Wolf's of Masters Manimuthu alias Mohideen Muthu

Nov 17, 2016

When masters pets dogs obviously they faithful to their masters. But when masters pets wolfs in cover of dogs the masters have to pay the price even without their knowledge. That’s what happened to Hon. Arumugam Thondaman MP and Hon.Champika Ranawaka Minister of Megapolis and western Development

M.Manimuthu a former vice president of Ceylon workers congress, former chairman land reclamation Development Corporation, former chairman building Materials Corporation and managing director of overseas management and constructions under the ministry of housing development and estate infrastructure during the tenure of Hon. Arumugam Thondaman was the Minister.

Since these appointment were made he rose to from zero to hero where Thondaman did not realize that instead of a dog he grew a wolf.

Lanka news web reliably learns and possess a document In late 80’s, this Manimuthu was a smuggler of gold where he had a name called bunker Muthu this person’s job was caring gold in his private parts to Singapore and Chennai for his Muslim agents for petty money. This person was using a fake passport on the name of Mohideen Mohomed confirmed by former retired senior customs officer to Lanka news web.

We will reveal how Mohideen Manimuthu and M.M.C. Ferdinand’s former Secretary to the ministry of power and energy damaged Hon.Armugam Thondaman’s political life including preventing of getting the Ministry of Water Supply and Drainage where the former President Mahinda Rajapaksha want to offer to Thondaman to please the Tamil community and the neighboring India to keep happy after defeating LTTE and costing the lives of huge number of Tamil community.

According to a two powerful unions of CEB submitted a detailed report to Lanka news web how these two culprits conducted a mafia style operations including ousting Hon. Champika Ranawaka then Minister of Power and Energy during Rajapaksha Regime.    

M Manimuthu who became a big funder for certain necessity of Rajapaksha Government including funding of 7.5 million for the protest against Tamil diaspora and UNHRC Organized by the Government.

This person also submitted of full personal report of Hon Arumugam Thondaman wealth including finance and properties to Mr.Lalith weeratunga the Former sectary to the president and Sajin vass Gunawardena former personal coordinator to the former president.

We will highlight the Manumuthu and Ferdinando relationship which cost billions of rupees to the CEB and their shabby dealings in coming days.

Palestinian political leader on hunger strike

Raed Salah greets supports shortly after he was sentenced to nine months of imprisonment by a Jerusalem court in January 2010.Mohamar AwadAPA images

Charlotte Silver-16 November 2016

A Palestinian political leader long targeted by Israel is on hunger strike in protest of his solitary confinement and alleged mistreatment by Israeli prison authorities, his lawyer announced on Sunday.

Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, a political party in Israel, refused all meals on Monday.

Guards raided his prison cell and removed food and electrical devices, including his television set and radio. Also confiscated were his writings, which Salah has said are part of a book he is working on.

In late October 2015, Salah was convicted of “inciting violence and terrorism” in a sermon he delivered in a mosque in occupied East Jerusalem in 2007. Salah allegedly called on Muslims to protect Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque from infiltrating Jewish settlers and members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

Salah began serving a reduced nine-month prison sentence last May. He was placed in solitary confinement soon after his imprisonment, according to the Ma’an News Agency.

His conviction coincided with a wave of deadly confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces that began late last year.

In the wake of Salah’s trial, Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Knesset, said the court had been “influenced by the impassioned public atmosphere.”

Tibi stated that the Israeli government was “seeking to transfer responsibility for the current violence to other parties, including the Islamic Movement.”

Shortly after Salah was convicted, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, banned his political party, shutting down its offices and community operations.

Late last month, an Israeli court rejected an appeal to end Salah’s isolation.

According to Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoner solidarity group, Salah has been denied books sent by his family as well as visits from Palestinian leaders in Israel, including Knesset member and Balad party head Jamal Zahalka.

50 days on hunger strike

Another Palestinian hunger striker, 20-year-old Anas Ibrahim Shadid, has suffered memory loss and is at high risk of paralysis, the Palestinian Authority committee on prisoners’ affairs warned on Saturday.

Shadid, from the Hebron-area village of Dura in the occupied West Bank, was arrested on 2 August during a raid of his home and has since been detained without charge or trial, a practice known as administrative detention. On hunger strike since 25 September, he is being treated at a hospital in Tel Aviv.

On Monday, Israel’s high court denied an appeal to end Shadid’s detention.

A military court has also refused to end the administrative detention of another Palestinian prisoner, Ahmad Abu Fara, who also began a hunger strike on 25 September.

Abu Fara, 29, reportedly suffers from shortness of breath, severe pains throughout his body, weakening sight and constant vomiting.

An Israeli military court recommended to “freeze” Abu Fara’s administrative detention order until his health improves.

Journalist to be released

Israel is expected to release a Palestinian journalist who has spent eight months in prison for alleged “incitement” on social media.

