The Vavuniya Diaries By Neville Jayaweera

Review by B. Skanthakumar –February 12, 2018

This slim memoir spanning a few months in 1971 is noteworthy for its insider view on the failed first insurrection of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP—Peoples Liberation Front), or more exactly its repression somewhere remote from Colombo and the southwest, by a principal participant. The author was then Government Agent, that is the top-most administrative official, in undivided Vavuniya (before Mullaithivu had been carved from it).

Jungle Outpost

This Tamil majority northern district was sprawling and forested and populated by poor peasants and wild animals. It was a punishment station “away from the comforts of home, family and friends”, for public officials out-of-favour with the incumbent government; and is variously described by Jayaweera as a “jungle outpost”, “Siberia”, and even “gulag”!

Their politically motivated transfer was to affect the loyalty and morale of police personnel and other state cadre as news of a daring bid for state power by a shadowy movement of Sinhala radical youth – known colloquially as ‘Cheguara’ (through association with the image and example of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara) – trickled in from the Sinhala villages of Madukanda, Mamaduwa and Pavatkulama, to the town. 

After his previous roles as Government Agent of Jaffna during the implementation of the ‘Sinhala Only’ Act – narrated in his Jaffna: Exorcising the Past and Holding the Vision (Ravaya Publishers, 2014) – and as Chairman cum Director-General of the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation, Jayaweera had anticipated measuring the length of his sentence in Vavuniya by “purchasing paddy and looking into corruption in cooperative societies”.

The eruption of armed rebellion from 4^th April 1971 and until its eradication (in Vavuniya at least) by mid-August, changed the situation utterly.

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Should State banks be privatised?

By Sumanasiri Liyanage-February 11, 2018, 9:51 pm 

Various governments in the last forty years had made many attempts to privatize state banks justifying their decision with implicit neoliberal arguments. However, the strong Ceylon Bank Employees Union (CBEU) flexed its muscles against such attempts so that the government was forced to retreat with the hidden agenda to come up later. The move to privatize state banks and other state-owned institutions is very much consistent with the neoliberal theory that market with private interest working in is the best regulator that would create more efficient and beneficial outcome. We can see the repetition of this argument in almost all the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, it refloating of the same argument in more explicit terms shows that we are now entering into a new phase of neoliberalising of the Sri Lankan economy. This phase was defined by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in his regular "special" statements as the third phase of liberalisation, the first and second being the reform measures of 1977 and that of 1989. The impression given was that the third would be a full-blown implementation of Washington Consensus (WC) on which IMF and the World Bank wanted each so-called developing countrry to design its economic strategies. So the Prime Minister being a market fundamentalist has insisted that no deviations from the WC be allowed for the sake of the requirements of the national economy and local business interests.

This is clearly indicated in the Budget 2018. Budget 2018 speech informs us: "In line with Vision 2015, we need to undertake bold reforms in factor markets in order to eliminate price distortions and restore property rights in accordance with market principles aiming at promoting faster and sustainable growth. Capital market reforms to capture its full potential are imperative for ensuring high growth …. Without proper ownership of land and property, no country could achieve faster growth ensuring prosperity for all. In this context the country’s land and property ownership issues need a careful and urgent appraisal.The country’s labour demand against the constraints on labour supply requires a closer examination of all areas of the labor market including labour laws, to pave the way forward to harness the productive resources of the economy."

In this regard, Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government has proposed two strategies, namely, (1) "Sri Lanka needs to liberalise and globalize"; (2) "over-dependence on non-tradable drivers" should be reduced. Hence, Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government wants to amend some legislations enacted in the past mainly by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led governments. It is interesting to note that President Sirisena and his SLFP faction wholeheartedly supported the Budget 2018 and its all substantive proposals. So it is somewhat hilarious for the President to say that the economic management in the last three years was in the hands of the UNP side of the government.

So it is quite clear that the proposal to divest the state banks is not an isolated one but a part and parcel of the larger project of implementation of neoliberal fundamentalism. Besides the general argument for privatization, the government has failed to offer an acceptable justification why the state banks should be privatized. There is no evidence to support that the state banks are loss-making institutions. In fact in 2016, the net profit of the Bank of Ceylon was Rs. 31.6 billion. It has paid to the government Rs. 18,000 million as levy and Rs. 346 million as dividends.The Peoples’ Bank paid to the government Rs. 8,000 million and Rs 316 million as levy and dividends respectively. Justification for privatisation given with reference to Basel Agreement appears to be quite weak as the capital requirement can be easily resolved by alternative means. Hence, we have to conclude that it is the misconceived faith in market operation and the private ownership that leads this government to adopt these policies. However, the government knows very well that the strong trade union in the banking sector will not allow this decision to be implemented. So it should be super coated. The Budget 2018 proposes:

"It is in this context that we will allow the BoC and the PB to raise both debt and equity capital. In raising equity capital the state will not relinquish the controlling ownership, but is willing to allow the divestitures, provided that the depositors and the employees are given the option of becoming shareholders."

In the face of structural reforms and in the context in which the organizations of the lower classes are strong, neoliberal program cannot be implemented like they were introduced and implemented in Chile, so that reforms come creeping like a snake. Hence divestiture begins in the form of handing over share rights to the workers as a first step.

Establishment of state banks

The state sector banks were set up with specific developmental objectives going beyond just facilitating transactions. In 1939, Bank of Ceylon was established as a bank that could play the role of banker to state institutions as well as a banker to local business groups which were neglected by the colonial banking structure. It was nationalized in the early 1960s and at the same time the Peoples’ Bank was formed as a bank especially catering for rural sector and small scale enterprises including co-operatives. In the 1970s the National Savings Bank was set up incorporating existing small savings institutions like post office, savings banks with the aim of increasing small scale public savings. Later some developmental banks were established and without a serious analysis of its consequences those development banks were privatized. If we look at the economic history, it reveals that in many of today’s advanced countries, state owned or controlled banks and financial sector play a role of great importance in the process of development facilitating transfer of scarce capital into sectors that are crucial for development. One of the earliest examples of this was the formation of Credit Foncier and Credit Mobilier in France during Napoleon III time in order for France to face England and to steer its economy towards capitalist development. A similar example can be found in many late-developing countries including in the countries of East Asia.

