Bond scam caused Rs. 10 bn loss to govt alone – Former Dy. Governor

By Shyam Nauwan Ganewatta and Sarath Dharmasena-April 26, 2017, 10:44 pm 

Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank W.A. Wijewardena yesterday arriving at the venue. Pic by Nimal Dayaratne

Respected former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank Dr. W. A. Wijaewardena yesterday said that the Treasury bond scam had caused a 10 billion-rupee loss to the government coffers alone.

Giving evidence before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry probing the controversial bond sale, the former Deputy Governor said there had been an immediate loss of Rs. 532 million to the government and the total loss for the 30 years would be Rs. 10 billion, he said.

That loss had been caused by a controversial decision to accept bids worth Rs. 10 billion instead of accepting bids worth Rs 2.6 billion on Feb. 27, 2015, the former Deputy Governor said.

Dr Wijewardena said so in answer to questions raised by Supreme Court Judge Prasanna S Jayawardena. Dr. Wijewardena also explained the methodology he had adopted to calculate the loss.

The state had suffered such a loss because of the acceptance of high interest rate of 12.5 percent for 30 years, Dr Wijewardena said. He also presented to the CoI, a document outlining his calculation of the loss.

Responding to a query, Dr Wijewardena said that he had used standard methods.

Army gives best treatment for Samanthabadra

Apr 26, 2017

Pitiduwe Siridhamma, aka Samanthabadra, toured Tissamaharama, Kirinda and Kataragama areas recently along with his disciples. It was not a pilgrimage, but an excursion. What is disturbing is that the Army gave him all the facilities. On the Army commander’s instructions, the regional Army headquarters in Hambantota provided food, accommodation and transport facilities as well as protection, say Army sources.

The touring group was opposed by Buddhist monks of the area and they did not spare the Army either for having facilitated the visit. But, they did not show their opposition in public.

 

Senior Army officers are displeased over their chief’s having come forward to provide facilities and protection for persons in private visits. He has no legal or ethical right to have issued the orders, they say.

Mass hunger strike tests Palestinian unity

Palestinians rally in solidarity with prisoners on hunger strike in the West Bank city of Nablus, 23 April.Ayman AmeenAPA images

Palestinians protest in support of hunger striking prisoners in front of Megiddo prison in northern Israel, 24 April.Haidi MotolaActiveStills

Budour Youssef Hassan-26 April 2017

 Hunger strikes don’t get any easier with experience.

So says the family of Palestinian prisoner Majd Ziada, who has participated in multiple collective strikes since his arrest by Israeli occupation forces in 2002.

“It is as if you are carrying the weight of 15 years of imprisonment on your shoulders,” Hurriyah Ziada, Majd’s youngest sister, told The Electronic Intifada. “It is like running the last kilometers of a marathon: at the start you have a lot of energy but you eventually become drained.”

Majd, whose family hails from the village of al-Faluja northeast of Gaza City, ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948, was 19 when he was swept up during a wave of mass arrests at the height of the second intifada.

He spent 50 days in incommunicado detention, during which he was subjected to physical and psychological torture, his father and lawyer say. The abuse exacerbated preexisting ear inflammation, resulting in a complete loss of hearing in Majd’s right ear.

During a hearing in an Israeli military court the year of his arrest, Majd proclaimed that he did not recognize the court’s legitimacy and that it was Israeli soldiers who should be put on trial.

Majd was convicted of carrying out armed attacks and organizing a resistance cell, receiving a 30-year prison sentence.

Majd’s attorneys requested a retrial, arguing that his conviction was rife with grave procedural errors. An Israeli military court issued a rare commutation last month, reducing Majd’s sentence to 20 years.

Majd, who was arrested in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, has most recently been held in Hadarim prison, in central Israel. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power such as Israel from transferring detainees from the territory it occupies, such as the West Bank, into its own territory. Majd’s imprisonment in Israel is thus a war crime.

Punishment

In her most recent visit to Hadarim, on 12 April, Hurriyah was told by Majd that he was planning to join the open-ended hunger strike set to begin five days later.

One of the main demands of the hunger strike is to end medical negligence of prisoners.

“[Majd] requires surgery to his ear and he is at risk of losing his hearing completely if it’s not performed,” Hurriyah said. “But the Israel Prison Service has refused to allow it and the only treatment he has received has come in the form of painkillers.”

Israel has punished hunger striking prisoners with a series of measures, including denying family visits and meetings with lawyers. All Hurriyah knows about her brother is that he was transferred from Hadarim and put in isolation. She does not know where he is currently being detained.

