proximity of the upcoming bout could be one reason Dissanayake was in no hurry to tell his trainer about his risky gas station heroics. As one might imagine, street fighting with multiple assailants is generally frowned upon in the weeks leading up to a fight. Then again, this was a special case, even if Dissanayake doesn’t seem to see what the big deal is, according to his coach.

“The funny thing is, I didn’t hear about it until Friday,” Soliz says. “He’s that quiet. He’s so humble and modest, he wasn’t talking about it at all. He’s just not that type of person. It doesn’t surprise me at all though, him doing something like that. He fights the same way. He lets it hang loose, and he doesn’t take a step back.”

Thanks to Dissanayake, police apprehended one man, identified as 33-year-old Odell Mathis, but Dissanayake says he’s been warned that the other would-be robbers are still out there.

“I know there’s a possibility that they could come back and try to get revenge or something, but I’m ready,” Dissanayake says. “I wouldn’t say I’m scared, but I’m careful, and I’m prepared. If they come, they come.”

Conflicted UN struggles in global peace efforts

Why hasn't the United Nations done more to end the violence in Gaza? Or, for that matter, the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan or Ukraine?

By Nick Bryant-30 July 2014

These are questions that UN officials find themselves fielding not just with mounting frequency but rising passion and frustration. For it is hard to recall a time when the world confronted so many seemingly intractable crises, and when the body designed to resolve and mediate them looked so thoroughly incapable of doing so.

"Why the UN Can't Solve the World's Problems" ran an accusatory headline over the weekend in the New York Times, a newspaper that's something of a parish pump for UN diplomats.
Conflicted UN Struggles in Global Peace Efforts by Thavam

The Moral Failure Of The West

| by Paul Craig Roberts

( July 30, 2014, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) Readers are asking for my take on the Israel-Gaza situation, and, believe it or not, Oxford University’s famous debating society, the Oxford Union, invited me to debate the issue.

The Moral Failure of the West by 

Thavam

Gaza: at least 15 killed and 90 injured as another UN school is hit

UN official condemns ‘in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces’

Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem-Wednesday 30 July 2014

At least 15 Palestinians were killed and about 90 injured early on Wednesday when a UN school sheltering displaced people was hit by shells during a second night of relentless bombardment that followed an Israeli warning of a protracted military campaign.

Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, condemned “in in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces”.

Gaza at Least 15 Killed and 90 Injured as Another UN School is Hit by Thavam

Kerry presses India on global trade deal as deadline looms

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (L) arrives to board a plane to New Delhi at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington July 29, 2014.

BY SANJEEV MIGLANI-Wed Jul 30, 2014

(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who arrived in India on Wednesday for an official visit, has pressed New Delhi to drop its opposition to global trade reforms, saying it was a test of the country's commitment to advance economic liberalisation.
Kerry Presses India on Global Trade Deal as Deadline Looms by Thavam

Uighur scholar charged with separatism amid new violence in western China

By William Wan July 30 at 11:39 AM

BEIJING — A prominent Uighur scholar was formally charged with separatism Wednesday and will face trial in Xinjiang, even as conflicting accounts of violence in the restive Chinese region have emerged from Uighurs and the government.

The charges against Ilham Tohti were announced on the microblogging account of the procuratorate’s office in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi. And it comes in the face of criticism and protest by international human rights groups and lobbying by Western diplomats.

Tohti, an economics professor at a Beijing University, is known for speaking out for the rights of the Uighur ethnic minority in Xinjiang. He was taken from his Beijing home in January by authorities, who accused him of secession.

The formal charge of separatism is concerning because it can result in a death sentence, said Sophie Richardson of U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

The announcement came two days after reports of a clash between Uighurs and authorities in Xinjiang that killed or wounded dozens.

The exact death toll and circumstances of the violence have been difficult to independently determine. Uighur groups say authorities have cut off Internet service and other communications in the area near the city of Kashgar. And the only official report has come from the state-run Xinhua News Agency, which described the violence as an “organized and premeditated terror attack.”

Xinhua’s account, which has been questioned by overseas Uighur groups, said police opened fire on dozens of people armed with knives and axes who attacked a police station and government offices in the Elixku township.

The Washington-based Uyghur American Association cited accounts from unnamed local Uighurs contradicting the government’s version of events. In a statement, the organization said that the Uighurs involved were merely protesting a crackdown by authorities during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and that the police shootings were an “extrajudicial use of lethal force.” The association said more than 20 Uighurs were killed and more than 70 arrested.

The heightened tensions are a result of a spate of attacks in recent months across China that authorities attribute to Muslim extremists.

For years, many Uighurs and other smaller Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have agitated against China’s authoritarian government. Their protests are a reaction, Uighur groups say, to oppressive official policies, religious restrictions and widespread discrimination.

The government has long denied any oppression of Uighurs or any other ethnic minority and has presented its strict security efforts as part of an increasingly intense counterterrorism response to violent extremists espousing separatism.

