Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Central Bank time bomb to explode

2016-06-29

When Sir John Kotelawala was the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, he arranged a banquet for the British Bank Governor at the Temple Trees for which the Central Bank Governor at that time N.U. Jayawardena was also invited. While the dinner was in progress, Sir John suddenly flew into a rage at N.U. Jayawardena, and said, "I say, I am informed that you are earning a lot from the Central Bank monies". This made NU's face to turn red. "You'd better understand I can probe your foreign assets under the Foreign Exchange Act," NU yelled at Sir John.

It was on that day Sir John decided to appoint a Commission to investigate into NU's corruption and frauds. After the Commission was appointed, and NU was found guilty, J. R. Jayewardene went to meet Sir John and had discussions on behalf of NU. JR advised Sir John, as NU's caste representation was most essential to the government and the party, to re consider the decision. JR and NU were intimate friends. Sir John chased JR away. It was based on the Commission's decision NU was dismissed.
Journalists went to meet NU after his dismissal from the post. While the journalists were expressing their sorrow over the incident, NU made an intriguing statement, "my friends, you must be telling like this about me now, but just wait and see. I shall stage a come-back soon. When that happens you must splash it in the newspapers as headlines".

NU was a friend of United Nations Permanent Representative R.S.S. Gunawardena. The latter was the best man at the wedding of Bandaranaike. NU through him ingratiated himself into the company of Bandaranaike.
After his dismissal from the post of Governor, Central Bank, NU did not idle away his time. He actively campaigned to defeat Sir John at the 1956 elections, while also spending heavily in that direction. He even mustered the support of those representing his caste and campaigned for Bandaranaike.

Sir John Kotelawala
When Bandaranaike won the elections, he freed NU of the charges mounted against him by the Commission appointed by Sir John. That was on his appeal.
That was how the bomb of the first Governor of Sri Lanka's Central Bank ripped apart Sir John's Government. This old incident comes to memory when analyzing the storm of controversy that has been triggered now owing to Arjuna Mahendran the Central Bank Governor. In any event the Central Bank is a place where disputes originate. The dispute between Sir John and NU started from the Central Bank, and JR was also in a corner of it.

Prior to that, during the period of Dudley's Government the Central Bank bomb exploded in JR's hand. That was when JR the then Finance Minister went to prepare the budget on the advice of American national John Exter, the first Central Bank Governor of Sri Lanka. Following the demise of D.S. Senanayake, it was Exter the Central Bank Governor who advised Dudley Senanayake after his appointment as the Prime Minister to go for a snap election. This is how it is mentioned in the Biography of Late J. R Jayewardene.
Dudley, some days after becoming PM dissolved Parliament on 4 April 1952. There were several reasons that prompted Dudley to go for a snap election. Let us state first, this necessity arose because Exter the Central Bank Governor advised to go for elections before the country's economic predicament aggravated.

As John Exter prophesied, Dudley by going for general elections won convincingly. It is thereafter Exter began advising JR cut relief to resuscitate the economy. In accordance with Exter's advice, JR as Finance Minister made cut backs on the rice ration which precipitated the 1953 hartal. Owing to a shooting incident, Dudley had to resign. Dudley resigned in anger against JR. The pro-Dudley groups instilled poison into Dudley's mind that JR conspired with Exter to drive Dudley into a quagmire. In the biography of late JR this is how it is related.

While the country's economy was booming and there was a revival in 1954, Dudley regretted that his decision to resign (1953 July) taken too hastily owing to the hartal and the unsavoury budget was a shortsighted step. He thought JR must have got rattled because of Exter's pressures and debates for and against. Erosion of Dudley's implicit faith in JR's political acumen was a long lasting outcome of the hartal, yet he did not approve of the criticism levelled against JR by Dudley's relative Neela – sister of R.G. Senanayake, that JR's rice ration cut backs was a deception practised on Dudley.

In the end, Exter had to go home. Now Ranil the nephew of JR has to face issues because of the Central Bank Governor he appointed.
The issue of the Central Bank Governor is a time bomb planted within the government. It is the masses who appointed the government into power who are waiting to see how Ranil is going to defuse the bomb.

Chinese couple arrested with three antique statues

2016-06-29
Two 40-year-old Chinese, a husband and wife, were arrested this morning at the Katunayake Airport on charges of being in possession of three antique statues of deities, Customs Media Spokesman Darmasena Kahandawa said.

They were arrested by Customs officers at the airport departure lounge while attempting to smuggle the three statues to China.

Customs investigations revealed that the statues had been purchased from the Bentota Archeological Department.

Mr. Kahandawa said the statues were sent to the Archeological Department for verification and the Chinese couple released.

