There has recently been a flurry of comment and speculation about whether, due to a technical flaw in the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (2015), former President Rajapaksa may actually be eligible to offer himself for election at the next presidential election, although it had so far been universally assumed that he was disqualified by virtue of having been twice elected previously to the presidency.
Democratic elections alone do not remedy the crisis of confidence in government. Moreover, there is no viable justification for a democratic system in which public participation is limited to voting. ~ Beth Simone Noveck
What is happening around in political circles seems disastrous to Sri Lanka’s well-being and progress. With unbridled publicTamashas, corruption deals and extravaganzas around,causing severe drain on the tax payers’ moneywithout any consideration for public good or morality, Sri Lanka appears to be sliding down towards a point of no return. Public feelings and views about their representatives are not charitable to say the least of social media is anything to go by; however not much public activism is visible to stem the rot.
The previous government was accused ofmany wrongs- unwanted airport, harbour, stadium etc mortgaging the country on a deadly debt trap, virtually making it aclient state of China! There were many Tamashas then, which were common place and took place without any fear or sanctions.However, despitea change of government, these public money wasting antics continue regardlessat all levels in many forms – super expensive vehicles, extravagant overseas travel, unwanted office spaces, an oversized Cabinet/overextended political structures ,an unproductive public administration and even the craze to purchase ultra-comfortablefurniture items and toilet modernization, when the average Citizen Silva and his family are forced to live belowthe poverty line and follow extreme austerity measures. Even the PET scan machine for the Cancer hospital was funded by public contributions. To add insult to injury, it has been height of haughtiness that even some Councillors have lost track of who they are- by asking the staff to ‘Sir’ them or asking the schools in their area to hang their photographs or even racially abusing a Muslim constituent as it happened recently for example. This make us wonder whether Sri Lanka is losing the plot and time has come to rethink of the rationale behind the very public democratic institutions which we have created to take it forward. The country is crying out for an Imran Khan or a Mahathir (not pseudo Yahapalanists)to kick-start the process ofdriving some sense into the system of governance which is corrupt to the core and regularly abused for reasons ofpolitical expediency.
Whether Parliament, provincial councils or local government bodies, the system is today reeked of corruption, mismanagement and lack of efficiency and focus, bureaucratic red tape and uncertainty over who is responsible for what — a dispute between the central government and the provincial councils with regard to devolved or un-devolved powers. The unbelievable disclosures for example about the Western Provincial Council administration allegedly blowing a whopping sum to purchase super luxury chairs at the rate of Rs. 650,000 each (Well! The CM corrected the figure; it was 640,000!) would have sent shocking waves across the nation while the Colombo Mayor allocated a crazy amount of money to modernize the bathroom in her official residence. When public conveniences and public amenities within the city were in extremely unhygienic conditions and when more than one half of Colombo’s population are in slums and shanties, a waste of taxpayer’s money for such purposes is a crime as every right-thinking person would agree. In 2009, The Council has, reportedly allocated Rs. 30 mn for a mega junket a tour of China. If this is the situation in Colombo, the capital city, it is needless to talk ofother provinces.
It was in February this year that local government elections were concluded and councillors were elected in unwieldy numbers adding yet an unbearable burden on the State coffers, raising vital questions about the wisdom behind the new system of election. Then again, a further round of elections is coming soon to elect councillors to another public representative body below Parliament- the Provincial Council (PC) – described as a white elephant by opponents of the system from the very inception. Many an academic has expressed the view that the PC system has not served the purpose for which it was established, for a number of reasons. They were initially intended to devolve power to the North and East, but ironically, the system was extended to the South as well. The Provincial Councils, which the people never asked for, have nevertheless become part and parcel of the country’s Constitution today. It is pertinent to talk of PCs in more length as the PC elections are drawing near to be conducted based on a new system of election adding more burden.
As S L Gunasekera once said, ‘The 13th Amendment to the Constitution (forced down our throats by the Indian Government] was an unmitigated disaster which resulted in the creation of`White Elephants’ called `Provincial Councils’ and a proliferation of political functionaries in the form of Provincial Ministers, Members of Provincial Councils and their hangers on’ which drained the public purse of colossal amounts of funds which ought to have been used for the benefit of the People and not for the benefit of such functionaries’.
