Lasantha Tapes: More To Come But It Becomes Clear

December 28, 2016 

It’s eight years since Lasantha was murdered. Recorded conversations between former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Lasantha Wickrematunge have been released to the media via websites. That is understandable if one puts his thinking hat on. The persons releasing them do not want to be identified. It also means such is released for public consumption and not for legal reasons. Public consumption without legal scrutiny means the released tapes will only have one purpose. Tilt public opinion.

The first leaked tape was initially sent to Colombo Telegraph. As is normal with Colombo Telegraph standard procedure we did an analysis for our readers without simply reproducing it. For reasons best known to the whistleblowers the subsequent leak was not sent to us. Nevertheless since it is in the public domain we shall discuss it.

There are basically two sides to the story of Lasantha’s murder. That of Lasantha and the other of Lasantha’s murderers. Now consider. Who would gain from releasing these conversations and who would have taped them? Both Lasantha and Mahinda could have taped. So let us consider both possibilities. If Lasantha did and given the gist of the conversations, what is to be gained by releasing them now? Who would have had access to his tapes, eight years after his death?

His cell phone was taken after the murder by a thief and later recovered by the Police and handed over to Court. It is yet in the custody of the Court. Of course it would have been possible possible to transfer the recorded conversations from a phone to another device by Lasantha. Let us assume that was done by Lasantha. In whose custody was it after his death and why release it now. The secret and also the raison d’etre, is in the gist of the conversation. There is nothing to be gained for Lasantha in the conversation thus released. If he was accused of whispering UNP secrets to Mahinda as was reported immediately after his murder by pro Mahinda groups, there was no sign of that. If at all the conversations reflected Lasantha advising Mahinda on corruption within his government and also the harassment of journalists.

It is also apparent from the second recorded release that it was the infamous doctor of dubious repute who had been the go between. Pretending to be snow white, he seems to have been the facilitator between the two. It’s almost akin to him giving steroid to an athlete prior to taking part in Olympics knowing that he/she would be tested. But we digress. Such persons would fish in troubled waters and would even steal power from the National Grid.

Without any remorse !!!

Let us ponder. If Lasantha had nothing to gain from releasing these conversations, who would have been at an advantage? The answer is clear. What advantage would have accrued to Mahinda? There has been elaborate attempts to inform the public that Mahinda was a friend of Lasantha. True to an extent. He was. But that was before Lasantha exposed the Helping Hambantota deal. We have also read how he used filthy language on Lasantha over the phone many times and vowed to destroy him which Lasantha reported in his paper without a murmur of denial by Mahinda.

It is understood universally that mediamen do speak to politicians despite them having been admonished and vilified. Vice versa is always not true but Mahinda being the quintessential politician would have done so. We know that. So given the probabilities it appears as if Mahinda taped these conversations and released them via guerilla mail addresses. Why? We do not know. Perhaps he scents something which we do not. It will not be long though before it becomes apparent.

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An attempted Rajapaksa return

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

The soft launch of a new political party nominal headed by former Minister G.L. Peiris, but substantively the Rajapaksa political vehicle, styled the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) has created a new buzz in political circles about the Rajapaksa comeback project. A project that really began, in the small hours of the morning of 9th January last year, when it became apparent that the people had rejected Mahinda Rajapaksa for an unprecedented third term.

The first proposed comeback, an alleged coup by deploying the Gajaba regiment, to nullify the election results, has had a formal complaint to the CID by Minister Mangala Samaraweera and the strange mid night meetings at Temple Trees by the judicial usurper Mohan Peiris and the then Attorney General, military commanders etc. had all the makings of midnight plotting of anti-constitutional measures as alleged by Minister Samaraweera in his formal complaint.

However, the possible return of the Rajapaksa face several fundamental political obstacles, that the Rajapaksa political project has failed to address. The first obstacles in a Rajapaksa return is that the fundamental political dynamics that formed the foundation of Rajapaksa defeat, still holds true.

Political elites and key leaders

What the Rajapaksa’s faced in 2015, is what they face today, which is that with regards the political elites or key leaders, it is pretty much Rajapaksa verses the rest. Rajapaksa allies being the miniscule non SLFP parties of the UPFA, the same coalition which lost in 2015. In fact, since the defeat of 2015, Rajapaksa has further lost control of the SLFP party machinery, a necessary vehicle for political mobilization, hence the SLPP.

Further neither Rajapaksa nor his allies can begin to accept the failures of their governance and hence offer a real alternative vision to the National Unity Government, for the future. Most political projects after defeat, do look inward somewhat and seek a political course correction, not so the Rajapaksas.

They and their allies continue to insist, if by implication that it was the voters who made a mistake in 2015 and the voter will change their mind, very quickly.

