Economics of the Colombo Port City Project

Image courtesy Yamu

by Sam Samarasinghe 

- on 02/09/2015 

The government recently took a cabinet decision to go ahead with the $15 billion Colombo Port City Project (CPCP). Cabinet spokesperson Dr. Rajitha Senaratne, trying to justify the decision told the media that it was a “business venture” done together with one of Sri Lanka’s “long-standing friends,” China. A day later Prime Minster Ranil Wickramasinghe in a statement to parliament drew back from the announcement that Senaratne made. The Prime Minister had stated that the information on the project was “incomplete” and that some environmental reports were missing. This indicates some indecision and reservation about the project.
Economics of the Colombo Port City Project by Thavam Ratna

Tens of thousands of Muslims flee Christian militias in Central African Republic

Killings and atrocities continue as thousands flee to neighboring countries.

By Sudarsan Raghavan February 7, 2014

BANGUI, Central African Republic – Tens of thousands of Muslims are fleeing to neighboring countries by plane and truck as Christian militias stage brutal attacks, shattering the social fabric of this war-ravaged nation.

Tens of Thousands of Muslims Flee Christian Militias in Central African Republic by Thavam Ratna

Red Cross saw twice as many dead Afghan fighters in 2014, fears worse to come

Afghan Air Force crew loads ammunition on a helicopter before flight at the military airport in Kabul December 18, 2014.

KABUL Mon Feb 9, 2015

(Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross removed more than twice as many dead combatants from Afghan battlefields in 2014 than in the previous year as fighting intensified, the charity said on Monday.

The ICRC retrieved the remains of 1,372 dead fighters in the 12-month period, up from 620 the year before.

The Red Cross, a neutral party in the war, retrieves casualties mainly for the Afghan security forces and the militants they fight. U.S.-led foreign forces, who officially ended their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, mainly use their own evacuation and health services.

The number of injured fighters rose by more than a third last year, the charity said, ascribing the increase to heightened violence in remote regions of Afghanistan that also restricted civilians' access to healthcare.

"Persistent and fierce fighting, including serious violations of the rules of war, continue to have a deplorable impact on the Afghan population," said the head of ICRC in Afghanistan, Jean-Nicolas Marti.

"For the victims of the conflict, the situation might deteriorate even further as the funding of humanitarian aid dwindles in the country," he said in statement

Despite the formal end to foreign participation in the war, Afghan troops remain locked in a fierce fight with Taliban militants trying to gain territory. Last year was the most violent since the war began, as NATO troops began to withdraw and Taliban insurgents tried to disrupt a presidential election.

The Red Cross only retrieves casualties when called on by combatants to do so, usually when the injured or dead are behind enemy lines.

More than 10,000 foreign soldiers remain in Afghanistan and continue to engage in combat when needed. On Monday a U.S. drone strike killed at least six alleged militants, including a senior commander suspected of having started to work for Islamic State.

The Red Cross said civilians were frequently caught up in the fighting but that the past year had seen an 18 percent decline in patients accessing medical services due to the worsening security situation.

The United Nations has said at least 3,188 Afghan civilians were killed in the intensifying war with the Taliban in 2014, making it the deadliest year on record for non-combatants.

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Thousands of Bangladeshis protest against political violence - video

Sunday 8 February 2015 16.10 GMT 

Thousands of Bangladeshis form a human chain to protest against an increasing number of politically-motivated attacks. The country has seen petrol bomb attacks on the rise. On Sunday, one person was killed and three others badly burned in Bogra, and four people were injured nearby in a separate fire-bomb attack by activists 

Islamic State pulls forces and hardware from Syria's Aleppo - rebels

A damaged petrol station is seen in Aleppo January 13, 2015.

BY SULEIMAN AL-KHALIDI-AMMAN Mon Feb 9, 2015

(Reuters) - Islamic State has withdrawn some of its insurgents and equipment from areas northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo, rebels and residents say, adding to signs of strain in the Syrian provinces of its self-declared caliphate.

Islamic State Pulls Forces and Hardware From Syria's Aleppo - Rebels by Thavam Ratna

Why Arming Kiev Is a Really, Really Bad Idea

Washington pundits are jumping on a proposal to send weapons to Ukraine. Here's why they all need to take a deep breath.

