Friday, 23 March 2018 Fortunately for me,W.A. Wijewardena wrote an article on Dhammika Perera’s presentation at the Colombo School of Business and Management on ‘My entrepreneurship mind and leadership heart’. If not for that article, I would not have known aboutcomments on green cars made in the presentation and might not have brought these aspects to Daily FT readership.
For months, Maryam Tarayra couldn’t help but think of Issa when she opened her refrigerator - reminded every time that her son’s body lay frozen in an Israeli morgue, as the family fought for Israeli forces to release his body for burial.
“As the mother of someone who was held in a freezer, at that time I could never feel warm,” she recalled, sitting on the terrace of her home in the village of Bani Naim in the southern West Bank.
Like scores of other Palestinian families, Maryam and her husband, Salem, have dealt with the compounded grief of mourning for a relative killed by Israeli forces while fighting for their bodies to be returned to them in order to give them a proper burial.
After unofficially halting its policy of confiscating bodies in 2004, Israel resumed the practice in October 2015 during a resurgence of violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Israel had progressively given back most bodies since, although Israeli forces have increasingly returned to the practice, temporarily holdings several slain Palestinians’ remains in the past few months.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has simultaneously been consolidating the legal basis for confiscating bodies and working around Israeli Supreme Court rulings on the issue, raising fears that the road ahead may become more arduous for grieving families as Israel further entrenches the practice into law.
Legal leeway
On 7 March, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed legislation granting Israeli police authority to withhold bodies of Palestinians within Israel and annexed East Jerusalem - a power that had so far only been officially held by the army in the occupied Palestinian territories, albeit implemented on an ad hoc basis by police.
“The (Israeli) Supreme Court had decided that there is no legal authority for police to hold the bodies,” Hassan Jabareen, founder and general director of legal centre Addalah, told Middle East Eye.
“This law is looking to bypass the position of the court.”
The issue of body confiscation is a particularly complex one, which Palestinian families have had to fight on several fronts.
According to Budour Hassan, the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC) - for which she is a project coordinator - is currently representing the families of 120 Palestinians whose remains have been buried in unmarked graves in Israel’s two "cemeteries of numbers."
Nasser and Raeda Tarayra show a photograph of their son, Mohammad, whose body has been held by Israel since June 2016 (MEE/Chloé Benoist)
The Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs has estimated that the remains of some 250 people designated by Israel as “enemy combatants” are currently held in these cemeteries - some dating as far back as the 1960s.
While the Israeli Supreme Court officially called on the Israeli government in March 2017 to form a committee to locate and identify all bodies held in the cemeteries of numbers, ahead of an April hearing intended to check on the committee’s work, Hassan said that “no serious progress has been achieved on this front.”
“A year has passed since the decision was taken, and only a couple of DNA tests have been taken,” she told MEE.
“The fear is that, again, they will request another delay.”
Meanwhile, the majority of the estimated 140 bodies that have been withheld for various lengths of time since 2015 have been stored in morgue freezers, although in September, Israeli authorities buried at least four new bodies in the cemeteries of numbers -- belonging to Palestinians who the Israeli security cabinet decided in January 2017 would be held as leverage in eventual future negotiations with Hamas in exchange for the bodies of two slain Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
In December, the Supreme Court ruled in a two-to-one vote that the army did not have authority to withhold bodies under the 1945 regulation, but gave the Israeli government a six-month deadline to enact a new law on the matter.
Israeli authorities instead requested another hearing in front of seven justices, to take place in July. Should the panel still rule that the policy of confiscating bodies is illegal, the six-month deadline would be applicable starting in July -- effectively giving a year to the Israeli government to retroactively justify the policy.
“We at JLAC believe that the three arms of the Israeli state - the judiciary, the parliament, and the government - work mutually to buttress this apparatus of control and surveillance,” Hassan said.
“On the one hand, the Court ruled this decision, but on the other hand it provided the government with leeway. It gives the impression that the court is actually helping the Knesset come up with what we believe to be discriminatory and unconstitutional laws that explicitly violate international law.”
‘There is no humanity in it’
While legal battles are being waged on multiple fronts, Palestinian families end up being the ones paying the price, spending months or years waiting for their relatives’ remains to return.
In Bani Naim alone, six residents were killed in 2016 - including 15-year-old Issa Tarayra, who was shot by Israeli forces in September that year when they claimed the teenager had been carrying a knife; 18-year-old Majd Khdour, who was killed in June after allegedly carrying out a car-ramming attack; and Mohammad Tarayra, who was killed by a security guard after he stabbed and killed a 13-year-old girl in the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba that same month.
Issa’s body was returned to his family after three months, while Khdour’s relatives had to wait seven months. Mohammad’s body is still being held by Israel a year and nine months later.
“Before he was killed, everything had meaning - but after that, I lost hope in everything,” Nasser Tarayra, Mohammad’s father, said, as his wife Raeda sat beside him. “It never gets easier.”
“The first pain is losing your son, and the second pain is still waiting for his body,” he added. “To keep the bodies is the worse thing we can do, there is Salem Tarayra, the father of slain Palestinian teenager Issa Taraya, on 19 March, 2018 (MEE/Chloé Benoist).”
