(Lanka-e-News- 09.May.2015, 5.00PM) ‘The laws of the country and court orders cannot be allowed to be disdained or violated by anyone ‘ said the chief magistrate of Colombo Gihan Pilapitiya while ordering the police to immediately arrest and produce before court all the monks, parliamentary and provincial council (PC) representatives who defied the law and courts. The chief magistrate also expressed his bitter disappointment over the failure of the police to discharge their duties duly.
The judge made these adverse comments when the suspects involved in the protests staged on April 23 rd in front of the Birbery and corruption commission defying even a court injunction, were produced in court yesterday (08)
27 UPFA MPs including Dallas Alahaperuma, Bandula Gunawardena, Gamini Lokuge, Janaka Priyantha Bandara ,Sarath Weerasekera , Roshan Ranasinghe , Jayantha Kethagoda, Uditha Lokubandara ,Weerakumara Dissanayake and S.M .Chandrasena were produced before court and released on bail. The chief magistrate who did not wish to insult Buddhism though the monks by misbehaving did not show that concern for their religion ,permitted the robed monks to be seated on a bench . However the shameless political goons , the ex ministers , MPs and PC members who committed the criminal offence were put behind bars for about two hours until the bail conditions were fulfilled and they were released .
These suspects finally left the courts after spending two hours behind bars within the court . Those who witnessed this disgraceful spectacle said , these politicos are getting a foretaste of much worse punishment they deserve and are in store for them.
The suspects had to face delays when being released because the keys of the prison cage within the court was misplaced. Gamini Lokuge reportedly had fainted within the cage.
The chief magistrate said , it is a matter for deep regret that the suspect Priyantha Janaka Bandara who was serving as a magistrate in court being seen in the dock as an accused . Janaka Bandara was an erstwhile magistrate who was dismissed from the post based on irregularities committed by him .
The chief magistrate questioned the indicted monks , to what extent reciting pirith across the main road hindering the movements of the public is in accord with the Buddhist tenets and precepts ? while revealing to them that he is a Buddhist himself .
--------------------------- by (2015-05-09 11:43:22)
“As a creeper overpowers the entwined Sal tree, he whose impiety is great reduces himself to the state which his enemy wishes for him.” -Attavaggo, Dhammapada.
The meeting of the present President, Maitripala Sirisena (MS) with the previous President, Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) was held yesterday (7th of May 15) in Parliament. From the sources we have, it is clear that the meeting flopped. One newspaper report stated that when MR at one stage threatened to walk out Maitri had stated that he could do so if he wanted to. One gets the impression that MR had acted like a bully trying to coerce the hand of MS into granting unreasonable demands. According to sources he had asked to be named as Prime Ministerial candidate from the SLFP. Refused. He had requested MS to detach himself from the UNP. Refused. He had wanted a stop to ongoing corruption investigations by the FCID. Refused. Of course MR must walk out. But he didn’t.
Pretty cheeky and brazen, I thought those reported demands were! Typical bullying tactics. The brawniness of a suburban macho and the polite shrewdness of a simple village peasant was in display in this narrative. One newspaper cartoon showed MS offering hoppers to MR. “Ganna ko!” (“take will you!”)
The surprising electoral defeat has not taught Mahinda a lesson. That is clear. His post- electoral behavior makes this self-evident. The strident efforts of those around him who have lost perks, benefits and illegal windfalls have given Mahinda a boost from outside. There was Nugegoda. There was Kandy. There was Ratnapura. And, today, there is Kurunegala. Although diminishing returns are seen in these successive bring-back rallies MR cronies are not deterred in what appears to them as a life or death struggle. Such bliss these cronies enjoyed; such power to order and to control; such money to come by. How can they lose all that? In countries like Australia, where I live, defeated pollies have ready-made exit avenues in the private sector. But what avenues do vanquished and incompetent cronies have in Sri Lanka where they acted as parasites on society-eking out of it rather than giving to it. Besides, many of them hardly sleep dreaming of the FCID knocking at their doors. Read More
(Lanka-e-News -09.May.2015, 10.00PM) The deposed deflated ex president Mahinda Rajapakse had instructed Dinesh Gunawardena M.P. to probe whether there is a possibility to raise a question of breach of parliamentary privilege before the speaker of parliament against the Colombo chief magistrate Gihan Pilapitiya , according to reports.
