Amaraweera, Dilan justify Arundika!

Jun 16, 2017

SLFP general secretary Mahinda Amaraweera and minister Dilan Perera have justified state minister, MP for Puttalam Arundika Fernando, who has published in social media the pictures he has taken of him along with Udayanga Weeratunga, during the recent tour of Japan by ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

After Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation criticized Fernando in its ‘Sodisi’ programme, both ministers strongly criticized deputy minister of media Lasantha Alagiyawanne, and asked him to immediately stop attacking SLFPers.  Justifying Fernando’s reckless conduct, they have claimed it was a personal right of him to meet with Weeratunga, and stressed that the state media could not criticized him for it. It is not Fernando whom the two ministers are protecting, but Weeratunga.

2 Palestinians killed in Jerusalem attacks

According to police, two Palestinian men were killed after two separate attacks that left Israeli border policewoman dead

Israeli security forces and an ambulance are seen at the scene of an attack outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on 16 June (AFP)

Friday 16 June 2017

Israeli police shot and killed two suspected Palestinian assailants after a policewoman was stabbed and killed outside Jerusalem's Old City on Friday.

The attacks took place as Muslims were marking the end of the third Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan, during which tens of thousands of Palestinians from east Jerusalem and the West Bank attended prayers at the nearby Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third-holiest site.

According to police, two people opened fire at a group of police officers who returned fire, and a third stabbed the border policewoman a short distance away before being shot. It was earlier reported that all three suspected assailants were killed, but a police spokesperson backtracked and said that one was taken to hospital for gunshot wounds.

Palestinian security forces identified the Palestinians as Bara' Saleh and Adel Ankoush, both 18 and from Deir Abu Mashal near Ramallah, and 31-year-old Amer Badawi from Hebron.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said on Twitter that border policewoman Hadas Malka, 23, was killed in the attack.

Medics said two other people were moderately wounded in the attack, and a further two lightly wounded.

A wave of unrest that broke out in October 2015 has claimed the lives of 272 Palestinians, 41 Israelis, two Americans, two Jordanians, an Eritrean, a Sudanese and a Briton, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks.

Israeli soldiers harass students on US campus

A video still shows a man wearing a Palestinian scarf and a T-shirt with Arabic. He was part of a group of Israeli soldiers harassing students at UC Irvine in May.

Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel’s Shin Bet secret police, addresses the group Reservists on Duty in 2016. (via Facebook)

Charlotte Silver-16 June 2017

University of California, Irvine is once again investigating the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine group after a protest of an event featuring Israeli soldiers last month.

But members of Students for Justice in Palestine say they are the ones who endured days of harassment and intimidation by Israeli soldiers invited to campus to give a panel discussion about the Israeli army.

The SJP students say they were subjected to days of racial and sexual slurs in what they believe was an attempt to provoke a reaction.

UC Irvine has been a focal point for Israel advocacy groups seeking to categorize support for Palestinian rights as anti-Semitic.

Documents obtained by Palestine Legal through a freedom of information request show that over the last year Israel advocacy organizations have consistently pressured the UC Irvine administration to crack down on Palestine activism.

They were also instrumental in the school’s adoption of a policy that conflates opposition to Zionism, Israel’s state ideology, with anti-Semitism.

“On the offensive”

In early May, UC Irvine’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel invited members from the Israeli organization Reservists on Duty to campus, coinciding with an Anti-Zionism Week being organized by Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
With chapters on several campuses, Students Supporting Israel is backed by Israel lobby groups and has close ties to the Israeli government.
Reservists on Duty says it was founded in 2015 by “Israeli reserve combat soldiers” with the mission to counter the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement on college campuses in the US.
The group describes itself as taking “an extremely proactive approach towards confronting BDS and the movements that defame” Israel and its army.

Reservists on Duty also says that it aims to counter Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem, two groups documenting army abuses that Israeli leaders have dubbed “traitors” and “enemies” of the state.

“We decided to change strategies, stop being on the defensive and to go on the offensive,” Reservists on Duty co-founder Amnon Goldstof told The Jerusalem Post last year.

Reservists on Duty evidently enjoys high-level support from Israel’s military establishment. Its 2016 conference was addressed by Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel’s Shin Bet secret police, as well as by a high-ranking military officer.

Racial and sexual slurs

Six people, including at least five soldiers, from Reservists on Duty first appeared on the UC Irvine campus on 8 May, the kick-off day of Anti-Zionism Week.

This video posted on Facebook by Jewish Voice for Peace shows some of the actions by members of Reservists on Duty that Palestinian rights activists have also described to legal advocates and to The Electronic Intifada:

Students had erected a mock wall – representing Israel’s barrier in the occupied West Bank – in the school’s Anteater Plaza and were handing out flyers with information about life under Israeli military rule. Student groups MEChA and the Black Student Union also volunteered to help.

On the first day, two of the soldiers carried Israeli flags and wore shirts identifying their support for the Israeli army, while the others disguised their intent: at least one person wore a traditional Palestinian checkered scarf, while others claimed to be from Palestinian cities and attempted to speak with the students in Arabic. Some feigned naivety about the issue, while secretly recording responses.

This tactic is reminiscent of Israeli soldiers who dress up as Palestinians – so-called mistaravim – in order to act as provocateurs at demonstrations or to carry out extrajudicial executions in the occupied West Bank.

The next day the group returned, this time they all wore clothes that more honestly identified who they were.

Over four days in total, the group of soldiers showed up to the mock wall. They hurled racial and gender insults while one woman aggressively filmed the activists’ faces and conversations.

They told Daniel Carnie, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, that he is “not a real Jew” and told him to take off his Jewish skullcap.

