Russian destabilisation of Balkans rings alarm bells on eve of EU summit

Top MEP David McAllister says bloc must be more visible in the region to counter Kremlin’s growing influence

A train with a sign reading ‘Kosovo is Serbia’ was sent to Kosovo, plunging relations in the region into a crisis. Photograph: Oliver Bunic/AFP/Getty Images

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels-Wednesday 8 March 2017

The European Union needs to be more visible in the western Balkans to counter Russian attempts to destabilise the region, a leading MEP has said.

“Geopolitics has returned to the Balkans,” said David McAllister, a German MEP and chair of the European parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

“We are seeing the growing Russian influence, we are seeing growing Turkish influence, the United States is a player, the European Union is a player, so there are different interests at stake,” he said.

But it was Russia’s role that he described as negative, citing the Kremlin’s suspected involvement in a failed coup in Montenegro and Moscow’s support forhardline nationalist leaders in the region.

Russia was also exerting influence on political debate by organising anti-western, and anti-EU propaganda, McAllister said, especially in Serbian-language media outlets that promoted the Kremlin’s world view, as well as “conspiracy theories and Serbian ultranationalism”.

EU leaders will discuss the growing tension in the Balkans at a summit in Brussels on Thursday. According to a draft memo seen by the Guardian, the leaders will renew their promise that the door of membership remains open while stressing the importance of reforms and “good neighbourly relations”.

Member states are divided over whether the summit communique should identify the “outside forces” carving out a bigger role in the region. Russia is a particular concern, but officials are also wary of Turkey’s growing role.

“There is third country interference,” one EU diplomat said.

EU diplomats are also worried about Balkan citizens heading to Iraq and Syria to fight for Islamic extremist groups. A disproportionately high number of Kosovans, Albanians and Bosnians have been fighting in Middle Eastern war zones, according to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

Balkan countries were given the green light to begin the long road to EU membership in 2003, but progress has been mixed. Croatia joined the EU in 2013, and Montenegro and Serbia have embarked on formal membership talks. Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia are further behind in the process.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, visited the region last week, in an attempt to revive momentum towards EU integration. Speaking after her visit, she laid out her “profound concerns” but also optimism that all countries could eventually join the EU. “The Balkans can easily become one of the chessboards where the big power game can be played,” Mogherini said.

 Federica Mogherini visits Bosnia-Herzegovina. Photograph: Fehim Demir/EPA

Her trip was also aimed at reassuring the region it had not been forgotten. While the EU has been rocked by one existential crisis after another, from Brexit to Greek debt to coping with migrants and refugees, nationalist and inter-ethnic tensions have been bubbling away in the western Balkans.

In January, a Serbian train bearing signs reading “Kosovo is Serbian” was sent towards Kosovo, plunging relations between the countries into a crisis. Meanwhile, Macedonia is entrenched in an increasingly bitter political crisis that has pitted neighbours against each other, and Montenegro was shaken by the assassination attempt against its pro-western prime minister last October. The failed coup has been linked to Russian authorities, although Moscow has denied any involvement.

Tensions have also flared in Bosnia, where the Bosnian-Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, is accused of flouting the 1995 peace agreement that ended a four-year civil war.

McAllister disputed the view, held by some regional leaders, that the Balkans have been forgotten by Brussels but said it was time for the EU to increase its visibility. A recent poll showed Serbians were more likely to assume Russia was the country’s biggest aid donor, rather than the EU, although the estimated €3bn (£2.6bn) received from Brussels since 2000 far exceeds sums from Moscow.

Citing this poll, McAllister said the EU needed to increase its efforts “to make the European Union and its good work more visible in all the six western Balkan countries”.

The MEP was elected to lead the foreign affairs committee in January. In early April, MEPs are to vote on a resolution drafted by McAllister calling on Serbia to align its foreign policy to Europe.

McAllister said he regretted that Serbia had not chosen to join in EU sanctions against Russia, although pointed to its support for UN peacekeeping operations. “Serbia will have to fully align its foreign policy with the European Union to become a member,” he said.

‘Big Candy’ is lobbying the Trump administration. It’s also holding events at Trump hotels.