The UPFA MPs Dallas Alahaperuma , Bandula Gunawardena , Gamini Lokuge , Janaka Priyantha Bandara , Sarath Weerasekera ,Roshan Ranasinghe,Jayantha Ketagoda, Uditha Lokubandara ,Weerakumara Dissanayake and S.M. Chandrasena who were found guilty of contempt of court for not abiding by the directives of the court had expressed their grievances to Mahinda Rajapkse who by now is widely known as mentally moth eaten due to senile decay despite all the cosmetic display he puts on before the public to hide it . Mahinda despite his own embattled state with mounting accusations against him of embezzlements and corruption had tried to maintain his fast crumbling ‘hero’ image before his UPFA zeros , by giving the instructions noted in the foregoing paragraph to Dinesh Gunawardena.
These UPFA politicos have complained to Mahinda that the respect (if they have any ?) they deserve as parliamentary members and provincial council members were trampled by the Colombo chief magistrate in open court when they appeared in court , and therefore suitable action be taken since their parliamentary privileges have been breached thereby.
Dallas Alahaperuma had pointed out , when their group appeared before court , the attitude of the chief magistrate and detaining them in the prison cage of the court for two hours constitute a breach of privilege of the MPs , and therefore the chief magistrate Gihan Pilapitiya should be summoned to parliament and questioned.
Udaya Gammanpila had complained to deposed president that Gihan Pilapitiya has now become a stooge of the government (for taking action duly against the law breakers?). Hence a parliamentary action should be initiated to somehow displace him from his post . Measures must be taken to stage protests Island wide against Gihan Pilapitiya to achieve this goal , Gammanpila had further stated.
Mahinda Rajapakse of course having nothing better to do during these days , and with an idle mind that has turned into a devil’s workshop had agreed to focus on the future parliamentary action simultaneously with a poster campaign against courts
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by (2015-05-09 17:00:57)
2015-05-08 Colombo Chief Magistrate Gihan Pilapitiya today ordered the CID to arrest the suspects and and produce them in court on July 13 on charges of having maligned the National Flag by displaying a distorted version during a protest opposite the Bribery Commission on April 20. The Cinnamon Gardens Police in a report filed in Court requested that the investigations be handed over to the CID. The Magistrate acceding to the request directed the CID to take over the investigations and arrest the suspects who maligned the national flag by waving a distorted version of the flag during the demonstration held opposite the BC when former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa reported to the BC to record his statement. - See more at: http://www.dailymirror.lk/71791/cid-told-to-arrest-suspects-who-maligned-national-flag#sthash.Ndw51yDv.dpuf
It is being revealed the Chancellor of the Uva Wellassa University and the venerable in charge of the Sri Pada Bengamuwe Dhammadinna thero who is an uncle of the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa owns three licensed Gem mines and many illegal gem mines. According to the Gems and Jewelry Authority although he has licenses for a mine is Kiriella Rathnapura and for another two mines in Pathakada there are many illegal mines are being preserved by him around the area without license. Officers attached to the authority said although there was pre-information about this before due to the influence of the former Rajapaksa regime no mines were raided but they said they are surprised why the authority still has not taken credible steps about this.
