European Union supports media training in constructive journalism 

Saturday, 12 November 2016

Media in Cooperation and Transition GmbH, the Press Complaints Commission of Sri Lanka

(PCCSL) and the Media Resource and Training Centre (MRTC) have partnered to train Tamil and Sinhalese media professionals in constructive/ethical reporting. The project is funded by the European Union.

“Constructive news is an approach which aims to empower audiences with a more accurate and balanced picture of society,” said Ulrik Haagerup, Executive Director of News at the Danish

Broadcasting Corporation and founder of the concept of constructive news, during his keynote speech to the Sri Lankan journalists, “while using open-minded journalism to find answers and possible solutions regarding the issues facing it.”

Last month, 25 journalists from all over Sri Lanka met in Batticaloa to discuss how media can play a role in combating polarisation of society, with the ultimate goal of propelling reconciliation in the country. The training forms an integral part of the project ‘The Catamaran’ (www.thecatamaran.org), a tri-lingual portal publishing work by journalists from all over Sri Lanka.

Original reporting is available for free syndication to Sri Lankan and international media.

Speaking about the project, Libuse Soukupova, Head of Cooperation of the Delegation of the

European Union to Sri Lanka and the Maldives said, “Serious and responsible reporting is challenging in competitive media markets. This project should help to increase capacity of media, as well as build peace and social consensus in addition to keeping citizens engaged in matters related to reconciliation.”

The three-day training included lectures by Maarja Kadajane, Business Development Manager of the Eurovision Academy, the training institute associated with the European Broadcasting Union, and Editor-in-Chief of The Catamaran news website, Sven Recker. During the workshop, journalists successfully adapted the idea of constructive news to their context and looked for topics that could fit to this approach. This new approach will have an impact to the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka. The results will soon be published on www.thecatamaran.org.

The Catamaran is a project run by the Berlin-based organisation, Media in Cooperation and Transition. The project is funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Diplomatic row erupts between Sri Lanka and China

Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe visited China separately twice this year, hoping to mend strained relations. Both leaders met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, signed economic agreements and invited investors. Both countries agreed to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in March next year. China is still Sri Lanka’s top donor and investor, with $409 million a year in direct investments.

by W.A. Sunil

( November 12, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Sri Lankan foreign ministry on Monday voiced its “displeasure” about comments made early this month by Chinese ambassador Yi Xianliang on Chinese financial assistance to Sri Lanka. The diplomatic row underscores the continuing strained relations between Sri Lanka and China since the pro-US President Maithripala Sirisena was installed in office in January 2015.

Yi’s comments were made in response to a reporter’s question at a November 1 press conference held during a seminar at the Chinese embassy. The ambassador was asked clarify “what they [the Sri Lankan government] call ‘expensive loans’ from China that were taken out by the previous regime [of President Mahinda Rajapaske].”

Yi said some Sri Lankan ministers and the media had spoken about “expensive loans” from China. He commented: “I talked with Ravi [Karunanayake], the minister of finance. Ravi criticised this many times publicly. I asked him, if you don’t like this one [loans from China] why have you spoken to me about getting another one?”

The ambassador explained that the interest rate for loans from China’s Exim Bank was 2 percent for friendly countries. He asked why this was considered expensive, when the rate for commercial loans from Europe was 5 percent.

Yi said claims that China’s loans were expensive were “really unfair.” He added: “The Sri Lankan people and the government should have a more thankful attitude towards China. For a long time, we have supported and assisted Sri Lanka in international forums and bilateral business fields.”

Yi also voiced his concerns over the slow progress of China-funded projects in Sri Lanka. He stated: “I do believe that political in-fighting should not be linked to Chinese assistance.”

Sri Lankan Finance Minister Karunanayake angrily opposed the ambassador’s comments, telling the media: “I cannot imagine that the envoy of a friendly country thought it fit to make those remarks.” He declared that he was “Sri Lanka’s finance minister and not China’s.” The Colombo media reported that an unnamed senior Sri Lankan foreign ministry official had said the ambassador’s statements were “highly unprofessional.”

The Chinese foreign ministry responded by defending the ambassador. Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the ambassador had only “clarified some misunderstandings and misleading remarks regarding China-Sri Lanka cooperation at a seminar.”

On Monday, Sri Lankan foreign secretary Esala Weerakoon telephoned Yi to express the government’s concerns. Weerakoon later issued a statement declaring that he told Yi “it is not necessary for the ambassador to communicate his concerns through the media.”

