Kaduwela Magistrate, Additional District Judge Dhammika Hemapala yesterday ordered to re-remand former Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa until 7 May. Police are conducting investigations into the allegation that Basil Rohana ...
...Rajapaksa had committed a fraud amounting to millions of rupees when implementing the compensation and gratuity programme of the Divi Neguma Development Department of the Ministry of Economic Development, along with three others. The other three persons remanded included former Secretary to the Ministry of Economic Development Dr. Nihal Jayatilleke, former Director General of Divi Neguma Department Ranawaka Arachchilage Amitha Kithsiri Ranawaka and Director of the Divi Neguma Community Bank Bandula Thilakasiri.
Investigations were initiated following a complaint made to the Financial Crime Investigation Department by Director General of the Divi Neguma Department, H. Sumanapala.
The suspects are accused of a financial irregularity in paying compensations and gratuity of the Divi Neguma Development Department, an irregularity in the housing project on behalf of Samurdhi beneficiaries as well as in printing five million almanacs instead of 1.5 million. Lawyer Anil de Silva told Court that his client Basil Rajapaksa is suffering from a severe heart problem. As doctors have prohibited Rajapaksa from climbing stairs, Silva requested the Court to allow his client to remain in an ambulance in the court premises.
Silva also requested the Court to release the suspects on bail as they had been in remand for over two weeks. The lawyers said the suspects only attempted to eradicate poverty in the country. Attorney-at-Law U.R. Silva presenting court records on previous cases said that everyone including the FCID was being pressured to keep the defendants in remand prison as they are being manipulated by an outside force.
The Magistrate rejected the lawyer's request to send Basil Rajapaksa back to the Merchant Ward of the Colombo National Hospital and Nihal Jayatilleke as well as Ranawaka to the Cardiology Unit and Thilakasiri to Ward No. 76. The Magistrate ordered that all suspects be examined by a doctor. He also ordered that all reports should be submitted to Court on 7 May and that medical reports should be handed over to the FCID.
Minister Wickramasinghe was often referred to as Mr Clean even among the opposition members. Even though many SLFP Ministers and some UNP members very often referred to him as the serial loser, many politicians privately had an enormous respect for Ranil Wickremasingha because he came from an elite family, conducted himself with dignity , was not associated with any financial scandals and was competent in managing international and economic affairs. But after the fraudulent Bond deal he has been humiliated on many fronts and the committee he appointed to investigate the bond deal has been ridiculed in every quarter. Presidential sources say even the President who is generally an easy going leader is very unhappy with the outcome and he gently slipped away from visiting the Central Bank on Tuesday.
Many hoped after the Change of Government, the Central Bank would regain its independence and would not be involved in controversy in the future . But, sadly Mahendran brought disrepute to his office, to the government and has embarrassed the Prime Minister. If Mahendren thinks he has got away, he is sadly mistaken, the courts now have regained their independence , this was clearly seen when the 19 A was discussed in the higher courts. Sri Lanka has passed the stage when the higher courts gave decisions based on requests made by the executive. Mahendran would save the Prime Minister his job and the UNP the next election, if he stepped down now, before he is conduct is debated in parliament and examined by courts and his previous tenure in the BOI is investigated by the opposition and exposed.
The Central Bank needs a bureaucrat from within to regain its independence and to act as an independent advisor to the Government. Mahendran's continuing presence is only damaging the office he is holding and the credibility of the Prime Minister and his party.
Robert Blay filmed telling journalist that Conservative candidate Ranil Jayawardena is ‘not British enough to be in our parliament’
Robert Blay, Ukip’s candidate for North East Hampshire, was recorded expressing his disgust at the possibility of Ranil Jayawardena becoming the UK’s first British-Asian prime minister. Photograph: gethampshire.co.uk
A Ukip parliamentary candidate has been suspended after saying he would shoot his Tory rival if he ever became prime minister.
In an expletive-laden rant, Robert Blay said the Conservative party’s candidate in North East Hampshire, Ranil Jayawardena, was “not British enough to be in our parliament” and accused him of timing the birth of his child to coincide with the general election.
Footage of Blay’s exchange with a Daily Mirror reporter, which reportedly took place outside an event at which the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, was speaking, was posted on the newspaper’s website on Tuesday evening.
A Ukip spokesman said: “Mr Blay has been suspended with immediate effect.