Sami Said al-Saee, 37, works for Sawt al-Quds (Voice of Jerusalem) radio and New Dawn TV. He was arrested in March.

Another journalist, Khalid Maali, was ordered released by an Israeli military court on condition that he shuts down his Facebook account and turns in his laptop, in addition to paying a fine of $1,700.

Samidoun stated that Maali, 48, was arrested from his home in the West Bank village of Salfit last week as part of a wave of arrests targeting Palestinians over social media posts.

In the trial of a Palestinian professor of astrophysics, military court prosecutors 

reportedly reportedly entered into evidence the number of “likes” and “shares” his Facebook posts criticizing Palestinian politics and the Israeli occupation received.

The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, known as MADA, recorded a 17 percent increase in Israeli violation of Palestinian press freedoms in the first half of 2016.

The watchdog stated that the most common offenses committed by Israel were physical assault, arrest and detention, confiscation of equipment and prevention of coverage.

Torture and Tunisia: Survivors accuse persecutors on live TV

Political activist Bechir Khalfi was suspended 'like a roast chicken' by his persecutors. His is but one of thousands of stories revealed by the Truth and Dignity Authority

Bechir Khalfi, who is testifying to the truth commission after years of torture in prisons (MEE / Maryline Dumas)

Maryline Dumas-Thursday 17 November 2016

TUNIS, Tunisia - Manel Abrougui offers a wonderful smile that hides the horrors she has heard, and is now unable to forget.

For the past 18 months, this doctoral sociology student has worked for the Truth and Dignity Authority (Instance Verite et Dignite or IVD), a body created at the end of 2013 to highlight abuses suffered by thousands of people, mostly before the 2011 revolution that toppled long-term president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

'The witness, himself a victim, felt guilty. Because she called him for help and he could do nothing'

- Manel Abrougui, Truth and Dignity Authority

The 29-year-old woman personally listened to between 800 and 1,000 people - she has lost count of the exact figure - in closed hearings, as they recounted abuses suffered during the Ben Ali era, from 1987 to 2011, even as far back as Tunisia’s independence from France in the 1950s.

On Thursday, victims will tell their stories live on television, as the first public hearings start. But Abrougui has already moved on from collecting testimonies: working on the project has taken too heavy a toll. 

'I had nightmares every night'

“I was exhausted. I had nightmares every night," she told Middle East Eye. Abrougui was particularly haunted by the testimony of a man tortured in jail, where he shared a cell with a young woman whose name he never knew.

His cellmate was raped many times right before his eyes before she eventually died, he had told Abrougui.

“The witness, himself a victim, felt guilty. Because she called him for help and he could do nothing,” Abrougui recalled. 

More than 62,000 people and communities have filed cases with the IVD, a figure that includes those claiming to be victims as well as repentant perpetrators.

Each case must meet three criteria. The alleged incident must have taken place between 1 July 1955, when Tunisia became independent, and 31 December 2013, when the country's new Transitional Justice Law came into force. The accused perpetrator must be the state, or persons acting on its behalf or under its protection. Finally, crimes should be considered serious or systematic.

'Roast chicken' torture

Expert listeners like Abrougui are the first to get in touch with applicants. Their work consists of helping people tell their stories, collecting testimonies to identify the type of violation - 32 of which have been identified by the IVD - identifying victims’ needs in terms of psychological or follow-up care, and recording applications for compensation.

Bechir Khalfi was one of those applicants. He had to relate in detail what he experienced in Tunisia’s prisons between 1991 and 2007. As an opponent of Ben Ali's rule, he had been sentenced to 52 years in prison on various charges, including membership of an unauthorised organization, involvement in an illegal demonstration and distributing leaflets. 

'My arms and legs were tied around a suspended stick. The men beat me on both sides and my body swung between them'

- Bechir Khalfi, torture victim

Such judgments are now considered illegal. Arbitrary arrests such as these represent the greatest number of alleged violations being heard by the IVD. So far, 13,752 complaints of arbitrary arrest have been filed, as well as 6,367 allegations of unfair trials.

But Khalfi was also tortured. The 50-year-old remembers as if it were yesterday the “technique of the roast chicken".

"My arms and legs were tied around a suspended stick," he told MEE. "The men beat me on both sides and my body swung between them. I was left like this until 4 o'clock in the morning.

"My head was also plunged into a basin of waste water. Because I was kicked with boots, the skin on my legs fell off in tatters,” he said, specifying that he had spent “seven years in the interrogation box, with its share of abuses”.

After the listening phase, the file goes to the mapping service, where Abrougui now works after finishing up collecting testimonies.

"We trace the history of Tunisia, with the different phases the country has passed through," she explained.

Manel Abrougui in her office, where she now works corroborating victims' testimonies (MEE / Maryline Dumas)

"Eighteen periods of violations were thus determined, such as the bread riots (1983-1984) and the strikes of Gafsa," she explained.