A 30 May letter to UC Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman, signed by Palestine Legal attorney Liz Jackson on behalf of a coalition of civil rights groups, describes what happened at the mock wall.

According to the letter, when the students began a chant that compared Israel’s wall to the US wall at the Mexican border, one of the soldiers shouted, “We want the Mexicans!”

And when a Black student asked one of the hostile members of Reservists on Duty to leave, he called her an “18-year-old punk-ass bitch,” then followed her around shouting at her.

The letter alleges that a “male soldier taunted a female demonstrating at the wall in a sexually threatening tone, saying in Arabic, ‘You want me to stick it in you, don’t you.’”

“These soldiers do not just use propaganda, they use intimidation tactics like taking video footage,” Ghiyath Alazzah, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Irvine, wrote in an email to other SJP groups on the West Coast.

Alazzah also accused the soldiers of “using hidden microphones, attempting to incite to violence by using extremely racist and sexist obscenities in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and even going so far as to physically grab a student.”

“We are sending this email to you to warn you all that your campus may be targeted next,” Alazzah wrote.

Administrators watch passively

School administrators witnessed the confrontations, but did not intervene.

Dean of students Rameen Talesh was one of the administrators present during the week’s activities, according to Carnie and Alazzah.

Carnie told The Electronic Intifada that students asked Talesh to stop Reservists on Duty from harassing them, but Talesh said there was nothing he could do.

But advocates for the students say that the accumulation of racist speech and harassing behavior created an environment of intimidation that was grounds for the school to intervene.

“Here, there was overwhelming evidence that foreign military agents engaged in sustained harassment of Palestinian students, and other students of color perceived to be allies of Palestinian students,” Palestine Legal’s Jackson wrote to Chancellor Gillman.

Jackson alleges that the school violated its obligations under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as its own policies, by standing by passively: “Administrators cannot act with deliberate indifference to a hostile climate of severe or pervasive harassment targeting students based on their race or national origin.”

On the night of 10 May, Reservists on Duty held their panel discussion.

SJP members came to the event with the intent to ask challenging questions.

During the event, a woman who had been filming the students during the preceding days lunged at one of the students with her fists up, according to Carnie and Alazzah. She was restrained by an administrator and then the SJP students broke out into a chant before they were asked to leave.
Part of this altercation can be seen in the video above.

The next day, 11 May, Jackson’s letter states, the same woman who had nearly attacked a student, returned to Anteater Plaza and shoved a sign out of the hands of a student protester, hitting the student in the face with the sign.

According to Jackson, these two physical assaults were also grounds for intervention, yet administrators took no action.

Alazzah was informed on 16 May that his group was under investigation for allegedly disrupting the question-and-answer portion of the discussion with Reservists on Duty.

The university confirmed to the The Electronic Intifada that members of its staff were present during some of the week’s incidents. A spokesperson wrote that administrators are “reviewing reports of that week from all interested parties and will take action, as appropriate.”

A year of pressure

The investigation is taking place after a year of heavy pressure from Israel advocacy groups, including the Amcha Initiative, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights, Hillel, StandWithUs and the Israeli consulate, to crack down on Palestine activism on campus.

On 30 May this year, Hillel of Orange County wrote to Chancellor Gillman.

Emphasizing that SJP and an earlier incarnation of the Palestine solidarity group have been investigated three times since 2010, the letter strongly suggests that the university’s disciplinary process had yet to be effective.

Last year, UC Irvine investigated SJP after students from several groups protested a film screening sponsored by pro-Israel organizations.

That investigation cleared SJP members of accusations they had harassed and intimidated participants, but found that it was “more likely than not” that the student protest outside the venue had generated enough noise to disrupt the viewing of a film about Israeli soldiers.

The students were given a warning and required to host an educational program. Israel advocacy groups expressed unhappiness that the penalty was not more severe.

Hillel also invoked a UC Irvine policy document titled “Higher Ground.”

Published in October 2016, after the university cleared SJP, “Higher Ground” attempts to integrate the UC Regents’ “principles against intolerance,” which were approved in March 2016.

The UC Regents is the governing body for the entire University of California system. The regents produced the “principles against intolerance” in response to heavy pressure from pro-Israel groups, which wanted the regents to adopt the controversial US State Department definition of anti-Semitism. That definition conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish bigotry.

The UC Regents rejected that definition and removed a sentence equating anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism.

The “principles,” which are unenforceable themselves, did however specify a prohibition against “anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism” – a weaker formulation than Israel advocacy groups wanted.
But pro-Israel groups have since sought to use this formulation as a basis for going after Palestine activism.

UC Irvine’s “Higher Ground” document appears to be a direct capitulation to this agenda.

Silencing criticism

In an 18 July 2016 email to Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim group Amcha Initiative, UC Irvine’s associate chancellor Michael Arias, wrote: “Following up on your suggestions, Chancellor Gillman plans to ask [UC Irvine’s] Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion to undertake a review of existing policies to confirm they are consistent” with the “principles against intolerance.”

Arias promised Rossman-Benjamin the university would “revise as necessary” any of its policies.
The following month, Gillman asked Douglas M. Haynes, a university vice provost, to conduct the assessment.

In October, Haynes produced “Higher Ground,” which critics say reproduces the misperception that anti-Zionist activities exclude Jewish students.

According to Palestine Legal’s Jackson, the document “conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, discards the UC’s commitment to free speech and excludes the interests of Palestinians and other vulnerable communities.”

After “Higher Ground” was published, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights and StandWithUs, two Israel lobby groups that have spearheaded efforts to silence Palestine activism, wrote to Haynes to applaud the report.

They also sent Haynes a “white paper” supposedly meant to help UC Irvine understand and recognize “anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism.”