Further the Rajapaksa message seems to be geared to and not extending beyond a section of the Sinhala Buddhist majority in the country, a political base and message too narrow to bring the project back to power. If the Rajapaksa political comeback project is to succeed, two key changes need to take place, there must be an honest assessment of the failures of their governance, in all areas including economic, foreign, public sector management and social reconciliation policies and consequently seek to design a policy message and political outreach that is more pluralistic, tolerant and democratic.

Now, the factor that excites the die-hard minority of Rajapaksa supporters in the political establishment is the constitutional making process that is currently ongoing through the Parliament as a constitutional assembly. The Rajapaksa political calculation is that the potential divisiveness of constitutional reform and its consequential political and social change would permit the divisive identity politics and its attendant fear and hate mongering, which is Rajapaksa’s greatest political asset but also his greatest political liability.

Opponents of constitutional reform

With the presentation to Parliament of the interim reports of the six sub committees of the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly and its scheduled debate in the House on January 9 and 10, 2016, the opponents of the constitutional reform are slowly waking up to the fact, that there is a consensus building up in Parliament regarding the contours of a new basic law for Sri Lanka, a new social compact between the governed and the government.

Almost four decades since the 1978 Constitution was adopted for Sri Lanka, the empirical evidence we have is that our current constitutional arrangement and its overbearing executive presidency, reduced democratic space and centralized political power, consequently leading to poor public governance, weakened democratic institutions, led to armed conflicts in both the South and the North and reduced individual freedoms and human rights.

The vast majority of the near forty-year period since 1978 to the present, Sri Lanka has been governed under emergency rule, which says it all about our failures as a polity.

The end of the war in 2009, removed armed conflict from the political equation and hence opens up a historic window of opportunity to address the democracy deficiency we have in Sri Lanka and effect state reform through a new constitution which ensures that the Sri Lankan State becomes more tolerant and pluralistic accommodating the full diversity of her society.

There are opponents of such reform among the more extremist elements in both the North and the Southern polity. In the North, the opposition to the current approach of consultations, compromise and consensus, seems to be led by the Tamil Peoples Forum (TPF), led by a collection of defeated politicians, whose common feature seems to be their inability to be elected to Parliament by the Tamil people but having the patronage of Northern Chief Minister Justice CV Wigneswaren, whose endorsement of them nonetheless at the last general election failed to sway the voter, the Tamil Congress led political alliance of nay-sayers, collecting a paltry five thousand votes in the Jaffna District, even less than the SLFP’s modest support of seventeen thousand.

Tamil political leadership

In the South, the opponents of state reform and a return to the past, has a more formidable champion in Mahinda Rajapaksa, but the reality is that the more extreme politics ruled in Sri Lanka, until the recent past and are now relegated to the peripheries.

The Tamil political leadership moved from Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman to Sampanthan and Sumanthiran in 2009 and political leadership in the Southern polity moved from Mahinda and Gotabhaya to Sirisena and Wickremesinghe. The political centre has never been as dominant in Sri Lankan politics, in the recent past, as it is at present. Political change will always have its detractors, but the detractors having lost the last elections are on the periphery, providing a possible path and a foreseeable future for a new Sri Lanka. 

Sri Lanka: Minister’s brother grabs 600 acres of land !

( December 28, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The CID has launched an investigation into an incident where the brother of Minister Rishad Bathiudeen allegedly acquired 600 acres of land in Mannar recently.

Police interrogated the Minister’s brother over the incident on the Christmas eve.

According to the CID, the suspect has acquired the lands by promising to pay their owners, but so far he has not honoured his promise.

The police said they had acted on a complaint and a few more persons would have to be questioned.

A former Pradeshiya Sabha member, the suspect had been charged with attacking the Mannar Courts complex and grabbing land from the Wilpattu Sanctuary, according to police.

If It’s Back To H’tota For China And Trinco For US, Is It Neo-Cold War For Sri Lanka?

• It’s heartening that Minister Ranatunga has clarified that the ‘framework agreement’ of December eighth was equivalent to a MoU and nothing more and Sri Lanka would have its way on issues of security and other concerns
• There could have been no two opinions that the $ 1.4-billion port deal was a drain on Sri Lankan economy, so was most of the host of other China-funded projects

by N. Sathiya Moorthy -Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, G. L. Peiris and Arjuna Ranatunga

The Cold War dictum that “there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, but only permanent national interests” seems to be working overtime in the case of Sri Lanka just now. No one disputes that the Government is keen on giving away a piece of sovereign real-estate to China even as a respectable Opposition veteran has claimed that the eastern Trincomalee naval base may go the US way.

Ports Minister Arjuna Ranatunga, the celebrated captain of the World Cup winning national cricket team, seems to have bowled a googly at his own Government, by declaring that the Government was pushing for ‘better terms’ for the Hambantota property from China. But the same cannot be said of LSSP leader and former Minister Tissa Vitharana’s charge that the US was keen on seeking a naval base in Trinco.

