A corruption case filed against former Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and seven others for allegedly causing a Rs.11.4 billion unlawful loss to the government when giving permission to Avant-Garde Maritime Services (Pvt) Ltd to operate a floating armoury was yesterday fixed for August 11 by Colombo Chief Magistrate’s court.
When the matter came up before Chief Magistrate Lal Ranasinghe Bandara, both parties were directed to submit their written submissions regarding defence’s preliminary objections before next hearing date.
President’s Counsel Romesh de Silva appearing on behalf of first accused Gotabaya Rajapaksa had raised a preliminary objections alleging that the Bribery Commission Director General had filed this case without the written sanction of the Bribery Commission.
He moved Court that case proceeding pertaining to the matter be terminated since the case had been filed without the consent of the Bribery Commission. The Defence Counsel further moved Court that the notices issued against the accused be recalled since the notices were injuria (unlawful).
However, Senior State Counsel Janaka Bandara appearing on behalf of the Bribery Commission informed Court that the Bribery Commission had given its consent to this legal action. He said the Director General of Bribery Commission is vested with power to file cases in the Magistrate’s Court in accordance with the Bribery Commission Act and cited a judgement issued by Court of Appeal.
When the matter came up before the Chief Magistrate, seven accused, former Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Avant Garde Chairman Major Nissanka Senadhipathi, former Navy Commanders Somatilleke Dissanayake, Jayanath Kolambage and Jayantha Perera, Rtd. Major General Palitha Piyasiri Fernando and Banda Adhikari were present in Courts. Meanwhile, the Chief Magistrate had at a previous occasion had allowed to proceed the case in absentia of second accused Sujatha Damayanthi, former Additional Secretary to the Defence Ministry.
The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption had filed this case against eight accused under Section 70 of the Bribery Act.
The Bribery Commission alleged that the accused had had given permission to Avant-Garde Maritime Services (Pvt) Ltd to operate a floating armoury between August 7, 2012 and January 8, 2015 in violation of laws by providing unlawful income to this private company, amounting to Rs.11.4 billion
By Bernard Fernando-2017-07-11 According to news reports, the President has suspended the recent supplementary estimate for purchase of vehicles for politicians, apparently to rectify the bad timing of the proposal in the face of the flood catastrophe. If it is only a postponement of the issue, we urge the policymakers to make use of the recess to install a transparent and an effective mechanism to rationalize the purchase and use of vehicles for politicians and government officials in the long run.
The writer in his previous submissions has repeatedly drawn the attention of the authorities, that with the advent of the decentralized Provincial Councils and Pradeshiya Sabhas in 1987, the role and responsibilities of the central government MPs should have been redefined in order to make them only 'law-makers' or 'legislators' confined to the centre. Therefore, effective steps should be taken at least now to clearly redefine job roles of the Parliamentarians, Provincial Councillors and Local Government members. Also, use of pool vehicles in the ministries should be maximized to cater to demands from Parliamentarians. The measures will no doubt reduce the official travel of Parliamentarians to the periphery using luxury vehicles.
seemingly lukewarm role
It is pertinent to mention that the absence of clearly defined roles was quite evident in the recent school re-opening mess-up as well as in the seemingly lukewarm role played by the provincial and local government politicians during the flood disaster. The media culture on the other hand too needs to be changed to shift the limelight from Parliamentarians to their peripheral counterparts so that the public can assess and justify the presence and effectiveness of politicians in the periphery.
Also, it is an accepted fact that the wasteful 'Preference Voting system' has acted as an obstacle to implementing an effective decentralized political administration system as Parliamentarians are compelled to travel to their constituencies regularly to safeguard their preference votes. Therefore, it needs to be abolished with the forthcoming electoral reforms. Being an optional system, why can't it be repealed by a simple amendment to the relevant laws? However, it should not be re-installed in the guise of a 'mixed-voting' system applicable to general and PC elections where again the candidates would be compelled to canvass for votes under a 'first-past-the post' system thereby reinventing the wheels of violence, bribery and corruption.
I now take the liberty to enlist below, a few direct measures to rationalize vehicle use by politicians and government officials.
All official vehicles should be inventoried under the respective ministries and departments and fuel and maintenance will be their responsibility.
Vehicle purchases (except ceremonial) should be purpose driven and not luxurious.
All officers including politicians should apply for the use of vehicles through vehicle application forms providing details of official purpose, route to destination and return, time of departure and arrival to prevent abuse. Fuel usage registers should be properly maintained. Even if a system is already in place it doesn't appear to be robustly adopted, judging from the files before the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID). Although every rule has an exception, in Sri Lanka exception seems to be the rule.
For private travel they should use the vehicle given to them on duty free basis or concessionary terms.
Discarding of vehicles should be handled by an independent, technical committee. Looking at the scores of so-called condemned vehicles in the backyards of ministries and departments we cannot surmise that such committees are in place.
Regular vehicle auctions should be held to dispose of used vehicles so that idle assets can be minimized.
Productive political machinery
We are still hopeful that only a government committed to good governance can rationalize and institute a cost effective and productive political machinery in Sri Lanka and accelerate the developmental process of the country.
We urge the civil society and concerned organizations to guide the Yahapalana government on the correct path.