“It was a big shock, we couldn’t accept finding out she had died,” Fatima Khdour, Majd’s mother, told MEE, holding Majd’s three-year-old daughter Batoul on her lap. “Waiting was very hard, at the time I felt as if she was still alive. I was just waiting for her to come back.”
“When we buried her, at least we knew where she was.”
Beyond being a part of the grieving process, the ability to hold a funeral for their loved ones promptly is also a religious issue for many families - as Islam requires bodies to be buried within a day.
“As Muslims, we know that God will take care of his soul, but it was still painful to not be able to bury him. It was very, very hard,” Salem, Issa Tarayra’s father, recalled.
Relatives of slain Palestinians have fostered strong ties over the years, which they said has been a necessary sense of community in difficult times.
Fatima Khdour and Batoul Khdour, hold photographs of Majd Khdour, Batoul’s mother and Fatima’s daughter (MEE/Chloé Benoist)
“We are the only ones who understand the wait, how we carry this weight. We are the only ones who can understand the emotions, the pain, the sadness,” said Azhar Abu Srour, the mother of Abd al-Hamid Abu Srour, 19, who died when explosives he was carrying detonated on a bus in Jerusalem in April 2016, injuring 20 people.
Abd al-Hamid’s body is still withheld by Israel, as Azhar has become one of the more vocal Palestinian family members fighting against this policy.
“A number of people were supporting each other, demonstrating together to ask for the return of bodies, and we are still in touch,” Salem Tarayra said, adding that he was held by Israel in administrative detention for three months last year - he suspects due to his involvement in demonstrations against body confiscations.
Some, however, said they felt neither the Palestinian Authority, foreign governments, nor international organisations paid attention to their plight.
“Israel has done this for decades, but no one cares about the issue,” Abu Srour said. “I feel as if this cause only matters to the families… The issue of the confiscation of bodies takes a lot of my time, away from my daughters and my home. The problem is if I stop, no one else will speak up.”
The families rejected the justifications used by Israel to maintain the policy.
“They think that because there are some (Israeli) bodies held by Hamas, they are justified to hold (Palestinian bodies),” she said.
“But if they want to make a deal, don’t they already have hundreds of bodies in the cemetery of numbers, thousands of prisoners?” Abu Srour said. “The families are not an instrument of pressure against Hamas regarding the bodies (of Israeli soldiers).”
For Nasser Tarayra, the confiscation of bodies was mainly “a weapon to cause pain to Palestinians.” Nonetheless, the families said they would not give up.
“My goal is to get Abd al-Hamid back,” Abu Srour said. “As a mother, to be able to bury my son, it would be a relief. It would be a great gift for me.”
Thousands of internally displaced Palestinians take part in the March of Return [File photo]
March 22, 2018
Despite Tel Aviv’s clear plan not to show its concerns about the March of Return which Palestinians are organising to take place soon, and which includes a huge mass mobilisation towards the borders between the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 and those occupied in 1967, all indicators show that the Zionist decision-making circles are dealing with this development as a first degree political and security threat.
The official television channel Kan revealed on Friday that the Security Cabinet had listened to various reports and estimates from Israeli security and intelligence institutions about the upcoming march and its various repercussions.
It is clear that Tel Aviv is dealing with the event as the embodiment of its worst nightmares because of the potential energy it contains, especially in terms of affecting Israel’s international standing, as the ability of the occupation army to deal with large masses of defenceless civilians will be limited.
The use of military weapons to attempt to disperse the march can indicate the collapse of the security situation in full, while Tel Aviv won’t be able to market its use of such weapons internationally.
Adding to the complexity of the situation for the Zionists is the fact that setting the date of the march to be the day the Trump administration moves the US embassy to occupied Jerusalem carries with it an additional opportunity to ignite the security situation in the West Bank. Hence, Palestinian protests against the transfer of the embassy will expand the public reaction to the military responses to the march.
Last Friday, Ala Qabha’s actions were an omen of pessimism for the Zionists as an indication that the relative calm in the West Bank is misleading and that there is a lot of fire under the ashes.
In addition, the Zionists found that the economic and social reality in the West Bank was worse than they thought. The latest data released by the World Bank showed that economic growth has slowed and unemployment among young people has jumped to 40 per cent. This means that betting on the differences in the economic situation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will not pay off.
At the same time, the rise of the Trump administration and the madness of extremism characterising the right-wing government in Tel Aviv reinforce an environment in which the situation can be flammable, and this in turn increases Zionists’ concerns that the March of Return can contribute to realising their worries.
There is no doubt that the most sensitive issue to the Zionist entity, the Trump administration and the Arab regimes is that this march can end up imposing a regional agenda that leads to destroying the conditions that Washington and Tel Aviv have been trying to prepare in order to propose the “deal of the century”; the deal that is clearly and explicitly aimed at ending the Palestinian national cause.
Trump’s administration is concerned about maintaining relative calm until the deal is announced. The Americans know that an explosion of the security situation before the deal is announced is a drag on the Arab rulers, who Washington is betting on to get the deal passed.
