Thursday, December 22, 2016

Publisher slain in Philippines after criticizing officials over drugs

Candles are laid in memory of Filipino journalist Larry Que, who was shot Monday.

(CNN)A journalist has been slain in the Philippines after writing a column criticizing local officials for alleged "negligence" over an illegal drug factory.

By Vivian Kam and Elizabeth Roberts, CNN-Thu December 22, 2016

Larry Que, publisher of the Catanduanes News Now newspaper, is the first journalist killed since President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in June; two others have been attacked and injured.

The Philippines is one of the world's most dangerous countries for media workers, according to a watchdog group.

Que was shot by an unidentified person on the remote central island of Catanduanes on Monday, Joel Sy Egco, the executive director of the presidential task force on media security, told CNN.

He died early Tuesday, according to a statement by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

"Que's murder came after he published his column, which criticised local officials and their alleged negligence in allowing the setting up on the island-province of a recently raided shabu [the local name for methamphetamine] laboratory that authorities claimed was the biggest so far discovered in the country," the IFJ said.

Columnist-publisher is first journalist killed under Duterte

According to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), a second journalist, broadcaster Jinky Tabor, who was a witness to the raids that discovered the lab, has received death threats.

Que had only been publisher of the newspaper for two weeks, according to the NUJP, which said he was shot in the head as he was about to enter the building that houses his insurance office. The column in question was published in the December 13-19 edition of the newspaper.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on authorities in the Philippines to establish the motive behind Que's killing and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Que was a journalist on the eastern Philippine island of Catanduanes

"President Rodrigo Duterte has sent mixed messages on his government's commitment to protecting journalists and upholding press freedom. He should set the record straight by quickly solving Que's killing through legal means," Shawn Crispin, CPJ's senior Southeast Asia representative, said in a statement.

Philippines drug war's wide net claims 6-year-old shot dead in his sleep

A total of 77 journalists have been killed in the Philippines since 1992, according to the CPJ, which ranks it fourth in its Global Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where journalists die and their alleged killers go unpunished. It ranks behind Somalia, Iraq, and Syria.

Duterte has launched a brutal war on drug crime that has left more than 5,900 people dead since July.

Before he took his oath of office, Duterte said journalists killed on the job in the Philippines were often corrupt.

"Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch," he said. "Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong."

But, in October, he created a task force to protect the media from threats and violence and look into unsolved attacks.

UN Says Syrian Forces, Allies 'Likely' Committing War Crimes In Aleppo

Nearly 6,000 civilians have reportedly left rebel-held districts of Aleppo over the past 24 hours (file photo).

December 14, 2016

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights says Syria and its allies, Russia and Iran, have almost certainly violated international law and probably committed war crimes by bombing civilians hoping to be evacuated from eastern Aleppo.

UN human rights chief Zeid bin Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein made the accusations in a December 14 statement issued after a purported Aleppo evacuation plan announced by Russia a day earlier failed to materialize.

Zeid said he was "appalled that the deal enabling the evacuation of many thousands of civilians, including the wounded and the sick, from the remaining opposition-held area of eastern Aleppo appears to have collapsed."

Zeid acknowledged that the reasons for the breakdown of the cease-fire were disputed, but said that "the resumption of extremely heavy bombardment by the Syrian government forces and their allies on an area packed with civilians is almost certainly a violation of international law and most likely constitutes war crimes."

He also said the Syrian government "has a clear responsibility to ensure its people are safe, and is palpably failing to take this opportunity to do so."

Late on December 13, Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said an agreement had been struck for rebel fighters and civilians to be safely evacuated from eastern Aleppo.

Churkin told an emergency session of the UN Security Council that military activities in eastern Aleppo had stopped and that the Syrian government had "established control" over the area.

But fierce fighting, air strikes, and artillery barrages shattered the purported cease-fire deal less than 12 hours later before any evacuation materialized.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed there was shelling, air strikes, and "very intense clashes on every front line" between Syrian government forces and rebels in Aleppo.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that government forces resumed their assault after rebels, in the ministry's words, broke the truce brokered by Turkey and Russia.

