A bomb detonation expert in his suit, accompanied by security personnel (obscured), checks the area after a bomb exploded on a bridge in the Cairo district of Zamalek, April 5, 2015. (REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany)
DECEMBER 24, 2017
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian authorities have detained 15 people pending an investigation into an attack on an unlicensed Coptic Christian church in a village south of Cairo, a security source said on Sunday.
Dozens of Muslims from the village of Kafr al-Waslin attacked the church after Friday prayers, smashing the windows and breaking everything inside, the archdiocese of Atfih said in a statement.
The diocese had applied to legalize the status of the church, which has housed worshippers for 15 years after a church building law was passed in 2016, the statement said.
Those detained are accused of stirring sectarian strife, harming national unity and destroying private property, one judicial source told Reuters.
The owner of the building was also in custody pending inquiries into the operations of the facility by state security and the interior ministry, the source added.
Egyptian Christians make up about a tenth of the country’s almost 95 million population and are the Middle East’s largest Christian community.
They have long complained of discrimination in the majority-Muslim country. The government does not make the official number of Christians public in its census and Christians have long complained of being undercounted.
“Some Muslims object to turning this building into a church because there’s a really big mosque beside it,” one villager who asked not to be named told Reuters.
“There are strong social ties between the Muslims and Christians [in our village,” he added.
The nuclear weapon missile business is contradictory, full of missteps, highly dangerous and prepared in its madness (Mutually Assured Destruction, aka MAD, they used to call it in Cold War days) to plunge the world into a nuclear war that will reduce most of the world to dust.
A new book, “The Doomsday Machine” by Daniel Ellsberg tells the whole nuclear bomb story in detail. No one has done it better. The only rival is the movie, “Dr Strangelove”, that got the essentials right without being privy to much of the Ellsberg’s knowledge.
Ellsberg is the legendary whistle-blower who revealed the Pentagon papers, an expose of the US role in the Vietnam War. In this book he tells of his time in the 1960s as consultant to the Department of Defence and the White House. He drafted Robert McNamara’s plans for nuclear war- McNamara was secretary of defence during the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy.
And so the story proceeds over many decades, including the Cuban crisis about which Ellsberg gives frightening new information including that Russian submarines also had delegated authority- and almost used it -- to fire their nuclear weapons without waiting for an order from Moscow
Five years ago, after he had finished the book, he tried 17 different publishers and it was rejected. Earlier this year he found a home with Bloomsbury, the publisher of Harry Potter, a book that was also rejected many times. Why, at last? “The world got scarier”, he said in a long interview in the Financial Times last month. “The only silver lining to today’s world is that people now want to read my book”. Doubtless, Donald Trump and North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un will ensure good sales. Are we about to watch Trump and Kim start the world’s first nuclear war? A YouGov opinion poll suggests that despite Hiroshima and Nagasaki a 56% majority of the American people would back the use of nuclear weapons if the situation was sufficiently dire. (But not most Europeans who, the British and French apart, find them disgustingly immoral.)
There are two very tightly held secrets at the center of US nuclear policy. The president of the United States isn’t the only one with his finger on the button, as has long been presumed. Long ago, starting with President Dwight Eisenhower and continued ever since, the power of ordering a launch of nuclear-tipped missiles has been devolved to a number of senior and some not-so-senior military men. At one time submarine commanders had autonomous power when they were submerged and out of touch of radio signals, and could launch their nuclear missiles. This also used to be true of the long range rockets deep in their silos. McNamara found to his shock that the code on the locks in the silos was set at 000000. Even today there is devolution, although Ellsberg doesn’t make it clear to whom.
The other great secret is that the president’s power is circumscribed. He is using the military’s computers when he inserts his code and presses the button
The other great secret is that the president’s power is circumscribed. He is using the military’s computers when he inserts his code and presses the button. The military top brass today can, without too much trouble, interfere with the decision the president has made, since it is coming at them from above and thus has to be relayed downwards to those who do the actual firing.
Sometimes one shivers, reading Ellsberg. In one incident he discovers that the military held its secrets about its battle plans so close to its chest that even the president, in this case Kennedy, did not know about them. Ellsberg revealed that when the National Security Advisor to the president, McGeorge Bundy, ordered the Pentagon to send him a copy, he was refused. On a second attempt, saying this was the president’s wish, he was refused again. Eventually, it was agreed there would be a verbal briefing given to Bundy and McNamara and the forwarding of the “plans” to the president. Ellsberg discovered that the real document was never delivered- it was just a re-written record of the briefing. It was only his tenacity that enabled him to find the original document. He forwarded it to Bundy. He was then asked to write revised guidelines on basic national security policy and this eventually became Kennedy’s new policy.
And so the story proceeds over many decades, including the Cuban crisis about which Ellsberg gives frightening new information including that Russian submarines also had delegated authority- and almost used it -- to fire their nuclear weapons without waiting for an order from Moscow. At one time, he records, President Richard Nixon ordered his aide, Henry Kissinger, to “think big” about using the bomb against the North Vietnamese.
Gradually Ellsberg changed under the influence of what he observed from being an enthusiast for nuclear weapons policy to becoming one of its severest critics. If you doubt his concluding reasons for his Damascene conversion don’t just read the last chapter or the reviews, read the book. There are many reviewers and commentators out to diminish him. But he is the one who is absolutely right. (For 17 years Jonathan Power was a foreign affairs columnist/commentator for the International Herald Tribune/New York Times.)