Their paper claims that anti-Semitism today is mostly expressed in “coded” ways, but points the administration back to the State Department’s definition as a guide. That controversial definition,
which Israel lobby groups have urged institutions and governments around the world to adopt, claims that “demonizing” Israel, holding Israel to a “double standard” and “delegitimizing” Israel are forms of anti-Semitism.

It also alleges that “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and denying Israel the right to exist” are anti-Semitic. This would potentially categorize advocacy for a one-state solution founded on equal rights in a democratic non-sectarian state that grants full citizenship to Israelis and Palestinians as a form of anti-Semitism.

Last month, Haynes spoke at a conference hosted by the Academic Engagement Network, a group founded to counter support for Palestinian rights on college campuses.

On 6 June, Haynes responded to Jackson’s letter to Gillman. Haynes asserted that the administration’s priorities align with the “principles against intolerance.” Haynes’ letter also makes allusions to balancing students’ First Amendment rights while maintaining “safety and security” and enforcing “civil discourse.”

According to Haynes, the university is still “reviewing the May 10th incident,” presumably a reference to the Reservists on Duty panel.

Hold them accountable

Palestine Legal’s Liz Jackson believes UC Irvine does indeed have a discrimination problem, but it is students advocating for Palestinian rights who have been the targets.

According to Jackson, the harassment students faced from the Israeli soldiers “is just the latest example of UC Irvine’s discrimination problem.”

Jackson accuses the administration of “ignoring harassment complaints by Palestinian and other students of color, and meanwhile singling out these same students for discriminatory treatment because of their viewpoint in favor of Palestinian rights.”

Some of those students have filed a complaint asking the university to investigate the pervasive harassment they say they face based on race and national origin.


“We must hold UC Irvine accountable for this discrimination,” said Jackson.

Russia's military says it may have killed IS leader Baghdadi

FILE PHOTO: A man purported to be the reclusive leader of the militant Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi making what would have been his first public appearance, at a mosque in the centre of Iraq's second city, Mosul, according to a video recording posted on the Internet on...REUTERS/Social Media Website via Reuters TV/File Photo

By Dmitry Solovyov and Ahmed Rasheed | MOSCOW/BAGHDAD- Fri Jun 16, 2017

Moscow said on Friday its forces may have killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air strike near the Syrian city of Raqqa last month.

There was no initial independent confirmation that Baghdadi had been killed. The U.S.-led military coalition fighting against Islamic State said it could not confirm the death, and several Iraqi officials told Reuters they were sceptical.

The secretive Islamic State leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since he declared a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from a mosque in Mosul in 2014, after leading his fighters on a sweep through northern Iraq.

If the report does prove true, it would be one of the biggest blows yet to Islamic State, which is trying to defend its shrinking territory against an array of forces backed by regional and global powers in both Syria and Iraq.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on its Facebook page that it was checking information that Baghdadi was killed in the strike, which it launched after receiving intelligence that a meeting of Islamic State leaders was being planned.

"On May 28, after drones were used to confirm the information on the place and time of the meeting of IS leaders, between 00:35 and 00:45, Russian air forces launched a strike on the command point where the leaders were located," the statement said.

"According to the information which is now being checked via various channels, also present at the meeting was Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was eliminated as a result of the strike," the ministry said.

OPERATING CAUTIOUSLY

However, a colonel with the Iraqi national security service told Reuters Baghdadi was not believed to have been in Raqqa at the time of the strike in late May. One of Baghdadi's aides may have been killed rather than Baghdadi himself, the colonel said.

He said that Baghdadi was believed to be operating cautiously in the border area between Iraq and Syria with just a handful of close aides, and avoiding using telecommunications equipment to evade surveillance.

Another Iraqi intelligence official said the Russians had not shared any information with Iraqi authorities to indicate Baghdadi was killed. Iraq was checking the report and would announce his death if it received "solid confirmation".

Hoshiyar Zebari, a long-serving former Iraqi foreign minister and now a senior adviser to the government of the Kurdish autonomous region, also told Reuters there was no confirmation of Baghdadi's death.

The Russian defence ministry statement said the strike was believed to have killed several other senior leaders of the group in addition to Baghdadi, as well as around 30 field commanders and up to 300 of their personal guards.

The IS leaders had gathered at the command centre, in a southern suburb of Raqqa, to discuss possible routes for the militants' retreat from the city, the statement said.

The United States was informed in advance about the place and time of the strike, the Russian military said.

CLOSE TO DEFEAT

Islamic State fighters are close to defeat in the twin capitals of the group's territory, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, after nearly three years ruling over millions of people in a wide swathe of territory in both countries.

Russia supports the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, which is fighting against Islamic State fighters, one front in a multi-sided civil war. The United States supports Kurdish and Arab fighters in Syria who are separately planning an assault on Raqqa.

In Iraq, the U.S.-backed government has been battling to recapture Mosul since October last year after driving the group out of most of the rest of the territory it had seized.

The last public video footage of Baghdadi shows him dressed in black clerical robes declaring his caliphate from the pulpit of Mosul's mediaeval Grand al-Nuri mosque back in 2014.

Born Ibrahim al-Samarrai, Baghdadi is an Iraqi in his mid-forties, who broke away from al Qaeda in 2013 after years participating in the insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq and the Iraqi government. The U.S. State Department has offered a $25 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

A number of senior IS figures have been killed in air strikes or special forces raids since the United States launched its campaign against the group in 2014, including Baghdadi's deputy Abu Ali al-Anbari, the group's "minister of war" Abu Omar al-Shishani, and its media director Abu Muhammad al-Furqan.

Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, cast doubt on the report Baghdadi may have been killed. He said that according to his information, Baghdadi was located in another part of Syria at the end of May.