 Donald Trump speaks Oct. 25 at Trump National Doral near Miami. The resort this week hosted the National Confectioners Association, which hopes to score policy wins from the new administration. (Evan Vucci/AP)

By Amy Brittain and Jonathan O'Connell March 7 at 5:24 PM

As U.S. candymakers descended on South Florida for their industry conference this week, they were scheduled to plot lobbying strategy in the “Ivanka Trump ballroom.” A dessert networking event was planned for the “Donald J. Trump grand patio.” Between meetings, attendees were eligible to enjoy outings on a Trump-owned golf course and massages at a Trump spa.

The National Confectioners Association is doing a lot of business with President Trump’s company.

In addition to this week’s gathering of 600 attendees at the Trump National Doral resort near Miami, the group has booked two upcoming meetings, in September and again in 2018, at the Trump International Hotel down the street from the White House.

At the same time, the organization, representing candy titans Hershey, Mars and Jelly Belly, among other companies, is optimistic about scoring big, early policy wins from the Trump administration. Among the industry’s priorities: a long-sought rollback of government sugar subsidies that candy firms say drive up the costs of making their products.

“We have a very narrow window of time now with the current administration and political dynamics to win this fight,” the group’s president and chief executive, John H. Downs Jr., wrote to the board of trustees in the days before this week’s Doral meeting. The memo, which was posted on the group’s website, estimated that a victory on the sugar issue could save the industry $280 million annually.

A group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington claims President Trump is violating a little-known constitutional provision called " the Emoluments Clause." (Video: Jenny Starrs/Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Downs added that the group has “significant opportunities to go on offense” on other matters, including its push to end Obama-era regulations on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and food labeling.

The group said it booked the venues in 2014 and 2015, long before Trump won the presidency. And a spokesman said the sites were chosen for their locations and amenities, not in any effort to seek political favors.

But the arrangement illustrates a repercussion of Trump’s decision to retain ownership of his business during his time in the White House — that he can become financially intertwined with a special interest that is simultaneously seeking to influence policy decisions by his administration.

By holding conferences at the Doral resort and the D.C. hotel, the confectioners group is making payments to businesses that directly benefit the president’s personal fortune at the time the candy group is seeking policy changes in the administration. In addition to the three events taking place during Trump’s presidency, the group also held two conferences last year at Trump properties when he was running for office — a winter gathering in Doral and a September forum at the D.C. hotel.

The group declined to disclose how much it has paid the Trump company, but according to meeting planners familiar with the Trump Organization’s prices, the price of the Doral events likely cost at least $100,000 to $200,000 each, not counting hotel rooms and extras such as spa services, while the D.C. hotel events likely run at least $100,000 apiece.

Ethics laws forbid executive branch officials to participate in government operations that could benefit them or their families. Those restrictions do not apply to the president. Trump’s predecessors have typically abided by the same standard by putting their finances in blind trusts to avoid even the potential for a conflict, but Trump’s aides have argued that such a setup would be impractical for a real estate company.

Ethics experts have previously raised concerns about Trump profiting from other events booked at his D.C. hotel, such as a recent event held by an association of railroad contractors and a gala scheduled for September by an association of college athletic directors forming a new political action committee. A liberal watchdog group is suing Trump, claiming that some hotel events, such as a reception held last month by the Kuwaiti Embassy, violate a constitutional provision barring a president from taking payments or gifts from foreign governments.

The candymakers’ association is the first known example of an interest group with multiple events planned at Trump properties during the Trump presidency.

Christopher Gindlesperger, spokesman for the confectioners, told The Washington Post that the conference sites are “completely unrelated” to the group’s lobbying work.

“Our federal advocacy and regulatory agenda has remained the same as it has for years related to the sugar reform issue,” he said. “Anytime there is a new Congress or new administration there is a moment when the business community or other groups can tell their story about the jobs they can create, products they make, and the other contributions they make to the American economy.”

Gindlesperger said the two Doral conferences were booked in 2014, while the three D.C. meetings were booked in 2015. The venues, he said, were selected based on “the same criteria we always use: availability of lodging for a large group, quality of service, space to hold large meetings, and proximity to Capitol Hill.”

A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization declined to comment for this report. A White House official declined to be quoted by name but said that the White House counsel’s office provides routine ethics training.

Trump announced shortly before taking office that he was removing himself from management of his company, a global real estate and branding enterprise that includes luxury hotels, golf courses, office buildings and merchandise. His adult sons and a longtime executive are now running the company.