“Any comments of this sort have absolutely no place in British politics or public life, and the party would like to take this opportunity to apologise to Mr Jayawardena for any distress caused. Ukip acts immediately in circumstances such as these.”
In the footage, Blay is heard to express his frustration with suggestions that Jayawardena has a bright political career ahead of him and especially at the possibility that he could rise to be Britain’s first prime minister of Asian descent.
“If he is, I will personally put a bullet between his eyes,” says Blay. “If this lad turns up to be our prime minister, I will personally put a bullet in him. That’s how strong I feel about it.
“I won’t have this fucker as our prime minister. I absolutely loathe him,” he said. He went on express grievances about Jayawardena’s father, who migrated to Britain from Sri Lanka.
Speaking after the reports first surfaced on Tuesday evening, Jayawardena said: “I was shocked to hear about these comments and that someone who holds these types of views could have been selected as a Ukip candidate.
“My family believes in hard work. My father came to this country to do just that – never claiming a penny from the state. He’s contributed to society as a magistrate, and I’ve done the same as a local councillor.
“I hope to contribute positively to our country by representing my community – the community in which I grew up – in parliament.”
In the footage, Blay is heard attacking Jayawardena’s heritage, saying: “His family have only been here since the 70s. You are not British enough to be in our parliament. I’ve got 400 years of ancestry where I live. He hasn’t got that.
“I said to his dad about two months ago, ‘when did you come to Britain?’ He said, ‘in the 70s’. I said, ‘why did you come?’ He said, ‘things weren’t very good politically in Sri Lanka and I came here and I could train as an accountant’.
“So he’s come here and ponced off us hasn’t he, like all the east Europeans are? That’s what is happening. Continually.
“His name’s Jayawardena and I’m told that name is a Tamil name. Well the Tamils were Indians which went to Sri Lanka to take it over and they got their asses kicked. So, he comes here, ponces off us and then his son’s in our political system.”
North East Hampshire is a safe Tory seat. It was won by James Arbuthnot in 2010, with a majority of more than 18,000 from the nearly 53,000 votes cast.
“It makes me quite sick,” said Blay of the situation. “But I’ve always said in my constituency you could put a monkey out there with a blue rosette on and it would win”.
He added that Jayawardena had “got his missus to drop a kid just before the election”.
In the video, Blay said: “He’s planned the birth of the child, there’s no doubt about that”.
Latest conspiracy to pit Christians against Muslims
By Latheef Farook
United States of America which has turned Middle East into a killing field has become a land of lunatics and religious bigots insulting Islam and its revered beloved Prophet Muhammad (be Upon Him) - seal of all prophets.
This is how one could describe American lunatics holding a sadistic competition to draw cartoon to demonize Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in the worst possible way.
The contest awarding $10,000 (£6,600) prize to the “winning cartoon” depicting Prophet Muhammad in the most negative way has all potentials to create tension against Muslims all over US and Europe.
This heinous crime against humanity was committed in the name of what they describe as “freedom of expression”. This contest is absolute disgrace to all decent Americans who were brainwashed with daily doses of lies and deception by America’s rabidly pro Zionist media. Americans are some of the nicest people in the world. However the American media owned by pro Israeli warmongers shape their mindsets against Islam and Muslims to cover up their in the Middle East.
As a result American media has created a generation which sees the world through Zionist eyes and not through their own independent eyes.
Just wait for a week or ten days for reports to emerge from independent sources explaining how this attack was part of Israel’s ongoing conspiracy to put Christians in America and Europe against Muslims. Perhaps building up a campai9gn for a holocaust against Muslims to the benefit of war mongers.
This campaign has already made life miserable for Muslims in the west. Muslims living in and around Dallas remain frightened as this could unleash violence against them.
Already questions began to emerge with the suspicious killing of the two gunmen. The question is why did the gunmen attack the security if they had come to attack the participants at the cartoon contest .Perhaps with the shooting of the two men the truth is buried as it happened in the case of Charlie Ebodo killings in France which was later proved as the work of Israel’s secret service Mossad.
However Muslims worldwide should be proud of themselves because, through out their more than fourteen century history, never they resorted to such disgraceful acts of perversion to insult any religious leader. Instead Islam teaches Muslims to respect other religions and other religious leaders.
As expected the American media started accusing ISIS and other so called radical organizations, created by US, of involvement in the attack. There was hardly any emphasis in the American mainstream media on the provocative and blasphemous nature of the event which was well planned to demonize Islam and Muslims to suit their agenda.
