Intensifying Rape Culture of Sri Lanka — Psychology Explains…

Psychologists said that the media is one of the main contributing factors for the increasing rate of gang rape in Sri Lanka.

by Kalana Krishantha-Mar 2, 2018

( March 2, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian ) No matter whether we believe or not, the rape culture of Sri Lanka has been increasing day by day. The wave of gang rapes has been intensifying for years. In 2017, Sabaragamuwa Province Governor President’s Counsel Marshal Perera openly said it was a disturbing matter that a rape of a woman takes place every four hours in Sri Lanka according to Police statistics and it`s sad to happening this in a country that carries the reputation as the country which produced the first woman prime minister and the first woman president in the world.

Statistics tell the Story

The Care International did a research over sexual violence on 2013, covering the four districts –Colombo,Nuwaraeliya,Batticoloa and Hambantota in Sri Lanka, they interviewed 1658 men and 653 women. The findings were so terrible at that time, but related ministries officers have still been unable to take necessary actions regarding that type of issues. This research revealed that 33% of man had acted at least one time sexually or physically violent manner to their intimate partner and 17% of males contribute to act at least one act of sexual violence against women including a rape. The report, which is named as “broadening gender-Why masculinities matter “is freely available in partners4prevention.org website.

Recent Tragedy-Gang Rape of a Nurse-Narahenpita

The most recent incident is rape of nurse who worked at some private hospital at Narahenpita. She has been allegedly raped for four occasions in different areas of Sri Lanka. The most pathetic thing is so called erudite people became suspects of this incident. Four suspects were arrested by Narahenpita Police and one was a doctor while another one was an engineer. Why so called erudite people are behaving in such a way? The question is remained yet to be answered.

Above all the controversies and dilemmas, it`s crystal clear that our country has become a place with full of sexual maniacs and vulnerable groups of the society, especially children and women have to face much more difficulties due to prevailing conditions.
Minds of the people have become so rude and It`s so worthy to investigate on the psychological aspects of this issue and what are the possible solutions to this from the eyes of psychologists.

Psychologists said that the media is one of the main contributing factors for the increasing rate of gang rape in Sri Lanka.
Clinical Psychologist and Founder of the Arnaha Centre for Wellbeing Kavitha Amaratunga said that the media had been contributing a lot to the increasing tendency of gang rapes owing to unethical reporting.

Media-The way of reporting

“The way the media reports an incident means a lot to the audience. The uncensored and exaggerated reporting of such incidents paves the way for the spread of those things within the country in a rapid manner,” she explained.

War Mentality- Aggression

“The 30-year-long war is over. During that time, people directed their aggression towards their enemies in war. But, after it finished, the aggression was suppressed and now has been released in various ways and gang rape is one of the ways of releasing their suppression. Although the war is finished, Governments have still not been able to initiate a proper plan of rehabilitation. This can also be considered as another factor.”
When queried as to whether culture contributes to sexual suppression, she said that the harmful influence of culture has been on the wane but that there is still some remaining influence.

Psychological Interventions Should be Promoted

While suggesting solutions, she added that the support of the Government should be increased for psychological counselling and in Government hospitals there should be more opportunity for psychological interventions. “Currently, in Government hospitals, there is very little attention paid to psychological counselling, it should be changed. Apart from this, discussion forums, awareness programs on mental health and sexual education-based programs should be held throughout the country,” Amaratunga added.

Sri Lanka is a country which was civilized 2500 years ago and the politicians, religious leaders and etc. are talking proudly about long civilization. However, no one care about the current situation of the country and what is going under the carpet. The country was once renowned as pearl of the Asia, has now become the paradise of sexual maniacs who has been keeping the title for years as, “the country which is searching the term” sex”, for highest number of times in Google”. The time has come to implement the necessary reforms to our society and improve psychological interventions towards this mentally ill society. Otherwise, this land will become a place which is not suitable for human habitation.

Why agricultural value chains fail: Failure to commit to policy decisions?

Introduction

 Friday, 2 March 2018 

It is with great difficulty that we as a country arrived at the decision to abolish the fertiliser subsidy.

The fertiliser subsidy, as an economic instrument used to increase the efficiency of rice production, was successful in achieving its primary objective, which is increasing rice production and reducing the need to import rice.

Sri Lanka became very close to achieving its status of rice self-sufficiency. However, there were many negative externalities. With a subsidy of almost 90%, farmers became heavily dependent on chemical fertiliser, nearly forgot about organic fertiliser and overused as well as misused the subsidy.

Why agricultural value chains fail Failure to commit to policy decisions.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Voice of America claims Israel seeks to help Gaza

A recent protest against the siege that Israel has long imposed on Gaza. Ashraf AmraAPA images

 

Michael F. Brown-28 February 2018

Voice of America would have its listeners believe that as the conditions in Gaza deteriorate, Israel is turning to the world for help.