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike are also protesting solitary confinement, night raids on prisoners’ cells, humiliating searches, the reduction of family visits, a ban on mobile phones, suspension of university education, restrictions on books and magazines, and widespread imprisonment without charge or trial, family members of striking prisoners and their lawyers told The Electronic Intifada.

“Through the battle of empty stomachs, prisoners are not only calling for their basic rights and demanding an improvement in prison conditions,” Abdel Nasser Ferwana, a writer who has done extensive research on the history of Palestinian hunger strikes, told The Electronic Intifada.

“They also seek to express their defiance, to reinvigorate public solidarity with the prisoners’ cause and to draw attention to their plight.”

A dangerous tactic of last resort, the first known hunger strike in the history of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement was in 1968, one year into Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Inmates at a prison in Nablus waged a three-day hunger strike protesting physical abuse and humiliating treatment by Israeli soldiers.

The first Palestinian prisoner to lose his life during a hunger strike was Abd al-Qader Abu al-Fahm, who died after being force-fed during a mass strike in Ashkelon prison in 1970.

History of struggle

Ferwana said that the current hunger strike is not an isolated event and is part of a long history of struggle.

“We need to remind people that Palestinian prisoners improved their conditions in jails and attained some of their rights thanks to their sacrifices, rather than Israeli generosity,” Ferwana said. “Some have lost their lives to secure those rights but this has been the most effective form of resisting and confronting the Israeli prison system.”

According to the Palestinian rights group Addameer, Israel currently holds 6,300 Palestinian political prisoners, 500 of whom are held without charge or trial under indefinitely renewable administrative detention orders issued by a military court.

Administrative detention has been the impetus for some of the more high-profile hunger strikes in recent years, such as those undertaken by Khader Adnan – a baker from the northern West Bank who has embarked on two lengthy strikes, becoming an icon of the prisoner movement – as well as journalist Muhammad al-Qiq, lawyer Muhammad Allan, and Bilal Kayed, who won his release after 15 years of imprisonment following a 71-day strike.

Hunger strikes waged by individual prisoners have been more prevalent than mass hunger strikes in recent years.

Esmat Mansour, who was imprisoned by Israel between 1993 and 2013, said this is a direct result of the fragmentation of the prisoners’ movement – a spillover of the bitter impasse between the two main Palestinian political parties, Fatah and Hamas, that has prevailed over the past decade.

Mansour pointed to the August 2004 mass hunger strike – which lasted up to 19 days, depending on the prison, yielding little improvement in prisoners’ conditions – as a turning point.

Overcoming failure

Several factors contributed to the failure of that strike, according to Mansour: the harsh repression of the Israel Prison Service, then headed by Yaacov Ganot. Mansour described Ganot as a “fascist,” adding that he reintroduced the practice of strip-searching and ordered the separation of prisoners from their visiting family members with glass instead of a net that allowed for physical contact.

The second intifada was still going on and Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister at the time, was not willing to compromise. This was the first hunger strike for many of the prisoners, and they lacked experience to deal with the inevitable Israeli retribution.

“The leadership of the strike was divided and the fragmentation of the prisoners made it easier for the [prison authorities] to quell it and break our spirits,” Mansour, who participated in that strike, told The Electronic Intifada.

“It took a long time and effort for the prisoners’ movement to recover from that setback and to restore confidence among prisoners and rebuild the movement.”

It wasn’t until 2012 that prisoners from all political factions organized another sustained mass hunger strike involving multiple prisons and political parties.

Preceded by a series of individual hunger strikes in protest of administrative detention, thousands of prisoners began an open-ended strike on 17 April 2012 – Palestinian Prisoners’ Day – and refused food for nearly one month.

The hunger strikers demanded an end to solitary confinement for all prisoners and a resumption of family visits to prisoners from the Gaza Strip. Such visits had been done away with following the capture of an Israeli soldier in Gaza in June 2006 and maintained even after the soldier’s release in a prisoner exchange deal in October 2011.

The 2012 hunger strike was accompanied by popular protests and escalated mobilization on the ground, not seen in Palestine since the early days of the second intifada more than a decade earlier. Even though the Fatah leadership did not participate in that hunger strike and was even accused by some prisoners of not showing enough solidarity, according to Esmat Mansour, the Fatah base in the prisons did join the strike.

The agreement reached between Palestinian detainees and the Israeli prison authorities in May 2012 was said to include limitations on administrative detention, the end of prolonged isolation and resumption of family visits to prisoners from Gaza.

“No other option”

Five years on, Palestinian prisoners are having to resort to their empty stomachs again to fight for their rights.