'Fragile And Complicated'

But in Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Syrian government forces of breaking the deal.

Erdogan's comments came after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and its allies of trying to intentionally scuttle the agreement.

"We see now that the regime and other groups are trying to obstruct this [deal]," he said. "This includes Russia, Iran -- forces supported by Iran -- and the [Syrian] regime."

Later on December 14, officials in Turkey's presidential office said Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a telephone conversation to make a joint effort to start the evacuation of civilians and opposition forces from eastern Aleppo as soon as possible.

Reuters quoted the Turkish presidential sources as saying that both Erdogan and Putin agreed on the need to prevent further cease-fire violations

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Russia was partly responsible for the destruction of eastern Aleppo.

"We know that this ruthless destruction of eastern Aleppo would not have been possible without massive military support from Russia," Seibert said. "Russia has not prevented the crimes of the last few days although it was within its power to do so."

Assad has been backed by Russian air strikes and an array of Shi'ite militias from Iran and Lebanon in his campaign to seize full control of Aleppo, which was the most populous city in Syria before the more than 5-year-old civil war.

In excerpts from an interview aired on December 14 by state-funded Russian channel RT, Assad accused Western countries of seeking a cease-fire in Aleppo to "save" what he called "the terrorists" -- a reference to rebels fighting against his government.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he expected rebel resistance in eastern Aleppo to end "in the next two to three days."

WATCH: U.S. Attacks 'Shameless' Aleppo Assault

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on December 14 that nearly 6,000 civilians had left Aleppo's rebel-held districts during the previous 24 hours.

It also said that 366 rebels had laid down their arms over the same period and moved out of rebel-controlled parts of the city.

Execution-Style Killings

But the UN human rights office said it was receiving reports of pro-government forces in Syria entering homes in eastern Aleppo and shooting civilians dead "on the spot."

The UN human rights office said on December 13 that it had reliable evidence from four Aleppo neighborhoods that 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children, had been summarily executed.

Spokesman Rupert Colville said the atrocities were committed in recent days, adding that there could have been "many more" execution-style killings.

UN humanitarian spokesman Jens Laerke said it looked like "a complete meltdown of humanity in Aleppo."

Syria's UN ambassador, Bashar al-Ja'afari, denied allegations of any mass killings or revenge attacks and insisted that it was Syria's "constitutional right" to go after what he called terrorists.

"Aleppo has been liberated from terrorists and those who toyed with terrorism," Ja'afari said. "Aleppo has returned to the nation."

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the Syrian government, Russia, and Iran bore responsibility for “the conquest of and carnage in Aleppo.”

"Aleppo will join the ranks of those events in world history that define modern evil, that stain our conscience decades later,” Power said, citing the 1988 Halabja chemical attack in northern Iraq, the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian war.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, AP, and dpa

Palestinian Israeli lawmaker arrested

Basel Ghattas has denied accusations that he gave cellphones to Palestinian prisoners

Basel Ghattas says his advocacy for prisoners is a humanitarian issue (AFP)

Thursday 22 December 2016 22:26 UTC

Israeli police said on Thursday they arrested a Palestinian Israeli lawmaker whose immunity has been lifted after he was suspected of secretly giving cellphones to two Palestinian high security prisoners.

Basel Ghattas of the Joint List, a coalition of Palestinian Israeli parties, has denied the accusations.

“This is your immunity; I return it to you.”

-Basel Ghattas

A police spokesman told AFP that Ghattas was detained after being questioned, and will appear before a judge on Friday morning at Rishon LeZion, about 10 km south of Tel Aviv.

The 60-year-old said on Thursday he would accept his parliamentary immunity being lifted shortly before a planned vote in the Knesset on the issue.

In a defiant videotaped message Ghattas called his prosecution unjust.

“This is your immunity; I return it to you,” the lawmaker said. “My decision to accept lifting the immunity stems from my conviction that I have nothing to hide. I am willing to answer any question asked to me.”

Ghattas insisted that he did not commit any violation against the “so-called state security”, adding that his advocacy for prisoners is a humanitarian issue.