“The information is that as of the end of last month Baghdadi was in Deir al-Zor, in the area between Deir al-Zor and Iraq, in Syrian territory,” he said by phone.

(Additional reporting by Polina Devitt in MOSCOW and Tom Perry in BEIRUT; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov, Christian Lowe and Peter Graff; Editing by Peter Millership)

‘I Want to Die in the Shadow of the Flag of an Independent Kurdistan’

President Masoud Barzani plans to hold a referendum to declare a sovereign Kurdish state. But will Iraq — and the United States — allow it to happen?

BY CAMPBELL MACDIARMID-JUNE 15, 2017

MASIF, Iraqi Kurdistan — In a career spanning 55 years as an independence fighter, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan is intent this year on reaching a landmark in his lifelong dream. President Masoud Barzani recently announced plans to hold a referendum on Kurdish independence, scheduling the vote for Sept. 25.

In an exclusive interview with Foreign Policy on June 12 — his first since announcing the referendum — Barzani said amicable divorce from federal Baghdad is the only solution to Iraq’s woes and wider regional instability.

[Editor’s note: read the full text of Foreign Policy’s exclusive interview with Masoud Barzani here.]

“A long time ago I reached the conclusion that it was necessary to hold a referendum and let our people to decide,” he said. “For a long time I have had this belief that Baghdad is not accepting real, meaningful partnership with us.”

Barzani acknowledged that the referendum will be the first step of what promises to be long and fraught negotiations with Iraq’s central government. But it’s not only Baghdad that might object: The United States remains committed to its one-Iraq policy, and neighboring Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan’s largest trading partner, has labeled the referendum “irresponsible” and a “grave mistake.”

Barzani, however, remains undeterred. When asked whether negative backlash from its neighbors could result in the Kurdistan region’s isolation, he said Kurds would rather die of starvation than live under oppression. “If this decision is made by referendum and the reaction is to isolate us, let our people die,” he said. “That will be a ‘glory’ for the world that they have killed our people by starvation just because those people wanted — through democratic means — to express their destiny.”

Barzani’s decision to call the referendum will likely be his last major decision as president. He has already stayed in office two years after his term expired, citing the war against the Islamic State as the reason for remaining in power, and says he will stand down when local elections are held in November.

Entering the last few months of his rule, the 70-year-old leader is considering how his life has been inextricably entwined with Kurdish independence. “Imagine what this means for my legacy. All of my life has been for the independence of Kurdistan,” Barzani said, speaking at his presidential palace in the foothills above Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region.

His father, legendary Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani, led the short-lived Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in Iran. Masoud Barzani was born there, in the only time and place the Kurds have ruled over an independent state. “When they raised the Kurdish flag, I was born in the shadow of that flag,” Barzani said.

Following in his father’s footsteps, he joined the Peshmerga at 16 and assumed leadership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in 1979. Most of his experience dealing with federal Iraq ever since has been defined by conflict and violence. Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds suffered through wars, genocide, and persecution. “The Anfal campaign, chemical bombardment, the destruction of our villages, the mass graves, genocide — that was the lot of the Kurds from this time in its relations with Baghdad,” Barzani recalled.

Following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi Kurds enjoyed a rare decade of stability. From the ruins of conflict, Iraqi Kurdistan developed as a beacon of stability fueled by investors attracted by the region’s vast oil reserves. An international airport, glitzy shopping malls, public parks, and rapid expansion came to characterize Erbil.

All this was threatened in 2014 by the shock of advancing Islamic State fighters, tumbling oil prices, and an influx of Iraqis fleeing from neighboring regions. While Barzani and the Kurds won global acclaim for their role in the fight against the Islamic State, relations with Iraq’s central government in Baghdad only worsened. A dispute over oil exports led Baghdad to withhold funds from the region entirely. “Post-2003, what was the share of the Kurds?” Barzani asked. “They cut the budget of Kurdistan, and they have not abided by the Iraqi Constitution.”

Barzani still faces major obstacles in his attempts to transform Iraqi Kurdistan into an independent state. The oil-dependent economy has languished with the fall in prices; the majority of the workforce is on the public sector payroll and is only receiving partial salary payments from the cash-strapped government.

“If we wait to have the ideal situation to have a solution to every single problem, that’s not going to happen,” he said.

“If we wait to have the ideal situation to have a solution to every single problem, that’s not going to happen,” he said.

The issue of disputed territories — lands claimed by both Baghdad and Erbil and home to many of Iraq’s minority communities — also remains unresolved. The Kurdistan Regional Government hopes that de facto control of the territory it seeks to incorporate, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, will render this point moot. For minorities living in disputed territories, he said a “no” vote would suffice to indicate their preference for remaining part of federal Iraq. “They have the option not to vote,”

Barzani said. “If they need another referendum, then maybe after that.”

The referendum also lacks a legal mechanism for implementing its results — at most, it will be seen as providing officials with a mandate to pursue secession talks. “We are going to start serious, peaceful negotiations and dialogue with Baghdad,” Barzani said. “We don’t want also to accept to be their subordinate. This is in order to prevent a big problem, prevent a bloody war and the deterioration of the security of the whole region.”

Since announcing the referendum, Barzani has spoken with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a conversation he characterized as positive. “We told him that we want to solve this issue with Baghdad through peace and not through violence,” Barzani said. “He was receptive and understanding.”

Barzani was eager to emphasize that fracturing Iraq didn’t have to result in instability. “We will do whatever is necessary to support Prime Minster Abadi to make him successful in his premiership,” he said. “We will continue our cooperation on counterterrorism. We will increase the coordination between the Peshmerga forces and the Iraqi Army.”