“Prisoners have been preparing for this hunger strike for almost two months and my husband confirmed to me on 4 April that he was taking part,” said Khalida Hamdan, whose husband, Muhammad Mesleh, is sentenced to nine life sentences plus 50 years for his involvement in the killing of nine Israelis.

“I initially questioned his decision but he explained to me how the increasing crackdown by Israeli prison authorities had left them with no other option,” Hamdan told The Electronic Intifada.

Mesleh, a leading figure in Fatah’s armed wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was arrested by Israeli occupation forces on 17 February 2001, leaving Hamdan to raise their months-old child on her own. For almost a decade, Hamdan was banned from visiting her husband on security grounds. In 2012, she went on hunger strike for seven days in solidarity with her striking husband.

Mesleh is a close companion of Marwan Barghouti, the high-profile Fatah leader serving multiple life sentences after his arrest in 2002, and the face of the current hunger strike.

“He pleaded with me to not go on a solidarity hunger strike this time around but since 17 April, I have been unable to cook, unable to sleep properly or think about anything else,” Hamdan said.

“I only hear about him in the media. Is he in solitary confinement? How is he handling pain and fatigue? How is he surviving the revenge of the prison guards? You cannot exorcise those thoughts when a loved one is on hunger strike.”

Unity

The current hunger strike, estimated by Addameer to include 1,500 prisoners, is being led by Fatah, but prisoners from all the major Palestinian factions are participating.

Following his release from Israeli prison on 20 April, former Palestinian minister Wasfi Qabaha said that the hunger strike in Hadarim prison, the epicenter of the protest, involved prisoners from all factions and that parties from across the political spectrum were represented in the strike leadership.

He added that strike leaders such as Marwan Barghouti and Karim Younes, the longest-serving Palestinian political prisoner currently held by Israel, were transferred to Jalameh prison and put in isolation.

Nadim Younes, brother of Karim Younes, who has been imprisoned by Israel since 1983, told The Electronic Intifada that family and lawyers lost all contact with Karim since he began his hunger strike.

“Karim is now 58 and 35 years of imprisonment have definitely taken their toll on his ailing body,” 

Nadim said. “The importance of this strike lies in the fact that it has brought together prisoners from all factions and from all over Palestine: Gaza, West Bank, Jerusalem and Palestinians from the ’48 territories [present-day Israel].”

There are lingering doubts about whether this hunger strike will avoid the failure suffered in 2004. Former prisoner Esmat Mansour does not dismiss those concerns.

“It is true that Barghouti is the undisputed leader of this hunger strike. Some believe that he is trying to send a message to the Fatah Central Committee that he remains an influential leader,” Mansour said.

“But prisoners are not puppets: they would not join this strike if they didn’t have pressing demands. And Marwan’s leadership of this strike has definitely given it momentum and unprecedented media attention.”

The unity and resilience of the prisoners’ movement in the face of Israeli repression, intimidation and attempts to delegitimize the strike are being put to the test. Moreover, it is a test of the capacity of Palestinian society to mobilize in support of the prisoners, to build sustained pressure on Israel, and overcome their divisions to stand behind the prisoners.

If there is one cause that has managed to bring Palestinians together in recent years, it has proven to be the prisoners’ struggle.

Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian writer based in Jerusalem. She blogs at budourhassan.wordpress.com.

Sanctuary cities ruling: When a judge quotes Sean Spicer, it’s not a good sign for the White House

A federal judge halted President Trump's executive order that would withhold federal funds from jurisdictions that don't cooperate with immigration authorities, on April 25. He called the administration's position on the order "schizophrenic." (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

By Derek Hawkins April 26 at 7:51 AM

When a long list of comments from President Trump, his surrogates and his spokesmen shows up in a federal court ruling, it’s fair to say it can only mean one thing: a constitutionally questionable executive order is about to get a judicial smackdown.

That was true in March, when federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland suspended Trump’s travel ban, saying the administration had showed a clear animus toward Muslims, despite government lawyers’ claims to the contrary.

And it was true Tuesday, when U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick of California temporarily froze Trump’s executive order on sanctuary cities, ruling that a case could be made that it violated the Constitution.

[Trump blasts federal court ruling that blocks his ‘sanctuary city’ order]

Trump’s order, signed Jan. 25, threatens to cut off funding from local governments that refuse to cooperate with immigration authorities. Santa Clara County and the city of San Francisco challenged the order, arguing, among other things, that the president doesn’t have the power to withhold federal money. 