According to Buddhist tenets Buddhist monks cannot involve in industries or at least brake a branch in a tree. But at a time where the Lord Buddha’s teachings have gone for dogs we are afraid that the
A labourer ties a bundle of sugarcane on a rickshaw to transport it at a wholesale sugarcane market in Kolkata, India, May 4, 2015.-REUTERS/RUPAK DE CHOWDHURI
AHMEDNAGAR, INDIA| BY RAJENDRA JADHAV-Tue May 5, 2015
It is a Catch-22 for Nandkumar Patil, one of the millions of sugar cane farmers in India.
Millers have not paid up for his cane this year as falling sugar prices have hit their income. But switching crops is not an option as prices for most agricultural produce have dropped and forecasts for weak monsoons have raised worries on yields.
With farmers like Patil staying put on cane fields, India is seen producing excess sugar in 2015/16. A sixth annual surplus, the longest such stretch ever, will allow the world's No.2 sugar producer after Brazil to remain a net exporter, denting global prices that hit six-year lows in March on ample supplies.
In the past, lower prices have prompted Indian cane growers to switch to other crops, but given uncertainties about the monsoons this year, farmers see more sense in staying with resilient cane than moving to delicate crops.
"In changing weather conditions, sugar cane is more reliable than others. You may get lower returns, but at least something is assured," said the farmer Patil from India's top sugar producing state, Maharashtra, who is still owed nearly 50,000 rupees by a mill for cane sold this year.
"In other crops you may not get anything if weather becomes erratic," said Patil, whose onion crop on two acres was damaged this year by unseasonal rainfall in February.
Vivek Shinde, another cane farmer, agreed.
"Cane prices can't fall below a certain level, but that is not the case with vegetables. They can rise to 100 rupees per kg or fall to 5 rupees," said Shinde, from Ahmednagar district, 250 km east of Mumbai.
Shinde should ideally get 2,500 rupees per tonne for cane as per the price fixed by the central government, but millers have been paying him 40 percent less.
TAKING HEART FROM GOVERNMENT MEASURES
Cane farmers in India are, however, taking heart from recent government measures, such as a subsidy for raw sugar exports and higher import duties, aimed at helping the country's beleaguered mills as well as its farmers.
Due to plunging domestic sugar prices, down 16 percent over the past seven months, mills' financial health has been eroded to the extent that they now owe more than $3 billion to cane growers for purchases made since Oct. 1, 2014.
"The government measures are providing farmers hope that their income will improve going ahead," said Pallavi Munankar, commodity analyst at Geofin Comtrade.
Also, given the low cost of taking a second harvest from the stubs of cane roots, known as ratoon, means farmers will stay with it, Munankar added. Indian farmers usually take one ratoon crop as after that yields begin to drop.
India's sugar output in 2015/16 could reach 25.7-26 million tonnes, versus its demand for around 25 million tonnes, said Rahil Shaikh, managing director of commodities trader ED&F Man Commodities India. That would account for 15 percent of total global sugar output, almost unchanged from this year.
With its recent surplus, India is set to start the sugar marketing year in October with carry forward stocks of 9.5 million tonnes, the Indian Sugar Mills Association said.
When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur – too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen? Think about the recent debates on torture, assassination by unmanned aircraft, secret warrants and detentions, intelligence and surveillance courts, military commissions, immigration detention centers and the conduct of modern warfare. These policies affect millions of people around the world every day and can affect anyone – wives, children, fathers, aunts, boyfriends, cousins, friends, employees, bosses, clergy and even career politicians – at any time. It is time that we bring a health dose of sunlight to them.
I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state.
In the past decade or so there have been an increasing number of clashes – both in the public and behind the scenes – between the US government, the news media and those in the public who want fair access to records that pertain to the implementation of policies by their government.
After the establishment of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice in 2006, there have been more national security and criminal investigations into journalists and prosecutions of their sources than at any other time in the nation’s memory. Eight people have been charged under provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917 for giving documents and information to the media by this administration alone – including me, former CIA officers Jeffrey Sterling and John Kiriakou, and the former Department of State analyst Stephen Jin-Woo Kim.