It’s heartening that Minister Ranatunga has clarified that the ‘framework agreement’ of December eighth was equivalent to an MoU and nothing more, and on issues of security and other concerns, Sri Lanka would have its way. But days after Vitharana’s allegation, none in the Government has come up with a denial just as they have not confirmed anything, either. If nothing else, the likes of Leftist Vitharana are not known to make wholly irresponsible statements.

For now, however, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, another Leftist Minister in the erstwhile Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, has threatened to move the Supreme Court against the H’tota deal. As is known, the Government is seeking to sell a high 80 per cent stake in the southern port, directly facing the geo-strategic sea-lanes of the Indian Ocean, to China Merchant Port Holdings (formerly China Merchants Holdings (International) Company Limited), for $ 1.12 b.

There could have been no two opinions that the $ 1.4-b port deal was a drain on Sri Lankan economy, so was most of the host of other China-funded projects that the Rajapaksa Government initiated, without much thought or consultation. They were set to bomb at least in the short and medium terms, and they have bombed. But the irony is that neither present-day President Maithiripala Sirisena  (then a senior minister), nor Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, then the UNP Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, seemed to have come up with any criticism, leave alone an abundance of valid and valuable criticism that was anyway available to them.

‘Regime-change’

Even at present, the Government and the Joint Opposition (JO) identified with the Rajapaksas seem to be talking overmuch on the existence/continuance of ‘political stability’ in the country than on the port-stakes’ sale in the Chinese context. Technically, yes, the stakes’ buyer may not be the Government of China, which going by general principles of bilateral relations, may not be encouraged to buy real-estate in another country other than for its diplomatic missions.

In the present context, Government Ministers have started reassuring China against any political instability that could make the stakes-sale unattractive to the buyer, whatever it meant. For the JO, ex-Foreign Minister, G L Peiris, has denied that he and Rajapaksa did not discuss ‘regime-change’ back home when they were in China recently. It’s another matter that not long after losing the 2015 presidential polls, Mahinda Rajapaksa did mention that the US and the rest of the West worked on ‘regime-change’ in Sri Lanka.

As always since the ‘Government of National Unity’ (GNU) came to power, President Sirisena has once again maintained stoic silence on the port deal, even though he would not have been unaware of the fact and negotiations of the December eighth agreement with China. Whether his later / later-day intervention could ‘save’ Sri Lankan ‘sovereignty’, which seems to be the ‘concern’ of the Rajapaksa camp, it could not avoid embarrassing the two countries and governments, nonetheless.

Should it happen, then it would be more than Sri Lanka losing credibility before the US and the rest of the West and also the UN in the case of UNHRC-centric war-crime and accountability probes. There, President Sirisena’s post facto intervention put the probe-promises of the Ranil Government on the back foot, more than once.

On more recent domestic issues, like the anti-graft police harassing former military commanders too, President Sirisena had maintained stoic/strategic silence until after PM Ranil and/or his UNP ministerial colleagues had taken a near-irreversible position in public, before making his position known. But the port deal, more than even the UNHRC probe, a presidential intervention at this late-hour could become a matter of Sri Lankan credibility just as it’s about the nation’s ‘sovereignty’ and ‘territorial integrity’.  It’s no more domestic politics, of playing hide-and-seek, long after the game got over.

India in a ‘quandary’

Breaking his post-poll silence on the India front, former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a brother of President Mahinda, has said that the new Hambantota deal might put the Indian neighbour in a ‘quandary’. He was/is silent about the Rajapaksa regime’s early attempt of a similar kind on the Hambantota front, for the very same reason – economic distress – but given up afterward, only to be revived with the equally controversial ‘Colombo Port City’ project.

Local media reports have quoted Gota R to claim that India had opposed the Rajapaksa Government’s ‘relationship with China and thrown its weight behind the Opposition’ in the 2015 presidential polls. According to him, India had wanted the cancellation of the $ 1.4-b Port City project, and a Sri Lankan take-over of the Colombo International Container Terminals Limited (CICT), a joint venture between China Merchants Port Holdings Company Limited (CMPH) and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), with 85 per cent Chinese involvement.

In this context, Gota Rajapaksa quoted India’s National Security Advisor (NSA) “as having told him that India wanted all Chinese funded infrastructure projects stopped and for Sri Lanka to have full control of the Hambantota port”. Rajapaksa quoted Doval as having said: “Sri Lanka is a small country, you don’t need such development projects.” True as Doval’s observations may have been in a larger context, neither of the Rajapaksa brothers seems to remember or wanting to recall Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s publicly wishing Mahinda Rajapaksa victory in the presidential polls, at the regional SAARC Summit in Kathmandu, only weeks earlier.

Yet, Gota R may have a point in the India-China context. Ahead of the presidential polls, PM Ranil as the then chief campaign manager of candidate Sirisena unilaterally offered to end the Colombo Port City project if they came to power. The new Government did so, though haltingly, and re-negotiated the project with China to remove the ‘real estate’ part of the deal.