The raid was conducted by Customs Superintendent of N.A. Ratnayake, Assistant Superintendents W.P. Cyril, P.N. Fonseka T.K. Gunstilake, H.A.S. Perera and H.M Anthony. (Chaturanga Pradeep and T.K.G. Kapila)

Ranga to be arrested soon

Jun 29, 2016

The former parliament MP J. Sri Ranga would be arrested soon for an incident happened during the period of the former regime. He is alleged for misleading the courts about a death of a person when he was driving a vehicle in 2011.

Many crimes committed by politicians and their henchmen’s during the former regime are coming to light one by one and we should value that the justice is met even lately.

In 2011 March the vehicle Ranga was travelling met with an accident and his ministerial security bodyguard Jayamini Pushpakumara died. According to sources Ranga has driven the vehicle by himself despite his usual driver has gone on holidays. However following the accident using his parliamentary powers Ranga has able to get out from the allegations and told the police his security guard was driving the vehicle. However according to the investigations conducted by the Settikulam police it was revealed that Jayamini Pushpakumara was seated in the left side of the driving seat while the accident occurred.

Two strong stalwarts of the Rajapaksa regime from Anuradapura and Hambantota have come forward for rescue Ranga. They have intimidated the police and damaged the vehicle further to cover the accident and the actual damage.

However Sri Ranga has able to get out from the allegations from the intimidations of the stalwarts of the former regime by heaping the accident to the deceased ministerial security member.

Meantime last 22nd the wife of the deceased has filed a case in the Vavuniya police about the accident and the case will be heard on the 26th. Although Ranga got free from the allegation due to political influence he cannot get away from it this time due to the report noted by the Settikulam police regarding the accident.

Meantime reports reaching us confirm that Ranga has intimidated his driver Mohan who was on holiday at the time of the accident.

Ranga has forced this driver to involve in the accident. Following the accident Ranga has called Mohan and forced him to come to Vavuniya and take the responsibility of the accident by inducing him large amount of money.

However Mohan said that Ranga tried to influence him by paying money and entangle him to take responsibility of a fault not committed by him and he showed his resentment. Mohan is alleging that Ranga intimidated him.

US-backed rebels in Syria seize huge cache of IS documents

Find comes as separate group of US-trained rebels farther south retakes and loses key border crossing within matter of hours

Rebels also took control of network of underground tunnels built by IS near Manbij (AFP)

Wednesday 29 June 2016

US-backed Syrian fighters battling the Islamic State (IS) group captured thousands of its documents, cellphones and other digital devices, a Pentagon official said on Wednesday.

The seizure came on Wednesday as an anti-IS force of Kurdish and Syrian Arab fighters honed in on the northern city of Manbij, an important waypoint between the Turkish border and Raqqa, the militants' de facto capital.

Colonel Chris Garver, a spokesman for the US-led anti-IS campaign, said Syrian Arab fighters were establishing "footholds" on the southern and western edges of Manbij, and had seized entrances to an intricate tunnel complex built by the militants.

They "also seized more than 10,000 documents from the outlying edges, including textbooks, propaganda posters, cellphones, laptops, maps and digital storage devices," Garver told reporters.

"Exploitation of this information is ongoing to better understand Daesh networks and techniques, including the systems to manage the flow of foreign fighters into Syria and Iraq," he added, using an Arabic abbreviation for the IS group.

Pentagon officials often highlight the value of such information, which can improve their grasp of the IS network and lead to new targets.

Separately, in the southeastern corner of Syria, a group of US-trained rebels called the New Syrian Army on Wednesday battled for control of territory near the Albu Kamal border crossing with Iraq.

Their goal was to cut IS supply lines in the Euphrates Valley between Syria and Iraq.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the rebels had seized the small al-Hamdan airbase nearby, but by Wednesday afternoon IS had recaptured it, forcing the rebels to retreat.

Garver did not provide additional details about the ongoing fight but stressed the value of the border crossing.

"That fight is important because that's going to help slow down the flow of foreign fighters ... from Iraq to Syria and back," he said.

The Pentagon claims the numbers of foreign fighters coming into Iraq and Syria have dropped from about 2,000 a month last year to as few as 200 a month this year.

"You don't see the massive amounts of movement. It's certainly been whittled down in its size," Garver said.

IS seized the Albu Kamal crossing in mid-2014, when it overran swaths of territory on both sides of the border and declared a self-styled "caliphate."

In Iraq, Garver said attention is now shifting from Fallujah, which Iraqi security forces last week recaptured from IS, to the militants' main stronghold in the country, Mosul.

Coalition air strikes have destroyed IS's "self-proclaimed ministry of oil headquarters" in Mosul and continue to hit targets in the city, Garver said.

Why is Carlos Santana refusing to honor Israel boycott call?

Find comes as separate group of US-trained rebels farther south retakes and loses key border crossing within matter of hours

Nora Barrows-Friedman- 29 June 2016

Carlos Santana and his charitable foundation have ignored repeated calls to cancel an upcoming performance in Tel Aviv.

The legendary guitarist canceled a performance in Tel Aviv in 2010, heeding the call from boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists around the world.