Gafsa is a mining region in western Tunisia with a history of protest - in 2008 security forces intervened harshly over a six-month period to suppress widespread demonstrations and social unrest.

Pooling the testimonies makes it possible to corroborate them, to highlight patterns and to identify victims or perpetrators of crimes.

The mapping has highlighted the appearance of the so-called "roast chicken" torture method since the 1960s, and has proved that sexual violence was almost systematic in the Cap Bon region at the north-eastern tip of Tunisia.

“We can also see the evolution of some torturers. For example, there was one who crushed the testicles of his victims with a drawer. His doings can be traced throughout the territory,” Nouguil Heni, a colleague of Abrougui, said.

This work facilitates the task of the survey service, which processes the files in batches of 10 to 20 cases.

'We are not targeting the executioner, but the executives. Those people are sometimes dead, retired or still in office'

- Elyes Ben Sedrine, lawyer

"The more serious the case, the less the executioner can deny it," said Elyes Ben Sedrine, a lawyer working for the homicides unit. “We are not targeting the executioner, but the executives. Those people are sometimes dead, retired or still in office."

Sedrine told MEE that it is often difficult to reach the defendants. "Those who are less senior are protected so they are not tempted to speak. If he opens his mouth, everyone falls,” she said.

So far, she said, no one has confessed to the most serious crimes, which would lead to a special trial.

This is despite the fact that admitting guilt and submitting testimony to the IVD could see perpetrators treated with more leniency, according to the 2013 Transitional Justice Law. 

'Huge' disagreements between the State and the IVD

In cases of corruption - currently also being investigated by the IVD - culprits have come forward. Imed Trabelsi, a nephew by marriage of Ben Ali - who now lives in Saudi Arabia with his family - is one of those who has done just that. The 40-year-old has been in prison since 2011, having been sentenced to a total of more than 80 years for various offences, including cannabis use and fraud.

“Today, the transitional justice law [and cooperating with the IVD] is the only way he can get out of prison," said his lawyer, Anis Boughattas, adding that his client is ready to return any ill-gotten money and disclose all the information he has.

Yet the case is stagnating: the state's representative, in charge of negotiating compensation for victims, is no longer participating in the meetings.

"There is a huge disagreement between the State and the IVD," Boughattas told MEE - he highlighted the economic reconciliation bill wanted by President Beji Caid Essebsi, which would mean that corruption cases aren't heard by the IVD in the first place.

Imed Trabelsi (C) with his head in his hands during a 2011 trial (AFP)

Questions over compensation

At present, allegations are heard by different sub-bodies - once the initial survey is completed, files are dispatched according to their content.

"In cases of professional misconduct, it is the institutional reform committee that takes care of them," Oula Ben Nejma, the chair of the committee, explained. "For corruption, the arbitration one is responsible.

"Massive violations are transmitted to the inquiry unit and then to the special chambers. But in reality, the majority of cases are cleared at this stage. Then they are sent to the compensation commission," he said.

'I filed my case on the first day. I was number 59! Since then, nothing. I have been waiting. There is something wrong - the IVD is a bad organisation'

- Hamdoui Sami, political activist

Financial compensation is all that Hamdoui Sami wants. And quick. Pursued by the police for years, prevented from moving as he wished, this opponent to the dictatorship was never able to find a stable job before the revolution. 

But Sami says he has now lost patience with the IVD after long delays.

"I filed my case on the first day. I was number 59! Since then, nothing. I have been waiting. There is something wrong - the IVD is a bad organisation."

The IVD says it is still in the process of setting up a consultation service to deal with compensation claims.

Its leadership says it wants to set up a consultation service to "use reparations according to a development approach". The objective will be to ensure that money that is given back is used not as a compensation fund but as a sustainable resource.

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

Myanmar troops have killed 150 Rohingya Muslims, advocacy group says

Myanmar's military has killed scores of Rohingya Muslims in its recent crackdown across the western state of Rakhine, a London-based advocacy group says.

Nov 16, 2016

Myanmar's military has killed scores of Rohingya Muslims in its recent crackdown across the western state of Rakhine, a London-based advocacy group says.

The Arakan Rohingya National Organization said on Wednesday that based on reports from the troubled region, at least 150 Muslims had been killed since Saturday.

Ko Ko Linn, a senior official from the organization, said Myanmar's government sought to cover up the killings by barring the media and aid groups from entering the area.

The government has so far acknowledged the death of nearly 70 Rohingya Muslims and 17 members of security forces during the past days of fighting.

Rakhine, home to a large number of Rohingya Muslims, has been under a military lockdown since an alleged attack on the country’s border guards on October 9 left nine police officers dead. The government accused the Rohingya of being behind the assault.

Soldiers have killed scores and arrested many more in their hunt for the alleged attackers.