The fact that PM Ranil did not mention Hambantota in the same vein should now mean that the new deal should not be held against his leadership, isn’t it? It’s another matter that the likes of him, then in the Opposition, had flagged the so-called ‘Indian concerns’ or their concerns for India, at the time of the original Hambantota deal with China, or the later-day negotiations for possible sale of stakes.  Heading the list now should be the TNA Leader of the Opposition, R Sampanthan, and others in his party, who alone were open about their criticism of all the China deals, and more so in the Indian security context than even Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and security, internal and external.

To the extent that there seemed to have been a ‘national/Sinhala’ political consensus on not making the nation the new ‘battle-ground’ for extra-regional powers especially to fight their neo-cold wars centred on Sri Lanka, that’s now being tossed up in the winds. The Rajapaksas may have started the process by allowing Chinese submarines to visit Sri Lankan ports, if only to test and try the unique salinity and viscosity of the neighbourhood Indian Ocean waters, upsetting the Indian neighbour, the Hambantota deal now could be taking it all to the next and more critical next logical or illogical step, in geo-strategic terms and all in China’s favour.

Freedom of Navigation

Whether or not ex-Minister Vitharana is proved right on the Trincomalee front, there is no denying the growing American interests in Sri Lanka in terms of geo-strategic interests, linking both the Indian Ocean and an ever-growing China in the post-Cold War era, just as during the Cold War period. It was then that first talk of the US getting a strategic foothold in Sri Lanka, leading to increasing discomfort and concern in India, then in the Soviet camp.

In Colombo recently, where he called on President Sirisena and PM Wickremesinghe among others, Admiral Binkley Harris, Commander of the US Pacific Command, said that Sri Lanka could be the facilitator and convenor for talks to ensure freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean. According to local news reports, Admiral Harris welcomed the Sirisena- Wickremesinghe government’s “contribution to security in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, and stressed on the importance of expanding cooperation between like-minded countries to uphold the rules based global operating system”.

Coming in the context of the South China and East China Sea disputes, it’s anybody’s guess what ‘freedom of navigation’ means/implies from an all-American perspective. From the contemporary Sri Lankan perspective, it’s enough to recall that PM Wickremesinghe had referred to the US as the ‘elephant in the room’ in the Indian Ocean context. He reiterated the same view in the context of the upcoming Trump administration in the US, implying that none can wish away America in geo-strategic terms in the Indian Ocean.

‘Malabar  exercise’

With at least six Chinese submarine sightings off Indian waters with a turn-around in Pakistan’s Karachi Port, reports from New Delhi have said that the next edition of the trilateral ‘Malabar Exercise’ in 2017, involving the navies of India, Japan and the US, would lay a “renewed thrust on anti-submarine warfare operations”. Australia, which had been left out of a possible ‘Military Quartet’ earlier, is not unlikely to join this time.

“We want to make the 21st Malabar exercise, which will be held in the IOR next year, bigger and more complex,” the Vice-
Admiral, Joseph P Aucoin, US Seventh Fleet Commander, was quoted as saying, after meeting with Indian Navy Chief, Admiral Sunil Lanba.  “Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) is one area I think would be very beneficial. So, I am looking forward to it in the Malabar,” he said, noting that with the US P-81 Poseidon long-range maritime patrol aircraft now in the operation of the Indian Navy, the two sides “can hunt submarines together” as part of the ‘Malabar Exercise’.

Incidentally, Admiral Lanba was in Sri Lanka recently on a five-day visit, when he was also the key-note speaker at the post-war annual ‘Galle Dialogue-2016’.  There were also independent reports that Sri Lanka was also considering the purchase of the Poseidon even while planning a military aircraft workshop-kind of unit at Kattanayake.

It’s anybody’s guess if Sri Lanka would be motivated to join the Malabar on a later date, in the light of repeated American references to the nation having to play a key role in the context of ‘freedom of navigation’ in the Indian Ocean and the like. It had begun months before the conclusion of ‘Eelam War IV’, but the Rajapaksa regime did not read it right – or, so it would seem, post facto.

Hunting with the hound…

At the time, a report of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, co-authored by then Co-chair, John Kerry, identified Sri Lanka as being important to the US as in ‘geo-strategic terms’.  Kerry left the Senate, to become the Secretary of State during President Barak Obama’s second term, which ends in January 2017. But the impact of the report would remain, independent of the party or President in power in the US.

The question is thus not about China, the US, or even the immediate Indian neighbour, or even the larger Indian Ocean, where from the days of the Rajapaksa regime to date, Sri Lanka has been dreaming of a ‘blue-water capability’, though put out in different terminologies. The question is about Sri Lanka, and its yet-to-be proved ability, or proven inability, to manage two, or in this case, three elephants, and especially after letting ‘em all into the Room, and not stopping with the Indian Ocean.