“I don’t regret my activism,” he said.

According to Ghattas’s office, lifting parliamentary immunity in this fashion is unprecedented. It said such move is reserved for suspects of rape, harassment and embezzlement who were later convicted.

Israeli media have reported that 12 mobile phones were found on two separate prisoners in searches after Ghattas visited Ketziot prison in the Negev desert.

One of the prisoners is serving time for the kidnapping and killing of an Israeli soldier in 1984, news site Ynet reported.

Police on Thursday said the lawmaker is suspected of passing phones and SIM cards to detainees at the prison on an unspecified date.

Lawmakers from the Joint List, the third largest force in parliament with 13 seats, frequently clash with Israel's leaders. Palestinian citizens of Israel make up some 17.5 percent of the country's population.

On Wednesday, parliament decided to restrict visits by deputies to high security prisoners.

Arctic freeze on Israeli settlement products

Dr. Mads Gilbert and a team of Palestinian surgeons prepare emergency treatment at al-Shifa hospital during Israel’s invasion of Gaza in January 2009. NORWAC

Ryan Rodrick Beiler-22 December 2016

A second major city in Norway has voted to boycott Israeli goods and services produced in Palestinian territory occupied in 1967.

The 25-18 vote by Tromsø city council followed a similar action in Trondheim in November.

Tromsø’s resolution was sponsored by council members Jens Ingvald Olsen and Mads Gilbert, known worldwide for his medical work in the Gaza Strip.

With a population of 75,000 and one of only a handful of world cities north of the Arctic Circle, Tromsø has a long tradition of solidarity with Palestine, Gilbert told The Electronic Intifada.

Tromsø has been twinned with Gaza City for 15 years, which has led to cultural and youth exchanges and a visit to by the mayor of Gaza City.

Given that history of solidarity, said Gilbert, “it should come as absolutely no surprise that Tromsø city council should be the second in Norway to vote in favor of a boycott of Israeli goods produced on occupied territory.”

According to Gilbert, there was little formal coordination with the vote in Trondheim except that officials shared the text of their resolution.

The primary inspiration for Tromsø’s boycott came from the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, which voted in 2015 to boycott all Israeli products until Israel complies with international law and human rights conventions.

After an extreme backlash from Israel and its supporters, however, the Reykjavik initiative was rescinded.

“We already then decided that we would support our Icelandic friends in a very concrete way by taking up the baton and promote similar votes in Norway,” said Gilbert. “It has been on our drafting table for quite some time.”

A moral question

The Tromsø city council has faced pressure both before and after the vote, which was approved by a left-wing alliance of Labor, Socialist Left and Red parties.

As with the Trondheim vote, members of the council’s right-wing opposition criticized the measure as an unjustified incursion by local politicians into foreign policy.

But there were also personal attacks.

Council member Benjamin Notkevich from the Socialist Left party faced particularly fierce criticism for supporting the boycott because of his Jewish heritage – his grandparents perished in the Holocaust.

His rejection of that criticism was vehement.

“For me it’s a moral question,” Notkevich told The Electronic Intifada. “Should the money of the people of Tromsø go to supporting an occupation economy? We decided that it should not, and therefore we made this resolution.”

Following the vote, he has been harassed with abusive phone calls, emails and social media posts, including comments labeling him anti-Semitic, calling him “garbage with a Jewish name” and comparing him to Vidkun Quisling, the puppet leader of the collaborationist government during the Nazi occupation of Norway.

“To the charge made by several actors that this was motivated by anti-Semitism, let me put it as simple as this: It was not,” said Notkevich. The charge, he said, “is an easy way to run away from talking about the occupation and keep building new settlements.”

One injustice does not justify another

Israel’s ambassador to Norway, Raphael Schutz, was a leading voice suggesting the vote was anti-Semitic. In a letter to members of the Tromsø city council, Schutz asked them to vote against “sinister winds of hate” and made references to Nazi Germany and allegations of anti-Israel bias in the United Nations.

