Shifting Army HQ from Fort: President blasts MR Govt. decision

2017-12-19

President Maithripla Sirisena has in a special statement to the Cabinet today blasted the ad-hoc, un-advisable and arbitrary decision by the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime to move the Army Headquarters from Baladaksha Mawatha in Fort and sell the land to Shangri-La Hotel chain.

Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told a media conference held at the party office that the President had highlighted the fact that this move had placed the country at large and the Colombo City in particular at risk with 15 Army Units being relocated in 15 different buildings at a total annual rental of Rs.5,000 million paid by the Treasury.

He said on a request by the ministers, the President would soon decide whether to appoint a Commission of Inquiry on the questionable transaction where 10 acres of prime land in the centre of Colombo City was sold for a mere US$125 million or Rs.18.80 million and whether to take legal action to get to the bottom of this deal.

The minister said the President had made the special statement as Minister of Defense and pointed out that he was shocked to learn of the damage caused to the country and the economy after perusing the information and the statistics submitted to him by officials on this controversial transaction.

He said the annual rental costing the Treasury a massive Rs.5,000 million a year was the result of a unplanned, foolhardy and ill-advised decision to shift the Army Headquarters.

“There was no plan, no evaluation or no afterthought on the decision to shift the Army Headquarters and the only objective was to permit Hong Kong's Shangri-La Hotel Chain to purchase outright the 10-acre block of land at their price,” the minister said. These are the people who are pointing fingers at the yahapalana government accusing it of selling lands in Hambantota to the Chinese while the fact is that we gave the lands on 99-year lease."

The Cabinet suspended the construction of the Rs.40 billion Defence Headquarters Complex (DHC) at Akuregoda in July this year and the payments to the private contractor stopped on the basis that the selection of consultancy firms and payments had been made without providing correct information to the Cabinet.

The minister said a Cabinet Memo presented by President Sirisena had revealed that a huge financial scam running into billions of rupees had occurred during the initial stages of the project and all Cabinet papers pertaining to the project had been prepared according to the instructions of the former defence secretary.

The disclosure of the financial scam, the haphazard and ad-hoc manner in which the consultancy firm was selected and the payments made was a result of a committee appointed by the Cabinet in March, 2015.

Having considered the note to the Cabinet presented by the Minister of Defence on the ‘Project to Construct the Defence Headquarters Complex in Akuregoda”, it was decided by the Cabinet at its meeting on March 18, 2015 to appoint a committee headed by Secretary to the Ministry of Defence to look into this matter and report on matters related to the said project. Accordingly, the report prepared by the committee was presented to the Cabinet on August 5, 2015 by the Minister of Defence.

However, the Cabinet had again decided to request the Secretary to the President to appoint a committee of officials to further inquire into the matters referred to in the first report under Consultancy Firms and Related Payments and observations and recommendations.

Accordingly, the four-member committee has recommended that the Architectural Consultancy Firm named Muditha Jayakody Associates (Pvt.) Ltd.(MJAPL) should not be considered for consultancy services of this project in future.

“There is no doubt that a huge financial fraud has taken place involving this project and the government would go to the bottom of it and expose the culprits and take legal action against them before long," the minister said and added that the ministers commended the President for exposing the scam and requested that it be investigated. (Sandun A. Jayasekara)

International Migrants Day: 18 December

BY TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 18 Dec 2017

“Let us make migration work for the benefit of migrants and countries alike.  We owe this to the millions of migrants who, through their courage, vitality and dreams, help make our societies more prosperous, resilient and diverse.”

— Ban Ki-moon, then Secretary-General, United Nations

In December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 18 December as the International Migrants Day.  The day was chosen to highlight that on a 18 December, the U.N. had adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrants Workers and Members of Their Families. Although migration to and from countries is a world-wide flow of people, only  42 countries, basically Latin American, North and West African, Indonesia and the Philippines, have ratified the Convention.  The Convention created a Committee on Migrant Workers which meets in Geneva to review once every four years a report of the Convention members on their  application of the Convention.  The Convention also created a mechanism by which the Committee could receive individual complaints.  Only three States have ratified this individual complaints mechanism: Mexico, Guatemala and Uruguay.

Today, there are some 232 million persons who reside and work outside their country of birth.  The reasons for migration are diverse − most often economic, but also refugees from armed conflicts and oppression, and increasingly what are called “ecological refugees” − persons who leave their home area due to changing environmental conditions: drought, floods, rising sea levels etc.  Global warming is very likely to increase the number of these ecological refugees.

Although migration is an important issue with a multitude of consequences in both countries of origin and destination, the Committee on Migrant Workers, a group of experts who function in their individual capacity and not as representatives of the State of which they are citizens, has a low profile among what are called “UN Treaty Bodies” – the committees which review the reports of States which have ratified UN human rights conventions such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Since the great majority of States receiving migrants − Western Europe and North America   – have not ratifies the Convention on Migrant Workers, other ways have to be found within the UN system to look at migration issues.  Thus  has been created outside the UN system but in close cooperation with the UN, the Global Forum on Migration and Development and the Global Migration Group to address the opportunities and challenges of international migration.  Within the UN, there was the  “High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development”. in 2013 and there have been a number of conferences since, given the massive flow of refugees and migrants toward Europe in 2016 and 2017.

The Governments at the Dialogue unanimously adopted a Declaration (A/68/L.5) calling for greater cooperation to address the challenges of irregular migration and to facilitate safe, orderly and regular migration.  The Declaration also emphasized the need to respect the human rights of migrants and to promote international labor standards.  The Declaration strongly condemns manifestations of racism and intolerance and stresses the need to improve public perceptions of migrants.