At the time, the lawyer who worked out the plan, Sheri Dillon, dismissed the suggestion of a problem resulting from “arms’-length transactions the president-elect has nothing to do with,” such as hotel stays.

 Nevertheless, addressing questions about potential violations of the Constitution’s “emoluments clause,” Dillon said, the company would donate to the U.S. treasury “all profits from foreign government payments” to the Trump International Hotel.

Kathleen Clark, a Washington University law professor and ethics expert, said much is unknown about how White House officials are approaching potential conflicts related to business at Trump properties.

“I can envision a competition among interest groups to patronize Trump businesses, expanding the field of corrupt influence from one focused on contributions to campaigns, PACs and super-PACs, to one that includes enriching Trump businesses,” she said.

In the case of the confectioners, Clark said, the group’s chief rival in the sugar debate — the sugar-cane growers who support government price supports — may “reasonably believe that they are at a disadvantage.”

“The sugar growers may feel pressure to even up the lobbying playing field by patronizing Trump businesses,” Clark said.

Phillip Hayes, a spokesman for the American Sugar Alliance, declined to speak in detail about the candymakers’ decision to drive business to Trump’s hotels. But he used the opportunity to criticize the candymakers’ group, which the sugar industry, often dubbed “Big Sugar” by critics, derides on its website as “Big Candy.”

“I don’t put anything past them,” he said.

The candy association was one of the first major customers for the Trump International Hotel in the District.

The group took a leap of faith in the Trump Organization by booking the September 2016 Washington Forum a year in advance, long before the hotel’s completion. At the time of the meeting, dozens of hotel rooms were not yet finished and construction crews were installing drywall and electrical systems.

The association, which funds a “CandyPAC,” is making plans for an aggressive lobbying push over the next year, according to documents posted on its website.

The group plans to spend about $1.9 million on state and federal advocacy in 2017-2018, according to its business plan that was posted online. The document describes candy as “part of a happy and balanced lifestyle.” And it said the group’s goal is to “enhance the positive perception of the industry through additional relationships with Congress, the administration and regulatory agencies.”

Downs, the group’s chief executive, wrote in his memo to trustees that he believes the Trump administration “should create a more favorable legislative/regulatory environment in Washington.” 

Strategic documents prepared for the Doral meeting also reveal how efforts targeted toward specific agencies within the Trump administration could affect the candymakers’ bottom line.

The association wrote that it will be “closely watching” the upcoming confirmation process of agriculture secretary nominee Sonny Perdue, and that the group had worked with Senate staffers to shape questions for the former Georgia governor on a range of key issues. That includes the candymakers’ opposition to efforts by some states to prohibit candy purchases using food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Documents laying out the National Confectioners Association’s lobbying goals and other strategic materials were removed from the group’s website over the weekend after The Post inquired about them.

 If you know of an interest group event or business conference being held at a Trump property, email Amy Brittain at amy.brittain@washpost.com.

Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed

Press Release

Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named "Vault 7" by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.

The first full part of the series, "Year Zero", comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

Vault 7 CIA Hacking Tools Revealed.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Cuba: Fidel Castro’s legacy

The question is how far Trump will want to roll back relations with Cuba. Nobody knows.

Samuel Farber interviewed by Paul D’Amato-
Courtesy: International Socialist Review

( March 8, 2017, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) Samuel Farber was born and raised in Cuba and has written extensively on that country. His newest book, The Politics of Che Guevara: Theory and Practice, is available from Haymarket Books. International Socialist Review editor Paul D’Amato interviewed him in early December 2016.

Did the US embargo against Cuba that began in 1960, and continues to this day, drive Cuba into the arms of the Soviet Union, as many liberals contend, or was it part of the original plan of the Cuban revolutionaries to move in that direction? 

Cuba Fidel Castro’s legacy.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

“Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50:50 by 2030.”

Lakshmi Puri is Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women

Women are working in construction in Rio de Janeiro. Credit:Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Lakshmi Puri-Wednesday, March 8, 2017

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2017 (IPS) - Yayi Bayam Diouf became the first woman to fish in her small rural fishing village in Senegal despite initially being told by the men in her community that the fish wouldn’t take bait from a menstruating woman. When she started practicing law, Ann Green, CEO of ANZ Lao, was asked to make coffee or pick up dry cleaning (by men and women), simply because she was a young woman. The difficulties faced by Yayi and Ann in entering the labour force and at the workplace are not only unique to them, but sadly is the reality for many women across the globe.