The EU is finally declaring it's a club with rules — and that countries like Poland might not belong.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Brussels on December 14, 2017. (JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images)
BYJAN-WERNER MUELLER-
DECEMBER 22, 2017, 3:32 PMOn Dec. 20, the European Commission activated what in European Union circles has long been known as “the nuclear option.” The commission, the official “guardian of the European treaties,” charged that the Polish government’s so-called reforms of the judiciary posed a serious threat to basic European values, in particular the rule of law. The European Council, the group of EU member state governments, will now have to take a vote on whether it shares this assessment. Ultimately, if Warsaw does not amend the laws that effectively end the courts’ independence, Poland might have its rights to vote on collective EU decisions suspended.
Such shaming and, ultimately, ostracizing of an EU government has never happened in the history of European integration. Contrary to what some observers have been suggesting, the invocation of Article 7 is not yet further evidence, together with the ongoing euro crisis and Brexit, that the union is well on the way to disintegration. If anything, the commission did the right thing for European integration by taking a stand on what exactly the EU stands for and what membership in it means. The alternative would have been turning a blind eye to a slow erosion of democracy and the rule of law in several member states — a process that calls the very core of European integration as a political project into question.
The real problem is that the commission never acted as decisively in the face of the country that originally went “rogue”: Hungary. And Hungary, Warsaw’s staunchest ally in the union, has now pledged to veto the ultimate ostracizing of Poland. No wonder Warsaw has reacted very calmly to the EU’s action so far — Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki knows full well that his right-wing populist government has nothing to fear as long as Budapest has its back.
The Article 7 mechanism for suspending a state’s EU membership rights for breaching the fundamental European values of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights was only introduced in the late 1990s, at the request of Austria and Italy — up until then, it was taken for granted that this was a club for stable democracies only. Both countries were apparently worried about something going wrong in the Central and Eastern European states that were set to join the Union in 2004. Ironically, the latter initially turned out to be model pupils of liberal democracy — whereas the two countries that raised major worries about the state of democracy happened to be Italy under Silvio Berlusconi and the Austrian government formed in 2000 with the participation of the far-right Freedom Party led by Jörg Haider.
The latter provoked sanctions not by the EU as such, but by the then-14 other member states, outside the framework of Article 7. These bilateral measures were mostly symbolic and had been announced even before the new government had done anything; both facts helped the Austrian chancellor to mobilize nationalist sentiments against the union. As a reaction to what was widely perceived as a failure on Europe’s part, Article 7 was modified to include a preliminary warning before actual punitive measures are taken — that is the step Brussels has now decided to trigger.
Something decisive happened between what was often called the “Haider affair” and Warsaw’s current attempt to dismantle an independent judiciary. In 2010, Viktor Orban’s right-wing populist Fidesz Party came to power in Hungary. It systematically disabled checks and balances and tinkered with election laws so as to make the vote, in the assessment of Transparency International, free, but not fair; it also massively reduced media pluralism (according to some estimates, 90 percent of the media have owners close to the government). Just this year, the government unleashed a massive attack on civil society, forcing any nongovernmental organization that receives about $25,000 or more from abroad to declare itself prominently as “foreign-funded,” a measure accompanied by Orban claiming that organizations that have backing from Hungarian-American hedge fund manager and philanthropist George Soros pose a threat to national security — even the very survival of the Hungarian nation.
The EU did not ignore such obvious threats to its core values (and the fact that the Hungarian government’s conduct also called into question the premise that gaining EU membership meant the irreversible consolidation of liberal democracy). Yet it never came close to triggering Article 7. One reason for the tame reaction was what Orban once described to a domestic audience as his “peacock dance.” His skillful dance moves consisted in making cosmetic changes in reaction to criticism from Brussels — but ultimately persisting with the overall project of centralizing all power in his hands.
Most important, Fidesz is a member of the European People’s Party (EPP), the supranational association of Christian Democratic and center-right parties in the EU, the largest grouping in the European Parliament. Leading EPP politicians have often issued stern warnings to the Hungarian prime minister — for instance, when he publicly mused about re-introducing the death penalty in Hungary, an absolute no-no for Christian Democrats in particular. But they have never come even close to excluding Fidesz from its ranks, even though it is by now blindingly obvious that Orban is well to the right of, for instance, a figure like France’s far-right party leader Marine Le Pen.
The reasons are simple: Fidesz has a relatively large number of deputies in the European Parliament, and the EPP is firmly committed to keeping its plurality in the parliament (as former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl insisted, Christian Democrats had not built Europe to then leave it to socialists). Orban has also been useful for individual Christian Democrats to achieve their short-term political purposes: Bavarian conservatives, for instance, have made a spectacle of celebrating Orban in order to mark their opposition to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s temporary opening of German borders to refugees.
Poland’s Law and Justice party (PiS) has from the beginning been unashamed about wanting to follow what it calls the “Budapest model.” But it has done without the “peacock dance.” It also does not command a sufficiently large majority at home to change the constitution at will; Orban, by contrast, had such a majority throughout his first post-2010 term in office and could proceed in a formally legal manner. PiS has had to dispense with legal niceties and frontally attack the third branch of government, using ordinary legislation and a whole range of tricks to give the ruling majority the right to hire and fire judges. Such vandalism in dealing with highly respected institutions — unprecedented in the history of postwar European democracies — has made it easier for the EU to make the case against Warsaw.