The needs of these developmental objectives of the state banks remain unchanged notwithstanding the fact that the management of state banks by political henchman of the Ministers had led their function to be deviated from their original objectives.

The yahapalana government is in the process of selling almost everything showing its inability to manage public assets. As the CBEU has correctly stated, the privatisation of state banks is a decision that should not be allowed to be implemented.

E-mail: sumane_l@yahoo.com

University ragging: Destroying the creativity of a generation

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Lucky and unlucky students

 Monday, 12 February 2018 


Those who can secure admission to a state university in Sri Lanka consider themselves a lucky lot. That is because the state university system has a few places far short of the number that qualifies for admission at the GCE (Advanced Level) Examination. According to the official data, the lucky lot is 1 to 6.

The large majority of others are in a quandary as to what they should do to have their aspirations for higher education fulfilled. A few of the rest have to find educational opportunities at universities abroad at a great expense. Some others switch over to professional education in accounting, computing or marketing. These two categories are the really lucky lot since they could acquire the necessary qualifications faster than those at state universities and secure the available few places in the very thin job market.

A large segment has to be content with diploma level education at a technical college. A great majority of students have to give up hopes of higher education altogether and continue to search for jobs which are scarce in the market.



Perceived crème of the top brains 

Since only the top-scorers at the exam are admitted to a university, students regard themselves as the crème of the country’s top young brains. Hence, they demand society to treat them as an unquestionable elite group.

This view is being subscribed to by the academia, media and the public at large. Since it is the crème that is admitted to the university system, one might expect that what the system would produce would be better crème than what is taken in.

However, this judgment has to be made not by the academia or the students. It has to be made by prospective employers who have to make use of the skills which these students have acquired while going through the university system.


Throughputs going through the educational machinery 

As I have argued in a previous article in this series (available at: http://www.ft.lk/w-a-wijewardena-columns/How-to-groom-intellectuals-for-the-future--Two-contrasting-views-from-Thailand-and-Sri-Lanka--Part-1/885-648278), students who join an educational institution go through a prescribed study program and subject themselves to the changes that are inflicted on them during the process. Hence, they are simply ‘throughputs’ that go through the system and pass out at the end. As a result, what comes out from the system as graduates is the same person possessing a higher level of skills and a changed mindset.


A ready-to-use human resource

Employers hire those graduates in the hope that they could produce a good or a service which they can sell in the market at a price. From their point, the graduates passing out from universities are ‘ready-to-use human resource units’.

‘Ready-to-use’ means that once they are placed in jobs they should be able to use their acquired skills to produce a good or a service immediately with no need for further training. A resource means that once they are employed, they should be able to produce an output that can be sold in the market. The normal microeconomic principles involving the diminishing marginal productivity are also applicable to them.

There are certain qualities which employers expect of graduates if they are to become a resource which is readily usable.


Ability to merge with organisational cultures

First, they should have right attitudes to work in an organisation. Those attitudes should enable them to absorb the cultural values of the organisations they join and work for the furtherance of its goals. If they are hard-lined and unable to appreciate those cultural values, the result would be the emergence of continual conflicts that lead to low productivity, low output and finally, low profits.

Such an organisation is unable to withstand the competitive onslaught of competitors will go out of business pretty soon. Along with the bankruptcy of the organisation, the graduates too will lose their jobs. Hence, the employers normally give a very high weight to the attitudinal base of the new recruits.


Willing and able learners

Second, they should have ability and willingness to learn. Knowledge becomes obsolete pretty fast due to the introduction of new technology and changes in the systems. One good example is the displacement of double-entry bookkeeping by the new distributed digital ledger system known as the Blochchain, the operating system governing the new digital currencies, mainly, Bitcoin. 

As such, employees should be ready to throw out old knowledge and equip themselves with new knowledge. This applies not only to work routines but also technical skills which they should have in order to deliver their output. Employers love to hire people who are ready to invest their time, money and efforts in new learning.


Team workers

Third, they should have an extraordinary capacity to work with others to produce outputs in teamwork arrangements. One is unlikely to work as an effective member of a team unless he has good social skills that help him to have good interpersonal relations with others. Modern outputs are not individual-based but produced by the combination of a large number of people.


Ability to communicate

Fourth, a modern worker, since he or she has to work with others, should have excellent communication skills, both verbal and written. One should be able to communicate at least in one language. However, in order to learn of new developments, he or she should essentially have competence at least in one international language.


Creative workers

Fifth, workers should be creative workers who are able to think out of the box and come up with solutions to the problems they face. This is the essential quality which education should develop in those who go through the system as throughputs.


High hopes of stakeholders

At universities in Sri Lanka, the academics attached to them, parents and policymakers have high hopes that the system will produce the human capital needed by society. Students who consider them as the crème of the brains to enter the university with the same high hopes.

However, one particular ritual which is practised by a section of the students religiously has shattered those hopes beyond recovery. That is subjecting the fresh students to mental, physical and economic torture on a mass scale under the guise of orienting them to the new life at universities. In common parlance, this is known as ragging.
The subculture cult called ragging

Ragging is a sub-cultural practice by students in Sri Lanka’s universities. It is built into their DNA in the sense that what they have learned from their seniors is passed on to their junior batches.  Accordingly, those students who become seniors will rag the new students who enter the university in subsequent batches. Thus, it is repeated year after year and it survives like a religious cult within the university system.