These difficulties represent violations of women’s human rights to work and their rights at work with gender-discriminatory laws still in existence in 155 countries, resulting in the gender wage gap of 23 percent globally. Also, women represent 75 percent of informal employment, in low-paid and undervalued jobs that are usually unprotected by labour laws, and lack social protection.

Only half of women participate in the labour force compared to three quarters of men, and in most developing countries it is as low as 25 percent. Women spend 2.5 times more time and effort than men on unpaid care work and household responsibilities. All of this results in women taking home 1/10 of the global income, while accounting for 2/3 of global working hours. These inequalities have devastating immediate and long-terms negative impacts on women who have a lower lifetime income, have saved less, and yet face higher overall retirement and healthcare costs due to a longer life expectancy.

Women’s economic empowerment is about transforming the world of work, which is still very patriarchal and treats the equal voice, participation and leadership of women as an anomaly, tokenism, compartment or add on. Despite recognizing progress, structural barriers continue to hinder progress towards women’s economic empowerment globally.

Women in all professions face what we call sticky floors, leaking pipelines and broken ladders, glass ceilings and glass walls! At the current pace, it may take 170 years to achieve economic equality among men and women – according to estimates from the World Economic Forum’s latest Gender Gap Report. This is simply unacceptable.

To accelerate the move to a planet 50/50 in women’s economic empowerment and work will require a transformation of both the public and private sector environments and world of work they create for women and also how they change it to make it a women’s space of productive and fulfilling work.

It will mean adopting necessary laws, policies and special measures by governments. It means their actively regulating and providing incentives to companies and enterprises to become gender equal employers, supply chains and incubators of innovation and entrepreneurship.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, together with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (on financing for development), position gender equality and the empowerment of women as critical and essential drivers for sustainable development. There is a Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality (Goal 5) which seeks to ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’ and sets out global targets to address many of the remaining obstacles to gender inequality.

The framework recognizes women’s economic empowerment as essential enabler and beneficiary of gender equality and sustainable development and a means of implementation of all the six targets of SDG 5, including ending all forms of discrimination against all women and girls; ending all forms of violence and harmful practices like child marriage: recognizing and valuing unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family; ensuring women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life; and ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Achieving these targets would have a multiplier effect across all other development areas, including ensuring equal access to decent work and full and productive employment (SDG 8), ending poverty (SDG-1), food security (SDG-2), universal health (SDG-3), quality education (SDG-4) and reducing inequalities (SDG-10).

The upcoming 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW61) will consider “Women’s Economic Empowerment in The Changing World of Work”, as its priority theme providing the international community the opportunity to define concrete, practical and action-oriented recommendations to overcome the structural barriers to gender equality, gender-based discrimination and violence against women at work.

We live in a world where change is happening constantly, presenting new challenges and opportunities to the realization of women’s economic empowerment. The innovations – especially in digital and information and communications technologies, mobility and informality are also increasing rapidly. Emerging areas, such as the green economy and climate change mitigation and adaptation offer new opportunities for decent work for women.

Also, in the context of new digital and information technologies, it is estimated that women will lose five jobs for every job gained compared with men losing three jobs for every job gained in the fourth industrial revolution. Successful harnessing of technological innovations is an imperative as is women’s STEM education and capability building, financial and digital inclusion for the realization of women’s economic empowerment.

Achievement of women’s economic empowerment, as well its related benefits, requires transformative and structural change. In his report on the priority theme of CSW61, the Secretary-General of the United Nations identifies are four concrete action areas in achieving women’s economic empowerment in the changing world of work, including strengthening normative and legal frameworks for full employment and decent work for all women at all levels; implementing economic and social policies for women’s economic empowerment; addressing the growing informality of work and mobility of women workers and technology driven changes; and strengthening private sector role in women’s economic empowerment.

Progress must be provided from both the demand and supply sides of the labour market. From the demand side, the enhancement of capacity building and the creation of a value chain of education skills and training for women is key to accelerating change.

