Senate passes stopgap spending bill, allowing Congress to avert partial government shutdown

Vice President Pence spoke to American service members at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, on Dec. 21.(The Washington Post)

By Mike DeBonis and Erica Werner December 21 at 7:14 PM

Congress passed a stopgap spending bill Thursday, averting a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday but pushing into January showdowns on spending, immigration, health care and national security.

Among the issues still to be resolved is federal aid for victims of recent hurricanes and wildfires. The House on Thursday passed a separate $81 billion disaster relief bill, but the Senate did not immediately take it up amid Democratic objections.

The stopgap extends federal funding through Jan. 19 and provides temporary extensions of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which has languished politically since it expired in October, a veterans health-care program and a warrantless surveillance program set to expire Jan. 1.

“It is essential that Congress maintain government programs and services for our nation’s stability, the stability of our economy, and for the security and well-being of the American people,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) said Friday on the House floor, urging lawmakers to support the stopgap.

It passed the House 231 to 188 and cleared the Senate 66 to 32. Thursday’s congressional votes are expected to be the last of 2017.

President Trump with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Vice President Pence, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Wednesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The votes came after House GOP leaders scrambled Wednesday and Thursday to gather votes to keep the government open, seeking to defuse intraparty squabbling that erupted just hours after Republicans passed a landmark tax overhaul Wednesday.

Between assurances from House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), pressure from President Trump to avoid a shutdown and the impending holidays, most GOP lawmakers agreed to set aside their misgivings.

“The fact of the matter is, it’s Christmas, and we don’t need to be shutting the government down. I mean, that’s a horrible optic,” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-Tex.), who said he was dismayed by the lack of long-term military funding but supported the stopgap.

But some frustrations lingered. While many House Republicans burst into applause after passing the short-term spending measure, not everyone saw cause for celebration.

“That we’re clapping for a three-week CR just basically shows we can’t do appropriations, we can’t take care of our constituents back home, we just have to punt for three more weeks so we can leave for Christmas,” said Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.), a member of the Appropriations Committee who has pushed for federal aid for citrus growers devastated by hurricanes. “For some reason, that justifies applause. I don’t get it. I don’t get this place.”

Advocates of increased military spending fumed after House GOP leaders abandoned a plan to attach a defense bill directing more than $600 billion to warfighters through September. Instead, the stopgap spending plan is offering only temporary funding at current levels, save for a $5 billion emergency increase to repair damaged warships and beef up ballistic missile defense systems.

[The tax bill is likely to become more popular after passage]


What happens during a government shutdown? (Joyce Koh/The Washington Post)

Leaving a House Republican conference meeting Wednesday evening, Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.) said he was “bitterly disappointed” by the move and would not support any stopgap that did not make the Pentagon whole. But on Thursday, he and other defense hawks said they had been persuaded to support the stopgap after receiving assurances from Ryan.

“He’s going to take a strong position for defense” in upcoming spending negotiations with Democrats, said Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Another tricky issue for House Republicans involved the extension of a program used by U.S. intelligence agencies to collect electronic communications of foreign spy targets on U.S. soil. National security officials warn that the loss of the program Jan. 1 could harm their ability to protect the country; civil liberties advocates, including members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, want the program to be overhauled and resisted a long-term extension.

But the group’s chairman, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), said Thursday that its members would stand down after GOP leaders promised a full debate next month on a stand-alone bill to reauthorize the program, known as Section 702.

Trump urged lawmakers to pass the stopgap in a tweet Thursday morning that accused Democrats of forcing a showdown to distract from the tax bill.

“Pass the C.R. TODAY and keep our Government OPEN!” he wrote, referring to a “continuing resolution,” the technical term for the stopgap.

[10 reasons Democrats think the tax bill will be a political loser for Trump’s GOP in the midterms]

Senate Democrats, who have the ability to block any spending bill if they stick together, waited Thursday to see whether House Republicans could manage to send a bill to the other chamber. Aides of both parties had warned that if the House did not act, the Senate could send the chamber a spending bill of its own that could include measures that House conservatives would find distasteful.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that Democrats would agree only to a short-term measure as long as broader disputes about spending, immigration and more remain unresolved.

“We’re not going to allow things like disaster relief to go forward without discussing some of these other issues we care about,” he said. “We have to solve these issues together.”

But Democrats have split over how far to push for legislation that includes their key priorities — most of all, legislation granting legal status and a path to citizenship for immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, known as “dreamers.” Activists and many lawmakers have said they are willing to force a shutdown unless the issue is addressed.

In a stark display of the divide among Democrats about how to proceed, more than a dozen members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus marched from the House floor to Schumer’s office across the U.S. Capitol on Thursday afternoon, demanding to see the Democratic leader.

Members of the caucus said they wanted to pressure Schumer and Democratic senators to withhold support for the spending bill unless Republicans commit to holding votes on legislation providing permanent legal protections to dreamers.

