Indian police storm ashram in search of controversial guru, 190 wounded
Indian police use batons and water cannon to disperse supporters, as they storm the ashram of controversial Indian guru Sant Rampal, in search of him at Hisar in Haryana state, India, Tuesday, Nov.18, 2014. (AP Photo/ Bansilal Basniwal)

Nirmala George, The Associated Press - November 18, 2014 8

NEW DELHI -- Thousands of devotees of an Indian spiritual leader who is wanted for questioning in a 2006 murder case fought running battles with police Tuesday outside the guru's heavily fortified ashram in northern India.

About 190 people, including more than 100 security forces, were injured in the melee as authorities tried to move in and arrest 63-year-old Sant Rampal, police said.

After hours of fighting, police armed with tear gas, batons and bulldozers still had not managed to break into the compound in Haryana state. By nightfall, police broke through half of a 20-foot wall but decided to stop out of fears it was booby trapped and would explode.

"We have given an ultimatum to Rampal and others to come out," said Shriniwas Vashisht, the director-general of police in Haryana, some 175 kilometres from New Delhi. "We want to ensure that innocent people inside the ashram are not harmed."

Thousands of people -- many of them armed with guns, rocks and even small bags of acid -- were in and around the compound to fight off the police and prevent Rampal's arrest, according to Vashisht. He said 105 security forces were among the injured, including nine with bullet wounds.

He also said many people inside the ashram were probably being held against their will.

"There have been people who have been calling us and saying that they have been stopped inside the ashram forcefully," he said in a televised news conference.

The standoff, which had been simmering since last week, escalated Tuesday after police blared warnings on megaphones and then fired tear gas into Rampal's complex.

Earlier, police tried to flush out Rampal and his supporters for several days by cutting electricity and water to the compound.

Even as the clashes raged outside the ashram, there were reports that the guru had left. Ashram spokesman Raj Kapoor told Press Trust of India that Rampal was unwell and was being treated at an undisclosed location. But Kumar, the police official, said authorities were confident he was still inside.

According to PTI, Rampal and 38 others were charged with murder and other offences after a violent clash between his supporters and another group killed one person on July 12, 2006. He has been out on bail for several years, but the bail was cancelled in July after his followers entered a courtroom and threatened lawyers.

Since 2010, Rampal, an engineer-turned-guru, has ignored 43 court summonses, seeking exemptions each time. The court set a final deadline for him to be present in court on Monday, which he also ignored.

Rampal's supporters say he is too ill to make the 250-kilometre journey from his ashram in Haryana's Hisar district to the court in the state capital, Chandigarh.

Gurus and Hindu holy men as immensely popular in India, with followers that run into millions.

People offer prayers or consult astrologists before taking important personal decisions.

But the enormous power wielded by these self-styled holy men has also led to several scandals in which they are accused of exploiting their followers.

Mossad Targets Nuclear Engineers in Damascus

Dr. Franklin Lamb Salem-News.com-Nov-17-2014

While Unleashing Projects to Derail Nuclear Talks

Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Ghashghavi Photo: radiofarda.com

(DAMASCUS) - With less than two weeks run-up to the ‘deadline’ for Iran and the P-5 + 1 to negotiate a final agreement, the ninth set of talks between the parties on the nuclear issue, Mossad has assassinated a team of five nuclear weapons specialists in Damascus, the leader of whom was Iranian.

Mossad Targets Nuclear Engineers in Damascus by Thavam Ratna

UPDATED: Opioids killing more Ontarians than ever, coroner’s numbers show

By Anna Mehler Paperny 

WATCH ABOVE: Crystal Goomansingh reports on the recent increase of opioid-related deaths in Ontario. 

Update 4:50 p.m. ET Wednesday, Nov. 12: Updated figures from the Ontario Coroner, emailed to Global News this afternoon, show opioid deaths are even higher than previously reported. Figures have been updated below.

Ontario’s opioid epidemic is more deadly than ever, new numbers obtained by Global News indicate. And the province hasn’t shifted its tactics to deal with the evolving health crisis killing 600 Ontarians a year.

Preliminary 2013 coroners’ data indicate the number of Ontarians killed by prescription opioids continues to rise.