This will in turn lead to decent work opportunities as well as productive employment for women. From the supply side, there must be a creation of an enabling environment for women to be recruited, retained and promoted in the work place, including through promoting policies to manage trade and financial globalization.

These forces, profoundly altering the world of work should come as a benefit to women and the working poor in rural and urban areas; and macroeconomic and labour market policies must create decent jobs, protect worker rights, and generate living wages, including for informal and migrant women workers.

Enhanced interventions to tackle persistent gender inequalities and gaps in the world of work, and stepped-up attention to technological and digital changes to ensure they become vehicles for women’s economic empowerment are needed. The creation of quality paid care economy is also pivotal in employment creation and in empowering at least a billion women- directly and indirectly as well as providing much needed jobs for all!

Transformative change is not only possible but it would generate tremendous dividends for the economy. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, if women were to play an identical role in labour markets to that of men, as much as USD 28 trillion, or 26 percent, could be added to global annual GDP by 2025.

Moreover, the total value of unpaid care and domestic work, dominated by women, is estimated to be between 10 and 39 per cent of national GDPs, and can surpass that of manufacturing, commerce, transportation and other key sectors. With women’s economic empowerment the global economy can therefore yield inclusive growth that generates decent work for all and reduces poverty ensuring that no one is left behind.

With the United Nations Observance of International Women’s Day, we celebrate the tectonic shift in the way that gender equality and women’s economic empowerment has been prioritized and valued in the international development agenda and express the resolve that we will all do everything it takes including transformative financing to achieve the ambitious goal of Planet 50/50 in the world of work by 2030.

This article is part of a series of stories and op-eds launched by IPS on the occasion of this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8.

Ukraine’s Women Are Kicking Ass and Taking Names

From small towns to the halls of parliament, women are at the forefront of change.

BY ILYA LOZOVSKY-OCTOBER 27, 2016

“You should have made an appointment,” the clerk says, eyeing us dubiously. But Olena Ivanchenko isn’t the kind of woman to take no for an answer. She launches into a flurry of objections, and soon we’re being led into the office of a local official named Vasil Grisha. I’m in Skvyra, a small town 75 miles outside Kiev, to see if Ukraine’s post-revolutionary reforms have reached this far. The slight but ferocious Ivanchenko — a longtime local activist — isn’t happy with the way things are going, and she wants me to meet one of the men she holds responsible.

Grisha, who clearly isn’t glad to see us, complains that he hadn’t had any time to prepare. He begins by telling me that things in Skvyra are looking up since the Euromaidan revolution two years ago. “I’d put it very differently,” Ivanchenko interrupts. “What have the citizens gotten? How open is our government, really?”

For the next twenty minutes, I watch the two battle it out. Ivanchenko had told me that Grisha is in the thrall of a local oligarch, making him an obstacle to progress, but I can’t help but feel a little sorry for him. As she berates him for failing to listen to opposing views on the district council, Grisha turns to me with an apologetic smile. “This is how it always is here,” he says. “This is how we talk, but we’re still working.”

“Yes,” Ivanchenko shoots back, “we can all see the results of your work in the city.”

Along with her husband Grigoriy, Ivanchenko has battled the apathy and corruption of the (overwhelmingly male) local establishment for years — all while heading an NGO, running for mayor, getting elected to the district council, and raising two children. But her capacity for outrage hasn’t come close to exhausting itself. As we drive around Skvyra later in the day, she urges me to take pictures of everything that’s gone wrong: an old hospital, an abandoned construction site, a chaotic market. “Look at this, this is a central street,” she says, her voice rising, as we rumble over a particularly rough patch of asphalt. “Is that normal?”

You’d think that Ivanchenko’s single-minded determination to change things for the better would make her an extraordinary exception — except that she’s not. One of the most striking things about the current efforts to rid Ukraine of its Soviet legacy is how many of the most prominent reformers are women.

The American-Ukrainian Natalie Jaresko became a standard-bearer for change during her two-year stint as finance minister, pushing through several vital reforms before resigning in the face of stiffening reactionary opposition earlier this year. Olena Sotnyk, an accomplished lawyer and board member of the Ukrainian Bar Association, gained notoriety for her efforts to prosecute those responsible for killing protesters in the center of Kiev during the 2014 revolution. Having failed to budge a petrified legal system, she has now entered parliament, quickly becoming a leading voice for judicial reform.