The roots of this crackdown seem to have begun before the administration took office: Steven Rose and Keith Weissman were prosecuted for sharing information about classified foreign policy issues to members of the media, analysts, and officials of a foreign nation, though neither man worked for the government or had a security clearance. The lawyers who prosecuted Rose and Weissman successfully established their broad interpretation of the Espionage Act before Judge TS Ellis III; though he ruled in their favor, he also warned that “the time is ripe for Congress to engage in a thorough review and revision of [the Espionage Act of 1917] to ensure that they reflect ... contemporary views about the appropriate balance between our nation’s security and our citizens’ ability to engage in public debate about the United States’ conduct in the society of nations.
And, when I was court-martialed for providing government documents and information that I felt were in the public interest to a media organization, the government charged me with “aiding the enemy” – a treason-related offense under the US constitution and military justice system that even civilians may be charged with. During one of my pre-trial hearing in January 2013, the military judge in my case, US Army Colonel Denise Lind, asked the government lawyers: “Does it make any difference – if we substituted Wikileaks for The New York Times, would the government still be charging this case in the manner that it has and proceeding as you’re doing?” An assistant trial counsel for the government answered a straightforward “Yes, Ma’am”; the lead trial counsel elaborated with a reference to a US Civil War era court-martial, in which the soldier was sentenced to six months imprisonment without a trained lawyer representing him, or any post-trial appeals process: “This isn’t the first time that Article 104 has been charged for a service member providing information to the enemy through a member of the news media.”
The government further argued that there was no distinction to be made between any media organizations that provided information to the public, if the government felt would “aid” the enemy: whether such information was published by a small-time blog, a controversial website like Wikileaks, a national newspaper like the Washington Post, or an international one like the Guardian, to the government, they can all be “aiding the enemy”.
After 9/11, a dedicated office of lawyers specializing in novel applications of law for national security issues, the National Security Division (NSD), was created and now, with a small caseload and an enormous amount of resources, this division of the Department of Justice has been waging a quiet war against the media, their sources and the right to free speech and a free press, using the growing national security and surveillance apparatus to prosecute various cases and, occasionally, target the media.
Consider the Department of Justice’s admission in May 2013 that they had secretly seized sensitive office, home and cellular telephone records from more than 20 reporters working for the Associated Press while investigating a leak leading to a 2012 AP news story reporting on an operation foiling a terrorist plot. The president of the AP, Gary Pruitt, called the actions a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” and noted that the government’s actions were creating a profound chilling effect on sources and members of the press. The president personally defended the actions of the Department of Justice, saying: “I make no apologies”.
The US needs legislation to protect the public’s right to free speech and a free press, to protect it from the actions of the executive branch and to promote the integrity and transparency of the US government.
We need to create a media “shield” law with teeth and substance that creates an effective federal privilege for communications between a journalist and her sources, preventing the government from compelling testimony from the journalist and to protect the documents, records and other information created by the journalist and the actual communications between the journalist and her sources. The privilege should be in effect unless the government can prove with clear and convincing evidence that very clear and dangerous circumstances should merit an exception.
We also need to narrow the murky and awkward military offense of “aiding the enemy” into a time of war offense and restrict its application to military personnel. It can be replaced through the creation of an explicit “treason” and “misprision of treason” offense under military law – based on existing US civilian law – for those who openly wage war and attempt to overthrow the US government.
It is also long past time for the government to live up to its commitment to transparency by enacting the changes to the Freedom of Information Act (Foia)and records retention rules that were in the Foia Improvement Act of 2014, which nearly passed in the US Congress at the end of last year and were re-introduced this year. It should also amend the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to require that the government prove a clear intent to harm the government or anyone else and to make the motive of the accused relevant at trial.