And it isn’t the usual suspects: While oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin and its successor OxyNEO, is being prescribed less often and playing a role in fewer deaths, other drugs have more than made up the difference.

Hydromorph Contin is also made by Purdue Pharmaceuticals. It’s even more powerful, per milligram, than OxyContin; it’s just as addictive.

And, in Ontario, it’s far easier to get.

Meanwhile, the province is beginning to act on the prescription database it created in 2012. But police referrals from a working group parsing those numbers are a drop in the bucket; and prescriptions for these potent painkillers have continued to rise since the working group’s creation last fall, numbers first reported by Global News show.

As Global News reported previously, prescriptions for Hydromorph Contin have been skyrocketing as it replaces prescriptions for relatively restricted OxyNEO.

Hydromorphone, the active ingredient in Hydromorph Contin, has almost doubled as a cause of death in the past two years. Methadone and morphine-related deaths have increased, as well, even as oxycodone, once the dominant cause of opioid-related deaths, continues to drop.

Interestingly, heroin is also causing more deaths – possibly as people who started on prescription opioids turn to a relatively cheaper street drug.

This is translating to changes in these drugs being sold on the streets, says OPP Constable Chris Auger, with the Drug Enforcement Unit.

“We do see a switch to other opioids,” he said – Fentanyl and Hydromorphone among them.

Ontario opioid toxicity deaths, by drug – 2002-13. Data from Ontario Coroner.

Note: Where a death involves more than one opioid, it may appear twice in the chart above. Preliminary coroner’s numbers indicate 489 people in Ontario were killed by opioids in 2013, and an additional 112 were killed by a combination of opioids and alcohol.

The number of deaths involving both opioids and alcohol is also increasing for certain drugs, preliminary coroner’s numbers show:

Data from Ontario Coroner

When Purdue phased out OxyContin and replaced it with “tamper-resistant” OxyNEO, Ontario was among many provinces to restrict its coverage for the new drug.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins cited that step the last time Global News asked him about skyrocketing opioid prescriptions, which have shown the province’s strategy has worked, but only in the narrowest sense – there’s less Oxy out there, but more of everything else.

When Global News asked in July about the increasing number of opioid prescriptions, Hoskins said that while Ontario was “always looking to improve” its strategy it had no immediate plans to crack down on prescription opioids.

Hoskins was not available for an interview for this article. An emailed statement cited the 2012 OxyNEO restrictions and narcotics monitoring system.

That monitoring is starting to bear fruit: In the past year, the province’s Narcotics Monitoring Working Group has referred

• nine cases of “possible double-doctoring” to the Ontario Provincial Police;
• 16 cases of “potential inappropriate prescribing practices” to Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons;
• and 10 dispensing-related concerns to the Ontario College of Pharmacists.

The cases referred to the OPP are on the “extreme” end of the double-doctoring scale, says the OPP’s Auger – “people that see multiple physicians; not just two.” These nine also comprise a small minority of the double-doctoring or prescription drug diversion cases the OPP deals with every year.

“We are working with the Ministry of Health and we have a great relationship [with] them, working back and forth on these cases. And it’s been very effective that way,” he said.

“A referral, to us, it’s a starting point.”

(There’s been no disciplinary action yet taken against any of the pharmacists referred, their College says. Global News is manually combing through dozens of disciplinary actions against physicians, which are searchable by name but not year or offence.)

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Ontario opioid prescriptions

Amid mounting evidence of Canada’s prescription opioid epidemic, both provincial and federal officials have taken steps to curb the health crisis: While Ottawa approved generic OxyContin against the recommendations of both provincial  ministers and health professionals, Health Minister Rona Ambrose has sincesuggested all such powerful narcotics be tamper-proof, and has called for recommendations on how to make opioid prescribing safer.

(“Several” organizations applied for the Drug Strategy Community Initiatives Fundbefore the Aug. 29 deadline, Health Canada spokesperson told Global News in an email last month. And while “The department is assessing all applications and will announce the successful applicants, once the review and approval processes are complete,” she couldn’t say when that announcement will take place.)

Ambrose’s office has made clear it has no intention of tracking opioid-related deaths on a national level – “Data on opioid related deaths is collected by the provinces and territories,” a spokesperson for the minister told Global News in a July email.

