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

Friday, June 22, 2018

Palestinian Authority proves to be good student of Israeli repression

Palestinian Authority security forces at al-Manara Square on 13 June.

Annelies Verbeek-21 June 2018
The tension was palpable in Ramallah’s city center as numerous Palestinian security forces gathered around al-Manara Square on the evening of 13 June. Wearing helmets and carrying batons, they peered through the square, waiting for the first person to raise their voice.
On the second of three days of protests, Palestinians gathered in Ramallah – a city in the occupied West Bank – to demand the Palestinian Authority lift sanctions it imposed on the Gaza Strip.
The protests were the first clear expression of solidarity with Gaza in Ramallah since the beginning of the Great March of Return.
As PA security officials waited for the 13 June protest to begin, women’s voices rose up chanting, “with our blood, with our souls, we will sacrifice for you Gaza.”
It only took seconds for the militarized forces to shoot stun grenades into the crowd, chase protesters and beat them with full force.
It became clear that there were many security forces in plain clothing present as young men were violently dragged away.



Joe
✔@joedyke

A man is dragged away by what appear to be plain clothed Palestinian security forces, during protests in Ramallah
4:28 PM - Jun 13, 2018
“We have seen violence from the PA before, especially during peaceful protests,” Dalia Nassar, a protester at the scene, told The Electronic Intifada.
“But to this extent, no. This is violence like never before.”
Some of the security forces present wore caps bearing the emblems of Fatah, the dominant party in the PA.
“We are used to the men in uniform,” said Wafa Abdel Rahman, founder of women’s rights group Filastiniyat. “But these gangs, they were new.”
Abdel Rahman noted that the men in caps were harassing women and girls. Some of the men in caps were heard shouting “bitch” at women and telling them to go home.
In at least one case, a woman was sexually abused before being rescued by acquaintances.
“I thought that they would still have some respect for women and girls, being Arabs. But I saw undercover forces beating up women the age of their mothers,” Abdel Rahman said.

Punitive measures

The protest had been organized under the banner “lift the sanctions,” and came as a response to the Palestinian Authority’s recent salary cuts of public employees in Gaza.
“First, they cut benefits, like transportation, health insurance, child support,” Hussein, a Gaza resident who was reached by phone, stated.
In April 2017, the Palestinian Authority cut the wages of public employees by 30 percent in Gaza.
“People had to live on 70 percent of their salaries for 10 months,” said Hussein (not his real name). “Then they cut 50 percent more. Then the salaries stopped for two months, then they kept paying the 50 percent.”
“But most of the money goes to banks because many people here have loans.”
Hussein asked for his real name not to be used, as he is waiting for an exit permit for medical treatment. He fears the Palestinian Authority – which processes such permits for Gaza residents – would not allow him to leave.

Tug of war

Since Hamas expelled Fatah forces and took power of the interior of Gaza in 2007, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority has been trying to force Hamas out of power through imposing various sanctions on the strip, political analyst Mouin Rabbani told The Electronic Intifada.
The PA has “believed that a combination of Israeli military pressure against Hamas and punishment of the population of Gaza would lead to Hamas’ voluntary departure from government, or a popular rebellion against them,” Rabbani added.
Rabbani explained that as this strategy has not worked, Abbas and his associates are increasing pressure. In doing so, they do not shy away from appealing directly to the Israeli occupation authorities.
Last year, the PA asked Israel to cut Gaza’s electricity supply.
“We have come to see a disgraceful situation in which the self-proclaimed Palestinian leadership is openly soliciting for collective punishment from the occupation against its own people,” Rabbani stated.



Palestinians call for the lifting of sanctions on the Gaza Strip in the West Bank city of Ramallah on 10 June.
Eyad JadallahAPA images