Myanmar's troops have also torched hundreds of Rohingya homes over the past days.

Rakhine has been the scene of communal violence at the hands of Buddhist extremists since 2012.
Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands have been forced from homes and live in squalid camps in dire conditions in Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
SS

The Top U.S. Intelligence Official Just Said He Has Resigned

BY ROBBIE GRAMER-NOVEMBER 17, 2016

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told lawmakers Thursday he has sent a letter of resignation to the House Select Committee on Intelligence and it “felt pretty good.”

“I got 64 days left,” he added. “I think I’d have a hard time with my wife anything past that.”

Clapper, the longest-serving DNI since the position was created after 9/11, said he sent his official resignation to the panel on Wednesday night. As DNI, he was the top intelligence official in the U.S. government, overseeing 16 civilian and military intelligence agencies. A statement released by his office Thursday said Clapper will serve until President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

Clapper’s resignation comes at a conspicuous time in the horse race for top posts in the the incoming administration. Trump is widely believed to be considering retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a former top military intelligence official, to be his national security advisor. Such a move could signal Trump’s intention to water down the DNI job and centralize intelligence and top security issues at the White House.

Like Clapper, Flynn is a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he served from 2012 to 2014. Though he is one of the most experienced national security hands in the president-elect’s inner circle, Flynn spurred controversy among active-duty military personnel when he openly backed Trump and spoke out on the GOP nominee’s behalf at the Republican National Convention in July. (Flynn was not the only retired general to throw his stars onto the political stage this year; retired Marine Gen. John Allen, the former commander in Afghanistan and global coalition taskmaster to defeat the Islamic State, gave a prime-time speech at the Democratic National Convention for Hillary Clinton.)

Clapper is also used to controversy. He oversaw the U.S. intelligence community during a national debate over government surveillance and civil liberties, and notably claimed to give the “least untruthful” answers possible when pressed on whether the National Security Agency was collecting data on millions of Americans. In December 2010, Clapper was caught unaware of the arrests of 12 terror suspects in London during a TV interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer. And in 2011, the White House walked back the DNI’s claim that Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi would “prevail” against rebels supporting his overthrow. His comments, which National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon called “a static and one-dimensional assessment,” came right after President Obama said Qaddafi no longer held legitimate power.

But Clapper also oversaw some of the most important U.S. intelligence missions since 9/11, including the May 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Clapper announced his resignation at a hearing where Republican lawmakers were expected to excoriate the Pentagon and intelligence committee for failing to respond “on a range of critical national security issues,” said House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

Most notably, the hearing was to focus on 2015 complaints by a group of intelligence analysts at the U.S. Central Command that their work was being altered to make the situation in Iraq and Syria appear less grave than their assessments originally found.

In August, a House Republican task force backed up those claims in adamning report, finding that dozens of analysts at Centcom viewed their leadership as “toxic,” while 40 percent of analysts interviewed by congressional staffers reported “they had experienced an attempt to distort or suppress intelligence in the past year.” The investigation was led in part by Nunes, who revealed to Foreign Policy in February that he had been repeatedly stonewalled by the command in investigating the complaints.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the panel’s top Democrat, praised Clapper for “serving honorably.”

“You’ve always exhibited sober judgment and put the fate of the nation first,” Schiff said.

Clapper was tapped as DNI in 2010. Previously, he served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, from 1992 to 1995, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, from 2001 to 2006. He is a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Air Force.

FP’s Paul McLeary contributed to this report
.

This article was updated to clarify the controversy surrounding Clapper’s remarks on Qaddafi.

Photo credit: GABRIELLA DEMCZUK/Getty Images

After the Funeral

After the Funeral

“Mr Trump was the cruellest candidate since George Wallace” – Garrison Keillor

by Uditha DevapriyaTuesday, November 15, 2016

Victories are savoured when expected, baffling when they are not. Predictions are fun when they turn out to be correct, not so when they do not. Elections, it must hence be said, are less about choosing winners than about making forecasts, tallying what was expected with what came about, and ensuring that the top dog makes it to (what else?) top. That is why critics of representative democracy, chortling at that term with no mean sense of humour, have baptised candidates who triumphed at the polls as selected, not elected. The guy who clinches the throne and crown twice, on that basis, is reselected. And when that guy loses, all hell tends to break lose.

I don’t count myself among the Sri Lankans who think that the US Election has implications for us. Fact is, there really aren’t any, and if there are, we can only predict and forecast as to what they are with limited success. Of course Donald Trump won, of course Hillary Clinton lost, and of course the hype over the latter’s predicted victory soured as and when the results of key swing states were announced, but let’s be honest here: comparing what transpired in the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” with our “Dharmishta Samajaya” (yes, I am being sarcastic here) would be akin to comparing apples with oranges.