Like Orban, though, PiS leaders have skillfully recast what should be a conflict about institutions as one that is merely about political ideals and more or less subjective values. PiS’s foreign minister complained that Brussels wanted to implement “a new mixing of cultures and races, a world of bicyclists and vegetarians, who … fight every form of religion.” In other words, it is what Orban calls the “liberal nihilists” running the EU who are intolerant of diversity and who wish to stamp out the genuinely Christian, more nationalist approaches being pursued in relatively conservative member states such as Poland and Hungary. Yet what we are witnessing today is not a pan-European Kulturkampf about moral issues — it is a crucial fight to preserve the very institutional infrastructure of democracy as such. Alas, many Western European politicians have taken the bait and criticized Poland and Hungary for specific policies that they dislike — instead of claiming that Fidesz and PiS are guilty of trying to capture the state as such and in effect make transitions of power extremely difficult.
The PiS government has one other decisive disadvantage compared to Orban: The party is not a member of the EPP, but of the much smaller and relatively marginal European Conservatives and Reformists. This grouping of euroskeptics is dominated by the British Tories — Prime Minister Theresa May, remaining faithful to the dictates of supranational party loyalty, promptly told a Warsaw audience yesterday that constitutional matters were Poland’s own business. But the Tories are, of course, to disappear from the European party scene with Brexit. Warsaw is thus simply not as firmly protected in the way Budapest is, and, perversely, the EPP can now partly distract from its own failings by being as stern as possible with Warsaw (and issuing statements such as “the rule of law is non-negotiable in the EU” — translation: non-negotiable, unless subverted by an EPP ally).
In order to move toward actual sanctions against Warsaw, a unanimous decision by the other EU member state governments is required — and Orban has made it absolutely clear that he will veto such a step. Hence, in effect far-right governments in the union will protect each other, and the commission has to pay a steep price for its inaction vis-à-vis Budapest. The only way forward might be triggering the next step of Article 7 against Hungary and Poland simultaneously — an approach suggested by my Princeton University colleague Kim Lane Scheppele, but one that would still require the EPP to abandon its hypocritical stance.
In any case, it is important to recognize that Article 7, strictly speaking, is not really a form of “intervening” (or “meddling,” as PiS and Fidesz representatives will put it) in a country. Rather, it is a way for the rest of the EU to insulate itself from a particular government having a hand in decisions that are binding for all EU citizens. This has a certain logic: EU citizens have a right not to be governed, however indirectly, by a nondemocratic government. But it also means that, in theory, such a government could simply say: “So be it that we have lost our votes in the European Council, we persist with the restructuring of our state as we see fit.”
What would be much more likely to actually change a rogue government’s behavior is financial pressure. The EU makes enormous contributions to Polish and Hungarian infrastructure. At the same time, at least in Hungary, there is no doubt such European funds are the equivalent of oil for Arab dictatorships: They are a free resource to buy political support, while at the same time enriching oligarchs close to the government. French President Emmanuel Macron has openly said that the EU is not a supermarket where one gets access to the common market and subsidies but can leave the rule of law on the shelf. The question is whether Angela Merkel is willing to use the next EU budget as leverage or not.
German companies like Audi and Mercedes are very well treated in Hungary — they receive generous subventions and do not have to deal with pesky unions. Merkel allies such as Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer and EPP leader Manfred Weber have invested a lot of political capital in protecting Orban. As the political scientist Daniel Kelemen has pointed out, as long as mainstream European conservatives pay no real political price for supporting soft authoritarianism in Europe’s midst, the union is likely to remain powerless. Meanwhile, it is ordinary Polish and Hungarian citizens who actually pay a price for the hypocrisy of Europe’s center-right.
Request for financial information may be connected to inquiries into possible conspiracy between Trump and Kremlin
Robert Mueller is investigating a possible conspiracy between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin. Photograph: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The FBI has asked officials in Cyprus for financial information about a defunct bank that was used by wealthy Russians with political connections and has been accused by the US government of money laundering, two sources have told the Guardian.
The request for information about FBME Bank comes as Cyprus has emerged as a key area of interest for Robert Mueller, the US special counsel who is investigating a possible conspiracy between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin.
People familiar with the FBI request told the Guardian that federal investigators and the US Treasury approached the Central Bank of Cyprus in November seeking detailed information about FBME, which was shut down this year.
One person familiar with the FBI request said it appeared to be connected to Mueller’s ongoing examination of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager who was indicted in October, and money that flowed between former Soviet states and the US through Cypriot banks.
The Central Bank of Cyprus, which in 2014 placed FBME under administration in a direct response to US action and obtained full access to the bank’s data, declined to comment. The US special counsel’s office also declined to comment.
The owners, Lebanese brothers Ayoub-Farid Saab and Fadi Michel Saab, issued a statement following a series of recent critical articles about the bank and denied all wrongdoing.