The outbreak of confrontation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will reduce the margin of manoeuvre those rulers have with public opinion in terms of cooperating with the deal.
Perhaps one of the main reasons why the Trump administrations held brainstorming sessions in the White House and Brussels on the situation in the Gaza Strip was to reduce Palestinians’ enthusiasm so they won’t participate in the march.
Hence, it was not surprising to see some regional powers intensifying their contacts with the Palestinian forces inside the Gaza Strip to try to influence the political environment in a way that would reduce the enthusiasm of Palestinians to join and participate in the march.
What concerns the Zionists, the Americans and those Arabs that revolve around them is that the March of Return can provide Palestinians with a platform that helps them regain control of their own cause, while many parties, including regional parties, are seeking to harm the Palestinian cause in order to strengthen their position with the Trump administration.
This article first appeared in Arabic in The New Khaleej on 19 March 2018
The crown prince is trying to burnish his reformist credentials ahead of his US tripCREDIT: FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Women in Saudi Arabia do not need to wear traditional black abayas or headscarves, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said, as he tries to burnish his reformist credentials ahead of his first trip to Washington as Saudi heir to the throne.
The 32-year-old prince, who will meet Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, said that Saudis had “come a very long way and have a short way to go” to roll back laws which have restricted Saudi women for decades.
"Saudi women still have not received their full rights. There are rights stipulated in Islam that they still don’t have,” he told CBS News.
“The laws are very clear and stipulated in the laws of sharia: that women wear decent, respectful clothing, like men,” the prince said. “This, however, does not particularly specify a black abaya or a black head cover. The decision is entirely left for women to decide what type of decent and respectful attire she chooses to wear.”
Black abayas, a loose fitting robe, are not mandatory for women in Saudi Arabia but they are so widely worn that they are strongly associated with the conservative kingdom. The prince’s comments will be taken as a sign of his ambitions to further ease Saudi Arabia’s social laws and customs.
Prince Mohammed has pushed through widespread domestic reforms since rising to power, including allowing women to drive from June, attend football games in stadiums, and join the Saudi military.
However, he has not rolled back the country’s male guardianship laws, which make it almost for women to travel, work, or get married without permission from a male relative. Human Rights Watch call the laws “the most significant impediment to women’s rights” in Saudi Arabia.
The meeting between Prince Mohammed and Mr Trump will be their first face to face encounter since the prince usurped his older cousin to become Saudi Arabia’s heir to the throne last June.
He is considered one of the most powerful men in the Middle East and may potentially rule Saudi Arabia for decades once he takes power from his frail 82-year-old father King Salman. “Only death” would stop his reformist mission, the prince said.
Women are now allowed to attend football matches in Saudi ArabiaCREDIT: FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
While Prince Mohammed is well-liked by the Trump administration, especially for his hawkish tone on Iran and promises to fight Islamist extremism, members of the US congress have voiced serious concerns about his policies ahead of the trip.
A group of Democrat and Republican senators are attempting to halt US support to Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen, where Saudi-led coalition is bombing a rebel group aligned with Iran.
The war has killed 10,000 civilians and left millions on the brink of famine, with human rights groups blaming Saudi Arabia for much of the suffering. Both the US and UK supply Saudi Arabia with weapons and other support.
The prince said the situation in Yemen was “very painful” but blamed the rebels and Iran for the humanitarian catastrophe.
Millions of Yemenis are on the verge of famineCREDIT: SAVE THE CHILDREN
US senators are also speaking out about Prince Mohammed’s plans to build a nuclear power programmed Saudi Arabia. The prince said the programme is only for civilian purposes but several senators said they feared it could laying the foundation for nuclear weapons development.
“Saudi Arabia has failed to take basic steps that would signal its commitment to use nuclear energy solely for peaceful purposes,” said Edward Markey, a Democrat senator.
Prince Mohammed has said previously that Saudi Arabia would develop a nuclear bomb if its arch-rival Iran was allowed to get one. Analysts have warned that a nuclear arms race between Iran and Saudi Arabia would be a major source of instability in the Middle East.
Mark Zuckerberg: ‘Facebook made mistakes.’ Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Julia Carrie Wongin San Francisco@juliacarriew-
Facebook is changing the way it shares data with third-party applications, Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday in his first public statement since the Observer reported that the personal data of about 50 million Americans had been harvested and improperly shared with a political consultancy.
The Facebook CEO broke his five-day silence on the scandal that has enveloped his company this week in a Facebook post acknowledging that the policies that allowed the misuse of data were “a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it”.
“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Zuckerberg wrote. He noted that the company has already changed some of the rules that enabled the breach, but added: “We also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.”
Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, shared Zuckerberg’s post and added her own comment: “We know that this was a major violation of people’s trust, and I deeply regret that we didn’t do enough to deal with it.”
Zuckerberg also spoke to a handful of media outlets on Wednesday, including a televised interview with CNN in which he apologized for the “breach of trust”, saying: “I’m really sorry that this happened.” In similar conversations with the New York Times, Wired and the tech website Recode, Zuckerberg expressed qualified openness to testifying before Congress and said that he was not entirely opposed to Facebook being subject to more regulations.