Supporters of Palestinian human rights are outraged that Santana is now preparing to cross the international picket line.

On Tuesday, a group of Bay Area-based Palestine solidarity organizers, some with children, attempted to deliver a petition, signed by 25,000 people demanding the musician cancel his 30 July gig, to the San Rafael offices of Santana’s management and his Milagro Foundation.

However workers at the foundation, which supports community organizations serving marginalized children and youth, “refused to open the door … and closed the blinds,” according to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA).

Jewish Voice for Peace live-streamed the attempted petition delivery.

“We’re here as parents, as activists, as individuals who care about Palestinian children and their rights. And we’re calling on Santana to do the same,” says an activist in the video.

“He has a foundation set up to serve children who are marginalized, and Palestinian children need his support too.”

One child, 4-year-old Marcel, “was stooping down, trying to see through the door’s glass. He couldn’t understand why there would be someone waving to him on the other side but not letting him in. It was very confusing for him,” Barbara Lubin, MECA’s director, told The Electronic Intifada.

Young children look into the windows of the Milagro Foundation’s office. (Middle East Children’s Alliance)

The group left the petition outside the offices, “in the hopes that Milagro Foundation staff and Carlos Santana will read it and respond,” MECA stated.

“Problematic”

“The Santana Band is coming to play in Tel Aviv this summer. We are coming to share our hearts music for anyone who wishes to attend. All are welcome,” Santana stated on Facebook on 30 March.

But Santana ought to know that if his Palestinian fans living in the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip, or in the diaspora, want to attend his concert, Israel would not allow them.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) sent an open letter in April to Santana asking him “to respect our picket line and join hundreds of artists from around the world” who have refused to perform in Israel and honored the BDS call.

PACBI said that the musician’s efforts to offset crossing the international picket line are “problematic.”

On his Facebook page, Santana has promoted a video for the nonprofit educational institution Hand in Hand, which established Arabic-Hebrew bilingual schools in Jerusalem and the Galilee, noting that his foundation has “funded Hand in Hand since 2003.”

Santana has also pledged to donate proceeds from his concert to medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

But such gestures apparently aimed at defusing protest have been sharply criticized by Palestinian campaigners.

“It is equivalent to performing in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, against the will of the overwhelming majority of the oppressed there, and donating the proceeds to some charity,” PACBI said in response.

“While we support donations to this commendable organization [Doctors Without Borders], it cannot be at the expense of contributing to the cover-up of Israel’s blatant violations of Palestinian rights,” PACBI added.

Earlier this month, “the original Facebook post on [Santana’s] page announcing the concert and donation to Doctors Without Borders was edited to remove their name,” according to MECA.

“It’s not like him”

Activists are sharing a video released by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation in order to amplify the boycott call to Santana. It can be viewed at the top of this article.

MECA’s Barbara Lubin said she was surprised that Santana and his child-centered foundation have ignored the demands from Palestinian civil society and solidarity activists to cancel his performance.

“Carlos has stood up for justice so many times in different parts of the world,” Lubin said. “And like little Marcel, I’m also so confused. Why he would take this stand? It’s not like him.”

Inside the Democratic Party’s Showdown Over Israel-Palestine

How Democrats changed their decades-old approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict — and why the fight isn’t over yet.
Inside the Democratic Party’s Showdown Over Israel-Palestine

BY MOLLY O’TOOLE-JUNE 29, 2016

The meeting at a St. Louis hotel had run for more than nine hours and stretched into the night by the time the main reason Jim Zogby was there came up. As Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s primary point person on the intractable Israeli-Palestine conflict, long a political landmine in U.S. presidential politics, Zogby was ready for a fight.

“We do not often see the Arab-Israeli conflict through Palestinian eyes,” Zogby began, according to an informal transcript of the meeting obtained byForeign Policy.

He was pushing an amendment calling for “an end to occupation and illegal settlements.” American policymakers, he noted, have for decades referred to the Israeli presence in land Palestinians claim for a future state as an “occupation.”

“We have to have the ability in our politics to say what we say in our policy,” he said.

Wendy Sherman, a Jewish-American and the top State Department negotiator on the historic Iran nuclear deal, was representing presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton at the platform talks and pushed back, firmly but gently. She told Zogby that she sympathized with both innocent Israelis and innocent Palestinians, but that his amendment went too far.

“I have been with teenagers in Ramallah where I wished I could disappear into the floor because they were so angry and in such pain,” Sherman said. “I have been with Israeli young people who live with risk and terror and fear every single day.”

She left former California Rep. Howard Berman, an “unaligned” Democratic National Committee pick who helped push through strict Iran sanctions in 2010, to play bad cop.

Berman said the amendment would be “a terrible mistake” because it was “one-sided” toward the Palestinians. “It’s not our time, I think, to select out things which understandably aggravate many people, but only on one side of the conflict,” he said.