Of the three, India alone has some claims to nativity. In the case of China and the US, not necessarily in that order, the national consensus seemed to have been for Sri Lanka not to entertain ‘extra-regional’ powers in, lest it would face problems, along with neighbouring islands-nation of Maldives, in managing its ‘external security’ whatever be the ‘internal security’ situation or equations of ‘political stability’ be.

Over the years and decades, successive SLFP leaderships in power in the country have had tried to satisfy every global and regional player, but satisfied none in the end. A succession of UNP leaders in power had sought to hunt with the hound and run with the hare, assuming that they were the smartest of ‘em all. They went nowhere, either.

Today, Sri Lanka has a combined SLFP-UNP leadership at the helm. They are already double-timing each other, and now seem wanting to double-time the world at large. One of them could give away the other, yes, but in the process, together or separately, they should not end up giving away Sri Lanka, and on a platter!

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. email: sathiyam54@gmail.com)

What’s With 2015/16 Annual Report Of SriLankan Airlines?

By Rajeewa Jayaweera –December 25, 2016

Rajeewa Jayaweera

Almost nine months since the end of the 2015/16 financial year, the national carrier is yet to publish its Annual Report. Therefore both, shareholders and tax payers are at sea of the airline’s performance during the last financial year.

A media release in October 2016 was followed by a Press meet by the Chairman and CEO. The media release stated “In the Financial Year ending 31st March 2016, the airline recorded a significantly improved performance compared to the previous year”. It further stated, “At the end of the last financial year, without the ‘one-off’ payment relating to cancellation of the lease of one A350 aircraft, the airline’s Group Loss stood at LKR 9.03 billion, which represents a 45% improvement for the 2015/16 financial year compared to the previous year. The net loss after taking the ‘one-off’ item into consideration (Rs 2.56 billion) is LKR 11.59 billion, compared to the net loss of LKR 16.33 billion during the previous year”.

Announcements regularly refer to ‘Company Losses’ and ‘Group Losses’. The current Board and CEO undoubtedly cannot be held responsible for the monumental losses accrued over 35 years.
However, a yardstick which could be utilized to evaluate the success or the lack of it by an airline during a given financial year is the profit or loss resulting from its core business operations. Even though performance in core business operations is generally not referred to, it is a useful yardstick to gauge if an airline with a loss-making history has affected course correction.
Core business activity of an airlines is ‘Passenger & Cargo Transportation, carriage of Mail & Excess Baggage, ad hoc flights (charters) and Frequent Flyer net accruals. Ancillary activities such as Ground Handling, Engineering Services, Duty Free Sales, Catering, Training Centre etc. do not belong to core business activity.

Debt servicing charges, USD 17.7 million. (Rs 2.56 billion) paid for the cancellation of one A350 aircraft etc. has no relevance to the airline’s core business operations. They, along with revenue and related expenses of ancillary activities belong to the net profit / loss of the company.

In 2015/16, revenue from core business operations has dropped by 8%, losses in core business operations has reduced by 33% and Fuel Costs have been 41% less than previous year. Here is the rub. Aviation fuel costs are directly related to the airline’s core business operations. Notwithstanding a 33% reduction in losses in its core business operations and 41% reduction in Fuel Costs amounting to over USD 150 million from previous year, the airline failed to record a profit from its core business operations in 2015/16.

The losses in core business operations during 2015/16 includes a 7% drop in Passenger Revenue and 15% drop in Cargo Revenue from previous year. The reduced revenue need be attributed to the Sales and Marketing strategies and efforts of the present team. In this backdrop, the self-gratifying claim in the October media release ‘In the Financial Year ending 31st March 2016, the airline recorded a significantly improved performance compared to the previous year”, cannot be sustained. The current Board of Directors, the interim CEO and current CEO need be held accountable for the airline’s losses in its core business operations in 2015/16.

The current Board of Directors were appointed commencing January 2015. A board member who had previously worked for Air Lanka in mid 1980s in charge of Duty Free operations not related to the airline’s core business functioned as CEO, in total violation of the company’s Articles of Association. The current CEO, a pilot by profession and zero relevant management experience came on board in October 2015. It is pointless to whine of the “benefit of lower fuel costs being significantly eroded with the airline’s declining revenue due to the addition of capacity to the Colombo market by other airlines and a dramatic drop in airfares in certain markets”. Air Lanka / SriLankan Airlines operated for over three decades under similar conditions. This Board and CEO should consider themselves extremely lucky they did not have to contend with very high fuel costs as done by many previous boards and a civil war impacting tourist arrivals and air fares negatively.

It must be noted, most major operating expenses such as Fuel Costs, Aircraft Lease charges etc. are incurred in USD and not Sri Lankan Rupees. Currency loss as a result of the depreciation of the Sri Lankan Rupee has no bearing when evaluating performance in USD.

