Sunday, February 26, 2017

Trump to skip White House correspondents’ dinner: ‘No reason for him to go in and sit and pretend’

A timeline of President Trump's battle with the media since he took office on Jan. 20. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

By Amy B Wang and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. February 26 at 11:04 AM

President Trump will not attend the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, after a campaign and early tenure during which he has continually battled with the press.

Trump announced his decision on Twitter late Saturday afternoon. The dinner is scheduled for April 29.

On Sunday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged on ABC’s “This Week” that there had been tensions between the president and the media.

“I think it’s … kind of naive of us to think that we can all walk into a room for a couple of hours and pretend that some of that tension isn’t there,” Sanders told “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos.

Trump would skip the dinner to instead “spend the night focused on what he can do to help better America, Sanders said.

“You know, one of the things we say in the South [is] ‘If a Girl Scout egged your house, would you buy cookies from her?’ I think that this is a pretty similar scenario,” Sanders added. “There’s no reason for him to go in and sit and pretend like this is going to be just another Saturday night.”

(The response came at the end of her appearance on the show. “Pretty straight answer,” Stephanopoulos replied. “I think a lot would argue the eggs have gone both ways on that. But we’re going to have to leave it there today.”)

Shortly after Trump’s tweet on Saturday, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which sponsors the annual event, said in an email that the dinner would take place even without Trump’s attendance.

The dinner “has been and will continue to be a celebration of the First Amendment and the important role played by an independent news media in a healthy republic,” said Jeff Mason, WHCA president. “We look forward to shining a spotlight at the dinner on some of the best political journalism of the past year and recognizing the promising students who represent the next generation of our profession.”

Since Trump’s inauguration, calls to boycott the annual event have grown louder amid his increasingly fraught relationship with the press. Throughout his campaign, he regularly lashed out at the press, singling out news outlets as being “dishonest” and at one point barring The Washington Post from covering his campaign events. Since his election, he has accused certain media outlets of publishing “fake news.” Earlier this month, the tense relationship reached a boil when Trump called the media “the enemy of the American People.”

In response to concerns, the White House Correspondents’ Association released a statement this month saying the dinner would take place. Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Bloomberg canceled their parties, which usually draw celebrities. Comedian Samantha Bee announced in January that she was planning an alternative event on the same night for “journalists and non-irritating celebrities from around the world.” (Its tentative name: “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.”)

[How a journalists’ dinner became a celebrity blowout]

Questions about whether the dinner was appropriate existed before Trump took office. The event is an annual gathering of journalists and the people they cover, typically headlined by the sitting president. The White House Correspondents’ Association awards $100,000 in scholarships at the annual dinner, according to its website, and recently started a mentoring program that pairs working journalists with journalism students.

The annual dinner began in 1921, and in 1924, Calvin Coolidge became the first president to attend the dinner. In 1978, Jimmy Carter declined to attend, citing exhaustion. First lady Rosalynn Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale also didn’t show up that year, according to The Post’s Paul Farhi.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan managed to deliver remarks by phone even though he was at Camp David recovering from an assassination attempt.

“If I could give you just one little bit of advice, when somebody tells you to get in a car quick, do it,” Reagan said to laughter.

Trump has attended the dinner before.

President Obama and comedian Seth Meyers skewered Donald Trump at the 2011 White House correspondents' dinner. From the birther movement to his potential run for president, here's a look back at some of their jabs. (The Washington Post)

In 2011, then-President Barack Obama roasted Trump at the dinner — five minutes of jokes directed at the man who had raised questions about whether Obama was born in the United States.

“No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald,” said Obama, who ultimately released his birth certificate. “That’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like: Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

At the time, Obama joked about Trump’s experience to lead the nation.

[Did the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner spur Trump to run for president?]

“All kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience,” Obama said. “For example, no, seriously, just recently in an episode of ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around, but you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the problem was a lack of leadership and so, ultimately, you didn’t blame Little John or Meatloaf — you fired Gary Busey. And these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well-handled, sir. Well-handled.”

Obama ended his roast talking about the change a President Trump would bring to the White House.

Then he flashed a picture of the then-hypothetical Trump White house, emblazoned with pink neon and gold columns, with bikini-clad women relaxing in the fountain outside.