She is not a dancer, but a dancer. Frances Halladay is her name, but it is a mystery how she became ‘Ha,’ until the end of the story. I first thought it is an old movie, because it is black and white, but it is not. It was produced in 2012 and released in 2013. Its ‘black and white’ give a classic flavour to the moving picture frames, blended with several pop songs. One of which is ‘This little light of mine.’ You may listen to it here quite safely.
Most attractive is Frances’ tall, slender figure, moving or running all the time, never missing a chance to smile, laugh or joke.
This is simply a new type of comedy. It is American, but it depicts a universal theme going around among young women of new times who seek independence, affection, relationship, occupation and most of all, in this case, amusement. It may be little premature for Sri Lanka in certain aspects, but not in essence. I could see little bit of ‘Frances’ in the character of Abisheka in the Harakotiyateledrama, or Paba in the Paba teledrama.
Even in real life I have seen them emerging among university undergraduates, before I left after retirement, and mostly among Sri Lankan migrants in Australia. A known young woman, recently went around Latin America, all alone, meeting friends, visiting Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru, after saving some money from her first job. She came to our place to relate the adventure, perhaps in an exaggerated manner, talking nonstop. They don’t mean any harm to themselves or others, if they are brought up in an intelligent manner.
Frances also was brought up in such a caring family in Sacramento, California. You could meet the parents in the movie when Frances visits them for Christmas. They are very close, not physically, but emotionally. Father is also funny, like Frances. Frances is mostly in New York, when not moving. They live worlds apart, almost 2,500 miles is the distance from Sacramento to New York. Sacramento is also a city but compared to New York, it is a ‘village.’
This genuine ‘village’ trait is mostly visible in the manners and behaviour of the people that Frances acquainted with in Sacramento. That might be one reason why Frances has a more causal, carefree and openminded soul, compared to her, not so friendly friend, Sophie in New York. I also had my roommate at Peradeniya Campus from, ‘that time’ remote, Embiliyapitiya. He also was very frank and open and even witty unlike many of our urban folks or Colombians.
The Story
The story starts in Brooklyn, New York, where Frances shares an apartment with Sophie, who was her ‘best friend.’ Perhaps they first met at Vassar College, a liberal arts college in New York, where Frances got her liking for just dancing. This is a hopeless venture, according to more professional and money minded Sophie.
Frances has already joined a dance company as an apprentice which does not give her much money. Sophie also wants to move to her dream neighbourhood, Tribeca, which Frances cannot afford. Rents are very expensive not to speak of other living costs in Tribeca. That is their breakup. Sophie wears glasses with thick lenses. Is that any indication of the character? Perhaps it is a common prejudice. Tribeca is very trendy, many celebrities living there. Sophie also now has a ‘professional’ boyfriend.
Where does Frances move? China town of course! She lives with Leve and Benji, two boys in a shared apartment. Often there are various visitors, boys and girls, coming to sleep over. Frances didn’t mind very much given her casual life style. She is respected by others, like a Loku Akka (big sister). What is Frances’ age? Twenty something, she always says. She is in fact 27. Does she look for steady relationship. Yes, of course, she does but not with much success.
One interesting episode is when Frances goes for a ‘date’ with Benji to a restaurant. It was understood that the bill will be foot by Frances. Perhaps Benji is ‘hard up’ at that time. When it comes to paying, she apparently doesn’t have cash. This is a small restaurant where credit cards are not accepted. Then she runs to an ATM. She falls on her way, and even bruises her arm. She is a person who cannot walk slow. She always have to run. The relationship with Benji does not go much further.
It is this time that Christmas comes and Frances goes to Sacramento. She is now a big star to her old friends and relations, usually boasting about her adventures in New York. There are two significant episodes. She meets one of her old school friend, a boy – now a man, going to a dinner party with her partner, who is expecting a child. There is a kind of remorse on Frances’ part, still a spinster. But Frances is open, kind and well wishing to the couple. Second is when she meets another old friend, a girl or a woman, who is fortunately single, like Frances. What does she do? She plays with her, even trying to show her amateur Karate skills. This appears childish, but funny as it is enacted. There are of course ‘tomboy’ characteristics in Frances.
Issam Younis, left, director of Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, and Shawan Jabarin, director of Al-Haq, both head human rights groups targeted by Israeli government smears.
Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon has publicly attacked Palestinian human rights organizations Al-Haq and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, accusing them of supporting terrorism and inciting violence.
An international federation of 184 human rights organizations described his “slandering statements” as “baseless attacks” and urged UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to publicly support the two organizations.
Danon’s attack appears part of an Israeli policy to curtail foreign funding of human rights organizations working to expose human rights violations against Palestinians.
Israel is warning foreign governments “that no money should go to terrorism, incitement, or to the glorification of violence,” foreign ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon recently told media outlet Middle East Eye.
Smearing human rights organizations as terrorist sympathizers is one way to deter foreign donors.
Danon made his remarks at a press conference on 29 June where he was criticizing the UN for funding Al-Haq and Al Mezan.
“We expect more from the UN,” he said in reply to a question about a UN committee meeting to mark Israel’s 50 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to which representatives of the two human rights organizations were invited. “We expect the UN to respect its core values.”
Instead, he said, the UN is funding Al Mezan and Al-Haq that, he charged, have links with Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP, which like most Palestinian parties Israel considers terrorist organizations.
“They are flying supporters of terrorists, they are sitting in this building, and incite against Israel. This is unacceptable,” said Danon
Trumped up accusations
Danon in part based his claims on the work of the right-wing Israeli group NGO Monitor which habitually smears international organizations.