READ MORE: Hooked – Canada’s pill problem

Despite all the public health warnings regarding giving out strong, long-acting opioids for chronic, non-cancer pain, it’s clear Canadian physicians are still providing these prescriptions?

Why?

For many of them, it’s what they’ve been taught.

No one wants to see a patient in pain.

And it’s often easier to write a prescription for powerful pills than to sit down with a patient and go over other, effective but often more complicated options, such as physiotherapy or other interventions, pharmaceutical or otherwise.

“It takes about 20 seconds to write a prescription – and 30 minutes not to write a prescription,” said David Juurlink, an internist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centrewho specializes in drug safety.

That said, “opioids are a very heavy, blunt instrument.” The clinical-trial evidence behind their use as long-term painkillers is scant, critics say. And there are better ways to treat pain.

But the solutions to this tidal wave of prescriptions aren’t easy: Putting a hard cap on dose amounts ignores that some people genuinely do need these drugs.

Doctors and advocates for pain-sufferers balk at the idea of only allowing specially trained physicians to prescribe opioids, the way only specially trained doctors are allowed to prescribe the methadone used to treat opioid addictions.

And putting all opioids under Ontario’s Exceptional Access Program, which involves more paperwork and more scrutiny for drugs not meant for routine prescribing – and which OxyNEO’s now on – could overwhelm that system, Juurlink says.

“The Exceptional Access Program does not have the capacity to accommodate those kinds of requests.”

READ MORE: Pilfered Canadian pills are fuelling a U.S. health crisis

Ultimately, Juurlink argues, a solution must go much further than Ontario’s one-drug crackdown.

“The idea that the one intervention and no longer paying for one particular product … is going to make a huge dent in the big picture is not really believable,” he said.

“If we wanted to make a really big dent in opioid-related deaths we would find a way to get doctors to prescribe much, much, much less readily.”

RECOLLECTION OF JVP-TIME KILLINGS SHOWS NEED TO SPAN THE LONGER PERIOD--JEHAN PERERA

17 November 2014

Last week there was an unexpected focus on events that took place 25 years ago and which had appeared to have fallen out of public memory. This was the Sinhalese militancy led by the JVP in a three year period of terror that gripped most of the country and excluded only the predominantly Tamil-speaking North and East. The general belief is that about 60,000 people perished in the period 1988-90. But there is no certainty about the figure. The numbers killed by the JVP were counted by the government at that time which gave precise numbers. These included 487 public servants, 80 of who were bus drivers, 30 Buddhist monks, 2 Catholic priests, 52 school principals, four medical doctors, 18 estate superintendents, 27 trade unionists, 342 policemen, 209 security forces personnel and family members of 93 policemen and 69 service personnel. But the numbers killed by the government side were not counted or shared.

The overwhelming present local and international focus has been on the final phase of the war against the LTTE and this has taken the country’s attention away from those terrible events. But suddenly the tragic past was brought back to life. The media ran several stories on what happened those days. In particular there was a vivid description of the last hours of the JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera when he was held in captivity by the government forces. It showed how he was interviewed by the political and military leaders of that time who had been at the receiving end of JVP violence. It showed how he was subjected to their violence. It showed how people can act when they hold absolute power of life and death over those who have been their enemies, and why the laws cannot be silent even in a time of war, or when the war has just been won.

The re-emergence of accounts of the killings and massacres of the JVP insurrection in the public eye, 25 years later, is a reminder that the past can never be ignored and can spring up at any time. Just as the country is heading for a decisive presidential election, there is reason for the past to be revived due to political reasons. The main protagonists 25 years ago were the UNP which formed the government at that time and the JVP, which today are trying to get together in an opposition alliance against the present government. The publicity being given to the events of the past have put these two parties in an unfavourable light. However, another important message that comes as a by-product is that the tragedies of the past do not go away by themselves. The wounds of the past need to be consciously cleansed of untruth and healed through justice, development and reconciliation.