This is a bizarre take on reality. Israel, more than any state in the world, has led the charge in reducing Gaza to economic desperation.

The US propaganda outlet did get one thing right: Conditions in Gaza are certainly deteriorating. The notion that Israel is serious about helping, however, flies in the face of 10 years of an Israeli siege and three devastating wars against the people of Gaza resulting in the deaths of more than 3,500 Palestinians.

Nickolay Mladenov, special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, recently told the UN Security Council that “Absent immediate steps to address the humanitarian crisis and to revive the economy, we will face a total institutional and economic collapse in Gaza. This is not an alarmist prediction … it is a fact.”

Particularly noteworthy is the highlighting by Voice of America of the previous efforts of Qatar to fund various projects in Gaza, such as $84 million for a road and another $114 million for buildings in southern Gaza as well as a hospital. Unmentioned in the article was Qatar’s intention to provide a $9 million grant for fuel and medicine at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital.

Muhammad al-Emadi, who heads Qatar’s Gaza reconstruction effort, declared, “When you want to do work in Gaza, you have to go through the Israelis.”

In an interview with the Associated Press, he called for Israel to provide Palestinians with more travel permits, but also pinned blame on the Palestinian Authority during a contentious visit to Gaza that included a shoe thrown at his car, apparently by a hospital cleaner upset by the lack of pay.

Al-Emadi’s comment about the PA led Fatah to issue a statement defending its leader Mahmoud Abbas.

“The political statements which the Qatari envoy made against President Mahmoud Abbas attempt to exploit the tragic situation in Gaza as he denies the support we provide to our people there and what we share with them,” the statement read.

These heightened tensions come at a time when Qatar has lately been strengthening its relations with the pro-Israel lobby.

During the interview with the Associated Press at his Jerusalem hotel, al-Emadi stated: “If the international community helps Gaza, this will prevent” a new war in Gaza.
The pressure the Trump administration, Gulf states and Egypt are applying to Qatar is presumably enormous.

Squeezing Gaza

Israel squeezes hard in Gaza – waging “economic warfare” according to Gisha, a human rights group – and in 2012 was discovered to have cynically calculated how many calories Palestinians there need to survive. The goal, 2,279 calories per person, seems to have been to make life miserable without an actual famine.

Both misery and malnutrition went up. Stunting debilitated Palestinian children, hurting their growth and intellectual development.

The current policy pursued from Washington to Riyadh appears to be that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations favoring obfuscation and endless delay have failed and now should be replaced by a ratcheting up of the economic pressure Palestinians have endured for the past decade in Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority has cruelly proven its complicity and been repaid by the Trump administration with the announcement that the US would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Notwithstanding the setback, the PA continues to turn the screws against the people of Gaza.

Leaders from Gaza to the West Bank to Israel to the Gulf to the European Union to the US to the UN have universally failed Palestinians in Gaza.

There is seemingly nowhere to turn as water supplies dwindle and farmland shrinks.

“Spraying of agrochemical poisons”

Yes, even the farmland is shrinking as Israel has turned to aerial herbicide spraying at the barrier to kill Palestinian crops.

The Israeli military attempted to explain the process in December 2015: “The aerial spraying of herbicides and germination inhibitors was conducted in the area along the border fence last week in order to enable optimal and continuous security operations.”

In practical terms, this has meant the destruction of crops and new impediments to Palestinians’ ability to feed themselves.

The practice continues, most recently in January 2018 according to the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.

A briefing paper published by Al Mezan in February spelled out the effects for Palestinian farmers in Gaza. “The spraying of agrochemical poisons deforms some crops and visibly changes their color.

This is easily observable on leafy plants, such as spinach, parsley, chard and rocket.”

The human rights organization also noted the negative consequences for honey production.

The lack of transparency regarding substances used has caused alarm in Palestinian farmers along the boundary area just inside Gaza – according to Al Mezan “officially designated by Israel to encompass the lands within 300 meters from the border, but effectively extending up to 1,500 meters into Gaza’s territory.”

Beyond knowing that Oxygal is one of the chemicals employed by Israeli planes in fly-overs, Palestinians do not know what other chemicals are damaging crops and soil in the area.

The harm to this strip of land along the barrier is a microcosm of what is transpiring in Gaza as a whole which, according to a 2012 UN report, requires “Herculean efforts” if it is to be a “liveable place.”

Those efforts have not been forthcoming. Notwithstanding the claims by Voice of America about Israel seeking help for Gaza, the situation has only declined since the 2012 UN report with Israeli military and economic policies central to the deterioration in conditions.