While Karunanayake and the foreign ministry condemned the Chinese ambassador, senior Sri Lankan officials and members of parliament routinely criticise loans awarded to the government of former President Mahinda Rajapakse. These sorts of denunciations, along with allegations of corruption directed against Rajapakse, were commonplace during last year’s presidential election campaign.

In fact, the criticism of Chinese investments was an integral component of the US-led regime-change operation to oust Rajapakse and install Sirisena as Sri Lankan president.

Washington was hostile to Rajapakse’s close relations with Beijing, which cut across the US “pivot to Asia”—the aggressive economic and military effort to subordinate China to its geo-strategic interests—and wanted him removed and replaced with a pro-US regime. India, a rival of China and its influence in other South Asian countries, backed Washington’s campaign.

After coming to power, the Sirisena-led government suspended all Chinese-funded development projects, including the $US1.4 billion Colombo Port City Project. Beijing regarded the port plan as a key part of its Maritime Silk Route initiative, linking China’s sea routes in the Indian and Arabic Oceans with West Asia and Africa. The cash-strapped Colombo government over the past months, however, has been making overtures to Beijing for new funding.

Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe visited China separately twice this year, hoping to mend strained relations. Both leaders met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, signed economic agreements and invited investors. Both countries agreed to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in March next year. China is still Sri Lanka’s top donor and investor, with $409 million a year in direct investments.

Colombo eventually removed restrictions on the Port City Project, while amending clauses that promised to grant a portion of reclaimed land freely to the Chinese construction company. Beijing agreed to convert part of Sri Lanka’s debts to equity, buying the Chinese-funded Hambantota sea port and Mattala airport in Sri Lanka’s south. The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe regime also agreed to provide 15,000 acres, near Hambantota, for a special economic zone for Chinese companies.

While economic relationships between two countries have strengthened in recent months, diplomatic strains are intensifying as the Sri Lankan government steps up its involvement in the US and Indian efforts to isolate China.

Senior officials from the Obama administration, including Secretary of State John Kerry and US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, visited Sri Lanka, hailing the new regime in Colombo. US Pacific Command (PACOM) officials also visited and new military training programs were put in place.

In August, the first Operational Level Bilateral Defence Dialogue was held between a PACOM delegation and Sri Lankan security forces at Sri Lanka’s navy headquarters. According to reports, the discussion was held to “develop military engagements for the next three years, from 2016” and continue training and other exercises involving the armed forces of both countries.

A group of members of parliament, known as the Joint Opposition (JO) and led by former President Rajapakse, is seeking to gain political advantage from the current diplomatic differences. The MPs, who are campaigning to topple the government, praised Yi’s criticisms, declaring that China had “set the record straight.”

The growing US military presence in Sri Lanka and in Indian waters is part of Washington’s military preparations against China. Beijing clearly regards this as a threat to its interests in the region.

The Politics & Economics Of Frontierland

By Rajan Hoole –November 12, 2016

Dr. Rajan Hoole

The Dress Rehearsal In Trincomalee – Part II

By the 1970s, and certainly more so by the 80s, serious doubts had begun to be expressed the world over about the viability of agricultural schemes involving the transplantation of huge populations under centralised direction, giant reservoirs, deforestation and the accompanying unplanned migration. Their political and social consequences, whether planned or unplanned, deliberate or accidental, have tended towards causing conflict. The late Mahee Wickremaratne was a civil servant who worked on the Gal Oya scheme and later, on the Mahaveli scheme. In a private conversation, he commented on the fate of some of the Tamil and Muslim villages that were already there in the area of the Gal Oya scheme – called earlier the Pattipalai Aru scheme. He observed that in order to attract settlers, the villages constructed under the scheme were recipients of modern infrastructure and other facilities, while the older villages (including Sinhalese ones) already there were neglected. It is known that they suffered also in terms of representation and the language in which they were served changed from Tamil to Sinhalese.

Further, there were unforeseen environmental changes resulting from drastic topographical transformation. Padaviya reservoir often runs short of water due to adverse changes in rainfall. The Muslim and Tamil farmers in the Kantalai-Thampalakamam area were getting their water from the Kantalai reservoir long before the scheme was implemented in the 1950s. They are now mainly at the lower end of the scheme. They complain of not being given enough water when there is a lack of rain, and being flooded out by water released from the reservoir when there is an excess of rain.

What was perhaps most defective about these schemes was that they came from the vision of an authoritarian ruling class trying to recreate their idea of a feudal past. Instinctively,
it led to distorting their own historical antecedents and adapting to an era of universal franchise a power structure in which they saw themselves as aristocratic benefactors. The legitimisation of this scheme of things was based on the historical reading of Sri Lanka in ancient times as a prosperous unitary state, ruled centrally by benevolent kings who built and maintained reservoirs and fostered Buddhism.