Misconceived learning from British universities 

Sri Lankan universities have been modeled on British universities and many believe that the ragging practiced in Sri Lanka has been adapted from them. British universities too have a system of ragging but it is completely different from the system being practiced here. In the British universities, it is the senior students who are being ragged mostly and not the freshmen as is the case in Sri Lanka.


British universities have rag weeks

I had the experience of observing the ragging that took place at the University of York, UK in 1977. There was a ‘rag week’ and it took place not in September when the new students were admitted but in February when the Spring Semester started. It was organised by the university’s student union with deliberate pre-planning done with full cooperation of the university authorities.

The details of the rag week organised by the University of York Student Union in 2016 have been given in the university’s official website and they are not different from what I had observed nearly 40 years ago (available at:  https://www.yusu.org/opportunities/rag).

The objective of the rag week 2016 has been explained by the student union as follows: “YUSU RAG brings you fun, cross-campus, events and adventurous activities - in aid of good causes. Take a little time away from your studies: explore the secrets of student life in York on our Freshers’ Week Scavenger Hunt, or sign up for our charity challenge Trek. Just taking part helps. York students do their bit for the wider world. But that’s not all you can do….Join our sociable team and help make things happen; Run your own Fundraising event/activity with support from us; Sponsor a friend in their York fundraising effort.”


The rag week of the

University of York in 1977

The rag week was announced by the Vice Chancellor and it consisted of a number of events aiming at raising funds for a good cause. Students were coaxed to participate in the events voluntarily. There were social events, entertainment in the nights, sports, challenge walks, numerous fund raising campaigns that enable the students to support a charity at the end.

Thus, there were dancing, singing, martial art demonstrations, food fairs and various other activities hosted by students coming from different countries and cultures. Students in all the four years participated in these events voluntarily. The challenge for them in 1977 was to build a hypothetical wall of 25 pence coins from the university’s Library Gate to the York City Gate which had a distance of about 4 km. The student union had calculated the amount of Sterling Pounds needed to build this hypothetical wall when standing coins are placed touching each other through this distance.

Then, targets were given to each student group to raise funds. I recall that by the end of the week, students at the university managed to raise more than the needed amount to erect this wall. At the end of the week, at a function attended by all the students, the Vice Chancellor congratulated them on the successful completion of the rag week and the raising of funds for donation to a charity.

In 1977, it was a donation to an old people’s house in Yorkshire. But in 2016, as the website under reference has pronounced, it had been numerous charities for which each college of the university had to raise funds for giving support.


An eye-opener for university authorities in Sri Lanka

If the objective of ragging is to help students to fight away shyness, bring forth their hidden talents and build interpersonal relationships, this type of cross-cultural events done voluntarily serve that purpose best. In the rag week, there is an event for every student. It is open, fully sponsored by university authorities, voluntary and meant for a good cause.

All universities in the UK have similar rag weeks organised with sponsorship of universities by student unions. Since the cult practices in the subculture at Sri Lanka’s universities cannot be eradicated through punishment as suggested by some, this is a good practice which Sri Lanka’s university authorities could consider adopting. Instead, the ragging practised in Sri Lanka has caused young students to become mentally tormented and left them with experiences that will torture them for the rest of their lives.


Inadequate knowledge of English to follow courses in English 

Sri Lanka’s universities have started to give instructions to students in English medium from the first year onward. However, the proficiency of students in English, as demonstrated by their performance at the Common English Paper at the Advanced Level Examination, has been far from adequate. A senior don at a state university has confided in me that his university usually gets the students who have scored the highest at the examination.

Yet, half of them have failed the Common English paper which he says is not a very tough examination. Only about 13% of the students have got more than 70 marks. Therefore, the university has arranged to conduct special English classes for the students to enable them to overcome that deficiency within the shortest time possible.

He says that in countries like Russia, Germany and China where the medium of instruction is in their respective mother tongue, foreign students are taught the language of instruction within the first six-month period. Students after following those language courses are able to follow the lecture programs without difficulty. Hence, the first six months are the most crucial for students to learn English.


Mass ragging 

prevents students from concentrating on studies

However, according to this academic, students are subject to mass ragging during the first three-month period. The objective of ragging has been to break the in-built personality of the student and make him obey the orders of the raggers without questioning. Those raggers are affiliated to a radical political party and the objective of ragging has been to make the fresh students follow the orders of the top leadership of that political party.

Though the first six months are crucial for any student with language deficiency to overcome the same, according to this academic, they are not in the right mind to follow those English classes. It is the students who come from remote areas who fall victim to this mental torture.

A few students are able to overcome the deficiency either because they have family backgrounds or because they come from schools which provide a good English education. The students who are left out are unable to recover from the loss throughout their university career. Accordingly, only a few will succeed in becoming a better lot. It makes the creativity among university students exclusive rather than inclusive.

Ragging is a criminal offence in Sri Lanka. Yet, it is practiced openly with total impunity. Since the authorities keep a blind eye, fresh students have no choice but to allow themselves to be ragged by seniors freely. Though the radical political parties attain their objective of creating a silenced student population, that silence has destroyed the creativity of a generation. 


(W.A. Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com). 

The Unintended Consequences of Trump’s Palestinian Budget Cuts

By cutting aid to Palestinian refugees, the United States is undermining stability in the entire region.

Palestinian schoolgirls and women attend a protest in the southern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Rafah on March 8, 2010. (Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images) 

BY SCOTT ANDERSON

 | FEBRUARY 2, 2018, 3:11 PM

When I was 19, I left the farm I grew up on in Iowa to serve in the U.S. Army, which I did proudly for 21 years. Soon after I left the military, I decided to continue public service — this time with the United Nations. For the last decade, I have worked in Gaza and the West Bank as a member of the U. N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides humanitarian and human development services to the refugees of Palestine. In both the military and in the Middle East, I have seen firsthand how instability can harm societies and cultures. It is much more cost-efficient to preempt instability than to have to address it once the situation is deteriorating; it also saves lives.

