Peace for the World

Peace for the World
First democratic leader of Justice the Godfather of the Sri Lankan Tamil Struggle: Honourable Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam

Monday, April 2, 2018

Seven reported killed as Dalits lead protests against Supreme Court ruling

Police officers patrol a street after people belonging to the Dalit community burned tyres and hoardings during a nationwide strike called by Dalit organisations, in Ahmedabad
Police officers patrol a street after people belonging to the Dalit community burned tyres and hoardings during a nationwide strike called by Dalit organisations, in Ahmedabad, India, April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Amit Dave

Suchitra MohantyDerek Francis-APRIL 2, 2018

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - At least seven people were killed on Monday as protesters led by India’s Dalits set fire to police posts and blocked railway tracks after the Supreme Court barred the immediate arrest of people accused of discriminating against them, local media said.

Four people were killed in Madhya Pradesh, where police also imposed a curfew, Indian television channels reported. Three others were killed in other states, local media said.

Reuters could not independently confirm the death toll.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government submitted a review petition to the Supreme Court on Monday, asking it to amend the March 20 judgment that sparked the protests, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said in a televised interview.
 
Dalits are at the bottom of India’s ancient caste hierarchy and together with the scheduled tribes - indigenous peoples who are often isolated or disadvantaged - form about a quarter of the population. Protesters carried banners demanding a nationwide shutdown, saying the judgment was diluting the law.

Television showed police beating protesters and an unidentified person firing shots, with demonstrators in Haryana also setting police posts ablaze and attacking shops.
 
Violence was reported from other states such as Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar, while exams have been postponed and internet services have been shut down due to clashes in Punjab.
Dalit organisations called for protests after the Supreme Court ruled last month that arrests under a law meant to speed action on complaints of violence against Dalits required prior approval from officials, and barred the immediate arrest of those accused in such complaints.

“Get out in strong numbers, block the roads if needed, but do not touch public property,” Jignesh Mevani, an independent Dalit lawmaker from Gujarat, told the India Today news channel.

Although he backed the protests, Mevani said, he was opposed to any damage to public property.

Police officers patrol a street after people belonging to the Dalit community burned tyres and hoardings during a nationwide strike called by Dalit organisations, in Ahmedabad, India, April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Amit Dave

Mayawati, former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and a prominent Dalit politician, also supported the protests while condemning violence.

Shops were shut as protesters blocked key roads in many areas, including the capital, New Delhi, and the industrial city of Ahmedabad in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, the Times of India newspaper reported.

By the end of 2016, about 90 percent of roughly 145,000 cases involving Dalits were still awaiting trial, government data from last year showed.

Investigation showed that fewer than a tenth of the cases brought by Dalits in 2016 were proved false, according to government data.


 
Slideshow (7 Images)
Police try to stop people belonging to the Dalit community as they take part in a protest during a nationwide strike called by Dalit organisations, in Chandigarh, India, April 2, 2018.
Hindus, who account for about four-fifths of India’s population of 1.3 billion, were traditionally grouped into thousands of castes, whose membership was determined by birth.

Dalits have historically faced various forms of discrimination including segregation and social boycott, in addition to violence.

They have been barred from physical or social contact, and in some cases, even having their shadows touch those belonging to people from castes higher in the hierarchy.

The rigid Hindu caste system also forces some Dalit castes into occupations which are considered unclean by the so-called higher castes, such as cleaning human excreta and disposing of dead people and animals.

'I went to death row for 28 years through no fault of my own'

‘The state of Alabama had every intention of killing me for a crime I didn’t commit’: Anthony Ray Hinton enjoying his freedom. Photograph: Nicole Craine for the Observer

Anthony Ray Hinton endured almost three decades behind bars, wrongly convicted by Alabama’s racist judiciary system. Here, he tells his incredible story



Anthony Ray Hinton was going out of his mind on Alabama’s death row as he repeatedly churned over the iniquities of the shambolic trial that put him there. So he started a book club.

The prison warden wasn’t keen but after Hinton told him that it was better to have inmates applying their minds to reading than to ways of causing disruption, he reluctantly agreed. The book club began with a handful of death row prisoners meeting in the jail’s law library, and for a few years the numbers grew as word spread that reading was as good an escape as any of them could expect. But then the numbers shrank again as each of the members was executed until only Hinton remained of the original group. His cell was so close to the electric chair he could smell the burning flesh of the men he’d been debating the writings of James Baldwin and Harper Lee with.