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: 'We spent $1m harvesting millions of Facebook profiles' – video
The crisis stems from Facebook policies that allowed third-party app developers to extract personal data about users and their friends from 2007 to 2014. Facebook greatly reduced the amount of data that was available to third parties in 2014, but not before a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan had used an app to extract the information of more than 50 million people, and then transferred it to Cambridge Analytica for commercial and political use.
On Saturday, Facebook’s deputy general counsel, Paul Grewal, appeared to defend the lax policies that allowed data harvesting from unwitting friends, writing in a statement: “Aleksandr Kogan requested and gained access to information from users who chose to sign up to his app, and everyone involved gave their consent.”
But after five days of outrage from the public, and calls for investigations and regulation from lawmakers in the US and UK, the company appears to be acknowledging that blaming users for not understanding its byzantine terms of service will not suffice.
The company will investigate apps that had access to “large amounts of information” before the 2014 changes, Zuckerberg said, and audit any apps that show “suspicious activity”. A Facebook representative declined to share how Facebook was defining “large amounts of information” or how many apps would be scrutinized.Zuckerberg said in his interviews that the number of apps was in the “thousands”.The company will also inform those whose data was “misused”, including people who were directly affected by the Kogan data operation.
An online petition calling for just such disclosure for people included in Kogan’s data set had garnered more than 15,000 signatures since the weekend.
Facebook also promised to further restrict the amount of data third-party developers can access when users log in to their sites with their Facebook profile, turn off data sharing for apps that have not been used for three months, and move the tool that allows users to restrict the data they share from the Settings menu to the News Feed.
David Carroll, a US design professor who is challenging Cambridge Analyticathrough the UK courts to access his data profile harvested from Facebook, called the reforms “inadequate”. “Users should be notified, and not have to know to go and find out,” he told the Guardian by email.
Zuckerberg’s statement notably did not offer any explanation for why Facebook did not make any effort to inform affected users when Guardian reporters first told the company of the data misuse in December 2015. He did address the question in his press interviews, acknowledging to CNN that it was “a mistake” to rely on Kogan and Cambridge Analytica’s certifications that they had destroyed the data.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m used to when people legally certify that they’re going to do something, that they do it,” he said. “We need to make sure that we don’t make that mistake ever again.”
“With Mark Zuckerberg’s response, they are trying to convey that they are taking this seriously, but they are reacting to furore rather than facts,” said Jeff Hauser of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “The facts are not new to them.”
Jonathan Albright, a research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, said that while he welcomed Zuckerberg’s explanation of how Cambridge Analytica gained access to the data in question, he was disappointed that the CEO did not address why Facebook enabled so much third-party access to its users’ personal information for so many years.
“This problem is part of Facebook and cannot be split off as an unfortunate instance of misuse,”
Albright said. “It was standard practice and encouraged. Facebook was literally racing towards building tools that opened their users’ data to marketing partners and new business verticals. So this is something that’s inherent to the culture and design of the company.”
Olivia Solon and Edward Helmore contributed reporting.
One of President Trump's personal attorneys, John Dowd, resigned on March 22, amid a shake-up of the president’s legal team for the Russia investigation.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
By Rosalind S. Helderman, Carol D. Leonnig and Ashley ParkerMarch 22 at 1:15 PM John Dowd, a personal attorney to President Trump, resigned his position Thursday amid a shake-up in the president’s legal team as Trump has sought more firepower to deal with the special counsel’s Russia investigation.
The resignation came Thursday, according to three people familiar with the decision.
In an email to The Washington Post, Dowd wrote, “I love the President and wish him well.”
Dowd’s departure was a largely mutual decision made after the president lost confidence in his ability to handle special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation and Dowd became frustrated with Trump’s recent efforts to bring on new attorneys, they said.
In recent weeks, Dowd clashed with the president, including an incident in which he disagreed vehemently with Trump over a legal strategy, according to the people.
Jay Sekulow, a Trump lawyer and spokesman for the legal team, told The Post, “John has been a valuable part of the team and a friend and we will continue to cooperate fully with the special counsel.”
When asked Thursday at a White House trade event whether he still wants to testify in front of Mueller’s team, Trump responded, “Yes, I would like to.”
Trump added former U.S. attorney Joe diGenova to his legal team last week. And on Monday, The Post reported that Trump had urged his aides to reach out to legal superstar and former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson to join as his lawyer as he faces a likely interview with the Special Counsel’s investigative team and scrutiny for possible obstruction of justice.
Last week, Dowd called on the Justice Department to immediately shut down the special counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, in the wake of the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Dowd said in a statement that the investigation, now led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was fatally flawed early on and “corrupted” by political bias. He called on Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees that probe, to shut it down.
“I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd said in an emailed statement.
Dowd told The Post on Saturday he was speaking for himself and not on Trump’s behalf. Earlier Saturday, Dowd told the Daily Beast that he was speaking on behalf of the president and in his capacity as the president’s attorney. After the Daily Beast published its story, Dowd emailed the publication and said he was not speaking on the president’s behalf.