UN conferences and such dialogues or forums serve as a magnet, pulling Governments to agree to higher ideals and standards collectively than they would proclaim individually.  This is not only hypocrisy − though there is certainly an element of hypocrisy as Governments have no plans to put these aims into practice. Rather it is a sort of “collective unconscious” of Government representatives who have a vision of an emerging world society based on justice and peace.

The role of non-governmental organizations is to remind constantly Government representatives that it is they who have written the text and voted for it without voicing reservations. Numerous States which ratified the International Convention on Migrant Workers made reservations limiting the application of the Convention on their territory. Thus, the Declaration of the High-level Dialogue was not written by the Association of World Citizens but by Government diplomats.

The Declaration is a strong text and covers most of the important issues, including human mobility as a key factor for sustainable development, the role of women and girls who represent nearly half of all migrants, the need to protect the rights of migrant children and the role of remittances to families.

Recently international attention has been drawn to slavery-like conditions of migrants trying to reach Europe and blocked in Libya. It is estimated that there are one million migrants blocked in Libya.  Migration is a crucial issue. Many governments prefer to turn a blind eye to the fate of refugees and migrants. Non-governmental organizations have responded with more compassion but are under strain by the number of peole involved. 18 December should serve as a moment of cooperative discussion and action so that broader policies can be undertaken.

_______________________________________________

René Wadlow is a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Task Force on the Middle East, president and U.N. representative (Geneva) of the Association of World Citizens, and editor of Transnational Perspectives. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

Ibrahim Abu Thurayya: an icon of dignity and defiance

Ibrahim Abu Thurayya challenged both his disability and his occupier. 

 Ezz Al-ZanoonAPA images

Shahd Abusalama-18 December 2017

How should I mourn the death of somebody who – like so many others – has been killed simply for being Palestinian?
Ibrahim Abu Thurayya was shot dead by Israel along Gaza’s boundary with Israel last Friday.
My thoughts and feelings on his killing are complex and cannot fully be expressed in words.

Abu Thurayya was actually one of four people killed by Israel on the same day. These killings took place amid protests against Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Yet because both of his legs had previously been amputated, the local and international media paid more attention to Abu Thurayya’s story than they do to the experiences of most Palestinian victims.

Many articles on his killing highlighted how Abu Thurraya posed no threat to the Israeli military.

Palestinians killed by Israel usually don’t pose any real threat to that state’s heavily armed forces. Yet the question about whether he posed a threat shouldn’t even arise.

The very question ignores the power dynamics between a soldier serving an occupying power and civilians who have spent their entire lives under occupation. Asking a question about whether a Palestinian poses a threat is a subtle way of putting the blame on the victims.

I have no wish to tell a story of a 29-year-old whose disability did not make him immune to Israel’s lethal weapons. We have lost so many people that our wounds have never healed. Another killing deepens the pain felt in our open wounds.

Dehumanization

I know too well the level of dehumanization to which Israel subjects us.

Israel and its supporters openly describe us as a “demographic threat.” Our history and identity, indeed our very existence as a people threaten to destroy all the myths that Israel has propagated in its desperate search for “international legitimacy.”

I know too well that being a Palestinian is enough reason for Israel to kill us.

Why should the specific tragedy of Ibrahim Abu Thurayya suddenly awaken people to Israel’s brutality against Palestinians? There are thousands of other striking examples – children being killed, beaten up (sometimes in front of cameras) and terrorized in Israeli jails – that only received a fraction of the attention being paid in this case.

It troubles me that we seem to have more sympathy for Abu Thurayya than we do for other victims.
Abu Thurayya had to have both his legs amputated after being attacked by Israel in April 2008.
Seven others were killed in that attack. It took place during an Israeli invasion of al-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza.

Would we have felt less sympathy for Abu Thurayya if he had been killed in that attack? If so, why? It would have been the same victim, the same family devastated by losing a loved one.
Ibrahim Abu Thurayya was much more than a man who lost both his legs. He emphasized that much himself.

Abu Thurayya kept on working after he was attacked. He washed cars for a living and once said: “Please never look at my disabled body. Look at the great job I am doing.”

Losing his legs, he added, was “not the end of the world and life should go on.”

Positive attitude

Abu Thurayya refused to be imprisoned by his disability. He also tried to live as freely as he could within the open-air prison of Gaza.

With his positive attitude, he provided an extraordinary example of dignity and resistance.

Since April 2008, Abu Thurayya had been featured in many news stories. He said a similar thing in each of them: “I challenge my disability, I challenge Israel as well.”

In his own way, Abu Thurayya had won a victory over Israel’s attempts to dehumanize Palestinians.

His story would require a book to do it justice – it is a story that must be placed within the collective Palestinian experience of Israeli colonialism. Yet there are some key components of that story which we must not forget.

He was born a third-generation refugee in Gaza’s Beach refugee camp. As a teenager, he worked as a fisherman. Every day he would venture out in a humble boat in waters patrolled by the Israeli Navy – a force that often uses brutal methods to prevent Gaza’s fishermen from plying their trade.
Abu Thurayya was just 20 when he had to have his legs amputated. He continued defying Israel until the end.

The final instance of his defiance came last Friday. Abu Thurayya confronted his oppressor at a protest. An Israeli soldier on the other side of the fence fired at him, piercing his head with a bullet.