NGO Monitor “works closely” with the Israeli foreign ministry, Nahshon told Middle East Eye earlier this month. “There is a level of coordination and we share information,” he said.
Danon described Al-Haq head Shawan Jabarin as someone who had been jailed for his “PFLP role,” a charge NGO Monitor has persistently leveled at Jabarin.
NGO Monitor refers to an Israeli high court ruling to substantiate the claim against Jabarin.
But the ruling was based on secret evidence presented in a hearing behind closed doors.
Jabarin denies any links with the PFLP.
“If I am a member of the PFLP, then why don’t they bring me to trial?” Jabarin told Middle East Eye.
Danon also accused Al Mezan of having links with Hamas without clarifying the character of the alleged contacts.
Israel made similar accusations, apparently also originating with NGO Monitor, a few years ago against the London-based group Palestinian Return Centre. But the UK government said Israel did not provide it with any evidence to back up its claims.
Al Mezan is based in Gaza City and documents human rights violations in the Gaza Strip. Its fieldworkers played a crucial role in collecting information during and after Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza that killed more than 2,200 people including 550 children and decimated dozens of families.
Since 2008, moreover, Human Rights Watch has only once been allowed to bring staff into Gaza.
Al Mezan is often critical of Gaza’s authorities, taking the coastal strip’s Hamas rulers to task for the juvenile justice system, the death penalty and military-style court processes.
Protecting human rights defenders
Such work is lost on NGO Monitor, which has the single mission to assail those who lay bare Israeli abuses. The organization is “the main tool in the hand of the Israeli officials and the foreign ministry,” Jabarin told The Electronic Intifada last month.
He suggested that organizations, lawmakers and governments should not accept the information of NGO Monitor and other Israel lobby groups at face value. They should instead look at the aim behind these groups, Jabarin told The Electronic Intifada.
He added: “Do they believe in human rights? Do they believe in justice? Do they believe in accountability? Do they really believe in transparency? Are their budgets and resources published on their website? Who is behind them, who is the director of the organization? What is his history, background? Is the main purpose to strengthen the culture of equality and rule of law?”
The Observatory – created by the International Federation for Human Rights, FIDH, and the World Organization Against Torture – also urged Guterres in an open letter to “protect all human rights defenders working on issues related to Palestine and ensure that they are able to carry out their legitimate activities without any hindrance and fear of reprisals.”
Over the past years, Al-Haq and Al Mezan have had staff members receive death threats, the Observatory notes in its letter.
They have also been targets of wider efforts to discredit and destabilize the organizations using “the hacking of emails, intimidating phone calls to staff and efforts to alarm donors.” These “acts of intimidation” persist.
Jabarin challenged parliamentarians and donors around the world to set up unbiased fact-finding missions to Palestine and “not let anyone interfere in your country.”
“They should not accept the Israeli narrative,” he told The Electronic Intifada. “In the end you are speaking about a state behind this, big resources, very organized campaigners behind this.”
by John Pilger- ( July 12, 2017, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) When I first went to Palestine as a young reporter in the 1960s, I stayed on a kibbutz. The people I met were hard-working, spirited and called themselves socialists. I liked them.
One evening at dinner, I asked about the silhouettes of people in the far distance, beyond our perimeter.
“Arabs,” they said, “nomads.” The words were almost spat out. Israel, they said, meaning Palestine, had been mostly wasteland and one of the great feats of the Zionist enterprise was to turn the desert green.
They gave as an example their crop of Jaffa oranges, which was exported to the rest of the world. What a triumph against the odds of nature and humanity’s neglect.
It was the first lie. Most of the orange groves and vineyards belonged to Palestinians who had been tilling the soil and exporting oranges and grapes to Europe since the eighteenth century. The former Palestinian town of Jaffa was known by its previous inhabitants as “the place of sad oranges.”
On the kibbutz, the word “Palestinian” was never used. Why, I asked. The answer was a troubled silence.
All over the colonized world, the true sovereignty of indigenous people is feared by those who can never quite cover the fact, and the crime, that they live on stolen land.
Denying people’s humanity is the next step – as the Jewish people know only too well. Defiling people’s dignity and culture and pride follows as logically as violence.
In Ramallah, following an invasion of the West Bank by the late Ariel Sharon in 2002, I walked through streets of crushed cars and demolished houses, to the Palestinian Cultural Centre. Until that morning, Israeli soldiers had camped there.
I was met by the centre’s director, the novelist, Liana Badr, whose original manuscripts lay scattered and torn across the floor. The hard drive containing her fiction, and a library of plays and poetry had been taken by Israeli soldiers. Almost everything was smashed, and defiled.
Not a single book survived with all its pages; not a single master tape from one of the best collections of Palestinian cinema.
The soldiers had urinated and defecated on the floors, on desks, on embroideries and works of art. They had smeared feces on children’s paintings and written – in shit – “Born to kill”.
Liana Badr had tears in her eyes, but she was unbowed. She said, “We will make it right again.”
What enrages those who colonize and occupy, steal and oppress, vandalize and defile is the victims’
refusal to comply. And this is the tribute we all should pay the Palestinians. They refuse to comply.
They go on. They wait – until they fight again. And they do so even when those governing them collaborate with their oppressors.