These changes would go far – but certainly not all the way – toward ensuring that future citizens under future administrations can continue to be able to question and criticize their government without fear of being publicly humiliated and prosecuted by their government. It would also set a clear example to the rest of the world that, in a truly modern democratic republic, the suppression of the press and sources by criminal prosecutions cannot be tolerated. Then the US could no longer be used as an excuse by repressive governments around the world to say: “Well, they do it in America, too.”
The Soviet Union resisted, fought back and eventually won the war, at a gigantic human and material cost with up to 27 million deaths.
By Ezequiel Adamovsky
May 07, 2015 “Information Clearing House” - The Soviet Union resisted, fought back and eventually won the war, at a gigantic human and material cost with up to 27 million deaths.
As a child growing up in the periphery of the “Free world”, I learned to imagine World War II as a clash between the evil forces of Nazi Germany and the Americans, the liberators of old Europe.
Like many young folks, I grew up watching Combat!, the American TV series. I can still hear in my head the German soldiers crying “Amerikaner!” in desperation every time they bumped into the heroic troops of Sergeant “Chip” Saunders, who would invariably annihilate them.
Later on I suffered together with Private Ryan while he was being rescued in Steven Spielberg’s extraordinary film. As I learned by watching American TV, Americans also tend to imagine that they saved the world from the Nazi menace. As Moe proudly tells a Briton in a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, “You know, we saved your ass in World War II!”.
As far as I know, that is not an uncommon phrase in the US. According to this imagination, in World War II the Americans rescued not only poor Ryan, but also European (and probably world) freedom.
The missing part in all these recollections is of course the Russians. I have no childhood images of their role in WWII, but I later learned that they also played a part and that they actually claim that it was them who saved Europe from the Nazis.
When I visited Berlin two years ago I went to the magnificent Soviet War Memorial on Treptower Park. A gigantic statue there shows a Soviet soldier rescuing a child while destroying a swastika. Smaller monuments also celebrate the role of communist partisans who resisted the German invasion in other countries. While I was observing the statue, a group of American tourists was being briefed by a local guide, who emphasized the propaganda function of the memorial, aimed at exalting communism and the historical role of Stalin and the Soviet Union.
Granted: all countries have their own politics of commemoration. Treptower Park Memorial is undoubtedly a piece of propaganda, as the German guide explained. But the same can be said of Hollywood’s productions. As a recent Wikileaks revelation exposed, just like in the good old times of the Cold War, the US government is still recruiting entertainment corporations to help in propaganda wars against its enemies, including Russia.
Yet, the effectiveness of each propaganda endeavors has not been the same. On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Russian side of the story is almost inaudible out of Russia. The American propaganda has to a great extent shaped the social memory of WWII worldwide.
A good example of this is the shifts in historical memory in France, the territory that was actually liberated as a direct consequence of the American military intervention. In 1945, immediately after the end of the war, a poll was conducted among French people. One of the main questions was “Which country do you think played the most important role in the defeat of Germany?” 57% of the interviewees responded that it was the Soviet Union, 20% chose the US and 12% the UK. The same poll was conducted again in 1994. Interestingly enough, only 26% chose the Soviet Union this time, while 49% responded it was the US. The poll was repeated in 2004. By then the reversal was even more noticeable, with only 20% choosing the Soviet Union and 58% the US (the perception of the British role did not change much).
By contrasting memory with historical facts, it is not difficult to conclude that the French people of 1945 were closer to the truth than recent respondents.
Despite Hollywood imagination, there is little doubt that the Soviet Union played the most important role in the defeat of the Nazis. The core of WWII was the Eastern front. Hitler mobilized incomparably more soldiers, weapons and equipment against the Soviet Union than were used in the Western Front. When he set to invade Russia in June 1941 Germany deployed over 3 million soldiers; to this number we should add many more provided by the Finns, Rumanians, Croatians, Hungarians, Italians and Spaniards.
After Goebbels proclaimed “total war” in 1943, more forces were added to the initial endowment. Vast portions of the Soviet Union were invaded and major cities –included Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and Stalingrad (now Volgograd)– were besieged.