The population that UNRWA works with is highly vulnerable and dependent upon the international community to help feed their poor, educate their children, and care for their sick. One million Palestinians in Gaza alone survive on food provided by UNRWA. Our schools educate over half a million children in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, and they have proven to be centers of excellence, consistently outperforming government schools in the region. All of our students receive education in human rights, nonviolent conflict resolution, and tolerance of differences.

But recent developments are jeopardizing the relative stability and security provided by UNRWA. Earlier this month, the U.S. government announced that it was reducing critical aid, saying it would provide only $60 million, for now, to support our efforts this year — an 83 percent reduction from its 2017 contribution of $360 million. Until this year, the United States had consistently provided one-third of the agency’s overall annual funding.

This announcement came as a shock to the agency, with no notice that the funding we have been able to rely on for decades would be massively decreased. In order to ensure continuity of food aid and other life-saving assistance to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, we initiated procurement processes in December and relied on funding pledged to our emergency assistance program to pay for and deliver the food.

The U.S. government has been our single largest donor and one of our most valued partners since we first began our operations in 1950; it has always made good on its word. It is part of the American legacy abroad to care for those in need and to not leave the most vulnerable behind.

 If the U.S. government fails to follow through on the generous support it has always provided to the Palestinian refugees we serve, not only will our operations be at stake, but millions of lives will also be in danger — and the very stability of an already volatile region will be at risk.

A world that is willing to watch as hungry children cannot access food, students are shut out of their schools, and mothers can no longer access prenatal care is not the world any of us want to live in.

The West Bank, where I am based, is an illustrative example of the challenges faced by refugees.

 Here, we see a people who have endured 50 years of occupation and 70 years of dispossession, with levels of vulnerability reaching unprecedented highs. The impoverished Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank, for example, have been subjected to multiple displacements and home demolitions — and they now face the prospect of further disruptions in the form of a reduction or halt to our life-saving services.

UNRWA will do everything in its power to continue providing for those in need. This includes launching an unprecedented global fundraising campaign in which we are reaching out to a broad range of governmental donors, the private sector, foundations, charities, and individuals. Failure to make up the funding gap will mean service disruptions to food-insecure refugees, vulnerable children, mothers, the disabled, the sick, and the dying.

The people we serve want a future that offers their children the same peace and stability that I grew up with in Iowa. The services that UNRWA provides not only ensure a measure of security and stability for over 5 million human beings registered with UNRWA, but also provide them hope for the future — hope that they can one day enjoy the same rights and privileges that I enjoyed in the United States. Hope for peace and stability, the opportunity to continue their education and be part of the global community, and the chance to work and provide for their families. Hope that they will eventually see a just and lasting solution to 70 years of displacement and conflict.

Until then, the international community must continue to provide them with protection and assistance. Now is certainly not the time for any country to pull back from these longstanding commitments.

Labour’s top Israel lobbyist accused of defrauding Jewish charity

Jeremy Newmark, sitting between disgraced Israeli embassy agent Shai Masot and Israeli ambassador Mark Regev at a private meeting during Labour’s 2016 conference. Newmark is seen in undercover Al Jazeera footage giving the ambassador “intelligence.” (Al Jazeera/YouTube)

Asa Winstanley Lobby Watch 9 February 2018

Jeremy Newmark, a top Israel lobbyist and parliamentary hopeful in the UK’s Labour Party, misappropriated tens of thousands of dollars from his former employer, it was revealed on Thursday.

An internal report obtained by The Jewish Chronicle shows that the real reason Newmark stepped down as executive of the Jewish Leadership Council in 2013 was that his financial conduct had been exposed.

Under Newmark, the report states, it “appears to be standard practice in the [Jewish Leadership Council] to falsify information relating to finances.”

It also states that when auditors asked Newmark for information and clarifications, he “did not provide honest responses to a number of queries.”

But top figures at the registered charity – including Mick Davis, who is now chief executive of the ruling Conservative Party – buried the affair and allowed Newmark to resign citing health concerns, the paper reported.

Stephen Pollard, editor of The Jewish Chronicle, slammed the trustees of the Jewish Leadership Council for their failure to “call in the police and let the law take its course” when Newmark’s behavior was discovered, instead deciding “to cover it up” and hand him six months salary as a parting gift.

Newmark, who denies any wrongdoing, did not reply to a request for comment from The Electronic Intifada.

Among Newmark’s alleged financial irregularities were expense claims relating to family holidays in Israel; leasing a BMW worth $64,000 on which he put a personalized number plate; inflating project budgets while failing to account surpluses; routinely charging personal expenses to the organization; habitually withdrawing cash while failing to provide receipts and attempting to cover his tracks.

Since leaving the Jewish Leadership Council, Newmark has reinvented himself as the chair of the revived Jewish Labour Movement which lobbies for Israel within the Labour Party.

The Jewish Chronicle reported on Friday that “senior” members of the group were calling for Newmark to step down, but that he had initially refused.

Later on Friday the group issued a statement announcing that Newmark had agreed to quit so he could seek “redress following the publication of historic allegations.”

The statement, signed by the group’s secretary Peter Mason, said that the paper’s report they had called for Newmark to resign was “completely untrue” and claimed that “there are no allegations whatsoever against Jeremy that relate to the Jewish Labour Movement.”

Labour’s Israel lobby

Newmark is now a leading Labour councilor in the London suburb of Hertsmere and was a candidate for Parliament in the 2017 election, narrowly losing to a Conservative.