In the midst of the 2014 Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer never stopped reporting. He and his family were stricken; he queued for food and water and carried it through the rubble. When I phoned him, I could hear the bombs outside his door. He refused to comply.
Mohammed’s reports, illustrated by his graphic photographs, were a model of professional journalism that shamed the compliant and craven reporting of the so-called mainstream in Britain and the United States. The BBC notion of objectivity – amplifying the myths and lies of authority, a practice of which it is proud – is shamed every day by the likes of Mohamed Omer.
For more than 40 years, I have recorded the refusal of the people of Palestine to comply with their oppressors: Israel, the United States, Britain, the European Union.
Since 2008, Britain alone has granted licenses for export to Israel of arms and missiles, drones and sniper rifles, worth £434 million.
Those who have stood up to this, without weapons, those who have refused to comply, are among Palestinians I have been privileged to know:
My friend, the late Mohammed Jarella, who toiled for the United Nations agency UNRWA, in 1967 showed me a Palestinian refugee camp for the first time. It was a bitter winter’s day and schoolchildren shook with the cold. “One day …” he would say. “One day …”
Mustafa Barghouti, whose eloquence remains undimmed, who described the tolerance that existed in Palestine among Jews, Muslims and Christians until, as he told me, “the Zionists wanted a state at the expense of the Palestinians.”
Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician in Gaza, whose passion was raising money for plastic surgery for children disfigured by Israeli bullets and shrapnel. Her hospital was flattened by Israeli bombs in 2014.
Dr. Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist, whose clinics for children in Gaza — children sent almost mad by Israeli violence — were oases of civilization.
A Dead Infant
Fatima and Nasser are a couple whose home stood in a village near Jerusalem designated “Zone A and B,” meaning that the land was declared for Jews only. Their parents had lived there; their grandparents had lived there. Today, the bulldozers are laying roads for Jews only, protected by laws for Jews only.
It was past midnight when Fatima went into labor with their second child. The baby was premature; and when they arrived at a checkpoint with the hospital in view, the young Israeli soldier said they needed another document.
Fatima was bleeding badly. The soldier laughed and imitated her moans and told them, “Go home.” The baby was born there in a truck. It was blue with cold and soon, without care, died from exposure. The baby’s name was Sultan.
For Palestinians, these will be familiar stories. The question is: why are they not familiar in London and Washington, Brussels and Sydney?
In Syria, a recent liberal cause — a George Clooney cause — is bankrolled handsomely in Britain and the United States, even though the beneficiaries, the so-called rebels, are dominated by jihadist fanatics, the product of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the destruction of modern Libya.
And yet, the longest occupation and resistance in modern times is not recognized. When the United Nations suddenly stirs and defines Israel as an apartheid state, as it did this year, there is outrage – not against a state whose “core purpose” is racism but against a U.N. commission that dared break the silence.
“Palestine,” said Nelson Mandela, “is the greatest moral issue of our time.”
Why is this truth suppressed, day after day, month after month, year after year?
On Israel – the apartheid state, guilty of a crime against humanity and of more international law-breaking than any other– the silence persists among those who know and whose job it is to keep the record straight.
On Israel, so much journalism is intimidated and controlled by a groupthink that demands silence on Palestine while honorable journalism has become dissidence: a metaphoric underground.
A single word – “conflict” – enables this silence. “The Arab-Israeli conflict”, intone the robots at their tele-prompters. When a veteran BBC reporter, a man who knows the truth, refers to “two narratives”, the moral contortion is complete.
There is no conflict, no two narratives, with their moral fulcrum. There is a military occupation enforced by a nuclear-armed power backed by the greatest military power on earth; and there is an epic injustice.
The word “occupation” may be banned, deleted from the dictionary. But the memory of historical truth cannot be banned: of the systemic expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. “Plan D” the Israelis called it in 1948.
The Israeli historian Benny Morris describes how David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was asked by one of his generals: “What shall we do with the Arabs?”
The prime minister, wrote Morris, “made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand”. “Expel them!” he said.
Seventy years later, this crime is suppressed in the intellectual and political culture of the West. Or it is debatable, or merely controversial. Highly-paid journalists and eagerly accept Israeli government trips, hospitality and flattery, then are truculent in their protestations of independence. The term, “useful idiots,” was coined for them.
Accepting Awards
In 2011, I was struck by the ease with which one of Britain’s most acclaimed novelists, Ian McEwan, a man bathed in the glow of bourgeois enlightenment, accepted the Jerusalem Prize for literature in the apartheid state.
Would McEwan have gone to Sun City in apartheid South Africa? They gave prizes there, too, all expenses paid. McEwan justified his action with weasel words about the independence of “civil society”.
Propaganda – of the kind McEwan delivered, with its token slap on the wrists for his delighted hosts – is a weapon for the oppressors of Palestine. Like sugar, it insinuates almost everything today.
Understanding and deconstructing state and cultural propaganda is our most critical task. We are being frog-marched into a second cold war, whose eventual aim is to subdue and balkanize Russia and intimidate China.
When Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke privately for more than two hours at the G20 meeting in Hamburg, apparently about the need not to go to war with each other, the most vociferous objectors were those who have commandeered liberalism, such as the Zionist political writer of the Guardian.
“No wonder Putin was smiling in Hamburg,” wrote Jonathan Freedland. “He knows he has succeeded in his chief objective: he has made America weak again.” Cue the hissing for Evil Vlad.