The October media release also referred to “Stringent cost controls underscored by heightened accountability and transparency have been cornerstones of the new strategy”. Yet, the carrier’s modus operandi reflects otherwise. For example, the discontinuation of unprofitable European routes was first proposed sometime in the first half of 2015. Operations to Rome ceased in May 2016 whereas operations to Paris and Frankfurt did not cease till end October 2016. Even though flights to Paris and Frankfurt ceased in end October 2016, both offices continue to be in operation today. French and German staff were not issued termination notices till a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, a high-powered five-member team consisting of Head of Human Resources, Head of Group Legal Affairs, Group Legal Affairs Manager, Performance Management & Administration Manager and Regional Head of Europe & Americas paid two visits to Paris recently to sort out termination issues of French staff. It is indeed a strange form of ‘stringent cost controls’. However, judging from the number of participants at the ‘Hospitality Suite’ at Lords cricket grounds last summer, the culture of ‘group travel’ on company business seems to be contagious and prevalent from top down.

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Protest march & rally against destruction caused by Uma Oya project

December 28, 2016 by

A massive agitation and a protest march has been organized tomorrow (29th) by the ‘People’s Front against Uma Oya multi – Destructive Project’ against the failure of the government to pay compensation appropriately to the people who have been affected drastically due to the ‘multi destructive’ Uma Oya project that has severely affected the eastern slopes of the central hills and the socio- economic affairs of the people living in the area says the convener of the Front and JVP Member for Uva Provincial Council Samantha Vidyarathna.

The protest march joined by a large number of civil organizations demanding the authorities to stop any future destruction to the area and the people as in December it would be two years since the destructive leak occurred and to pay compensation for destruction that has been caused would begin from Thanthiriya Junction tomorrow at 1.00 p.m. said Mr. Vidyarathna.

Among the participants are General Secretary of National Bhikku Front (NBF) Ven. Wakamulle Uditha Thero, Senior Professor on Geology Prof. Jinadasa Katupotha, Environmentalist and Senior Professor Prof. Ranil Senanayaka, convener of ‘People’s Front against Uma Oya multi – Destructive Project’ Samantha Vidyarathna, National Organizer of All Ceylon farmers’ Federation Namal Karunaratna, Senior Lecturer of Sabaragamuwa University Jayalath Attanayaka, Environmentalist Sujeewa Chamikara, the President of Sri Lanka Nature Lovers Collective Environmentalist Thilak Kariyawasam, Renowned artist Deepani Silva, Executive Director of Environmental Society Hemantha Vithanage, the President of National Intellectual’s and Professionals’ Organization Senior Geology Scientist Anton Jayakody, the General Secretary of People’s Front against Uma Oya multi – Destructive Project’ Senior Environmentalist Athula Priyantha, Artist Mithra Kapuge, Senior Lecturer on Geography Nishantha Sakalasooriya, Electronic Engineer and Renowned Lecturer on Mathematics Ravindra Bandara, the General Secretary of Sri Lanka Nature Lovers Collective Senior Environmentalist Vishwalingam, Renowned Artist Chandrasoma Binduhewa, Dramatist Premaratna Tennekone, Renowned Artist Jagath Chandrasiri, Artist Lalith Rajapaksha and Renowned Writer Anthony Jeewa said Mr. Samantha Vidyarathna.

No Plastic No polythene

Dec 27, 2016

Solid waste management system at National Hospital

According to the new procedures of disposing solid waste management system at National Hospitals, the government has prohibited bringing in polythene, Plastic or king coconut husks into hospitals. Accordingly, in the future, patients could only receive food items that are brought without wrapped in lunch sheets or kept in reusable containers. Unfortunately, the majority of the public are still unaware of these new regulations, causing a lot of confusions in front of hospital gates. Since the majority of the people who are visiting government hospitals are suffering from financial difficulties, it has become problematic for them to find the proper means of bringing in these food items. On the other hand the security personnel in these hospitals have also faced a dilemma as they are bound to enforce the law. Regarding this matter Lanka News web we talk to Director NHSL Dr Anil Jasinghe.

Director of NHSL Dr Anil Jasinghe said to Lanka News Web , "Everyone like to consume food that is prepared at home. So the food items that are prepared at home should be brought inside reusable containers. For the residential patients who are receiving treatments from the National Hospital, the hospital provides nutritional food. The food are prepared according to the nutritious needs of the patients under the supervision of nutritionists. Even the drinking water that is used in the hospital are filtered and purified. The public has nothing to worry about the safety of the food and water available at the hospital. Next year we have plans to expand our facilities to provide a better service for the people".  According to the Director the daily amount of solid waste in the hospital is over 5000 kg while the chemical waste is over 1000 kg.