BY STEPHEN M. WALT-FEBRUARY 9, 2015

Should the United States start arming Ukraine, so it can better resist and maybe even defeat the Russian-backed rebels in its eastern provinces?
Why Arming Kiev is a Really, Really Bad Idea by Thavam Ratna

Germany v Greece is a fight to the death, a cultural and economic clash of wills

Berlin’s attitude to Syriza looks condescending, the Greek popular mood is verging on a national revolt – and there is little sign of either side backing down

 Alexis Tsipras: 'exactly the kind of guy you find in German business meetings.' Photograph: Kostis Ntantamis/NurPhoto/REX

Sunday 8 February 2015

Last week, after the European Central Bank staged its coup against the Greek banks, forcing them to rely on emergency assistance, I asked a friend in Athens whether there’d been a rise in anti-German sentiment. “Hard to say,” he replied. “It has been running at such a fever pitch recently that it would be difficult for it to get any higher.”

Hellenic culture, of course, has a unique relationship with Germany. The Greek-American comedian Yannis Pappas, whose alter-ego Mr Panos parodies the “lazy Greek” stereotype, responded to the ECB’s move with an instant video blog. With cruel humour, it evoked the high death toll among German paratroopers landing on Crete in 1941. And it went viral.

This is the cultural background to the meeting last week between Wolfgang Schäuble and Yanis Varoufakis, respectively the German and Greek finance ministers. It took Varoufakis less than five minutes in the press conference to get to the N-word. “Germany must and can be proud that nazism has been eradicated here,” said the Greek finance minister, “but it’s one of history’s most cruel ironies that nazism is rearing its ugly head in Greece, a country which put up such a fine struggle against it.”

The subtext understood by many Greeks was: you were once Nazis, we fought and beat you, you have no moral right to push our country into chaos. It must have been tough for the Germans to hear – but they’ll be hearing an even tougher message should their politicians succeed in ejecting Greece from the euro.

For Germany’s unwillingness to lead Europe is the old problem. The new problem is Germany’s demonstrable willingness to break up Europe. Pleas for the continent’s largest economy to expand state spending are met with the schwarze null policy: 0% budget deficits, imposed by law. Brazen acts of proxy warfare by the Kremlin are met with diplomatic dithering. The sight, on top of that, of large anti-Muslim demonstrations in this, the richest and most politically stable country in Europe, is now reviving hostility towards Germany way beyond Greece.

As a child in the 1960s, I swapped bubblegum cards showing the depredations of the SS and the Luftwaffe’s dastardly behaviour at Dunkirk. But, being trained in classical music, I was also lucky to be exposed to the best of German culture: to Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Brahms. So, when I say what follows, it is not out of hostility or ignorance.

Germany is eating itself over Greece. It is eroding its moral authority, and seems prepared to destroy the eurozone’s integrity just to make a point. As long as the Greeks obeyed the troika, they could be cast as the stereotypes on which Mr Panos plays: foul-mouthed, lazy Mediterraneans, addicted to a welfare system they cannot afford, which is the subtext of magazines such as Bild. By voting for Syriza, the Greeks have challenged the stereotype. Prime minister Alexis Tsipras is exactly the kind of guy you find in German business meetings; a polyglot with a polite smile and no tie. Varoufakis, if you took away his Greek passport and gave him a better suit, could be a German technocrat from central casting.

Against the Greeks, suddenly it is German politicians who look old, condescending, out of touch. While various Anglo-Saxon politicians have tried to foster positive relations with Tsipras – New York Mayor Bill de Blasio going publicly tie-less in his congratulation call after the election – the German political class has not.

Meanwhile, the German press has concentrated on disparaging the new Greek leaders, suggesting they are, among other things, antisemitic. In that context, it was welcome that Syriza’s most senior female politician, Rena Dourou, used a Holocaust memorial speech last week to make an eloquent attack on modern antisemitism.

Dourou also used the speech to state Syriza’s only case for debt relief: that Greece is as central to western culture as Judaism, and that solidarity should be moral as well as economic. “The dialectical tension between Athens and Jerusalem, symbolising the claims of reason and revelation,” she said, citing Leo Strauss, “feeds the heart, the nucleus of the political tradition of the so-called western world.”

Greece may be near-insolvent, its pensioners huddled over wood stoves in freezing flats without electricity, but – says Syriza – it stakes a superior claim than Germany when it comes to the creation of Europe and modernity. It may be at the bottom of the economic pecking order, but Europe was supposed to be more than an economy. Greece, like Germany, is a strong, visceral state of mind. If nations were measured by the salience of their culture – its bite, its saltiness, its addiction to beauty – Hellenic culture would stand equal to its Teutonic counterpart. And that is what makes the economic clash of will so visceral, too.