Trump’s rage at Sessions puts the president in serious danger

The relationship between President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has deteriorated in recent months. Here’s a look at how they got to this point. (Taylor Turner/The Washington Post)

THE MORNING PLUM:

By Greg Sargent March 1 at 10:01 AM

We often treat President Trump’s demands for loyalty from law enforcement, and his open chafing at institutional constraints on his power, as the temperamental explosions of an out-of-control madman whose tyrannical tendencies are largely impulsive — a Mad King. But what if they are driven by calculations that are deliberately designed to achieve a concrete end that he perceives to be the best of a range of possible outcomes for him?

In the case of Trump’s efforts to hamstring the Russia probe, this is becoming increasingly clear. At the same time, those obstruction efforts are failing to bring him closer to his own apparent goals, and may arguably be putting him in greater danger. One might refer to this paradox as Trump’s “irrational instrumentalism.”

The Post has a blockbuster report that tells us that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is scrutinizing Trump’s efforts to push out Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the summer, to determine “whether those efforts were part of a months-long pattern of attempted obstruction of justice,” as The Post puts it:

In recent months, Mueller’s team has questioned witnesses in detail about Trump’s private comments and state of mind in late July and early August of last year, around the time he issued a series of tweets belittling his “beleaguered” attorney general, these people said. The thrust of the questions was to determine whether the president’s goal was to oust Sessions in order to pick a replacement who would exercise control over the investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Trump associates during the 2016 election, these people said. …

In mid-July, Trump started escalating his public criticisms of Sessions, including angry tweets. Around that time, according to people familiar with internal White House discussions, the president discussed firing Sessions or forcing him out of the Justice Department. Those discussions are of particular interest to Mueller’s investigators, as they seek to determine the president’s intentions, according to a person familiar with the probe. 

At the time, a White House adviser told a Washington Post reporter that Trump was “stunned” that Sessions had not yet quit. The president, this adviser added, had been hoping the attorney general would be so embarrassed by Trump’s scathing comments that he would leave.

As has been widely noted, Trump’s assaults on Sessions, and his calls for prosecution of political opponents, reveal that he views law enforcement as little more than an instrument at his political service. Trump has raged at Sessions for failing to protect him from an investigation that began when he was a candidate, and was taken over by Mueller precisely because of Trump’s own conduct in firing former FBI director James B. Comey. Trump and his allies have gone to extraordinary lengths to pervert and weaponize the congressional oversight process to portray that investigation as illegitimate, but independent reporting and a successful push by Democrats to smuggle out basic facts in the face of that massive disinformation campaign have laid waste to those efforts.

Now Mueller is scrutinizing whether Trump’s efforts to remove Sessions are part of a broader pattern designed to obstruct justice. Mueller wants to know whether Trump hoped to replace him with someone who would protect him from the probe. And the fact that Mueller is scrutinizing Trump’s efforts in this regard over the summer is significant. Remember the timing here: As you may recall, Trump ordered his White House counsel to fire Mueller in June, an effort that failed when the counsel threatened to quit. And so, it’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that Trump’s subsequent effort to dislodge Sessions may have been designed to bring about the same end, in a different way: If his White House counsel wouldn’t fire Mueller, he’d replace his disloyal attorney general with someone who might at least constrain Mueller.

This isn’t at all a stretch, because this desire on Trump’s part to enlist help in constraining the Mueller probe has been documented by independent reporting — repeatedly. It was widely reported that Trump wanted the Nunes memo released because it might give him pretext to remove Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who currently oversees the Mueller probe, apparently to replace him with a loyalist. And last spring, Trump ordered the White House counsel to stop Sessions from recusing himself from the probe with the explicit purpose of getting Sessions to protect him from it. When that failed, Trump raged: “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”

Trump himself has basically told us in his own words, again and again and again, that he believes law enforcement should function as an instrument of his political will. How much clearer can it be?

One might ask why Trump hasn’t just fired Sessions and replaced him with someone who will protect him from Mueller. But there’s an answer: The Times reports that Trump views himself as “constrained” from this option because senators in both parties — yes, including Republicans — would view this as a step too far. This is likely constraining Trump from firing Rosenstein as well. We also know Trump’s lawyers are forestalling such drastic steps by telling himMueller is close to wrapping up.

To show obstruction of justice, Mueller must demonstrate that Trump’s efforts to hamstring the investigation were undertaken with “corrupt intent” and an “improper purpose,” such as protecting himself and his associates from accountability. Even if Mueller does not conclude that the president is criminally liable, he could still document a pattern of serious misconduct. And so, the key question — which Mueller is plainly trying to answer — is whether there’s actually a methodical pattern in that behavior that’s designed to achieve a concrete goal. As law professor Eric Posner put it to me, it increasingly appears Trump is acting “instrumentally rational” toward “getting what he wants.” Posner added: “The more you think that Trump is acting pursuant to a clear plan in his mind to protect himself and his family from these investigations, the more you’ll think that it’s obstruction of justice.”