In 'special message', Taliban leader urges Afghans to plant more trees

Taliban new leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada is seen in an undated photograph, posted on a Taliban twitter feed on May 25, 2016, and identified separately by several Taliban officials, who declined be named. Social Media/File Photo

Sun Feb 26, 2017

The Taliban group in Afghanistan on Sunday used a rare public statement in the name of its leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, to call on Afghans to plant more trees for worldly and other-worldly good.

Official Taliban outlets released the "special message" under Akhundzada's name, an uncommon move for the group that has recently published unsigned statements on a range of issues such as civilian casualties, upcoming military operations, and the anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops in the 1980s.

Akhundzada, a cleric, is believed to have been in hiding since becoming Taliban leader in May 2016 following the death of his predecessor in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.

In the statement, he urged Afghan civilians and Taliban fighters to "plant one or several fruit or non-fruit trees for the beautification of Earth and the benefit of almighty Allah's creations."

The Taliban has been waging an insurgency against the government in Kabul and its NATO coalition backers since being ousted from power in a U.S.-led military intervention in 2001.

Since the withdrawal of most foreign combat troops in 2014, the Taliban has made slow but steady gains, now controlling or contesting more than 40 percent of Afghanistan.

While the Taliban is mostly known for its insurgent attacks, it has political aspirations and has often worked to provide basic services and assert connections in communities in areas it controls.

Akhundzada, who was reported to have spent 15 years teaching at a mosque in Pakistan, interpreted verses of the Koran in his call for more trees in the arid country.

"Planting trees and agriculture are considered actions which hold both worldly good and benefit as well as immense rewards in the hereafter," Akhundzada said in the statement.

(Reporting by Josh Smith)

China: What Did Deng Xiaoping Really Reform?

by Li Xuewen-Feb 22, 2017

(February 22,2017, Beijing, Sri Lanka Guardian ) In the world of Chinese Communist Party propaganda, the image of Deng Xiaoping (邓小平) has been molded into that of the master architect of China’s reform and opening up. He’s said to have helped China through two major transformations: the reform and opening up following the Cultural Revolution, and then the development of a market economy following his Southern Tour in 1992. Thus, in the mythology of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng is the second deity following Mao Zedong (毛泽东).

But if we step back, take in a broader historical perspective, and make a rational examination at the twentieth anniversary of Deng’s death (February 19, 1997), it quickly becomes clear that Deng Xiaoping managed to effect only one transition: launching China onto the road of crony capitalism after the June 4 massacre. The baneful consequences of crony capitalism have saved the Party but are a crime against the nation.

Historians have already used a wide variety of documentary sources to show that during the anti-rightist movement of the 1950s, Deng Xiaoping was a “leading vanguard” and a chief perpetrator. But there’s no need to rehearse that history here — after all, the chief culprit in the anti-rightist campaign was Mao, and Deng only truly came into his own as a historical figure following the Cultural Revolution, as the so-called “second generation core” leadership. This essay aims at analyzing why Deng Xiaoping only oversaw a partial, not a full, transition, and it argues that this is the key in any evaluation of Deng.

The first matter to address is why the first so-called transformation wasn’t a transformation at all.

By the end of the Cultural Revolution, China had been so thoroughly ravaged by Mao that people could hardly get by, the economy was ruined, and the Chinese people were living in unspeakable misery. Mao, as head of the Party, had driven the country into the ground. When Mao died and the Party carried out so-called “reform and opening up,” they said it was to save the nation and save the people — but it would be better put that they were mainly about saving themselves. The Party’s decision for Deng Xiaoping to take the lead was no more than a passive historical choice, the only option when there were no options. In the years following 1949, all the outstanding political leadership of the Nationalist Party had either fled to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek, or were slaughtered by the communists. During Mao’s dictatorship, the communist’s own pragmatists, for instance Liu Shaoqi (刘少奇) and Zhou Enlai (周恩来), had either been struggled to death or had their careers stifled out. The designated successor, Lin Biao (林彪), died trying to flee to Mongolia, and other veteran revolutionary cadres were either too old to be of any use or were already dead. The remnants of this corps, including Ye Jianying (叶剑英) and Li Xiannian (李先念), had ideals, but were too old to be at the helm. The only two remaining figures who had the resourcefulness and strategic measure to rule the country were Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun (陈云). Overall, Deng was more capable than Chen, and so it became a matter of “none but Deng.”