What’s about to happen is a fight to the death. Either Germany drives Greece to insolvency, and out of the eurozone, or the German taxpayer signs up to an outcome that flies in the face of the rules-based mentality at the heart of German culture.

Germany needs to handle this carefully; the rest of Europe is watching. My pals and I from the bubblegum card era were brought up in a country that had not seen occupation or fascism or genocide. Greece saw all of these, and Syriza’s victory has opened a floodgate of discussions about the past at Greek dinner tables. The popular Greek response to the ECB’s move last week is in danger of taking on the character of national revolt: a replay of the Battle of Crete, where the Greeks lose physically but win morally, at irreparable cost to the attacker.

That imagery like this is being thrown around in modern Europe is a testimony to how badly modern Europe is failing.

Paul Mason is the economics editor at Channel 4 News. Follow him@paulmasonnews

Africa: The Formation of Biafra Shadow Government

by Osita Ebiem

( February 8, 2015, New York City, Sri Lanka Guardian) In October 2014 a meeting of Biafra freedom movement activists was called by Festus Afamefule in Barcelona, Spain. The venue of the meeting was in the hall which was made available to the Biafrans by the Catalonians with whom the Spanish Biafran activists have worked closely together since the last ten years. In attendance at the meeting were many battle-hardened activists of the Biafran freedom movement.

Afamefule is a medical doctor based in Madrid, Spain. James Achike who was also at the meeting lives in Austria. Achike is an inventor and veteran Biafran scientist and engineer of the Ogbunigwe fame. There were several other notable Biafran activists and foreign friends of Biafra who attended the meeting. There were also others like Emmanuel Enekwechi who heads the Biafra Government in Exile (BGIE); he is a clinical psychology professor in the United States and Tony Nnadi of the Lower Niger Congress, who attended the meeting virtually through internet video call-ins.

The proceedings of the meeting were coordinated and covered by the radio station, Biafra Voice International (BVI). The coordinator of the radio station is Emmanuel Okezie who lives in Germany.

In the last four years this meeting is one of the series called with the aim to unify and streamline the activities of the various groups that are working at different levels in the multi-faceted Biafra liberation movement. It was a success. At the meeting it was decided that with the current critical situation in the Nigerian social and political scene it is time and urgent to go home and form a Biafra Shadow Government (BSG) in accordance with the stipulations of the Biafra Charter. (A copy of the charter can be obtained from the internet at www.biafrafoundation.com.) The reason for the urgency is to forestall a disarray and panic situation in the Biafran area, by having a political and administrative structure in place on the eventuality that the Nigerian state disintegrates very quickly.

Festus Afamefule left Madrid on the second half of December 2014 to go home to oversee and help in forming the BSG. On getting home Afamefule organized a small team of individuals and together they took a tour of all the ten states that make up the Biafran territory. The ten states the team visited are Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo and Rivers states. The team had a wide and enthusiastic reception throughout.

At the end they had a series of meetings deliberating on all the aspects and details of the Biafra Shadow Government. Their last meeting took place in Uli on January 18, 2015.

Uli is the town that became famous during the war because of its role as the home of the iconic Biafra Airport. At its peak the airport became the busiest in Africa. Through hard work, dedication and creative efficiency of Biafrans, Uli Airport was receiving hundreds of planes weekly with hundreds of thousands of tons of food and medicines that helped to save the lives of millions of Biafran civilians. The airport was designed, built and managed entirely by indigenous Biafran engineers and virtually all the flights were nightly flights under heavy bombardment from the enemy – Nigeria.

On the 18th of January the Biafra Shadow Government (BSG) was formally formed and constituted as spelt out in the Biafra Charter. The meeting was well-attended and there were representatives from such Biafran freedom movement groups like Eastern Peoples’ Congress, Joint Revolutionary Council, Biafra Liberation in Exile (BILIE), Biafra Regional Emancipation, Ben Onwuka’s Biafra Zionist Movement (BZM), Eastern Veterans Social Welfare Initiative, Afra Descendants, USP, World Union of Biafran Scientists (WUBS), BIAMOS, Aladinma, Lower Niger Congress, representatives from some aspects of Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and people from a host of other groups.