Trump embraces his instincts at a key global moment


Stephen Collinson Profile Mon April 2, 2018

(CNN)President Donald Trump is facing cresting challenges at home and overseas by rejecting traditional West Wing structures and defying an orthodox policy process while stacking his administration with subordinates who share his combative reflexes.

A month of turmoil, staff purges and sharp policy shifts by a President determined more than ever to follow his impulses has left the White House at a perilous moment of global transition.
In becoming true to his outsider anti-establishment roots, the President is implementing the purest form of Trumpism he has so far attempted.
Yet his experiment with gut-level governance brings significant risks of unpredictable results, ahead of tests like his summit with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un or work to create a post-ISIS settlement in Syria.
As he conducts his symphony of chaos at home, the President has lost seven people from within his administration or inner circle in just a month, some of whom were fired by tweet.
He has swapped restraining influences like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson or traditionalists like national security advisor H.R. McMaster with replacements such as Mike Pompeo and John Bolton who reflect his own aggressive instincts or who lavished him with praise on TV.
But it is his tendency to make policy on an ad hoc basis, on issues on which millions of lives could depend, that may represent Trump's most significant turn.
For example, on Thursday, Trump declared that the US will be coming out of Syria "real soon," sparking a day of scrambling and contradictions from within his own national security team.
"We are still trying to figure out what he meant about Syria yesterday," a senior administration official told CNN's Jim Acosta on Friday.
The episode was an apt metaphor for Trump's governing style. Normally, a President would only make such pronouncements after weeks of briefings and meetings, after poring over policy papers providing an in-depth understanding of the battlefield and a set of options on a tough issue.
But with Trump, the process is reversed -- instinct and impulse power his actions, after little apparent forethought or assessment of the unpalatable consequences that usually accompany any serious presidential decision.
His disruptive tendency was visible again on Sunday, when many Americans were observing Easter or Passover, festivals of renewal and liberation. Trump went on a Twitter tear, accusing Mexico of failing to stop undocumented migrants from crossing the southern US border and warned he could kill a NAFTA renegotiation if it didn't do more.

Reflexive decisions

It is a pattern that has been repeated over and over in recent weeks, from Trump's sudden reflex decision to meet one-on-one with Kim, to his demand for tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that rocked US allies.
In each case, Trump's sudden move set his aides struggling to keep up and understand his strategy, such as it was. It is also a style of governing that sets nerves on edge back home and brings with it considerable risks, however true it may be to Trump's vow as a candidate to keep everyone guessing.
Trump's sudden nomination last week of his personal White House physician Ronny Jackson to head the Veterans Affairs department fitted the trend -- showing a President more interested in shock and awe news and affinity with a nominee than concern for in-depth policy.
Jackson may have impressed Trump with his bravura news conference on the President's health -- and is loved among many current and former White House officials -- but he has no experience running a major organization and the VA is one of the most expansive and troubled medical bureaucracies in the world.
The hollowing out of Trump's political circle is mirrored in his legal war council, following the recent departure of his counsel John Dowd and a struggle to attract blue chip counsel to strengthen his team.
As Robert Mueller bores ever deeper into his business and political affairs, Trump's apparent desire to testify personally to the special counsel reflects his trust in his own instincts and impatience for advice despite the risks, mirroring his new approach to domestic and international policy.
And those who fear that the President's moods and hubris are increasingly driving his actions are worried the departure of one of his most trusted friends and aides, Hope Hicks, could make him even more volatile.

Programmer in chief

The circus surrounding Trump has often been compared to a reality show.
But increasingly, the administration actually resembles a cable politics channel, with Trump as chief programmer and anchor, making news, breaking it and ditching a traditional policy process for a corps of conservative commentators.
Bolton spent months auditioning for his new role on Fox News. And his new top economic advisor Larry Kudlow has been an outspoken CNBC voice for years.
Such spectacle infuriates critics who see government as a serious business, fraught with risks and defined by processes tested by generations of bureaucrats and West Wing tradition.
But there is a gulf between the political class in Washington and Trump supporters.