Emerging from the meeting, caucus members said Schumer assured them that more Democratic senators would vote against the spending bill than the 14 who did so two weeks ago, the last time Congress temporarily extended government funding.

Several people who attended the meeting, granted anonymity to describe what was expected to be a private exchange, said Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) — arguably the most outspoken Democrat on immigration matters — unloaded on Schumer, accusing him and Democratic senators of not caring about the fate of dreamers and “throwing them under the bus” in the ongoing spending debate with Republicans, participants said.

In response, Schumer raised his voice, telling Gutiérrez not to insult fellow Democrats.
Gutiérrez shot back, telling Schumer: “Don’t raise your voice.”

In a signal of growing frustrations, 29 Senate Democrats voted to oppose the stopgap. Only seven opposed the previous stopgap passed Dec. 7.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) testified at a House Rules Committee hearing Thursday morning, advocating for the inclusion of language that would grant legal status to dreamers, as well as a comprehensive spending agreement that would raise spending on both defense and nondefense programs.

Without those, they said, Democrats would not be able to support the stopgap.

“Unless we see a respect for our values and priorities, we continue to urge a strong NO on the Continuing Resolution,” Pelosi said in a letter to House Democrats on Wednesday.

As a result, House Republican leaders were under major pressure to assemble enough GOP votes to pass the measure.

[What the Republican tax bill actually does]

The disaster bill, meanwhile, hung by a thread Thursday. Republican leaders sought Democratic votes, inserting provisions late Wednesday directing additional funding to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in response to Democratic leaders’ demands.

Democrats indicated that it would not be enough, pointing to various tax and spending provisions.
Disaster funding “may have to slip to next year,” Schumer said. “I think we can work it out in a bipartisan way, I certainly do, but just jamming it through without consulting us and not being fair to so many other parts of the country doesn’t make sense.”

[One potential loser in the new GOP tax bill: Puerto Rico]

Another controversial provision was also added to the House stopgap Wednesday: a measure waiving mandatory cuts to entitlement programs forced by the passage of the tax bill.

The tax bill slashed revenue by nearly $1.5 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, adding to the federal deficit. That impact triggers a 2010 law that makes automatic spending cuts to Medicare and other programs if lawmakers increase the deficit.

Democrats opposed the GOP tax bill in part because they said it was fiscally irresponsible, and some said they would not help Republicans by passing the waiver — particularly as many Republicans have vowed to target deep spending cuts to social welfare programs next year. But Democrats — who are typically fiercely opposed to any reductions in Medicare, which would see roughly $25 billion in cuts per year — did not object Thursday.

In the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a fierce advocate for lower federal spending, accused his fellow Republicans of reneging on calls to cut spending and forced a separate vote on the waiver.
“We have a spending problem,” Paul said on the Senate floor, urging colleagues to vote it down. “We have rules to keep spending in check, and we disobey our own rules.”

The waiver passed 91 to 8, averting the mandatory cuts.

Ed O’Keefe and Damian Paletta contributed to this report.

Ex-Trump adviser Carter Page accused academics who twice failed his PhD of bias

• Page’s ‘verbose’ and ‘vague’ thesis was failed twice at University of London
• Compared treatment to Russian oligarch sent to Siberian prison by Putin

Carter Page quit the Trump campaign amid controversy over a July 2016 visit to Moscow. He has been under investigation over alleged connections with Russian officials. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

Luke Harding and Stephanie Kirchgaessner-Fri 22 Dec ‘17 06.00 GMT

Carter Page, Donald Trump’s former foreign policy adviser, accused his British examiners of “anti-Russian bias” after they took the highly unusual step of failing his “verbose” and “vague” PhD thesis, not once but twice.

Page was a little-known oil consultant who lived and worked in Moscow when he joined Trump’s campaign in March 2016. The then-candidate named Page as one of five foreign policy advisers, calling him “Carter Page PhD” in a meeting with the Washington Post’s editorial board.

In fact, Page took three attempts to gain his doctorate from the University of London, finally succeeding in 2011.

In emails seen by the Guardian, Page compares his decade-long struggle to get a postgraduate qualification to the ordeal suffered by Mikhail Khodorkovsy – the Russian oligarch sent to a Siberian prison by Vladimir Putin.

In one unhappy note to his examiners, he writes: “Your actions to date have been far more destructive than anything I have personally experienced in my 39 years on this planet.” The fate of Khodorkovsky, he adds, represents “the closest analogy in recent history to my trials”.

Page eventually quit the Trump campaign amid controversy over a July 2016 visit to Moscow, and he has been under investigation over alleged connections with Russian officials.

Page first submitted his thesis on central Asia’s transition from communism to capitalism in 2008. Two respected academics, Professor Gregory Andrusz, and Dr Peter Duncan, were asked to read his thesis and to examine him in a face-to-face interview known as a viva.