Bloomberg reported last week that FBME was the subject of two US investigations: one into the bank’s credit card unit, and another into alleged laundering of money from Russia. Bloomberg said the Russia-related investigation, which is being led by the US attorney’s office in New York, was connected to a flow of illegal Russian funds into the New York real estate market.
FBME, previously known as the Federal Bank of the Middle East, was based in Tanzania but about 90% of its banking was conducted in Cyprus. A report by the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in 2014 said the bank was an institution of “primary money laundering concern”.
The report found that the bank was evading efforts by the Central Bank of Cyprus to supervise its activities, and that FBME was facilitating money laundering, terrorist financing, transnational organised crime, fraud, sanctions evasion, weapons trading and political corruption.
A 2014 internal report by the Central Bank of Cyprus about FBME that was obtained by the Guardian found that FBME had banking relationships with several Russians who were considered to be politically sensitive clients and that about half of the bank’s clients were Russian nationals, including Vladimir Smirnov, who is close to Putin, and Aleksandr Shishkin, a member of Putin’s political party.
FBME was subjected in 2016 to what is known as a “fifth special measure”, a hard-hitting US regulatory tool that was established after the 9/11 attacks to address law enforcement concerns in the banking sector. The move prohibited the bank from doing business in the US or using US dollars, and barred US banks from opening or using any bank accounts on FBME’s behalf. In effect, it shut the bank down. FBME has challenged the decision but US courts have so far upheld the move.
It is not clear why Mueller and his team of investigators appear to be interested in FBME’s financial data. But it indicates that the special counsel is continuing to examine money flows from Cyprus.
Manafort has pleaded not guilty to charges that he laundered millions of dollars through foreign banks as part of a scheme to hide his work for political parties in Ukraine. He is accused of funnelling the funds through foreign shell companies, including many that were based in Cyprus.
Manafort’s attorney, Kevin Downing, has called the charges, including those related to his use of offshore accounts, “ridiculous”.
A spokesman for FBME bank told the Guardian that Manafort was never a client of FBME.
Mueller’s team has separately issued a subpoena for information from Deutsche Bank. According to a person close to the bank, the subpoena was issued in the autumn. The German bank is Trump’s biggest lender.
Deutsche also worked as a correspondent bank for FBME. Internal emails seen by the Guardian show that executives from both banks were in contact in 2014 discussing accounts that were “on the radar” of US law enforcement.
Deutsche Bank said in a statement: “We severed our relationship with FBME in 2014 and have added more than 1,000 anti-financial crime staff in recent years to make our business safer and increase our controls.”
People across the country are skipping the wrapped presents in favor of giving experiences like tickets to a sporting event, a special day trip or promise for a cooking class or other service. (iStock)
Becki Svare has made a radical decision: She won’t buy any more Christmas presents.
It started a few years ago as an experiment with her extended family. The holiday season began as it often did, with a dozen family members drawing names out of a hat. But instead of buying gifts for each other, they had to come up with a meaningful experience to share with their designated person. Suggested price: $20 to $25.
Svare’s children took their aunts kayaking. Her brother took his 9-year-old nephew for a ride on his Harley-Davidson, then out for sushi and a trip to the local reptile center. Others went to the zoo.
“You had to be somewhat creative with it,” said Svare, a blogger who lives in DeLand, Fla., near Orlando. “But we all agreed that it was better than buying things people don’t need.”
Across the country, families are hearing a similar refrain: Fewer items, please. More experiences.
Reatilers are paying heed. Nordstrom Local – the company’s latest retail concept–attempts to turn shopping into an experience. The store has no dedicated inventory. Rather, customers who want to shop will have access to services like manicures and personal stylists, who can suggest what to buy online or pick up later at a store. ( Nordstrom / Nordstrom )
It’s a movement that has picked up steam in recent years, as part of a broader push away from consumerism. And even retailers are taking notice. Major chains like Best Buy, Apple and Nordstrom now incorporate cooking classes, photography workshops and even manicures inside their stores as a way to attract customers who want to do more than just shop.
This holiday season, retail analysts say there has been a discernible shift in gift-giving as Americans think beyond traditional presents. Nearly 40 percent of shoppers plan to give gift cards, event tickets or other “intangible” gifts, according to market research firm NPD Group. And although overall holiday spending is projected to rise about 4 percent to $680 billion this year, Americans say they will spend less on presents: an average of $608 on gifts for family, friends and co-workers, down from $621 last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
“We live in a world of abundance, where most of us just have too many things,” said Jeffrey Galak, a professor who studies consumer behavior at Carnegie Mellon University. “People are starting to realize that items really aren’t that important anymore.”
Also helping the movement: the lack of novel items at the store.
“A lot of retailers are carrying the same old stuff that they’ve been hawking for five years,” said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. “People are saying, ‘Uncle Henry’s already got a black sweater — in fact he’s got two that still have the tags on — so why should we get him a new one?’ ‘Let’s do something else instead.’ ”
And, academics note, there has been no shortage of research in recent years to back up the idea that people derive more joy from experiences than goods. The trend has been good for the likes of StubHub. The online purveyor of sports, concert and theater tickets says sales of gift cards are up 50 percent so far over last year.
Will the iconic Santa photos disappear along with our malls?(Video: Jorge Ribas/Photo: Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Celebrities, too, are increasingly speaking out against holiday consumerism. The actress Mila Kunis said in a recent interview that she and husband Ashton Kutcher wouldn’t be buying gifts for their children this year.