The officers of the Shadow Government are Kalada Jene who was unanimously voted to head the provisional government, I. Nwoko is the deputy and the secretary to the government is E. A. Dignity. The officers were charged to go to work immediately in forming their government according to the provisions of the Biafra Charter. The Shadow Government is to work in close relationship with BGIE and all other Biafran organizations at home and abroad, sharing information, harmonizing and coordinating strategy and activities.

In response, the officers and members of the BSG accepted their job and acknowledged the seriousness of the responsibilities that go along with their position. Specifically they gave assurances that they will go to work immediately especially in organizing a network that will ensure the security of lives, properties and territorial borders of Biafra land, both proactively and as a response to any threat of aggression from outside.

How to Make Medicinal Garlic Honey

January 6, 2015 -By Admin

Garlic is a common kitchen herb with many medicinal uses. It can help resolve colds, coughs, sore throat, and sinus infections. Externally it can be used for skin infections.

For chronic concerns, garlic helps reduce blood sugar and high blood pressure. It is also helpful to treat Malaria and boost immunity for AIDS. It is famous as a de-wormer. I remember my grandpa taking it powdered on everything.

The fresh garlic is the most potent to use medicinally, but I am just not one of those people who can handle a raw clove. The first time I tried raw whole garlic was in Belize. One of the locals was taking it raw and suggested I try it. Too strong for me! I prefer mine chopped fine in small amounts, cooked, or made up into garlic honey.

It’s very simple to make garlic honey for medicinal or culinary use. Just chop up a whole garlic bulb: peel and chop the cloves. Chopping helps release Allicin — the most potent chemical ingredient in garlic.

Allicin is created when Allin reacts with the enzyme Allinase, which is activated when garlic is chopped or crushed. After your cloves are ready, put them in a clean pint jar. Cover with honey. I used raw wild flower honey. It takes a long time for the honey to seep through all the chopped cloves, so pour slowly.

You can use a knife or a chop stick to get the air bubbles out from among the chopped cloves. Photo: Cory Trusty

The next step is to cover and label and date your jar and put it up in a cupboard for 2-4 weeks. You can use the honey with or without the garlic at the end of this time. The shelf life of garlic honey is 3 months. You can take this honey by the spoonful or add it to tea if you have a cough, cold or sore throat.

I love making coleslaw dressing with garlic honey. You too can give it a try. Here’s what you need:

• 3 tablespoons of herbal vinegar of your choice
• 3 tablespoons of Virgin Olive or Coconut oil
• 2-3 tablespoons of garlic honey
• 1/4 teaspoon mustard seed
• 1/4 teaspoon celery seed
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Mix the above together and cover with 4 cups of shredded cabbage and 1 cup of shredded carrot. Toss and chill for 2 hours before serving.

This Social Experiment at Dundas SquareProves That Torontonians Are Awesome

"I Am a Muslim" Project

Posted on 2/9/2015 by JJ and Melanie 

Hug or no hug? 

I know this only masks the real struggle with all these warm fuzzy feelings...making it appear like toronto doesn't face Islamaphobia ( even if that was not the intent). It was still nice to see, if only that hug served justice, if only that experiment could be done anywhere else in Toronto and still get the same result.

Tamils in Mullaitivu demand new Sri Lanka govt returns disappeared loved ones
Placard reads: "We voted for change. Will you change our lives????"

Placards read: "New government, release our loved ones", "Wanted, wanted, international investigation is wanted", "Tears formed thinking of our missing loved one". 08 February 2015 Tamils in Mullaitivu protested on Sunday calling on the new Sri Lankan government to return their missing loved ones and release all political prisoners, almost six years after the end of the armed conflict. Tamils in Mullaitivu Demand New Sri Lanka Govt Returns Disappeared Loved Ones by Thavam Ratna

TNA Lobbying in Geneva for Release of UN Report on SL War Crimes

By P.K.Balachandran-07th February 2015 

COLOMBO: M.A.Sumanthiran, a Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP, is currently in Geneva lobbying at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for  release of the UN’s investigative report on allegations of war crimes committed in the last phase of the 2006-2009 Eelam War IV in  North Sri Lanka.

The TNA is trying to counter the US move to postpone the presentation of the report  which has been prepared by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) at the request of the UNHRC.  