These propagandists have never known war but they love the imperial game of war. What Ian McEwan calls “civil society” has become a rich source of related propaganda.
Take a term often used by the guardians of civil society — “human rights.” Like another noble concept, “democracy,” “human rights” has been all but emptied of its meaning and purpose.
Like “peace process” and “road map,” human rights in Palestine have been hijacked by Western governments and the corporate NGOs they fund and which claim a quixotic moral authority.
So when Israel is called upon by governments and NGOs to “respect human rights” in Palestine, nothing happens, because they all know there is nothing to fear; nothing will change.
Mark the silence of the European Union, which accommodates Israel while refusing to maintain its commitments to the people of Gaza — such as keeping the lifeline of the Rafah border crossing open: a measure it agreed to as part of its role in the cessation of fighting in 2014. A seaport for Gaza – agreed by Brussels in 2014 – has been abandoned.
The U.N. commission I have referred to – its full name is the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia — described Israel as, and I quote, “designed for the core purpose” of racial discrimination.
Millions understand this. What the governments in London, Washington, Brussels and Tel Aviv cannot control is that humanity at street level is changing perhaps as never before. A World Stirring
People everywhere are stirring and are more aware, in my view, than ever before. Some are already in open revolt. The atrocity of Grenfell Tower in London has brought communities together in a vibrant almost national resistance.
Thanks to a people’s campaign, the judiciary is today examining the evidence of a possible prosecution of Tony Blair for war crimes. Even if this fails, it is a crucial development, dismantling yet another barrier between the public and its recognition of the voracious nature of the crimes of state power – the systemic disregard for humanity perpetrated in Iraq, in Grenfell Tower, in Palestine. Those are the dots waiting to be joined.
For most of the Twenty-first Century, the fraud of corporate power posing as democracy has depended on the propaganda of distraction: largely on a cult of “me-ism” designed to disorientate our sense of looking out for others, of acting together, of social justice and internationalism.
Class, gender and race were wrenched apart. The personal became the political and the media the message. The promotion of bourgeois privilege was presented as “progressive” politics. It wasn’t. It never is. It is the promotion of privilege, and power.
Among young people, internationalism has found a vast new audience. Look at the support for Jeremy Corbyn and the reception the G20 circus in Hamburg received. By understanding the truth and imperatives of internationalism, and rejecting colonialism, we understand the struggle of Palestine.
Mandela put it this way: “We know only too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
At the heart of the Middle East is the historic injustice in Palestine. Until that is resolved, and Palestinians have their freedom and homeland, and Israelis are Palestinians equality before the law, there will be no peace in the region, or perhaps anywhere.
What Mandela was saying is that freedom itself is precarious while powerful governments can deny justice to others, terrorize others, imprison and kill others, in our name. Israel certainly understands the threat that one day it might have to be normal.
That is why its ambassador to Britain is Mark Regev, well known to journalists as a professional propagandist, and why the “huge bluff” of charges of anti-Semitism, as Ilan Pappe called it, was allowed to contort the Labour Party and undermine Jeremy Corbyn as leader. The point is, it did not succeed.
Events are moving quickly now. The remarkable Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) is succeeding, day by day; cities and towns, trade unions and student bodies are endorsing it. The British government’s attempt to restrict local councils from enforcing BDS has failed in the courts.
These are not straws in the wind. When the Palestinians rise again, as they will, they may not succeed at first — but they will eventually if we understand that they are us, and we are them. This is an abridged version of John Pilger’s address to the Palestinian Expo 2017 in London. John Pilger’s film, ‘Palestine Is Still the Issue’, can be viewed on this website. Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger – http://johnpilger.com/
Blast ripped through textile factory in Idlib which members of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham had been using as their quarters
Idlib province in Syria, which borders Turkey, has long witnessed infighting between religious militias vying for power (Reuters)
Wednesday 12 July 2017
A suicide bomber rammed a car laden with explosives into a gathering of former al-Qaeda affiliated militants near the rebel-held northwestern Syrian city of Idlib on Wednesday, killing and injuring scores, rebel sources said.
They said the blast ripped through a textile factory that members of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance of rebel groups whose backbone is the former Nusra Front, had been using as their quarters. At least 12 were killed, one rebel source said.
In recent days, the alliance had been waging a major sweep to round up ultra-hardline Islamic State (IS) group sleeper cells in Idlib province. They say they have arrested at least 100 people, including those the group says are senior operatives blamed for a string of recent assassination and blasts in the province.
Idlib province is dominated mainly by religious militant cells, although there is some presence of the moderate Western-vetted Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups.
The province, which borders Turkey, has long witnessed infighting between the main religious militias vying for power.
Although opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's rule, insurgents are riven by deep divisions on ideology and rivalry that erupts occasionally in deadly clashes.
Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton during his father's presidential campaign, after being told the information was "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump."(Video: Elyse Samuels, Jenny Starrs/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) By Philip Rucker and Ashley ParkerJuly 12 at 6:42 AM
The White House has been thrust into chaos after days of ever-worsening revelations about a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a lawyer characterized as representing the Russian government, as the president fumes against his enemies and senior aides circle one another with suspicion, according to top White House officials and outside advisers.
President Trump — who has been hidden from public view since returning last weekend from a divisive international summit — is enraged that the Russia cloud still hangs over his presidency and is exasperated that his eldest son and namesake has become engulfed by it, said people who have spoken with him this week.