America is the sole super power in the world today. However this very same America is ruled by Jewish lobbies with their iron grip on American political, economic, corporate conglomerates, weapons industries and social establishments.
These Jewish lobbies decide who should be in the White House and what they should do to help implement their evil agendas on Muslim countries in the Middle East and beyond.
According to reports what happened in Dallas on Sunday 3 May 2015v was this;
A “Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” was held in a suburb of Dallas. The event was organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which is run by anti Muslim pervert Pamela Geller and is listed as an anti-Muslim group by a civil rights group- the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Many in Garland objected to the event stating it was blasphemous, provocative and could endanger peace in the area.
Pamela’s Zionist link was exposed with her calls for the removal of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.
She has been involved in anti Muslim activities since 9/11. She sponsored an ad campaign across major U.S. cities with anti-Muslim posters saying, among other things, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah.”
In 2009, she became a leader of the movement against a mosque in Manhattan and told that she believed the only “moderate Muslim is a secular Muslim” and that when Muslims “pray five times a day … they’re cursing Christians and Jews five times a day.”
Islamization, she has said, is not something that will happen overnight. “It’s a drip, drip, drip, drip,” she told in 2010 as she waged war against the mosque at Ground Zero. “The mosque-ing of the workplace where you’re imposing prayer times on union contracts, non-Muslim workers have to lengthen their day. … These demands are a way of imposing Islam on a secular society.”
One of the keynote speakers at the cartoon contest was the Dutch sadistic politician Geert Wilders who compares the Quran with Mein Kampf and has campaigned to have Holy Quran banned in the Netherlands.
Geert Wilders said during his speech that” Muhammad fought and terrorized people with the swords. Today, here in Garland, we fight Muhammad and his followers with the pen. And the pen, the drawings, will prove mightier than the sword,”.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that challenges negative depictions of Muslims and Islam, said in a statement “We also reiterate our view that violence in response to anti-Islam programs like the one in Garland, Texas, is more insulting to our faith than any cartoon, however defamatory. Bigoted speech can never be an excuse for violence."
While the overwhelming response by leaders in the community has been strong condemnation of the violence, some activists have also argued the incident highlights the importance of finding creative ways to counter growing Islamophobia in the U.S., which they say has helped to fuel such violence. Ends
Judge orders UN to lift suspension of Anders Kompass, who leaked internal UN report on alleged abuse of children by French troops in Central African Republic
A French soldier in Bangui in December 2013. Photograph: Andreea Campeanu/Reuters
An appeal tribunal has ordered the United Nations to immediately lift the suspension of a whistleblower who disclosed the alleged sexual abuse of children by peacekeeping troops in Africa to the French authorities.
A judge said on Wednesday the decision to suspend Anders Kompass, the director of field operations for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, was “prima facie unlawful”. He ordered his employers in the UN to lift his suspension immediately to prevent further damage to his reputation.
The decision is a blow to senior UN officials who have repeatedly defended their treatment of Kompass, claiming he breached strict protocols about the passing on of confidential information to outside authorities.
Kompass leaked an internal UN report on the alleged sexual abuse of children by French troops in Central African Republic to French prosecutors last summer. The French immediately mounted an investigation and revealed last week they were investigating up to 14 soldiers for alleged abuse. The French authorities wrote to thank Kompass for passing on the internal report detailing the abuse, the Guardian has revealed.
In his statement to the UN dispute tribunal, published on Wednesday, Kompass stated that he informed his boss – the deputy high commissioner – last July that he had leaked the report in order for the French to mount an investigation. The UN disputes this.
Nine months later on 17 April this year, he was suspended by the high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, and put under investigation for leaking confidential information – including the names of victims and staff members who conducted the interviews with the children.
The confidential internal report leaked by Kompass contained interviews by a UN official and a member of Unicef with a number of children, aged between eight and 15, who say they were sexually abused at a camp for internally displaced people in Bangui, the capital of CAR, by French troops last year. The interim report identified about 10 children effected but the UN said it was possible many more children had been abused.
In his statement to the dispute tribunal, Kompass said he had suffered damage to his reputation as a result of the suspension and allegations being made against him by the UN.
His lawyers state: “The applicant [Kompass] has an unblemished employment record and his competence and integrity, which have never been questioned throughout his career, are cast into doubt by the contested decision; the publicity of the process resulting from him having been placed on administrative leave leads to an exacerbation of the reputational damage … each day the administrative leave continues.”