I do believe, however, that certain significant points emerged from the election. Points that may well explain where we are heading and where we will stop, as a nation. This week’s column is about what we can take from the results, the constituencies, and the ideological predilections each candidate pandered to. Starting with this: how did the winner win?

Let’s get one thing clear. From Day One, the candidates were already decided on. It was not the most radical nominee who emerged from the Democrats. Bernie Sanders, at every step of the way, was less hindered by his Republican counterparts than by his own party’s other candidate. He was rubbished, dubbed a mean old man, and portrayed as everything the party was supposed to stand for but did not: social democratic, reformist, dangerous. In the end, it was left to that most astute of satirists, Jon Stewart, to sum up the case against Sanders: “We’ve all become so accustomed to stage-managed, focus-group-driven candidates that authenticity comes across as lunacy.”

And that authenticity cost not just his candidature, but Hillary Clinton’s as well. I don’t wish to delve into statistics, but the fact of the matter is that Clinton won by slender margins and lost by not-so slender margins in key states. Given that Trump won the same proportion of white people that Mitt Romney did (against Barack Obama) in 2012, the only reasonable explanation of Clinton’s loss was this: she did not court as many minority votes (about 88%, according to the Pew Centre) as she should have to soar into the kind of victory Obama did eight years ago (with about 91%).

That, coupled with the fact that of the 11 most crucial swing states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin) seven went to Trump, probably renders the racism story (I’ll get to this later) about the man at best, a myth. Let’s not forget, after all, that Clinton suffered her biggest losses in places where Obama was strongest with white voters. As with 2008 hence, there was a transition, a pool of undecided millennials who were (as Sanders eloquently pointed out in a Facebook post a day after the election) sick of the Establishment, sick of rhetoric, sick of the media, and wanted action.

Ben Domenech, writing in The Federalist, poses an interesting question: who really deserves the credit for Trump’s victory? He answers it at once: Obama and the media. I’ll get to the media shortly, but as for Obama, suffice it to say that his over-optimistic message for continuity was as blind as it was going to get. It’s difficult to imagine how a person as universally loved could be so deprecated in his own country, but much of that has to do with the Big Government mentality that Republicans tried to reflect with his every word and deed. Put simply, he tried to save the privilege-deprived when he gave the impression of burdening others who were as deprived of privilege, yet ignored. It was that ignored crowd who voted against continuity.

Sanders and Trump were the only two authentic, no-frills candidates in the race. Sanders in particular, with the integrity typical of a man as old, veteran, and controversial as him, reaped so much appeal among young voters that it didn’t surprise anyone when those same young voters, instead of going for Clinton, either chose third party candidates or didn’t vote at all. As the Pew Centre analysis puts it succinctly, not many young people were out there voting for her.

And in the final analysis, this probably had to do with how the lady was perceived. She was branded, vilified, and insulted. She had a past. It was Gloria Steinem, that renowned and still-at-it feminist crusader, who once famously said of the median woman, “Either she’s a feminist or a masochist”, and went on to class female Republican Party supporters as the latter, but the truth was that given Clinton’s foreign policy record (particularly when it came to the Middle East), she was regarded as much a Republican as those touted as sexists and misogynists on the other side. She had imbibed Sanders’ vision for a more equal society, but had repudiated its core message.

Enough with this though. Donald Trump won. Will he make this world any better? I don’t think so. To be fair by him, I don’t think he’ll make it any worse either. People and individuals are so alluring that voters forget there are things other than personality which drive a government. Barack Obama was loved, yes, but despite that he had to implement some of his most controversial policies using Executive Orders (thanks to Republican opposition).

To be as simple as possible, a vote for Trump was a vote for change, a vote for concrete action over lofty ideals. It proved that liberals were stuck in complacency, were too ready to compromise in the face of disaster, and were raising too much hope. They were deciding for the undecided, which the undecided (predominantly white, male, and Christian) did not like.

So what have we as a country learnt? For one thing, the underdog can triumph. Ann Coulter, that rightwing political commentator, put it best when Trump won his candidature last May: “A guy just won the Republican nomination for president by spending no money, hiring no pollsters, running virtually no TV ads, and just saying what he truly believed no matter how many times people told him he couldn't say that.”

There were a great many institutions telling us that he could not win, from the so-called liberal media to the BBC. Even rightwing commentators like Glenn Beck were badmouthing him, caught in the unenviable dilemma of either liking the Obamas (whom he’d trashed for the last eight years) or voting for the Republican candidate who happened to be the same man he was now trashing. Trump was criticised as unrefined, uncouth, and appealing to what Harper Lee once called “white trash”: coarse, vulgar, White, otherwise known as bumpkins. Yes, like the baiyas of this country.