The disclosure that Trump Jr. met with a Russian attorney, believing he would receive incriminating information about Hillary Clinton as part of the Kremlin’s effort to boost his father’s candidacy, has set back the administration’s faltering agenda and rattled the senior leadership team.
On Wednesday, in his first Twitter posts since the email disclosures, Trump defended his son as “open, transparent and innocent” and repeated past claims that his administration is the subject of a “witch hunt” fueled by leakers.
“My son Donald did a good job last night,” Trump wrote, referring to his son’s appearance on Fox News. “He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!”
What you need to know about Donald Trump Jr.'s ties to Russia. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
Trump also took aim at anonymous leaks from “sources” — even though Trump Jr. gave a step-by-step email chronology of the plans for the meeting with the Russian lawyer in 2016.
Even supporters of Trump Jr. who believe he faces no legal repercussions privately acknowledged Tuesday that the story is a public relations disaster — for him as well as for the White House. One outside ally called it a “Category 5 hurricane,” while an outside adviser said a CNN graphic charting connections between the Trump team and Russians resembled the plot of the fictional Netflix series “House of Cards.”
Vice President Pence sought to distance himself from the controversy, with his spokesman noting that Trump Jr.’s meeting occurred before Pence joined the ticket.
Inside a White House in which infighting often seems like a core cultural value, three straight days of revelations in the New York Times about Trump Jr. have inspired a new round of accusations and recriminations, with advisers privately speculating about who inside the Trump orbit may be leaking damaging information about the president’s son.
This portrait of the Trump White House under siege is based on interviews Tuesday with more than a dozen West Wing officials, outside advisers, and friends and associates of the president and his family, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid.
The makeup of Trump’s inner circle is the subject of internal debate, as ever. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser; Jared Kushner, her husband and another senior adviser; and first lady Melania Trump have been privately pressing the president to shake up his team — most specifically by replacing Reince Priebus as the White House chief of staff, according to two senior White House officials and one ally close to the White House.
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner walk together during the Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on June 22. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The three family members are especially concerned about the steady stream of unauthorized leaks to journalists that have plagued the administration over the nearly six months that President Trump has been in office, from sensitive national security information to embarrassing details about the inner workings of the White House, the officials said.
Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s communications director, said: “Of course, the first lady is concerned about leaks from her husband’s administration, as all Americans should be. And while she does offer advice and perspectives on many things, Mrs. Trump does not weigh in on West Wing staff.”
Lindsay Walters, a deputy White House press secretary, disputed reports about Priebus’s standing. “These sources have been consistently wrong about Reince, and they’re still wrong today,” she said.
After this story first published, Josh Raffel, a White House spokesman, said in a statement on behalf of Kushner and Ivanka Trump: “Jared and Ivanka are focused on working with Reince and the team to advance the President’s agenda and not on pushing for staff changes.”
Trump recently publicly praised Priebus’s work ethic, and the chief of staff’s allies note that Priebus has done as good a job as can be expected under the unique circumstances of this administration.
Defenders of Priebus have long said they expect him to make it to a year in the position, and Trump is said to be hesitant to fire him or any other senior staffer amid the escalating Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
The mind-set of Trump Jr. over the past few days has evolved from distress to anger to defiance, according to people close to him. He hired a criminal defense attorney but maintains that he is innocent of any wrongdoing. After his tweets commenting on the matter drew scrutiny, he agreed to his first media interview — with his friend Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity on his show on Tuesday night.
One friend of Trump Jr.’s said the presidential son saw the Hannity appearance as an opportunity to give his version of Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech, a 1952 address in which the then-vice-
presidential candidate defended himself against accusations of financial improprieties.
Trump has had no public events since returning Saturday night from Germany but has been closely monitoring developments with his eldest son in the news.
Trump continues to view the Russia controversy as an excuse used by Democrats for losing an election they thought they would win — and an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of his victory, aides said. They said that the president’s frustration is based on the media coverage of his son’s actions, as opposed to the actions themselves.
“He just looks at this as the continuum of taking a group of unrelated facts and putting them together in concentric circles and saying, ‘Aha — look what happened!’ ” said Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a longtime friend of the president who was chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee. “With Don Jr., whatever set of facts there are may not lead to the conclusion that the establishment media is making.”
Trump and his advisers are deeply frustrated that the disclosure by Trump Jr. has overshadowed the positive coverage they expected to receive from the president’s trip abroad, as well as other issues they hoped to spotlight this week, such as the Senate health-care bill and trade.
A handful of Republican operatives close to the White House are scrambling to Trump Jr.’s defense and have begun what could be an extensive campaign to try to discredit some of the journalists who have been reporting on the matter.
Their plan, as one member of the team described it, is to research the reporters’ previous work, in some cases going back years, and to exploit any mistakes or perceived biases. They intend to demand corrections, trumpet errors on social media and feed them to conservative outlets, such as Fox News.
But one outside adviser said a campaign against the press when it comes to Trump Jr.’s meeting could be futile: “The meeting happened. It’s tough to go to war with the facts.”
In the West Wing, meanwhile, fear of the Mueller probe effectively paralyzed senior staffers as they struggled to respond.
No official has yet delivered a robust defense of Trump Jr., although Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the principal deputy press secretary, told reporters Monday, “I would certainly say Don Jr. did not collude with anybody to influence the election.”