The order of the dispute tribunal on Wednesday means Kompass’s suspension will be lifted temporarily while an internal management review takes place into the handling of the case. Kompass was due to return to work in his office in Geneva on Wednesday afternoon.
In his judgment, the judge, Thomas Laker, said there were serious and reasonable doubts around the “substantive legality” of the decision. He said the tribunal had found it was “prima facie unlawful” to suspend Kompass and if the decision was not reversed the damage to his reputation could be irreparable.
Ian Richards, head of the staff union at the UN, said the treatment of Kompass could have lasting impact on the investigation of serious allegations of human rights abuses.
He said: “Some colleagues are worried now of passing on any information to the authorities in case the UN suspends them too.” He added that within the OHCHR rules on human rights monitoring there was an expectation that reports may be passed on to national prosecutors.
What was passed on would depend on the judgment of the human rights officer on how that information would be used. In the case of a prosecutor, Richards said, passing on the names of victims and details of allegations would be a way of providing useful information for the prosecutor to follow up.
A pedestrian stands on the train tracks at the train station in Hershey, Cuba, as the sun rises on March 30, about 30 miles east of Havana. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
HERSHEY, Cuba — Along the coastal highway 30 miles east of Havana, the road signs point to a turnoff for Camilo Cienfuegos City. It doesn’t exist. At least not by that name.
“AIR-shee” is what everyone still calls it. Hershey. That much remains.
Most of the rest of the model town founded by U.S. chocolate tycoon Milton S. Hershey in 1916 is in a state of heartbreaking ruin. The looming sugar mill, once among the world’s most advanced, is a gutted, ghostly hulk. Its rusting machinery spills from the wreckage as if blasted by a bomb or kicked apart by a giant.
Afghan women's rights activists carry the coffin of Farkhunda, an Afghan woman who was beaten to death and set alight on fire on Thursday, during her burial ceremony in Kabul March 22, 2015. REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail
MIRWAIS HAROONI AND KAY JOHNSON,- WEDNESDAY, MAY 06, 2015
KABUL - An Afghan judge sentenced four men to death on Wednesday for the mob killing of 27-year-old woman accused of burning a Qur'an in Kabul, a case that sparked outrage and rare street protests against religious extremism in the capital.
The caretaker of a Muslim shrine who falsely accused the woman of desecrating Islam's holy book was among those sentenced to death.
Eight defendants were jailed for 16 years for participating in the attack in which a crowd beat and kicked the woman, named Farkhunda, and set her body on fire in central Kabul as bystanders chanted "God is great".
Judge Safiullah Mujadidi found 18 others not guilty due to lack of evidence.
The four men sentenced to death were convicted of murder, in part on the basis of mobile phone footage of the attack that was played in court during the five-day trial.
Some of those arrested were tracked down after posting footage of the attack on social media and bragging about taking part.
Nineteen police officers were also on trial, accused of standing by and doing nothing to stop the violence. Their verdicts and sentencing are due later in the week.
The attack proved a polarising incident in Afghanistan, a deeply conservative Muslim country. Initially, some clerics said the killing was a defence of Islam.
Many others were outraged by the attack, even before an investigation showed that Farkhunda had been falsely accused of desecrating Islam's holy book.
Farkhunda, who was a long-time student of Islam, had a running dispute with Zain-ul Abedeen, the caretaker of a local shrine, over his selling of amulets and other good luck charms. She considered the practice un-Islamic.
Apparently in retaliation, he publicly accused her on March 19 of burning aQur'an and led the crowd that surrounded her and beat her to death.
Zain-ul Abedeen and the three others condemned to death can appeal against their sentences.
Several protests against religious extremism and violence against women sprung up in Kabul, including one in the last week that re-enacted the attack.
Such demonstrations are rare, even though women's rights were enshrined in the constitution after the Taliban's hard-line Islamist regime was ousted in 2001.
Under the Taliban's five-year rule, women were banned from leaving home without a male guardian, denied education and forced to wear the all-covering burqa.
BERLIN — The signs of Germany’s economic might are hard to miss. There are the swanky new high-rise hotels cropping up on Berlin’s main shopping mile and luxury condominium complexes spreading across the government quarter. In the southwest, Germany’s engineering heartland, auto parts factories are humming and newfound confidence is brimming.