This is not to say that Ukraine’s most influential women always agree with each other. Oksana Syroyid, the intellectual powerhouse of the reformist Samopomich party, exasperated Ukraine’s western partners in her rejection of the Minsk II peace agreement with Russia, which she views as unfair to Ukraine. On the other hand, Hanna Hopko, a Euromaidan activist turned legislator, felt so strongly in favor of the decentralization scheme Minsk II required that she stuck to her guns even when it got her kicked out of the party.

Perhaps this shouldn’t come as such of a surprise. Ukraine has always had its share of strong women. Even if you’re only vaguely familiar with the country, you’ve probably heard of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her trademark braids. The fierce Nadia Savchenko — the pilot who defied Vladimir Putin during her Russian imprisonment — captured imaginations around the world.

Even so, it’s hard to recall another moment in recent Ukrainian history when women have played such prominent roles in political life. The 33-year-old journalist and activist Svitlana Zalishchuk is a case in point. Her organization, Centre UA, ran a Facebook page during the Euromaidan revolution that became the largest-ever on the Ukrainian internet, helping bring thousands onto the streets. Today she’s one of the best-known liberal legislators in a parliament that still consists mostly of oligarchs’ yes-men. She also co-leads Democratic Alliance, a party that aims to unite pro-European reformers under one tent.

Zalishchuk spent time as a fellow at Stanford University and is close to Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, who has been vocal in his support of Ukraine’s pro-European forces. So it’s no surprise that the quick-spoken young legislator has a global perspective on her country’s fate: “We can be a potential partner [to the West], a window, a bridge to the further development of this part of the world,” she told me while sipping lemonade in a Kiev restaurant (and declining a seemingly endless series of phone calls). “I think that European leaders and world leaders need to understand this.”

Not all women reformers are as visible as Zalishchuk. I was introduced to Ivanchenko by Olga Shalayska, a sharp-tongued journalist who has forgotten more about Ukrainian media than I will ever know. Shalayska works for the Institute for Mass Information, an organization that performs a vital function as a media watchdog, tracking attacks on journalists and tracing the convoluted ownership structures of Ukraine’s media holdings. And then there’s Regina Makhotina, a soft-spoken young woman who happens to lead UAngel, a leading network of angel investors in the IT sector — perhaps the country’s next cash cow.

I don’t want to overplay the point. There’s no good data about what proportion of Ukraine’s reformers are women. And, of course, some powerful women aren’t reformers at all. But when I asked Sandra Pepera of the National Democratic Institute her thoughts on the matter, she noted that women tend to be natural allies of change. She dismisses the notion that they’re innately prone to cooperation. But, she says, “most women’s experience will be of coming in from the outside. And that’s what makes it different — that they haven’t assumed their right to power.”

I have no doubt that’s true. But even so, the Ukrainian experience is hard to square with the standard Western storyline of gradual emancipation. It’s a legacy of the Soviet treatment of women, which heralded them as equal to men in the workplace, but still expected flawless performance of housewifely and motherly duties. Maybe that’s why the trappings of Western feminism — which many Ukrainian women see as dismissive of femininity — hold little appeal.Ukraine’s women haven’t so much been excluded as saddled with additional responsibilities.

Perhaps this is what has prepared them to carry the country on their backs for so long. After the devastation of the Second World War, in which so many of Ukraine’s men were killed, it was the women who did the rebuilding. And that generation is still at it today. The resolve was evident in the elderly women I met in Skvyra who — with little enough money or material possessions to call their own — spend their days making camouflage netting and collecting supplies for the soldiers still battling pro-Russian separatists in the East.

Without their help, Ukraine’s army, which had nearly disintegrated after years of corruption and neglect, could have collapsed in the face of Russian aggression. If America’s women are about to save their country from Donald Trump, Ukraine’s women have already saved theirs from his Russian best friend.

Photo credit: ALEXANDER KHUDOTEPLY/AFP/Getty Images

Amnesty names 6 women leading human rights activism in Southeast Asia

Maria at the police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Wednesday, Sept 2, 2015. Source: AP--Maria chairs Malaysia’s Bersih 2.0, the Coalition of Clean and Fair Elections. Source: @Reaproy.