As a corollary, the ruling class developed an uneasiness and even antipathy, towards those who would not, or could not, fit into this scheme of things – particularly the Tamils. The very diverse and involved reasons why the ancient hydraulic system broke down are hardly understood. Yet, ruling class ideology as reflected in school history books provided a simple answer – Tamil invaders from India in the Middle Ages.

Although Sri Lanka at the time of independence had acquired considerable modernity – particularly in health and education – its political vision and direction was feudal. Its massive investment in colonisation schemes was made possible by the labour of Plantation Tamils who then brought in more than 70% of this country’s foreign earnings. Their reward was to be disenfranchised and virtually made serfs.

Even as value for money, these colonisation schemes were dubious. They were carried out at the expense of building infrastructure for a modern nation and, for example, of furthering science education in the Sinhalese South. For the colonists themselves things soured after one generation when with an expanded family, the land had to be split up into smaller plots. In the mid-1990s market conditions did not favour profitability and a number of suicides by farmers were reported in the Polonnaruwa area.

Read More

Historic budget made by both UNP-SLFP ministers – Ranil

By Saman Indrajith-November 12, 2016 

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe described the budget 2017 as a foundation for a national economic policy that would not change the country’s development process whenever there is a government change.

Participating in the second reading stage debate on the budget proposals, the premier said that they had been formulated with the input from both two main parties – the UNP and the SLFP. "This is a historic budget for it had been made by group of ministers from the two main parties. It is a positive trend. The proposals are not hard and fast as in the case of previous budgets but more flexible," he said.

The Prime Minister said that even though the two main parties are together now, they may take separate paths in the future but under the present unity government, economic policies will be put in place that will remain constant despite political changes.

"This is the best opportunity to make new economic polices taking the strengths of the two main parties into consideration so that when there is a change in government, one will not say these are the other parties polices and change them," he said.

"In the past year, we had to overcome the immediate economic challenges we faced having to pay off massive loans and had to resurrect the economy which was suffering from bad investment. We have scaled one mountain but is a steeper mountain ahead but we will overcome them too," he said.

The premier said that there may be some difficulties to face in the next two to three years but with the changes that are being put in place, the economy will move forward.

He also spoke on forging new economic alliances with the Free Trade Agreements with China, India and Singapore in the pipeline while Pakistan and Iran too would be the others that the government seeks stronger ties.

"We have to develop relations with the Southern Indian states, other Bay of Bengal nations  as well as Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar where there is accelerating economic growth. We also have to develop new industry as, except from the garment sector, revenue from other sectors including the Middle East will decline," he said.

The Prime Minister said the Budget is meant for the masses and that the additional revenue the government earns will go towards education, health and housing.

He said many measures were introduced in the Budget to further strengthen the free education system in the country. "I have benefited from the free education system in the country so has the President as well as many others here. We will further strengthen it and make 13 years of schooling mandatory," he said.

Quoting Chinese reformist leader Deng Xiaoping, the premier said that the economic path of the government of national unity would not be confined by ideologies. "Deng Xiaoping once said ‘I don't care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.’ Similarly we should not care if the colour is green or blue or red, we will work together to build an economic policy that would be retained even if there are changes in government."

Using disabled soldiers with ulterior motives Shame!

2016-11-12

Protest gatherings or marches are a dime a dozen these days. They are actually an epidemic and a nasty one at that. Why so? Because the protesters have latched on to a new gimmick – to protest on highways, the more important and vital the trunk road, the better. And thus the daily news item on television channels of the soldier, sailor, candlestick maker; the fisherman, farmer and of course the white collar worker protesting all over the country.

True, some protests bring the attention of the authorities on to a vital grievance that has been put forward through the legitimate channels and not solved; hence the mass road or junction protests like at Lipton's Circus. But most people have no sympathy with the protest marches of university students against the SAITM medical college and the GMOA joining in with a vicious kick – supposedly maintaining vital services in hospitals but the hospitals almost closing down for the day. Some have turned nasty for the protesters and the country itself like shooting into the crowd at Rathupaswela when all they asked for was safe drinking water as their sources had been contaminated, actually or exaggerated, by a rubber gloves manufacturing factory close by.

Foreign mass protests

Curiosity led Kumari to Google to find out just a few facts she remembered but was not certain of as regards dates. The first most dramatic protest was in Paris when the Proles stormed the Bastille – the government prison at the time. Louis XVI was on the throne with his extravagant Marie Antoinette. She did not, however, famously ask the people to eat cake if they did not have bread.The statement was thrust upon her!