In one sense, President Donald Trump’s decision to negotiate directly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is unprecedented: The heads of state of their respective countries have never previously met in any forum. But Trump isn’t the first U.S. president to meet one-on-one with a foreign adversary in a high-stakes summit. History offers plenty of examples Trump would do well to study.
Presidents, it turns out, rarely achieve very much in such negotiations. Most often, these meetings unsettle traditional allies and disappoint eager citizens. They rarely produce breakthroughs. And the biggest risk is that an acrimonious and ill-prepared meeting can push the two sides closer to war.
That is what happened in June 1961, when a tough-talking and impatient new American president, John F. Kennedy, traveled to Vienna to meet with a wily and well-rehearsed Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. In Kennedy’s own words, the summit was the “roughest thing in my life.” Khrushchev “just beat [the] hell out of me.”
Kennedy was, in fact, quite tough at Vienna, refusing to back down from American resistance to communist advances in Europe and Asia. Kennedy also refused to concede to Soviet demands for disarmament. The president arrived in Vienna with a firm grasp of U.S. strategic priorities, and he stuck to them.
Kennedy’s problems arose because he did not have a constructive strategic proposal to offer at the meeting. He arrived in Vienna prepared to charm and cajole his adversary as he often did in encounters with constituents and allies. He was not prepared to address the Soviet leader’s needs or create new mutually beneficial realities in areas of Cold War tension, particularly in Berlin, Cuba, and Indochina.
The leader of the free world always looks weak when he cannot promise a path to improved circumstances for citizens on both sides of the negotiating table. The presumption for progress rests on the shoulders of the president because he is so powerful, and he suffers a major defeat when he fails to deliver in a one-on-one setting. Kennedy learned this lesson in Vienna, and the near-nuclear apocalypse during the Cuban missile crisis was a sobering consequence.
When they met, Khrushchev subjected Kennedy to a barrage of accusations regarding U.S. support for anti-Soviet forces in Europe and intervention in the developing world. Khrushchev also condemned the United States for building a massive nuclear arsenal, many times larger than the Soviet arsenal at the time. The United States and its allies had far more wealth, nuclear weapons, and global reach than the Soviet Union, and U.S. military bases surrounded Moscow’s territory. Khrushchev put Kennedy on the defensive throughout their discussions, demanding that a stronger United States curtail its military activities and address Soviet insecurity before the two countries could form a peaceful relationship.
The U.S. president was not prepared to shift the conversation away from these powerful arguments. Although the Soviet Union was expanding its influence across the globe and rapidly increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal, it remained much weaker than the United States. Kennedy rebutted Khrushchev’s accusations of aggressive intentions, but he could not deny the reality of U.S. economic and military superiority. From such a position, how could the president refute Soviet claims of insecurity? Kennedy found it difficult to divert the conversation away from Khrushchev’s contentions that a more powerful United States had to make concessions to a cornered Soviet Union if it wanted peace.
U.S. economic and military superiority is indeed a liability when the president enters one-on-one negotiations with an adversary powerful enough to resist Washington — and also weak enough to claim victimhood. In Vienna, Khrushchev challenged U.S. calls for open access to Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe while simultaneously condemning the United States for encircling his society. Kennedy looked recalcitrant because he could not chart a strategic alternative that did not involve more American strength and more Soviet weakness. Khrushchev could never accept such a one-sided U.S. position, and he used it to justify his own aggression in response, especially when he decided, a year later, to place nuclear missiles in Cuba.
President Ronald Reagan learned a similar lesson when he first met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva in 1985. During this summit, the two leaders talked past one another. Reagan extolled American benevolence and defended work on a new Strategic Defense Initiative. Gorbachev pushed back against what he described as Reagan’s efforts to escalate the nuclear arms race. He blamed the United States for trying to exploit its technological advantages to bully Moscow. This was a self-serving claim for the leader of a society that had invaded Afghanistan, but it put Reagan, like Kennedy, on the defensive. The Geneva Summit ended without progress — a second example where the first presidential meeting with a foreign adversary failed to match expectations.
Kennedy and Reagan eventually made progress with their adversaries when they moved beyond defending existing U.S. positions and offered strategic alternatives. During the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy agreed to curtail U.S. efforts to overthrow the communist regime in Cuba, and he removed America’s nuclear missiles from Turkey — both steps designed to reduce Soviet insecurities and build a cooperative relationship with Moscow.
Reagan followed the disappointing summit in Geneva with more personal outreach to Gorbachev one year later in Reykjavik, Iceland. The president pulled his adversary away from their handlers, and he made an emotional case for eliminating all nuclear weapons. Gorbachev was surprised and persuaded. As he recounts in his memoirs, Gorbachev recognized that Reagan was committed to more than just American superiority. The U.S. and Soviet leaders began negotiations about eliminating the nuclear threats at the core of Cold War conflict, and this process produced the first agreements to cut the arsenals of both superpowers, reduce tensions in Europe, and even consider the reunification of Germany.