But vowing to cut back on presents is one thing — actually doing so can be a years-long process. It can be tough to get family members on board, and even the most dedicated of gift-boycotters can feel a tinge of panic when, a few days before Christmas, there isn’t much under the tree.
“Social norms can be a difficult thing to overcome,” said Ross Steinman, a professor of consumer psychology at Widener University in Chester, Pa. “If there is an understanding in your family that there should be a tower of gifts under your Christmas tree every year, it’s really hard to change that.”
Some adjustment necessary
It’s taken nearly two decades, but Alethea Smartt says her family has (mostly) stopped buying Christmas gifts.
The effort started back in 1999, she says, when she moved to New York to take a job as a flight attendant. She had a tiny apartment and traveled often, which meant she didn’t have room for extra items.
But convincing her family in Tennessee, where she grew up receiving a whopping two dozen gifts each Christmas, was a different story. She started slowly — or so she thought — suggesting a limit of one gift per person.
“I knew we couldn’t go cold turkey, but it was still a total disaster,” said Smartt, 43, a travel writer in Portland. “There were a lot of hurt feelings and tears. Even though we didn’t have money, it was really important to my parents to be able to buy us material things.”
Her mother, in particular, was crestfallen, she says.
But lately, she said, they’ve found a groove — and her mother, Diane Campbell, agrees.
A few years ago, Campbell surprised the family with new luggage — and a cruise to Alaska. Last year, she took her grandsons on a four-day trip to Chicago. She makes photo books for her daughters, and bakes cookies for her son-in-law.
“At first, it almost felt embarrassing,” said Campbell, 67, who works for a tour company in Nashville. “I’d always been so proud that I was able to give everyone so much during the holidays..”
But it’s getting easier, she said, although she does sometimes stash a couple of last-minute McDonald’s gift cards under the tree for her grandsons.
“I do still worry about it,” she said, “about finding ways to create that ‘Oh, wow’ moment.”
(Smartt’s husband, too, says he sometimes has trouble adjusting to the arrangement: “Around Dec.
24, I’ll start to think ‘Wait, do I have enough? Maybe I should go buy more,’ ” said Greg LaRowe, adding that he now stocks up on extra items like lavender soaps and other locally made items.)
Smartt, though, said she has no complaints.
“It’s gotten better every year,” she said. “We’ve gone from what I’d call excessive materialism to a few thoughtful gifts.”
Finding a happy medium
After years of experimenting — dozens of gifts one Christmas, none another — Christi Chartrand, a home health-care worker in Brantford, Ontario, said she’s finally found a happy medium for her brood of eight, which includes three biological children, four adopted children and one foster child.
On Christmas morning, each child receives exactly three presents worth a total of $100. On birthdays, they get to choose between a birthday party or a $150 outing with mom or dad.
“Almost every single time, the kids ask for a date night,” she said, adding that they’ve gone shopping in Buffalo, visited CN Tower in Toronto, and taken a half-hour airplane ride near Niagara Falls. “They don’t even think twice about it anymore.”
Back in 2010, though, it was a different story. For years, she and her husband maxed out their credit cards to buy mountains of toys.
“We had to unbury the tree on Christmas morning because there were just so many gifts piled up around it,” she said. “And we found that our kids were just so ungrateful. It never seemed to be enough. They would open their presents and then say, ‘Now what?’ ”
The turning point came, she said, when her son unwrapped a present from an aunt. “He looked at her and said, ‘A book? That’s it?’ ” she recalled. “I was so mortified and said, ‘This has to change.’ ”
The following year, she and her husband took the family on a road trip to Florida and didn’t buy a single present. The kids were irked at first, she said, but quickly got over it. The following year, they settled on the three-gift compromise.
“We’re not trying to be radical,” she said. “We just want them to realize that it’s not a life requirement to open 1,000 presents on Christmas morning.”
Christmas in Bangladesh is celebrated with great enjoyment and fun. It is a festival which is celebrated by all the people of all ages of the Christian community. The people celebrate the birth of Jesus on this day. Though Christmas around the world is celebrated in different ways by different countries.
by Anwar A. Khan-
“I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat ~ Of peace on earth, good-will to men!” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
( December 23, 2017, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) Christmas in Bangladesh falls in the winter season. Of course Christmas in our country has great spiritual meaning and is not as commercialised as in the developed countries of Europe or Northern America – this is probably a reason why in every country there are so many interesting local traditions and cultural differences. As in the most Christian cultures in Europe and the Americas, having Christmas dinner with friends and relatives is the most popular activity after attending the church. Christmas is usually an official public holiday in our country, so people use the opportunity to spend time with their friends and family.
After church service, Christian people go home and have a festive meal along with their friends, near and dear ones. Children do usually get Christmas presents. The festivities are accompanied by singing the Christmas Carols. In our country, there is singing and dancing just as in many other countries of the world. One of the most widespread Christmas traditions in Bangladesh is the colourful decorating of premises which symbolises peace. There is Santa Claus in our country. The sunny weather draws many people to the outdoors. Later in the evening a masquerade party is held with lots of food and music for residents to enjoy.