Abu Thurayya reminds me of Nadia, a character in Letter from Gaza, a short story which Ghassan Kanafaniwrote in 1956.

Nadia was aged 13 when she lost a leg when Israel carried out massacres in Gaza that year. She had been wounded while trying to shield her siblings from Israel’s bombs.

In that story, Kanafani implores that a friend living in California return to Gaza so that he can “learn from Nadia’s leg, amputated from the top of the thigh, what life is and what existence is worth.”

Shortly before he was killed, Ibrahim Abu Thurayya was filmed, saying: “This is our land and we will not give up.”

We can all learn about life from his story. That is why it must be shared, taught and remembered.
Editor’s note: Some minor edits have been made to this article following initial publication.

Palestine’s 'capital city': Why politicians are talking about Abu Dis

The fragmented East Jerusalem suburb is again being suggested - despite many Palestinians being opposed to the plan

A Palestinian protester hits the Israeli separation barrier with a hammer in Abu Dis in October 2015 (Reuters)

Mustafa Abu Sneineh-Tuesday 19 December 2017 

It was once a small rural village, noted for its fields of olive trees and spectacular views, overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem to the south-west and the Jordan Valley to the east.

But now Abu Dis is a name spoken by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a potential capital of a future Palestinian state, as reported in the New York Times on 3 December.

Palestine’s 'capital city' Why politicians are talking about Abu Dis.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Court says Palestinian poet won’t be released from house arrest

 

Dareen Tatour, who was arrested and jailed for publishing a poem on Facebook, will remain under house arrest, preventing her from working or leading a normal life.

Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour ® and Attorney Gaby Lasky seen in the Nazareth court, November 20th, 2017. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

 

 

By Yoav Haifawi-December 17, 2017

 

The media calm in recent months could have fooled the casual reader into thinking that the trial of Dareen Tatour for her poetry has already ended. After all, how much can abuse can the poet face for one poem and two statuses on Facebook?The silence is misleading. More than two years and two months after her arrest in October 2015, Tatour’s trial drags on languidly in the Nazareth court with no end in sight. 

 

On Monday, December 4, the remand judge once again rejected her request to be released from the house arrest imposed on her “until the end of legal proceedings.”

New testimony regarding “The Next Martyr”

Tatour, 34, from Reineh near Nazareth, was arrested by Israeli police on October 11th, 2015, and later indicted of incitement to violence and support of a terrorist organization, all for publishing a poem, “

 

Resist my people, resist them

 

”, and two Facebook statuses. The prosecution claimed that her publications at the beginning of October 2015 should be read in the context of the Palestinian “third intifada,” which was characterized by attacks by unaffiliated individuals.

 

Tatour replied that her publications contain no call for violence, to which she objects, and that they express legitimate protest and call for struggle against Israeli restrictions on the right of Muslims to pray in Al-Aqsa and against the crimes of the occupation and in particular the killing of innocent Palestinians. She also claimed, bringing experts to prove this claim, that the police both mistranslated and misinterpreted her poem.

 

Following her arrest, Tatour was jailed for three months in three different prisons. She was later released to strict house arrest, forced to wear an ankle monitor. As the authorities demanded that she be distanced from the Nazareth region, her family had to rent an apartment in Kiryat Ono, just outside Tel Aviv, to hold her there. She was forbidden from using the Internet.

 

Gradually, through many appeals and legal battles, which met stiff resistance from the prosecution, the conditions of the house arrest were somewhat eased. In July 2016 she was allowed to continue her house arrest at her home, and in November of that year the ankle was removed. Gradually she was allowed to leave the house for limited hours, but with the required accompaniment of custodians at every step.

The last witness in the case was heard on April 27, and the judge gave each of the parties 45 days to submit written summaries. The prosecution requested a postponement and finally submitted its summaries at the end of June.

 

While working on the defense summaries, the team from Attorney Gabi Lasky’s office came upon an important piece of evidence concerning one of the main points of the indictment, the publication of a profile picture with the text “I’m the next martyr” (the word was written in its masculine form, “shaheed,” in Arabic). In fact, as we learned from the testimonies of the police officers during the trial, the publication of this picture was the immediate trigger for the night raid on the poet’s home and her “military style” detention. Police intelligence poorly interpreted this status as a declaration of her intention to carry out an attack. Only after the arrest did officers search through Tatour’s Facebook and find the other publications that are mentioned in the indictment.

 

Tatour explained during both her police interrogations and testimony in court that she, along with many others, shared this profile picture to protest the killing of innocent Palestinians. It was published, for example, after the burning alive of Muhammad Abu Khdeir in Jerusalem in July 2014, and as a response to the police killing of Kheir Hamdan in Kafr Kana (just near Reineh) in November of that year.

 

Palestinian residents of Shuafat stand above the body of Muhammad Abu Khdeir during his funeral. (photo: Activestills)

 

The prosecutor claimed in her summaries that Tatour had lied about the publication date of this picture. As evidence she mentioned that it was found on Tatour’s phone as a file dated just prior to her detention. The police computer expert was asked during cross-examination whether he had checked when Tatour first published the picture. He said he did not know whether there was any way to check it.

 

The defense found the picture on Tatour’s Facebook page, and Facebook itself clearly shows the date of its first publication in July 2014, as she originally claimed. Moreover, the publication of the picture in the context of protests against Abu Khdeir’s murder also shows the context in which Tatour uses the word shaheed as a “martyr” or “victim” of Israeli violence, rather than as an attacker, a subject that has been at the center of much of the trial.