At issue in the talks was the party’s platform, a formal distillation — to be presented for ratification at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia — of the goals Clinton would pursue as president. In practice, the platforms are exercises in pleasing each party’s core constituencies but rarely carry substantive weight.

Yet the late-night debate between Sanders’s allies on one side and the DNC and Clinton’s allies on the other was a half-hour snapshot of perhaps the most politically fraught fight within the Democratic Party today. Democrats have seen a seismic shift on the Israel-Palestine issue in the nearly eight years of the Obama administration — with a strong push to the left by Sanders, the first Jewish presidential candidate to win a primary.

In one of the most heated exchanges of the unexpectedly contested nomination fight, the Vermont socialist used an April debate in New York to push the former secretary of state to call Israel’s 2014 strikes on Gaza disproportionate. She refused.

An unofficial transcript of the Israel-Palestine debate at the drafting committee’s last meeting — as well as a copy of that portion of the final draft of the platform, which has yet to be released — shows just how far the party has moved on the issue.

The current platform says “a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian accord, producing two states for two peoples, would contribute to regional stability and help sustain Israel’s identity,” reflecting longtime U.S. policy.

The new version has some notable differences, even if neither Sanders nor Clinton got all they wanted.

Sanders’s allies did not ultimately achieve their goal of inserting the word “occupation.” But for the first time, the platform explicitly asserts Palestinians’ “independence, sovereignty, and dignity” alongside Israeli security.

Early Saturday, the drafting committee adopted the final language for the 2016 platform without Zogby’s amendment, which had lost 8-5, with only Sanders’s picks voting for it.

Still, compared with past platforms, the subtle shifts are significant.

“We will continue to work toward a two-state solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict negotiated directly by the parties that guarantees Israel’s future as a secure and democratic Jewish state with recognized borders,” it reads, “and provides the Palestinians with independence, sovereignty and dignity.”

Underscoring the continued combustibility of the issue, both the DNC and supporters of Clinton and Sanders have kept the seemingly small but significant changes quiet. None of the statements on the platform from theDNC and the campaigns in the days since the drafter’s final meeting mention the Israel-Palestine debate, and neither the Clinton campaign nor the DNC provided comment.

In an interview, Zogby said the presumptive nominee’s allies peppered him anxiously before the meeting last weekend to finalize the platform.

“‘What’s gonna happen? What’s gonna happen? What are you going to do?’” he recounted to Foreign Policy. “Did I know we’d lose? Of course I knew we’d lose. But we ended the deadly silence that says you can’t talk about this.”

Typically, the larger platform committee, which will meet July 8-9 in Orlando, Florida, adopts the final language approved by the drafters, and the platform’s ratification at the convention is largely pro forma.
But should he choose, Sanders has enough power to bring the more controversial language to Philadelphia as a minority plank, which could force a debate on Israel-Palestine on the convention floor.

Sanders has said he will vote for Clinton but indicated he will not formally endorse her until his key demands are met.

The exchanges among the delegates at the late-night meeting, according to the transcript, show just how much distance remains.

Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a Sanders pick and one of only two Muslim-American lawmakers, urged adoption of Zogby’s amendment on Friday, according to the transcript. “I know that this is an incredibly difficult issue for many of us,” he acknowledged during the meeting. “I respect that, I appreciate that.”
Business executive Bonnie Shaefer, another DNC selection and a gay Zionist Jew, said Israel is “the only place in the Middle East where I can walk down the street with my wife hand-in-hand and not be afraid.”
Zogby responded that while Shaefer may be able to hold her wife’s hand in Tel Aviv, unafraid, he can’t travel without risk of harassment. He was once held at the airport for seven hours — though he’d flown to attend a dinner at Israel’s legislature at the invitation of former Vice President Al Gore.

Cornel West, an outspoken Sanders surrogate, civil rights activist, and fiery scholar, drew parallels between slavery and the Palestinian experience.

“All we’re trying to say is, the Democratic Party must tell the truth,” he said. “We can never fully respect the Palestinians unless we can name what they’re up against, the boot on their necks.”

Zogby has spent much of his adult life working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Democratic policy. A Maronite Catholic of Lebanese descent, Zogby founded the Arab American Institute, a nonprofit to encourage Arab American leadership. He has been deeply involved with the party platform for decades, including as part of the DNC’s executive body. In 1988, when he pushed for mere mention of the “p-word” — Palestinian — as a member of the larger platform committee, he said fellow Democrats told him he would destroy the party.

It was then that he first faced Sherman, the Clinton advocate he would debate some 30 years later in St. Louis.

As the session wound down, Sherman quipped, “He and I haven’t grown any older since 1988, when we tread this same territory.”

Photo credit: AHMAD GHARABLI/Staff

Brexit re-think? No one is Brussels is giving it the time of day

EU and British flags are adjusted before the EU summit.