On the day of this occasion, the sun shines and everything seems so alive. All that vitality is brought to life even more by the festivity of Christmas. Just like any other place in the world, the preparations for the celebration of Christmas begin way in advance. Some Christian businesses are closed for the whole month of December. Even though Christmas in our country has many differences from Christmas in the rest of the world, the actual traditions and festive spirit are quite similar. Houses of the Christian community are well decorated. Elaborate Christmas dinner and carolers bring Christmas spirit and festivity in the wind.
Many families set up a decorated Christmas tree in a corner with lights and ornaments, surrounded by gifts for everyone at home. The Christians say the first decorated Christmas trees appeared as far back as the 14th century. Christmas trees are a popular decoration as are tiny sparkling lights in windows and on walls. However, the Christmas tree is usually only put up in the homes only in the morning of the 25th of December. For them, Christmas Day is a day of good eating, exchange of gifts to add up the enjoyment. The women wake up bright an early, ready for a busy day full of tasks, making sure everything is neat and set up before visitors appear.
On Christmas Day, children and adults, representing the angels in the fields outside the Churches, go from house to house singing carols. Church services are held on Christmas day where people dress in their native attires or Western costumes. Later on, there is a grand feast in every Christian home. Families eat together with close friends and neighbors, and gifts are exchanged. In the evening, the children and adults do traditional dancing. The teenage kids and adults sing and play the drums. Friends and family members sing the jingle and party till midnight.
At Christmas, Christians all over the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Traditional Christmas decoration often can be admired and festive celebrations can be joined in most countries, even in many of the countries where Christianity is not the religion of the majority of people like Bangladesh. Christmas all over the world is celebrated on Christmas Day, the 25th of December. Some countries however have different Christmas traditions and Christmas traditions and celebrations take place over a longer period of time.
Christmas in Bangladesh is celebrated with great enjoyment and fun. It is a festival which is celebrated by all the people of all ages of the Christian community. The people celebrate the birth of Jesus on this day. Though Christmas around the world is celebrated in different ways by different countries. Customs differ around the world for observing Christmas, but they all centre on celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Thus, all around the world, people have taken the celebration of the birth of Jesus and made a Christmas that fits with the culture of their own country.
Christmas is a happy, festive time filled with great spiritual significance. Caroling, feasting, and gift giving along with the prayers and wishes – the Christmas is celebrated with high spirits all over the world including Bangladesh. Though the mode of celebration, the dates and the traditions vary, the main spirit remains the same everywhere. Although Christians only form a small minority of the population in Bangladesh, her long history as a British colony has seen many traditions remain. This includes keeping Christmas Day as a public holiday.
Every year, Christmas is celebrated on December 25 to commemorate the birth anniversary of Jesus Christ. This auspicious occasion is a prime festival of Christian community and hence, is celebrated zestfully around the world including Bangladesh. Christmas conveys his message of love, tolerance and brotherhood. Though, it is a religious festival of Christians, it has a special significance in everyone’s life of the Christian community in Bangladesh.
Like any other religious festival, the celebration of Christmas begins month before the day of festival. During Christmas week, markets and shopping places are embellished with different types of Christmas gifts and Christmas items. People prepare themselves for the festival by decorating their houses. Cakes, Candles, Christmas Carol and most importantly, Christmas tree are the attractions. Churches and other public places are decorated elegantly to celebrate the festival with great zeal. On the day of festival, people perform prayers at the Church and wish everyone with open heart and sacred soul. Also, various cultural programmes are organised across the nation to make this auspicious day memorable for everyone. Santa Claus distributes gifts to the children and listens to their demands with a smile.
The festival of Christmas reflects the cultural unity of Bangladesh as on this auspicious occasion. This cultural unity sets an excellent example of brotherhood and humanism. Though the country has only small population of Christians, it celebrates the auspicious occasion of Christmas with passion and pomp. The unity in diversity of Bangladesh can be seen during the celebration of Christmas. Bright light, great food and lavish parties are synonymous to Christmas celebration in our country.
Christmas brings love and happiness into the family. This is the occasion, when friends and family members gather at one place and celebrate the bond of togetherness with love. Being the birth anniversary of Jesus Christ, this festival has a great significance in Christianity. On the day of Christmas, prayers are offered to the almighty at the Church in a traditional manner. Christmas is the time to be jolly and spread festival cheer among one and all.
Christmas is the celebration to mark the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The customs and traditions associated with a particular festival reflect historical connection and human emotion attached with it. Christmas festival, as we have said earlier, is celebrated on December 25 all over the world. Different countries celebrate this ceremony through different customs. Winston Churchill veritably wrote, “Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.” Love comes down at Christmas; love all lovely, love divine; love is revealed at Christmas; and stars and angels give the sign. We make a polite expression of our desire for welfare of the Christian community in Bangladesh and good luck to them on the auspicious occasion of Christmas.
-The End-
The author of this piece is an ordinary senior citizen of Bangladesh
Taslima, a 13-year-old Rohingya refugee adjusts her scarf as she stands next to her temporary settlement at the Shamlapur refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh December 20, 2017. Source: Reuters/Marko Djurica
22nd December 2017
A NON-PROFIT is using blockchain technology to provide stateless Rohingya refugees who fled Burma (Myanmar) with digital identity cards in a pilot project aimed at giving access to services like banking and education.