"This whole idea that President Trump is somehow chaotic and unique because he has his own strong point of view and is trying to push his administration in the way he sees fit, is actually the way presidents operate in the job," Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, told Fox News on Sunday.
With the economy roaring, with unemployment below 5%, after the passage of a huge tax cut and with his Cabinet lieutenants dismantling Obama-era regulations despite scandals swirling around them, Trump's base is remaining solid, giving him latitude for his currently unorthodox approach.
Trump showed how well he understands this during a rally in Ohio on Thursday, embracing a revival of ABC's "Roseanne" -- claiming the show's success is rooted in giving voice to white, working-class families who power his movement.
"It was about us. They haven't figured it out, the fake news hasn't quite figured it out yet," Trump said during a speech in Ohio.
Yet the increasingly improvisational and unpredictable approach that worked for Trump as candidate and is coming to define the administration faces an examination at a time when Washington chaos could exert a heavy price.
So far, Trump has been spared a major foreign policy crisis or an economic meltdown that puts his capacity to lead with coherence, speed, organization and in a way that foments national unity on the line.

But history, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the more recent financial meltdown has shown that sometimes only decisive presidential leadership, rooted in policy mastery, cool-headedness and an ability to command a functioning US government and national resources can stave off disaster.

A global economic shock, a massive natural disaster, a mass casualty terror attack, a sudden crisis with China or a further deterioration in post-Cold War relations with Russia could trigger such a moment.

Trump has rarely shown so far he would be up to such a task.

For instance, there's no indication yet that he has a clear strategy for his talks with Kim — the most high-stakes meeting between a US President and a foreign leader for decades. The cost of a failed summit could spark a slide into a disastrous war that could kill hundreds of thousands.

Trump's reflexive warning that the US will soon leave Syria, would in theory boost US adversaries in the region including Russia and Iran, and open the kind of vacuum that led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq, if it was carried out.

Re-writing the rules

Some Washington veterans believe that Trump's scattergun approach is certain to undermine his presidency in the long term -- even though he has prospered by rewriting all the rules of campaigning.

"To be successful in politics over the long term when you are governing you have to have a strategy and an agenda, and you have to go out and build on it day after day after day. What Trump does is he just tries to build interest rather than building a message over a long term," said Joe Lockhart, a former White House spokesman for Bill Clinton.

"It seems chaotic, he loves that. I don't think that sets him up though for the long-term and re-election, I don't think he really understands how different 2020 will be from 2016," Lockhart told CNN's Ana Cabrera on Friday.

Trump's governing style, in which he is the dominant figure, dictating events, making calls from the gut, surrounded by acolytes and family members, recalls the small leadership cell at the top of the Trump organization.

Indeed, friends of the President are telling him that he doesn't need to replace Hicks as communications director or John Kelly as chief of staff if he eventually decides to leave or is fired, CNN's Kevin Liptak reported last week.

Yet such fluid structures have been tried before and have failed, notably in the Carter and Ford presidencies when they became overwhelmed by the crush of events and issues bearing down on the West Wing.

"You just can't run the White House the way you run the 26th floor of Trump Tower," Chris Whipple, author of "The Gatekeepers" a book that maintains that strong White House chiefs of staff are vital to a functioning presidency, told CNN on Saturday.

Trade war escalates as China says it will impose tariffs on 128 U.S. exports, including pork and fruit

Trade tensions escalated between the U.S. and China with Beijing slapping tariffs on 128 U.S. goods, from scrap aluminum and pork to nuts, wine and fruits. 

 

The Chinese government plans to immediately impose tariffs on 128 U.S. products, including pork and certain fruits, a direct response to President Trump’s recent moves to pursue numerous trade restrictions against Beijing.

If U.S. goods become more expensive in China, Chinese buyers could opt to purchase products from Europe, South America or elsewhere, though White House officials have routinely discounted the likelihood of this.

Beijing’s move could force Trump to decide whether to follow through on expansive trade restrictions he had hoped would crack down on China even if Beijing is now threatening to harm U.S. companies that rely on Asian markets for buyers.

A Twitter post from the “People’s Daily,” an English-language news organization controlled by the Chinese government, said Sunday that “China imposes tariffs on 128 items of imports from the U.S. including pork and fruit products starting Monday as a countermeasure in response to a previous U.S. move to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports: Ministry of Finance.”

The Chinese government said the tariffs would effectively serve as retaliation for restrictions Trump announced last month.

In early March, Trump said he planned to apply steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Since then, he has exempted numerous countries, but he has not waived the impact on China.

Trump's announcement of a 25 percent tariff on steel imports could greatly affect products that you may not know depend on it, like Reddi-wip. 
And in late March, Trump took additional steps toward imposing tariffs on $60 billion in Chinese goods and limiting China’s ability to invest in the U.S. technology industry. He has alleged that the U.S. government had been too complacent in allowing Chinese firms to steal U.S. intellectual property and abuse trade rules. He has accused China of trade practices that led to the closure of 60,000 factories and the loss of 6 million jobs.