Meetings between presidents and foreign adversaries were crucial for reducing Cold War tensions in the 1960s and 1980s, but the initial summits did not produce immediate results. They created disappointments and, in Kennedy’s case, increased conflict. Progress came only when the adversaries saw their summits as the beginnings of relationships that, over time, can reduce suspicions and build trust. Both sides must believe the other wants peace. Both sides must see strategic benefits for themselves. And both sides must come to feel more invested in negotiated progress, rather than propaganda victories.
This process takes time. It requires deep study of the issues and the players. It also demands a willingness to offer new strategic ideas that address the deeper sources of conflict, not just immediate provocations. Kennedy and Reagan only made progress when they started to empathize with how Khrushchev and Gorbachev saw the world and offered real shifts in U.S. strategic behavior to address legitimate Soviet security needs.
That brings us to Trump’s planned meeting with Kim. The North Korean leader will surely come ready to condemn American bullying of his small, poor, and insecure state. He will point to the presence of U.S. forces on his borders, the pressure of sanctions on his economy, and the continual threats to his regime. He will also expose the hypocrisy of U.S. calls for nuclear disarmament in North Korea as America maintains its own large nuclear arsenal.
Like Kennedy, Trump will not succeed if he simply responds to these arguments with the legitimate U.S. defenses of containment on the Korean Peninsula. The United States is much stronger, and the expectation in any meeting will be that Washington must offer some concessions for the weaker negotiator to feel more secure and therefore capable of a change in behavior.
The task for the Trump administration is to plan carefully for a set of strategic proposals that will reshape the region and the Korean Peninsula, including perhaps reintegrating Pyongyang into the global trade system in return for major disarmament measures. If Trump wants to make this meeting a success, he must become the strategic agenda-setter, with pragmatic and creative new ideas, and he must invest in an evolving relationship with his adversary.
History tells us there will be no world-changing “deal” when Trump and Kim meet. The leaders can begin to chart a path to compromise and stability. Poor preparation and inflated expectations pose the greatest risk of pushing both sides even closer to war. The Trump-Kim meeting must replace threats and bluster with patience and mutual understanding — a lesson Kennedy and Reagan learned after early disappointments.
Poverty is dragging growing numbers of women into prostitution, where they are coerced by gangs feeding on the war-torn country's lawlessness
A Yemeni artist paints a mural drawing attention to the plight of women in Sanaa on 15 March (Anadolu)
Thursday 22 March 2018
SANAA - Sara's first experience left her alone, hurt, humiliated and in tears. She was given makeup, perfume and an expensive abaya by her "trusted friend", then taken to a Sanaa hotel, locked in a room and forced to have sex with a stranger.
The 26-year-old was coerced into that first meeting. Her job selling incense earned next to nothing, and she jumped at her friend's offer of "better work", at $40 a day, which she believed was in a shop.
"I agreed to try it out and she gave me an attractive abaya and makeup, and asked me to return next day," she told Middle East Eye.
We entered a room and immediately she closed the door... and we stayed up with a man until late at night
- Sara, Yemeni sex worker
"I was thinking about work in a shop but my friend took me to a hotel. We entered a room and immediately she closed the door. In that moment I understood and tried to resist but there was no way, and we stayed up with a man until late at night."
That first time was the beginning of a spiral into an underworld, with Sanaa's notorious Haddah Street at its centre, that she now cannot escape. Her reputation was threatened by exposure, and there was no other job to go back to. Her life, she says, had been turned into "hell".
"After the man raped me, there was no choice - I returned to my friend and she provides me with customers."
Kefah fell into sex work by a different route, but her humiliation was just the same.
"Two years ago, I was hoping to marry a wealthy man to help my family," the 23-year-old said. "A friend recommended a rich man and built a relationship between us.
"The man promised to marry me, and we began a sexual relationship. As soon as that happened, he betrayed me and left."
After that, fearing her reputation was in tatters in a deeply conservative society, and with no money to support her family, she felt she had only one choice.
Kefah rationalises her life: "There is no difference between one sexual relationship and hundred, as I am a victim of that traitor man."
Life on Haddah Street
These are but two stories of the lives of the dozens of sex workers who walk the infamous Haddah Street in Sanaa, but those told to MEE share common threads: women dragged in by grinding poverty, coercion, and family responsibilities, then exploited, trapped there by threats and shame and the need to make money.
Sara keeps her five siblings and mother since her father left four years ago; Kefah has six siblings and a mother to feed after her father left for work two years ago, and was never seen again. Sara has been working for a year and a half, and Kefah a year.
Sex workers look for business on Haddah Street (MEE)
Both say that in that time, more and more women are joining them on the streets. And where once their "customers" were careful, deals are now being struck openly on the street.
"For me," says Sara, "I go to Haddah Street early after lunch and there are dozens of women and even young girls in the street waiting to customers."
That competition and availability has also pushed down prices - Sara stated that she makes between 3,000 and 15,000 riyals a day now - $6 to $30.
Studies conducted by UNAids, the UN organisation responsible for monitoring the spread of HIV/Aids, suggests there were 54,000 sex workers in Yemen in 2016.
And as Yemen's war destroys institutions, jobs and lives, the gaps in society grow ever wider - and the authorities that remain can no longer keep on top of the situation.
Gangs have moved in to control the trade, according to human rights activists.