The Storming of the Bastille and the arrest of Governor de Launay occurred on the morning of 14 July 1789. A group formed of craftsmen and salesmen decided to fight back and ran to the Invalides to steal some weapons. The crowd knew that a pile of powder was stocked in the Bastille and so they stormed it and ignited the French revolution with the cry of "Liberté, Egalaté" and "Fraternité". In the melee, prisoners escaped. The monarchy was overthrown and the royal family guillotined along with aristocrats. This woman who did not study history as a subject in senior secondary school knew about the French Revolution from Charles Dickens' 'Tale of Two Cities' and Baroness Orczy's 'Scarlet Pimpernel' series. As young teenagers, didn't Kumari and her friends thrill to the daring rescue of French aristocrats form the guillotine by the British fob of a Lord who signed off with the symbol of the pimpernel.

Stiff upper lip

In Britain, they are rather restrained preferring probably the stiff upper lip to putting their grievances on public show. Also Margaret Thatcher put paid to the constant demands of labour with her strict rules. We remember seeing in newspapers pictures of protests in strategic places in London when the LTTE was in force here in Sri Lanka. There was a massive protest in Westminster opposite Parliament. A rather rare occurrence of protests was over the Brexit decision.

"March for Europe" rallies were held across the UK on 3 September 2016. Thousands of pro-Europe protesters marched in London, calling for the UK to strengthen its ties to the continent following the Brexit business. This showed without doubt that the younger Britons and Londoners were for remaining in the European Union (EU) while the older, conservative people voted to get out of it due to fears of immigrants pouring in and also believing the rumour that each year Britain paid a vast sum to the EU as a membership fee. They were not told that Britain ultimately benefited with more income due to enhanced trade.
In the US there have been marches by the African-Americans and more recently consequent to Police shooting of a couple of their kind.

March for Life

They also stage occurring marches and rallies in Washington which are one-time events. Two exceptions are the March for Life and Rolling Thunder, both held annually. The March for Life is a protest against abortion held on 22 January marking the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case legalizing abortion. The march has been held annually since 1974, typically drawing several hundred thousand demonstrators. Rolling Thunder is a motorcycle demonstration held since 1987 on Memorial Day to raise awareness of issues related to American Prisoners of War/Missing in Action.

The latest local protest

Kumari and her compatriots saw in newspaper photographs and television news clips the lie-down protest by disabled soldiers. Their demand was for a pension or the enhancement of a pension already received.
Kumari sadly had no sympathy or empathy for them. She felt they could have negotiated their request, because unlike in the case of other workers, the government definitely is responsive for the needs of the armed forces as far as it is possible.
The reader of this column may think Kumari is heartless, non-patriotic, snooty, forgetful of the fact the armed forces saved Sri Lanka from the LTTE terrorists, when she announces she disapproved strongly of the soldiers lying around and then, suddenly rising up to walk to the Presidential Secretariat. Her comment was: "Not done, not done at all!"

And then came the pronouncement from President Maithripala Sirisena that the soldiers who marched in protest had been instigated to do so. Two Bhikkhus and a Joint Opposition member were hinted at along the grapevine. Their purpose was to bring discredit to the government so it starts crumbling and in their reckoning, shortly collapse altogether. This woman believes that the protesting soldiers and policemen were pushed and promised much to march and bring force upon themselves, thus bringing discredit to the government. The armed forces are sacrosanct now, no blaming them; no denying them anything. And thus the repugnance felt towards the instigators of the march; a hidden hand, but all too obvious.

Good lesson

And so we go on. We need to learn a good lesson from the US. Hillary Clinton was supposed to win, thought she would win, deserved to win. And that man Trump is voted in as the 45th President of the United States of America. She gracefully conceded victory to him, spoke to the people to unite after being divided over the elections. Crowds gathered and vent their disappointment by shouting slogans opposite the Trump Towers. But life will proceed over there where power is transferred peacefully with no major hiccups.

Kumari

Gota Wants Sri Lanka To Follow In The Footsteps Of US And Elect A Non-Politico As President

November 12, 2016

Amidst reports that former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa is hoping to contest the next Presidential Election, Rajapaksa has justified the recent victory of US President Election Donald Trump on grounds that people took the decision because they are sick of career politicians.

In a tweet on his official Twitter account, Rajapaksa said that Trump’s victory was a lesson for even Sri Lanka to consider.

“One reason Donald Trump won: People are sick of career politicians delivering rhetoric instead of results. A lesson for Sri Lanka to consider,” he tweeted.