The battle between the two parties is one for political power, stated Wafa Abdel Rahman moments before protests commenced on 13 June.
“Abbas and Hamas are both taking the Gaza people hostage,” she explained to The Electronic Intifada. “Abbas wants Gazans to rebel against Hamas, but they have done it before. They were attacked and killed. You are asking them to commit suicide.”
Abdel Rahman added, “nobody is answering the essential question: If Hamas is gone, what is the alternative?”
Rabbani expressed a similar sentiment, stating that while Abbas is attempting to oust Hamas, he is not showing a willingness to take responsibility over the Gaza Strip himself.
“The PA talks about the Gaza Strip as a foreign country to which it is providing aid, and about those who receive the salaries as if they are somehow recipients of a donor project, rather than their own people,” he said.
Diana Buttu, a former negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization, said that Abbas is seeking to punish the people of Gaza for voting for Hamas.
“The scary part is that the actual security services were willing to follow his orders,” Buttu told The Electronic Intifada.
Buttu emphasized that the Palestinian Authority seemed to have learned well from Israeli repression techniques.
“I watched the events via Facebook live feeds, and it was very reminiscent of what the Israelis did to solidarity protests in Haifa,” she said.
Buttu was referring to Israeli police’s violent suppression of a Palestinian protest in Haifa, a city in Israel, on 18 May. The protest had been called against Israel’s massacre of unarmed civilians in Gaza.
“From wearing riot gear when there is no riot, to stun grenades, to approaching it from a standpoint that this needs to be shut down, rather than allowing people to express themselves,” Buttu said. “They [the PA’s forces] have proven to very good students.”
Annelies Verbeek is a Belgian journalist based in Ramallah.
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Nikki Haley: ‘It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America’


U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley rebuked a United Nations report condemning poverty in the U.S. Here are the statistics you need to know. (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)

A United Nations report condemning entrenched poverty in the United States is a “misleading and politically motivated” document about “the wealthiest and freest country in the world,” according to the Trump administration's ambassador to the world body.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley criticized the report for critiquing the United States' treatment of its poor, arguing that the United Nations should instead focus on poverty in developing countries such as Burundi and Congo. The U.N. report also faulted the Trump administration for pursuing policies it said would exacerbate U.S. poverty.

“It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America,” Haley wrote in a letter to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday. “In our country, the President, Members of Congress, Governors, Mayors, and City Council members actively engage on poverty issues every day. Compare that to the many countries around the world, whose governments knowingly abuse human rights and cause pain and suffering.”

The rebuke comes two days after Haley announced the United States' resignation from the U.N. Human Rights Council over that body's perceived bias against Israel and toleration of human rights abusers.


U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks at the State Department on June 19, 2018. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

In May, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston released a report saying the United States has the highest rates of youth poverty, infant mortality, incarceration, income inequality and obesity among all countries in the developed world, as well as 40 million people living in poverty. Alston accused President Trump and the Republican Congress of deepening poverty and inequality in the country, citing the Republican tax law passed last fall.

[U.S. withdraws from U.N. Human Rights Council over perceived bias against Israel]

“The policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege,” Alston wrote in the report.

Haley pushed back in Thursday's letter, arguing that the administration has created a strong economy that would lift people out of poverty and that Alston's report was premised on misleading statistics. Haley said the U.N. special rapporteur had “categorically misstated” the progress America has made in reducing poverty, but she gave no examples.

“I am deeply disappointed that the Special Rapporteur used his platform to make misleading and politically motivated statements about American domestic policy issues,” Haley said. “Regrettably, his report is an all too common example of the misplaced priorities” of the United Nations.


Here are key moments from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley's announcement on June 19. (The Washington Post)

Sanders, who initially requested Haley's comments on the U.N. report, asked Haley to respond to statistics showing more than 30 million Americans lack health insurance, more than half of older workers have no retirement savings and 140 million Americans struggle to meet basic living expenses.

“You are certainly right in suggesting that poverty in many countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi is far worse than it is in the United States,” Sanders said. “But ... as it happens, I personally believe that it is totally appropriate for the U.N. Special Rapporteur to focus on poverty in the United States.”

Alston did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
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India Is the Latest Front in Trump’s Endless Trade War

Modi’s soft approach is getting nowhere with a hard-line Washington.

 Indian farmers, traders and vendors negotiate prices of vegetables at a wholesale vegetable market in Hyderabad on February 1, 2018. (NOAH SEELAM/AFP/Getty Images) 

No automatic alt text available.
BY -
JUNE 21, 2018, 3:27 PM

U.S. President Donald Trump has been starting trade wars on all fronts, with escalating spirals of tariffs between the United States and its three main trade partners: the European Union, China, and NAFTA. But there’s a smaller yet no less significant part of the protectionist tit for tat that’s been overlooked: the fight between the United States and India.