The first 1,000 people to benefit from the project in 2018 will be members of the diaspora in Malaysia, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia, decades-old safe havens for the Rohingya, who are the world’s biggest stateless minority.
“They are disenfranchised,” Kyri Andreou, co-founder of The Rohingya Project, which is organising the initiative, said at its launch in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.
“They are shut out. One of the key aspects is because of the lack of identification.”
More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims – who are denied citizenship in Buddhist-majority Burma – have fled to Bangladesh since August after attacks by insurgents triggered a response by Burma’s army and Buddhist vigilantes.
Rohingya refugees stand on a road at the Shamlapur refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh December 20, 2017. Source: Reuters/Marko Djurica
The Rohingya Project estimates there are four million Rohingya around the world, the majority living outside their ancestral land since Burma excluded them from the country’s recognised ethnic groups in 1982, effectively rendering them stateless.
Blockchain, the technology behind the bitcoin currency, will be used to issue individual digital IDs to people once they have taken a test to verify that they are genuine Rohingya.
It aims to improve the stateless Rohingya access to public services, such as hospitals, which is often difficult, as well as restoring their dignity, the project’s founders said.
“We are trying to put a smile on the Rohingya’s face who has been crying for decades,” said another co-founder Muhammad Noor, a Rohingya who first came to Malaysia in 2000. “This is a ray of hope.”
“This project will engage public support to address the problems of statelessness and financial exclusion for the future of the Rohingya,” he said.
According to The Sun, Muhammad Noor explained the project focuses on two aspects – identity and opportunity – in which the system will provide the first verified data on Rohingya census across the world.
Individual Rohingya, he said, shall have their ancestry authentically identified to link them directly to their original land of dispersion.
Rohingya Children recite the Koran at the Madrasah Rahmaniyah managed by the Parents Association of Rohingya on 16 December 2015 in Klang, Malaysia. Source: Afif Abd. Halim
Blockchain is a digital shared record of transactions maintained by a network of computers on the Internet, without the need of a centralised authority.
It has gained popularity among humanitarians in recent years, with charities using it to transfer money cheaply and disburse aid to refugees.
The United Nations refugee agency said in November that the Rohingya are the biggest minority among an estimated 10 million people worldwide who are stateless, a status that deprives them of an identity, rights, and often jobs.
This article was originally published on our sister website Tech Wire Asia. Additional reporting by Reuters.
More than nine thousand people won’t be ‘going home for Christmas’. Instead they’ll be waking up in cars and tents, or on buses and trains. The figure comes from the homeless charity Crisis, which says many people miss out on help because they are not spotted sleeping on the streets.
Jane Deith has been to meet one man who slept in his car, until locals complained.
Dr Vishal Rao has created a simple device to help throat cancer patients in India to speak again. Replacement prosthetic voice boxes can cost up to $1,000 (£750) but his Aum box costs just $1.
In India, around 30,000 patients a year are diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. Many face having the voice boxes removed and they can no longer speak.
Replacement prosthetic voice boxes can cost up to $1000 - which is unaffordable. But one doctor has invented a cheap solution to give these patients their voices back.
Image: Land mine treaty symbol in front of UNHRC, Geneva.
23/12/2017
Sri Lanka has recently acceded to the Optional Protocol on the Convention against Torture that allows for greater international scrutiny of a country’s detention facilities and the Ottawa Treaty to ban landmines. Previous Sri Lankan governments had resisted acceding to these international instruments on the grounds of national security even while agreeing to their content in principle. The National Peace Council welcomes the government decision to accept the challenge of governance in the future according to international standards.
The main feature of the mine ban treaty is that it bans anti-personnel landmines, requires destruction of stockpiles and the clearance of mined areas, and assistance to victims who have suffered landmine injuries. The mine ban treaty is forward looking in that it prohibits the future use of antipersonnel land mines. It does not deal with the past except to provide assistance to those who have become victims. The Optional Protocol of the Convention against Torture permits visits by independent international and national bodies to places of detention in order to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. This too is a forward looking commitment as it seeks to ensure that present practices do not permit torture and the violation of human rights.
The focus on the future has also made it easier for both the government and security forces to accept. The progressive attitude of the Sri Lankan security forces in regard to international standards has been facilitated by the end of the war. It is the past that is troubling, in which human rights violations and war crimes occurred. The challenge for the government and for the security forces would be to accept the commitments to deal with issues that continue from the past. The commitments made by the government in Geneva before the UN Human Rights Council in October 2015 are about dealing with the past. The transitional justice mechanisms pertaining to truth seeking, finding missing persons, reparations and accountability are important to the victims.
The slowness with which the government is implementing promises made in regard to human rights and justice issues that arose in the course of the war and post-war period have led to doubts about the government’s intentions in regard to the implementation of those commitments. The delay has been protracted even when it comes to setting up the Office of Missing Persons. The legislation was passed over a year and a half ago. But the institution has still to get off the ground and the commissioners have yet to be appointed. The National Peace Council urges expedited implementation of these mechanisms. The government’s paradigm shift in acceding to the international agreements that previous governments failed to suggests that this is now possible and will be done.