Given what a wreck China was at the end of the Cultural Revolution, no matter who the successor was to be, their only option was to reform and open the economy. This was a product of circumstance, the trend of history, and not something that any individual could reverse. The fact that Hua Guofeng (华国锋) was unable to keep the Maoist antics going is a prime example. If it wasn’t Deng who took control, it might have been, for instance, Lin Biao — and he may have taken things much further than Deng, and been still more groundbreaking. Simply taking a glance at the seditious, anti-Mao thought in Lin Liguo’s (林立果, son of Lin Biao) “Project 571 Outline” (《五七一工程纪要》) makes clear the possibilities. My claim that the circumstances overrode the individual is to say that at that point in China, whoever took charge simply had to carry out economic reform and opening. Besides, the official propaganda around Deng Xiaoping being the grand architect of reform and opening doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. As scholar Wu Wei (吴伟) revealed in his recent book “On Stage and Backstage: China’s Political Reform in the 1980s,” (《中国八十年代政治改革的台前幕后》) Deng lifted many of his ideas about governance from Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦) and Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳). In particular when it came to political system reform, Deng was no architect. Thus, attributing the entire reform and opening program to Deng, as Deng’s achievement and the first post-Mao transformation, is simply not supported by the historical evidence.

These days, there are many people of my father’s generation who hate Mao but feel a great sense of gratitude toward Deng. The reason is simple: they were persecuted in the Mao era, and in Deng’s time they were able to live a normal life. But rarely do they think it through a step further: they should have been able to live unmolested in the first place. The Party under Mao robbed them of that, and under Deng it simply gave them back a bit — not all — of what was stolen. Not to mention that their youths, and most of their lives, had been wasted — giving them their lives back shouldn’t be seen as the grace and magnanimity of the Party, but simply the basic rights they are entitled to as citizens.

At the end of the Cultural Revolution, a group of veteran cadres used classic coup d’état-style tactics to purge the remaining Maoists. The Party, with Deng at the helm, then transitioned from Mao’s mode of frantic political violence to a form of stable, pragmatic politics: so-called abandonment of class-struggle as the guiding principle, and a turn to economic development as the central focus. Through this, Deng was able to gradually establish his personal power and authority, and forge for himself the historical role as so-called grand architect.

And yet for all this, because what Deng presided over was always merely a maimed transition — economic reform without political reform — China’s reform never resolved the most fundamental issues and it failed to achieve the genuine transformation that would have brought true political modernization. Throughout the 1980s, Deng constantly suppressed the political reformist leanings of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, he personally ordered the June 4 massacre, and then he used his personal power and prestige to make clear that “whoever fails to promote economic development will be sacked.”

This was the direct catalyst for ushering in the period of China’s crony capitalism, which persists to this day. It’s not only through the Jiang Zemin (江泽民), Hu Jintao (胡锦涛), and Xi Jinping (习近平) eras that discussion of political reform has been out of bounds — nothing comparable to the political reformist aspirations of the 1980s in the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang period has been allowed to appear. As Wu Wei reveals in his “China’s Political Reform in the 1980s”: “Deng Xiaoping added a line to a draft of the document ‘Overall Considerations in Political System Reform’ (《政治体制改革总体设想》), saying: ‘We absolutely won’t carry out Western-style separation of powers, with periods of elected office.’ Without this line being added, Deng wouldn’t have felt reassured. And without Deng’s approval, the entire political reform program at the time would have died in its crib.”

The liberal intellectuals have mocked the “Five Nos,”* proposed by the then-National People’s Congress Chairman Wu Bangguo (吴邦国) in 2011 that summed up the key political changes that the Party rejects. Few know that Deng Xiaoping was the one who first set out the “Five Nos.” Rejecting political modernization is in fact rejecting reform, because true reform must have at its heart reform of the political system. Any reform without political reform is ersatz reform — all simply a matter of using the banner of “reform” to monopolize power and plunder the people of their wealth. For these reasons, following Deng there was simply no more so-called reform. Reform was long dead. What was left were a pack of political swindlers.

People who think clearly ought to be able to see that Mao and Deng were not at loggerheads. Their commitment to the sustenance of Communist Party totalitarianism was identical. Mao pointlessly set the Cultural Revolution in motion, and Deng caused the June 4 massacre; Mao created a one-man dictatorship, Deng demanded eternal adherence to the Four Cardinal Principles (四项基本原则).** Whether under Mao or Deng, the same one-Party dictatorship was up there all the same, lording it over the people. This is the fundamental commonality in the ruling power clique, and could be said to be the Party’s core, unshakable mafia code.