Newmark has for years worked with the Israeli government to attack campaigns for Palestinian rights in the UK.

In 2012 he told an Israeli newspaper that he was “liaising closely with the government of Israel” to help Israeli colonel Moty Cristal sue the trade union Unison after its members threatened to boycott a training session he’d been set to run.

The “discrimination” case ultimately came to nothing, and was dropped in 2014.

In the Labour Party since becoming chair of the new Jewish Labour Movement in early 2016, Newmark has made frequent media appearances claiming the party has become institutionally anti-Semitic under the leadership of Palestine solidarity veteran Jeremy Corbyn.

A spokesperson for Corbyn declined to comment on the report in The Jewish Chronicle, saying it was “not one for us to comment on.”

Despite his record of attempting to undermine Corbyn’s leadership and acting as an agent for Israel within Labour, Corbyn has publicly backed Newmark.

At a Jewish Labour Movement event in December, Corbyn said he was “very grateful” to Newmark for his “help and advice” and that he admired part of the speech Newmark had just given.
In 2016 Newmark was caught on camera in an undercover Al Jazeera investigation at Labour’s annual conference colluding at a private meeting with the Israeli ambassador and the now-disgraced embassy agent Shai Masot.

Masot was later forced to leave the country after the documentary exposed how he had been plotting to “take down” British ministers.

At the meeting, Newmark provided the ambassador with what he called “intelligence” from an apparently private leadership meeting of Momentum, the left-wing group set up to support Corbyn from the grassroots. The footage can be viewed in the video above.

Momentum’s chairperson Jon Lansman declined to comment on the Jewish Chronicle report, but, in an email to The Electronic Intifada, responded to the undercover Newmark footage: “I don’t think we have Israeli spies in Momentum. At that time we never had private meetings. They were reported on various websites or Facebook feeds while they were still going on.”

Momentum’s press office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Financial improprieties

The Jewish Chronicle apparently obtained the internal report into Newmark’s financial improprieties from a whistleblower at the charity and published it in full on Thursday.

The report says an external auditor revealed that in September 2011 Newmark had made an unspecified number of cash withdrawals from the charity’s account which were spent at party political conferences – presumably those of Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

The report states that “receipts were never found and the amounts were ‘written off’ by” the auditor.

The report elsewhere states that Newmark “has commonly withdrawn cash while abroad which has been difficult to monitor.” One withdrawal of $570 during a 2013 trip to Israel went “unaccounted for.”

Such withdrawals included Newmark’s trip to the 2012 conference of Washington’s most powerful Israel lobby group AIPAC.

Newmark did not reply to The Electronic Intifada when emailed to ask if he had made such cash withdrawals from the Jewish Labour Movement.

In his editorial The Jewish Chronicle’s Pollard charges that some donors who knew the truth about Newmark nonetheless “sat back mutely” and “gave the JLM generous donations, while knowing the details of his behavior.”

“Preposterous” lies

The Jewish Leadership Council is a registered charity, a large part of whose work is to lobby for Israel.

In one of its most high profile anti-Palestinian cases during Newmark’s tenure as executive, the group backed a failed attempt to sue the University and College Union for “institutional anti-Semitism.”
In reality the union’s membership had debated – and not even implemented – the Palestinian call to boycott Israeli academic institutions complicit in occupation and apartheid.

The case spectacularly backfired in March 2013 when it was thrown out by the tribunal on all counts. The judge said the case “was an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means” and singled out Newmark for giving “preposterous” and “untrue” evidence.

The leaked report says that Newmark was responsible for inflating the Jewish Leadership Council budget for the case, one of several such instances in which Newmark “independently decides on the allocation” of the funds.

Thousands of pounds

An almost $53,000 surplus for the case then existed, and it was suggested that the money be transferred to a fund to help pay for other legal work, including the Moty Cristal case.

However, the audit report states, Newmark “indicated he intends to transfer [the amount] in full to the [Jewish Leadership Council] account” where it could be used to cover “staff time” including his own.

Newmark also said he was waiting to hear from the lawyers who handled the University and College Union case “whether they will be invoicing” the group for their fees, in the amount of about $28,000, which he suggested would be paid out of that surplus.

But in 2012 lawyer Anthony Julius told The Electronic Intifada that his firm Mishcon de Reya had taken on the case pro bono.

Newmark did not reply to The Electronic Intifada when emailed to ask about the discrepancy.

The report also states that Newmark transferred more than $29,000 to external accounts managed “independently” by Newmark without oversight from the Jewish Leadership Council’s auditors.

One of these was an account for the Fair Play Campaign Group, which was set up in 2006 to combat the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.

One bank statement allegedly showed that about $1,900 from the Fair Play Campaign Group’s account was used to pay off one of Newmark’s credit cards. When challenged Newmark claimed this was for expenses he was owed. The report states that the balance in the campaign’s account was “lower than expected” based on the money that had been transferred into it.

The report also shows that the charity paid annual costs for Newmark’s home security system.
Newmark claimed he had been advised by the Community Security Trust – another pro-Israel group – he was “at risk” due to being “actively and publicly engaged in counter boycott work.”

Updated to add Jon Lansman comments and news of Newmark’s resignation.

Trump warns Israel that settlements 'complicate' peace hopes

President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital was strongly welcomed by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu

9 February 2018

US President Donald Trump has said Israeli settlements "complicate" the peace process with Palestinians and urged "care" over the issue.

He also told an Israeli newspaper that he did not believe the Palestinians, and possibly Israel as well, were ready to make peace.

nians in December when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
He also threatened to withhold aid unless Palestinians agreed to talks.

The US leader's latest comments came in an interview published on Sunday with the conservative newspaper Yisrael Hayom.