Read More

Indian kidney racket suspects remanded



November 13, 2016 

Five Indian nationals who had escaped from the Mirihana detention center where they were held for their alleged involvement in a kidney racket have been remanded to police custody until November 24. 

They were recaptured by the Pesalai police in Thalaimannar yesterday and produced before the Mannar magistrate, police said. The suspects have been remanded to police custody until November 24, they said.

 Some eight Indian nationals were arrested on March 4 for violating visa conditions. They were later found to be involved in illegal kidney transplants in Colombo hospitals. 

 They were detained at the Mirihana detention Center after producing them before the Colombo Magistrate’s Court. 

One of the suspects had escaped from the detention center earlier and fled to India. The others had escaped the Mirihna detention centre last week.

 PTI 

-Agencies

Ravi Imports Super Luxury Benz, While Ordering Public To Tighten Their Belts

November 12, 2016

While the public was ordered to tighten their belts, and pay up increased taxes, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake this month imported a brand new super luxury Mercedes Benz from Germany with a duty free vehicle permit, which resulted in the country losing millions of rupees in revenue.

The total tax waived off for Karunanayake’s luxury Benz which was imported on November 2, 2016 is approximately Rs. 29 million on the vehicle. The custom’s declaration form in possession of the Colombo Telegraph has been signed by the Finance Minister himself.

According to the Ministry of Parliamentary Reforms and Mass Media, which issued the permit to Karunanayake, the CIF value of the vehicle should be US $ 62,500 or any other currency equivalent to this amount for a petrol or diesel vehicle, and Karunanayake can import any vehicle of his choice and no limit was granted to the engine capacity of the vehicle.

Meanwhile in a letter addressed to the Director General of Customs, lawyer and rights activist Nagananda Kodituwakku in a letter dated November 10, 2016 accused the Director General of intentionally violating the Constitutional rights conferred in all citizens in terms of Article 14A (1) (b) of the Constitution and Section 3 of the Right to Information Act No 12 of 2016 and also the provisions of Section 6 Paragraph XLVII of Volume II of the Establishment Code – to obtain the said information helped with the office of the Director General of Customs.

Kodituwakku accused the Director General of Customs that he had not only violated the public trust placed in his office, but had abused his office to protect the interest of dishonest politicians, while also helping them in unjust enrichment by defrauding the government revenue.

At least 77 MPs in Parliament have used their duty free permits to purchase luxury vehicles in 2016 alone, which has resulted in the country losing billions of rupees in revenue.

Most of the vehicles that have been imported have been Toyota Land Cruisers, Hummers, BMW’s and Mercedes Benz. In July, Kodituwakku told the Supreme Court that the MPs instantly make as much as Rs. 25 million for each permit they sold, which they receive free of charge from the government.

After coming to power, the Maithripala Sirisena – Ranil Wickremesinghe led administration, having appraised the colossal losses sustained under the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration, in its first budget presented in the parliament on November 20, 2015 declared that government had incurred a heavy loss of over 40 billion rupees on tax free car permits, therefore the administration proposed to abolish all such permits altogether including the permits issued to MPs which was openly abused by them.

Read More

Has US opted for a Mussolini populist?

Is Trump’s victory a harbinger of capitalism’s end-game? 

The President Elect – What a pity!

by Kumar David-November 12, 2016

Donald Trump has defied forecasters and stormed to victory. It is a repudiation of the Obama legacy, a rejection of the Washington establishment and a mandate for racial prejudice. It is also the beginning of a new period in US foreign policy if he keeps the threats he flung on the campaign trail. The white working and lower middle class vote was a wall Hilary Clinton could not scale. They were angry with Obama, with Washington and with non-whites. Add America’s conservative, reactionary, gun toting and male chauvinist population segments and you have Trump’s winning formula.

Colic in America will disturb the rest of the world as profoundly as did the decline and fall of Rome bring chaos to medieval Europe. A plunge in America will not usher in a Dark Age, a jihadist catastrophe or global financial chaos, but capitalism as a world system stands confounded. A political and economic mess in America will affect others. Inter-layering and spread of production, trade and political power across the world is more intense now than in Roman times hence the world today has resilience. Well, this is not quite true if you recall that the other great civilisations of the time, Imperial China and Gupta India, hardly noticed events in far way Rome and Constantinople; but that was a differently compartmentalised world. Global dependence is deeper today than millennia ago.