And in the end, those baiyas won. They were forgotten, as Trump constantly reminded them, and they weren’t necessarily aligned with the conventional Republicans. They morphed from the Tea Party Movement (in 2009) into a class of their own: distrustful of the Establishment (whether from the Left or the Right), concerned with developing their country from a neo-Mercantilist standpoint (which explains Trump’s promise to create more jobs without “importing” them for cheap). They were ignored by a media that perpetuated a culture of political correctness, which in itself wasn’t bad if it wasn’t taken as an excuse (as it covertly was here) to ignore the nationalists, who as I pointed out in a previous column win whether you want them or not.

What transpired last week was hence an outcry against liberal elitism: the kind that ignored nationalist rhetoric, fears of outside invasion, and a sense of losing one’s communal identity. These are genuinely felt fears and threats, and in the long run they can transform into a substantial chunk of the country’s electorate if they are not addressed. At the end of the day, such elitism can be taken as arrogance, which probably explains the anger the bumpkins displayed against an article written by Garrison Keillor in the Washington Post, where he point-blank dismissed them with the following (unnecessary) point: “The future is scary. Let the uneducated have their day.”

When elitism is repudiated by people who have been shut off for long, the consequences can be disastrous when those people win at the ballot. Majority aspirations are based on self-perpetuating myths which may or may not be ridiculous, but if they are rubbished, they will be transformed into political slogans for the underdog. That underdog emerged in Sri Lanka as well, in 1989 and in 2005, from both the main political parties here and without the support of their own colleagues. Donald Trump too, without a clear endorsement from the likes of Paul Ryan (who masterminded the Tea Party Movement) soared to victory. All bets are that he will cast aside those who harboured doubts about him from his own party and take in those he takes to, though all that’s conjecture for now.

It was probably telling that the populists in Sri Lanka were cheering the man. One of them posted on Facebook, “This election showed the true power of the silent, anonymous powerbase of people in the USA,” no doubt spurred on by their distrust of Democrats, especially Clinton (who, thanks to all those leaked emails from her private server, was considered as a supporter of the LTTE), but also by their inclination towards a man who spoke his mind, baited his voters with rabble rousing rhetoric, and swept aside the conventional wisdom in favour of the national interest.

So who won? Xenophobes, sexists, and homophobes. That is a problem. Who lost? The warmongers, the subsidisers of capital, and the Establishment. The former are hawks on domestic policy and (supposedly) doves on foreign policy, while the latter (the Clintons especially, given their past) were hawks on foreign policy and doves on domestic policy. It’s difficult to point out who will be regretted more. Personally speaking, the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea would have been easier for me. And personally speaking, I don't think we should care.

We should care, however, about the lessons we can learn. America brought out the biggest upset in its electoral history last week. The vilified man won, the championed woman did not. Some would exclaim: “Misogyny!” Perhaps. But the truth is, despite the caricature and the parody, despite the comic sketches, and despite the vilification, the alleged misogynist got through anyway. If he becomes dangerous (and I don’t cut any slack for him if he does), who are we to blame? Not the bumpkins, but those who ignored them for eight years.

Bottom line: nationalism wins. If you bottle it up, you’ll make things a whole lot worse. Just like that.

Written for: Ceylon Today, November 15 2016

South Sudan’s independence and the irony of defeat in victory

Part of what I consider to be the right approach in solving the problem is to avoid an obtuse and blanket kind of condemnations and approvals. Let the guilty be blamed and those who out of a sincere and honest heart have done the right thing should be praised and encouraged. It will be more beneficial, especially in the interest of posterity for those who do intervene in this matter to be specific when dealing with all aspects of the issue.

by Osita Ebiem

( November 17, 2016, New York City, Sri Lanka Guardian) For more than 25 years the people of South Sudan fought their powerful common enemy to a standstill. The enslaving Arab Islamist forces of north Sudan were matched fire for fire until the northerners acknowledged that the southerners who are Animists and Christians have rights to live free and on their own cultural and religious terms. The southerners fought valiantly as men, they fought as one people; they fought long and won their freedom from the oppressors on July 9, 2011.

Vicariously, those of us who are fighting to free Biafra from the vicious grip of the Islamic state of Nigeria participated in the South Sudanese victory like it was our own. Yes, in more ways than not, the Sudanese victory tends to foretell how the eventual Igbo freedom from Nigeria will look like. Why the Biafrans saw in the South Sudanese victory their own is because in Nigeria Igbo people are also faced with the same Arab-Islamist forces of Hausa, Fulani and Yoruba oligarchies which are bent on the total extermination of the Igbo. So, since the South Sudanese withstood similar enslaving forces and defeated them, the victory has remained an evergreen source of inspiration for the Igbo in Nigeria.

While they fought in the trenches, on the hills and in all the many battlefields; the South Sudanese leaders had some squabbles and disagreements. But they always found ways to settle their differences and disputes and sustained the fight against the enslavers. At the end of the battle they won a country but now this is 2016, they need to win a nation.