Wednesday 29 Jun 2016

The most striking thing about the last 24 hours in Brussels is how virtually no one is talking about a UK re-think. Meet Remain enthusiasts in the UK, read some of the pro-Remain media and you might think there was a crack of light on this one.

There was, “very predictably,” one EU diplomat said, an immediate ‘keep all options open’ approach signalled from Chancellor Merkel’s court. That is in her nature. But last night the German Chancellor said: ” I see no possibility to reverse this. We would do well to accept this reality.”

As Patrick Wintour writes in The Guardian today – UK voted for Brexit – but is there a way back? This is being talked about in Westminster. But it could be EU partners have studied the numbers more closely than we have.

As one EU diplomat put it to me: “57% of the English voted no when you discount London. What do you tell them? It is irreversible. And that we have noted everywhere.” The Remain MPs who talk of schemes to reverse things have constituencies that defiantly went against their views.

As I head back to London, Nicola Sturgeon heads to Brussels on what her team describe as the first of several exploratory discussions about how to stay in. The mirror image of the English result, they hope, will stir the EU to offer the Scots continuing membership. SNP sources say while English politicians are utterly distracted by their own party politics they will make headway preparing the way for Scotland’s breakaway.

There was huge applause yesterday and a standing ovation for the SNP MEP Alyn Smith when he called on the EU not to desert Scotland. Applause there though does not always translate into a decision at the European Council.

Spain was the most outspoken critic of Scotland splintering from the UK back in 2014 and on the eve of that vote Spain’s Prime Minister Rajoy gave his most defiant cry of resistance to the idea. He has, of course, just been re-elected.

Spain worries about the existential threat to its state if Catalonia in particular were to think it could split off and get separate EU membership. It doesn’t want that kind of contagion.

Some EU observers say Madrid is nothing like the force it was in EU affairs though, weakened by the contagion of Eurozone crises and their aftermath and eminently biddable if the right compensation could be offered.

We shall see.

Matthew Uzukwu’s The Nigerian Civil War

Book review by Osita Ebiem

( June 28, 2016, New York City, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Nigerian Civil War: The Memoirs of an Unsung Biafran Commando, a book by Matthew Uzukwu is an important book. It is published in 2016 by Feli Publishing Maryland, USA and available at www.amazon.com for $15. The book tells the story of the Biafran War from the perspective of a Biafran soldier, John Ude who fought on many fronts against the unwarranted Nigerian war of aggression against Biafra. It is clear from the book that every Biafran soldier believed in the justness of the fight till the end – an indication that the philosophy of the war was clearly communicated to the people. To all Biafrans and by all honest definitions of the word; the war was genocide. Therefore, the fighters clearly wanted to survive a certain death. Ude and the rest of Biafran soldiers fought to stop genocide. In trying to prevent the death of a people Ude and others like him gave everything they got – their very life.

The book is a faith kept by the author who painstakingly took down notes as a high school student from the oral narrations of Ude’s personal recollections of his experiences during the war. The book is well-written and an easy-read with many pages of pictures of the principal participants in the war as well as those of many kwashiorkor victims and war refugees in Biafra. It’s a book of 166 pages that catches the interest of the reader right from start and can be finished within the space of a few lunch breaks. It is a historical narration of how Biafrans successfully used ingenuity to prosecute a war of survival and ran a functional society while going through the greatest of trials. Basic social services such as law courts, electricity, fuel supplies and the post office worked till the very end of the Biafran ordeal. It was because the post office worked in Biafra that John Ude’s life was spared at the tail end of the war when he was wrongly taken for a deserter. The lesson here is that when a society works as it should, it does not only enhance the quality of living in all aspects for the citizens, lives are often saved when it matters the most, even in seemingly unrelated areas.

Ude and all the other Biafran soldiers distinguished themselves in the fields of war and successfully prevented an intended total genocide against Igbo people. They made history. And after nearly fifty years, Matthew Uzukwu wrote to preserve the history of their courage and to inspire for all time any group of people who may have to go through a similar unjust Biafran experience. But sometimes there have often been debates about; between the soldier and the historian, who does more service for humanity. This must have informed David Ben-Gurion’s conclusion. In a tone obviously meant to disparage the historian and raise the status and prestige of the soldier above the historian, Ben-Gurion said that “History is not written, history is created.”

But there will be no history at all without the historian. If a great tree falls in the forest and no one was there to hear the fall, it would never have made any sound. At the dawn of creation, physicists believe that there was a big bang that exploded to give existence to everything there is in the universe today. The fact is that the explosion which is supposed to be the one sound that spanned the entire universe at the beginning of time did not make any sound at all because there was no sentient being to hear the sound at the time. So, history is created by the soldier but history must be written by the writer for it to even exist. John Ude did his part by fighting to prevent genocide and Matthew Uzukwu has written the story to prevent a future occurrence of genocides against Igbo people. One of the highlights of the night in Washington DC area where the book was presented to the public on June 19, 2016 was the vote of thanks which was delivered by Uzukwu’s teenage daughter Chinwe. She thanked the guests who were gathered to support the father for writing the book. For many of us who were there the vote of thanks was two ways and we could not have been less grateful.