His new, unilateral trade steps, though, shocked many U.S. businesses and foreign leaders, 
particularly because Trump had taken a more cautious approach in his first year, seeming to dial back some of the populist trade rhetoric he made during the 2016 campaign. Beijing promised to respond quickly, however.

In a statement from the Chinese Ministry of Finance, the government said the new tariffs “caused serious damage to our interests.”

Trump has for years accused the Chinese government of unfair trade practices, which he says put U.S. companies at a disadvantage. Many other foreign leaders have agreed that China unfairly subsidizes its businesses and has at times devalued its currency to boost exports, but most have favored a multi-national approach to apply pressure on Beijing.

Trump has expressed disgust for multilateral trade decisions and has favored more adversarial action. For his first year in office, a number of key advisers — including National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — had tried to persuade Trump to be careful before following through on some of his trade threats, but both men have recently departed, and now Trump is surrounded by advisers who support some of these protectionist decisions.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned that President Trump's broad aluminum and steel tariffs could "send the economy in the wrong direction." 
A number of U.S. business groups have warned that these tariffs could backfire because they could make it harder for American companies to sell goods overseas if other nations retaliate, but Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross have expressed skepticism that the impact of these moves would be substantial.

China exported $505 billion in goods to the U.S., and U.S. companies exported $135 billion in goods to China in 2017. Trump says the difference between these two numbers is too large and should be eliminated or at least greatly diminished. His precise approach with Beijing is hard to pinpoint because he has occasionally praised Chinese leader Xi Jinping, while also suggesting that Xi’s administration will not offer concessions that he believes are necessary.

A number of U.S. agriculture firms have warned they could be caught in the middle of a trade war, particularly if Trump follows through on threats against China and Mexico.

The National Pork Producers Council said in late March that its members exported $1.1 billion in pork to China last year, making it the third-largest market.

In addition to pork, the new tariffs from the Chinese government will include U.S. exports of apples, oranges, almonds, pineapples, grapes, watermelons, cranberries, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, and a host of other items.

Trump’s trade approach has been inconsistent, making it difficult for allies and foreign leaders to know what he plans to do. Trump has said his trade threats are meant as a way of negotiating. On Sunday – in Twitter posts – he threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement if Mexico doesn’t do more to stop immigrants from entering the United States.

Those comments caught many by surprise because U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has spent months trying to renegotiate NAFTA with Canada and Mexico, and they are hoping to make progress later this year.

China, though, has always been the biggest trade target for Trump. It also appears to be the first country to retaliate to his trade threats, putting pressure on leaders in Washington and Beijing to anticipate each other’s next moves quickly.

The stock market rose sharply during Trump’s first year in office, but it has slid back more than 10 percent since late January amid concerns that Trump’s trade threats could roil world markets. His senior advisers, though, say Trump’s trade approach will help U.S. workers by creating more jobs and boosting U.S. exports abroad.

Bangladesh: ‘The scapegrace will never listen to a moral lecture’

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole humanity. Those who clearly recognise the voice of their own conscience usually also recognise the voice of justice.