The Soviet Union resisted, fought back and eventually won the war, at a gigantic human and material cost. 34.5 million men and women were mobilized. The number of Soviet deaths in WWII has been much debated, but current academic consensus suggests that it was between 25 and 27 million (half of which were military deaths).
By comparison, the US contribution to the defeat of Germany was small. Although Americans engaged in combats with the Germans in Africa and in the periphery of Europe before, the most relevant battles only came in the second phase of the Western front, after the invasion of Normandy in June 1944.
In that famous episode, the combined Allied forces deployed 175,000 men, half of which were American. In the whole of World War II the American forces accumulated 407,316 servicemen dead, including those who died fighting in the Pacific War and with all non-German combatants (including civilian deaths, the total number would be around 420,000). Great Britain lost a similar number, while German wartime deaths are estimated in five to seven million.
As British historian Roger Bartlett concluded, “with all credit to British and American achievements, it is clear that Nazism was defeated in the Soviet Union”.
There is little chance that the 70th anniversary of the Nazi defeat will offer the opportunity for a non-ideological revisiting of the past. In recent commemorations in Europe, Russia has been deliberately excluded, like never before. Earlier this year Poland celebrated the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army. Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, was not invited, under the absurd claim that it was Ukrainian soldiers (and not Russians) who actually liberated the Jews of that concentration camp.
Likewise, Obama and several European heads of State have organized a boycott against Russia’s official parade of Victory Day, which will be held this May 9 in Moscow. The boycott, they say, comes because of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. This would perhaps be a valid reason, if it was not for the fact that no boycotts are in order when the US bombs other countries or force changes of their governments, or when US allies –like Israel– occupy other nation’s lands by military force.
So let us profit from this opportunity to remember history beyond propaganda. If there was such a thing as a “Free world” in 1945, it was to a great extent thanks to the armies of a communist country and to the irregular forces of anti-fascist partisans in France, Italy and other nations, a good deal of which were also communists. Our grateful memory of those who died fighting fascism should include all of them.
La nueva Televisión del Sur C.A. (TVSUR) RIF: G-20004500-0
Russian president uses Moscow’s annual Victory Day parade to accuse the US of ignoring principles of international cooperation
Thousands of Russian troops march across Red Square in Moscow on Saturday to mark the 70th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany Damien Gayle and agencies-Saturday 9 May 2015
Vladimir Putin has used an address commemorating the 70th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany to accuse the US of attempting to dominate the world.
Speaking at Moscow’s annual Victory Day parade in Red Square, which this year has been boycotted by western leaders over the continuing crisis in Ukraine, the Russian president berated Washington for “attempts to create a unipolar world”.
Putin said despite the importance of international cooperation, “in the past decades we have seen attempts to create a unipolar world”. That phrase is often used by Russia to criticise the US for purportedly attempting to dominate world affairs.
The US president, Barack Obama, has snubbed the festivities, as have the leaders of Russia’s other key second world war allies, Britain and France, leaving Putin to mark the day in the company of the leaders of China, Cuba and Venezuela.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has likewise ducked out of attending the parade but will fly to Moscow on Sunday to lay a wreath at the grave of the Unknown Warrior and meet the Russian president.
As western sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine continue to bite, Moscow has increasingly appeared to pivot away from Europe and focus more on developing relations with China. The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, will be the most high-profile guest on the podium next to Putin. Other presidents in attendance include India’s Pranab Mukherjee, president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi of Egypt, Raúl Castro of Cuba, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Jacob Zuma of South Africa.
Russia used the parade to show off its latest military technology – including the Armata tank – in the parade, which included 16,000 troops and a long convoy of weapons dating from the second world war to the present day. Also on show for the first time was a RS-24 Yars ICBM launcher, which Moscow has said described as a response to US and Nato anti-missile systems.