And eventually, Barzani hopes, the international community will come around to his point of view. “They are saying that maybe this is not a good time, or it may create problems, and I have my differences with them on these two points,” he said. “If these international players are against this referendum, that means that they are against their own values — the peaceful, democratic right of people to express their own decisions about their destiny. If they stand against the referendum, it means that they are against democracy.”

Whatever else Kurdish independence might bring, for Barzani it would seal his legacy. “I want to die in the shadow of the flag of an independent Kurdistan,” he said.

Photo credit: Campbell MacDiarmid

The Daily 202: Prospect of Trump firing Mueller keeps becoming more untenable

From the Michael Flynn scandal to James Comey's firing, Vice President Pence has repeatedly had his official statements defending the Trump administration contradicted - sometimes by the president himself. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Robert Mueller, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2013. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)--Then-Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), attorney Floyd Abrams, Mitch McConnell and attorney Kenneth Starr speak to reporters outside the Supreme Court after arguing against the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law in 2003.

Jared Kushner arrives at Andrews Air Force Base last week after joining Trump on a day trip to Cincinnati. (Andrew Harnik/AP)--Rod Rosenstein sorts through notes as he testifies before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee this week. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

THE BIG IDEA: If Donald Trump thought he could intimidate Bob Mueller, he thought wrong.

By James Hohmann June 16 at 9:14 AM

A person who spoke with Trump on Tuesday told the New York Times that the president was pleased by the intentional ambiguity of his position on firing Robert S. Mueller as special counsel, “and thinks the possibility of being fired will focus the veteran prosecutor on delivering what the president desires most: a blanket public exoneration.”

If the president truly believes this, he fundamentally misunderstands what motivates the former FBI director – who has stood up to previous administrations and never swayed under political pressure.

Marines Corps veterans don’t scare easily. Mueller, 72, earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with Valor for his gallantry in Vietnam before devoting most of the rest of his life to public service. Trump, 71, avoided military service by claiming a medical deferment for “heel spurs,” and he’s said that his “personal Vietnam” was avoiding sexually-transmitted diseases while sleeping around in New York. “I feel like a great and very brave solider," the president once told Howard Stern.

-- Just as almost every previous effort at damage control has made Trump’s Russia-related headaches worse, keeping the door open to firing Mueller earlier this week has now backfired. Key figures on Capitol Hill and in the conservative legal firmament have now gone on the record to warn that ousting the special counsel would trigger a constitutional crisis. That would make it much harder for Trump to go that route down the road.


“Firing Mueller would be an insult to the Founding Fathers,” Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel in the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations during the Clinton 
administration, writes in an op-ed for today’s Post: “Subject to the possibility of being fired for ‘good cause,’ Mueller should be allowed to do his work unhindered and unimpeded. Absent the most extreme circumstances, the president would be singularly ill-advised to threaten, much less order, Mueller’s firing. Under legally binding regulations, the special counsel’s fate rests exclusively with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. He alone is empowered to make that fateful decision. As a matter of honor, and in light of his sworn testimony before Congress, Rosenstein would inevitably resign if confronted with a White House directive to dismiss the special counsel. Wisdom counsels strongly against unleashing a 21st-century version of the Saturday Night Massacre of Watergate-era infamy.”

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Colombia peace process weathers the storm as Farc hands in weapons

40% of rebels’ arsenal has been decommissioned, marking another success in a process that has often stumbled

Thick clouds stopped Juan Manuel Santos’s helicopter from landing. Photograph: Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images

UN observers check weapons handed by the Farc as part of the peace process. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images

Joe Parkin Daniels in La Elvira-Friday 16 June 2017

What was supposed to be a momentous demonstration of Colombia’s progress toward peace was almost scuppered by the weather.

As part of a historic deal between the government and the leftwing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, the rebel group this week handed over a second cache of weapons to the United Nations for decommissioning.

President Juan Manuel Santos and guerrilla commanders had been due to attend the event in the rural municipality of Buenos Aires, where just two years ago, Farc fighters ambushed and killed 11 government troops.

But the event was hurriedly reconfigured when thick clouds stopped Santos’s helicopter from landing, and instead, dignitaries and rebels gathered in the city of Cali, about 40 miles away.

Despite the logistical hiccups, however, Thursday’s ceremony means that 40% of the Farc’s arsenal has now been decommissioned, marking another success in a peace process that has at times stumbled.

“Today is a historic day,” Santos said. “What we have witnessed ... is something that just a few years ago the country would not have believed possible.”

Colombia’s 53-year conflict has left 260,000 dead and nearly 7 million displaced, with atrocities committed by all sides, including state-aligned paramilitaries. Most of the victims are civilians.

The peace accord – which had to be ratified in congress last November after failing to pass a public referendum two months earlier – stipulated that the Farcdemobilisation would be complete by 1 June.

That deadline was postponed by two months after delays setting up reception camps for the former fighters. Even today, many rebels are still living in improvised tents, sleeping under mosquito nets and tarpaulin.

“The government hasn’t helped us out where it promised it would,” the Farc’s southern bloc commander, who goes by the alias Martín Corena, said in a recent interview at a demobilisation camp.

This week’s ceremony means that the rebels have now laid down 40% of their weapons, and the remainder of the group’s arms are due to be handed over next week.

But the decommissioning process is also behind schedule: the Farc were supposed to have handed in 60% of their weapons by Wednesday, and there is still uncertainty surrounding how many weapons the rebels still have.

The UN says it registered more than 7,000 firearms over the past few months, with at least one weapon per Farc member, but earlier this year, the rebels surprised the UN when they announced that they had 949 weapons caches scattered around the country.

And despite what the government and Farc see as steady progress, opponents of the deal have continued to criticise the process at every step.