De Lima remains defiant in the face of three drug-related charges. Source: Reuters/Romeo Ranoco--Nga was accused of ‘spreading propaganda against the state’. Source: YouTube.

 8th March 2017

IN CONJUNCTION with International Women’s Day, Amnesty International has recognised Southeast Asian women activists for their resolve to stand up for human rights in the face of harassment, threats, imprisonment and violence.

Amnesty names 6 women leading human rights activism in Southeast Asia.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Quality of life after heart CT scan depends on results

Siemens logo is pictured on a CT scan in the manufacturing plant of Siemens Healthineers in Forchheim near Nuremberg, Germany, October 7, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

By Will Boggs MD- Wed Mar 8, 2017

(Reuters Health) - Improvement or worsening of chest pain symptoms and quality of life after a CT scan of the heart may depend on what the scan finds, a large study suggests.

People who have coronary artery disease ruled out by the scan benefit, and so do those with severe blockages diagnosed, while those who have moderate artery disease confirmed may only become more anxious after the scan, researchers found.

Computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA), is a high-resolution X-ray of the heart that can be used to diagnose the reason for angina, or chest pain, symptoms and clarify what other treatments might be needed.

“Patients with normal coronary arteries or those with severe coronary artery disease seemed to get the most benefit in quality of life and did best,” senior study author Dr. David E. Newby from University/BHF Center for Cardiovascular Science in Edinburgh, told Reuters Health.

“This suggests that being reassured that all is normal is highly valued by patients and CTCA really helps provide this reassurance. Conversely, knowing the cause of your symptoms is due to coronary heart disease and patients undergo treatment for it, is also very helpful,” he said by email.

Although getting CTCA is associated with a lower likelihood of having a heart attack later on, its effects on symptoms and quality of life may vary, the researchers note in the journal Heart.

Newby and his team assessed how CTCA affected symptoms and quality of life six weeks and six months after the scan for 4,146 patients with suspected angina due to coronary heart disease.

When the CTCA results revealed something less than a blockage, so-called nonobstructive disease, as the cause for the patient's chest pain, patients’ quality of life got worse in the following weeks and months.

This reflects the fact that the cause of the symptoms had been unknown before and in addition they now have heart artery disease that needs treatment, Newby said.

The findings were similar when it came to changes in symptoms during follow-up. Improvements in symptoms were greatest in patients diagnosed with normal coronary arteries or who had their medications discontinued and least in those with moderate nonobstructive disease or who received new prescriptions.

“Although CTCA removes diagnostic uncertainty and halves the rate of subsequent heart attacks, quality of life can be negatively impacted in those who are worried about their health and are found to have nonobstructive coronary artery disease,” Newby said. “Much like screening tests for cancer, being told you have heart disease does not make the patient feel better,” he added.

If a doctor is faced with a patient who is already on an aspirin and statin with an unconfirmed and questionable clinical diagnosis of angina due to coronary heart disease, he said, then CTCA would be useful because finding normal heart anatomy means that more invasive testing can be avoided, treatment could be stopped and quality of life improved.

“If, however, a patient presents with atypical symptoms and is on no therapy, then the clinician needs to discuss with the patient the implications of potential CTCA findings, including nonobstructive disease that would mandate life-long preventative therapy,” Newby said. “Certainly, this is something we now discuss in more detail with our patients, some of whom have declined CTCA.”

“It was striking for me that health status was very much related to receiving a (treatable) diagnosis or excluding such a diagnosis, rather than experiencing angina symptoms per se,” said Dr. Paula M. C. Mommersteeg from the Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic Diseases, Tilburg University, The Netherlands, who has investigated associations between personality traits and coronary artery disease symptoms.

“In my opinion, CTCA does have added value in the diagnostic process (improved decision making), it is less invasive than coronary angiography (CAG), and can provide more clarity in the cardiac symptoms experienced by patients,” Mommersteeg concluded.

SOURCE: bit.ly/2lEdxAV Heart, online February 28, 2017.