“The radical pro-boycott approach uses almost always false information and lies,” Schutz charged.

“Describing Israel as an apartheid state, accusing it of committing ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians, blaming it for intentional killing of innocent people and indiscriminate attacks against civil population are just a few of them.”

The council’s majority leader, Jarle Heitmann of the Labor Party, responded publicly that while both the situation of Palestinians today and the historic tragedies experienced by Jews would be part of the council’s deliberations, “one injustice could never justify another.”

Heitmann called the ambassador’s declarations “counterproductive.”

The Tromsø resolution bans the purchase of goods produced in any occupied territory, but also refers to territory occupied by Morocco in Western Sahara.

In general, the Norwegian government has enforced sanctions against many other countries – mostly based on UN and EU policy – including Russia and Iran.

“Start of a cascade”

Following the vote, Schutz dismissed the Tromsø boycott as “an empty gesture.”

But Gilbert argues that the Israeli government considers the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) to be a serious threat.

“They do whatever they can to combat it,” he said. “There is an increasing number of attempts from the Israeli government to make BDS activities illegal.”

This has included increasing attempts to either deny entry or expel BDS supporters, making visits to Palestine more difficult for solidarity activists.

In November 2014, Israel indefinitely banned Gilbert from entering Gaza.

Gilbert said he is not concerned about how his role in this vote could affect his ability to return to Palestine.

“Our hardship is absolutely miniscule compared to the daily hardship that Palestinians are facing on checkpoints, access to hospitals, the denial of right to travel from Gaza, the repeated brutal military assaults on Gaza and the limitations in access to health care,” he said. “I hope these two city council votes in Norway will be the start of a cascade of similar votes.”

Changing politics

The resolutions are the most recent indicators of changing trends within Norway’s Labor Party, the largest party in parliament, though not currently part of the governing coalition.

In a shift echoing the Democratic Party in the US, Israel’s repeated assaults on Gaza in the last decade have forced a reconsideration of a long history of support for the Zionist project and strong ties with the Israeli labor movement.

During the 2014 assault, Labor Party leaders went on record discouraging trade with Israeli settlements.

“There is no doubt that there is a major shift within the Labor Party and of course this is such a defeat for the Israeli government,” said Gilbert, whose own efforts to save the victims of Israeli military aggression in Gaza in 2008-2009 and 2014 became the basis for two books: Eyes in Gaza and Night in Gaza.

“I’m sure that if there is a left- or center-left majority during the next election, there is a real possibility that goods and services from the illegal Israeli colonies, misleadingly named ‘settlements,’ in the occupied Palestinian territories will be boycotted by the Norwegian parliament.”

Norway’s next national election takes place in September 2017. Recent polls show the Labor Party with a lead.

The party’s platform declares that “there should not be trade of [Israeli] goods and services produced in occupied areas.”

Trump, Obama on possible collision course over Israeli settlement vote

A construction site in the Israeli settlement of Beitar Ilit in the West Bank. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

By Karen DeYoung December 22 at 11:37 AM

President-elect Donald Trump warned the Obama administration Thursday against a possible abstention in a key U.N. Security Council vote that would declare illegal all Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory in the West Bank and the mostly Arab East Jerusalem.

The resolution, initially scheduled for a Thursday vote, urges Israelis and Palestinians to commit to negotiations toward a two-state solution — a possible centerpiece for now-stalled peace efforts.

Word of the resolution — and the possibility of an abstention that would upend decades of U.S. policy — brought a flurry of activity in Israel and beyond. In a Twitter post, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “the U.S. should veto the anti-Israel resolution.”

That was followed by a near-identical, pre-dawn tweet from Trump and a statement by his transition office. “The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed,” he said.

“As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations.”

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped David Friedman to be the next U.S. ambassador to Israel. The bankruptcy attorney welcomed the announcement, saying he's looking forward to taking up his post in Jerusalem, a nod to Trump's pledge to move the U.S. embassy out of Tel Aviv. (Reuters)

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped David Friedman to be the next U.S. ambassador to Israel. The bankruptcy attorney welcomed the announcement, saying he's looking forward to taking up his post in Jerusalem, a nod to Trump's pledge to move the U.S. embassy out of Tel Aviv. (Reuters)

“This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis,” Trump said.