With one eye on next year’s presidential elections, Colombia’s hardline right has been ramping up rhetorical attacks against the Farc, accusing members of hiding funds to support their political movement – and to avoid contributing to reparations to victims.

The size of the rebel army’s war chest has been debated for years, with estimates ranging wildly. In 2014, Forbes put the Farc’s annual income at $600m, gained through drug trafficking, illegal mining and extortion, among other activities. The Farc maintains it has little cash left after feeding and equipping thousands of fighters.

During the event on Tuesday, one of the Farc’s commanders, Jorge Torres Victoria – better known by his alias, Pablo Catatumbo – warned of the security threat facing Colombia and its fragile peace process. “Paramilitarism is the biggest threat to peace,” he said, in reference to myriad criminal groups that spawned following the demobilisation of the AUC, a federation of anti-insurgency paramilitaries, more than a decade ago.

The Farc, along with many on the left in Colombia, says these groups maintain a political component. Successor groups have claimed responsibility for a recent spate of murders of leftist activists around the country.

Despite the step toward a full disarmament, retrieving the remaining weapons from rebel arms caches scattered around the country would not be easy, said Adam Isacson, senior associate for defence oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America.

“Getting to all those caches before other criminal groups or Farc dissidents do will be a huge challenge for Colombian authorities and the UN mission.”

Tories have blocked Labour legislation to make rented homes safer – but it’s complicated.

• By Georgina Lee-16 JUN 2017

Housing standards have come into sharp focus this week after the devastating fire in west London that left at least 30 people dead and dozens more injured.

There have been reports of Tory MPs rejecting Labour legislation that would require all rented homes to be “fit for human habitation”.

Labour have put two pieces of legislation before Parliament on this issue since 2015. Both have been blocked. We take a look at what happened.

A Labour MP laid a bill in 2015 to make private rented properties safer – it was rejected

In 2015, Labour MP for Westminster North, Karen Buck put forward her own legislation called the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill. The proposed law was designed to do two things.
1. Make sure all privately rented homes are fit for human habitation – not just the most expensive. 

There is already a legal requirement on private landlords who charge more than a certain level of rent to make sure that their properties are fit for human habitation. Buck’s bill tried to extend that obligation all private rented properties – regardless of how much landlords charge in rent.

2. Make sure that privately rented homes with “category 1 hazards” like dangerous boilers and faulty wiring cannot be signed off as fit for human habitation.

Under current law, (the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985) landlords must consider several factors when deciding whether a property is fit for human habitation. These include “freedom from damp”, “water supply”, “drainage and sanitary conveniences” and “[structural] stability”.

Karen Buck’s bill sought to add another requirement to that list: that landlords must take action against so-called “category 1 hazards”.

According to Shelter, a category 1 hazard is anything in a home that causes a serious threat to the health or safety to residents or visitors. Examples include exposed wiring or overloaded electrical sockets, dangerous or faulty boilers, broken steps at the top of the stairs, and leaking roofs.

At the moment, local authorities must take action if they find a category 1 hazard in a rented home (including homes in the private rental sector).

Buck’s proposed law would put a legal duty on private landlords – not just local councils – to make sure there are no category 1 hazards in their rental properties.

What happened to Labour’s bill?

Private members’ bills like Buck’s are not the same as legislation laid by the government. They are “sponsored” by individual backbench MPs, rather than ministers, and only a tiny minority actually make it onto the statute books.

Private members’ bills are often used as a way of drawing attention to issues.

A handful of these bills make it to the debate stage, but government or other MPs can deliberately “talk out” them out as a quick way of killing them off.

In the case of Karen Buck’s housing bill, it was talked out by Conservative MPs, including Philip Davies, who describes himself as both a landlord and tenant. He said this dual status put him in the “unusual position of being able to see both sides of the argument”, but ultimately declared that the proposed legislation would put “huge burdens” on landlords and should be dropped.
His lengthy filibuster meant that it was.

Labour tried to amend the government’s Housing Bill in 2016 – and was thwarted again

After the private members’ bill failed to pass the debate stage, Labour MPs and peers took a second shot at rental regulation in 2016 – this time trying to amend the government’s Housing and Planning Bill.

Shadow Housing Minister Teresa Pearce wanted to get the content of Karen Buck’s rejected bill – i.e. the “fitness for human habitation” clauses – included in the government legislation.

But then-Housing Minister Brandon Lewis said that the government’s bill already included policies to tackle rogue landlords, and that Buck and Pearce’s proposals would impose “unnecessary regulation” on landlords.

The Labour amendment was defeated; all 309 Tory MPs that turned up voted against it. All 205 of the Labour MPs that voted supported the amendment, but it wasn’t enough to force the change in the law.

But the government has effectively taken through Labour’s policy proposals under a different name

It’s easy to confuse the substance of the legislation with its appearance. Understandably, Tory MPs voting down legislation that contains the words “fit for human habitation” attracts negative headlines.

And much has been made of the fact that 39 per cent of Conservative MPs in 2016 were themselves landlords, and might therefore have an interest in voting down potentially burdensome regulation.

But, as this research by the House of Commons Library (which is independent from government) shows, there are several areas of legislation that already require landlords to maintain safety standards.

For example, under the Gas Safety Regulations 1998, landlords are responsible for repairing and maintaining gas fittings and appliances. Legislation from 2015 requires all private landlords to install a smoke alarm on every storey of the property, and says they can be fined up to £5,000 for non-compliance.

The research also points out that the health and safety regulations that Karen Buck wanted to introduce in her failed 2015 bill were included in the government’s Housing and Planning bill the following year.

In effect, the government has taken forward a lot of the substance of Labour’s proposed legislation, but avoided using the language of “fit for human habitation”.