The “strong” report castigating Sri Lanka, is due for presentation at the March session of the UNHRC. But the US and its allies are wanting a postponement of the presentation to September, to give the new liberal-democratic and pro-Western government of Sri Lanka led by President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, sufficient time to put in place a credible domestic mechanism to investigate the charges.     

Case For Postponement

The US argument for postponement is that failure to give the new regime sufficient time to do the needful could result in ultra-nationalist and anti-minority forces in Lanka, represented by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, riding back to power on a Sinhalese majoritarian wave in the June parliamentary elections.  

This view was conveyed to the TNA by the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Nisha Biswal, when she was in Lanka recently.

SL Govt’s Stance

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government is happy with the US stance and is in the process of negotiating with the US what should be done to satisfy the UNHRC and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein.

To have discussions on the question, Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera is to meet the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, in Washington on February 12. Samaraweera has invited Rights High Commissioner Zeid to visit Sri Lanka at the earliest to see the situation for himself and also to discuss ameliorative measures.

TNA’s Concerns

But the TNA fears that a postponement may lead to the report being brushed under the carpet. The US may want to keep the pro-Western politicians in power in Lanka perpetually, and for that purpose, may go for a compromise with them on the Tamil question.

The US has said that a revised UN report could be presented at the UNHRC’s September session taking into account the measures taken by the Lankan government between now and September. But the TNA thinks the Lankan government will not deliver on its promises for electoral reasons. It has to face crucial parliamentary elections in June. It will lose if a substantial section of the Sinhalese-majority is against giving concessions to the Tamil minority at the behest of foreign powers.

The TNA itself has electoral compulsions to think of. It has to fight the parliamentary elections on a pro-human rights and pro-Tamil platform. It cannot be seen as pussyfooting on the UN report.

Tamil Diaspora’s Demand

Meanwhile, the Global Tamil Forum’s spokesman, Suren Surendiran, said that the UN team’s report has to be released in March to assuage the feelings of the wounded Tamil masses.

Referring to the thousands of Tamils who had perished, and many others whose kith and kin had disappeared, Surendiran said: “We want the truth to be told. Any breaches of international laws should be dealt with through an international judicial process. The UN report will serve as a first step in this process."   

An Internal War Crimes Inquiry Will Be A Farce

By Rajasingham Jayadevan -February 8, 2015

Rajasingham Jayadevan

Sri Lanka is on the international agenda on war crimes and serious post war human rights violations. Until the election of the new President Maithiripala Sirisena, the Government of Sri Lanka was on a head on coalition with the United Nation and the west to cover-up its conduct and was hell-bent to undermine the UN efforts on war crimes investigations.

Sri Lanka is a party to the international law and treaties and as a legally constituted state, is answerable to the atrocities it committed during the internal war. The outgoing government was uncooperative and wilfully absconded by its intemperate behaviour leaving the UNHRC to proceed with an investigation on its own without the co-operation of the Sri Lanka government.

Sri Lanka failed to implement its own post war Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation Committee report on crucial issues and fragrantly extended a democratic dictatorship that emboldened the anti-minority hatred in a calculated and systematic manner. The entire security mechanism and the propping up of right wing Sinhala Buddhist hatred kept the outgoing government live and kicking until its demise. With the hyphened paranoia of war victory, Mahinda Rajapakse thought he is indispensable and could extend his regime indefinitely and his decision to call the Presidential election back fired on him.

With the defeat in the election, Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa have even lost their diplomatic immunity and have become ordinary citizens without absolute legal safeguards. Both are now in the hell holes, unless the new government bestow them with the protection against international efforts. The present government’s stance on the internal inquiry is a big respite for the former President and those who discharged war crimes under his military hierarchy.

The new government’s decision on the internal inquiry on war crimes with the help of the UN is not without any constraints. A matter that needs international process, though encouraged to be carried out locally (thus abiding by local laws) will not deliver fair justice when local laws are impediment to any justice being delivered against the perpetrators of war crimes and serious human rights violations.Read More

Real Executive Powers Of Provinces Rest With Chief Ministers, Not With Governors

by Varatharaja Perumal-Saturday, 07 February 2015

Function of democracy depends on rule of law and for ensuring proper function of rule of law the separation of powers is essential. In the process of progressing democratic system, the devolution of powers to the regional units of governance has become fourth pillar of the separation of powers, which in fact ensure the check and balance for good governing of the country.  
Real Executive Powers of Provinces Rest With Chief Ministers, Not With Governors by Thavam Ratna