LARGER CHALLENGE
After the JVP insurrection of 1988-89 there was no action taken against those who were accused of human rights violations. Instead all was put aside and buried along with the past. The same practice appears to be the desired one after the end of the LTTE war also. But as the continuing international agitation on the issue of war crimes in Sri Lanka continues to increase, with no sign of getting less, there is a need to think newly about how best to deal with the situation. Instead of which the government is getting into an escalated conflict with the UN system where it cannot possibly prevail. The government’s position has been that the UN investigation in to war crimes is intrusive, biased and against the national sovereignty of the country and while the government will cooperate with the UN system in general, it will not do so with regard to the war crimes investigation.

However, the Office of the UN Human Rights Commissioner is one of the many UN institutions that have been set up to further the overall goal of world peace and stability for which the UN was set up in the aftermath of the Second World War, which led to the loss of millions of lives and the destruction of a significant section of the world’s heritage. The UN system cannot permit one of its key institutions to be weakened or undermined due to the actions of one of its 193 member countries. When the Sri Lankan government rejects the UN High Commissioner’s statement using strong language which may meet the expectations of the electorate and of the majority of Sri Lankan people, it is challenging an important component of the UN system.

Previously it was believed by many in Sri Lanka, including by those in the government, that Sri Lanka’s problem at the UN was being caused if not made worse by the actions of the previous Human Rights Commissioner, Navanethem Pillay. It was believed that although her citizenship was South African, her Tamil ethnicity had made her biased against Sri Lanka. Therefore she too became a part of the global anti-Sri Lanka Diaspora in Sri Lankan eyes and her departure from office was expected to change the UN’s attitude to the issue of accountability for war time problems of human rights. But this has not happened. The new Human Rights Commissioner is even stronger in his position that Sri Lanka must address the issue of accountability. But it is not only to the international community or to the UN that the government needs to give answers.


OWN PEOPLE
In the past week I took part in discussions and seminars in the North and East on the issues of post-war healing and reconciliation amongst communities. In the meetings I attended I saw at first hand the powerful sentiments of people who have lost their loved ones and have found no answers forthcoming from the government. There was a mother who said that she had surrendered her son to the military at the end of the war. She wanted to know what had happened to him. She still had hope he was alive. She said other young persons who had been surrendered like her son had returned, but she said that they did not say what had happened to her son, and would not talk about the past. She said she had even been to the army camps in the East to look for him, although she was from the North and her son was surrendered in the North. She had also been to the Fourth Floor of Police Headquarters in Colombo. She would go anywhere to find her son. She had not found him, but she still had hope.

At none of these events was there interference by the military or government officials. However, some of those who participated said they noted the presence of unidentified persons who took photographs and went away. Some of them also said that when they tried to organize similar events, the security forces in those areas wished to know what was happening and why. This may not be done with the intention of disrupting the activity, but rather to know what is going on. But the psychological climate is such that even this information gathering can create unease in a population that continues to live in the memory of the war that had so cruelly shattered their lives.

It is not only to the UN investigators that the government needs to give its answers, and it is not only about the LTTE war. The Sri Lankan state itself needs to give answers to its own people too for events that go back in time 25 years ago. A new electoral mandate will not negate the need to provide answers. The issue of human rights and war crimes that include the JVP period, as much as the last phase of the LTTE war, needs to gone into, the truth ascertained and reconciliation be achieved, as it was in South Africa. It is better that these issues are addressed sooner rather than later for they will not go away, even as the killings of the JVP period have not gone away. Obtaining the support of friendly countries like India, Japan, Korea and South Africa, as the government appeared to be doing for a while, and persuading the opposition to join in this, to achieve a balance between the imperatives of Truth, Justice, Development and Reconciliation that span the longer period is the best possible thing to do in the circumstances. It can even justify postponing the envisaged snap Presidential election for two years, as constitutionally permitted, to find an awareness creation, reconciliation and healing process, and agree on a new political system that will ensure that the violent tragedies of the past where impunity and lawlessness rode high are never repeated.

Percy Mahendra And His Cintanaya

By Shanti Wijesinghe -November 17, 2014

Percy Mahendra’s purse has been getting bigger and bigger, starting even before the tsunami money going out to help Hambantota. Hence his change of name to Pursy.