[Trump once donated $10,000 to a West Bank settlement]

Within hours of the swelling criticism, the vote was postponed, at least until Friday, at the request of the government of Egypt, which drafted the resolution and placed it on the Security Council agenda, asked for the vote to be postponed, at least until Friday, according to a spokesman for the Spanish U.N. mission, which currently holds the Security Council chair.

Trump has been highly critical of the Obama administration’s reproach of the government of President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s crackdowns on Egyptian civil society and said his administration would view Egypt as a close security ally.

Asked what communication the president-elect had with the White House before his statement Thursday morning, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said, “I don’t think it’d be appropriate to try to qualify one way or the other, other than to say we gave them a heads-up in advance.” The White House, Miller said, “has been unbelievably gracious with their time, advice and opinions to the president-elect and his senior staff so far in making this transition as smooth as possible.”

In a statement issued after the postponement, Netanyahu said, “Israelis deeply appreciate one of the great pillars of the US-Israel alliance: the willingness over many years of the US to stand up in the UN and veto anti-Israel resolutions.

“I hope the US won’t abandon this policy; I hope it will abide by the principles set by President Obama himself in his speech in the UN in 2011: That peace will come not through UN resolutions, but only through direct negotiations between the parties.

Speaking to reporters at Trump Tower, Dec. 15, senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said President-elect Trump does not intend to act on his vow to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem before he takes office, but emphasized that "he has showed his commitment" to do so. (The Washington Post)

“And that’s why this proposed resolution is bad. It’s bad for Israel; it’s bad for the United States; and it’s bad for peace.”

The resolution, promoted by liberal Jewish groups in the United States, has been the subject of intense debate in recent days within the Obama administration. Secretary of State John F. Kerry has pushed for a clear statement of position before the administration leaves office.

A Kerry speech outlining the U.S. stance that was tentatively scheduled for Thursday morning appeared to have been canceled within two hours of its planned delivery, according to U.S. officials, who said the matter remained unsettled within the administration.

In a speech this month at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Forum, Kerry outlined what he called “a basic choice that has to be made by Israelis. . . . Are there going to be continued settlements? Is there going to be a continued implementation of settlement policy, or is there going to be separation and the creation of two states?”

Kerry noted that the United States has repeatedly described settlements as an obstacle to peace but that the Israelis “haven’t listened.” At the same time, successive U.S. administrations have blocked U.N. resolutions declaring the settlements illegal and calling for international action against them.

[Settlement backers in Israel make new push to safe West Bank footholds]

As settlement activity has spread at a rapid pace over the past six months — and right-wing members of the Israeli government have spoken out against a two-state solution — U.S. dismay has grown. That has led to the current discussion of whether the administration should take advantage of its final month in office to make the kind of strong statement outlined in the resolution.

“If it’s biased and unfair and a resolution calculated to delegitimize Israel, we’ll oppose it. Obviously, we will,” Kerry said at the forum. “We always have. But it’s getting more complicated now because there is a building sense of what I’ve been saying to you today, which some people can shake their heads, say, well, it’s unfair.”

“We have been adamant to the Palestinians about their need to deal with their education system and to change the things kids are taught and to try to lead by example with respect to the nonviolence and so forth,” he said. “But I do believe that Israel, because of decisions that are being made on a daily basis quietly and without a lot of people seeing them or fully processing the consequences, is heading to a place of danger.”

Trump met with Netanyahu in September and spoke with him the day after the Republican’s election last month, inviting the Israeli leader to visit again at his earliest opportunity. At the time, Trump stated his intention to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a highly symbolic act that successive U.S. presidents have refused to make. Both Israel and the Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital.

Last week, Trump named his New York bankruptcy attorney, Daniel Friedman, as his nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman, a strong supporter and financial backer of West Bank settlements, has said that they are legal and that Israel should annex Palestinian territory.