The only true transition that Deng Xiaoping oversaw was his opening the road to crony capitalism. It was this transition that threw the Communist Party a lifeline following the 1989 massacre — and which also threw open the floodgates for the mass expropriation of the Chinese people by corrupt officials, which continues to this day.

This historical turning point that Deng presided over comes into clearer focus twenty years after his death because, as the Party’s crony capitalists continue their mad plunder of the citizenry, the regime is getting closer and closer to the mouth of a volcano that threatens to erupt. If we concede that his reform and opening following the Cultural Revolution saved the Party, then we must say that his inauguration of crony capitalism will lead to the death of the Party, and the June 4, 1989 massacre was the historical inflection point.

Deng ended the madness of Mao, but he ushered in another form of madness. The latter has led to an enormous wealth disparity in China, to a corrupt class alloyed with power who act as they wish, to environmental disasters, moral collapse, and the plunder of the country’s patrimony. Perhaps even Deng failed to foresee all that.

*Five Nos: No multiparty rule; no diversification of the Party’s guiding principles; no separation of powers and no two parliaments; no federalism; no privatization.

**The Four Cardinal Principles of Deng Xiaoping: Keeping to the socialist road, upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat, upholding the leadership of the Communist Party, and upholding Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.

Li Xuewen (黎学文) is an independent writer in Beijing. This article was first published to WeChat, and later censored. China Digital Times preserves an archived version.

《黎学文：邓小平转了什么折？》 translated by China Change.

Uber, OKCupid users among millions urged to change passwords after Cloudfare bug causes massive leak

25th February 2017

SOME of the world’s most popular websites and apps have been affected by a massive data leak after internet security giants Cloudfare was hit by a tiny bug that exposed sensitive data, including passwords and personal information of millions of users.

According to several reports from leading technology news sites, the so-called Cloudbleed vulnerability, had affected up to 3,400 websites, including popular services such as Uber, OKCupid and Fitbit, Cloudfare announced late Thursday.

While there’s no indication hackers actually accessed usernames and passwords, as well as a slew of other private information sent by users over the services, the information was exposed both on corrupted versions of the websites and in cached results on search services like Google and Bing.

Although there had yet to be any sign that hackers have accessed the sensitive information, including usernames and passwords, the information can now be accessed on corrupted versions of the websites and in cached results on search engines such as Google and Bing, CBS News reported.

Image via cloudfare

In a blog posting detailing the flaw, Cloudflare’s chief technical officer, John Graham-Cumming, said the company has not discovered any evidence of “malicious exploits” of the bug or other reports of its existence.

“The bug was serious because the leaked memory could contain private information and because it had been cached by search engines,” he said.

“Because Cloudflare operates a large, shared infrastructure, an HTTP request to a Cloudflare web site that was vulnerable to this problem could reveal information about an unrelated other Cloudflare site.”

SEE ALSO: ASEAN countries should learn from the Philippines’ massive election data leak

He said after being made aware of the bug, the company quickly identified the problem and turned off three minor Cloudflare features; email obfuscation, Server-side Excludes and Automatic HTTPS Rewrites, that were all using the same HTML parser chain that was causing the leakage.

Because of the seriousness of such a bug, he said a cross-functional team from software engineering, infosec and operations formed in San Francisco and London to fully understand the underlying cause, and the effect of the memory leakage, and to work with Google and other search engines to remove any cached HTTP responses.

“Having a global team meant that, at 12 hour intervals, work was handed over between offices enabling staff to work on the problem 24 hours a day. The team has worked continuously to ensure that this bug and its consequences are fully dealt with.”

He said one of the advantages of being a security service is that bugs can go from reported to fixed in minutes to hours instead of months.

“The industry standard time allowed to deploy a fix for a bug like this is usually three months; we were completely finished globally in under 7 hours with an initial mitigation in 47 minutes,” he said.

According to Wired, Google vulnerability researcher Tavis Ormandy had uncovered the flaw on Feb 17, but bug that inserted random data from any of six million users of major sites like Uber could have been leaked since Sept last year. This means that information about an Uber ride a user took and even their password could have invariably ended up hidden in the code of another site.

This Friday, Nov. 21, 2014, photo taken in Newark, N.J., shows smartphones displaying Uber car availability in New York. Uber is offering car service in 250 cities in 50 countries. Pic AP

However, the exposed data was not easily available as it was not posted on well-known or high traffic sites. Regardless, the leak included sensitive cookies, login credentials, and other important authentication tokens, including some of Cloudflare’s own internal cryptography keys.