Andrusz said he had expected it would be “easy” to pass Page, a student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas). He said it actually took “days and days” to wade through Page’s work. Page “knew next to nothing” about social science and seemed “unfamiliar with basic concepts like Marxism or state capitalism,” the professor said.

The viva, held at University College, London, went badly. “Page seemed to think that if he talked enough, people would think he was well-informed. In fact it was the reverse,” Andrusz said. He added that Page was “dumbfounded” when the examiners told him he had failed.

Their subsequent report was withering. It said Page’s thesis was “characterised by considerable repetition, verbosity and vagueness of expression”, failed to meet the criteria required for a PhD, and needed “substantial revision”. He was given 18 months to produce another draft.

Page resubmitted in November 2010. Although this essay was a “substantial improvement” it still didn’t merit a PhD and wasn’t publishable in a “learned journal of international repute”, Andrusz noted. When after a four-hour interview, the examiners informed him he had failed again, Page grew “extremely agitated”.

“He accused us of bias in our assessment of his work on the grounds that we were anti-Russian and anti-American. Actually, we are both old Moscow hands. We remain neutral and let the facts speak for themselves,” Andrusz said.

Duncan said Page’s accusation was unjustified. “I started learning Russian more than 50 years ago, and have made more than 30 visits to Russia, from 1967 up to my most recent one this summer,” he said.

After this second encounter, Andrusz and Duncan both resigned as Page’s examiners. In a letter to Soas, they said it would be “inappropriate” for them to carry on following Page’s “accusation of bias” and his apparent attempts to browbeat them. Andrusz said he was stunned when he discovered Page had joined Trump’s team.

Soas refuses to identify the academics who eventually passed Page’s PhD thesis, citing data protection rules.

In a statement, Soas said it had “proper and robust procedures for the award of PhDs”. It added: “All theses are examined by international experts in their field and are passed only where they meet appropriate high academic standards.”

Meanwhile, Andrusz said he was mystified as to why Page tried to pursue an academic career. The FBI, which is currently investigating allegations of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow, reportedly bugged Page’s communications in 2016. The Bureau suspected Page of being a Russian agent. He denies this.

“Carter Page wanted to become a rich man. He hinted at having contacts in high places in Russia who were his informants,” Andrusz observed. The professor – who taught at Middlesex and Birmingham universities – said during his three decades as a lecturer he failed just one PhD student twice: Page.
Page worked for the investment bank Merrill Lynch in Moscow, before returning to New York in 2008 to set up an oil and gas consultancy.

According to the dossier by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, Page held several secret meetings in Russia. One was with Igor Sechin, Putin’s de facto deputy, and the CEO of the state oil company Rosneft. Another was with a presidential aide, who hinted that the Kremlin held compromising material on Trump.

For more than a year Page denied contact with Russian officials. In November, however, he told the House intelligence committee that he did speak briefly with Russia’s deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich in Moscow. He knew nothing of Kremlin hacking, he said. Page admitted meeting Andrey Baranov, the head of Rosneft’s investor relations, in a bar. He said he didn’t encounter Sechin.

In evidence to the committee, Page added that his thesis wasn’t published as a book because of “a sort of anti-Soviet Union, anti-Russian sentiment” from academic publishers.

Asked about claims he accused his examiners of prejudice, Page told the Guardian : “I have infinitely more important things to think about today. You’re asking me about ancient, irrelevant history, which I can neither confirm nor deny.

He added: “Have good one.”

Peace and Justice for All

Even without the use of nuclear bombs, our so-called conventional weapons, including napalm and depleted uranium, wreaked havoc on Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Serbia, Vietnam and North Korea. We had little understanding of their histories and cultures, their fears and their needs.

by Ron Forthofer-Dec 20, 2017

( December 20, 2017, Texas, Sri Lanka Guardian) Unfortunately, the hope for peace and justice on earth and goodwill to all seems to be receding with each passing year. US politicians, particularly the neo-cons and neo-libs in Washington DC, seem to respond with a bah, humbug to this desire. These neo-folks, like other Americans, are people who have not directly experienced the ravages, destruction and killing of war here and are thus all too quick to ignore diplomacy. Instead they resort to the military in response to challenges, whether they are real or manufactured.

There are a number of potential flash points where, if the situation is mishandled, the potential for widespread death and devastation is present. In a few cases, the potential conflict could go nuclear. North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, the South China Sea, and along the Russian border with Eastern Europe are areas of particular concern. Making matters worse, these neo-folks also act as if they don’t understand that the use of only a small portion of the nuclear weapons on earth could kill tens-to-hundreds of millions, further destabilize the climate and imperil the world’s food supply.

Even without the use of nuclear bombs, our so-called conventional weapons, including napalm and depleted uranium, wreaked havoc on Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Serbia, Vietnam and North Korea. We had little understanding of their histories and cultures, their fears and their needs. Instead, the leaders of these nations were portrayed as being evil and this portrayal magically made horrific US war crimes against civilians acceptable.