Again and again, Trump has tried to act toward the obvious concrete end of hamstringing or constraining the probe. Again and again, his efforts have been foiled, and he has recoiled from taking the most drastic steps. This pattern of behavior has not moved him any closer to his own evident goal. Yet the pattern of behavior itself could either prove incriminating or could expose him to substantially worse political peril. Yep: What we’re seeing here is irrational instrumentalism.

* HICKS’S RESIGNATION LEAVES TRUMP ‘ISOLATED’: White House communications director Hope Hicks’s resignation comes after she testified to a House committee that she sometimes tells white lies on Trump’s behalf. The Post adds:

Hicks’s resignation leaves Trump … increasingly isolated in his own West Wing, which has returned to the chaos and tumult of its earliest days. “Trump is a lone-wolf president in a sequestered White House,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “He doesn’t trust his own agencies. He’s at war with his Justice Department. His son-in-law can’t get a security clearance. Hicks says she told white lies on his behalf and is disappearing. It’s just raining bad news on the president. He’s in a corner and there’s no easy exit.”

And there are still nearly three years to go.

* DRIP-DRIP-DRIP ON KUSHNER CONTINUES: The New York Times reports that a private equity billionaire met with Jared Kushner to talk infrastructure policy and a possible White House job. After that, his company gave Kushner’s real estate firm a $184 million loan:

There is little precedent for a top White House official meeting with executives of companies as they contemplate sizable loans to his business, say government ethics experts. “This is exactly why senior government officials, for as long back as I have any experience, don’t maintain any active outside business interests,” said Don Fox, the former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration … “The appearance of conflicts of interest is simply too great.”

The Times piece adds that Mueller’s investigators are also scrutinizing Kushner’s “interactions with potential investors from overseas,” presumably to probe whether they tried to influence him.

* DEMOCRATS RUN ON GUN CONTROL IN KEY DISTRICTS: Politico reports that Democratic operatives are increasingly looking at gun reform as a winning issue in certain districts:

Multiple Democratic political operatives said they will surgically deploy the issue in select competitive states and House districts, especially those wracked by mass shootings. … Democrats are looking to oust House GOP incumbents representing suburban House districts in Florida, Northern Virginia and Nevada whom they believe are out of step with their constituents on guns. … both parties say the topic could be central in suburban districts.

Politico reports that Democrats from red states are proceeding cautiously, but that’s to be expected, and the bigger development is this willingness to embrace the public shift we’re seeing.

* WALMART JOINS DICK’S SPORTING GOODS: Walmart has now announced it will raise the age for all firearms and ammunition purchases to 21, after having ended sales of “modern sporting rifles,” including the AR-15, in 2015:

We take seriously our obligation to be a responsible seller of firearms and go beyond Federal law by requiring customers to pass a background check before purchasing any firearm. The law would allow the sale of a firearm if no response to a background check request has been received within three business days, but our policy prohibits the sale until an approval is given. … Our heritage as a company has always been in serving sportsmen and hunters, and we will continue to do so in a responsible way.

This doesn’t go as far as Dick’s did in calling for comprehensive additional legislation, but it’s another sign that market pressures may be effecting a real cultural shift.

* TRUMP MAY ANNOUNCE STEEL TARIFFS: The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump may announce as early as today that he is rolling out new tariffs on steel and aluminum in the name of national security:

The issue has been the subject of intense infighting inside the administration … [Those] urging caution has included Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council, and Defense Secretary James Mattis. New import curbs would spark strong protests from trading partners and allies around the world … said they would likely retaliate if they were hit with tariffs or quotas.

A trade war? The problem is that we just have no idea what is motivating Trump to do this, and it likely has little to do with a serious effort on his part to evaluate its impact.

* REPUBLICANS FRET ABOUT ARPAIO’S SENATE RUN: Michael Scherer reports that lawless, abusive former sheriff Joe Arpaio views his Senate GOP primary run in Arizona as a referendum on the popularity of Trumpism:

“There is a silent majority out there, and that’s why he won,” Arpaio said at an event at a dun-colored retirement community here in February. … Such comments have raised concerns of Senate Republican leaders, who worry about holding on to the seat held by Jeff Flake, who is retiring, in a difficult ­November general election.

Huh. If Senate GOP leaders worry that Arpaio would put the seat at risk, maybe there actually isn’t a silent majority out there in support of undiluted Trumpism, which Arpaio does represent perfectly.

* POLL: MOST AMERICANS SAY TRUMP IS RACIST: A new Associated Press-NORC poll finds that 57 percent of Americans say Trump is a racist, including more than 8 in 10 blacks, three-quarters of Hispanics and nearly half of whites. And:

Eighty-five percent of Democrats consider Trump racist, but just 21 percent of Republicans agree. … There are vast partisan divides on the impact of Trump’s policies … 73 percent of Democrats but just 14 percent of Republicans think they’ve been harmful to African Americans, while 78 percent of Democrats and 25 percent of Republicans think they’ve been harmful to Hispanics.