This quarrel has the potential to erode the burgeoning strategic partnership between the world’s two largest democracies, which have been closely aligned in military and counterterrorism fields with the goal of stabilizing the Indo-Pacific region and countering the rise of China.

Trump struck the first blow with his steel and aluminum tariffs. India tried hard to get an exemption but failed. And so, on Thursday India began imposing what it deems proportionate payback worth $240 million on 29 American export items including almonds, chickpeas, and chocolates, with 28 tariffs taking immediate effect and a duty on shrimp rolling out on Aug. 4.

[Trump’s tariffs are starting trade wars on every continent. Here’s a set of charts listing them all—and how countries are retaliating.]

The U.S. side was pressing for trade reciprocity even before the Trumpist trade hawks swooped in. Since President Bill Clinton’s administration, the United States has filed six separate cases against India at the World Trade Organization. Despite these conflicts, the deepening of geopolitical cooperation rarely halted. But the unilateralist and rigid way the current U.S. administration is closing its market to imports while simultaneously demanding concessions for its exports has rattled India as much as it has the rest of the world.

India was already on the radar of the’ neomercantilists calling the shots in Washington, although not to the same glaringly visible extent as China, the EU, Canada, and Mexico. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has challenged India’s export subsidy policies as instruments “to sell their goods more cheaply to the detriment of American workers and manufacturers.” He initiated a case against India at the WTO in March, the first such complaint since 2013, and also threatened to revoke the non-reciprocal trade benefits India enjoys under the Generalized System of Preferences by virtue of being a developing nation.

Trump himself has chided India for placing barriers to Harley-Davidson motorcycles by lamenting that “we’re getting nothing” from India. In the services sector too, Trump and a Republican Congress have cracked down hard on the previously relatively easy route for skilled Indian information-technology sector workers into the United States.

The United States is India’s single largest trading partner, with the two-way flow totaling more than $100 billion or more a year, and total trade makes up 40 percent of India’s GDP. There is considerable worry that Trump’s trade war will jeopardize India’s economic boom, with GDP growing at 7.7 percent in the last quarter of 2017.

Indian equities and stocks fell by over 1 percent as the shadow of Trump’s trade war descended, reflecting worries not just about the tariffs but about the reduction of U.S. foreign direct investment into India, and for the fate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s signature “Make in India”
manufacturing initiative. Modi’s push to transform India into a manufacturing superpower depends on the free flow of capital and the openness of global markets.

India feels unfairly singled out because its trade surplus with the United States, at just shy of $25 billion, is so small compared to China’s nearly $350 billion, or even to Japan’s $69 billion, Germany’s $65 billion, or Mexico’s $63 billion.

Modi’s officials have attempted to juxtapose India with China and argued that the former poses “no such thing as a security threat to the U.S.” The Make in India program is far more modest than the Made in China 2025 high-tech industrial policy under which China aspires to surpass the United States in strategic fields like semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and aircraft manufacturing through massive subsidies from the Chinese government.

Unlike China, which is breathing down the neck of the United States in cutting-edge sectors, Indian industrialization is still relatively immature and not top of the line. Some strategists even contend that a full-blown U.S.-China trade war would benefit India, as friction between Washington and Beijing might redouble New Delhi’s value in Washington’s eyes as a less confrontational actor.

But none of these arguments worked against Trump’s ideological convictions, which demand all-out economic confrontation and dismantling the WTO-based order. I
But none of these arguments worked against Trump’s ideological convictions, which demand all-out economic confrontation and dismantling the WTO-based order. I
ndia is finding that, however different it is from China, there are no exemptions in Trumpland.
So inflexible is Trump that invocations of the “strategic partnership” between India and the United States and Washington’s designation of New Delhi as a “major defense partner” have not moved the needle on tariffs against India. Sophisticated suggestions, like that of the U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to deploy tailored tariffs that hurt only China while avoiding broader damage, is music to Indian ears that finds no audience in the White House.

Much to New Delhi’s discomfiture, the present U.S administration has little consistent interest in geopolitical rebalancing vis-à-vis China, which is the de facto foundation of the U.S.-India strategic compact. With treaty allies of the United States like Japan and South Korea themselves being subjected to trade punishment despite their crucial roles in countering China’s military and economic domination of Asia, India is finding that its own importance for the mercurial Trump is equally uncertain.