Apparently we, the U.S. public, long ago reached the point that widespread killing of the other became so acceptable that it didn’t even warrant discussion. According to J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atomic bomb), before the approval of the use of the atomic bomb, Secretary of War Henry Stimson struggled with the moral issues raised by WWII and expressed dismay at the “appalling” lack of conscience and compassion ushered in by the war. Stimson stated that he was disturbed by the “complacency, the indifference, and the silence with which we greeted the mass bombings in Europe, and, above all, Japan.”

After the initial use of atomic weapons, Admiral William Leahy, effectively Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, commented: “It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan … My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

In 1948 General Omar Bradley said: “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”

Our devaluation of diplomacy is reflected in our lack of ambassadors in many of these nations that we portray as enemies. This lack of diplomatic representation makes it difficult to enter into discussions or negotiations. Additionally, we tend to view things only from our perspective and this reduces the chance for success of any negotiation.

If we are indeed serious about achieving peace and justice on earth and extending goodwill to all, we must first accept that those opposed to our policies are fellow human beings. They are not lesser beings. The Golden Rule, treat others as you wish to be treated, must apply to these other people.

The other have the same human rights as we do and the same desire to provide a good life for their families. This includes having food, housing, jobs, sanitation and a safe water supply, health care, a clean environment, educational opportunities and electricity.

We must also stress diplomacy first and understand that compromise is not a dirty word. We cannot demand that the other comply with what we say. We need to try to understand why the other has taken its position.

In addition, we must reduce our military spending, particularly on weapons that don’t work or are not necessary. The US spending on the military and its related areas dwarf the combined military spending of nations labeled as our enemies. Instead of spending on destructive weapons, spend on programs that are constructive and increase our security — the items listed above.

Perhaps then we can finally achieve true peace, justice and goodwill to all.

Ron Forthofer is a retired professor of biostatistics from the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston and was a Green Party candidate for Congress and also for governor of Colorado.

Political space shrinking in Singapore through ‘creative repression’ of activists

Jolovan Wham and other activists conduct a silent protest on Singapore's MRT to commemorate 30 years since the detention of 22 activists under the under the Internal Security Act in 1987. Wham now faces charges of organising public assembly without a police permit and vandalism. Source: Human Rights Watch

By Max Walden | 22nd December 2017 | @maxwalden

“KILL the chicken to scare the monkeys” is a Chinese idiom, referring to punish one person as an example to others. It is a phrase commonly used as an analogy for the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party.

Political space shrinking in Singapore through ‘creative repression’ of activists.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Agency Alleges Fraud in Arms Industry

The country’s war on graft is far from over.

An activist wears a mask depicting Ukraine's President during an opposition rally in front of the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev on October 22. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images) 

BY ASKOLD KRUSHELNYCKY-DECEMBER 21, 2017, 2:10 PM

Ukraine’s embattled anti-corruption commission has been investigating wrongdoing in the state-run defense production enterprise, a consortium of around 130 companies with close ties to the country’s president, according to documents and interviews.

The country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, an independent law-enforcement agency formed at the behest of the United States and European Union, and partly trained by the FBI, was targeted by a government campaign earlier this month intended to wipe out its independence. While the bureau survived, its investigations into UkrOboronProm, a sprawling concern with 80,000 employees, could put it back in the crosshairs.

These latest allegations come amid a decision by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to allow the export of lethal equipment to Ukraine, which is fighting Russia-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas region of the country. The State Department on Wednesday confirmed that it approved a commercial sale of sniper rifles and associated equipment to Ukraine.

Yet even as Ukraine obtains Western military equipment, its own defense industry remains mired in corruption.
A 2017 report written by the anti-corruption bureau, and provided to Foreign Policy, alleges that officials at UkrOboronProm siphoned off funds from a $39 million contract to supply parts for Antonov AN-32 aircraft to the Iraqi defense ministry.

UkrOboronProm, which has been trying to make inroads into the Western arms market, is often singled out as a prominent example of corruption that hurts Ukraine’s relationship with its most important supporters, and critics blame it for harming Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russian-backed forces in the east.

The documents show that the anti-corruption bureau was looking into two executives at UkrSpecExport, the concern’s export arm, and an Indian citizen living in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, who allegedly transferred around $6 million to the bank account of a company, called Paramount General Trading, in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE-based company was supposed to acquire the spare parts, however, an investigation found that the company did not supply anything, and the parts were furnished from existing UkrOboronProm stock.

The bureau concludes the “bank accounts were used … by UkrSpecExport officials for acts of corruption in connection with laundering of criminally obtained money.”

Efforts to to reach the individuals implicated in the fraud allegations were unsuccessful. Questions relayed through UkrOboronProm’s press office went unanswered.