My major quarrel with the book is in the title. Unfortunately, most Igbo scholars have fallen into the trap of accepting without any examination the fallacy sold by the British and Nigerians, of thinking of the war as a “civil war.” But the truth is that there was no civil war in Nigeria until the Nigeria versus Boko Haram war which started less than ten years ago. On the contrary, Biafra versus Nigeria war was not a civil war. The standard definition of civil wars is that the war is fought within the physical geographical confines of a state. It is usually fought between or among several contending groups in the country. But this is not the case with the Biafran Nigerian conflict of 1967 to 1970. The war officially began on the 6th of July, 1967. That was the date on which Nigeria first fired the first bullet in the war of aggression which it waged against Biafra. July 6 date is important when proving that the Biafra-Nigeria War was not a civil war. The war was GENOCIDE. The purpose of deliberately distorting the historical facts about the war by the concerned players in the war (the British and Nigerians) is to make less the weight of the crime which they jointly committed against the Igbo.

On the 30th of May, 1967 the people of the former Eastern Region of Nigeria exercising their fundamental human right to self-determination and independence unilaterally declared their freedom and independence from Nigeria. The step the people took was the best option that they had at the time and they had every right to do what they did. Prior to this date, for a period of about one year, starting from May 29, 1966, the government of Nigeria and its citizens unremorsefully and without relent carried out a systematic program of pogrom against the Igbo population and the other ethnic peoples of the former Eastern Region. By the time of Biafrans declaration of independence, more than 100,000 Igbo and other southeasterners had been murdered. The independent declaration was an effort that the people embarked on as the last resort. They justifiably pursued their basic human right to self-defense and right to life. By the conclusion of that war, over 3.5 million Biafrans were unjustly murdered by the Nigerian state.

The truth about the Biafran War is that Nigeria waged a war of aggression against another sovereign independent state which had been in existence for almost two months. At this point, all responsible governments and leaders would have engaged in using diplomacy and negotiations to prevent any further loss of lives.

Fifty years afterward, given all the prevailing events in Nigeria’s political space, just as Biafra was right in 1967, it has remained so up till this writing in 2016. And that is partly some of the things that the reader may not find in the book. The author also failed to address appropriately the cause of the war. There is no doubt that Igbo officers dominated the rank of those who carried out the first coup d’état of January 1966 but he should have explained to the reader more about the reasons for the coup. He should have let the reader know that the coup was an attempt to save Nigeria from the suffocating Islamic bigotry and heavily corrupt political leadership of the central government of the Prime Minister and the Premier of the Northern Region.

The writer failed to tell the reader that the coup was also carried out partly to prevent the federal government’s planned “walloping of the Western Region” and to install in power the populist Obafemi Awolowo who was then serving a prison sentence for planning a coup d’état against the government. The author should have let the reader know that Ifeajuna/Nzeogwu coup d’état of January, 1966 was carried out to prevent the federal government of Nigeria’s declared intention to “wallop” or wipe out the Yoruba people of Western Region. If the author had done that he would have in that same vein established that John Ude and all Biafrans fought Biafra War to prevent the federal government of Nigeria’s declared intention and systematic program of wanting to exterminate the Igbo whom they considered to be the source of all the problems of Nigeria.

Millions of public sector workers get pay, pension rise

A money lender counts Indian rupee currency notes at his shop in Ahmedabad, India, May 6, 2015. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo

BY RAJESH KUMAR SINGH- Wed Jun 29, 2016

India on Wednesday approved an increase of at least 14.29 percent in salaries and pensions for about 10 million government employees and pensioners, a move that is expected to boost consumer demand and underpin economic growth.

While the one-off hike is in line with the recommendations of a government-appointed panel, it is smaller than previous increases, including a nearly 40-percent rise in 2008.

The changes include lifting wages for the lowest paid to 18,000 rupees ($267) per month from 7,000 rupees.

After the cabinet meeting, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the revisions will take retroactive effect from Jan. 1, 2016 and would cost the exchequer nearly $17 billion in the fiscal year to end-March 2017.

"The inevitable consequence of this would be a pressure on the budget," he told reporters. "(But) I have already provided for it in this year's budget estimates. Therefore, the amount doesn't come to us as a surprise."

The decade by decade pay hikes, a populist wage policy that dates back to India's independence from British rule, is in addition to half-yearly and annual increments linked to prices.

Fitch's India Ratings & Research chief economist Devendra Pant estimates the cumulative impact will be 0.63 percent of GDP, a fillip for Asia's third-largest economy that is saddled with idle capacity.

"A rise in demand is likely to not only increase capacity utilisation but may also help revive the investment cycle earlier than expected," Pant said.