Orrick found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on all their claims, as The Washington Post reported.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera praised the ruling by a U.S. District judge in San Francisco that blocked President Trump's executive order that sought to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities. (Reuters)

The 49-page ruling focused largely on an all-too-familiar theme for the young administration: the consequences of bragging and bluster by Trump and top administration officials.

Just like the judges who ruled on Trump’s travel ban, Orrick homed in on the vast discrepancies between what government lawyers defending the sanctuary cities order argued in court and what administration officials said about it in public.

In court, the government tried to make the case that the order doesn’t actually do anything, at least not at the moment, because the administration has yet to define what exactly a sanctuary city is or threaten any particular jurisdiction with a loss of funds. It was their way of convincing the judge to toss out the lawsuit on the grounds that no city or county has yet suffered any harm.

But in public, administration officials boasted about how the order would force sanctuary cities to their knees, singling out particular places.  The order described in court as essentially an empty shell was portrayed in news conferences, briefings and television interviews as a powerful tool to protect the public from dangerous undocumented immigrants being shielded by wayward cities and counties.

It was that gap that disturbed Orrick.

In his ruling, the judge pointed to a February interview between Trump and former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, in which Trump called the order “a weapon” to use against cities that tried to defy his immigration policies.

“I don’t want to defund anybody. I want to give them the money they need to properly operate as a city or a state,” Trump said in the interview. “If they’re going to have sanctuary cities, we may have to do that. Certainly that would be a weapon.”

The judge also cited news conferences in which Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatened to “claw back any funds” awarded to a city that violated the order.

And the judge brought up remarks by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who said in no uncertain terms that “counties and other institutions that remain sanctuary cities don’t get federal government funding.”

On top of that, the judge said, Trump and Sessions had repeatedly held up San Francisco as an example of the supposed dangers sanctuary cities pose to ordinary, law-abiding citizens because of the killing there of Kathryn Steinle in July 2015, allegedly by a man deported five times.

It was more than enough to show the intent of Trump’s order, Orrick wrote.

But government lawyers sang an entirely different tune.

According to Orrick, the government contended that the order was merely an example of Trump using the “bully pulpit” to “highlight a changed approach to immigration enforcement” — in essence, something much more benign than what Trump and company had described.

The argument was lost on the judge, who ridiculed the government’s position as “schizophrenic.”

“If there was doubt about the scope of the Order, the President and Attorney General have erased it with their public comments,” Orrick wrote.

“Is the Order merely a rhetorical device,” he added, “or a ‘weapon’ to defund the Counties and those who have implemented a different law enforcement strategy than the Government currently believes is desirable?”

The ruling continued: “The statements of the President, his press secretary and the Attorney General belie the Government’s argument in the briefing that the Order does not change the law. They have repeatedly indicated an intent to defund sanctuary jurisdictions in compliance with the Executive Order.”

If all that sounds familiar, it’s because other federal judges reached similar conclusions about the administration’s credibility in lawsuits challenging Trump’s travel ban.

In March, judges in Hawaii and Maryland issued rulings that temporarily halted parts of the executive order, which seeks to bar new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries. In both cases, judges found that what government lawyers said in court about the ban being religiously neutral didn’t line up with remarks from Trump and some of his closest advisers, who had previously called for a “Muslim ban.” The administration’s intent was obvious, the judges said.

“Plainly-worded” statements by Trump and his surrogates “betrayed the Executive Order’s stated secular purpose,” one judge wrote, using language strikingly similar to Orrick’s.

As long as the administration continues to issue broad executive orders, it should expect to have statements by its top officials to come up in court, said Jayashri Srikantiah, an immigration law professor at Stanford Law School.

“It’s hard to imagine not seeing more of these kinds of legal challenges,” she said. “The president is the president and the attorney general is the attorney general, and we have to take seriously what they say about an executive order with such sweeping implications.”

President Trump has threatened to go after sanctuary cities, which provide protections for illegal immigrants. This how state and local governments with sanctuary policies are responding to possible action. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

The Trump administration has vowed to fight rulings on the travel ban and sanctuary cities.

In a series of tweets Wednesday, Trump vowed that the White House was ready to bring the case to the Supreme Court and blasted the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which was part of legal decisions blocking Trump’s travel restrictions on several Muslim-majority countries.

“First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities — both ridiculous rulings. See you in the Supreme Court!” Trump wrote.

Orrick is a federal district judge in San Francisco. He does not serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, although those judges would review his decisions.

In an earlier statement, the White House took aim at Orrick, saying his ruling “unilaterally rewrote immigration policy for our nation.”

“This case is yet one more example of egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge,” the White House statement said.