After a 5-year-old boy ended up handcuffed and shackled in a patrol car following a classroom outburst last week, his family is saying the school's failure to follow an established action plan left their son traumatized and unable to return to school.
Chelsea Ruiz told The Huffington Post Monday that her son, Connor, had a "meltdown" at Philadelphia Primary in upstate New York last Wednesday. School personnel told Ruiz that Connor was jumping around, stabbing himself with pencils and trying to choke himself by chewing on foam and crayons.
Ruiz said teachers in her son's special needs classroom tried for two hours to de-escalate the situation. But eventually, instead of calling Ruiz or her husband, Ryan, the school called the state police. Ruiz said the school didn't reach out to her until after that.
"They’re incompetent, is how I feel," Ruiz said of her son's teachers and school officials. “I didn’t find out that they let my son spiral out of control for two hours until I read the [news] report."
Because Connor has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, his family had established a plan for how to deal with him should he act out in an extreme way, said Ruiz. Connor's family had made the school aware of their plan before Wednesday's incident, Ruiz said.
“Nowhere did [our plan] state to call the police or have him evaluated," Ruiz said. "If the teachers can’t calm him down, they should call me or my husband, because we can. But they didn’t. We were the last call.”
At the hospital, Ruiz said, her son cried and hugged her, telling her he'd been "arrested for being a bad guy.”
Chelsea Ruiz said her 5-year-old son with special needs was left with scratches after he was shackled and handcuffed by police following a behavioral outburst at school.
Mary Beth Klotz, director of educational practice for the National Association of School Psychologists, told The Huffington Post in an email that calling police on a child with behavior issues is appropriate only under certain rare circumstances -- "if the student had a weapon for example, or if the student was so out of control that they were posing an immediate serious threat to the safety of themselves and others."
"Again with adequate staffing levels, proper staff training and credentialing, and utilization of multitiered systems of support and positive discipline techniques, these occasions should be very rare," Klotz wrote.
Trooper Jack Keller, a public information officer with the New York State Police, defended the police measures, telling HuffPost that the responding trooper initially attempted to build a rapport with Connor to calm him down.
"After that was unsuccessful, [Connor] was trying to stab himself with pencils," Keller said. "At that point the trooper had to -- it’s kind of a bear hug -- tried to subdue the child to prevent him from hurting himself."
When that didn't work, Keller said that police cuffed Connor's hands in front of him to prevent him from swinging his arms, put his legs in shackles and carried him to a patrol car, where an officer sat in the back with him.
"It's one of those things where it’s a last resort. It’s not something we would do normally," Keller said. "No officer wants to put restraints on a 5-year-old. The idea here isn’t to discipline the kid."
Keller said that he spoke with Ruiz two days after the incident. He described their talk as "very productive."
"My concern was to address her concern," Keller said.
Ruiz took photos of the marks left on her 5-year-old son's wrists after he was shackled and handcuffed by police.
Ruiz, meanwhile, has been trying to get more information about last week's incident, but she says it hasn't been easy. Police told her she must file a Freedom of Information Act request to see a copy of the incident report involving her child. She made one call to Connor's school, but says it was "intercepted" by James Kettrick, the district superintendent. Since then, she says, she hasn't tried to contact the school district again.
“The staff and the police did everything necessary to keep that child safe," Kettrick told The Huffington Post on Monday. He declined to go into specifics about the incident or about the school's alleged failure to follow the plan devised by Connor's family.
"We’re getting into a level of detail that I can't respond to," Kettrick said. "I don’t want to get into a point-counterpoint with the parents.”
Ruiz also disputes the school's claim that they tried to contact her and her husband as their son was taken to Samaritan Medical Center for a mental health evaluation.
“All of this trauma, and for what? He never even got the mental evaluation the school insisted he needed," Ruiz said. "The one professional who could determine if he needed this or not decided he didn’t need it."
Ruiz said she plans to pursue legal action against the school. Connor hasn't returned to Philadelphia Primary since the incident, and Ruiz wants the district to provide a tutor for him until she can find a new school to place him in. She said she won't be sending Connor to any school in that district, or any public school at all, for that matter.
"He said, 'No Mommy, please, no more teachers.' He’s terrified of all of it," said Ruiz, adding that her son recently hid at the sight of police at their local park.
"People are saying kids bounce back from this stuff, but not a special needs child. They’re not typical developmental children," said Ruiz. "They have to have help to learn how to cope with things. He’s not going to just bounce back."