That more than one-fifth of Republicans agree Trump is a racist, and a quarter of them think Trump’s policies have harmed Hispanics, seems pretty remarkable and telling.

How Israel Won a War but Paid a High Moral Price

A decade of targeted assassinations has pushed the boundaries of Israel's laws and military ethics — and harmed its image across the globe.

BY RONEN BERGMAN-FEBRUARY 3, 2018

On May 18, 2001, a Hamas operative wearing a long dark blue coat came to the security checkpoint outside the HaSharon Mall, near the northern Israeli city of Netanya. He aroused the suspicion of the guards, who stopped him from entering, and then blew himself up, killing five bystanders. On June 1, another suicide bomber killed 21 people, most of them young Jewish immigrants from Russia, standing in line outside a discotheque on a beach in Tel Aviv. The owner of the dance hall, Shlomo Cohen, had served as a naval commando, “but this was the worst thing I had seen in my life,” he said, with despair in his eyes.

By early November, suicide bombers were striking in the streets of Israel almost every week and sometimes every few days. On Dec. 1, three bombers in succession killed 11 people in Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall. The next day, a man from Nablus blew himself up on a bus in Haifa, killing 15 and wounding 40.

The offensive did not stop. In March 2002 alone, 138 men, women, and children were killed by suicide bombers, and 683 were wounded.

In March 2002 alone, 138 men, women, and children were killed by suicide bombers, and 683 were wounded.

The most atrocious of the attacks occurred on Passover, on the ground floor of the Park Hotel in Netanya, where a Seder banquet was being held for 250 of the city’s poor. A suicide bomber disguised as a religious Jewish woman entered the hall and blew himself up, killing 30 people — the youngest aged 20 and the oldest 90 — and wounding 143 others. George Jacobovitz, a Hungarian-born Nazi death camp survivor, was among the dead.

2002 was, according to Avi Dichter, the head of the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet at the time, “the worst year for terror attacks against us since the establishment of the state.”

The Israeli intelligence community had come across suicide bombers before, but it had no solution for it. “What can you do against a suicide bomber when he’s already walking around in your streets looking for somewhere to blow himself up?” said Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, the head of the Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure.

Terrorism in general, and suicide attacks in particular, created a strange and frustrating situation within the Shin Bet and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). They generally knew who was behind an attack but could not get to him deep inside Palestinian-controlled territory. “There was a sense of impotence,” said Giora Eiland, the head of the IDF’s Planning Directorate at the time.

Dichter, the Shin Bet director, had already presented a new strategy to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during a series of meetings toward the end of 2001. At first, the ministers were hesitant. But at a meeting after the Haifa bus terrorist attack, Sharon whispered to Dichter, “Go for it. Kill them all.”
Since picking off individual bombers was ineffectual, Dichter decided to shift focus. Starting at the end of 2001, Israel would target the “ticking infrastructure” behind the attacks. The person who blew himself up or planted the bomb or pulled the trigger was, after all, usually just the last link in a long chain. There were recruiters, couriers, and weapons procurers, as well as people who maintained safe houses and smuggled money. They would all be targets.

The Israeli security forces did not hold back. Targeted killing operations killed 84 people in 2001, 101 in 2002, and 135 in 2003. Unlike sporadic killings abroad by Mossad, Israel’s chief intelligence agency, it wasn’t possible — or plausible — for the country to deny that it was behind the assassinations.

Criticism of the targeted killings inside and outside Israel also made it necessary to justify each one, disclosing details of the victims’ misdeeds to establish that it had sufficient cause to respond. Gradually, what had once been considered highly damaging — acknowledging responsibility for an assassination — became official policy.

The IDF began putting out statements after each hit. Simultaneously, the Shin Bet, which had previously been reluctant to talk to the media, distributed excerpts of the relevant “red page” — summaries of material about a dead terrorist’s actions — to various news outlets. Israel was completely rearranging its communications policy — fighting, in effect, a propaganda war.
Explaining, even highlighting, what had long been state secrets required new language and new euphemisms. The deaths of innocent civilians during an assassination operation became known as nezek agavi — “accidental damage.” The words “assassination” or “elimination” or, perish the thought, “murder” were seen as inappropriate, said a senior official in the prime minister’s office. Finally, they picked the term sikul memukad — Hebrew for “targeted preventive acts.”

Although these euphemisms may have been helpful for public relations, it was not at all clear whether Israel’s new targeted killing campaign was legal. Not surprisingly, some of the families of the assassinated Palestinians and victims of “accidental damage” didn’t believe so. They enlisted the help of human rights associations and experienced Israeli attorneys to petition the Israeli Supreme Court to investigate and prosecute those responsible.