Another popular tech news site said it will take some time before the full extent of the leak could be determined. Users were also urged change all their passwords and implement two-factor authentication everywhere they could.

SEE ALSO: Thailand: Sensitive info about tourists revealed in 2nd online data leak

Cloudflare might not be a household name for regular internet users, but a lot of favourite websites are being run by the company’s technology.

Describing itself as a “web performance and security company”, Cloudfare was originally set up to track sources of spam since 2009, but have grown to offer other performance-based services such content delivery services; reliability-focused offerings like domain name server (DNS) services; and security services like protection against direct denial of service (DDoS) attacks, according to Gizmodo.

The fact that Cloudflare is a security company makes the dustup around this new vulnerability supremely ironic. After all, countless companies pay Cloudflare to help keep their user data safe. The Cloudbleed blunder did the opposite of that.

“I’ve informed Cloudflare what I’m working on. I’m finding private messages from major dating sites, full messages from a well-known chat service, online password manager data, frames from adult video sites, hotel bookings,” Ormandy wrote in an advisory, as quoted by Gizmodo.

“We’re talking full https requests, client IP addresses, full responses, cookies, passwords, keys, data, everything.”

Fruit and veg: For a longer life eat 10-a-day

Image copyrightISTOCK

By James Gallagher-23 February 2017

Eating loads of fruit and vegetables - 10 portions a day - may give us longer lives, say researchers.

The study, by Imperial College London, calculated such eating habits could prevent 7.8 million premature deaths each year.

The team also identified specific fruit and veg that reduced the risk of cancer and heart disease.

The analysis showed even small amounts had a health boon, but more is even better.

A portion counts as 80g (3oz) of fruit or veg - the equivalent of a small banana, a pear or three heaped tablespoons of spinach or peas.

What counts as five-a-day?

The conclusions were made by pooling data on 95 separate studies, involving two million people's eating habits.

Lower risks of cancer were linked to eating:

green veg (eg spinach)
yellow veg (eg peppers)
cruciferous vegetables (eg cauliflower).

Lower risks of heart disease and strokes were linked to eating:

apples
pears
citrus fruits
salads
green leafy vegetables (eg lettuce)
cruciferous veg

Image captionHarriet is a big fan of spinach

Harriet Micallef, from Chippenham, says she often manages eight to 10 portions a day and has multiple portions of spinach every day.

She told the BBC: "I have a lot, I don't ever have a meal without veg or salad so eight to 10 portions is a regular thing."

She starts her day with a veg-packed omelette containing spinach and sometimes avocado or tomatoes.
Harriet's salad-based lunch is also packed with a mix of veg and her evening meals tend to be stir fries or stews.

Snacks during the day include blended fruit smoothies or peppers dipped in hummus.
She added: "It's definitely healthy, if you've got loads of colours on your plate then you're pretty much okay."

The results, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, also assessed the risk of dying before your time.

Compared with eating no fruit or veg a day, it showed:

200g cut the risk of cardiovascular disease by 13% while 800g cut the risk by 28%
200g cut the risk of cancer by 4%, while 800g cut the risk by 13%
200g cut the risk of a premature death by 15%, while 800g cut the risk by 31%

The researchers do not know if eating even more fruit and veg would have even greater health benefits as there is little evidence out there to review.

Dr Dagfinn Aune, one of the researchers, said: "Fruit and vegetables have been shown to reduce cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and to boost the health of our blood vessels and immune system.
"This may be due to the complex network of nutrients they hold.

"For instance, they contain many antioxidants, which may reduce DNA damage and lead to a reduction in cancer risk."

However, many people struggle to even eat the five a day (400g) recommended by the World Health Organization.

In the UK, only about one in three people eats enough.

Image captionHeather is a vegan who loves sweet potato curry

Heather Saunders, 24 and from Oxford, routinely manages nine or 10 portions a day since becoming vegan.

She has two pieces of fruit with breakfast, a "massive pot" of roasted vegetables at lunch and then at least four vegetables in curries or chillies in the evening.

She told the BBC: "It is about making a conscious decision, I feel fuelling myself with plant-based foods is a more healthy way to sustain myself."

Her tips for anyone trying to eat more is to do it gently: "Maybe decide to have one or two meat-free days a week and phase more veg in, I quite like a sweet potato curry with spinach and chickpeas."
Dr Aune said the findings did not mean the five-a-day message needed to change.
He told the BBC: "There are many different considerations if changing policy, it's not just the health effects - is it feasible?