The celebrations stand in contrast to the festivities a decade ago, when Putin hosted the leaders of the US, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
The Soviet Union lost about 27 million soldiers and civilians – more than any other country – in what it calls the “great patriotic war”, and the Red Army’s triumph remains an enormous source of national pride.
On Saturday morning, many Muscovites sported garrison caps and black and orange striped ribbons that have become a symbol of patriotism in recent years. More than 70% of Russians say a close family member was killed or went missing during the war, making Victory Day an emotional symbol of unity for the nation.
In recent years, victory in what Russians see as a 1941-1945 conflict has been raised to cult status and critics accuse Putin of seeking to co-opt the country’s history to boost his personal power.
The Kremlin has also used second world war narratives to rally support for its current political agenda, for example painting the Ukrainian government as Nazi sympathisers.
Later in the day around 200,000 people were expected to march through Red Square with portraits of relatives who fought in the war, in a Kremlin-backed campaign dubbed the “immortal regiment”.
The parade will also see more than 100 military planes – including long-range nuclear bombers swoop over Moscow in a spectacular flyby.
Smaller parades in 25 other cities will involve 25,000 soldiers and even nuclear submarines, according to the defence ministry.
For the first eight years of the CIA’s secret drone wars in Yemen and Pakistan, “oversight” by elected officials amounted to little more than an occasional phone chat with select politicians. Every now and then, the agency’s director would pick up the phone, call the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and describe a high-profile drone mission that had just taken place.
“We were not hiding the football on this from anybody, certainly not while I was there,” one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official told me.
Yet it still took until 2010 before formal oversight was introduced. By then, more than 850 people — perhaps one in three of them civilians — had already died in 100 CIA drone strikes. Since then, intelligence officials met once a month with security-cleared members of the House and Senate to talk through the drone killing program — and to show them selected videos of strikes.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), at the time chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, boasted in 2012 that this congressional oversight would tackle the secret drone war’s “legality, effectiveness, precision, foreign-policy implications, and the care taken to minimize noncombatant casualties.”
Except it hasn’t worked out that way. Instead, of acting like overseers, members of Congress often resemble cheerleaders. In 2013, for example, members of both the House and the Senate intelligence committees raised concerns about CIA plans to kill terror suspect and U.S. citizen Mohanad Mahmoud al-Farek. Their complaint? The CIA hadn’t killed him fast enough. (Farek was instead captured by Pakistan in late 2014 and is currently awaiting trial in New York.)
Now there are hopes this ineffective oversight might come to an end. Following the news that a CIA drone strike in January accidentally killed an American held hostage by al Qaeda, calls for changes to the program have been growing. And increasingly, policymakers are signing up to an idea that the White House and its allies have been pushing for years: transferring the entire targeted killing program away from the CIA to the Pentagon. Even Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), rarely a White House ally on foreign-policy issues, has been talking up the idea recently.
It’s easy to see why some transparency and oversight advocates might be tempted to support such a change. Some believe that a Pentagon-run killing program could allow for more openness than the current ban on any public disclosure of CIA drone operations allows.
There might be some technical advantages to placing the entire targeted killing mission under Pentagon control — after all, even the CIA’s missions are already flown by the Air Force. But the case for more transparency isn’t a convincing one. And neither is the suggestion that the Pentagon might run the killing program any more effectively.
According to some former high-ranking intelligence officials, the Senate Armed Services Committee might be even less equipped to oversee targeted killings away from the battlefield than the Senate Intelligence Committee. That’s because most drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, or Somalia would be carried out on behalf of the super-secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
“Don’t think that JSOC doing it is going to be more transparent than the current situation. Because JSOC doesn’t talk much to the Armed Services guys, compared to what some other committees get,” one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official told me.
Senator Feinstein appears to agree, recently insisting that “we have much more oversight over the intelligence program than we have over the military program, and that’s just a fact.”