The anti-corruption bureau’s report states that detectives discovered some of the money from Paramount General Trading’s account was transferred to various other companies and bank accounts. For instance, a $140,000 payment was made to a Wells Fargo bank account belonging to a company called Aragon International Petroleum, whose beneficial owner was the daughter of one of the UkrSpecExport executives, according to the documents.

FP contacted five companies operating under the name Paramount General Trading in the UAE; all denied any connection to the executives named in the documents, or to the contract.

The report states the daughter had another account at ABN AMRO Bank in the Netherlands, which also received $140,000. The anti-corruption bureau’s detectives suspected that funds were also transferred to another of the executive’s daughters, who is a U.S. citizen.

FP was not able to reach the daughters for comment.

The anti-corruption bureau earlier this year wrote to the criminal division of the Office of International Affairs of the U.S. Department of Justice requesting assistance in the investigation, according to documents reviewed by FP.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined to comment.

UkrOboronProm spokeswoman Roksolana Sheiko said many of the corruption allegations are part of the Kremlin’s hybrid war propaganda offensive against Ukraine. She admitted that the Iraqi spare parts contract was investigated by police and the prosecutor general’s office but said “there was no violation detected by the company or its officials.”

Sheiko said that the company has worked to counter corruption and instill transparency and will be cooperating with Transparency International to solidify reforms. She said UkrOboronProm had dismissed many suspected wrongdoers and reported 158 suspect episodes.

“We don’t deny that not everyone works to the highest standards and in a spirit of patriotism but that’s the minority and they won’t last long on our team,” she wrote.

The presidential administration did not respond to a list of questions FP submitted but replied with a general statement. “The accusations you mention are the part of a hybrid/information warfare against Ukraine and, in the vast majority, are not true,” the administration replied in a written statement. “The spreading of these accusations is beneficial for the critics of the President in Ukraine and for Ukroboronprom’s competitors in foreign markets.”

This is not the first time the anti-corruption bureau has targeted Ukraine’s corruption-riddled arms industry. Earlier this year the bureau’s head, Artem Sytnik, announced his office was investigating a slew of corruption cases at the state-run enterprise.

Investigators in July exposed a scam at an UkrOboronProm tank repair facility in the western city of Lviv where reconditioned engines instead of new ones were installed in 40 tanks being upgraded. The plant’s director and two high-ranking army officers were arrested.

That hit a raw nerve at the presidential administration, because Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, appointed two former business partners to key positions at UkrOboronProm.

Despite coming to power in 2014 on a pledge to root out corruption, a main cause of the revolution that ousted his pro-Kremlin predecessor, Poroshenko has been accused by politicians, civil society activists, and key foreign supporters of Ukraine of failing to make good on his promises.

Critics accuse Poroshenko of preventing effective action against corruption and prolonging the dominance of a monopolistic kleptocratic oligarchy that feels itself above the law and has a stranglehold on Ukraine’s political system. A billionaire businessman himself, he has been accused of shielding fellow oligarchs, including his own close associates.

The International Monetary Fund and others providing billions of dollars in financial assistance have made funding contingent on implementing anti-corruption reforms. The bureau’s ability to operate unfettered by political red tape became a benchmark of whether the government was pursuing its commitments.

But the bureau’s investigations rattled and infuriated many important business and political figures — and Poroshenko’s allies.

The president’s supporters in parliament voted earlier this month to remove the head of the anti-corruption committee, Yegor Sobolev, an outspoken backer of the bureau. Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, Yuri Lutsenko — another Poroshenko appointee — then accused the bureau of corruption, prompting an outcry from Western officials.

“It serves no purpose for Ukraine to fight for its body in Donbas if it loses its soul to corruption. Anti-corruption institutions must be supported, resourced, and defended,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.

“I can’t remember a more strident criticism in the history of our country than the one from Tillerson,” said Oleksiy Skrypnyk, a member of parliament from Ukraine’s Self-Reliance Party, which Sobolev also belongs to. “This administration is clearly saying that the U.S. cannot tolerate the situation.”
Skrypnyk, the deputy chairman of Ukraine’s Permanent Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, has lobbied the United States to supply Ukraine with sophisticated Javelin anti-tank missiles, but said he believes the U.S. government has blocked the export because of concerns that some of the weapons would be illicitly sold to Russia.

The United States, Skrypnyk said, needs to tell Ukraine, “‘Guys, if you want sophisticated weapons, you have to make changes [corruption reform] so that we know where the weapons go. Make the changes and you’ll get a lot more.’”

In an interview with FP in Washington, D.C.,  Yevhenii Yenin, Ukraine’s deputy prosecutor general, acknowledged that the pace of efforts to fight corruption has been slow but argued that reform takes time. “The expectations for new anti-corruption bodies are often very exaggerated,” he said. “The scale of corruption is so huge that’s impossible to overcome this issue in one day or one year.”

He said thousands of people in the corruption-infested judicial system, including judges, have to be replaced, but sacking up to 10,000 people for the sake of show and trying to replace them swiftly with qualified personnel is impractical.