So to some extent, Labour have succeeded in making sure the government improves regulation of privately rented homes.

Is there a link to the Grenfell Tower disaster?

It’s important to remember that both the private member’s bill and the Labour amendment to the government’s legislation were about regulating private sector landlords – not social housing.

We understand that the flats in Grenfell tower were owned by Kensington and Chelsea council and run by its housing association. There were a handful of flats sold to private owners, but the majority were in public hands.

So while the two pieces of legislation that Labour have put forward in recent years have made inroads in reforming private rentals, they’re not directly linked to social housing policy.


But still, the Tories will struggle to get away from continued accusations that austerity and lack of regulation are partly to blame for the tragedy.

Urbanisation 2.0

Featured image courtesy Human Cities Coalition

CARL BILDT on 06/15/2017

CHICAGO – We are now in the final days of the industrial age. Just as the second generation of steam engines propelled the Industrial Revolution forward, so, too, are new technologies advancing today’s digital revolution. But as technology races ahead of us, it is difficult to anticipate what the future holds.

One thing we do know is that the future will be shaped by two key trends: digitisation and urbanisation. And the possibilities introduced by the former will likely help us overcome the problems associated with the latter.

When the Industrial Revolution was first gaining momentum at the beginning of the nineteenth century, only a small percentage of the global population lived in cities. The world was still predominantly rural and agricultural, as it had been for thousands of years. But as industrialization accelerated, so did urbanization, as impoverished farmworkers flocked to factories.

We are now in another period of epochal change, and urbanisation is accelerating again. In 1950, approximately one-third of the planet’s 2.5 billion people lived in cities, whereas today, just over half of the world’s 7.5 billion people do. And by 2050, when the global population is expected to reach nine billion, an estimated two-thirds of all people will live in cities.

Urban areas are magnets for young people and entrepreneurs, because they provide a wide range of opportunities and dense professional and social networks. It is no coincidence that 80% of economic output originates in cities: urbanization is the engine of economic growth.

But while it is easy to focus on success stories such as Singapore and Dubai, or on the impressive features of cosmopolitan centers such as New York or London, urbanisation is not without its challenges.

By 2050, some 600 million people will live in the world’s 25 largest cities, none of which are in the European Union. Most are in Asia, followed by Africa, including Karachi, Pakistan; Kabul, Afghanistan; Khartoum, Sudan; and Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And some believe that by 2100, Lagos, Nigeria, will be the world’s largest city – showing how quickly Africa is catching up.

At the recent Chicago Forum on Global Cities, policy thinkers and practitioners – including past and current mayors from Amman, Chicago, Prague, Lahore, Rio de Janeiro, and Toronto – met for a couple of days to discuss common challenges on the road ahead. They all agreed that many solutions to future problems will come not from national governments, but from municipal and regional-level policymakers.

Many cities and states in the United States are already bringing this point home, by ignoring US President Donald Trump’s renunciation of the Paris climate agreement, and doubling down on their own efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and achieve energy sustainability. Indeed, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo have now joined forces to combat climate change, giving the lie to Trump’s claim that he was elected to “represent Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Climate change is one of three major challenges that will confront us in this new period of hyper-urbanisation. Because all cities depend on energy, more needs to be done to improve sustainability and efficiency. Municipal and regional governments will need to step up their efforts to curb energy use, and introduce new green technologies, particularly in more rural areas.

The second challenge will be to address the effects of new digital technologies that are generally associated with the so-called sharing economy. Hardware and software applications that provide on-demand transportation, delivery, hospitality, and other services will revolutionise how cities operate and are organized; but adapting to these changes will require innovative new policies.

The third challenge relates to migration and its attendant security concerns. Global migration will likely continue to increase in the coming decades, with the very rich and the very poor alike flocking to megacities. Without the policies and infrastructure in place to absorb these new arrivals, megacities could fail, and degenerate into urban jungles that pose a security threat to surrounding regions and the world beyond.

Addressing these challenges will require deeper dialogue among global cities themselves. In the recent discussions in Chicago, there was a general sense that national governments, while important, do not approach most of these issues practically, or with the urgency they require. The Chicago dialogues, on the other hand, epitomized practicality, by finding common ground across wide geographic and cultural boundaries.

This implies that we should be careful not to exaggerate the differences between the most and the least advanced global cities. Security solutions in Toronto might very well be applicable in Karachi; and digital services in Singapore could eventually take root in Kabul.

Just as industrialism ushered in a new age for cities and countries, so, too, will digitisation. To see the future that is taking shape, one need only look to the cities that are already shaping it.

This article is part of a content-sharing agreement with Project Syndicate. For more content, click here. 

South Korea: Human Rights Violated CIA officer for May 18 Foundation

Statement on Donald Gregg’s Participation in the 5.18 International Conference in New York

by George Katsiaficas-Jun 15, 2017

Jun 15, 2017

( June 15, 2016. Seoul, Sri Lanka Guardian) As reported in the Hankyoreh article entitled, “The spirit of Gwangju Democratization Movement comes to UN headquarters in New York,” on May 26, 2017, former CIA Seoul station chief and US ambassador to Korea Donald Gregg was the honored guest of the May 18 Memorial Foundation at a conference in New York at the United Nations.

Fifteen years earlier, on May 18, 2002, a Gwangju Citizens’ Tribunal involving hundreds of people found Gregg and seven other US officials (including former President Jimmy Carter) guilty of “crimes against humanity” for their role in the suppression of the 1980 uprising. Gregg has repeatedly asserted, contrary to mountains of evidence, that he has no reason to apologize to Gwangju citizens and that the US did not know what was happening there in 1980. The May 18 Memorial Foundation’s decision to invite Donald Gregg is therefore quite regrettable.