Evidence of discriminatory enforcement

From the beginning of the trial, the defense argued that Tatour’s arrest and trial constituted discriminatory enforcement, while others who had published far more “offensive” material were neither investigated nor tried. In particular, the defense argued that the attitude of the police and the prosecution is biased against the Arab public. However, the prevailing atmosphere in Israeli courts, which view every Arab protesting against the regime as a security risk, makes this claim difficult to prove. It can always be argued that every publication has special circumstances that are taken into account.

 

In an unexpected coincidence, the defense found a golden opportunity to strengthen its argument when Israel’s Culture Minister, Miri Regev, published the exact same video on her Facebook page for which Tatour was indicted, in which she reads “Resist My People, Resist Them.” The minister did so in response to the screening of the video as part of reading Tatour’s trial protocols during solidarity event in Jaffa last August. This is no longer a comparison between various publications, since both Regev and Tatour published the very same video. The rough Hebrew translation added by the minister, as well as the new title of the video (“where do you think this video was screened?”) cannot change the “severity” of the publication, had it really been an offense in the first place.

 

Palestinian hip hop artist Tamer Nafar and Israeli musician Itamar Ziegler perform during a solidarity event for Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, Jaffa, August 31, 2017. (Keren Manor/Activestills.org)

 

Another important detail is the scope of audience reached by the video. The indictment states that up to a few days after Tatour’s detention, her video was viewed 153 times (according to YouTube’s count, which includes some views by the interrogators themselves). In her summary, the prosecutor speaks of the “enormous potential for exposure” of Tatour publications on the Internet. On the other hand, the same video had tens of thousands of views on Regev’s Facebook page. Surprisingly, the minister was neither arrested nor interrogated, and apparently was not even requested to remove the dangerous video.

Evidence rejected and evidence accepted

Attorney Lasky submitted a request to the court to add the two new pieces of evidence to the case. It should have been a simple technical procedure.

 

However, in this specific case, the prosecution is conducting a war of attrition on every detail. After lengthy negotiations, an additional hearing of the trial was scheduled for November 15th to discuss the admissibility of the new evidence. In this hearing, the prosecutor demanded that whoever took the screenshot from Tatour’s Facebook page be cross-examined as a condition for its submission. This meant allowing the prosecutor to interrogate either Tatour herself or her attorney, Haya Abu Warda. Finally, the defense team decided not to agree to such an interrogation, which could have opened the door for the prosecutor to raise additional issues, giving up the opportunity to submit the new evidence.

 

Regarding the video from Regev’s Facebook page, however, the prosecution took a different line. It agreed to submit the video as evidence, if the prosecution would also be allowed to submit other videos from Regev’s Facebook page in which she rails against Tatour and those in solidarity with her. For some reason, it was suddenly possible to submit videos from Facebook without the need to interrogate witnesses. Apparently the prosecutor was convinced that Regev’s incitement against Tatour would affect the judge more than the legal argument of discriminatory enforcement.

Oral summaries after written summaries

The prosecutor used the presentation of the additional evidence for yet another procedural victory. When the testimonies stage came to an end, the prosecutor requested to move to oral summaries, while the defense insisted on its right to submit written summaries. When the judge accepted the defense’s request, the prosecutor requested the opportunity to respond to the defense summaries. She explained that during verbal summaries, she could interrupt the defense’s statement, which would not be possible during written summaries. The judge ignored this unusual request.

 

Now, because of the additional evidence, the judge has scheduled a round of oral summaries to be heard on December 28, after the written summaries are submitted.

 

Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour seen in the Nazareth court, December 20th, 2017. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

 

Legal struggle over house arrest

By now it has been over two years and two months since Tatour’s arrest. Even when she is allowed to leave her house during the day, she must be accompanied at all times by a court-authorized custodian. Under such conditions it is clear that she cannot work or live a normal life.

 

In most cases, the conditions of detention are relieved with the passage of time with the consent of the prosecution. But in Tatour’s case, the prosecution continues to stress the poet’s supposed dangerousness and opposes any relief. In view of the prolonged trial with no clear end date, Lasky filed an application to cancel Tatour’s house arrest. The request was heard on November 20 before Judge Naaman Idris, the same judge who, two years ago, ordered Tatour’s detention until the end of legal proceedings. The hall was full of friends who came to support the poet, hoping that the show of support would encourage the judge rethink the case. The prosecutor repeated her objection to granting Tatour any relief without even bothering to explain.

 

The judge delayed his judgment to December 4th, when he announced his rejection of the request. In order to show that he does not ignore the lengthening of the detention for such a long period of time, he extended the period during which Tatour is allowed to leave the house, to between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m.. Yet she still must be accompanied by a custodian, which means that the relief is only symbolic.

Yoav Haifawi is covering this trial and more on his blog,

 

Free Haifa

 

. A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.

Saudi Arabia says it intercepts Houthi missile fired toward Riyadh, no reported damage

Reuters Staff-DECEMBER 19, 2017

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi air defences intercepted a ballistic missile fired towards the capital Riyadh on Tuesday but there were no reports of casualties, the Saudi-led coalition said, the latest in a series of attacks by an Iran-aligned group in Yemen.

A spokesman for the Houthi movement said a ballistic missile targeted the royal court at al-Yamama palace, where a meeting of Saudi leaders was under way.

There was no official word on this assertion, but a royal family member appeared to confirm the missile was aimed at a royal palace meeting.