More surprisingly, the previous head of the Shin Bet, Ami Ayalon, whose overhaul of the intelligence and operational systems had al­lowed the new assassination program to begin, agreed with the dissenters. He argued that the Shin Bet was killing people without first considering relevant political and international events and that they failed to understand when an assassination would quell the flames of conflict and when it would fan them.

Shin Bet was killing people without first considering relevant political and international events and that they failed to understand when an assassination would quell the flames of conflict and when it would fan them.

On July 31, 2001, an IDF helicopter fired several missiles into the office of Jamal Mansour, a member of the political arm of Hamas and a student leader at Al-Najah University in Nablus, in the West Bank. He was killed, together with one of his helpers and six other Palestinian civilians, including two children. Ayalon called the Shin Bet command and asked a top-level official there if he had gone insane. “Why, this man just two weeks ago came out with a statement saying that he supported a halt to terror attacks and that the peace process should be given a chance!” The official replied that they were not aware of such a statement. “What does that mean, you ‘aren’t aware’?” Ayalon fumed. “All the Palestinian newspapers covered it! The whole world is aware!”
“I call it the banality of evil,” Ayalon later told me, channeling Hannah Arendt. “You get used to killing. Human life becomes something plain, easy to dispose of. You spend a quarter of an hour, 20 minutes, on who to kill. On how to kill him: two, three days. You’re dealing with tactics, not the implications.”

Israel had not given full consideration to the moral implications of the new program, but it was fully aware that it needed to provide legal cover for officers and subordinates who might later face prosecution, either in Israel or abroad. As early as December 2000, IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz summoned the chief of the Military Advocate General’s Corps, Menachem Finkelstein, and asked him: “In the current legal situation, is it permitted for Israel to openly kill defined individuals who are involved in terrorism? Is it legal or illegal?” Finkelstein was stunned.

IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz summoned the chief of the Military Advocate General’s Corps, Menachem Finkelstein, and asked him: “In the current legal situation, is it permitted for Israel to openly kill defined individuals who are involved in terrorism? Is it legal or illegal?” Finkelstein was stunned.

 “Do you realize what you are asking me?” he replied. “That the IDF’s advocate general will tell you when you can kill people without a trial?”

On Jan. 18, 2001, a top-secret legal opinion signed by Finkelstein was submitted to the prime minister, the attorney general, the chief of staff and his deputy, and the Shin Bet director. The document opened with this statement: “We have for the first time set out to analyze the question of the legality of the initiated interdiction” — another euphemism — “We have been told by IDF and Shin Bet that such actions are carried out in order to save the lives of Israeli civilians and members of the security forces. This is, therefore, in principle, an activity that leans on the moral basis of the rules concerning self-defense, a case of the Talmudic commandment: ‘He who comes to kill you, rise up early and kill him first.’”

For the first time, a legal instrument had been proposed for en­dorsing extrajudicial execution.
For Finkelstein, a religious man, it was a difficult moment. He was painfully aware that God prevented King David from building the temple because he had too much blood on his hands.
Finkelstein, who is now a district judge, wondered if he would be punished one day. “I submitted the opinion with trembling hands,” he told me. “It was clear that this was not a theoretical matter and that they were going to make use of it.”

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Questions linger about how Melania Trump, a Slovenian model, scored ‘the Einstein visa’

People who demonstrate “extraordinary ability” are eligible for what is known as the “Einstein” visa. First lady Melania Trump was granted an EB-1 visa in 2001. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)


By Mary Jordan March 1 at 6:00 AM

In 2000, Melania Knauss, a Slovenian model dating Donald Trump, began petitioning the government for the right to permanently reside in the United States under a program reserved for people with “extraordinary ability.”

Knauss’s credentials included runway shows in Europe, a Camel cigarette billboard ad in Times Square and — in her biggest job at the time — a spot in the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, which featured her on the beach in a string bikini, hugging a six-foot inflatable whale.

In March 2001, she was granted a green card in the elite EB-1 program, which was designed for renowned academic researchers, multinational business executives or those in other fields, such as Olympic athletes and Oscar-winning actors, who demonstrated “sustained national and international acclaim.”

“We called it the Einstein visa,” said Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic congressman and chairman of the House subcommittee that wrote the Immigration Act of 1990 defining EB-1.

President Trump has railed against "chain migration." His wife is an immigrant and his in-laws are in the U.S., but how did they come in? (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

The year that Knauss — now first lady Melania Trump — got her legal residency, only five people from Slovenia received green cards under the EB-1 program, according to the State Department.
In all, of the more than 1 million green cards issued in 2001, just 3,376 — or a fraction of 1 percent — were issued to immigrants with “extraordinary ability,” according to government statistics.