by Anwar A. Khan-
( April 2, 2018, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) Famed columnist Paul Craig Roberts has aptly written, “Integrity has vanished from the West” and his enounces are consistent with fact or reality when we get a line of gabble from the mouth of a British lawyer Lord Alex Carlile. His parents, Jewish refugees from Poland, both converted to Christianity, but he is proud of his “100 per cent Jewish ancestry” and is a strong supporter of Israel. Nameless, faceless about Bangladesh and its people, and devoid of actual proof of how he, like an evil solicitor, has learnt what he knows about Bangladesh’s history of birth, genocide committed by the unwarranted and un-called for and brutal Pakistani military dictators and their local accomplices during our glorious Liberation War in 1971. Their ghosts and goblins are still pursuing the same policy of extermination of our people and to make Bangladesh an infernal region. People of our country during the years 2013 to early 2015 again saw their heightened degree of ferocities to bring Bangladesh back to the Medieval Ages. That strip cartoon Lord was previously appointed by Bangladesh’s notorious war criminals’ nexus living at home and abroad as their international lobbyist to inflict colossal damage to the trial procuresses being conducted by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) of Bangladesh and our people, thus to save those criminal gangsters. This jackass made a crusade in the international arena in the yesteryear to garner support in his foldable to fulfill his dexterous and malevolent schema to save the worst malefactors of our 1971 war with Pakistan. He has still been questing for the same course of mendacious idiocy. He is now an appointive of a venal and uncouth politician and is in vapidity of buoyant temper to give legal beagles to his debauch client in Bangladesh who has no fealty to this country.
I, being a proud son of an illustrious and lucent lawyer with high ethical standards of his legal profession during the British regime in the Indian sub-continent, am writing this piece and know advancing the common law and the finest traditions of legal philosophy would be the moral calling of a Counselor-at-law and to emphatically uphold the honour and dignity of the legal profession and the highest standards of ethical conduct and integrity. Carlile’s standing posture of a lawyer is barren with all norms of ethical conduct and integrity. In fact, he has been doing his jobs only to receive bounty in huge amount from his clienteles flinging to ethical and moral principles of legal profession and misusing his office as a member in the House of Lords in Britain, the house that condemned the genocide in Bangladesh in 1971, the British government, its people, even the British media condemned it.
Let me not be thought as intending anything derogatory to the profession of the law, or to the distinguished members of that illustrious order. Well am I aware that we have in this country innumerable worthy gentlemen, who go about redressing wrongs and defending the defenseless, not for the love of filthy lucre, nor the selfish cravings of renown, but merely for the pleasure of doing good. Sooner would I throw this trusty pen into the flames and cork up my ink bottle forever, than infringe even for a nail’s breadth upon the dignity of legal profession. On the contrary, I allude merely to those caitiff scouts who, in these latter days of evil, infest the skirts of the profession, as did the recreant Cornish knights of yore the honourable order of chivalry who under its auspices, commit flagrant wrongs, who thrive by quibbles, by quirks and chicanery, and like vermin increase the corruption in which they are engendered.
Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole humanity. Those who clearly recognise the voice of their own conscience usually also recognise the voice of justice. We are in the know that dignity and respect of character are springing from probity, principle, or moral rectitude. Be we can’t embellish the rogue Alex with the laurel wreaths like respect, value, esteem, prize, appreciate, admire, worship, adore, revere, glorify, reverence, exalt, venerate…Good always has to triumph over evil, and a respect for the law and order establishment has to be encouraged. Carlyle, as if belonging to the Middle Ages; old-fashioned and unenlightened, he may be the resident of an infernal region and operates his fit out in that realm, not in Bangladesh.
He is the reigning champ of anti-heroes and anti-heroines with his so-called scruples. He is also an extremely evil character who sees the world in only in his own form of evil… He reminds me of the butchers’ group who recognises on some level that he is evil. He knows that what he is doing is not only criminal, it is morally wicked – and he doesn’t care for that. He lives every moment under a few fatalistic assumptions, mainly that he is as good as dead and that he is as evil as damned. Anti-heroes and anti-heroines are defined as anyone who fails to measure up to the heroic standard. What makes LA Carlile an anti-hero by our standards in modern-day Bangladesh is that he has no regard for human life. He is ruthless and merciless. Essentially, he is another villain that needs to be stopped. Why? Is it because we pity his loss? Is it because we as law-abiding citizens have no need to fear his wrath? Is it because he is so creative in the ways he offs good guys? Or is it because he realises that the Bangladesh’s justice system is so inefficient and corrupt that his brand of vengeance is the only kind of justice that the most powerful criminals will ever see? He is absolutely wrong, daffy and haywire!
This is why he reflects the most opaque tones of our society. He represents hopelessness. Everything is so corrupt that the only way to stop monsters is to become colossi ourselves. The ends justify the means, no matter how badly it erodes our souls. For some reasons, it draws a lot of fans. Perhaps there are a lot of people out there who are so despondent and grim that they think he is the only hero in crimes who reflects realism. Are misery and merciless vengeance unleashed by him are the only real values left for Bengalis? I don’t think so. To his followers-clients, moral codes are a hindrance to justice. Justice, to them, has nothing to do with being good or right and everything to do with being fair, e.g., those who commit horrible atrocities forfeit their basic human rights and will not be coddled by bleeding-heart liberals. The problem with approving of Carlile is that we will ultimately succumb to his nihilism. If this is how we want our society to be – vigilantes deciding who is good and who is evil and executing the wicked. Don’t forget that 6 worst war criminals executed people whom they believe deserved it. He is not to be applauded for having the guts to do what needs to be done, but to be observed as a cautionary tale.
He must be a hero who will always strive to live by a strong moral code, but Carlile doesn’t. Light or dark? Which is most relevant? The legal profession is to shape the moral codes of our favourite superheroes. Creators have felt the need for heroes to retain their moral imperatives, but their justification for these beliefs becomes thinner over the years, as more fans seem to see the moral imperative as a hindrance instead of an asset. Public ideas about where perfect north is on the moral compass have changed in that Alex, the person in himself.
Mythology illuminates mankind’s ideas about religions, values, and cultures. Most people have a passing familiarity with the mythologies of classical Greek and Roman canons. They played a role in how western civilisation developed. While those mythologies still resonate today, the new mythology for the modern world is superheroes. These are the new myths that tell us about ourselves as a society and reflect our values back to us, and these myths have been shaped by the civilisation for decades.