“Coalition forces confirm intercepting an Iranian-Houthi missile targeting (the) south of Riyadh. There are no reported casualties at this time,” the government-run Center for International Communication wrote on its Twitter account.

The attack happened hours before Saudi Arabia was due to announce the country’s annual budget in a news conference expected to be attended by senior ministers.

Reuters witnesses described hearing a blast and said they saw smoke in the north-east of Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia said on Nov. 4 it had intercepted a ballistic missile over Riyadh’s King Khaled Airport, in an attack that provoked a strong reaction from the kingdom.

Riyadh accused Iran of smuggling the missile to the Houthis and imposed a blockade on Yemen demanding that united Nations inspection procedures be tightened.

Last week the United States presented for the first time pieces of what it said were Iranian weapons supplied to the Houthis, describing it as conclusive evidence that Tehran was violating U.N. resolutions.

Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional foe, has denied supplying such weaponry to the Houthis who have taken over the Yemeni capital Sanaa and other parts of the country during its civil war.

In Geneva, a U.N. human rights spokesman said air strikes by a Saudi-led military coalition had killed at least 136 civilians and non-combatants in Yemen since December 6.

Cyril Ramaphosa Isn’t South Africa’s Savior

The newly elected leader of the African National Congress is being treated like a messiah. But he might not even win the next election.

Cyril Ramaphosa in a press conference in London on September 25, 2017. (Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images) 

BY EUSEBIUS MCKAISER-

DECEMBER 18, 2017
Many analysts and investors seem to have boundless faith in Cyril Ramaphosa, the newly elected leader of the African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party. Everyone from trade unionists and journalists to currency traders celebrated his victory on Monday. Ramaphosa’s cheerleaders blithely assume that he will both win the presidency in 2019 and deal decisively with the ongoing crises that plague South Africa’s governing party and its government. But such a rosy outlook is foolish.

Ramaphosa is facing a mountain that few could scale successfully. It is crucial to understand the nature of the party that Ramaphosa has inherited to appreciate why his election as Jacob Zuma’s successor does not mean that the ANC or South Africa is soon going to be out of trouble.

Too many observers give Ramaphosa the benefit of the doubt because he is a successful businessman who has amassed enough wealth to not be tempted to dip into the state cookie jars. He is also famously credited for his role as Nelson Mandela’s chief negotiator with the apartheid regime in the tense and violent years of the early 1990s before South Africa’s first democratic elections. Before that, he was a trade union leader. On paper, then, he ought to understand all stakeholders in South Africa’s divided society: the poor, exploited workers, white beneficiaries of apartheid anxious about their place in a new society, as well as unions and the corporate elite. Sadly, his impressive CV does not change the sorry state of the party he has inherited.

For most of this year, South Africans have had to deal with an almost daily diet of news stories that chronicle the extent to which government and private-sector corruption have occurred on a scale so grand that the phrase “state capture” has become part of the national lexicon. As the investigative journalists Pieter-Louis Myburgh and Jacques Pauw have documented, private actors have captured the state with the active assistance of the current president, Jacob Zuma.

While corruption was rampant in previous administrations, the extent of Zuma’s selling of the state silverware to the highest bidders has made the magnitude and impact of the looting on his watch uniquely rapacious. The scandals surrounding the Gupta family, which immigrated to South Africa from India in the 1990s and quickly became suspiciously wealthy and politically well connected, have ranged from alleged influence over the appointment of Cabinet ministers to setting up shell companies that fraudulently funneled billions of rands from state-owned enterprises.

But it’s not just the Gupta family that has corrupted Zuma. As recent revelations have madeclear, there are in fact multiple characters involved in the state capture project, including businessmen such as Roy Moodley — who had Zuma on his payroll for several months after he became president — and companies such as international management consulting firm McKinsey, which is implicated in a massive irregular government contract. Under Zuma, the criminal justice system and law enforcement agencies have been compromised, and intelligence structures have become pawns of warring factions within the ANC. Meanwhile, growing intolerance of the media and nongovernmental organizations is slowly beginning to resemble the authoritarianism of the apartheid era. Simply put, there are signs that one of Africa’s democratic success stories is turning into a mafia state.

This creep toward authoritarianism must be taken seriously. The ANC’s main leadership structure, the National Executive Committee, has been unable to halt the capture of the state. It has not taken the publicly available information about Zuma’s constitutional and political sins and used these as a basis to recall him from power. Instead, it has been left to the courts to constrain the looting in the absence of effective political oversight. This is partly because Zuma has many supporters within the party’s leadership who benefit financially from political proximity to him, and who fear that, under a new leader, their own opportunities for feeding from the state’s trough may come to an end.

The central problem Ramaphosa will face as he takes the helm of the ANC is that the party is so politically damaged that he might find himself becoming the first ANC leader to lose a general election since South Africa became a democracy in 1994. There are just 18 months until the next election, precious little time to reverse the organizational rot that set in during the Zuma years and to demonstrate to voters Ramaphosa’s willingness and ability to undo the current president’s ruinous legacy.

The challenge of slaying Zuma’s ghost will be compounded by the ANC’s peculiar attitude toward collectivism. As a liberation movement, the ANC became addicted to political rhetoric that downplayed the role of individual leaders and celebrated the idea of collective responsibility for everything done and decided by the movement. Even today, everyone in the ANC tends to talk in the passive voice or third person about corruption, never daring to name Zuma explicitly. Deference to the party is so ingrained that few leaders are willing to denounce the sins of their comrades — or their predecessors.