Melania Trump’s ability to secure her green card not only set her on the path to U.S. citizenship, but put her in the position to sponsor the legal residency of her parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that the couple are now close to obtaining their own citizenship.

[Melania Trump’s parents are legal permanent residents, raising questions about whether they relied on ‘chain migration’]

President Trump has proposed ending the sponsorship of relatives such as parents, slamming as “chain migration” the decades-long ability of U.S. citizens to assist relatives in obtaining legal residency.

“CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!” Trump tweeted in November.

Michael Wildes, an attorney for Melania Trump and her family, declined to comment on whether she sponsored her parents for green cards. He said he was not surprised that so few immigrants from Slovenia obtained EB-1 immigrant visas in 2001 because the requirements are stringent.

Melania Trump’s profile as a model in New York rose after she began dating Donald Trump. (Lawrence Lucier/Getty Images)

“Mrs. Trump was more than amply qualified and solidly eligible,” he said. But he declined to discuss the qualifications that the first lady cited in her petition for permanent residency.

“There is no reason to adjudicate her petition publicly when her privacy is so important to her,” Wildes said.

A White House spokeswoman for the first lady referred questions about her immigration process to Wildes.

Immigration experts said the president’s efforts to restrict legal immigration spotlight lingering questions about how the first lady and her family members obtained residency in the United States.
The biggest one: How did she convince immigration authorities that she qualified for the EB-1 program?

Morrison, the former congressman and immigration expert, said that Melania Trump’s resume in 2001 seems “inconsistent” with the requirements of the visa.

To obtain an EB-1 under the extraordinary ability category, an immigrant has to provide evidence of a major award or meet at least three out of 10 criteria. Among them: evidence of commercial successes in the performing arts, evidence of work displayed at artistic exhibitions and evidence of original contributions to a field.

“What did she submit?” asked David Leopold, an immigration lawyer and a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “There are a lot of questions about how she procured entry into the United States.”

The process of deciding who meets the “extraordinary ability” standard is subjective, said Sarah Pierce, an immigration expert at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. But it is generally thought that only the top 2 percent of people in their field would qualify, she said, adding that the “quintessential award you want to put on the application is Nobel Prize.”

The first lady came to the United States from Slovenia in 1996, first briefly on a visitor’s visa and then on work visas, according to Wildes.

Initially, she was not widely known in the highly competitive New York fashion world, according to people in the industry.

“She was never a supermodel; she was a working model — like so many others in New York,” said one person who knew her in the 1990s and requested anonymity to discuss the first lady’s early years in the United States.

In 1998, at age 28, she began dating Trump after meeting him at a party, an association that raised her modeling profile. She started appearing on Page Six of the New York Post and in other celebrity columns on the arm of the real estate developer.

At the time, she was modeling on a work visa for skilled immigrants. Melania Trump received five H1-B visas between October 1996 and 2001, Wildes has said.

[Melania Trump shares more immigration information but no documentation]

Under her husband’s administration, such temporary visas have been harder to get, dropping by more than 50,000 in 2017 compared with the previous year, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In January 2000, in perhaps her most widely known photo shoot, Melania Trump appeared on the cover of British GQ magazine. She was photographed nude on a fur rug on Donald Trump’s private jet under the headline: “Sex at 30,000 feet. Melania Knauss earns her air miles.” (The magazine cover is noted, among others, in her official biography on the White House website.)

The accompanying article predicted that the political aspirations of Trump — then making a bid for the Reform Party nomination — could transform his Slovenian girlfriend into the first lady of the United States one day.

“I will put all my effort into it,” she told the magazine, “and I will support my man.”

Turkish breakfast TV: Hate speech, death threats... and the weather

TV station under fire from all sides after early morning presenters rant about killing secularists and death sentences for journalists

Ahmet Keser launches a tirade on 'The Day Begins' (screengrab)

Suraj Sharma

Wednesday 28 February 2018 13:37 UTC

ISTANBUL, Turkey – Plenty of tea was spluttered and breadcrumbs spat as the presenter of a Turkish breakfast programme decided to launch a tirade on air and issue death threats to residents of certain areas of Istanbul.

Viewers of the ultra-religious Akit station's "The Day Begins" programme watched as Ahmet Keser seethed with anger at claims Turkey was harming civilians in Syria's Afrin region - before stating that, should likeminded Turks wish, they would start with "traitors" in secular areas of Istanbul - and even some members of parliament.

If we were to kill civilians we would start in Cihangir, Nisantasi, Etiler, there are so many traitors

- Ahmet Keser, presenter, The Day Begins

"Why would the military of the Turkish republic go there to kill civilians?" he said, adding: "If we were to kill civilians we would start in Cihangir, Nisantasi, Etiler, there are so many traitors."

He ended the tirade with a veiled threat to MPs: "There is the parliament."