The insurmountable obstacle

The question is what will a Trump presidency look like given his idiosyncratic personality? This is the point of departure of this essay and my conclusions are negative. I wish it were otherwise; I am not a juvenile who delights in human wretchedness because it brings revolution closer. Capitalism when it goes will do so on its own, it does not need a push from me; in any case social revolution is not within the perspective of a short essay such as this.

Some things are so difficult to change that one could disagree with Napoleon that "the word impossible is found only in the dictionary of fools" – you can’t bring Queen Victoria back to life! Trumpism (the Trump phenomenon) is an outburst of anguish from a white working class which has lost or is losing its livelihood and is in distress. The underlying and impossible to reverse root cause is that US capitalism is no longer competitive, or to be more precise, US manufacturing and much of the US service sector is no longer competitive in world markets.

Let me invent a simplified explanation. Let’s use MO for value of manufacturing output and BP for the benefit package (wages, social security, welfare, medical benefits and so on). Now let me propose the symbol PP, with apologies to snooty economists, for what I will call productive power, where PP = (MO/BP). Simply put, if PP is high, a country produces lots of output (MO) for relatively small human resource costs (BP); if PP is low, output is not enough relative to wage and benefit costs. True the USA is a high tech country, so its MO per worker is high, but the point is that, relatively, its BP is even higher. To put it another way; American standards of living, life styles and quality of life are too expensive, relative to productivity. If PP(A) of country A is higher than PP(B) of country B, then A’s products are less costly and more competitive than the products of country B, keeping other factors constant.

It’s as simple as this though economists obscure simple things. My case is that the USA is an example of B and examples of A are China and Mexico. US manufacturing and much of the service sector are no longer competitive; the consequence is that both the general rate of profit on capital and the rate of new investments decline, jobs disappear and no amount of quantitative easing or near zero interest rates – no amount of pseudo-Keynesianism or desperate monetarism - will make a difference. Which capitalist is so stupid as to invest his money for the purpose of losing it! This is the sustained experience of the last eight years (2008 to 2016).

What will come of Trump’s threat to tear up trade pacts and put China and Mexico on ice as trading partners and bring manufacturing back to make America Great Again? Scaremongering that the world is ripping off the US, cheating in trade and stealing its jobs is false and plays to the delusion "nothing is wrong with us, we are victims of cheating by foreigners". The reality is that PP(USA) is markedly lower than PP(Mexico), PP(China) and others who are routing the US in trade. Technology can be enriched, but China, Taiwan and Korea are not technology laggards and 95% of global trade is not in aerospace or advanced products that need the highest tech. A trade war will impose costs on the American consumer; stores are packed with imported goods for the reason that they are cheap. Is Trump going to replace them with more costly US made goods?

The way to make America competitive is to make big cuts in BP – wages and welfare. How else will he balance the budget and pay for his hare-brained economic programmes? Austerity! But austerity is the opposite of what propelled him to power. It will provoke unrest. In a gun crazed society with 300 million guns for less than 200 million adults and with 300 (FBI estimate) gun toting restless "sporting" clubs and clans, there is reason for alarm. In the absence of a revolutionary overturn of the economic order, and if reaction to austerity is hostile, what are Trump’s options? Sans hope of competitive and profitable golden-age capitalism, there is little to do but resort to state power to curb dissension. The consequence of repression will be revolt, or more likely, snowballing conflict which will bleed the nation and dismayed capitalism which will trigger return of recession. So is Trump is the Cassandra who will usher in what billionaires have been desperate to avert?

Here is my conclusion. There is nothing Trump can do about a dilemma whose roots lie deep in the laws of the dynamics of capitalism. Social transformation is not on the agenda and biting austerity is not politically feasible since America is not psychologically ready to climb down from its addiction to unaffordable life styles. That means crisis! The tragedy is that though there is a large deprived class, ‘average’ America lives beyond its means at the cost of cheap global labour, and topmost America is obscenely rich. My instinct says Trump will turn his back on those forces that propelled him to power. Tax cuts and leaning on the rich will worsen the plight of those lower down.

A negative prognosis

Indisputably, a primary objective has to be to reach the alienated white working class. Though golden-age capitalism cannot be reincarnated there are things that can be done – America’s reserves are immense. Redistribution of lopsided wealth and income will go some way. There is no denying despondency in the American white working class but it would be burying one’s head in the sand to deny that the class is also racist. The working class cannot be written off but the task of salvaging it is doubly urgent; livelihood issues and combating racism.

This requires a programme of new industries (small high-tech steel mills are already opening up) and investment in the rust-belt states; the US needs an active interventionist state. Does this sound like the anathema of social-democracy rather than progressive market capitalism? Desperate times call for corresponding responses. If the Great Depression drove FDR to the New Deal, the low-key prolonged depression following the Great Recession of 2008-09 should drive a progressive capitalist government to shift into social-democratic gear. But is Trump the animal to do it?