The ruling puts the executive order on hold while the judge weighs the full evidence in the case. At issue is whether the order violates the Constitution by giving the president spending powers reserved for Congress and by infringing on state sovereignty by “commandeering” local officials to enforce federal immigration laws.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said the government’s lawyers were reviewing their options.

“It’s the 9th Circuit going bananas,” he told reporters Tuesday. “The idea that an agency can’t put in some reasonable restriction on how some of these monies are spent is going to be overturned eventually, and we’ll win at the Supreme Court level at some point.”

Entire Senate being called to White House for North Korea briefing

All senators invited to WH briefing on North Korea

April 24, 2017

The entire U.S. Senate has been invited to the White House for a briefing Wednesday on the North Korea situation, amid escalating tensions over the country’s missile tests and bellicose rhetoric.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed the upcoming briefing, for all 100 senators, on Monday.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats plan to provide the update to lawmakers.

It is rare for the entire Senate to be invited to such a briefing. 

Spicer clarified that while the event will take place on the White House campus, it is technically a Senate briefing and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is the one who convened it.

The briefing, first reported by Reuters, was confirmed after President Trump earlier spoke to the leaders of both China and Japan.

Trump spoke by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Xi told Trump that China strongly opposed North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and hoped “all parties will exercise restraint and avoid aggravating the situation,” according to Chinese broadcaster CCTV. Trump hopes China could increase pressure on its isolated ally instead of using military options or trying to overthrow Kim Jong Un’s regime.

Trump and Abe agreed to urge North Korea to refrain from provocative actions.

Meanwhile, U.S. commercial satellite images indicated increased activity around North Korea’s nuclear test site, while Kim has said that the country’s preparation for an ICBM launch is in its “final stage.”

South Korea’s Defense Ministry has said the North appears ready to conduct such "strategic 

provocations" at any time. South Korean Acting Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn has instructed his military to strengthen its "immediate response posture" in case North Korea does something significant on the April 25 anniversary of its military. North Korea often marks significant dates by displaying military capability.

On Monday, Trump also had lunch with ambassadors of countries on the U.N. Security Council. Ahead of the meeting, Trump called for “big reforms” at the U.N. and criticizing its handling of recent events in Syria and North Korea – but said it has “tremendous potential.”

"You just don't see the United Nations, like, solving conflicts. I think that's going to start happening now," he said. 

Fox News’ Mike Emanuel and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

U.S. Probes Into Trump’s Russia Links, Kremlin Meddling Gain Two Heavyweights

• BY ELIAS GROLL, JENNA MCLAUGHLIN-APRIL 26, 2017

The flagging U.S. probes into the Trump administration’s ties to the Kremlin are about to get an injection of fresh blood.

Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats have tapped April Doss, a former NSA lawyer, to join the committee’s investigation of Russia’s intervention in the U.S. election. Meanwhile, Rod Rosenstein, who was confirmed as deputy attorney general on Tuesday, will take the reins of the Justice Department’s sprawling probe into Trump’s Russia ties and Kremlin meddling.

The two veterans are poised to bring legal and intelligence heft to probes that have been hobbled by a shortage of technical expertise and a lack of political cover at the Justice Department.

Doss brings a relevant set of skills from her time at the NSA where “a lot of the lawyering happens at the intersection of legal authorities and technological capability,” Carrie Cordero, a former DOJ national-security official, said.

Rosenstein, who was the top federal prosecutor in Maryland, easily won Senate confirmation on Tuesday. He comes to Justice Department headquarters after an intense clash between his Senate-confirmed predecessor, Sally Yates, and the Trump White House. President Donald Trump fired Yates after she refused to defend his ban on travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the probe after he neglected to disclose his meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during his confirmation hearing.

Critics of the Trump administration will be watching closely to see whether Rosenstein is able to maintain his political independence. At his confirmation hearing, Democrats repeatedly pressed the prosecutor to appoint a special counsel to oversee the Russia inquiry. Rosenstein refused but pledged to supervise the probe the way “I would handle any investigation.”

“I can certainly assure you, if it’s America against Russia, or America against any other country, I think everyone in this room knows which side I’m on,” he said.

Rosenstein, who will be heading up one of the most politically charged probes in the bureau’s history, will be responsible for steering the investigation’s path and for approving its most sensitive wiretap applications. He earned praise for his tenure as U.S. attorney for Maryland, which spanned the Bush and Obama administrations. He is widely credited with overhauling an office in disarray when he was appointed to lead it in 2005.