But for an economy primarily running on consumer spending, the hike is also potentially inflationary. The Reserve Bank of India has already flagged the risks that increases in wages and pensions pose for its 5 percent inflation target.

"It is a mixed bag," Jaitley said.

(Additional reporting by Nigam Prusty; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Louise Ireland)

US to downgrade Burma in annual human trafficking report

Newly arrived migrants gather at Kuala Langsa Port in Langsa, Aceh province, Indonesia last year. Pic: AP.

28th June 2016

THE U.S. will downgrade Burma (Myanmar) to the category reserved for the world’s worst perpetrators of human trafficking in the annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, which will be released this Thursday.

According to Reuters, the U.S. Department of State made the decision to move Burma to the “Tier 3” category in a bid to get the country’s newly-installed government to take action against the indoctrination of child soldiers and forced labor.

The report divides countries into three categories: Tier 1 for countries that fully comply with the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA); Tier 2 for countries that do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards; and Tier 3 for countries that do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.

There is also the additional category, the “Tier 2 Watch List”, which monitors countries that do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are either making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards, or are sliding back to worse standards.

In the 2015 TIP report, Burma was on the “Tier 2 Watch List”, but will now join the ranks of other “Tier 3” countries, such as North Korea, Syria, and Iran.

SEE ALSO: Burma: Military chief denies existence of ‘Rohingya’ term

The move was confirmed by a U.S. official in Washington and a Bangkok-based official from an international organization, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity.

Getting a “Tier 3” rating would not bode well for Burma’s budding economy, as countries in the category are subject to sanctions, such as the withholding of assistance or funding from other countries, or international financial institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.

There was a heated debate among committee members over Burma’s demotion to “Tier 3”, as some wanted to reward Burma for its political reforms, while human rights experts argued that the government was still not doing enough to curb human trafficking.

The controversy surrounding Burma’s ethnic Rohingya, the majority of whom are Muslim, likely played a major role in the decision.

SEE ALSO: Burma: US envoy says Muslim minority has a right to call themselves ‘Rohingya’

Since coming to power, de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her government have come under fire from the international community due to their failure to resolve issues involving the persecuted minority, thousands of whom have fled to neighboring countries and are currently stuck in refugee detention camps.

The Burmese government’s refusal to grant citizenship to an estimated 800,000 Rohingya “significantly increased this population’s vulnerability to trafficking”, concluded last year’s TIP report.

“The chronic, chronic abuse of the Rohingya has not been dealt with at all,” said a U.S. congressional aide regarding the issue.

Last month, the newly-appointed U.S. envoy to Burma, Scot Marciel, insisted that the persecuted Muslim minority in the country had the right call themselves ‘Rohingya’, despite the administration’s call to avoid using the term.

120 Spiritual Leaders of 10 Religions Came Together For Peace

Northeast Asian Leaders to Cooperate for Alliance of Religions and Peace
HWPL holds a Korea-China-Japan Trilateral Religious Leaders’ Peace Conference

( June 28, 2016, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka Guardian) While interfaith discussions on peace has endorsed various peace movements throughout the world, 120 prominent representatives of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese religious circles came together in Gyeonggi, Korea today.

Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), an international non-governmental organization for peace, hosted a Korea- China- Japan Trilateral Religious Leaders’ Peace Conference with the goal of putting religious boundaries aside to achieve peace together.

Leaders representing Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism, and indigenous religions discussed the roles of spiritual leaders and the concept of peace based on each respective religious texts. These discussions led to stimulating debate and mutual understanding among different faiths.

Chairman Man Hee Lee of HWPL awakened the duties of religious leaders of today. “Religious leaders have a crucial role in constantly studying and determining which religious scripture is the most believable to achieve peace. Leaders are responsible for their congregations that differences in religions must not hinder the progress of peace and harmony in the interfaith world. I hope we, leaders of religions of the Northeast Asia, will establish a path to peaceful coexistence,” he said.

Chairwoman Nam Hee Kim of the International Women’s Peace Group (IWPG) also urged the participants to actively cooperate with the alliance of religions projects advocated by HWPL.

Hyegeo, Abbot of Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism Geumgang Seonwon stated during his congratulatory remarks, “I give my deepest appreciation on behalf of all Korean Buddhist leaders for hosting this conference which lays foundations for prosperity and peace in Asia. I strongly believe that world peace, longed by every religion for a significant amount of time, will be achieved through efforts like this.”

The background of this peace conference is HWPL’s World Alliance of Religions’ Peace Office (WARP) Meetings, a series of the worldwide interfaith peace dialogue solely based on scriptures aimed at establishing alliance of religions and preventing causes of conflicts which involves religious misunderstandings. Currently, 172 WARP Office Meetings are actively being held in 85 countries, contributing to an atmosphere of peace and coexistence.