Then there is the formidable task of healing racial dissent. The US is a plural society and a melting plot of emigrants, but here has always been a heavy current of racist and religious intolerance and Trump has exacerbated it with a cacophony of bigoted rhetoric. Subduing cultural hatred is a great deal more difficult than overcoming economic problems – we in Sri Lanka know all about that. It cannot be done by governments alone and cries for the intervention of civil society at large – media, academia, churches and voluntary organisations. Trump is psychologically unsuited to lead any of this. On this matter I would have had some confidence in Clintonesque liberalism. But working towards a "more perfect union", a priority task now when the whites are on the brink of ceasing to be an absolute majority, is now buried. This election buries the legacy of America’s first black president.

Another matter of priority is violence; drug related violence, the largest prison population in the world, ‘black lives don’t matter’ police gunfire and the insane Second Amendment. When bigotry is ingrained as with the US Constitution’s Second Amendment, which guarantees Tom Mix style cowboy rights, it is impossible to rescind. Trump beloved of the National Rifle Association is unlikely to do much to ameliorate gun violence and abuse of power by the police.

Finally foreign policy; objectively, Trump has no room for manoeuvre, but plenty of options for fouling up the international scene if he is allowed to. The USA is no longer the world’s unhindered super power and Trump will have his hands tied from day one. The imbroglio in the Middle East, dealing with China in the South China Sea and with Russian interests in Ukraine are matters about which he can blow hot but there will be chaos if he disengages from rationality. There is hardly any flexibility in Syria and Iraq, the relationship with China is important for keeping the lid on North Korea and Russia is needed for pressuring Iran. He will be forced to come in line with the Washington Establishment. If the way he behaved during the campaign is anything to go by, he is a loose cannon and heaven knows what’s in store if he is allowed to run feral free. But Washington won’t let him; otherwise the Chinese will be the big long-run winners on the international scene.

Israel consolidates grip on Golan under cover of Syria’s chaos

Israeli landmines in the occupied Golan Heights pose a lethal risk to farmers.Matt Broomfield

Matt Broomfield-11 November 2016

“Listen,” Salman Fakherldeen said. “Do you hear?”

Below the drone of a farmer’s tractor, the distant clatter of automatic gunfire steadily increased in volume and intensity.

Fakherldeen is an activist in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights and a researcher with the Golan-based human rights center al-Marsad. Martial beret screwed down over his head, he paused for thought as he smoked a cigarette, watching shells explode on the Syrian plains beyond the demilitarized zone.

“The only winners now are [Bashar] Assad and the Israelis,” he said. “And in the end, Assad will lose as well.”

The equation leaves only one victor – and the Golan Heights are the spoils of war. As fighting tears its once stable if hostile northern neighbor apart, Israel is using the specter of the Islamic State group and Islamist militancy to seek international recognition for its annexation of the area, occupied since 1967.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, thus chose last year to declare that the Golan Heights will “forever remain in Israeli hands,” taking full advantage of the chaos in Syria to openly challenge international law.

“The time has come, after 40 years, for the international community to finally recognize that the Golan Heights will remain forever under Israeli sovereignty,” he said.

Naftali Bennett, Israel’s education minister, also made a play for the annexation of the Golan to be internationally recognized, specifically citing the threat of Islamic State. The Golan, he said, was the only thing preventing Islamic State fighters from “swimming in the Galilee.”

Consolidating the occupation

Such words have been followed by specific policies to consolidate Israel’s grip on the territory: a planned fivefold increase in the number of settlers, a $108 million cash injection into 750 new Israeli agricultural projects, and a significant military expansion along the boundary between Syria and the territory under Israeli control.

As recently as 26 October, the Israeli government gave the go-ahead for the construction of 1,600 new homes in the settlement of Katzrin. The town’s 8,000 settlers live on ground once home to Syrian villagers, their property razed during the 1967 war.

To Faisal, a farmer in the Golan whose vineyard adjoins the United Nations- patrolled demilitarized zone and who spoke on condition that his full name would not be used, the issue is not the border. These days, he observed, “everybody lives near a border.”

Faisal is more concerned with Israeli policies allowing settlers access to up to five times more water than the Golan’s indigenous Syrian Druze, a minority religious group, and harsh restrictions on building projects.