As a U.S. attorney, Rosenstein has led investigations with serious national-security implications and the work of the NSA. His office is currently prosecuting the former NSA contractor Hal Martin for allegedly spiriting a huge trove of classified information out of intelligence community facilities and storing them in his home.

Doss, who will serve as special counsel to the Senate investigation, spent 13 years at the NSA where she specialized in intelligence law before joining the law firm Saul Ewing less than a year ago as a partner focusing on privacy and cybersecurity.

She has recently reentered the public debate about surveillance law, particularly as Trump has made accusations that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice “may” have broken the law for making a routine request to unmask the names of Americans who turned out to be Trump aides in a foreign intelligence report.

With Susan Hennessey, another former NSA lawyer, Doss urged former and current intelligence professionals to “lean forward as much as possible to explain how processes like incidental collection and unmasking work” to cut through partisan arguments and confusion.

When asked by Foreign Policy whether or not the Republicans would be hiring their own special counsel, Senator Burr’s press office declined to comment.

Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images

Pains of Tackling Both Terror and Pakistan

by Ashok K Mehta-Apr 26, 2017

( April 26, 2017, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) India seems to have lost the moral high ground on combating terrorism by what some people are calling as ‘Doval-isation’. Even moderate elements in Pakistan are seeking moral equivalence with India

As the convenor of an uninterrupted India-Pakistan track II conference since 2003, even as we were exploring at Dubai, ways and means of reviving the dialogue process, I got a rude shock when Pakistan announced the death sentence to retired Indian naval officer, Kulbhushan Jadhav, alias Husain Mubarak Patel with two passports. The owner of a media house attending the conference called it a new low in India-Pakistan relations. Lately, India seems to have lost the moral high ground on combating terrorism by what some people are calling as ‘Doval-isation’.

Seeking moral equivalence with India, even moderate Pakistani interlocutors are regularly citing instances of the slow trial of Samjhauta Express blasts, collusion between Indian and Afghan security agencies for cross-border terrorism in Pakistan and the Modi declarations of political and moral support for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Balochistan. They quote National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s statement, albeit before he became a security czar that “if there was another Mumbai, there would be no Balochistan” with Pakistan. Former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is also a celebrity for his comments like, “To catch a terrorist, use a terrorist”; “going to Pakistan is like going to hell”, and re-thinking India’s No First Use nuclear doctrine. This narrative has allowed Pakistan to shift the focus from being the perpetrator of terrorism to a victim of terrorism emanating from India. Regrettably, all that India has really done is the modest surgical strikes which Pakistanis uniformly deny.

On the other hand, a member of the Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK) Assembly attending the conference accused the Indian Army of targeting a civilian bus and an ambulance in the Neelam valley after Uri and Nagrota. I do hope we are causing sufficient pain and political dividend to deserve the Doval-isation label.

A former General and Interior Minister of Pakistan at Dubai, said: “India is perceived as a hegemon, arrogant and state-sponsor of terrorism, determined to destabilise and isolate Pakistan as well as to block the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.” Though every allegation is countered, the moot point is: Has it been strategically worth India’s while doing what Pakistan is alleging? Or are most of these, False Flag operations? The blame game is unending, the trust gap widening, even at civilised Track II meetings such as ours.

What went unnoticed during the Dubai dialogue was the quiet disappearance of a retired Pakistani officer, Lt Col Mohammad Habib Zahir, along the India-Nepal border, notorious as a trading point for spies, soothsayers and terrorists. Zahir was ostensibly involved in the capture of Kulbhushan Jadhav in a landmark Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) operation which has made Pakistani charges of Indian espionage and terrorism stick domestically. Rawalpindi has been able to sell the canard that it was India and not Pakistan which was the regional villain in sponsoring terrorism.

The alleged abduction of Zahir in early April was a classic revenge operation masterminded by Research &Analysis Wing (R&AW). According to a Pakistani Brigadier, he was lured to Nepal via Oman, evidently for a UN job. His military colleagues are incensed with his ‘greedy behaviour’ which landed him in the R&AW trap. Feeling vulnerable, retired Indian Generals are now loath to travel to Nepal or the Gulf region. The anti-India sentiment in Pakistan, and among the establishment in particular, is very high.

The visit of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to New Delhi around the same time as the disappearance of Zahir and pictures of Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Hasina sitting against the backdrop of the legendary 1971 surrender ceremony at Dacca going viral in Pakistan, is another blow to Indian-Pakistan bilateral relations.