Yet, given the existential dread that informs how India views the rise of its giant neighbor China, Modi’s government has preferred to tone down the criticism of Trump’s trade harshness so as not to alienate the United States completely. India’s rhetorical reaction has been muted compared to other participants in the burgeoning trade war; even while filing suit against the United States at the WTO, India is still keen to work out its trade differences with the Americans through bilateral channels without spoiling strategic coordination.

But these softly-softly methods are unlikely to cut any ice with an administration locked into the zero-sum logic of Trumpian economics and barely cognizant of geopolitical nuances. Of course, the U.S.-India strategic partnership has other legs besides trade and investment. But if these economic pillars wilt under the stress of Trump’s populism, the quest for a long-term balance of power in Asia could be fatally set back.
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Britain’s Windrush veterans: the battle to be British


21 Jun 2018

It’s been 70 years since 492 passengers disembarked from the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks.

Invited to Britain as part of the first generation of workers from the Caribbean, some went on to serve in the armed forces. Over the decades they served in conflicts around the world as British citizens – or so they thought.

In the Afro Caribbean centre in Peterborough veterans meet up and play dominoes – and reflect on a Britain that has seen so many of their generation faced with deportation and their immigration status questioned. Warning – this report contains offensive language.
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Humanity’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: Starving, Enslaving, Raping, Torturing and Killing our Children

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The Long Read: Sri Lanka Guardian Essay 
by Robert J. Burrowes-

( June 21, 2018, Victoria, Sri Lanka Guardian) In a recent article titled ‘Challenges for Resolving Complex Conflicts’, I pointed out four conflict configurations that are paid little attention by conflict theorists.
In this article, I would like to discuss a fifth conflict configuration that is effectively ignored by conflict theorists (and virtually everyone else). This conflict is undoubtedly the most fundamental conflict in human society, because it generates all of the violence humans perpetrate and experience, and yet it is utterly invisible to almost everyone.
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The crying Honduran girl on the cover of Time was not separated from her mother

An almost-2-year-old Honduran girl cries as her mother is detained near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12 in McAllen, Tex. (John Moore/Getty Images)
The widely shared photo of the little girl crying as a U.S. Border Patrol agent patted down her mother became a symbol of the families pulled apart by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy at the border, even landing on the new cover of Time magazine.

But the girl’s father told The Washington Post on Thursday night that his child and her mother were not separated, and a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed that the family was not separated while in the agency’s custody. In an interview with CBS News, Border Patrol agent Carlos Ruiz, who was among the first to encounter the mother and her daughter at the border in Texas, said the image had been used to symbolize a policy but “that was not the case in this picture.”
Ruiz, who was not available for an interview Friday, confirmed as much to CBS. He said agents asked the mother, Sandra Sanchez, to put down her daughter, nearly 2-year-old Yanela, so they could search her. Agents patted down the mother for less than two minutes, and she immediately picked up her daughter, who then stopped crying.

“I personally went up to the mother and asked her, ‘Are you doing okay? Is the kid okay?’ and she said, ‘Yes. She’s tired and thirsty. It’s 11 o’clock at night,” Ruiz told CBS News.

The revelation has prompted a round of media criticism from the White House and other conservatives.

“It’s shameful that dems and the media exploited this photo of a little girl to push their agenda,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted Friday. “She was not separated from her mom. The separation here is from the facts.”

The heart-wrenching image, captured by award-winning Getty Images photographer John Moore, was spread across the front pages of international newspapers. It was used to promote a Facebook fundraiserthat has collected more than $18 million to help reunite separated families.

(Time magazine)

And on Thursday, hours before the little girl’s father spoke out, Time magazine released its July 2 cover using the child’s image — without the mother — in a photo illustration that shows her looking up at President Trump, who is seen towering above her.

“Welcome to America,” the cover reads.

Time has not responded to a request for comment from The Post, but in a statement sent to media outlets, the magazine said it’s standing by its cover.


Time also has added a correction to an online article and gallery that ran Tuesday, before the cover was released: “The original version of this story misstated what happened to the girl in the photo after she [was] taken from the scene. The girl was not carried away screaming by U.S. Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together.”

Moore, the photographer, told The Post in an email that Time corrected the story after he made a request minutes after it was published. He said that the picture “is a straightforward and honest image” showing a “distressed little girl” whose mother was being searched by border officials.