This emphasis on party collectivism will make it much harder for Ramaphosa to distance the party from the Zuma years. As giddy as investors may be about a businessman like Ramaphosa running the country, they should not forget that the systematic erosion of democratic institutions and large-scale corruption will have structural effects that linger for many years. The economy is growing at less than 1 percent annually, unemployment is almost 30 percent (some estimates put it higher than that), and the country remains one of the most unequal societies on the planet. Ramaphosa has no time to put a dent in these data before 2019.

Making matters worse for the new ANC leader, Zuma could remain the president of the country until mid-2019. If Zuma remains head of state while Ramaphosa heads the party, there will be a tug-of-war between the president of the ANC and the president of the country in the short term. No doubt those who have invested in Zuma — like the Gupta family — will now be desperate to loot as much as possible before their friend and patron steps down.

Ramaphosa has little chance of winning the 2019 elections for the ANC if Zuma remains in power until then, and he has so far been silent on the question of whether Zuma should be recalled. That plays into the hands of opposition parties, which have tapped into the frustrations of many ANC supporters by being more blunt about Zuma’s unfitness to rule. The two largest opposition parties — the center-right Democratic Alliance and the populist anti-capitalist Economic Freedom Fighters — will benefit electorally if Zuma isn’t axed before the next election. Meanwhile, competing centers of power — state power versus party power — will itself constitute a serious obstacle to good governance, since political infighting will delay the implementation of good policies that have gathered dust while the looting of the state has continued unabated.

As if these challenges aren’t overwhelming enough to spoil Ramaphosa’s victory lap, there are other obstacles, too. Everyone who supported Ramaphosa will now want a piece of him.

Keeping these competing stakeholders happy, without doing them political or financial favors, will be extremely difficult. He defeated his rival Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (the former chairperson of the African Union Commission and the president’s ex-wife) by less than a 4-percentage-point margin, and some of her allies are now in top leadership positions, including the new deputy president of the ANC, David Mabuza. Ramaphosa is thus surrounded by sharks who will be distrustful of him as they seek to continue their looting of state coffers.

Meanwhile, the trade unionists and communists — who are in an alliance with the ANC — are massively disappointed with President Zuma. He did not make good on his promise of a pro-poor agenda and instead became a looter-in-chief who was used and abused, with his knowledge and consent, by nefarious parasites within and outside the government. The political left therefore cautiously supported Ramaphosa, but their backing was not unequivocal or open-ended. In fact, the South African Communist Party has, for the first time, contested a by-election, rehearsing for participation in the 2019 elections independently of the ANC. This means that Ramaphosa may lead an ANC that has been divorced from the SACP, which has historically been an integral part of the movement.

For all these reasons, Ramaphosa might be wishing that he had been successfully anointed as party leader by Nelson Mandela 18 years ago rather than winning leadership of the ANC today. Back then, he would have inherited an idealistic young democracy mostly untainted by corruption. Now, he will finally lead this once glorious liberation movement, but that victory may yet be pyrrhic.

Amtrak crash: train was going at nearly three times the speed limit

Train was travelling at 80mph in 30mph zone when it derailed south of Seattle, killing at least three people

'There was a lot of metal, a lot of screeching,' says Amtrak crash survivor – video

Daniel Person in DuPont, Washington, and agencies-Tuesday 19 December 2017 08.53 GMT


Seattle on Monday was travelling at almost three times the speed limit for that section of track, according to investigators.

An Amtrak train that hurtled off an overpass south of
Some of the carriages from the train – which had been making its first-ever run along a new, faster route – fell on to the highway below, killing at least three people, injuring dozens and crushing two vehicles, authorities said.

Federal investigators say the train was travelling at 80mph (129km/h) in a 30mph zone. Bella Dinh-Zarr, a National Transportation Safety Board member, said at a news conference on Monday night that the event data recorder in the rear locomotive provided information about the train’s speed.
Dinh-Zarr said it was not yet known what caused the train to derail and that “it’s too early to tell” why it was going so fast. She said it was likely that federal investigators would be on the scene for a week or more.


 Aerial footage shows aftermath of deadly Amtrack derailment near Seattle - video

There were 80 passengers and five on-duty crew on board when the train derailed and 13 carriages fell off the tracks. As well as the three confirmed deaths, more than 70 people needed medical care including 10 with serious injuries.

Aleksander Kristiansen, a 24-year-old passenger from Copenhagen, said he had been in the bathroom when the crash occurred and he had been thrown to the ground. When he stood up, the train was shaking, he said.

“I didn’t believe it happened when it happened,” he said.

Kristiansen, who was in Seattle for an exchange programme, said his train car had stopped on a steep embankment, and that he had got out from the back of the car and helped others out.

First responders spent hours searching the train cars, some of which were not safe to enter as they continued to dangle off the overpass.

The new route, which was built to speed up local services, launched on Monday “after weeks of inspection and testing”, officials said.

A track chart from the Washington state department of transportation shows the maximum speed drops from 79mph to 30mph for passenger trains just before the tracks curve to cross the Interstate 5 highway, which is where the train went off the tracks.

 The chart, dated 7 February 2017, was submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration in anticipation of the start of passenger services along the new bypass route, which shaves 10 minutes off the trip between Seattle and Portland.

The Washington state governor, Jay Inslee, declared a state of emergencyand visited the scene on Monday. He emphasised that the cause of the crash remained unknown.

“There are four things we need to do: express compassion for these families, respect first responders, stay off [Interstate 5] and suspend judgment. No one knows what happened in this incident.”