At Tuesday’s press briefing, Sanders read a brief statement from the president — “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency” — but declined to speak further on the issue, referring all questions to Trump Jr.’s attorney. [Donald Trump Jr.’s emails about the meeting with a Russian lawyer, annotated]
Other senior White House officials were hesitant to talk about Trump Jr. — even on the condition of anonymity — for fear of exposing themselves legally.
Some top officials, as well as outside advisers, had earlier suggested that the White House conduct its own internal review to identify any potential problem areas related to Russia so that it can release the information on its own rather than be caught unaware by news reports. But that notion went nowhere, in part because officials were afraid to discuss any potential Russia interactions that could make them targets of Mueller’s probe.
One White House official went so far as to stop communicating with the president’s embattled son, although this official spoke sympathetically about his plight, casting Trump Jr. as someone who just wants to hunt, fish and run his family’s real estate business.
“The kid is an honest kid,” said one friend of Trump Jr. “The White House should’ve never let that story go out on the president’s son … What he’s upset about was that it was a minor meeting and the media glare — anything that’s Russia-related, gets picked up the way roaches get caught in a roach motel.”
Eric Trump, another son of the president, defended his older brother Tuesday night by retweeting a message from British politician Nigel Farage, who said Trump Jr. was under attack because he is “the best public supporter” of the president. Eric Trump tweeted: “This is the EXACT reason they viciously attack our family! They can’t stand that we are extremely close and will ALWAYS support each other.”
Critics of Trump Jr. counter that he should have known better than to accept a meeting with someone who was explicitly described in an email as a “Russian government attorney.”
“It wasn’t naivete,” said Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration. “It was, ‘Oh, they have some dirt on our opponent and I’m eager to receive it.’
Nobody thought to think, ‘Well, how did they obtain that? Is this coming from the Russian government, Russian intelligence?’ Those are the kinds of obvious questions that should have been asked, in my opinion.”
Pence found out about Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian attorney Friday evening in advance of the first Times story, said one person familiar with the discussions. Both Pence and his team view the Russia coverage as a distraction, and are working to keep the vice president clear of it and focused on Trump’s policy goals — such as health care, the subject of his scheduled visit to Kentucky on Wednesday.
“The vice president is working every day to advance the president’s agenda, which is what the American people sent us here to do. The vice president was not aware of the meeting,” Pence’s press secretary, Marc Lotter, said in a statement. “He is not focused on stories about the campaign, particularly stories about the time before he joined the ticket.”
On Capitol Hill — where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Tuesday that he is delaying his chamber’s August recess by two weeks — Republican senators were becoming increasingly frustrated with the White House, which they blame for Congress’s inability to pass any major legislation.
A growing number of senators believe that the widening Russia probe — as well as the Trump-
fueled tumult that seems to dominate nearly every news cycle — have stalled their legislative agenda, leaving them nothing to offer their constituents by way of achievements when they head home over the break.
Two-term president found guilty in scandal linked to oil giant Petrobras
Lawyers attack sentence and say ‘conviction came without any truth’
Lula still faces four more trials, in what lawyers say is a judicial blitzkrieg designed to prevent him returning to politics. Photograph: Eraldo Peres/AP
Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro-Wednesday 12 July 2017
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,once the most popular president in Brazil’s recent history, has been sentenced to nine years and six months in prison after being found guilty on corruption and money-laundering charges.
Although Lula, as he is universally known, will remain free pending an appeal – and his supporters denounced the sentence as political persecution – the ruling marks an extraordinary fall for a leader Barack Obama once called “the most popular politician on earth”.
Passing sentence on the former president, Judge Sergio Moro said Lula took part in the corruption scheme, in which billions of dollars were paid to middlemen, executives and politicians for fat contracts.
Lula still faces four more trials, in a process defence lawyers say constitutes a judicial blitzkrieg designed to prevent him returning to politics.
“Symbolically [the sentence] has a very heavy weight, not just for him but for the country, that voted not just twice for him but twice for the candidate he indicated,” said Carlos Melo, a professor of political science at Insper, a business school in São Paulo.
Born into barefoot poverty in Brazil’s arid north-east, Lula ran the powerful metal workers’ union before helping found the Workers’ party with fellow leftists, unionists and intellectuals in 1980. He fought and lost three elections before winning the first of two mandates in 2002. Thanks to transformative social policies and a booming economy, tens of millions of Brazilians escaped poverty during his rule.
No other Brazilian politician in recent decades has been able to capture popular imagination with such verve. Although his reputation has been tarnished in recent years, he currently leads polling for the 2018 election.
If his conviction is upheld by a higher court, however, he will be ineligible to stand.
“He will dramatize this process, of course, he will say this is a process to stop him being a candidate. The condemnation will enter the political game,” Melo said. “The Workers’ party will exploit this politically and say Lula is a victim.”
Wednesday’s sentence was related to accusations that Lula benefited from about £590,000 in bribes from a construction company called OAS, which the prosecution alleged was paid in the shape of a seaside duplex apartment, renovated at Lula’s request.
In his ruling, Moro said that Lula had bought a simpler apartment in the same building worth about £53,000, and the company had upgraded him.
Prosecutors said the payment was part of around £21m that OAS paid in bribes to Lula’s Workers’ party in return for lucrative contracts as part of two oil refineries that Petrobras was building, Moro wrote in his sentence.