“I believe this image has raised awareness to the zero-tolerance policy of this administration. Having covered immigration for Getty Images for 10 years, this photograph for me is part of a much larger story,” Moore said, adding later: “The image showed a moment in time at the border, but the emotion in the little girl’s distress has ignited a response. As a photojournalist, my job is to inform and report what is happening, but I also think it is important to humanize an issue that is often reported in statistics.”

Moore told The Post’s Avi Selk that he ran into the mother and toddler in McAllen, Tex., on the night of June 12. He knew only that they were from Honduras and had been on the road for about a month. “I can only imagine what dangers she’d passed through, alone with the girl,” he said.

Moore photographed the girl crying as the border agent patted down the mother.

Moore said the woman picked up her daughter, they walked into the van, and the van drove away. When he took the picture, he said he did not know whether the mother and her daughter would be separated, “but it was a very real possibility,” given the slew of family separations carried out by the Trump administration.

He said he’s glad that although the two were detained, “they are together.”

[‘We make kids disappear’: Activists alter billboard to condemn separation of migrant families]

In Honduras, Denis Javier Varela Hernandez recognized his daughter in the photo and also feared that she was separated from her mother, he told The Post.

But he said he learned this week that his 32-year-old wife and daughter were, in fact, detained together at a facility in McAllen. Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Nelly Jerez confirmed Varela’s account to Reuters.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman said in a statement to The Post that Sanchez was arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol near Hidalgo, Tex., on June 12 while traveling with a family member. She was transferred to ICE custody on June 17 and is being housed at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Tex., according to ICE.

ICE said Sanchez was previously deported to Honduras in July 2013.

Sanchez and her daughter left for the United States from Puerto Cortes, north of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, on June 3, Varela said. Sanchez had told her husband that she hoped to go to the United States to seek a better life for her children, away from the dangers of their home country. But she left without telling him that she was taking their youngest daughter with her. Varela, who has three other children with Sanchez, feared for the little girl’s safety, he said. Yanela is turning 2 years old in July.

After Sanchez left, Varela had no way to contact her or learn of her whereabouts. Then, on the news, he saw the photo of the girl in the pink shirt.

“The first second I saw it, I knew it was my daughter,” Varela told The Post. “Immediately, I recognized her.”

He heard that U.S. officials were separating families at the border, before Trump reversed the policy Wednesday. Varela felt helpless and distressed “imagining my daughter in that situation,” he said.

[Time magazine’s major mistake on the crying-girl cover]

This week, Varela received a phone call from an official with Honduras’s foreign ministry, letting him know his wife and daughter were detained together. While he doesn’t know anything about the conditions of the facility or what is next for Sanchez and Yanela, he was relieved to hear they were in the same place.

As news emerged late Thursday that the mother and child were not separated, conservative media jumped on the story, portraying it as evidence of “fake news” surrounding the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

It was the most prominent story on the home page of the conservative news outlet Breitbart, which called it a “fake news photo.” Infowars, owned by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, singled out Time and CNN for using the “completely misleading” image to push “open border propaganda.”

Donald Trump Jr. has been talking about the photo on Twitter on Friday.

“No one is shocked anymore. There is a no low they won’t go to for their narrative,” the president’s eldest son tweeted.


Donald Trump Jr.
✔@DonaldJTrumpJr

But but but... narrative. The dad is obviously lying because CNN said so. Right???

Saagar Enjeti
✔@esaagar
Father of the now famous photo of the little girl crying says his wife/child were never separated at any time by authorities, that his wife was seeking a job (not fleeing violence), and that he is upset w/ her for taking his child on the dangerous journey http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5869829/amp/Father-two-year-old-face-child-separation-crisis-speaks-out.html …

View image on Twitter
9:43 AM - Jun 22, 2018
Varela pushed back against the portrayals of his daughter’s story, saying it should not cast doubt on the “human-rights violations” taking place at the border.

“This is the case for my daughter, but it is not the case for 2,000 children that were separated from their parents,” Varela said.

At least 2,500 migrant children have been separated from their parents at the border since May 5.
Varela said he felt “proud” that his daughter has “represented the subject of immigration” and helped propel changes in policy. But he asked that Trump “put his hand on his heart.”

He hopes that U.S. officials will grant asylum to his wife and daughter, he said.

Asked whether he would also like to come to the United States, he said, “Of course, someday.”
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