[Trump picks settlement backer as U.S. ambassador to Israel]

Israeli cabinet ministers held an emergency meeting Thursday to discuss strategy if Washington decided not to use its veto powers in the Security Council.

“We expect our greatest ally not to allow this one-sided and anti-Israel resolution to be adopted by the Council,” tweeted Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Other Israeli minister and political leaders also released statements calling on the United States to stand by its longtime ally.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett from the hard-line Jewish Home party released a video clip calling the Security Council hypocritical for condemning Israel, while a “genocide is happening in Aleppo, Syria.”

“Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital for 3,000 years but later today the U.N. Security Council will gather to condemn and hurt Israel for living here in our capital. This is a Guinness world record in hypocrisy,” he said. “Hundreds of men, women and children are being killed in Aleppo and this is the number one issue from the Security Council’s perspective.”

France’s ambassador to Israel, Hélène Le Gal, told an Israeli radio station that she believed her country would vote in favor of the resolution.

She said it would make it clear to all the sides, particularly Israel, that the Security Council was worried about the situation.

The draft resolution condemns “all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, including . . . the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions.”

The settlements, it says, have “no legal validity” and are “a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”

It further demands that Israel “immediately cease all settlement activities” and calls on all states “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”

The resolution calls for the U.N. secretary general to report on implementation of the resolution within three months. Assuming the resolution passes with a U.S. abstention, that would allow the Trump administration to veto any subsequent action to impose its terms.

Carol Morello in Washington and Ruth Eglash in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Passenger removed from flight after confrontation with Ivanka Trump

Ivanka Trump takes her seat before the third and final 2016 presidential campaign debate between Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at UNLV in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 19, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake

By Amy Tennery | NEW YORK-Fri Dec 23, 2016

A JetBlue airline passenger, who media outlets and a witness described as making angry remarks at the sight of Ivanka Trump on his flight, was removed from the plane on Thursday by the airline.

JetBlue Airways Corp (JBLU.O) confirmed in a statement that a passenger had been removed from a flight set to depart from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, but provided no information on the incident.

Another passenger on the flight, Marc Scheff, said that when the man saw President-elect Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka, he "did a double take and said 'Oh my God. This is a nightmare!'"

"The decision to remove a customer from a flight is not taken lightly," JetBlue said in a written statement. "In this instance, our team worked to re-accommodate the party on the next available flight."

Reuters was not able to identify the passenger who was removed. A Twitter user cited by TMZ, Matthew Lasner, said his husband was going to confront Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, at the airport.

"Ivanka and Jared at JFK T5, flying commercial," wrote Matthew Lasner (@mattlasner) in the since-deleted tweet. "My husband chasing them down to harass them. #banalityofevil."

Lasner, a professor at New York's Hunter College, did not respond to requests for comment directed to his Twitter account, which has since been taken offline, or to messages left at his office or sent to his Facebook account.

Scheff, who told Reuters he was sitting in the row in front of Ivanka Trump on the flight, which was set to take off for San Francisco, said of the passenger who was later removed from the flight, "He started shaking."

Scheff, 40, added that after JetBlue staff approached the man to "make sure he was calm," the passenger said, "They ruin our country, now try (to) ruin our flight!"

Scheff said the passenger was "clearly agitated" but did not "scream or yell."

Ivanka Trump was en route to Hawaii for a vacation with her family, according to an ABC News report on the incident.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Donald Trump and his family are spending the Christmas holidays at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Additional reporting by Melissa Fares in Palm Beach, Florida; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Leslie Adler)

Africa – no more the 'Ailing Giant'

December 21, 2016, 8:08 pm

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (C) vowed to crush any new anti-regime protests as the authorities did three years ago - AFP

But extreme impoverishment is not the lot of many of Africa's countries, including Ethiopea itself. Some of these countries could be easily categorized as emerging economies on account of their growth. Sections of rural Africa are experiencing a dynamism never seen before and if strong redistributive justice measures are put in place by the governments concerned, Africa would soon match South East Asia, for example, in economic development.