“The responsibility of a president of the republic is enormous, and, consequently, so is his guilt when he practises crimes,” Moro wrote.
During his trial in May, Lula gave five hours of testimony in which he angrily proclaimed his innocence and denied ever owning the apartment. His lawyers, Cristiano Martins and Valeska Martins, attacked the sentence in a statement.
“President Lula is innocent. For over three years, Lula has been subject to a politically motivated investigation. No credible evidence of guilt has been produced, and overwhelming proof of his innocence blatantly ignored,” they said. “We will prove Lula’s innocence in all unbiased courts including the United Nations.”
Other leftist groups also condemned the ruling. “The conviction came without any truth,” the Homeless Workers’ Movement said in a statement. “It is evident that the sentence is a form of judicial shortcut to remove Lula from the political dispute.”
But the sentence divided Brazilians. Angel Inoue, 36, a TV scriptwriter from São Paulo, said she was pleased. “I know the (Workers’ party) started as a cool idea, but at a certain point, this idea was substituted for power and greed,” she said.
Mariluce de Souza, 35, an artist and community leader from the Complexo do Alemão favela in Rio de Janeiro, said Lula’s case was more closely linked to his party than him personally.
“All politicians are guilty of some sort of corruption,” she said.
Lula’s government was first hit by a corruption scandal called the Mensalão, in which lawmakers were allegedly paid to vote for government measures. He was still re-elected in 2006 and left office with an 87% approval rating. When his successor Rousseff was impeached in August 2016, she and Lula denounced the process as a “coup”.
Rousseff was succeeded by her former running mate, Michel Temer, whose administration has also been dogged by graft scandals.
Temer himself is facing corruption charges that could see him tried by Brazil’s supreme court if two-thirds of Brazil’s lower house agree in a vote expected in the coming days.
A woman cooks dinner by candlelight in her home in Dala township, outside Yangon, Burma February 6, 2017.
12th July 2017
OPPOSITION to a planned US$3 billion coal-fired power plant in eastern Burma (Myanmar) is highlighting the challenges facing Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in crafting a coherent energy policy in one of Asia’s poorest and most electricity-starved countries.
With only a third of the country’s 60 million people connected to the grid and major cities experiencing blackouts, finding investors is tough for Burmaand it is now looking at options, from coal to deep-sea gas, to boost its power supply.
Burma has reserves of natural gas, but most existing offshore production is exported under agreements struck during the junta era, while new blocks will not come on stream for some years.
Coal would be one of the quickest ways to ramp up power generation but, as protests against the proposed 1,280 megawatts (MW) project in the eastern Kayin state show, the option is unpopular in Burma.
More than 100 activist groups across the country have signed a joint statement calling for the project to be cancelled and urging the government to look at renewable energy instead.
“They are worried about their land and water, which would be affected by the coal-fired plant,” said Kayin-based activist Nan Myint Aung, referring to residents in the area who mostly depend on agriculture.
Attracting investment is crucial for Suu Kyi, who has made job creation one of her top priorities. Foreign direct investment has fallen 30 percent from the previous year to $6.6 billion in 2016/17 due to sluggish progress on retooling the economy after decades of military rule.
Burma aims a more than fourfold increase in its electricity generation of over 23,500 MW by 2030 to meet rising demand, a target experts said will be difficult to achieve – particularly, they say, if policy remains confused.
Uncertainty over energy mix
The Kayin state project, which is still awaiting approval from the authorities, is among the 11 planned coal-fired plants in Burma and, by itself, would increase the country’s current electricity production by 25 percent, official data shows.
But it is uncertain how many of those projects will go ahead. The former quasi-civilian government led by President Thein Sein had to stall more than 10 coal projects across the country due to opposition on environmental grounds.
Some western experts advising the government also oppose the solution, arguing that importing coal – which is not abundant in Burma – would mean an outflow of dollars from a country with tiny reserves of hard currency.
Officials have previously said they were looking to increase the share of hydro power in the country’s energy mix.
Most of its 49 planned hydropower projects have stalled, however, amid a lengthy dispute with China over the building of the Myitsone mega dam.
An electricity master plan has been under review since last year, but the government has yet to reveal details. Several energy officials said the share of coal and gas could be increased at the expense of hydro.
“International investors would like to see more clarity on energy policy. It is presently very difficult to say exactly what Myanmar‘s energy plans are,” said Jeremy Mullins, researcher at Yangon-based consulting firm FrontierMyanmar.
“Dilemma of coal”
Kayin’s energy minister, Soe Hlaing, told Reuters that the government would go ahead with the project if there was “enough public support.” He did not elaborate.
Residents and environmentalists say the risks the plant in Kayin could pose to the environment and the livelihoods of local people are not being properly investigated.
A feasibility study on the environmental and social impact will be ready later this year before the final decision from the energy ministry, local authorities said.
Thailand-based TTCL Public Company Ltd, developer of the project, said it would build a high-efficiency low-emissions station with advanced “clean coal” technology to mitigate environmental impact.
Coal currently generates just 1 percent of Burma‘s electricity.
Win Htein, one of the top leaders from Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, said alternatives such as hydropower would take time and coal was ideal for the country’s urgent energy demand.
“If we have to choose between the dilemma of coal and the development of the country, we prioritize the development,” he said. – Reuters
She is not a dancer, but a dancer. 