(Press release by the National Peace Council , Sri Lanka)
The message of human rights has to be reinforced with constant reminders very often, utilising every available mode of communication. After all, it is these rights among other things that differentiates man from the animals. The moment man forgets about the existence of such rights, he is seen transformed into an animal.
by Mass L. Usuf-
( December 23, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It takes two for any form of communication. The self and the other. The self knows everything about itself but very less about the other. The self expresses itself with the specific knowledge and learning that it knows, perceives, idealises and interprets. What is expressed is understood by the other applying the same qualities of the expresser. Between the various shades of expression of the self and the understanding of the other, there are universal expressions. These are, generally and mutually, understood by the expresser and the other in a unified sense. One such area is human rights.
Human rights both in the spoken and written forms are ubiquitous in the electronic, print and social media. Less so is its prevalence articulated through the medium of Art and the various creative forms art can manifest itself through. Herein excels the joint efforts of the Sri Lanka Arts Council and the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka visualising itself at the JDA Perera Gallery in Colombo at the ‘The First Human Rights Arts Festival 2017’ held from 11th to 17th of December.
The Festival consisted of Visual Arts, New Media exhibition, Music, Dance and Theatre performances on the themes of Human Rights. The architect of this Festival Mr. Chandragupta Thenuwara, President of the Arts Council of Sri Lanka and Senior Lecturer at the University of the Visual and Performing Arts was upbeat at the response from the public and art lovers. Giving credence to the conceptual theme of Mr. Thenuwara was the value added by Dr. Deepika Udagama, Chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka. A much-desired blending of professionals, though rare, from the field of human rights and the virtuosos of the world of Art. Clearly establishing the statement that art too has a major role to play in promoting social cohesiveness and, the general wellbeing of the people. “The plan is to have the Festival next year in a grander scale” said, Mr. Thenuwara, obviously energised by its success.
Freedom Of Expression
Our constitution under Chapter III on Fundamental Rights enshrines in Article 14 (1) (a) as follows:
“Every citizen is entitled to the freedom of speech and expression including publication”
Human Rights and Fundamental Rights are intertwined. Yet, there is an unfathomable distance between legislated fundamental rights and that supreme universalness of human rights. As such human freedom per se is ineffable. An extension of these rights from its normative sense would permeate into the realm of mystical thoughts and conscience. These two freedoms, thought and conscience, are also enshrined in the Constitution in Article 10 of the same Chapter.
What was demonstrated at the Arts Festival was the fantastic capability of the human mind to express itself when unbounded. The artists’ expressions captured both the esoteric and exoteric sense of the labyrinth feelings of man. Depiction of the naturalness of being free and the unnaturalness of being fettered where freedom is violated. Artistic expositions pontificating the sacredness of human rights while urging restraint from sacrileging that sanctity.
The Dark Side Of Art
As much as art can be used to depict the beauty, aesthetics and the good values of human life, there are those who use art forms to sully these adorable qualities. While art can help to heal the wounds of human rights abuses, the abusers would use it to justify their actions.
At the infamous Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay detention centres, the military interrogators of the United States of America used heavy metal music at excessively loud volume as a form of torture. The Psychological Operations (psyops) experts adopted this method of torture since it does not leave any physical trace on the body. Detainees were stripped to their underwear, shackled to chairs, and blinded by strobe lights (powerful bright light which flashes on and off very quickly). The lights were blinding their eyes while the heavy metal music was deafening their ears. This was, according to US interrogators, to disorient the detainees or, as they would call it, to break the Iraqi prisoners.
The United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights have banned the use of loud music for interrogations. It is considered a form of torture.
The interpretative power of art can turn love towards hatred, hope towards hopelessness, mercy towards ruthlessness, peace into horror and empathy to antipathy. Thus, art is sadly exploited sometimes as a tool to create dissension and chaos in society – stereotyping an ethnic group in main stream media, racial slurring in social media are classic examples.
“Clearly, there are many artworks which may fall short of hate, but which may still be, or be perceived to be, antagonistic to certain groups of people including vulnerable minorities. Just as art can help to dismantle harmful stereotypes, it can reinforce them: art is not necessarily “progressive” in relation to human rights. Examples include numerous cartoon depictions associating Islam with terrorism, and the sectarian murals on display in Northern Ireland. Art can combat propaganda, and can also constitute propaganda.” (Exploring the connections between arts and human rights: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights).
Art Can Help
“Much of the human rights agenda is directed at bridging attitudinal disparities, such as prejudices based on race, religion, gender, age, nationality, culture and identity. Art can help to overcome those barriers, by bringing a counter-discourse, contesting privileged narratives and perspectives.” (ibid).
The message of human rights has to be reinforced with constant reminders very often, utilising every available mode of communication. After all, it is these rights among other things that differentiates man from the animals. The moment man forgets about the existence of such rights, he is seen transformed into an animal. Artists can be a great source of help in propagating the generic values of human rights especially, in dismantling stereotypes, neutralising hatred and discouraging racial slurring.
Many are those from among the artists and journalists who have made the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of this basic universal freedom. They did it for us so that we can continue to live enjoying what is called human rights. To protect and maintain these principles is a great responsibility handed down to all civic minded citizens.
DECEMBER 24, 2017
The nuclear weapon missile business is contradictory, full of missteps, highly dangerous and prepared in its madness (Mutually Assured Destruction, aka MAD, they used to call it in Cold War days) to plunge the world into a nuclear war that will reduce most of the world to dust. 