The Social Laboratory

Singapore is testing whether mass surveillance and big data can not only protect national security, but actually engineer a more harmonious society.

BY SHANE HARRIS

PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY LEANDRO CASTELAO
ANIMATIONS BY ALEJO ACCIN

 

 

 

 

 

 

In October 2002, Peter Ho, the permanent secretary of defense for the tiny island city-state of Singapore, paid a visit to the offices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Defense Department's R&D outfit best known for developing the M16 rifle, stealth aircraft technology, and the Internet. Ho didn't want to talk about military hardware. Rather, he had made the daylong plane trip to meet with retired Navy Rear Adm. John Poindexter, one of DARPA's then-senior program directors and a former national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan. Ho had heard that Poindexter was running a novel experiment to harness enormous amounts of electronic information and analyze it for patterns of suspicious activity -- mainly potential terrorist attacks.

The two men met in Poindexter's small office in Virginia, and on a whiteboard, Poindexter sketched out for Ho the core concepts of his imagined system, which Poindexter called Total Information Awareness (TIA). It would gather up all manner of electronic records -- emails, phone logs, Internet searches, airline reservations, hotel bookings, credit card transactions, medical reports -- and then, based on predetermined scenarios of possible terrorist plots, look for the digital "signatures" or footprints that would-be attackers might have left in the data space. The idea was to spot the bad guys in the planning stages and to alert law enforcement and intelligence officials to intervene.          Full Story>>>

India landslide: dozens feared trapped

Heavy monsoon rains triggered a landslide in India on Wednesday, burying up to 150 in a village around 37 miles from the western city of Pune in Maharashtra.

WEDNESDAY 30 JULY 2014

According to the disaster force's deputy inspector general of operations, seven teams of 42 rescue workers were being sent to help.

The first batch of emergency workers arrived at the scene, but rain, mud and poor communications hampered efforts to rescue those believed to be missing.

Sandeep Rai Rathore, inspector general of the national disaster force, said: "The area is quite a difficult terrain."

He added that rescuers were trying to determine how many people were caught in the landslide, and that the figure could be up to 150.

Whilst providing water that is vital for agriculture, India's rainy season often brings disaster.

Intense monsoon rains occur annually in India and it is common for severe flooding and landslides to happen - especially in places with steep hillsides.

Unprecedented rain in June last year wreaked havoc across the Indian state of Uttarakhand, causing rivers and lakes to burst their banks, inundating towns and villages and killing thousands of people.

An environment ministry panel said in April that poorly managed hydro-power projects were partly to blame for those floods.

Sierra Leone's top Ebola doctor dies

Sheik Umar Khan becomes second specialist to die, as West Africa grapples with worst outbreak of virus on record.

30 Jul 2014  Sierra Leone's top Ebola doctor has died from the disease, medical officials have said. Sheik Umar Khan was infected earlier this month and died on Tuesday at a ward run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders in the far north of the country. Miatta Kargbo, Sierra Leone's health minister, called Khan a "national hero" and praised his "tremendous sacrifice" in working to save the lives of others. Sheik Umar Khan was infected earlier this month and died on Tuesday His death comes days after Samuel Brisbane, a senior doctor at Liberia's largest hospital, died on Saturday at an Ebola treatment centre on the outskirts of Monrovia. Several other medics have also been infected. The aid group Samaritan's Purse said on Saturday that a US doctor, Kent Brantly, who was working in Liberia was also sick. Health workers are at serious risk of contracting the disease, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids. Azaria Marthyman, a Canadian doctor, has put himself in quarantine as a precaution after spending weeks in Liberia treating patients with the deadly Ebola virus alongside an American doctor who is now infected, local media said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Pan-African airline ASKY suspended all flights to and from the capitals of Liberia and Sierra Leone over the worsening Ebola health crisis. Ebola has killed hundreds of people in West Africa in the worst outbreak on record. The World Health Organisation says that 219 people in Liberia, 319 people in Guinea, and 224 in Sierra Leone have died. Nigeria death The disease has also killed the Liberian husband of an American woman who had flown to Lagos, Nigeria. The family of Patrick Sawyer, a 40-year-old who died on July 24, said he had recently arrived from the US for a visit. Health officials said his family members were not affected. Officials stressed people were not contagious until they showed symptoms, and the Sawyer family left Liberia days before he fell ill. Sawyer, a consultant for Liberia's Finance Ministry, collapsed on arrival at Lagos airport. He was put in isolation at the First Consultants Hospital in Obalende.

Sri Lanka : A Failed Idea

| by Basil Fernando

( July 24, 2014, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The idea of the executive presidency, as found in the 1978 constitution, is now a failed idea.

Almost everybody agrees that it is a failed idea.

The people who are maintaining it also know that it is a failed political idea, but it helps them to have extraordinary power and the benefits of such power. Even they do not believe that it has any benefit to the state or to the population.