On Track II discourse, matters have not got out of hand, which is the case at Track 1. Despite India’s valiant attempts, Pakistan is not isolated. In fact, it has a new ally in Russia, besides the indelible and enduring strategic bonding with China. Even US National Security Advisor Lt Gen HR McMaster, in his first meeting with Pakistani Generals this month, delivered only the mildest of rebukes, counselling the use of diplomacy not proxies, and not being selective on countering terrorism.

The constant problem is of the diarchy of Governments in Pakistan — Rawalpindi and Islamabad — which adversely impacts bilateral relations. No way has been found working around the Pakistan military, though informal military-to-military dialogues have long tried to overcome this hurdle. It seems neither the Generals in Pakistan nor the Government in India are interested in high level military contacts.

The most recently crafted two-strand Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue — NSA and Foreign Secretary — which is yet to break the ice, has the potential of blossoming into an outcome-yielding path. It has one snag though. On the Indian side, it has a policeman, not a soldier, as the NSA. I have never understood why the Indian ruling political class has not selected a General or Admiral and instead persisted with a diplomat or an intelligence chief for the post. The Pakistan NSA, Lt Gen Nasser Janjua, would bond better and famously with, for example, Lt Gen HS Panag, a recently retired Kashmir Army Commander, or Admiral Arun Prakash or any other military officer. US President Donald Trump has seven retired Generals and Admirals on his National Security Staff.

It is time Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is frequently invoking the good work of the Army, tried out a military man as his NSA, even though a Chief of Defence Staff is yet to be appointed. The military has been systematically enfeebled by the lack of finance, and against which fear and suspicion has been engineered by the bureaucracy. The military is still portrayed as a threat. So much for nationalism!

The Dubai dialogue recognised that present conditions were not conducive for reviving the dialogue process that has been stalled with the longest interruption of four and a half years. Still, both sides felt that core concerns of Kashmir and terrorism be addressed swiftly, especially when the situation in the Srinagar valley was slipping out of control. In absence of any political engagement and outreach with stakeholders and youth, the continuing over-dependence on the military is bound to be counter productive. On Kashmir, the Four-point Musharraf formula once refined and rebranded, could constitute the framework of a solution. On terrorism, finger-pointing has become the new normal.

A Panamagate weakened Nawaz Sharif and on an all-time high, Modi will be together in Kazakhstan in early June as full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. A deal on a swap of Jadhav for Zahir could become the ice breaker. Remember, Modi invited Sharif for his swearing in, dropped in at Lahore for Sharif’s grand daughter’s wedding and called him before his heart operation in London. Will Modi pull out a rabbit in Astana?

(The writer is a retired Major General of the Indian Army, and a strategic affairs expert)

Deutsche Bank: 4,000 jobs at risk of being moved out of UK after Brexit

Bank says 2,000 front office people could be moved, with another 2,000 posts to be reviewed depending on new regulations

Deutsche Bank employs about 9,000 staff across the UK. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters

Jill Treanor-Wednesday 26 April 2017

Deutsche Bank has warned that up to 4,000 UK jobs could be moved to Frankfurt and other locations in the European Union as a result of Brexit.

Germany’s biggest bank employs 9,000 staff across the UK, including 7,000 in the City, and has called for clarity about how transactions worth billions of euros will be dealt with after the UK leaves the EU.

“For front office people if you want to deal with EU clients you need to be based in the EU, in continental Europe. Does that mean that I have to move all the front office people to Germany or not?” said Sylvie Matherat, Deutsche’s chief regulatory officer.

“We are speaking of 2,000 people – that’s not a small number.” She said another 2,000 jobs were at risk if regulators required banks to move the functions that support client activity – such as risk management.

“Everybody needs clarity – and the sooner the better,” she said. Matherat gave no indication when a decision might be taken.

Her remarks illustrate for the first time the scale of the problem that could be facing Deutsche Bank, which only last month committed to moving to a new London head office in 2023.

The Bank of England has given financial firms a deadline of 14 July to explain how they are planning for the UK’s departure from the EU and warned them to be ready for all possible outcomes, including a hard Brexit. The Bank wrote to hundreds of banks, insurers and other financial firms earlier this month, ordering them to get contingency plans in place.

Financial centres across the EU – such as Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin – have been jostling for the jobs, offices and business that might be forced out of London once the UK leaves the EU. Estimates of how many jobs will be affected by Brexit range from tens of thousands to 232,000 financial services jobs across the UK.

The triggering of article 50 last month – the formal process of leaving the EU – reignited speculation that financial jobs were at risk and was followed by an announcement by the insurance market Lloyd’s of London that it would set up a subsidiary in Brussels, where it it employs about 60 people.