“When we started our task, it was like trying to completely dismantle a car and to keep it going at the same time,” he said. “Explain to me how that’s possible?”

In the meantime, the government has backed away from its attempts to kneecap the anti-corruption bureau, but the agency’s spokeswoman, Darya Manzhura, wonders whether it’s just a temporary reprieve.

Manzhura said that the anti-corruption bureau can only perform its work effectively if the government delivered on a promise to create a specialized anti-corruption court staffed by respected judges trusted to resist political pressure, bribes, and threats. Poroshenko has so far stalled on creating such courts.

“The importance of the anti-corruption court is to show people that a precedent can be set of investigating suspects, bringing them before a court, securing convictions, and punishing them,” Manzhura said.

Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukrainian nongovernmental organization the Anti-Corruption Action Center, said it was vital to have a separate law-enforcement agency like the National Anti-Corruption Bureau that has powers to investigate activities of state companies “like this monster we call UkrOboronProm.”

But for now, even the future of Ukraine’s anti-corruption investigators remains precarious.
The efforts to dismantle the National Anti-Corruption Bureau are “an attempt to reverse some of the positive reforms in the field of corruption,” Kaleniuk said. “We won the fight this month, but it doesn’t mean that we’ve won the war.”

Homelessness – the young people with nowhere to call home this Christmas

By Symeon Brown-21 DEC 2017

It’s the longest night of the year: four days before Christmas when many people are beginning to head home for the holidays. But for thousands of young people living rough on the streets or with nowhere secure to live: there is no home. In the latest in our series on Britain’s homeless Symeon Brown has been talking to some of the young people with nowhere to go this Christmas.

Shingles vaccine 'has cut cases by a third' in England

SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYImage captionShingles causes a nasty, painful rash and can lead to complications in older people

By Philippa RoxbyHealth -22 December 2017

Cases of shingles have reduced by 35% in England since a vaccine was offered to 70-year-olds, Public Health England says.

But it is urging more people in their 70s to get their free injection against the painful condition.

They are most at risk of shingles and more likely to develop complications, such as severe nerve pain.

Shingles is caused by the reactivation of the chicken pox virus and results in a nasty skin rash and fever.

The vaccine programme started in England in 2013 and 5.5m people were eligible for the free single injection over the first three years.

A report in the Lancet Journal of Public Health on how much difference the jab has made between 2013 and 2016 found that roughly 17,000 GP visits for shingles had been avoided.

And another 3,300 consultations were avoided for one of the main complications of shingles - post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) or long-term pain.

'Nasty disease'

From the data collected, PHE estimate that the vaccine is 62% effective against shingles and between 70-88% effective against PHN.

Despite the reduction in shingles cases, however, the numbers taking up the offer of the vaccine have gone down slightly since 2013.

Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisations at Public Health England, encouraged all those eligible to make an appointment at their GP practice to get the shingles vaccine.

"It's the best way to avoid this very nasty disease and the long-term complications that can develop from having it," she said.

"Our population is aging and the risk from getting shingles and complications is higher as you get older.

"Immunisation is the best way to protect yourself from this painful, sometimes debilitating condition."

More than 50,000 cases of shingles occur in people aged 70 years and over each year in England and Wales - and around 50 cases are fatal.

Who can have the shingles vaccination?

• All those aged 70, or at 78 as part of a catch-up option
• Also, anyone who missed out up until their 80th birthday
• The shingles vaccine is not available on the NHS if you are aged 80 or over

See if you are eligible for the shingles vaccine here

What is shingles?

• It is a form of the chicken pox virus which has been hiding in the body and been reactivated
• Symptoms are a skin rash on one side of the body, sharp stabbing pain and burning of the skin, headache and fever
• It can last for two to four weeks and be very debilitating
• Shingles can sometimes lead to complications, including severe nerve pain lasting for several months or more
• It is not contagious, but it is possible to catch chickenpox from someone with shingles if you haven't had chickenpox before

More on shingles from the NHS here

Thousands got killed or went missing in both Sinhala and Tamil insurrections

Dr. Vickramabahu Karunaratne-2017-12-21

They sat in the baking sun: Sometimes through the cold of the night facing dangers, amid the dust and pollution of the roadside. For approximately twenty years, family members of those who disappeared during and after Sri Lanka's civil war in the South have been protesting continuously at various locations across the country. Now less and less people come. May be parents have died or they are satisfied with compensations. At the same time, the civil war in the North and the same suffering or more, spread into the Tamil homeland too.

In the first case Sinhala youth under the guidance of Sinhala chauvinist political parties attacked everybody who wanted to resolve the Tamil national problem. Of course they did not attack Tamil politicians but went against pro-devolution Sinhala activists including popular politicians such as Vijaya Kumaratunga and Deva Bandara Senaratne. Mass repression followed and over 40,000 - forty thousand – disappeared and families of the disappeared organized protests as described above. There were petitions in support of them, taken to HR commissions in Geneva.