There is another possibility. In Buddhist literature and lore we have stories of evil-doers being dragged to hell live, by the soldiers of Yama Rajjuruvo, the king of the Netherworld. Pursy’s crimes are such that this is a distinct possibility. The earth will gape open, and amidst raging flames, the soldiers of Yama Rajjuruvo, will emerge saying, “Pursy, we have come for you”

Pursy is best known for hisCintanaya, and actions based on that.  He wants us to think he is as great as Chairman Mao, the founder of modern China, because Mao had his Cintanaya printed in the form of a Little Red Book. Everything that China ever wanted was in that book. Likewise, everything Lanka needs in the Pursy Cintanaya. His four legged servants like the pathetic G.L. Pieris keep quoting the Pursy’s Cintanaya even at the UN. Incidentally, plagiarizing Mao’s idea was an early symptom of an illness that Pursy is now seriously afflicted with, namely the compulsion to sell Lanka to the Chinese. The medical term for this illness isAcute Manic Sinitis.

The term “cintanaya” has two quite obvious meanings. One refers to ANY thought that even animals obviously engage in. The other is reflective, coherent, intelligent thinking. Pursy is only capable of the first kind, which functions to (1) ensure that his purse keeps fattening, and (2) to keep the people opiated with talk of saving the motherland. When it comes to reflective, coherent, intelligent thinking, Pursy is simply not up to it. That’s why he needs prompters to answer questions except those asked by journalists with laptops.

Pursy’s Cintanaya is pre-modern, although he tweets, and in other ways uses modern amenities like flush toilets. He acts like a feudal lord. He is above the law, and habitually lifts his family and friends above it as well. Officials of the state including the judiciary are his vassals, and must carry out his wishes. He can hire and fire at will.

Read More

‘Indus script early form of Dravidian’

Iravatham Mahadevan proves the point with the help of ideograms

Iravatham Mahadevan-CHENNAI, November 15, 2014

Iravatham Mahadevan, a well-known expert in Indian epigraphy, especially the Indus and Tamil Brahmi scripts, on Friday unveiled what he termed as his long years of studies on the Indus Valley script, demonstrably showing that the language of that once great civilisation “was an early form of the Dravidian.”

Making a presentation of his latest paper, “Dravidian Proof of the Indus Script via The Rig Veda: A Case Study” at the Roja Muthiah Research Library here, he explained with the help of ‘ideograms- a picture or a symbol that represents an idea or a concept-,’ that the “Indus language has been correctly identified” as an early form of the Dravidian script.

Mahadevan traces language of Indus Civilisation to early Dravidian

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 November 2014, 10:35 GMT]
Releasing his latest research findings at the Indus Research Centre of the Roja Muthaih Research Library in Chennai this month, veteran epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan concluded that the language of the Indus Civilisation was an early form of Dravidian. Due to the migration of a section of the Indus population southwards, forming some settlements in South India, the Indus Dravidian influenced the South Dravidian languages. The earliest attestations of such influence are found in Old Tamil. As the Vedic Age succeeded the Indus Civilisation, the Rig Veda itself is a product of the composite culture, he said in the paper, “Dravidian Proof of the Indus Script via the Rig Veda: A Case Study,” published as November 2014 bulletin of the Research Centre. 

• Dravidian Proof of the Indus Script via the Rig Veda: Iravatham Mahadevan

Iravatham Mahadevan

Related research by Asko Parpola:

• A Dravidian solution to the Indus script problem: by Asko Parpola ( June 25, 2010)

‘Indus Script Early Form of Dravidian’ by Thavam Ratna

The session on Tamil- Muslim relations....

Imtiyaz Razak feeling accomplished

November 15 at 6:41pm · Edited · 

ثيران غاضبة تحاصر أسداً وتقتله bulls killed a lion

The session on Tamil- Muslim relations went pretty good this morning organized by politically active Tamil diaspora groups in USA. I am happy that they recognized my works on Tamil ethnic question and invited me to deliver special talk on Tamil- Muslims relations in Sri Lanka .

Opposition law makers representing Tamils in the current parliament, Mr. M.A. Sumanitharan and Tamil National Alliance stalwart Mr. Mavai Senathiraja, and Mr. Ayngaranesan minister of agriculture and environmental of north and east provincial council and brother of responded to my talk.