Keser also referred to the residents of Cihangir, Nisantasi and Etiler - considered westernised areas of Istanbul - as "mercenaries".

The backlash from the public and opposition political parties against his comments was immediate and widespread.

Baris Yarkadas, an MP from the opposition CHP Party, filed a complaint in parliament asking the speaker to initiate action. 

The recently launched centre-right Good party filed criminal charges. It was not clear if the charges were against Keser, the media group, or both.

On Tuesday evening, the Kucukcekmece prosecutor's office charged Keser with "using the media to incite public hatred and to denigrate".

It is a clear act of sabotage against Turkey's unity

- Mahir Unal, AKP spokesman

On 28 February, Mahir Unal, the spokesman of the ruling AKP party, whose views the Akit TV says it reflects, also lashed out at those remarks.

"You are using such expressions based on what? We will never accept or endorse this... It is a clear act of sabotage against Turkey's unity," Unal said in televised remarks.

Unal went on to say that he believed the television station had taken action against the person involved.

Akit TV said in a statement that Keser had resigned in order to prevent attacks on the institution using his remarks as a pretext.  

But presenters on Akit have on multiple occasions called the secular Turkish republic a stain on the country's history.

Just two weeks ago, another presenter on the same breakfast programme threatened the secular Cumhuriyet newspaper during a segment showing the front pages of the day's papers.

Taking offence at every aspect of the paper's front page and calling its employees "filth", the presenter, whose on screen physical agitation grows with every sentence, expressed a desire for one-man rule, sharia law and the death sentence in order to better deal with Cumhuriyet and its staff.

Akit's threats have enraged journalist unions and bodies, while also increasing concerns about the ever-deepening polarisation in society, which targeted groups say is encouraged by the AKP divisive rhetoric of recent years.

Can Guleryuzlu, the president of the Progressive Journalists Association, told Middle East Eye that Akit's work cannot be termed journalism - it is is criminality fuelled by political motives.

"Akit TV is engaging in warmongering and the incitement of hate crime under the guise of journalism," he said.

"Two weeks ago it used similar hate speech to depict the Cumhuriyet newspaper as a target and that is a criminal act. This shows that the institution in question is systematically engaged in such crimes and will continue to do so.

"We know that Akit TV is very close to the AKP ruling party in terms of thought and draws its courage to do such things from those in political power," said Guleryuzlu.

Ozan Asik, a sociologist at Uludag University, told MEE such incidents in the media reflected the wider social climate where people see threats in all directions.

"Polarisation in society is at such a high that it has reached existential angst levels for everyone. All differing views are seen as existential threats," said Asik. "It is the same thing we are seeing in media as well."

Asik said in the case of the Akit group, a large section of conservatives rejected its views as well, deeming it too radical and imbalanced.

Political influence and union inefficiency

Turkish media watchdog RTUK is the body that deals with infringements committed by media. However, many say the structure of the body is too politicised, preventing it from acting on issue with political import.

RTUK's membership is based on proportional representation of political parties in parliament. This gives the AKP clout over the body.

The watchdog on Tuesday evening also announced it had placed a three-episode ban on the programme and imposed a financial penalty on Akit TV.

Concerns that the judicial system is also increasingly vulnerable to political pressure also raises fears that such acts go unpunished.

"If prosecutors and other public institutions don't take immediate steps then they will not have performed their duty and will be complicit in the crime," said Guleryuzlu.

He spoke to MEE before the district prosecutor's office later in the evening announced an investigation into Akit TV.  

If prosecutors and other public institutions don't take immediate steps then they will not have performed their duty and will be complicit in the crime

- Can Guleryuzlu, president of Progressive Journalists Association

Journalist unions and associations in Turkey have no means of acting against or censuring improper journalistic practices.

Most of Turkish media is owned by corporations or individuals with varied business interests.

According to Asik, whose research specialises in Turkish media, journalists themselves are to blame for their inability to efficiently organise in the face of corporate owners.

He said the failure of journalists to organise properly began soon after the era of liberalisation and deregulation began, and that it was an issue not just in Turkey but across the globe.

"Journalists themselves are to some extent responsible for the weak position of Turkish media in its relationship to corporate owners and the political regimes because they did not organise, establish efficient trade unions to defend their professional rights, and form a united front against corporate owners and the government over the last two decades," said Asik.

"And remember that at the time it was a coalition government with various points of contact."

Despite their limitations, Guleryuzlu said they remained dedicated to calling out unacceptable journalism practices.

"As press trade associations we will always say that such an understanding [like Yeni Akit's] has nothing to do with journalism and will condemn it," he said.

"Journalism is not only under pressure from public authorities but from such politically motivated acts that have no place within journalistic principles."

"We will continue to use every platform to say that Akit TV is engaged in warmongering and hate crime."