A growing problem
The head of the Yemeni Organisation for Combating Human Trafficking, Nabil Fadhel, said that sex work had become a lucrative trade for criminals and gangs, who have their workers trapped in a desperate situation.
"Yemen is a conservative society, so gangs exploit the needy women, leading them to prostitution and then threatens them to ruin their reputations if they disobey their commands."
He said criminal networks prey on women, using them as sex workers, organ-trading and smuggling - but Yemen's governments do nothing to stop them.
"There are more women working in prostitution and with gangs because of the economic crisis that hits Yemen but those cases were not recorded because of the issue of dignity," Fadhel added.
Before the war, there were some campaigns targeting hotels in the capital Sanaa and other provinces where prostitution usually happens, but after the war the supervision of hotels was decreased or almost disappeared.
A source in the tourism office in the capital Sanaa said that the supervision of hotels had decreased or stopped because of the war.
"The campaigns need money but there is no budget for the office since 2015, so gangs are free to exploit.
"Normal people and not only officials know the names of the hotels of prostitution very well, but those hotels are still working and no one stops them."
A boy looks through a rubbish dump in Sanaa, Yemen. Years of war have left many Yemenis destitute (AFP)
Exploitation and escape
Ali Mohammed, a religious sheikh in Taiz, said authorities had to do more to stop the exploitation of women.
"Bad people are always there but there are no authorities here to stop them and make them fear they will be caught," he said.
"The courts also should do their duty and subject accused people to fair trial to receive their punishment. There should be lessons from criminals, so people cannot dare to do illegal works."
Sara walks Haddah Street, but is always thinking of an escape.
"I have done what I have done," she says "Even if I stop now there is no advantage, but I advise other women and girls that they must not fall into the same trap.
"Selling incense or anything else is better than this. In the future I hope to leave Sanaa for another province, so I can live a better life far from this."
* Names in this article have been changed to protect the safety and privacy of its subjects.
Many appeared to be state employees, and some showed up in groups and in mini buses bearing the names of state-provided services.
by Reuters-
(March 23, 2018, Moscow, Sri Lanka Guardian) Ludmila Sklyarevskaya, a Russian hospital administrator, voted on Sunday in an election that gave Vladimir Putin another term as Russia’s president.
Then she went to another polling station and voted again, according to Reuters reporters who witnessed her movements.
Sklyarevskaya, who denied any wrongdoing, was among 17 people who were photographed by Reuters apparently casting ballots at more than one polling station Sunday in the town of Ust-Djeguta, southern Russia.
Many appeared to be state employees, and some showed up in groups and in mini buses bearing the names of state-provided services.
An employee at the hospital where Sklyarevskaya worked confirmed the woman captured in photos at the two polling stations was Sklyarevskaya and identified her as the hospital’s deputy director of health and safety.
Voting twice is a misdemeanor under Russian law, carrying a penalty of a fine. Shown pictures of some of the people who apparently voted twice, including at Ust-Djeguta’s polling station no. 217, Leila Koichuyeva, a member of the election commission there, said: “They could be twins.”
Sklyarevskaya, when it was pointed out she had been seen voting at polling stations 216 and 215, said “that’s not me.”
Reuters was able to speak to seven of 17 people photographed casting multiple votes. They either denied voting more than once or declined to comment.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were established procedures for reporting election violations. “If these reports from the respected Reuters agency are backed up by corresponding statements to law enforcement agencies from the observers who were at each polling station, then it’s a worry. If they are not backed up, then it does not worry us at all.”
Putin’s opponents, and independent election observers, say Sunday’s vote was skewed across the country by officials loyal to Putin using a variety of tricks to inflate the turnout.
Putin is genuinely popular but a low turnout caused by apathy at a one-sided contest would have deprived him of the resounding mandate he sought. In the end, he won by a landslide and on a strong turnout of nearly 70 percent.
As well as multiple voting in Ust-Djeguta – a practice known in Russia as a “carousel” – Reuters reporters who monitored 12 polling stations around the country witnessed other irregularities though they were mostly narrow in scale.
In all 12 polling stations, the turnout declared by election officials exceeded a tally kept by Reuters of how many people voted. In one case in Simferopol the difference between the two figures was significant: 528 votes, or 66 percent of the votes cast.
Reuters reporters also uncovered a loophole in the voter registration system that could allow multiple voting by obtaining authorization to vote in more than one location. Under a new system designed to make it easier for people to vote when away from home, a voter can apply online to register temporarily at a different polling station. Three Reuters reporters who registered through the new system as well as at their local election office were able to vote once and then get the go-ahead by officials to vote a second time at a different polling station.
A Central Election Commission spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
MEDICAL HELP
On election day in Ust-Djeguta, Sklyarevskaya arrived just after 17:30 local time (10.30 a.m. ET), leading a group of eight other women and one man through the gates of polling station number 216.
About twenty minutes later, Reuters reporters observed the same group voting again a few hundred meters away at polling station no. 215.
Several of the women with her were wearing surgical scrubs, and the man wore a jacket with the word “ambulance” written on it. Ust-Djeguta, a town of 30,000 people and 1,500 km (930 miles) south of Moscow, has only one hospital, the state-run Central District Hospital.