A few hours after the crash, Donald Trump cited it as a reason to support his infrastructure plan, tweeting: “The train accident that just occurred in DuPont, WA shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly. Seven trillion dollars spent in the Middle East while our roads, bridges, tunnels, railways (and more) crumble! Not for long!”
Ten minutes later, he tweeted: “Thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved.”

Trump talked about rescinding Gorsuch’s nomination

President Trump has announced Judge Neil Gorsuch of Colorado as his pick for the Supreme Court. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

By Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Barnes December 18 at 8:51 PM

For nearly eight months, President Trump has boasted that appointing Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court ranks high among his signature achievements.

But earlier this year, Trump talked about rescinding Gorsuch’s nomination, venting angrily to advisers after his Supreme Court pick was critical of the president’s escalating attacks on the federal judiciary in private meetings with legislators.

Trump, according to several people with knowledge of the discussions, was upset that Gorsuch had pointedly distanced himself from the president in a private February meeting with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), telling the senator he found Trump’s repeated attacks on the federal judiciary “disheartening” and “demoralizing.”

The president worried that Gorsuch would not be “loyal,” one of the people said, and told aides that he was tempted to pull Gorsuch’s nomination — and that he knew plenty of other judges who would want the job.

It is unclear whether Trump’s “explosion,” as another administration official described it, truly put Gorsuch’s nomination in jeopardy or whether the president was expressing his frustration aloud, as he often does. But at the time, some in the White House and on Capitol Hill feared that Gorsuch’s confirmation — which had been shaping up to be one of the clearest triumphs of Trump’s tumultuous young presidency — was on the verge of going awry.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) ushers Neil M. Gorsuch into his office on Feb. 8. Behind Gorsuch is former senator Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.). (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

This account is based on interviews with 11 people familiar with the episode, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Trump was especially upset by what he viewed as Gorsuch’s insufficient gratitude for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court, White House officials said. The judge sent the president a handwritten letter dated March 2, thanking him for the nomination and explaining how grateful he was, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.

“Your address to Congress was magnificent,” Gorsuch wrote. “And you were so kind to recognize Mrs. Scalia, remember the justice, and mention me. My teenage daughters were cheering the TV!”
The reference to “the justice” was to Antonin Scalia, the late justice whom Gorsuch replaced, and “Mrs. Scalia” is his widow, Maureen.

Aides said Trump did not immediately receive the note, but it was retrieved by legislative affairs director Marc Short and then viewed by Trump on March 10, helping ease his concerns.

“As head of legislative affairs, our team was in charge of his nomination, and never did I view his nomination in jeopardy, nor did the president ever suggest to me that he wanted to pull him,” Short said. “The process obviously caused frustration, but that frustration was compounded by the fact that Gorsuch had sent him a personal letter that he never received.”
Gorsuch, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment.

President Trump watches as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch hugs his wife, Marie Louise, moments after Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy administered the judicial oath in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 10. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

“The president’s nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch was among his first and most important accomplishments during his first year in office, and delivered on a major campaign promise,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said in a statement. “At no point did the president consider withdrawing Justice Gorsuch’s nomination. He is very proud of the accomplishment.”

Advisers also told Trump that Gorsuch was trying to demonstrate the independence necessary to make it through the confirmation process and that pulling the nomination would have far-reaching repercussions and might infuriate supporters who were enthusiastic about the conservative jurist.
In April, two months after Trump first expressed his ire, the Senate confirmed Gorsuch on a vote of 54 to 45. Trump and his allies promptly began boasting about the appointment as one of the president’s major achievements.

The incident that so angered Trump came shortly after a federal judge had issued a nationwide stop to the president’s travel ban targeting a list of majority-Muslim countries. At the time, the president disparaged the “so-called judge” on Twitter, writing that the ruling “put our country in such peril.”

“If something happens blame him and court system,” Trump wrote. “People pouring in. Bad!”

Trump had additionally said that a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that held oral arguments to review the judge’s order was “disgraceful” and that the judges cared more about politics than following the law.

Gorsuch, meanwhile, was moving through the confirmation process, doing rounds of courtesy meetings with senators on Capitol Hill — including the one with Blumenthal, which quickly became news after the senator shared their private discussion with reporters.

“I told him how abhorrent Donald Trump’s invective and insults are toward the judiciary,” Blumenthal told The Post in an interview. “And he said to me that he found them ‘disheartening’ and ‘demoralizing’ — his words.”

Ron Bonjean, a member of the group guiding Gorsuch through the confirmation process, confirmed the account at the time.

 The remarks angered the president, who attacked Blumenthal on Twitter, saying the senator misrepresented Gorsuch’s comments. But at the time, at least, he also felt that Gorsuch himself was being disloyal.

In a meeting with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Trump attacked the judge in sharp terms, surprising his fellow Republicans.

“He’s probably going to end up being a liberal like the rest of them,” Trump told the Republican leaders, according to a person with knowledge of the comments. “You never know with these guys.”

A senior White House official who was in the room during the meeting disputed that characterization, saying the president is concerned about the judicial outlook of all lifetime nominees.

But McConnell was so concerned that he made a point of repeatedly telling Trump to stay the course on Gorsuch — and that he would make sure the judge made it through the confirmation process with as few hiccups as possible.

“It’s clear [Trump] was very upset with the comment” by Gorsuch, said someone familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.

The person added that he largely faults the White House for failing to adequately prepare Trump for Gorsuch’s comments and to explain that Supreme Court nominees asserting their independence from the president who appointed them was a natural part of a successful confirmation process.