Since the waste is comprised of various different categories the hospital has taken different steps to manage the waste disposal. Although these policies have been executed by the hospital for several years the recent policy changes in the municipal council has increased the pace of the process. Under the solid waste management system, the waste material are segregated to minimize the disposal. This has been placed as the responsibility of the officer in charge of each unit at the hospital. Afterwards the collection of garbage is being carried out by the cleaning staff. These collected waste material is then transported to the respective disposal depots. A new cart system has been introduced to speed up this procedure. This process is constantly monitored by the public health inspectors who are stationed at the hospital. The medical officers in charge of public health and the infection control unit have also been vested with the responsibility of overseeing the process.

AshWaru Colombo

Unidentified aircraft kills 22 civilians in IS-held Syria village

Islamic State militants have taken control of key strategic hilltops overlooking the eastern part of the Homs after bloody clashes

Civilians inspecting aftermath of a Syrian government air strike (AFP)

Wednesday 28 December 2016 

Air strikes carried out by unidentified aircraft killed at least 22 civilians, including 10 children, in a village held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria, a monitor said on Wednesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the civilians were from two families at Hojna in Deir Ezzor, which borders Iraq and is the country's second biggest province after Homs.

The oil-rich province is almost completely under the control of the IS and has been regularly targeted by the US-led military coalition and pro-government forces. 

The only part of the eastern province outside of IS control is its capital, which is also named Deir Ezzor, which is held by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The IS group also gained more control of territory in Syria's central governate of Homs on Tuesday, according to reports. 

Following clashes with Syrian government troops, the militants took control of key strategic hill tops overlooking the eastern part of the city of Homs. 

“ISIS launched a fierce attack on headquarters of the pro-regime forces in the vicinity of al-Qaryatain town, using mortar shells and Grad rockets. The heavy bombardment forced the army to withdraw from the Black Hills, that are now under ISIS control,” media activist Amro al-Hussein told ARA News in Homs.

According to ARA News bombardment by IS resulted in dozens of casualties in the ranks of the Syrian army. 

IS two weeks ago took control of the strategic T4 airbase from the Syrian government after taking control of various security checkpoints nearby in the Mashtal and Qasr al-Hir district east of Homs. The T4 base is located strategically along the main route between Palmyra and Homs city.

The militants besieged the airbase and destroyed at least five warplanes in the attack. 

IS advances in Homs

IS earlier this month recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra in Homs that led to bloody clashes with forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as well as taking control of a key supply route used by the Syrian government to support its troops in the east of the country.

In Syria, IS is targeted by warplanes of the US-led coalition as well as Turkey, the Syrian regime and its ally Russia in the northern province of Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and IS's stronghold of Raqqa.

The US-led coalition bombed Syrian army positions during a clash with IS in September in Deir Ezzor, killing dozens of soldiers, although the coalition said the strikes were accidental. Russia claimed the hour-long attack was deliberate.

On Wednesday the US State Department denied claims made by Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan that the Americans were supporting IS as well as Kurdish YPG forces. 

The cruel experiments of Israel’s arms industry

Palestinian protesters stand in a cloud of tear gas fired by Israeli forces during confrontations in the West Bank city of Bethlehem in October 2015.Anne PaqActiveStills

Matt Kennard-27 December 2016

Round the back of Ramallah’s main hospital lies the house of Iyad Haddad, a 52-year-old human rights investigator. His home office is the shopfront of a decrepit building and at first glance it looks like a bric-a-brac shop. But the objects placed out on the tables are not household trinkets. The surfaces are, in fact, cluttered with spent ammunition, tear gas canisters, sponge bullets and shell casings.

Haddad has spent the past three decades documenting the violence of the Israeli forces occupying his people’s land. These ugly little pieces of memorabilia are his testament to that process.

Many of these weapons have been fired on peaceful demonstrators protesting against Israel’s wall and settlements in the occupied West Bank. The villages of Nilin, Bilin and Nabi Saleh have been organizing regular protests for years. To my surprise, Haddad does not approve of those demonstrations.

“Sometimes they are using us so they can know how to use each kind of weapon,” he said. “For me, these kinds of activities by the Palestinians become helpful to the Israelis because it makes this area into a laboratory to test their weapons, to develop them and make it a commercial industry in order to sell them to other countries.”

The idea that the Israeli arms industry benefits from the occupation through having a captive population it can test new weaponry on is now widely accepted.

Israel tries out weapons in the West Bank and Gaza and then presents them as “battle proven” to the international market.

The high-velocity tear gas canister has been heavily tested in Bilin. In 2009, the weapon killed Bassem Abu Rahmah, an unarmed local activist, protesting the wall slicing into that village. At the end of 2011, another protester, Mustafa Tamimi, was killed in Nabi Saleh by a tear gas canister, shot at his head.

There is a sense of weariness in Haddad’s voice. “I have seen how they are developing their tools and their weapons industry and the ways of dealing with the community,” he said. “And, in 30 years, I never heard once that there is any kind of accountability for any soldier.”

But he goes on. He must go on.