Yes. That’s why the moral code is so important. In an age of moral relativism, our myths can still anchor a perfect north for our moral compasses. Just because we are adults doesn’t mean we can’t hold ourselves to a standard that’s higher than where we are at. But, you might be thinking, how can we seriously evaluate complex, real-life problems like law and order and the sanctity of human life by comparing ourselves to imaginary people who live in imaginary worlds like Carlile? The conclusion to this one should be obvious because Carlile eventually reverts to villainy. His idea of law and order was tyrannical. What might have begun with the intention to help others eventually led him to make decisions that merely accomplished goals, but not help people. Undoubtedly, our prosecution lawyers are an effective crime fighter…
So yes, it would make sense to kill …gang because as long as they are alive, they are just going to keep killing, but real mass murderers don’t cycle in and out. They always escape, and they always murders innocent people.
Like I mentioned above, most real-life lunatics often die in the course of committing their crimes. Others who do get caught go to prison and they don’t come out. Timothy McVeigh never escaped to challenge his arch-nemesis one more time; he just went straight to the execution chamber. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death, and he’s not going to escape. Some butcher war criminals in Bangladesh are still awaiting trials, and they’re not going to escape either. You might be thinking “You don’t know that, though.” True, I can’t see the future, but prisons in real life aren’t like …prison.
In terms of moral codes, Carlile wrecks the curve. If we hold him up as the moral standard, then his methods look brutal. His rogues are actually criminals. The biggies are … Aside from these guys; his rogues are extra-terrestrial threats like… Philosophers have argued for humanity to aspire to and pursue the greater good. Ancient Greek heroes did, and some failed miserably. Some of our heroes today try, and some fail miserably. But if we as readers settle for brutality, bitterness, and nihilism as the best we can hope for, the society we readers help shape will certainly slip into greater moral decay. Our ICT represents the morning star that we all strive to achieve.
Lord Carlile is a practising barrister and head of chambers at 9-12 Bell Yard barristers’ chambers, a criminal law chamber in England. As a QC, he successfully defended butler Paul Burrell when he was accused of stealing millions of pounds of goods from the estate of the late Princess of Wales. So, he carried out his actions only to keep the misdeed-mongers in safety and protect from harm, decay, loss, or destruction taking hold of money only from them for his personal ends. He is a notorious mastermind of booster for malefic characters. The goal of this action is to show to Carlile’s bots that they won’t be able to escape unpunished. He still has time to stop and not to disgrace this country.
He is the legal counsel of one of the most notorious murderers in Bangladesh’s history. He’s a lying piece of shit. He, as an organization, has no credibility with us, and anything he says about the mass murderers is all bullshit.
Our 1971 war valiant Freedom Fighter Nahid is right about the dangers of self-deception and it may be that the language of being an expert or expertise like Carlile is inappropriate in an ethical context. Perhaps the language of expertise suggests ethics can be a matter of applying algorithms, but might it make sense to think that some persons are or can become (and can help others become) better in terms of ethical reflection and living ethically? Can an ethics course or the study of ethics help one to? Absolutely yes. Get better at feeling and expressing genuine, appropriate concern for the welfare of others? Leave this wrong footpath right along, Mr. Carlile. Develop skills at showing appropriate compassion, affection, less given over to follow socially indoctrinated, harmful stereotypes? Become better at self-examination and self-questioning in which one can improve one’s recognition of when one is prey to vanity, self-deception, professionally jealousy?
A solicitor’s commitment to behaving ethically is at the heart of what it means to be a solicitor. The legal experts support his or her clients in recognising and handling difficult professional situations and making choices which can be substantiated by reference to the Code of Conduct. Ethics involves making a commitment to acting with integrity and honesty in accordance with widely recognised moral principles. Ethics will guide a professional towards an appropriate way to behave in relation to moral dilemmas that arise in practice. Ethics is based on the principles of serving the interests of consumers of legal services and of acting in the interests of the administration of justice, in which, in the event of a conflict, acting in the interests of the administration of justice prevails.
Making a commitment to acting ethically is intrinsically linked with meeting the standards and requirements set out in the Code of Conduct to be strictly followed by the legal professionals. These standards stem from the 10 mandatory principles. The principles apply to all solicitors and underpin all aspects of practice. A solicitor must consider his duties are purely standing on moral and ethical standards. The level of ethical behaviour requires of a solicitor is something that sets him apart from the general public.
There is a place and a need for ethics in the current climate in which solicitors should operate. He should foster cultures which promote good ethical decision making. He should take a more proactive role in embedding an ethical culture within the profession. Combining perceptions of power capabilities and cultural judgments unique to this rogue stereotype, the rogue image presents a challenge to punish the mass murderer’s strategy demanding attention to the future threat posed by these types of rogue legal professionals like Carlile.
Carlile’s reckless conduct is violating the norms justice system of Bangladesh and elsewhere and he has been trying to deform Bangladesh’s history since long. He is one of the criminals who are unabatedly unleashing from UK’s legal profession in collaborating with the worst war criminals and their mango-twigs in Bangladesh. Blood-thirsty is a very minor villain who is a massive alien creature with multiple holes on his skin that emit a green gas. His weapon appears to be a circular device like a clock without hands that he could use to slow down or even to stop time. This bloodthirsty brags throughout his first and (to date) only appearance that he is the cause of every evil job to support the major war criminals. He is an evil guy who has learnt how to advance or revert a human being’s age by means of his so-called special pills.
As a matter of fact, he is simply an agent highly paid by the obnoxious nexus of the war criminals and their mango-twigs to stop the legal procedures now going on in Bangladesh to punish those heartbreaking mass murderers. If we hear Carlile’s name or his words, we can simply say, ‘rogues supplant justice’ or ‘birds of a feather flock together’ or ‘the scapegrace will never listen to a moral lecture’ or maybe all, altogether. Lord Alex Carlile is an impish super-villain that is an enemy of mankind!
Philippines: De Lima calls for greater protection of rights defenders under Duterte
DETAINED senator Leila de Lima renewed her call for greater protection for human rights defenders in the Philippines as the threat number of attacks against continues to rise under President Rodrigo Duterte.