Asked by editor-in-chief Boaz Bismouth when the US would present its peace plan, Mr Trump said:

"We will see what happens. Right now the Palestinians are not into making peace, they are just not into it. Regarding Israel, I am not certain it, too, is interested in making peace so we will just need to wait and see what happens."

• Can Jewish settlement issue be resolved?
• Trump Jerusalem shift puts counter-terror efforts at risk

Asked whether Israeli settlements would form part of the peace plan, he said: "We will be talking about settlements. The settlements are something that very much complicates and always have complicated making peace, so I think Israel has to be very careful with the settlements."

Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have long been a stumbling block to peace deal

More than 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

In excerpts of the interview published on Friday, Mr Trump said that recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital had been a highlight of his first year in office.

"I think Jerusalem was a very big point and I think it was a very important point," he said.

"The capital, having Jerusalem be your great capital, was a very important thing to a lot of people. It was a very important pledge that I made and I fulfilled my pledge," he said.

Israel claims the whole of the city as its capital but the Palestinians want East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said he will no longer accept the US as a mediator following the controversial recognition of Jerusalem.

Last month the UN expressed concern at a US decision to withhold more than half of a tranche of funding for an agency that supports Palestinian refugees.

Washington said it would hand over $60m (£43m) of a planned payment to the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), but would keep back $65m until it carries out "reforms".

As tensions rise, neither Iran nor Israel want war

Restrained cut and thrust was central to the downing of an Iranian drone over Israel, but miscalculations are all too possible

Yossi Melman-Sunday 11 February 2018

The chain of events over Syria early on Saturday was the closest Israel and Iran have ever been to direct military confrontation. But the military punches between Israel-Syria-Iran also contained a few more "firsts".

It was the first time an Iranian unmanned drone had penetrated Israeli space - in the past, Iranian-made drones that infiltrated Israel were operated by Hezbollah from Lebanon.

This time it was an all-Iranian operation led by the al Quds force: the decision, the launch and the operational control and guidance.

It was also the first time that an Israeli warplane had been downed by enemy (Syrian) missile since 1982. And it was the largest Israeli attack against Syrian anti-aircraft batteries since the same year, during the Lebanese civil war.

Both sides are boasting of their achievements. Israeli generals have praised the precise intelligence which helped the Israeli Air Force to identify, follow and eventually to shoot down an advanced Iranian drone.

An IAF senior officer indicated that it was modeled on a US drone that had been intercepted by Iran.

And the Iran-Hezbollah-Syrian axis has celebrated the blow inflicted on the proud Israeli air force.

Pursuing strategies

Nevertheless, the basic reality and the conflicting interests have not changed. Israel remains the strongest military force in the region, and its air power and intelligence are evident almost daily, even in this incident.

All in all, the incident indicates that the tension between Israel and Iran over its involvement in Syria and Lebanon is growing and not going away. They are determined to keep pursuing their strategies.

Iran's interests are to deepen its involvement in Syria and to benefit from the economic dividends once the war is over and full stability restored. At the same time, Tehran seeks to use Syria as future launching pad against Israel.

For this purpose, it wants to build intelligence posts near the Syrian-Israeli border and production facilities for long-range and precision missiles, mainly to supply them to its Hezbollah ally. Iran also plans to construct similar production sites in Lebanon itself.

An Israeli soldier walks near a military post close to the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights (Reuters)

Israel, on the other hand, wants to preserve its freedom of action in Syria and Lebanon to prevent the deployment of Iran's troops or Iranian proxies (the international Shia miliatias and/or Hezbollah) - near its border, to stop weapon supplies to Hezbollah and to prevent the construction of missile factories.

To that end, Israel uses both diplomacy and military strength. It uses Russia as an intermediary to convey its messages to the Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah axis. And if they don't pick up on those messages, Israel uses its air force, which, since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, has attacked Syrian and Iranian targets on at least 100 occasions. In most cases, Israel has not publicly claim responsibility, to leave its operations opaque.

But Israel also doesn't want to find itself in a direct military confrontation with the tripartite axis. It is clear to Israeli military commanders and the cabinet that if a new war breaks out it will be conducted on two fronts - Syria and Lebanon - and with those countries' huge arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets and missiles, Israel's civilian population will suffer heavily.

Israeli fears

This Israeli fear was clearly demonstrated in the decision-making process which lay behind the drone being shot down over Israel and not Syria.

Israel knew in advance that Iran intended to launch it, so followed the drone from the moment of launch and decided to shoot it not over Syrian or Jordanian air space but only after it entered Israeli space. Why? In order not to provoke Iran and provide it with a pretext for retaliation.

But it seems from Iran's response that it also doesn't want to escalate things.

Iran didn't launch missiles against the Israeli planes that flew over Syria after the drone was shot down. Syria was the only party to shoot at them.

Iran initially denied that Israel had shot down one of its aerial vehicles, describing the Israeli version a "lie". Tehran then claimed it had been shot down over Syria, not Israel.

These reactions were all evidence that Tehran was restraining itself in order to prevent undesired escalation.  

Read more ►

The Israelis tried to cut their losses in Syria. They failed

Indeed, both sides continue their efforts to pursue their strategies and interests without being dragged into a war.

The name of the game they play is "containment". They trying to push the envelope to test the reaction and limits of the other side; if they realize that they have gone too far, they quickly stop.

The Russian game is even more complex. The Kremlin's ultimate interest is to stabilize the Syrian regime and eventually to reap economic dividends. At the same time, Russia is playing a double game.

It still needs Iran and its proxies as boots on the ground to finish off the remaining pockets of resistance to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Yet it also allows the Israeli air force, with which it has established official channels of communication, to operate freely against its two allies.

As for Assad, he knows very well that Israel is the major force with the power to prevent him achieving his goal to reinstate his full authority over all of Syria.