“Tested and retested”

“The laboratory of the occupied territories is where things can be fine-tuned, they can be tested, they can be retested,” said Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “They can say, ‘Hey this was used by the IDF [Israel’s military], this must be good.’ And that helps the marketing of the goods.”

Later, in Ramallah, I sat down with Abdallah Abu Rahmah, coordinator of the Popular Struggle Committee against the wall and settlements in Bilin. Every Friday – for a decade – he and his neighbors have gone to the wall to protest.

For these efforts, they have been subject to night raids by the Israeli military. Abu Rahmah himself has been arrested and imprisoned by Israel a number of times.

“There are many reports about when they [the Israelis] have tried to sell military products and they told the buyers about its use in Bilin,” said Abu Rahmah. “Things like skunk water, they used it the first time in our village.”

Skunk water is a putrid smelling liquid that is sprayed at protesters in order to get them to disperse. “Because Bilin is famous, sometimes they come to our actions and they take video and photographs showing how effective the weapons are in stopping the action,” Abu Rahmah said.

A Palestinian youth throws stones towards a truck with a skunk water canon during confrontations near the Beit El settlement outside the West Bank city of Ramallah in October 2015.Oren ZivActiveStills

Jeff Halper, author of War Against the People, a book on Israel’s arms and surveillance technology industries, said: “Israel has kept the occupation because it’s a laboratory for weapons.”

“Now, there has always been a tension,” added Halper, also a founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. “Because you’ve had the right wing that look at the West Bank as Judea and Samaria and Gaza as Gush Katif and, of course, East Jerusalem. So they want it all as part of the land of Israel. 

But then you’ve got another part especially the – I would say the military and the economic people – that say, ‘Hey, this is a laboratory, this is really a resource for us, and we really shouldn’t give it up.’”

Eitay Mack, a Jerusalem-based human rights lawyer and activist, raises the prospect that Israel uses Palestinians as test subjects for foreign arms companies as well.

Testing America’s bullets

“In East Jerusalem, the Americans give Israel sponge bullets,” Mack said. “First, they started with a blue sponge bullet but then they decided – this is their statement – that because the Palestinians wore a lot of clothes, it was not very effective so then they changed it to a [more powerful] black sponge bullet, which caused huge damage and there are dozens of Palestinians that have lost their eyes and other organs of their body.”

The black sponge bullets are manufactured by Combined Tactical Systems, a Pennsylvania-based firm which also supplies Israel with tear gas.

The company’s brochure for these bullets contains a note marked “caution.” It reads: “Shots to the head, neck, thorax, heart or spine can result in fatal or serious injury.”

Israeli troops began using the black bullets in 2014.

The Israeli arms industry is dominated by four companies: Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit, Rafael and Israel Military Industries.

More than 75 percent of all weapons exported by Israel are made by the first three of those firms. In 2015, the total value of Israel’s arms exports came to $5.7 billion.

The attack on Gaza the previous year enabled Israel to showcase some of its newest weapons. It was reported, for example, that the Hermes-900, one of Elbit’s drones, made its “operational debut” in that assault.

Israel allocates more than 5 percent of gross domestic product to the military. That means Israel spends a higher proportion of its national income on the military than even the US, the world’s only superpower.

“War sells weapons”

Some veterans of the Israeli military have developed careers as experts on the arms industry.

Shlomo Brom is one of them. A retired brigadier general, he now works at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

I asked Brom if it’s true that Israeli arms companies use the fact that their products have been tested on Palestinians to gain international business. “Of course,” he replied. “Why not? Marketing [professionals] try to use any advantage and if they can use the advantage that this system was tested operationally and it worked, they will of course use it for marketing.”

Uzi Rubin, a founder of Arrow, an Israeli anti-ballistic missiles program, is now a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.

He defended the way Israel has marketed its weapons as “battle proven.”

“It is legitimate because the Vietnam War sold a lot of weapons,” he said. “War usually sells weapons. But this is not to say that Israel is seeking war in order to sell weapons.”

Barbara Opall-Rome has spent a few decades covering Israel for DefenseNews, a trade magazine for arms manufacturers. She advocates that Israel should allocate greater resources into what she calls “less-than-lethal technologies.”

In her view, the Israeli weapons industry should think beyond weapons such as tear gas and skunk water that it is already deploying in the West Bank.

“I’m talking about using the electromagnetic spectrum or high-powered microwaves to get people dizzy,” she said. “If you’re dizzy you lose your balance. You know, I’d rather people just get an upset stomach and really just have to have diarrhea right in the middle of a demonstration or puke their guts out than to be killed.”

Her comments reveal much about the sadistic mentality of Israel’s weapons-makers and their promoters. For them, Palestinians are not human beings worthy of respect but subjects in one cruel experiment after another.

Matt Kennard is director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. He is the author of Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror(Verso, 2012) and The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Elite (Zed, 2016). His trip to Palestine was partly funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.