"Honestly, I feel like someone needs to be held accountable," she added. "Everyone is deflecting and blaming my son.”
By saying that ‘caste is class,’ the Left has checkmated itself and made itself irrelevant, says writer-activist Arundhati Roy. Photo: K. Pichumani
The writer-activist observes that the Left needs an intellectual re-evaluation of the role played by caste in Indian society.
UDHAV NAIG-CHENNAI, May 5, 2015
The fortunes of the Left in India are not going to change dramatically just by effecting a change in its leadership.
Writer Arundhati Roy, who was in Chennai to receive the “Ambedkar Sudar” award conferred by the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, was pessimistic about the chances of the Left emerging as a credible opposition to the politics of the Hindu Right, which has sought to combine communal polarisation with corporate-driven economic development.
As the Hindu Right seeks to appropriate B.R. Ambedkar even while pursuing the campaign of ghar wapsi, she observes that the Left needs an intellectual re-evaluation of the role played by caste in Indian society.
“The Left has failed to intellectually deal with the issue of caste. By saying that ‘caste is class,’ the Left — be it in West Bengal or Kerala — has checkmated itself and made itself irrelevant. In this regard, the rift between Dr. Ambedkar and Shripad Amrit Dange, an important member of the Indian trade union movement in the late 1920s, on the issue of mill workers’ rights in Bombay is important. Ambedkar rightly pointed out how there is no equality within the workers where Dalits would only get lower paid jobs. This has been the case since the inception of the Communist party in India,” she claims.
The fight against caste is a complex one, she remarks. “Philosophically speaking, subordinated castes have to take pride in their identity and have to assert that pride to fight caste oppression. But then there comes a tipping point at which that radical positioning is used against itself, in order to promote a kind of isolation, and it suits the privileged to keep that going.”
Not new
She identifies the ghar wapsi campaign by the Hindu Right, which seeks to “take back” the converted Muslims and Christians, as an effort to bring the subordinated castes into the ‘big house but keep them in the servant quarters.’ “The ghar wapsi campaign is not new. It was begun at the turn of the 19th and 20th century by Arya Samaj and the Shuddhi movement to purify the impure and bring converted castes into the Hindu fold.”
It was an ingenious counter-move, she claims, by the Hindu Right to influence the demography as politics of the Empire turned into politics of a representative government. “Until then, nobody cared when subordinated castes embraced Islam, Christianity or Sikhism. Then, suddenly, the demography became important. In this history, which included that of groups like the Arya Samaj — and Gandhi was an heir to that tradition — there was a lot of talk about untouchability, but no talk about caste itself. No talk about entitlement — the access to land, to wealth, to certain kinds of work — that is the real basis of the caste system. Now they have resurrected it because it is not just about Dalit communities as even the Adivasis are being fought over,” she says.
While mainstream commentators have prescribed globalisation and hyper-capitalism as a cure for caste and other inequalities, Ms. Roy warns that the caste structures ‘won’t break down’ by embracing capitalism, but will only be further strengthened.
Toxic alloy
“The fact is that it hasn’t happened significantly. Thomas Piketty in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century shows how those who have inherited wealth have the best chance of succeeding in the capitalist economy. That makes caste the mother of capitalism because caste is about inherited entitlement supposedly ordained by divine mandate. Caste and capitalism have fused into a toxic alloy. Privatisation will destroy the little foothold that Dalits have in the Establishment because of reservation.”
Ms. Roy slams the new Land Acquisition Bill, tabled by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Parliament, dismissing the notion that it will result in more jobs.
“The corporate land grab is the fundamental drive of the new economy. Whether they are IT, coal or steel companies, the first move is to take over and then control land and water resources. The notion that you must allow them to do it and that will generate jobs is a myth. The statistics say that we are only seeing ‘jobless growth.’”
She further adds that the economic and social conditions of 10 million workers in the industrial belt of Delhi, who, she says, are “show windows for the new economy” belie the notion that corporate-driven industrialisation will result in improving the quality of life of the workers. “They live in abject poverty and in absolute terror of their employers as well as their landlords.”
She rues the fact that the debates around land, when compared to the 60s and the 70s, are not “radical” anymore.
“When the Naxalite movement began and the Jayaprakash Narayan-led agitations occurred, a critique of Indira Gandhi was in full flow, what were they talking about? They were talking about social justice, redistribution of land, ‘land to the tiller’ and so on. Today, even the most ‘radical’ movements are only demanding that the lands of Adivasi people be left alone.”