In fact, establishing Gorsuch’s independence from Trump was so important that it was the subject of the first question he was asked by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a fervent Gorsuch supporter. “Tell us whether you’d have any trouble ruling against the president who appointed you,” Grassley said at the time.

“That’s a softball, Mr. Chairman,” Gorsuch replied. “I have no difficulty ruling against or for any party, other than based on what the law and the facts and the particular case require. And I’m heartened by the support I have received from people who recognize that there’s no such thing as a Republican judge or a Democratic judge. We just have judges in this country.”

Despite Trump’s early concerns, Gorsuch’s young tenure has given the president little reason to question his appointment to the Supreme Court. If anything, the justice — who has emerged as one of the court’s most conservative members — has been criticized for not distancing himself enough from both the president and the Republican Senate leaders who championed his nomination through the highly partisan confirmation process.

Gorsuch traveled to Kentucky with McConnell to lecture at the senator’s two alma maters. One of his first public speeches was to a conservative scholarship organization that held its luncheon meeting at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, the subject of a lawsuit alleging that payments to Trump’s companies violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

Gorsuch also was the featured speaker at the annual black-tie gala of the Federalist Society, which had recommended him to Trump for the Supreme Court, telling the cheering crowd that neither originalism nor textualism “is going anywhere on my watch.”

In April, Trump bragged to the National Rifle Association that Gorsuch “is really something very special” and in June told the Faith and Freedom Coalition that no president had accomplished more in their first 100 days, citing Gorsuch as a key achievement.

“I appointed and confirmed a Supreme Court justice in the mold of the late, great Antonin Scalia,” he said, “and now Justice Gorsuch has a seat on the United States Supreme Court.”

In his March note to Trump, Gorsuch was similarly effusive.

“The team you have assembled to assist me in the Senate is remarkable and inspiring,” he wrote. “I see daily their love of country and our Constitution, and know it is a tribute to you and your leadership for policy is always about personnel.”

He concluded, “Congratulations again on such a great start.”

Emerging market confidence in the UK

Rising import prices have driven inflation to its highest for 5 years. The Bank of England expects inflation to start falling from the November Consumer Price Inflation of 3.1 %.

by Victor Cherubim-Dec 19, 2017

(December 19, 2017, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) With every New Year, most businesses in the UK start off with the premise that the uncertainty of the past year will usher in a new era of growth and development. But the response of UK businesses to the issues raised by Brexit, is that they are rearranging their geographical operations in reaction to the potential changes in trade or really an increase in protectionism.

Managing today is as much a concern for preparing for tomorrow. Researchers maintain that UK confidence is set to increase in 2018 as UK assets continue to be attractive to overseas buyers.

London property market

It is a smokescreen that there is a slump in the property market in London. Overseas
Property buyers are confidently snapping up London property as the domestic buyers have felt the uncertainty after the Brexit tug of war.

The fall in sterling in relation to the Euro and the dollar is seen by investors as a buying opportunity. When asked: “Will you delay buying in London because of Brexit, most European buyers, for that matter Chinese and Singaporean buyers seem to say: “Nothing in certain any more. We cannot put our life on hold until 2022”.

It appears there is increasing concern over the stability of the Euro, the difficulty of Chancellor Angela Merkel forming a coalition, the uncertainty of affairs in United States; the UK may be on the minds of the wealthy families in Europe.

Perhaps, the only certainty being that President Donald Trump, will not want to support another Republican like in Alabama, for fear of letting in more Democrats to control the Senate in election year 2018.

London Estate Agents feel confident that after the recent trade deal with the EU, some of the wealthy families of particularly France and Italy are looking to put their money in London. For many, Brexit has cooled down. Theresa May has at least for the time being stood up to the bureaucracy of Brussels and restored confidence. For many the future is approaching faster than anyone anticipated.

Economic confidence

Economic confidence.comes we are told, with an acknowledgement of increasing risks.

Corporate venture capital investments are used more and more by UK companies. “Currently 68% of UK CVC’s as compared with the global average of 49% were able to access new capabilities and technologies and a faster route to market.”

Corporate VC’s participated in $13 billion funding access in 798 deals in a single quarter of 2017. According to Industry Analytics the UK is able to track high growth areas, track competitor activity and predict private market trends for 2018.

Barclays Corporate states, “Venture Capital is so important to UK economy. It is vital in driving growth. It is one of the most important sources of funding in the UK economy.” This is happening in part according to Barclays because the technology on which innovation relies is now cheaper and more accessible. “It has never been less expensive to start a software company,” explains Will Bowmer, M.D. Barclays International, based in Silicon Valley.

Employment and unemployment

The number of people in work remains according to the FT close to record levels. “It may be providing a tentative sign that the country’s job boom may be losing momentum”.

The unemployment rate has tumbled over the past four years from 8% in 2013 to a 40 year low of 4.3 % in November 2017.But the pace of decline has slowed.

Rising Import prices

Rising import prices have driven inflation to its highest for 5 years. The Bank of England expects inflation to start falling from the November Consumer Price Inflation of 3.1 %.

It may be too early to state that in the aftermath of the current trade talks with the EU days ago, the expectation is that consumer confidence may bounce back.

UK is resilient

Managing today is as much a concern for preparing for tomorrow. With the above litany of confidence building measures, there is expectation that 2018 will be an economically strategic year for the United Kingdom. But the new reality in the market place is no options are off the table, similar to Brexit negotiations.