"But our findings are quite clear in that they do support five a day, but there are even some further benefits for higher intakes."

Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health England, said: "The five-a-day target is the foundation of a healthy balanced diet and is an achievable way to help prevent a number of diseases.
"Whilst consuming more than five portions of fruit and vegetables a day may be desirable... adding pressure to consume more fruit and vegetables creates an unrealistic expectation."

Your questions answered

Jonathan Shorney asked: "I eat a lot of apples, but that amounts to a lot of sugar. Could that amount of sugar be harmful?"

Sugar seems to have become public enemy number one in the past few years. But it is important to remember the "war on sugar" is actually a "war on free sugar".

This includes sugars added to food as well as honey or those liberated in making fruit juices.

However, this does not include any naturally occurring sugars in fresh fruit and vegetables and the World Health Organization says "there is no reported evidence of adverse effects of consuming these sugars".
Mike asked: "Do pulses contribute to the 10?

Yes they do. All kinds of beans from kidney to cannellini as well as lentils count as a single portion according to Public Health England.

Gary Kruger asked: "Should fruit and vegetables be heavily subsidised by the government to encourage further consumption?

This is not being seriously considered, but something kind of similar is happening.

Rather than making the healthy stuff cheaper, a sugar tax will make sugar-sweetened beverages more expensive with the aim of shifting buying habits.

There is no VAT on fruit and veg, but the British Medical Association has called for the government to go further and use the proceeds of a sugar tax to discount fruit and veg.

However, it is not clear how big a health impact there could be without knowing who it would be for (everyone or just the poor), how big the discount would be and then how that would change shopping habits.

Harriet, who started cooking family meals at the age of 12, thinks more should be done to get children eating more.

"I think it comes from schooling and the traditional British meat and two veg.

"I think if you teach children to always have something green on their plate in addition then they'll naturally start having more.

"There's just so many different veg that people don't have like bean sprouts and chard."

Not all of the 95 studies that were analysed fully accounted for other aspects of lifestyle, such as exercise levels, that could also play a role in prolonging lives.

However, Dr Aune said the conclusions were "quite robust".

Follow James on Twitter.

Muslim groups protest in solidarity with Keppapilavu

25 Feb 2017

Muslim organisations in Batticaloa held a rally in support of protestors in Keppapilavu on Friday, demanding the release of military occupied land.

The rally, held after Friday prayers in Kattankudy, saw dozens of protestors take to the streets in solidarity with the families of Keppapilavu. Tamil families have continued to protest outside a Sri Lankan Air Force camp in the village, demanding the military return their land.

Making of a new constitution for Sri Lanka: Let wiser counsel prevail

by Tassie Seneviratne-February 25, 2017, 5:21 pm

The talking point throughout the country these days is about the making of a new constitution for Sri Lanka.

Principles of democracy as enunciated by the USA and accepted in most democracies and relevant to constitution making, are as follows:

Making of a new constitution for Sri Lanka.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Jaffna University Unions Voice Indignation Against Bar On Thiagalingam For VC

February 25, 2017

Colombo Telegraph has published two reports (Report 1 and Report 2) on the developments in the election of the new Vice Chancellor at the University of Jaffna. After many bitter years of stagnation, many people have come to see the University as the obstacle to openness and progressive change. This is evident in the fear of the mere the candidacy for VC of Prof. Sam Thiagalingam, who has had a successful academic career in the USA.

Prof. Sam Thiagalingam

Apart from the fear of an outsider (who in fact graduated from the University of Jaffna), there is anxiety that he might champion reform that all know is necessary.

Adding to the palpable excitement over the council meeting tomorrow (25^th) that would decide the fate of Thiagalingam’s application, the University Students’ Union (USU) and the Employees’ Union (EU) have joined forces with the University of Jaffna Teachers’ Association (UJTA) and the Jaffna University Science Teachers’ Association (JUSTA) to demand the acceptance of Prof. Thiagalingam’s candidacy for the VC’s position.

How dire the situation is could be seen in the University’s inability to reform even when an opportunity presents itself. For the 2014 VC election the present VC and the EPDP that earlier controlled Jaffna paced the border of intimidation to dictate how each councillor should cast his three votes. Thanks to the regime change in 2015, this time there has been no intimidation by political parties and the election has descended to the market place. Reckless promises are being made to canvas votes as though the new vice chancellor would own the University. With the Chancellor reportedly not in the best of health, his office has been thrown for auction into the market place. Candidates have been known to promise university positions not only to those who would lobby for them, but also to their spouses.