Yet it has to be remembered that the Middle East players are sometimes unpredictable. Its past and history show us that sometimes wars break out due to miscalculations, against the intentions of one or both sides.

Yossi Melman is an Israeli security and intelligence commentator and co-author of  Spies Against Armageddon.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Photo: A woman sits near a sign at Mount Bental, an observation post in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that overlooks the Syrian side of the Quneitra crossing (AFP)

Russian passenger plane crashes outside Moscow, killing 71

 Debris from crashed Russian plane found 50 miles from Moscow – video


 Marc Bennetts in Moscow and agencies Sun 11 Feb 2018 15.39 GMT

Saratov Airlines flight 6W703 crashes after take off from Domodedovo airport, leaving no survivors
More than 70 people died when a Russian passenger plane crashed shortly after take-off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Sunday, officials say.

Saratov Airlines flight 6W703 was heading to Orsk, a city near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, when it went down near the town of Argunovo, about 50 miles south-east of Moscow. Witnesses said the plane, an Antonov An-148 aircraft, was in flames as it fell from the sky.

The plane was carrying 71 people – 65 passengers and six crew members. Emergency services officials told the Tass news agency there were no survivors. Wreckage from the plane was reported to be spread over a large area and it was unclear if there were any casualties among people on the ground.

Russia’s gazeta.ru website cited unnamed investigators as saying the pilot had reported a technical malfunction and asked for clearance for an emergency landing at the nearby Zhukovsky International airport. Officials have not confirmed the report. Other reports said one of the plane’s engines may have exploded before the crash.

 Russian emergency vehicles arriving at the site of the crash. Photograph: Dmitry Serebryakov/AFP/Getty Images

The transport ministry said several causes were being considered, including weather conditions and human error.

The flight-tracking site Flightradar24 tweeted that the seven-year-old passenger jet had gone into a steep descent five minutes after take-off, after which it had vanished from radars.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, expressed his condolences to the families and friends of those who died in the crash and ordered the government to set up a special commission to investigate.

A source from Russia’s emergency services told Interfax the 71 people on board had no chance of survival.

Russian state television aired a video of the crash site, showing parts of the wreckage in the snow. Russia has experienced record snowfalls in recent days and visibility was reportedly poor.

The Russian-made plane had been bought by Saratov from another Russian airline a year ago.

Russian media reported that the emergency services had been unable to reach the crash site by road and rescue workers had walked to the scene on foot. Emergency services said that more than 150 rescue workers had been deployed.

The Russian transport minister was on his way to the crash site, agencies reported. The transport ministry said several causes for the crash were being considered, including weather conditions and human error.

The governor of the Orenburg region, which the plane was flying to, told Russian media more than 60 people on the plane were from the region.

Local media website Ural56.ru in the Orenburg region showed footage of distressed relatives at Orsk airport, where the plane was due to land. Andrei Odintsov, the mayor of Orsk told Russian state television that six psychologists and four ambulances with medics were working with the relatives in the small airport.

Plane crashes are common in Russia, where airlines often operate ageing aircraft in testing conditions. A light aircraft crashed in November in the far east of the country, killing six people on board.

A military plane carrying Russia’s Red Army Choir crashed after taking off from the Black Sea resort of Sochi in December 2016, killing all 92 people on board. The choir had been due to give a concert to Russian troops in Syria. Pilot error was blamed for the crash.

In March 2016, all 62 passengers died when a FlyDubai jet crashed in bad weatherduring an aborted landing at Rostov-on-Don airport.

Is capitalism on the global mend?

Markets surge while fundamentals remain weak

February 10, 2018, 5:33 pm 

The Wobble-U (2008-2014) and the New Normal (post-2015)
(Most major economic indices)

US Dollar Index
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/currency

Kumar David

From the time of the crash of 2008, I have been among the voices that warned of a prolonged recession (I called it New Depression) which global capitalism would not climb out of for a protracted period. Though not as serious as the Great Depression of the 1930s, thanks to new recession fighting tools applied globally and the stabilising influence of China, global capitalism failed to achieve robust recovery for nine years, almost as long as the Great Depression. The last few months, however, have seen a rally of equity markets and a mildly encouraging upturn in growth rates, commodity prices and employment. So, has global capitalism finally got past the New Normal in my little diagram?

The diagram is the fruit of my theoretical musings in 2008 updated in 2015. It says that unlike after conventional recessions, there would be no ‘normal’ recovery; instead the global economy would keep bouncing about the bottom. ‘Wobble-U Shape’ I thought was a neat term to coin side by side with the familiar V-shape, U-shape and W-shape, for fast and slow recoveries and a double-dip recession. The 2008 slump in US financial markets and banks was followed by a downturn in Europe (aggravated by the collapse in Greece) and recession in Japan and then China slowed in 2014-16. For three years from 2014 both ‘one-handed’ and ‘two-handed’ economists accepted the New Normal, life at the bottom of the trough, as normal. This little figure has stood the test of time better than the offerings of conventional liberal economists and Nobel Laureates.

Now the interesting question is: "Has global capitalism entered a period of recovery in its boom-slump-crisis-(war)-recovery lifecycle?" - Marx’s organic cycles, inbuilt in capitalism’s nature. Or is this a false dawn again? The paradox is that though signals of recovery are strong, fundamentals are weak. I will have to return to the subject again and again in the coming months but for now I will confine myself to alerting readers to some developments. Though no economist, I have observed that people with a sound grounding in materialist science, wide reading and disciplined study, do better than professional practitioners of the ‘dismal science’ in making sense of the real world.