At a casual glance, current political and socio-economic developments on the African continent may seem to correspond to the mainly Western stereotypical rendering of that vast land of promise over the decades. Bloody, prolonged ethnic and tribal wars, military coups and counter-coups, political and military strongmen who never part with power, political personality cults, botched democracies....these are usually seen as the hallmarks of Africa. And, to be sure, Africa is even today not free of these 'bizarre' characteristics.

There are the contemporary situations in Zimbabwe, the Congo, Southern Sudan, Gambia and Mali, to name just a few such countries of Africa, which seem to be fully and graphically substantiating what sections of the Western media, along with some Western writers and political scientists, have been seeing as Africa over the years. Studied superficially, Africa is indeed novelist Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'. It does not seem to be coming out of the multifaceted crises that have been plaguing it in particularly post-independence times.

The minds of perceptive observers are certain to go back to Algerian political scientist and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon's ground-breaking and seminal political tract and commentary, 'The Wretched of the Earth'. The book was written in the heyday of African anti-colonial liberation struggles in the sixties and going by current realities, Fanon seems to have spoken prophetically about Africa's political class. Rather than take anti-colonial liberation struggles to their logical conclusion in the form of people's empowerment in all its dimensions, the African political class, generally speaking, is tending to be self-aggrandizing and parasitic. This is true of many of Africa's political and military strongmen even today. Thus, Fanon continues to be profoundly important and one cannot understand African politics insightfully without having recourse to Fanon.

However, as an important 'aside' it could be said that Fanon's observations are true of almost the entirety of the developing world, or the one-time 'Third World', although he focuses mainly on Africa. Have South and South East Asia, for example, fared better than Africa in terms of political and economic development? How many vibrant, accountable democracies would one find in South Asia, for instance. It should be conceded that, barring a very few exceptions, Asian 'democracies' have failed to institute and implement constitutional provisions that ensure equality in its many dimensions. Sri Lanka is not among these exceptions.

Accordingly, Fanon continues to be important as far as Africa's post-independence political developments are concerned. Quite a few of Afrca's present rulers are self-serving, authoritarian and anti-democratic. Zimbabwe's Mugabe, Congo's Kabila and Gambia's Jammeh easily come to mind.

However, on the economic front some very interesting developments have taken place in Africa over the past 20 years or so that compel the observer to bemoan the fact that no true transition to democracy has taken place in many of these 'economic success stories' of the continent, that would enable the majority of Africans to enjoy a measure of empowerment, correctly understood.

To enable democracy to flourish on the African continent, conditions in the latter should enable, multi-party, freely and fairly elected, accountable democracies to come into being. In the absence of these features, popular political and economic empowerment could be said to be lagging in Africa.

Ideally, current economic liberalization measures in Africa should go in tandem with political liberalization to ensure complete democratic development on the continent. At present there exists a gap between the processes and this needs bridging through sensible, farseeing governance.

However, it could no longer be claimed that Africa is an 'Ailing Giant' of the world, on account of the economic vibrancy seen in some of its countries currently. Sections of world opinion were prone to see Africa as desperately poor and underdeveloped not so long ago. The catastrophic Ethiopean famines of the seventies and eighties, for example, were seen as symbolizing Africa's condition.

A study brought out by well known Indian economist Vijay Mahajan gives us all the relevant information on this African economic growth spurt. In a book titled 'RISE of Rural Consumers in Developing Countries – Harvesting 3 Billion Aspirations' (Published by SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd. - www.sagepub.in), Mahajan focuses on how rural regions of the developing world, including those in Africa, are unprecedently growing in economic terms.

One factor in this growth experience is the vast spread of the informal or 'shadow economy' among rural people. Rural dwellers have more cash in hand, and this is resulting in the expansion of a considerable consumer base in the rural areas of many developing countries. Some of the African cases in point are, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Congo Democratic Republic, Uganda and Ethiopia.