If there is anyone who may have some illusion about this idea having some effectiveness, it is only the opposition leader Ranil Wickremasinghe, who was closely associated with President JR Jayawardene. Unfortunately, he is the opposition leader, and therefore he is the main obstacle in the way of mobilizing the mass disillusionment about this idea.

Failed ideas cannot survive long. That is the lesson of history. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that this particular idea will prove to be an exception.

The factors that prevent the emergence of an alternative:

Firstly, there is the fear that no government can remain stable, as many of the members of the governing party can be bought over at any moment – this is one of the issues for which no solution has yet been proposed or discussed. The presidential system makes parliamentarians depend on the President and the President can use the state coffers to give extraordinary privileges and even to buy people who are engaged in active opposition, and thereby has the capacity to cripple the emergence of the powerful opposition. Therefore, the failed idea can survive not on the basis of its legitimacy but for other reasons, such as being able to maintain a government by whatever means.

Secondly, all parties fear the people. There prevalence of mass discontent is known to all political parties. They do not want to provide opportunities that allow the masses to express their discontent. The present form of government has more capacity for mobilizing repression than a functional democratic government. This is another negative reason in favour of the present system of governance.

Thirdly, no political party has a vision for resolving the problems in the national economy. Therefore, any government that comes into power is likely to be undermined by severe economic problems. The present form of government attempts to get over this problem by unscrupulous and undemocratic means, such as borrowing money from many sources without being restricted by the normal limitations imposed by economics, as well as by democratic norms. This way, they keep on postponing the crisis. Perhaps all political parties think that, having no solution to possible economic and financial problems, this is the only way to keep the government afloat.

A further factor that complicates the problem: The minority issue complicates this problem further. No political party has any kind of rational solution to the minority issue. If there is a democratic government, the pressure of solving this problem will weigh very heavily on that government. The present form of government can keep on postponing the reckoning by keeping an artificial form of consensus through the use of the power of the President and also mobilizing the armed forces in an extraordinary manner in the areas where minorities reside. Such kinds of virtual occupation will not be possible under a democratic government. Thus, a lack of solutions on this issue also act in favour of the present form of governance and, purely on this basis, more extremist sections of the majority will be willing to let this form of government stay.

Sri Lanka ‘committed to repression’ of Tamil journalists – Jaffna Press Club

29 July 2014

The Jaffna Press Club “strongly condemns” the treatment meted out by the military to Tamil journalists, travelling to a work shop in Colombo, and accused the Sri Lankan security forces of deliberately placing marijuana in the vehicle they were travelling in.

Sri Lanka ‘Committed to Repression’ of Tamil Journalists – Jaffna Press Club by Maria Anderson

Remembering the work of photojournalist Camille Lepage ( 26)

29/07/2014

Camille Lepage, a 26-year-old French photojournalist who had spent months documenting deadly conflict in Central African Republic has been killed, the French presidency said Tuesday, May 13. Lepage, a freelance photographer whose work was published in major French and American newspapers, died in western Central African Republic not far from the border with Cameroon, authorities said.

“All means necessary will be used to shed light on to the circumstances of this murder and to find her killers,” the French presidency said in the statement.

The U.N. Security Council as well as the Committee to Protect Journalists also called for an immediate investigation into her death.

Lepage’s work had appeared in The New York Times as well as in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. She also had sold images to French newspapers including Le Monde and Liberation.

Her death comes as the security situation worsens for reporters and photographers in the volatile country; two Central African journalists already have been killed this month in Bangui, the capital.

A native of Angers, France, Lepage also had worked extensively in Juba, South Sudan before moving to Central African Republic. In an interview with the photography blog PetaPixel, she said she was drawn to covering forgotten conflicts.

“I want the viewers to feel what the people are going through. I’d like them to empathize with them as human beings, rather than seeing them as another bunch of Africans suffering from war somewhere in this dark continent,” she said. “I wish they think: ‘Why on Earth are those people in living hell; why don’t we know about it and why is no one doing anything?’ I would like the viewers to be ashamed of their government for knowing about it without doing anything to make it end.”

Jerome Delay, chief Africa photographer for The Associated Press, first met Lepage while the two were working in South Sudan and again in Central African Republic. On Tuesday he described her as a “very talented, extremely courageous young woman.”

In this file photo taken Oct. 6, 2013 in the Bonga Bonga stadium in Bangui, Central African Republic, French photojournalist Camille Lepage smiles with a local dancer. Lepage, 26, was killed while covering the deteriorating situation in the Central African Republic Monday May 12, 2014. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui, File)

“She was the one who would spend the time on the job to make others understand what was going on in places like Central African Republic and South Sudan,” he said.

Lepage had recently traveled to New York for a prestigious portfolio review and a workshop at The New York Times. (AP)

Some of her Black and White work can be seen here

Some of her work in Colour can be seen here

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