“I find it very urgent that we come forward and claim our right, as human rights defenders, to be recognized and protected,” said De Lima, former chief of the Commission on Human Rights who is currently detained on drug charges.
“Not for our personal sake, but for the sake of our dignity as a people,” said her statement, as reported in Politiko.


The creation of a human rights court and jail terms of 12 to 20 years for rights violators are among the measures proposed under the “Human Rights Defenders Act of 2018,” which the senator is pushing to be fast-tracked.

Her call comes after Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque told reporters that human rights groups are being used by drug lords to fight against the Duterte administration.


“The attacks against the President’s war on drugs have been vicious and nonstop. We, therefore, do not discount the possibility that some human rights groups have become unwitting tools of drug lords to hinder the strides made by the administration,” Roque said at a press conference on March 26.

De Lima called the accusation “patently baseless propaganda” in a statement released on her Facebook page on Monday.

Human Rights Watch called the claims “a sinister veiled threat” and accused the government of “intimidation tactics” against rights groups.


De Lima has repeatedly underscored the importance of establishing effective legal remedy for the violation of the rights of human rights defenders. In passing the Bill, she hopes to institutionalise the enforcement of state obligations to protect those at risk of both physical and verbal attack, including all forms of media and by both public and private actors.

“The obsessive attacks against these concepts and principles, led by no less than the President himself, have rendered us, human rights defenders, vulnerable and our work extremely difficult and dangerous,” she said.

De Lima, a fierce critic of Duterte, has been detained since Feb 24, 2017 for her alleged involvement in the illegal drugs trade at the New Bilibid Prison when she was justice minister in the previous administration.

The senator strongly denies the charges and maintains they are politically motivated. 

Amnesty International has listed her as a “Human Rights Defenders Under Threat” after, they claim, Duterte made her a “target of his divisive rhetoric.”

U.S. DIPLOMATS STUCK IN MEDICAL LIMBO

State Department officials with special needs children face a byzantine bureaucracy that often denies them critical care.



No automatic alt text available.BY ROBBIE GRAMER-APRIL 2, 2018

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MELISSA MCFEETERS FOR FOREIGN POLICY



Christie Peterson’s life changed when her youngest daughter attempted suicide. Based in Europe, where her husband is a U.S. diplomat, she and her daughter were medically evacuated to the United States, while her husband and oldest daughter stayed behind.