One aspect of the informal economy is the inflow to developing countries of money earned abroad by the migrant labour of the respective countries. Currently these earnings stand at $ 440 billion. Such moneys lay the basis for a relatively prosperous rural consumer base which could keep an economy ticking in good health. Among other detailed relevant data provided by sources, such as the World Bank, Mahajan tabulates that Ethiopia's household consumption in 2014, as a percentage of its GDP, stood at 70.2. In 2015, it had 30.5 million mobile phone subscribers, 32 per cent of the country's population. Mobile phones are a great aid to economic growth, it is pointed out.

So, there's more than meets the eye in Africa. Economics usually drive politics and it is hoped that sensible governance will enable political liberalization to be in step with these positive changes in the economic sphere. However, it is time Africa is not seen through Western lenses in particular. The rest of the developing world would need to address this issue if it is put in place closer economic integration measures with Africa.

Could Mikhail Gorbachev Have Saved the Soviet Union?

The Soviet leader is remembered as the man who killed a superpower. But Gorbachev’s gambit on reforms could have worked -- if only he wasn't betrayed by the Communist Party.

DECEMBER 21, 2016

Amid the thousands of protesters who assembled on China’s Tiananmen Square inMay 1989, just weeks before the Chinese government sent troops to crush the demonstrations, one person held a placard that declared: “We Salute the Ambassador of Democracy.” The envoy that this protester saluted was neither an activist nor a dissident nor from a country renowned for human rights advocacy. It was Mikhail Gorbachev, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who had arrived in Beijing on May 15, 1989, two weeks before the Chinese leadership’s fateful decision to send in troops. The type of democracy he offered was not Western-style liberal capitalism but market socialism. Chinese students took trains from far-flung provinces just to see him. Gorbachev inspired China’s protesters on Tiananmen Square because the Soviet leader’s struggle to refashion the Soviet Union’s centrally planned economy and authoritarian political system mirrored their efforts in China. Reformers in both countries, protesters believed, were fighting similar battles.

Could Mikhail Gorbachev Have Saved the Soviet Union.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Wives of missing Thai, Lao activists demand answers on disappearances

Sombath Somphone of Laos, the winner of Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 2005, poses with the bust of the late Philippine president prior to receiving his award in ceremony at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila. Pic: AP

22nd December 2016

THE wives of three prominent Southeast Asian human rights campaigners who went missing after being detained by the authorities have united to urge Laos and Thailand to end impunity over forced disappearances.

All three women have become vocal critics of forced disappearances in a region where activists highlighting abuses over human, labour and land rights routinely face threats and violence. Some are gunned down, harassed through lawsuits, or simply “disappeared”.

“The biggest struggle is to get answers,” said Shui Meng Ng, whose husband Sombath Somphone, a Lao activist campaigning for rural development, went missing in December 2012.

The internationally acclaimed activist was last seen at a police checkpoint in the Lao capital Vientiane.

SEE ALSO: 3 Thai activists charged over damning report on military torture

Shui Meng reported Sombath’s case to police, asked lawyers for help, met with ministers and wrote to the prime minister. But her efforts to get information have been fruitless so far, she said.

“At every level, and you are faced with a wall,” Shui Meng told a joint news conference in Bangkok on Monday.

“Now after four years, I realise it’s not just Sombath – there are thousands who have disappeared, and we need to find justice. We need truth… It’s a fight against state impunity.”

Pinnipa Preuksapan – whose husband Pholachi “Billy” Rakchongcharoen, an ethnic Karen land rights activist, went missing after being detained by Thai national park authorities, on April 17, 2014 – said police would not take her case seriously.

“The police said ‘How can you file a case? Someone who has been arrested is not missing,'” Pinnapa said.

SEE ALSO: Thailand: Seven activists jailed for involvement in campaign opposing draft constitution

Thai human rights commissioner Angkhana Neelapaijit said it was painful to see policemen acquitted for the 2004 abduction of her husband, prominent Muslim lawyer and activist Somchai Neelapaijit, climb the ranks of power.

“They’re still promoted to higher and higher positions,” she said, adding that proving cases of forced disappearances by state authorities continues to be a huge challenge.

“It is murder without a body, so whoever tries to find the evidence will not find anything.” – Thomson Reuters Foundation