Other City employers are making plans. JP Morgan is considering buying office space in Dublin, and Citigroup has warned it may have to relocate “certain client-facing roles to the EU from the UK”. Goldman Sachs has warned that hundreds of roles could change, while HSBC could switch 1,000 investment banking jobs from London to Paris.

Jes Staley, chief executive of Barclays, told a conference in London that banks could have to start moving jobs within six months, and called for clarity on the status of EU nationals working in the UK. “You will start to see movement in a reasonably short period of time,” he said, according to Reuters.

The scale of the upheaval will depend on whether transactions denominated in euros can continue to take place through clearing houses in London.

Michel Sapin, the French finance minister, told the BBC: “I believe that there is an issue of sovereignty and security of European monetary markets and therefore the majority of the clearing houses cannot remain in London.”

What’s Tim Farron’s track record on LGBT rights?

By MARTIN WILLIAMS-26 APR 2017

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said yesterday that he does not believe gay sex is a sin, following criticism that he repeatedly failed to clarify his views.

“I don’t believe that gay sex is a sin,” he said. “I take the view that, as a political leader though, my job is not to pontificate on theological matters.”

But Farron suggested he should be judged by his voting record, not his religious beliefs, saying: “What counts is your actions and your beliefs in politics.” And he claimed to have a “track record” of over 30 years of campaigning in favour of LGBT rights.

But that claim is misleading.

FactCheck analysed his voting record, dating back to 2005, and identified 22 instances where he voted on same sex marriage or other LGBTQ issues. On the whole, he has voted in favour of equal rights, but there are some notable exceptions. They generally relate to the right of individuals to uphold their personal beliefs and include:

• Voting against a law that made it illegal for public services to be denied to gay people
• Voting to allow registrars not to carry out gay marriages if they object on religious grounds
• Voting to increase protections for people who don’t want to conduct or participate in a same sex marriage ceremony
• Voting to make it illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of their beliefs about the definition of marriage

Farron also abstained from a key vote on legalising gay marriage, despite voting in favour of it previously.

Equality Act

In 2007, he went against his party by voting against the landmark Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations, which criminalised many types of discrimination against gay people. The law was ultimately passed and hailed by campaigners as a major step forward towards greater equality.

In particular, the Act made it illegal for public services to be denied to people on the grounds of their sexuality. Before this, there were concerns about adoption agencies turning away gay teenagers and lesbians being denied smear tests.

Farron voted against this legislation, but appears to have been vague about it ever since.

Ben Summerskill, who was chief executive of Stonewall at the time, told FactCheck that he visited Farron a few months after the 2007 vote to ask why he’d tried to block it.

According to Summerskill, Farron was not clear about his reasons and the Lib Dem eventually suggested that he may have misunderstood the legislation. Farron promised to write to him to giving a full explanation for his vote, but never did, Summerskill claimed. 

A Lib Dem spokesperson told us: “I was in that meeting and that’s not my recollection.”

The Liberal Democrat was also vague about the vote when journalists from Pink News, one of whom formerly worked for Channel 4 News, questioned him on it in 2015. When told that he voted against the Equality Act, Farron denied it, saying: “I don’t think I did.”

When the journalists insisted that he had, Farron said: “Well, I’ve changed my position since then.” He explained in the same interview: “We had an amendment that I think was defeated, which tried to deal with some of the issues about protections. My recollection is that amendment was not accepted – I could not therefore support the [Sexual Orientation] regulations.”

Same sex marriage

Farron has said he regrets his decision to abstain from a key vote on gay marriage, when the Bill was in its third reading in the Commons. His abstention came despite him previously voting in favour of the Bill during the previous stages.

In 2015 he told the Observer: “There were a couple of amendments that were about the protection of essentially religious minorities, conscience protections, and I kind of voted for those. Me doing something like that, which is about protecting people’s right to conscience, I definitely regret it, if people have misread that and think that means I’m lukewarm on equal marriage.”

Tim Farron has certainly supported LGBT causes on occasion, but there are also significant instances where he has not. His claim of a track record in consistently campaigning for equal LGBT rights over three decades doesn’t quite stand up to scrutiny.

In response to Channel 4 News a Lib Dem spokesperson pointed to many causes that Tim Farron has supported as an MP and party leader, including supporting an end to the gay blood ban in 2014 and a posthumous pardon for thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted under historic sexual offence laws.

The spokesperson said: “Tim believes you should be allowed to be who you are and that no one has the right to tell you or anyone who you can be or who you can love. Love is love.

“He has have always fought for human rights, for LGBT rights, for the rights of all minorities because that’s what liberals do. Tim and the party have a proud record on LGBT rights.”