In September, Israel demolished a Syrian home in the occupied Golan Heights for the first time in decades.Matt Broomfield

“It’s been 40 years and we’re still not allowed to build,” he said. “We are farming with love, not money: it’s impossible. How can you continue to live on this land?”

In September, for the first time in decades, Israel implemented a home demolition policy in the Golan more commonly associated with its practices in the occupied West Bank.

A candy-coloured Druze flag now flaps over the remains of Bassan Ibrahim’s home on a promontory overlooking Majdal Shams, the largest Syrian town in the occupied Golan. Bulldozed by Israeli police, it is now just a heap of rubble and twisted metal.

And al-Marsad reports that there are now more than 80 homes scheduled to be destroyed, as native Syrians find it difficult or impossible to secure building permits.

“My son lives with me, he’s 28,” Faisal said. “And I thank God that he hasn’t found a wife yet. Where would they go? Where would they live?”

Something like Islamic State

Israeli designs on the Golan are no secret, but are often wrapped in seemingly innocuous language.

Last year, Israel presented itself as a concerned protector of the Druze on the Syrian side of the 1967 boundary from the threat of Islamist militants.

Reuven Rivlin, Israel’s president, aired these concerns after Druze citizens of the state had voiced fears for their coreligionists in Syria. But Faisal said he did not believe Israel cares about protecting him from Islamic State fighters or anyone else.

“The Israeli state takes care of Jews, not Arabs,” he said. He pointed out that Israeli landmines around his home force him to work a scrap of poor-quality land beside the boundary.

A massive landgrab around Majdal Shams is marketed as an apolitical act of ecological largess.

But Naftali Bennett’s remarks that the Syrian war is a “rare opportunity” for Israel to stake its claim on the “big mountain of the Golan” suggest a different motivation behind the Hermon National Park project.

An Israeli military vehicle sits on a bluff overlooking rebel-held territory in Syria.Matt Broomfield

Across the demilitarized zone, meanwhile, al-Marsad’s Fakherldeen pointed out border gates he alleged are used by Israel to systematically treat fighters from an al-Qaida offshoot group, smuggling them across the UN-patrolled boundary under cover of darkness.

Though Fakherldeen opposes the Assad government in Syria, he was emphatic in his condemnation of Israel’s touted humanitarian efforts in the region: “I do not thank them for it,” he said. “If they truly cared they would take some refugees. Instead they push them back.”

“Syria will collapse, and Israel will demand to keep control over the Golan – and maybe even more than that,” Fakherldeen argued.

Israel’s posture as a politically exceptional actor in the region, moreover, mirrors the exclusivist theology of Islamic State, Fakherldeen said.

“Israel says it’s the only democracy, it’s the only liberal state in the Middle East. But really it’s something like Daesh,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Matt Broomfield is a freelance journalist currently working in occupied Palestine. He regularly reports for the Independent and writes for VICE, Dazed and activist media, as well as publishing poetry and fiction. Twitter: @hashtagbroom. Website: mattbroomfield.contently.com

Israel PM Netanyahu denies incitement before murder of Rabin

Netanyahu, Likud party have been accused of taking part in hate campaign that preceded Rabin's assassination

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (AFP/file photo)

Matt Broomfield- 11 November 2016

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday rejected accusations that he had been involved in a campaign of incitement that preceded the 1995 assassination of premier Yitzhak Rabin.

In a message on his Facebook page, Netanyahu called Rabin's killing on 4 November that year by Jewish extremist Yigal Amir a "shocking political murder that all of us condemn".

"Since the murder there have been continuous attempts to distort the historical truth and blame me for the incitement that preceded the killing," he wrote.

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Marian Houk @Marianhouk

"Netanyahu didn't think it would end in murder, but if I were him I would have been wearing sackcloth + ashes for the past 20 years" #Rabin https://twitter.com/news10/status/797498710762647553 …

6:56 PM - 12 Nov 2016

 
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He posted video clips taken before the assassination, showing him condemning virulent statements against Rabin.

In the weeks before the assassination, Netanyahu and other senior Likud members attended a right-wing political rally in Jerusalem where protesters branded Rabin a “traitor,” “murderer” and “Nazi” for signing a peace agreement with the Palestinians earlier that year, the Times of Israel reported.

Rabin won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo peace accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.

Amir, who was opposed to the Oslo accords, is now serving a life sentence for shooting Rabin dead at a peace rally in a central Tel Aviv square.

Netanyahu and his Likud party have often been accused of taking part in the hate campaign that preceded Rabin's assassination.

Last week, Likud MP and close ally David Bitan, chairman of Netanyahu's governing coalition, provoked uproar by claiming that Rabin's killing was "not political".