The most visible sign of recovery is the state of play in global equity-markets. The best-known indices are going through the roof; Dow* (32%), Nasdaq* (36%), NYSE (23%), S&P* (25%), Hang Seng* (41%), FTSE* (8%), France’s CAC (14%), Nikkei (22%), India’s Sensex (30%) and Shanghai (12%). The number in parenthesis is the rise in the last one year and an asterisk (*) means that the index reached an all-time high in recent weeks. Equities have soared this year in the US in part in response to Trump’s pro-business push for deregulation; American capitalists are optimistic that impending tax-cuts and public welfare reductions will buoy the well-to-do classes. But the market is volatile and driven by speculation; it an unreliable indicator of economic health. Markets are at heights not seen except in 2000 and 1929 – dotcom bubble and Wall Street Crash. The share-market is like sex, the best part is just before the end.

The dollar remained depressed after the 2008 recession for over six years till early 2014. It recovered smartly in mid-2014, declined again in early 2017 and remains on the low side. The index in the accompanying chart weights the dollar against a basket of currencies and started at 100 in 1973 when Bretton Woods was dismantled. Its all-time peak was 165 in February 1985, lowest 70.7 in March 2008 and it is 89 now.

Another feature is that bond yields are rising; the US benchmark 10-year has shot up to 2.7% and the 3-month Bill is at 1.4%. Rising bond yields (lower bond prices) signal declining confidence in government and economy. Loose money is fuelling an equity surge; Central Banks are priming the global financial system through Quantitative Easing. In an environment where capital is reluctant to undertake major productive investments at home or abroad, this encourages market volatility.

Weak fundamentals

U.S. trade deficits have been at the heart of a runaway expansion of a market driven financial bubble round the world. There is no will and no political climate to cut consumption and reverse trade deficits. American capitalism has caught a tiger by the tail. Dough Noland writes "The U.S. financial situation is unsound and untenable. The de-industrialised services and finance-based economy is hooked on unending credit expansion, The U.S. boom is financed by unsound leveraging generated by global central banks and speculative finance. The perpetual outflow of U.S. ensures a crisis of confidence in the dollar"; [http://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/]

The IMF has warned that the global economy’s recent recovery may not last, despite a pickup in activity in western countries. Marking the 10th anniversary of the onset of the financial crisis it said, in its World Economic Outlook Report, that governments will be lulled into a false sense of security by booming markets and ignore essential domestic tightening. Capitalist governments won’t touch the rich. The global economy will fizzle into a decade of sluggish growth in the 2020s as the current upswing fades and a slowdown in population kicks in.

World Bank analysts have said that they expect the world economy to grow by 3.1pc this year, following an improved 2016 as the shadow of the financial crisis is shaken off. But this will be the high point of a temporary recovery as underlying structural problems surface in the next decade. Weak productivity growth globally, poor levels of investment and an ageing global workforce will dent growth. "This is a cyclical recovery, it is a rebound from weak growth in 2016. Underneath that there is a slowdown in potential growth," said Franziska Ohnsorge, economist at the World Bank.

[www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/01/09/global-economy-set-decade-gloom-world-bank-predicts-recovery/]

"If you look backwards 10 years, potential growth has slowed by about 1 percentage point globally. Looking forwards we expect it to slow further. Potential growth for the next decade is estimated at about 2.3pc." This World Bank forecast is based on a relatively benign scenario in which none of the big risks to growth emerge.

The political dimension

"The most likely cause for the bubble to burst would be the rising political tension in the West. The bubble economy keeps squeezing the middle class, with more debt and less wages. The festering political tension could boil over. Radical politicians aiming for class struggle may rise to the top. The "US midterm elections in 2018 and presidential election in 2020 are the events that could upend the applecart" says Andy Xie in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post 8 Oct 2017. I disagree, distressed fundamentals, not the political antics of neo-populists, are at the root of crisis.

In the previously quoted report the IMF says the backlash against globalisation, stoked by stagnant wages and the loss of well-paid, middle-skill jobs, is a threat to the global economy and noted that sustaining expansion requires abandoning protectionism and doing more to ensure that gains from growth are shared more widely. A decade after the financial crisis sparked economic decline around the world, 2017 seemed the year when capitalism came back. Failure by right-wing populists to seize power in Europe prompted stabilisation helping the single currency bloc to recover after years of tumult, while China kept up its rate of expansion despite fears over a sharp slowdown. According to the OECD, global real trade growth accelerated from 2.6% in 2016 to 4.8% in 2017 and world GDP growth moved up from 3.1% in 2016 to 3.6% in 2017.

Multinational agencies (IMF, World Bank etc) and establishment economists in global banks and corporations seem more concerned about political instability than unsteady fundamentals. I have a different view. Despite Trump the US will not plunge into political collapse; but trade imbalance, debt rising another $ 1.5 trillion in the next decade, and inability to service commitments in social security is far more serious. Though Theresa May will make a hash of Brexit, the already overdue Labour Government will be able to muddle things along. Neo-populism has not recently made gains recently in Europe; China is stable, Modi is ambitiously populist and likely to win the next Indian election.

In a word it’s not political instability but the fundamental systemic problems of the economy that are problematic. Unsustainable low interest rates and irresponsible monetary policy (QE) cannot go on, but Central Banks are terrified of the consequences of tightening. Strict spending controls seem undoable in Western Democracies and rising debt is out of control. The dollar is to be under pressure and worst of all capital is not interested in new investment. It’s the structure of the capitalist economy, not crazy neo-populists who threaten the house of cards down.

The implications of a short-term global rally are on the whole positive for Sri Lanka. Exports will rise and the rupee will stabilise if there is liquidity in Western markets and the dollar falls. On the other hand, rising global interest rates will aggravate our foreign debt servicing burdens. As for an ensuing long slump in the West, the way forward for Lanka is to expand its Asian businesses (China, India, Singapore and many others) as this is where our future lies.