Unfortunately, by 2013 the people lost their hard won country to personal interests and power flexing of their leaders. The leaders’ individual interests and show of power plunged the entire country into a civil war which has raged on to their shame and the disappointment of their admirers. These leaders need to put aside for one moment their pursuit for personal prestige and show some example of caring and benevolent leadership styles. Urgently, they must find solutions now; find ways to end childish things and begin the onerous and matured business of governing and managing a country and the welfares of its people.

Earlier on, at the southern tip of the continent, South Africans who had also fought long and arduous against those who oppressed them through Apartheid system, celebrated their freedom in 1994. Some of the leaders of the fight were imprisoned for more than 25 years. But their fight for equality had lasted for about a century. In the end the South Africans also won freedom and the right to be equal participants in the affairs of their country. But perhaps that is where the similarities of the two fights end. Today, and unfortunately so, the leaders of South Sudan are turning their laudable and prideful victory into a tragedy and nightmare. The attitude of the South Sudanese leaders toward leadership and power is largely to be blamed.

In South Africa there were Nelson Mandela and others like him who to a greater extent understood the nature and concept of victory and power – altruistic, magnanimous, camaraderie; transient and flitting. While in South Sudan there are Salva Kiir, Riek Machar and others who believe that victory is personal, individualistic and an end in itself. And that power should be held onto permanently and used vindictively to witch-hunt opposition while the opposition egoistically asserts that it is not weak, after all. That it also has influence. But the truth is that good leaders, whether in opposition or not cannot be vindictive and sour or constantly trying to prove some points.

The big guys of South Sudan are shamelessly flexing unattractive and unimpressive muscles, trying to prove personal superiority while their lowly citizens to whom the victory and power truly belong continue to suffer in pain and devastating impoverishment. In the mind of these leaders, they have come to erroneously think that because they were opportune to be present at the moment of the people’s victory therefore they have become some divine beings who are now infallible and indispensable. This attitude shamefully violates the memory and honor of those heroes who also fought and died before July 9, 2011. Sometimes one wonders if these leaders have ever considered that old saying of leaving the stage while the ovation is still loud.

Down through time, history has not lacked noble and honorable achievers and victors who left exemplary records which those that care can imitate. In the following story we learn that sometimes, because of the feelings of others that good leaders learn to let go of personal pleasures and comfort, even when they can afford them. In other words, true leaders cannot always take it just because they can. The biblical David was a military commander of ancient Israeli army who is still recognized as a successful leader of his people because he understood how to handle victory and power without being sucked into the twilight zone of those two impostors. It is reported that at one point during the heat of a battle, when an enemy force occupied Bethlehem his hometown, David thirsted for water from a well in Bethlehem. When he made his wish known, three of his officers volunteered and risked everything by cutting through the ranks of the enemy to fetch the water from the well. On their return, David would not drink the water but poured it out as libation, saying that there was no way he could drink it because the water equated with the blood of these men who risked their lives in order to satisfy his personal fancies.

As the leader, nothing prevented David from drinking the water but he resisted greed and insensitivity and instead poured the water away. We can play the story forward and contrast it with the attitude of the present South Sudan generals who it seems would rather impoverish and drink the blood of their fellow country men, women and children merely to hold on to power and prove how right and indispensable they have become.

The Monster is in us

My poet friend Jonathan Wilson said that as a little boy he looked for the monster under his bed. But now as an adult he suddenly discovered that the monster was himself. These South Sudanese generals fought so gallantly to win their many battles only to be defeated by mere selfish pursuit of personal glory and the unwillingness to let go and concede personal fancies in the interest of peace in the country for which they have already sacrificed so much. The present arch rivals President Salva Kiir and his former Vice-President Riek Machar fought side by side in the military until the enemy was defeated and the people of South Sudan became free and independent. Now, they are finding it impossible to defeat the enemy in their individual selves. Good leaders aim to leave behind legacies which acceptably, are more difficult to do than winning battles. In trying to win wars the aim is to defeat the enemy, while in building legacies true leaders must defeat their selves. At first it was believed that the problem of the South Sudanese people was the hegemony and evil devises of the Islamic Arabs in the north. Sadly, due to the selfish interests of their leaders, the people seem to be doing a rethink.

To many observers, that victory over the bigoted fanatical forces of Islamic Arab feudalism will not be complete until the leaders are able to defeat their personal demon. But they still have the time and opportunity to save themselves, the country and the people in it. These leaders must come to the realization that power as everything else is only a means and not an end in itself. All powers and attained positions are transient and temporal and should be treated as such.

Nevertheless, we are not pretending to believe that sentiments and emotions may be all there are in making these men to do the right thing. Sometimes there may be need for something extra. So, while we are appealing to the conscience of these men, to reconsider and solve this problem in the same way they had solved other disagreements they had when they fought for their liberation, we are not ruling out the need for genuine external assistance in helping solve this problem. The international community should find a way to use sanctions and other forms of economic and political pressures to force these men to do the right thing.