We learn nothing about nutrition, claim medical students


Stethoscope and bowl of healthy food
The health effects of nutrition and diet are not part of traditional training for medical students

25 March 2018
BBCMedical students say they currently learn almost nothing about the way diet and lifestyle affect health - and they should be taught more.
They say what they are taught is not practical or relevant to most of the medical problems they see in GP surgeries, clinics and hospitals.
A leading GP estimated that up to 80% of his patients had conditions linked to lifestyle and diet.
These included obesity, type 2 diabetes and depression.
Why does this lack of training matter?
This year the NHS will spend more than £11bn on diabetes alone - social care costs, time off work etc, will almost double that bill.
Type 2 diabetes - the most common kind - is linked to obesity. And right now Britain is the fat man of Europe.

Training too traditional

But doctors are not being trained to deal with what medics call non-communicable diseases - and it's those kind of illnesses that are threatening to bankrupt our health system, so a new kind of training is crucial.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme, Dr Rangan Chatterjee, authorand podcast host, told me: "The health landscape of the UK has dramatically changed over the last 30 or 40 years and I think the bulk of what I see as a GP now - almost 80% - is in some way driven by our collective lifestyles."
The ball started rolling at the end of 2016 when cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra and a number of other leading doctors including Rangan Chatterjee wrote to the General Medical Council, the health secretary and the Medical Schools Council calling for all medical students and practising doctors to be trained in "evidence based lifestyle interventions".
Dr Michael Mosley, presenter of BBC One's Trust Me I'm A Doctor, said, "Unfortunately it's not part of the traditional training. At medical school I learnt almost nothing about nutrition. And I have a son at medical school and it's again not part of his key curriculum.
"So I don't get the sense that there are lots of doctors out there who feel empowered to tell patients much about nutrition."
A hotbed of the new revolution is Bristol University where, in 2017, third year medical students Ally Jaffee and Iain Broadley founded Nutritank.
It's an online organisation created for and by medical students to share nutrition science research and organises events and lectures on campus.
This summer, it will welcome GP, author and podcast host Dr Rupy Aujla to Bristol to lead the first UK course in culinary medicine for medical students.
From one society in Bristol, Nutritank has now spread to 15 other student-led groups at universities across the country.

'It's time'

Ally Jaffee said: "There's just about a society at medical school in everything from sexual health to orthopaedics to dermatology. But there just wasn't a nutrition and lifestyle or a preventative medicine society.
"We're taught about 10 to 24 hours over five to six years in medical school on nutrition."
This month, the British Medical Journal announced it will launch a journal on the science and politics of nutrition in June 2018.
Dr Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the BMJ, told me, "It's time we recognised that food and nutrition are core to health. There is a growing body of research out there that needs to be published - and we want to contribute to that effort."
Cutting up lunch for an elderly person
What people eat has a bearing on their general health, doctors say
She said the same levels of quality and scrutiny should be applied to food science that are applied to other areas of health research.
The BMJ's announcement follows an opinion piece it published in October 2017 written by two University of Cambridge graduate medical students, Kate Womersley and Katherine Ripullone.
Kate said: "I was in an obesity clinic as part of my medical shadowing.
"A patient came in and said very frankly to the doctor, the consultant in charge, 'Why am I so fat?'.
"The patient was asking a very straightforward question and I think was expecting a straightforward answer. But often that's a question where doctors seem to clam up a bit.
"We were interested to write this piece for the BMJ, because we didn't feel prepared to be receiving that question."

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Medical schools in the UK are responsible for setting their own curriculum with guidance and standards published by the General Medical Council.
The GMC is now reviewing that guidance but so far it's been very general. It told us that it recognises the significance of the impact of diet and nutrition on health and wellbeing and has sought to express this more explicitly in its revised "outcomes" that will be released this summer.
Things are also beginning to change at medical schools. University of Cambridge told us it plans to double the amount of core course content on nutrition and has asked Kate and Katherine to help.
Similarly, Bristol medical school has sought input from students to redesign its curriculum.
Meanwhile, Prof Sumantra Ray of NNedPro Global Centre for Nutrition and Health told us his organisation is involved in rolling out training in diet and nutrition for student doctors by 2020.
Kate said: "Students need to see nutrition as something at the cutting edge of scientific discovery.
"I think there needs to be an image change of how doctors perceive nutrition, but also how it's presented to students."
You can hear more about this story on The Food Programme on Radio 4 at 12:32 BST on Sunday or on iPlayer afterwards.