In the mean time Tamil freedom fighters were able to capture power in many parts of the Tamil homeland. Even the Indian Army failed to arrest their progress. They assassinated many Sinhala and Tamil politicians; some who supported Tamil freedom. They had the power to assassinate Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Then with the support of world powers including of course India, Sri Lankan armed forces were able to repress the Tamil insurrection. That was a disaster with many disappearances. Families of the disappeared in the Tamil areas too were organized by the human rights organizations and they claim around 150,000 - hundred and fifty thousand - are missing. The protestors on both sides are seeking answers as to the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones, many of whom were disappeared, during the repressive wars, including after being taken into the custody of the Sri Lankan state authorities in its final stages and immediate aftermaths 1988-1989 and 2008-2009.

In order to obtain those answers, they are calling for the release of information that could provide vital clues. In particular, they want the Sri Lankan Government to release a list, known to have been kept by the authorities, of all those who surrendered or were detained by the security forces during and after the wars.

This demand, along with four others, was issued by Tamil protestors at a meeting with President Maithripala Sirisena in June of this year. Apparently it was met by a pledge from the President that he would take immediate action to secure the release of the records.

He has made similar promises to Sinhala protesters too. Meanwhile, the protestors – mostly Tamil mothers – still continue their fight. Organizers have produced a series of info graphics detailing the locations of the protests and the number of days occupied at each. They claim, already the longest running of these will have surpassed the half-year mark. These figures speak to the extraordinary resilience and determination of the families.

The time has come to say, enough is enough. Promises and pledges from the Government of Sri Lanka must now give way to concrete action.

The release of the list of detainees, un-doctored and in full would be a crucial first step in the right direction. It is correct to emphasize that getting distracted by arguments about the numbers that were killed or went missing during or in the immediate aftermath of the end of near three decade wars between the State security forces and both Sinhala and Tamil insurrections could easily distort the truth. In any conflict, while a single death is a tragedy, a large number of deaths are a statistic.

If people allow themselves to lose sight of the tragedy of what happened, reconciliation and the guarantee of future peace will become more elusive. It is necessary to be careful not to allow one to get distracted by arguments about numbers, because figures can too easily get in the way of the truth.

My Christmas wish for Sinhala Buddhists

• This Christmas though very much late by generations nevertheless would be ideal for Sinhala Buddhists to join in and enjoy with a determined resolution to work towards an alternative approach that can lift their lives out of misery and poverty
• They are all-inclusive innocent mindsets that should be promoted and nurtured

2017-12-22

Last weekend I read somewhere, the MEP that’s in tow with the flower bud (Pohottuwa) Party with Rajapaksa at its helm, has lost one of their strongest Urban Councils with nominations for the Maharagama UC among few others getting rejected.

My Christmas wish for Sinhala Buddhists.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Cabinet nod for $ 1 b financial city complex

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Port City land reclamation in progress

                                                                 - Pic by Indraratne Balasuriya

By Chathuri Dissanayake -Thursday, 21 December 

The Government yesterday approved a proposal to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with CHEC Port City Colombo to develop the Colombo International Financial City building complex valued at $ 1 billion on Sri Lanka’s artificial island.

The proposal was made by the Megapolis and Western Development Ministry to sign the MOU to undertake the development of the building complex that will form part of the Colombo International Finance City. The non-binding MOU clause regarding the building states: “In the event that the GOSL shall decide to proceed with Colombo International Financial City (CIFC), the Project Company shall, subject to the successful outcome (in the Project Company’s opinion) of a technical and financial viability assessment to be undertaken by the Project Company, seek to agree with the GOSL mutually acceptable terms upon which the Project Company may undertake a development that shall form part of the Colombo International Finance City. “

Seeking approval to sign the MOU, Megapolis and Western Development Minister Champika Ranawaka says that the MOU is signed between the Ministry and China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd. and CHEC Port City Colombo Ltd. to assist the project company in obtaining the required approvals from its ultimate parent company, China Communications Construction Company Ltd, and the China Development Bank, to proceed with new Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

Further, it was stated the move was to meet the requirement imposed by the Chinese Government on new overseas real estate investment projects being undertaken by all Chinese companies.

According to the Megapolis Ministry, the building complex will be located on 6.8 Ha of land, and entail a FDI of approximately $ 400 million in Phase 1 and a further $ 600 million in Phase 2. The Project Company has already committed an investment of $ 1.4 billion to create the Colombo Port City landfill and related infrastructure. The first part of the FDI, amounting to $ 400 million, is expected to commence in late 2018, the Megapolis Minster told Cabinet.