Part of what I consider to be the right approach in solving the problem is to avoid an obtuse and blanket kind of condemnations and approvals. Let the guilty be blamed and those who out of a sincere and honest heart have done the right thing should be praised and encouraged. It will be more beneficial, especially in the interest of posterity for those who do intervene in this matter to be specific when dealing with all aspects of the issue. There is the need for a comprehensive and holistic approach in trying to solve South Sudan. As an example, in my opinion, I think that the time has come for the review of the country’s political and social structure. The prevailing National Constitution was drawn under the circumstances of strife and war with an external force. As a matter of necessity, since the country as an independent state is now under a civilian regime, it may be a good idea to produce another constitution which takes cognizance of present realities.

Russian bribery probe widens amid reports of Kremlin power struggle

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev leaves a memorial ceremony at the Hall of Remembrance during his visit to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem on Nov. 11. (Pool photo by Gali Tibbon/AFP via European Pressphoto Agency)

By David Filipov November 16

MOSCOW — Is the “liberal wing” of President Vladi­mir Putin’s cabinet under attack?

Russia’s state-run news agency reported Wednesday that more officials could be targeted in the corruption probe that has already led to the arrest of the country’s economic development minister. Other news reports went so far as to name names, all of them of officials close to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, leader of the so-called liberals, who tend to favor a smaller state role in society and greater international outreach.

Medvedev’s faction is seen to be in an eternal struggle against the Kremlin’s “siloviki” — a force that includes officials from the military, law enforcement and security services in Putin’s inner circles.

At the center of the current tug of war is the privatization of major oil assets. On Tuesday, Alexei Ulyukayev, the economic development minister, was charged with demanding and receiving a $2 million bribe allegedly for approving the $5 billion purchase of a 50 percent stake in the Bashneft oil company by the state-run oil giant Rosneft.

[Putin backs Russian withdrawal from International Criminal Court]

Russian Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev was charged with demanding and receiving a $2 million bribe allegedly for approving the $5 billion purchase of a 50 percent stake in the Bashneft oil company by the state-run oil giant Rosneft. (Maxim Shipenkov/European Pressphoto Agency)

Ulyukayev initially opposed the deal, which eventually went through in October. Rosneft is led by Igor Sechin, seen as a close Putin lieutenant and one of the leaders of the siloviki. 

“The arrest of Ulyukayev served as another proof that Igor Sechin is a very powerful figure,” Andrei Kolesnikov of the Moscow Carnegie Center wrote in a commentary. “In the hierarchy of the elites he occupies one of the prized positions for influencing the economy, the political landscape, and the administrative system of weights and measures. Everyone has understood that.”

The influential business daily Vedomosti named four officials who are seen as part of Medvedev’s team and have come under investigation by the security services, which have had Ulyukayev under surveillance since last year. 

Medvedev presided over a government meeting Wednesday that was at first reported as an “emergency session,” although state-run Russia 24 television said later that it was just an ordinary meeting.

Medvedev said the case against Ulyukayev showed that “everyone is equal before the law,” and he also expressed hope that the investigation would get to the bottom of the allegations. 

“What’s happened should be investigated in the most thorough manner and assessed in strict compliance with the law,” Medvedev said.

[Russia’s establishment basks in Trump victory]

 

Russia’s former finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, expressed the doubts of many observers here about the Ulyukayev case.

“Even in the work of law enforcement agencies there are sometimes mistakes; we don't have complete confidence in certain steps,” Kudrin told Russia 24. “I know from the experience of other officials who were released after being arrested and all charges against them were dropped. We have such a practice in Russia.”

Alpha Bank, one of the leading Russian financial companies, issued its own opinion of the case, saying that the “explanation for his arrest is questionable.”

“The current situation is, thus, a litmus test for the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and as to whether he is able to defend the innocence of one his cabinet members,” the bank said. “We see this as very negative development for the government’s credibility.”

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny went further, saying that the government lacks any credibility. 

“The authorities consist of thieves and crooks and anyone can be put in jail,” Navalny wrote. “When someone gets a black mark, someone else benefits from it. So in this case probably it was Sechin who benefited. But what’s the difference: all of them are toads and vipers.”

Navalny’s political aspirations received a boost Wednesday, when Russia’s Supreme Court reversed a criminal conviction against him in a corruption case and ordered a retrial, opening the door for a potential run for office.

Navalny, who helped lead large street protests against Putin in 2011 and 2012 and ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Moscow, was seen as a rising political star and a possible challenger to Putin. But he was convicted in 2013 of embezzling timber worth $500,000 at the time from a state-owned company in the provincial city of Kirov in a trial that was largely perceived as a vendetta against him. He has remained free from prison but was barred from running for office.