In my speech, i emphasized the following to build a healthy Tamil- Muslim dialogue:
One, Tamils should stop defining Muslims as their part of ethnic group. It's Muslims who define their own identity and political choices. There's no role either for Tamils or Sinhalese to define Muslim identity and priorities.

Two, Tamils should openly and sincerely acknowledge their past crimes against Muslims, and

Three , TNA and other Tamil civil society groups should work along with Muslim organizations, scholars and policy makers to seek justice by helping affected Muslims (by the Tami tigers who massacred Muslims in the east and forcibly expelled Muslims from the north in 1990).

The response was pretty mix father Immanuel thinks that Muslims are Tamils. In other words, Muslims are only different from Tamils by their religion.

The response from both parliamentarians was pretty fair, i thought. But the response from Northern provincial council agriculture minister was negative because he thinks not only Muslims are part of Tamil, but also he seems to be thinking that Muslims pose serious threats to Tamil aspirations.

It's very important to point that Mr . M. A. Sumanitharan openly acknowledged the crimes the tigers committed against Muslims and highly appreciated my simple and strong positions on the Muslim question. He also accepted my position that it's Muslims who decide their own identity, not the Tamils.

However, extremist section of Tamil diaspora who was at the session was extremely unhappy over his position on the Muslim identity and the Tamil tiger brutality. They also rejected my position. I emphasised that they're can't be any dialogue between Tamils and Muslims as long as Tamil forces would fail to both recognize their crimes against Muslims and take concrete actions to redress Muslim grievances hail from the Tamil tigers' brutality.

Significant portion of attendees at the session who think their community wanted justice from the government of Sri Lanka not only reject justice for Muslims, but also expecting to build monolithic Tamil state in the island .

In other session, Mr. M. A. Sumanitharan' s speech was received so badly by extremist section of Tamil diaspora in the session. When he communicated New Delhi's position, there was commotion against him. What he said was what Indian prime minister's words: "section of Tamil diaspora should stop using violent language".

There was clear anti- China trends among all attendees. I thought these folks have no any clear clue about the new global trends in the post- cold war. Most of them strongly believe that western political actors such as Washington and London would help them to win an independent state in the corners of Sri Lanka.

My task was to pass the message what should be done as far as Tamil Muslim relations are concerned. I thought i did good job . Sri Lanka's opposition law makers appreciated my role.

Photo: me and Mr. M. A. Sumanitharan

On Education: Problems DS Senanayake Diagnosed

By Rajiva Wijesinha -November 17, 2014 

Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha MP

Mr Speaker, I am happy to speak on the votes of these two Ministries, which are both in their different ways so vital for the development of this country. Though I shall for obvious reasons concentrate on the work of the Ministry of Higher Education, I would like to congratulate both Ministers for their imaginative approach to the subjects coming under them. With regard to Sports, the efforts of the Minister to have it incorporated formally in all schools are laudable, and I can only hope he succeeds.

This was a decision of the Consultative Committee on Education, and it is a pity that those decisions have not as yet been translated into action. But while all the reforms that are contemplated are worthy, it does make sense to proceed with what is possible, given that vested interests seem to be delaying the full fruition of the Parliamentary recommendations. I hope therefore, that with His Excellency the President also committed to making sports compulsory, the Minister will soon succeed.

This is the more important because the qualities that develop through Sports in particular, but also other extra-curricular activities, are essential for productive employment. Team work and leadership and other aspects of socialization are vital, and at present opportunities to develop these are confined to children in the more popular schools. I have been shocked at the lact of extra-curricular activities in the many rural schools I look at during Reconciliation meetings in Divisional Secretariats in the North and East, and I am sure this is true all over the island. Given that for most jobs what employers look for is not just academic attainments, but evidence of other skills, it is vital that the proposal of the Minister has an impact soon in rural areas too.

This bears on the main point I wish to make with regard to Higher Education, where urgent reform is needed. The Minister and the Secretary did their best, and though the draft they prepared could have been improved, it is a great pity that the Legal Draughtsman’s Department ignored that draft and spent ages producing something not substantially different. I suspect, Mr Speaker, that the damage done to development by the Legal Draughtsman’s Department, by its delays, will loom large in the future, and amongst its worst shortcomings was the delay with regard to Higher Education.Read More