In my book Sudden Justice, I describe how U.S. Special Forces secretly flew hundreds of drone surveillance missions inside Pakistan on behalf of the CIA. According to a number of Special Forces personnel taking part in these missions, none ever went “kinetic.” But they did provide crucial “pattern of life” analysis for the CIA, the modeling of suspect behavior that is used in the agency’s targeted killings.
Was McCain’s Senate committee ever told about those super-secret JSOC operations? It seems unlikely.Sources were more nervous speaking about these operations than they were about the CIA’s secret drone squadrons. As one former military operator told me, they had “no intention of wearing an orange jumpsuit for the next 20 years by talking about this.”
The CIA, by contrast, is at least under an obligation to discuss its actions with Congressional oversight committees, thanks to transparency legislation that was introduced in the late 1970s.
“The CIA supposedly has to tell each of the Select Committees in its testimony, or at least in its testimony in closed session to the few who are able to get it, what it’s doing. It never does, of course, and it lies consistently,” Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, told me. “But it at least it has to say something to somebody, and if they ask the right questions — which sometimes they do — it has to say even more.”
So are there any circumstances in which transferring secret drone strikes to the military might actually improve accountability? Probably not.
Both JSOC and the Pentagon have routinely glossed over or flatly denied well-documented screw-ups in their own drone strikes in recent years. Take the example of Abdullah Mabkhut al-Amri and Warda al-Sorimi. In December 2013, these widowed Yemenis remarried in rural Yemen. It should have been one of the happiest days of their lives. Instead, a JSOC-controlled drone bombed their wedding convoy as it made its way toward the couple’s new home. Among the dozen or more dead were the groom’s 25-year-old son, by his first marriage. “We were in a wedding, but all of a sudden it became a funeral,” Abdullah later told Human Rights Watch. “Why did the United States do this to us?”
The Pentagon held two inquiries into the strike. Both claimed no civilians died. But Yemeni officials apologized for civilian casualties and even paid out $150,000 in compensation to the families of those killed. JSOC’s errors had major strategic consequences — with Yemen’s parliament eventually voting to ban all U.S. drone strikes as a result. Yet no one from the U.S. military was ever reprimanded for civilian deaths that day, as far as we know.
The case isn’t unique. In every drone screw-up by JSOC over the years — and there have been quite a few, according to monitoring groups — there’s been no credible transparency after the act, nor any apparent eagerness by congressional armed services committees to take the elite unit to task.
The idea of transferring the drone program from the CIA to the military is not a new one. Agency Director John Brennan said in his confirmation hearing in 2013 that he believed “the CIA should not be doing traditional military activities and operations.” Yet until McCain’s recent comments, the idea appeared to have gone cold.
Perhaps Brennan was digesting the uncomfortable truth that the CIA might simply be better at the job of drone killing than JSOC. Until Obama ordered Special Forces drones into Yemen and Somalia in 2011, it turns out JSOC wasn’t even particularly interested in killing with its Predators. Former pilots, operators, and analysts all told me JSOC’s emphasis was almost always on intelligence gathering rather than targeted assassination.
“We did not want to have to shoot the Hellfire [missile]. That meant something went wrong,” Pete Forrest, a former special forces drone commander said.
In contrast, after 14 years the CIA has become very good at targeted assassinations with unmanned aerial vehicles. After all, that had always been the mission. And since Obama clashed with the CIA over civilian deaths in 2010, apparently the agency became a lot better at not killing civilians, too. That may be a skill set the White House remains loath to throw away.
(Lanka-e-News- 09.May.2015, 5.00PM) ‘The laws of the country and court orders cannot be allowed to be disdained or violated by anyone ‘ said the chief magistrate of Colombo Gihan Pilapitiya while ordering the police to immediately arrest and produce before court all the monks, parliamentary and provincial council (PC) representatives who defied the law and courts. The chief magistrate also expressed his bitter disappointment over the failure of the police to discharge their duties duly.
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