107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs

A worker tends to corn crops at the Monsanto test field in Woodland, Calif., on Aug. 10, 2012. Monsanto is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate and the largest producer of genetically engineered seed. (Noah Berger/Bloomberg News)

By Joel Achenbach June 29 at 12:01 PM

More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The letter asks Greenpeace to cease its efforts to block introduction of a genetically engineered strain of rice that supporters say could reduce Vitamin-A deficiencies causing blindness and death in children in the developing world.

"We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against 'GMOs' in general and Golden Rice in particular," the letter states.

The letter campaign was organized by Richard Roberts, chief scientific officer of New England Biolabs and, with Phillip Sharp, the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of genetic sequences known as introns. The campaign has a website, supportprecisionagriculture.org, that includes a running list of the signatories, and the group plans to hold a news conference Thursday morning at the National Press Club in Washington.

“We’re scientists. We understand the logic of science. It's easy to see what Greenpeace is doing is damaging and is anti-science," Roberts told The Washington Post. “Greenpeace initially, and then some of their allies, deliberately went out of their way to scare people. It was a way for them to raise money for their cause."

Roberts said he endorses many other activities of Greenpeace, and said he hopes the group, after reading the letter, would "admit that this is an issue that they got wrong and focus on the stuff that they do well."

Greenpeace has not yet responded to requests for comment on the letter. It is hardly the only group that opposes GMOs, but it has a robust global presence, and the laureates in their letter contend that Greenpeace has led the effort to block Golden Rice.

The list of signatories had risen to 107 names by Wednesday morning. Roberts said that, by his count, there are 296 living laureates.

Nobel laureate Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Post, “I find it surprising that groups that are very supportive of science when it comes to global climate change, or even, for the most part, in the appreciation of the value of vaccination in preventing human disease, yet can be so dismissive of the general views of scientists when it comes to something as important as the world’s agricultural future.”

The letter states:

Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity.

Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people, suffer from VAD, including 40 percent of the children under five in the developing world. Based on UNICEF statistics, a total of one to two million preventable deaths occur annually as a result of VAD, because it compromises the immune system, putting babies and children at great risk. VAD itself is the leading cause of childhood blindness globally affecting 250,000 - 500,000 children each year. Half die within 12 months of losing their eyesight.

The scientific consensus is that that gene editing in a laboratory is not more hazardous than modifications through traditional breeding, and that engineered plants potentially have environmental or health benefits, such as cutting down on the need for pesticides. Areport by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released in May, said there is no substantiated evidence that GMO crops have sickened people or harmed the environment, but also cautioned that such crops are relatively new and that it is premature to make broad generalizations, positive or negative, about their safety.

[Are GMO crops safe? Scientists weigh in, saying the focus should be on the plant and not the process.]

Opponents of GMOs have said these crops may not be safe for human or animal consumption, have not been shown to improve crop yields, have led to excessive use of herbicides and can potentially spread engineered genes beyond the boundaries of farms.

Greenpeace International's web site states that the release of GMOs into the natural world is a form of "genetic pollution." The site states:

Genetic engineering enables scientists to create plants, animals and micro-organisms by manipulating genes in a way that does not occur naturally.

These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can spread through nature and interbreed with natural organisms, thereby contaminating non 'GE' environments and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way.

Virtually all crops and livestock have been genetically engineered in the broadest sense; there are no wild cows, and the cornfields of the United States reflect many centuries of plant modification through traditional breeding. Genetically modified crops started to become common in the mid-1990s; today, most of the corn, soybeans and cotton in the country has been modified to be resistant to insects or tolerant of herbicide, according to government statistics.

[The 'GMO-free' marketing ploy]

Opponents of GMOs have focused a great deal on the economic and social repercussions of the introduction of lab-modified crops. Greenpeace has warned of the corporate domination of the food supply, saying that small farmers will suffer. A Greenpeace spokesman Wednesday referred a reporter to a Greenpeace publication titled "Twenty Years of Failure: Why GM crops have failed to deliver on their promises."

This debate between mainstream scientists and environmental activists isn't new, and there is little reason to suspect that the letter signed by the Nobel laureates will persuade GMO opponents to stand down.

But Columbia University's Martin Chalfie, who shared the 2008 Nobel in chemistry for research on green fluorescent protein, said he thinks laureates can be influential on the GMO issue.

"Is there something special about Nobel laureates? I’m not so sure we’re any more special than other scientists who have looked at the evidence involved, but we have considerably more visibility because of the prize. I think that this behooves us, that when we feel that science is not being listened to, that we speak out."

Roberts said he has worked on previous campaigns that sought to leverage the influence of Nobel laureates. In 2012, for example, he organized a campaign to persuade Chinese authorities to release from house arrest the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Roberts said he decided to take on the GMO issue after hearing from scientific colleagues their research was being impeded by anti-GMO activism from Greenpeace and other organizations. He said he has no financial interest in GMO research.