Furthermore, land identified for the development of the CIFC Building Complex will be within the Project Company’s entitlement of the first 20 Ha of marketable land selected as per Schedule 14 of the Tripartite Agreement, the proposal to the Cabinet highlighted. With 50% of the land reclamation already completed, the newly reclaimed land, including the land area allocated for the building complex, is to be gazetted under the Lands Ordinance to enable the project company to enter into a 99-year lease. However, the full reclamation of the land is expected to be completed in 2019.

The construction of the building complex is expected to commence next year after relevant Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) approvals have been obtained. The EIA for Infrastructure Landscaping and Development on the reclaimed land has already been completed and was open for public comments until 18 December, while a final decision on the matter is expected in March next year.

Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) of the US has already been awarded the design contract of the building after being selected as the winner of a global competition to design the master plan for the development. 

Priorities of the Elections Commission:Stymying people’s sovereignty through bureaucratic nitpicking

By C. A. Chandraprema-December 21, 2017, 10:05 pm 

It was with interest that I read Prof. Ratnajeevan Hoole’s recent article in The Island, "Duties of Election Commission: A proactive or bureaucratic stand?" Prof. Hoole is one of the three members of the Elections Commission. Indeed this would be a question on many people’s minds at this moment given the rejection of many nomination lists filed by political parties for the forthcoming local government election. With regard to the rejection of the Maharagama nomination list of the Podujana Peramuna ostensibly on the grounds that it does not have the required number of women candidates, what we hear is that the list has the requisite number of women but that the gender of one female candidate had been inadvertently entered as male on the list.

Even though this had been pointed out to the returning officer, he had rejected the list nevertheless. It was said that the Weligama list of the Podujana Peramuna had not been handed in by the authorized person. According to a party leader of the JO, what had happened in that instance was that the authorized person - a politician - had come to hand in the nomination papers with a lawyer and he had handed in the first file and then been distracted by an official sitting nearby and the lawyer who had accompanied him had handed in the other file and that is what is being interpreted as ‘not having been handed in by an authorised person’. While it is certainly true that nomination papers should be handed in correctly, one has to ask oneself whether it is reasonable to reject a nomination paper on grounds such as those mentioned above.

This is the people’s sovereignty that we are talking about. Even though the Elections Commission exists to facilitate elections and the expression of this sovereignty, instances such as these give one the impression that they are waiting to find some excuse however flimsy to reject nomination papers and thereby stymie that very sovereignty they are supposed to uphold. It would stand to reason that a nomination paper should be rejected only in instances where there is a major error which cannot be corrected before the close of the nominations. Prof. Hoole has said in the article mentioned above that a new Election Commission was appointed in Nov. 2015, and that "It is the Commission’s immense responsibility to establish strong norms of governance as precedents for future Commissions". In that respect, the latest spate of rejections leaves much to be desired.

Referring apparently to the rejection of the Maharagama nominations list the Elections Commissioner was shown on TV explaining that while the names of the candidates were written in one column the gender was written in another column and the Elections Commission in checking whether the required number of women candidates have been included in the nomination list looks only at the column on which the gender is stated and not at the column on which the names of the candidates are written and besides, that there are many names used by both men and women such as Kumudu and that it is not possible to judge by name whether a person is male or female.

That, however, is not the point. The point is that if a nomination paper has the required number of women candidates even though the gender of one of the candidates has been inadvertently misstated in the nomination paper should that list be rejected? The requirement in the law is that it should have a certain number of women in it and that requirement has been met. In such circumstances to reject a nomination paper on the grounds that the gender of one candidate has been inadvertently misstated in the gender column can only be interpreted as bureaucratic nit picking. After all, every candidate on the nominations list is a male or female by self proclamation. Nobody has actually examined them to ascertain that they are actually what they claim to be. Therefore if the person handing in a nomination paper states that a particular candidate is female even though the gender column has misstated her gender as male that should be sufficient for the returning officer to accept the nomination paper. It should not be necessary to go to courts to get a minor error like that rectified. It is important to allow commonsense also to play a role in safeguarding the peoples’ sovereignty.

It is, no doubt, necessary to ensure that the contesting parties do not hand in faulty nomination papers. To ensure accuracy, a system of substantial fines for minor errors would be more appropriate without outright rejection. The only matters going before courts should be matters that are serious enough to be dealt with by courts. This practice of rejecting nominations lists has given rise to a culture of opponents trying to use this means to knock out the other side even before the contest begins by raising piddling issues in the paperwork submitted. The Elections Commission will have to decide whether they are running elections or a fill-in-the-blanks contest. Prof. Hoole a member of the Elections Commission himself has likened the attitude of Elections Commission officials to the little boy who was told by his mother to wear a particular shirt to school and the latter had gone to school wearing only that shirt because he had not been specifically told to wear trousers.

Elections officers would need to be reminded that their duty is to hold elections, and that the nomination paper is what enables people to contest those elections and that they should never be rejected without a good cause. Given the fact that this time the system of election has been changed completely, there should have been greater leeway given to correct minor errors in the paperwork without rejecting them outright.