Peopl use a tug boat to flee Yemen's southern port city of Aden amid fighting between Houthi fighters and the Southern Popular Resistance Committees May 5, 2015.
Wed May 6, 2015
(Reuters) - At least 80 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in the Yemeni port of Aden as fighting rages between Houthi fighters and local supporters of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, rescue workers and residents said.
The dead included at least 40 Yemeni civilians who were trying to flee heavy fighting in Aden on Wednesday when the Houthi fighters fired shells at their boat, rescue workers said.
The civilians were among some 50 people who were on the boat as it left the al-Tawahi district of Aden and headed towards safer areas in al-Buraiqa in the west.
Residents and local fighters said 40 other people, including a senior army officer, had been killed in fighting overnight in other parts of Aden, including an estimated 30 Houthi fighters and 10 local gunmen.
They said Saudi-led air strikes had helped the local fighters beat back a Houthi offensive on al-Tawahi, knocking out three tanks.
Among those killed overnight was Brigadier General Ali Nasser Hadi, the residents said. President Hadi later appointed Brigadier General Saif al-Baqri to replace him.
A Saudi-led Arab coalition began air strikes in Yemen on March 26 against Iran-allied Houthi fighters, backed by forces loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who seized control of parts of the country, including the capital Sanaa.
About 20 million people or 80 percent of the population, are estimated to be going hungry, the United Nations has said.
(Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf, writing by Sami Aboudi, Editing by William Maclean and Gareth Jones)
Smart meters are spying devices. Not breaking news? Likely not for those of us who have researched the issue for quite a long while, but an admission by those who make the devices is rather shocking.
That is exactly what has happened, as SmartGridNews, a website supported by the high-tech meter industry, acknowledged that smart meters are gathering private information on homeowners.
Smart meters utilize wireless technology and instantly tell power companies how much electricity a home is using, and even can report on the power usage by individual appliances, as Smart Grid News said. Smart meters also can literally control newer household appliances that have the capability to communicate with the device.
“One of the next areas of value comes from taking smart meter data and ‘disaggregating’ it to tell us exactly how customers are using electricity,” reads a new story on the website. “Do external devices already do this? Sure. Just as progress in the smart phone world reduced the need for external devices (cameras, alarm clocks, radios, pedometers, navigation systems, etc.) the ability to get accurate, appliance level feedback, without the need to invest in external hardware, is the next step in the world of smart meters.”
The Stop Smart Meters website states that fire dangers are also a problem associated with smart meters. Fire calls after smart meter installations reportedly include the shorting-out of electronics of all varieties and the burning-out of appliances.
Cyber hacking of smart meters to possibly overload and garner control of significant portions of the power grid is also an often-voiced worry about the smart power initiative. In Connecticut, 30 percent of customers in a pilot program had higher bills after smart meters were installed.
According to the Stop Smart Meters group, the smart grid devices do not always emit less RF (radio frequency) exposure than a cell phone — as some utility companies allegedly state.
“People are becoming increasingly aware of the potential harm done by chronic exposure to RF radiation-emitting devices and are taking steps to change how they use them. Most people are not offered a wired smart meter and you can’t turn it off once it is installed,” the group contends.
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Smart grid opponents have long opposed the gathering of their personal usage information.
Former CIA Director David Petraeus once stated that WiFi-connected devices, such as appliances commonly found inside many homes, will “transform the art of spying.” Petraeus also said that spies will be capable of monitoring Americans without going inside the home or perhaps even acquiring a warrant. He went on to state that remote control radio frequency identification devices, “energy harvesters,” sensor networks, and small embedded severs all connected to an Internet network will be all that is necessary for clandestine intelligence gathering.
The Smart Grid News report said customers surveyed in a recent report supported smart meters.
“Customers were delighted with the initiative as it showed how their new smart meters could work for them,” the website said. “Utility companies wanting to meet their specific conservation targets to drive customer engagement should ensure they are making the most of their smart meter investment. They can now use the power of smart meter data disaggregation to identify the customers who are most likely to help them reach their specific targets and turn them into willing partners in the drive for energy conservation.”
Data disaggregation basically means the automatic collection of personal energy habits of the homes attached to smart meters. The more customers know that is the case, the more they will oppose smart meters.
How do you feel about smart meters and the creation of a smart grid? Let us know in the comments section below.
by Shanika Edirisinghe- 2015-05-06.jpg)
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