In an interview next to her office on the hospital’s fourth floor, Sklyarevskaya said she had voted only once, at a third polling station, number 217. “Who directed you to do this investigation?” she asked when approached by Reuters reporters. “You do not have the right to get involved in the electoral system.”
Marat Shakmanov, head doctor at the hospital, said he didn’t believe anyone from the hospital violated election rules.
Another woman, wearing sparkly heels, also appeared to vote twice on Sunday.
When approached by Reuters in the town hall on Monday, the woman said her name was Jamila Tebueva, a social-care specialist in the town administration. She said she voted only once, and went to a second polling station to accompany friends.
When told she had been photographed with a voting slip in her hand at the second location she said: “Is it alright if I don’t reply?”
Zukhra Chomaeva, the head election official at polling station number 217, said she could not answer for what happened outside her precinct when asked about multiple voting.
“How do I know if they’re the same person? They might look the same.”
Larissa Tekeyeva, head of the election commission for polling station 216, said after looking at a picture of a woman in a pink coat who voted at polling stations 216 and 217: “We all have the same mentality. We all look alike.”
Ludmila Djukayeva, head of the town’s polling station 215, said she hadn’t witnessed any multiple voting. Ruslan Shagarov, a spokesman for the town administration, said he knew nothing about any employees breaking voting rules.
Official results released on Monday showed the three polling stations had an average turnout of 81.5 percent and delivered a majority for Putin of 89.86 percent. National turnout was 67 percent, according to the central election commission.
TURNOUT DISCREPANCIES
Reuters reporters used mechanical counters to count everybody who cast a ballot at the 12 polling stations they monitored from open to close on Sunday.
In some places, the discrepancies between the official count and the Reuters tally were small, with local election officials putting it down to the margin of error. But in nine of the 12 polling stations, the discrepancies were 10% or greater.
The biggest divergence, as a share of the total vote, was in polling station number 265, inside a technical college in Simferopol, Crimea. Moscow annexed the region from Ukraine four years ago.
Reuters reporters saw 797 voters at that station, while the official figures state that 1,325 people voted on the day and in person.
Asked about the discrepancy, the chairwoman of the polling station’s election commission, Oksana Mediyeva, said independent monitors had watched the vote and had raised no issues.
The three monitors, two from the governing party and one who said he would vote for Putin, didn’t appear to be keeping count of the turnout.
Typically in elections, the official turnout figures are produced when election tellers count the number of ballots cast.
But in three polling stations, in Ust-Djeguta and in Simferopol, the election officials weren’t seen physically counting all the ballot papers.
At Ust-Djeguta’s polling station number 216, a count revealed there were not enough ballot papers to tally with the figure for Putin votes, of 1,299, that officials there had provisionally penciled in.
After a recount produced the same outcome, the election officials said they were going home.
When a Reuters reporter asked how they could do that without finishing the count, Tatiana Chernyaeva, the director of the school hosting the polling station, said: “You want to cast doubt on Putin’s victory.”
FLAWED SYSTEM
Under the new registration system the three Reuters reporters were able to register online to vote in one location and also obtain authorization to vote in another location by using the old procedure of going to the local election office where they are resident.
All three reporters were offered a ballot paper in their second location after they had already voted in their first, though none cast a second vote.
Djukayeva the head of the election commission at polling station 215, where one of the reporters was offered a ballot to cast a second vote, said: “I don’t know whose mistake that was …. They gave us lists yesterday of voters who should be included and excluded.” She was in the list to be included, Djukayeva added.
Friday, 23 March 2018 
Thursday 22 March 2018 16:16 UTC
Nasser and Raeda Tarayra show a photograph of their son, Mohammad, whose body has been held by Israel since June 2016 (MEE/Chloé Benoist)
Fatima Khdour and Batoul Khdour, hold photographs of Majd Khdour, Batoul’s mother and Fatima’s daughter (MEE/Chloé Benoist)![Thousands of internally displaced Palestinians join annual return marches [file photo]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Rich-Wiles-Nakba-Stories-Palestinian-Villagers-004.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
Thousands of internally displaced Palestinians take part in the March of Return [File photo]
March 22, 2018
Facebook is changing the way it shares data with third-party applications, Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday in his first public statement since the Observer reported that the personal data of about 50 million Americans had been harvested and improperly shared with a political consultancy.
John Dowd, a personal attorney to President Trump, resigned his position Thursday amid a shake-up in the president’s legal team as Trump has sought more firepower to deal with the special counsel’s Russia investigation.
Sex workers look for business on Haddah Street (MEE)
A boy looks through a rubbish dump in Sanaa, Yemen. Years of war have left many Yemenis destitute (AFP)
Reuters reporters also uncovered a loophole in the voter registration system that could allow multiple voting by obtaining authorization to vote in more than one location. Under a new system designed to make it easier for people to vote when away from home, a voter can apply online to register temporarily at a different polling station. Three Reuters reporters who registered through the new system as well as at their local election office were able to vote once and then get the go-ahead by officials to vote a second time at a different polling station.