Govt’s Geneva Dilemma Why Sincerity Matters

2017-03-08

As Sri Lanka gets placed, once again, on the Human Rights Council agenda this month, it is difficult to ignore the significant shifts -- internal and external -- that have taken place since Sri Lanka was last on the Council’s agenda in September 2015. Then, flush with victory and the confidence to champion reform, the Sri Lankan Government negotiated a finely-crafted resolution amid global plaudits. Back at home, the President was credited with what was termed an historic victory in Geneva. The government braved and comfortably carried a two-day debate on the text of the resolution itself and even convened a number of seminars and meetings through which to publicize the specifics concerning the resolution it co-sponsored. Contrary to mischievous mis-characterisations of the political dynamics among political leaders at the time, observers noted that there was in fact a remarkable unanimity between the President, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister on the terms of the resolution. While the Prime Minister led the line-by-line negotiations surrounding the text, the President is by all credible accounts said to have been fully briefed on its contents with aides providing him a full translation of the text under negotiation. The President’s early leadership of an all-party conference on the implementation of the resolution and his early speeches on the need for introspection underscored this point.


Today, the situation is sharply different. While there will inevitably be another resolution requesting Sri Lanka to fully implement the terms of the 2015 resolution, the reporting period appears to be extended by two years, providing the government ample time within which to devise its strategy. Sri Lanka’s claim that the constitutional reform process must be given priority has been respected. However, the global mood with respect to Sri Lanka, and the appearance of credibility carried by the government has shifted. High Commissioner Zeid’s report was critical of the government, noting that the government has failed to advance accountability in sufficient measure. This frustration at the government’s failure to make use of existing political space will also likely be reflected by other country delegations in Geneva. Meanwhile, a number of UN Special Rapporteurs and treaty bodies have also released reports critical of the government’s human rights record.   


While these reports point to the lack of progress on a range of human rights issues such as Transitional Justice, land releases, the PTA and witness protection, the fundamental driver of skepticism and frustration manifested in these reports comes from a growing feeling that the government is insincere. The President’s unilateral statements seeking to renegotiate a hard-fought compromise on international participation in the proposed special court may even have been forgiven by the international community, had he not gone further. His needless refusal to assign the Office of Missing Persons Act -- and thereby increasing the agonizing wait by families of the disappeared -- as well as his frequent presidential diatribes against NGOs that champion criminal accountability for human rights abuses have not gone unnoticed.  

  Left unchecked, the growing skepticism at home and abroad will in time exact a heavy reputational cost on Sri Lanka. For a government whose strategy of progress is hinged so heavily on international support and financial interaction, the loss of global face will not merely be symbolic and will in time come to affect financial bottom lines. Indeed, by failing to make good on its own promises and projecting hostility towards an agenda it voluntarily committed itself to less than two years ago, the government risks alienating a Tamil population which had resoundingly rejected extremists within its ranks. The loss of face for Tamil moderates occasioned by the government’s insincerity could have long-lasting and unanticipated results.   

 Ironically, the President’s posturing is unlikely to yield results within the constituencies he now attempts to represent. As many have pointed out, the best antidote to the abundant misconceptions on Transitional Justice is to in fact implement the promised mechanisms fully. Special courts tasked with hearing cases pertaining to human rights abuses, whether international, hybrid or purely domestic, only target a handful of cases, particularly those bearing the greatest responsibility up the chain of command. For instance, the ECCC in Cambodia has thus far convicted only four persons, while the ICC has convicted three. The Rwanda and Yugoslavia processes accounted for more convictions, but that intensive decades long effort is unlikely to be replicated ever again. In contrast, Sri Lanka’s regular criminal justice system has already tried dozens if not hundreds of low-ranking officers, most often trigger pullers, when information pertaining to human rights abuses came to light. The choice for the vast majority of the military’s cadres should therefore be clear: a relatively short process focusing on a handful of those in leadership positions, or a steady trickle of cases over decades targeting those who were compelled to carry out orders, while the real culprits escape punishment. And yet, given the government’s refusal to speak truthfully to its own constituency about Transitional Justice, misconceptions will continue to proliferate.  

  Unless and until a proper mechanism is in fact operationalized, the fear mongering around it will continue, even though such a mechanism should provide more comfort to the rank and file than the ordinary system’s preoccupation with punishing privates for the sins of the generals. As long as the government speaks with two tongues, with one message for Geneva and another for its own constituency, it will continue to haemorrhage support at home and abroad. In politics, as in life, sincerity is often the best policy.