These manipulations show the extent to which recruitment to university positions has become corrupted. As the Employees’ Union points out in its statement of yesterday, there was a promise of reform with the change of government in 2015, reports of abuses were submitted to the Council, the UGC and to state functionaries, and had inquiries proceeded as promised, we would be in a different position today.

The Students’ Union, deferring to the current reality in the University, instead of confronting the Administration head-on, ask in its statement for a re-evaluation of Thiagalingam’s application for the position of vice chancellor and to take due steps to erase the ‘disgrace’ into which the University has fallen. The fear among student leaders to take up this issue was quite visible, for the fear of victimisation.

The University Employees’ Union which represents the non-academic staff of the University of Jaffna has, in its statement, expressed its displeasure over the moves to reject a well-qualified candidat[e] on the grounds that [his] application reached the University a day after the deadline. Concurring with the statements issued by the University of Jaffna Teachers’ Association (UJTA) and Jaffna University Science Teachers’ Association (JUSTA), the Employees’ Union notes that it would like to be informed about the procedure followed and the tasks carried out by the Search Committee appointed by the Council for the appointment of the new Vice Chancellor. The Union also requests the Council to give adequate time to Prof. Sam Thiagalingam (without mentioning his name) to present his vision for the University [to the University community] if his application is accepted.

In the first half of the statement, the Employees’ Union notes that since the mid-1990s, politicians who have held power have appointed self-seeking individuals who had no qualms about acting as the former’s puppets as Vice Chancellors of the University. Giving a detailed account of the last VC election held in 2014, the statement reports that at a pre-Council meeting held at the office of a political party prior to the election, instructions were given to the Council members as to whom they should vote for.

The statement notes that although new external members were appointed to the Council in 2015, irregularities in recruitment continue even today and questions prepared for recruitment exams are leaked to known persons. The statement adds that students continue to face vengeance and that there is no safety for female students in the University at present. In such a context, the statement cautions the Council members to decide carefully as to whether they should vote for their second and third preferential candidates. The Union makes this cautious remark as its members are of the view that some candidates for this year’s VC’s election, if elected, may take the University back to the 2008-2014 period when the administration of the University was heavily politicized.

In the meantime, Colombo Telegraph learns that three VC candidates. namely Prof. Mikunthan, Prof. Vigneswaran and Dr. Raviraj, have informed the Council in writing that they have no objection to have Prof. Thiagalingam as a fellow candidate in the VC’s election though the latter’s application posted from the USA reached the University two days after the deadline. The University Council meets tomorrow, the 25^th of February when it is expected that a decision on Prof. Thiagalingam’s application will be made.

Girl loses university admission hope due to postal issue

Feb 25, 2017

L.G.H. Nayana Sanjeewani of Thelawilla Maha Vidyalaya in Suriyawewa sat for the GCE Advanced Level examination in 2015 and obtained the results of one A and two Bs. Compared to the facilities available for her that was quite a good result, and made her eligible to apply for university entrance. Her application was accepted and she was selected by Rajarata University.

She was to get registered with the university before January 30, but Nayana received the relevant letter from the UGC only on February 06.

Her village Thelawilla is a remote and difficult one, and it has a sub post office but without a postman. The villagers have to go the sub post office around three to four kms away and get their letters. Since her father was not well, she could not go to the post office during the week, and her dreams of a university education is likely to be dashed.

“My parents wanted to send me to university and wanted to see me obtaining a degree. For that, they put in a great effort and suffered a lot. I studied well, but the dream of a degree is lost.”

Nayana’s mother says her father did labour work despite his illness and got her to qualify for university entrance, only to be lost in this manner. She requests relevant authorities not to deny this opportunity for her daughter.

Nayana is yet to gain university entrance not due to her, or her parents’ fault. That is owing to the Postal Department’s not having enough staff. Therefore, the responsibility is directly with the government.

What the government is now doing is to plan giving tabs for schoolchildren. That is not bad. But, what the government should understand is that there are students who have the IT literacy to use tabs, but at the same time, there are students who are without the basic facilities to have an education and that even if they gain university entrance, there are students like Nayana who have to lose their dream for a university education.

Rahul Samantha Hettiarachchi - Hambantota