Gregg participated in the May 22, 1980 White House meeting that came to “general agreement that the first priority was the restoration of order in Gwangju by the Korean authorities” (quoted from US government documents by then-US Ambassador William Gleysteen)—a clear signal to Chun Doo-hwan for him to suppress the uprising. Nine days before May 18, 1980, in a meeting in the very same safe house where Park Chung-hee had been assassinated, Gleysteen had instructed Chun the US would not oppose the use of the army against demonstrators, another indication of US knowledge and intent.

So great was public disapproval of Gregg when he was U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 1989 to 1993, he never made a publicized address at any Korean university because of expected protests (according to his own admission). In an article in 2005, he described the results of a 2003 South Korean poll as “shocking” because of the anti-American feelings expressed by so many people.

For the May 18 Memorial Foundation simply to ignore this history and invite Donald Gregg as an honored guest ignores years of Gwangju citizens’ heartfelt grievances—and their righteous condemnation of Donald Gregg and other American officials as the hand behinds behind Chun.

Recent attacks on 518 include false claims that the uprising involved North Korea. It is important to set the record straight, but in doing so, it at least as significant to clarify decades of US government and CIA lies about US involvement. Rather than doing so, the May 18 Foundation routinely uses CIA sources of information to “prove” no North Korean involvement, thereby implicitly endorsing the CIA as a reliable source of information and disrespecting the spirit of Gwangju.

Only If Gregg would apologize sincerely and truthfully reveal his and the US role in encouraging Chun to use force against Gwangju citizens should such an invitation have been made.

'Ai Weiwei Drifting': China's most famous, displaced artist

One year with Ai Weiwei: DW premieres documentary

• Author Ceyda Nurtsch (als)-14.06.2017

The new DW documentary accompanies artist Ai Weiwei during work on his own film. It depicts his life between Beijing, New York and Berlin, and is a very personal look at China's most famous artist living in the West.

The DW documentary "Ai Weiwei Drifting" initially aimed to showcase Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's work at Berlin's University of the Arts, but it ended up focusing on much more. It shows China's most famous artist in the western world as a filmmaker, architect, concept artist and sculptor, but also as a father.

Drawing on his experiences as a displaced person, and in light of the refugee catastrophe that has also overcome Europe, he himself created his own film entitled "Human Flow," which is currently in post-production. That movie, which employed film teams in 25 different countries, including Afghanistan, Palestine and Mexico, shows the tragedy of people who flee their native countries, only to drown by the thousands in the Mediterranean Sea.

On the edge

DW filmmakers Eva Mehl and Bettina Kolb followed Ai Weiwei on that journey for 15 months to produce their 56-minute documentary. It offers a glimpse into the artist's work at the Greek-Macedonian border in December 2015, for instance, when he interviewed, filmed and photographed refugees at a camp near the village of Idomeni.

An oppressive feeling can overcome viewers while they watch Ai take pictures with his cell phone of the refugees walking through the mud in their flip-flops or in their improvised tents, or when he looks through his camera to find the right angle on those he wants to interview.

Does art have no boundaries? This question has accompanied the artist in all of his work.

Ai Weiwei speaking with refugees in Idomeni, Greece

His fans see him as an agitator who masterfully pours salt on the wound with his work - such as when he drew attention to the serious deficits in the Chinese construction industry with his installation of 9,000 school backpacks representing thousands of pupils who died during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The artist pointed to the poor construction of the schools that were not able to withstand such a high-magnitude quake.

His critics, on the other hand, view him a media-hungry personality who manipulates via his supposed political statements.

Those critical voices grew louder when he re-enacted the 2015 photo of the young Syrian boy Alan Kurdi, whose corpse washed ashore on the Turkish coast. In "Ai Weiwei Drifting," he takes a clear stance on the outrage unleashed on him, saying that no one is in the position to tell him why that was immoral.

He finds it absurd that people would get upset about his depiction, but not about the children who die on a daily basis in Aleppo. The answer to the question about art's boundaries thus becomes apparent: "As long as artists are human beings, they must grapple with human crises," he says.

Intimate view

In addition to the film shots looking at his work about migration and the act of fleeing, Mehl and Kolb also accompanied the artist to visit the stations of his life in Beijing, New York and Berlin. He discusses his famous poet father Ai Qing, who was persecuted during Mao's cultural revolution.

The film looks at Ai Weiwei's years in New York from 1981 to 1993, his incarceration in 2011, and his move to Berlin in 2015.

For the first time, the film reveals moments from his personal life: cooking in his Berlin kitchen, or watching television with his son. It shows a Beijing visit to see his mother, who is the only person in the film to talk about Ai. The filmmakers were able to capture these moments in an authentic way, such as when he admits that his son has a stronger relationship to his mother than to him. His son says he is strict and meddles into things that are not his business.

Ai Weiwei (left) has focused on the risks refugees take to flee their homeland

"Weiwei was an enigma to me," said filmmaker Bettina Kolb. "I never knew what was going on in his head, but one thing was clear: His thinking is super-fast."

Filmmaker Eva Mehl, on the other hand, was impressed by the way Ai approaches people. "He just sat down with them to spend a little time with them," she said.

The film "Ai Weiwei Drifting" uses impressive film images to present a very personal profile of one of the world's currently most famous artists, who says about himself: "I do not have a home country. My native country is the internet."

"Ai Weiwei Drifting" is a 56-minute documentary film by Deutsche Welle, produced by Eva Mehl and Bettina Kolb. It premiered in Berlin on June 13 and will run on DW's television program starting on June 24,  2017. Together with the documentary, an online special will present the life of this exceptional artist whose childhood was dominated by flight and exile.