The whole PC system in addition to thelegislature and the extended LG assemblies have lost most credibility and Public feel that only politicians arebenefitting from the system, enjoying luxury perks and privileges while the whole exercise being a drain on public resources. Recent editorial in the ‘Island’ screamed; ‘creation of this monster that has only benefitted the political class with very little evidence of the devolution that was the raison d’etre for setting them up to be seen. Instead we have seen the multiplication of elected, paid political offices, replete with lavish perquisites, providing a new avenue for politicians to do very nicely for themselves and also aspire for Parliament as the next step up the ladder. The Editorial ended thus; ‘The politicians burdened the country in February with twice as many local councilors as we did before; at what cost and to what purpose? Now the debate is whether the PC elections will be under the new law or the old one. The people do not care just as much as they don’t care whether we have PCs or not’.
According to our Constitution there are specific responsibilities and duties allocated to Municipal Councillors, Provincial Councillors and Pradaysheeya Sabha Members. The Councillors from the day they are appointed, however wait for the monies from the central government to start spending it. Most of it is misappropriated. All that the PC system has achieved is to further politicise our society and give to political parties and their ‘leaders’ more opportunities of advancing the fortunes of their otherwise unemployable kith and kin, supporters, hangers on, sycophants at the expense of the long suffering public.
(Lanka e News 26.Aug.2018, 4.00AM) Following the criticism leveled by Prof. Colvin Gunaratne that the SL Medical council (SLMC) is a place ‘Horage ammagen pena ahana thenak” ( the place where rogue’s mother is asked to reveal by ‘light foretelling’) when tendering his resignation from it , heated discussions have been triggered among society in regard to the Council’s composition.
The views expressed by J.C. Weliamuna P.C who has long experience pertaining to human rights and anti corruption activities seem to be most independent , prudent and appropriate vis a vis the present time. The views of Weliamuna are hereunder ….
''The medical ordinance came into being in 1927, that is 90 years ago. This was amended from time to time. It is in 1987, the present image of the Medical Council came into existence . The powers to regulate in relation to discipline in the medical profession , and other professional bodies like the medical services affiliated to the medical profession are also vested in the Medical council.
The SLMC is constituted of a president appointed by the minister, and representatives of every medical faculty. They are the deans of those faculties. Another 8 members are appointed through the ballot which includes a registered medical practitioner and a Dental doctor . The minister too appoints 4 more members. Two of them should cannot have connections with the government .Though the Director General health service , Director General Teaching hospitals and the president are appointed by the minister , the Vice president is selected by the Council itself.
According to the 13 th amendment of the ordinance , all the members of the Medical Council should be doctors. The principal task of the SLMC is regulatory. In any profession if any Institution is regulating any body ,the key requirement is, that regulatory Institution has to be independent.That is it must be independent of those whom it is regulating. Similarly the regulating Institution should be independent of the government too. Moreover a regulatory is necessary not only from the standpoint of the professionals.
GMC
The General Medical council (GMC) of England which is the Sri Lankan counterpart was launched in 2001 as a registered charitable Institution. That country’s medical profession is regulated by that body .In 2001 another ‘Council for Healthcare regulatory excellence’ was commenced. The appeals made against decisions of the GMC could be taken up by that Institution. The GMC which comprises 12 members has six medical professionals while the other six members belong to other professions. There are also other councils too in England which regulate other health services such as the Optical Council and General pharmaceutical Council.
The contention that the medical council composition must change was propelled forward again simultaneously with what was revealed by the SLMC president Colvin Gunaratne when he was going to resign. He said ‘ meka Horage ammagen pena ahana thenak” ( the place where rogue’s mother is asked to reveal by ‘light foretelling’).
In the past a proposal was made to amend the medical ordinance . Another health professional trade union challenged that draft in the supreme court (SC) about two to three weeks ago Various grounds were cited regarding the composition of the Medical council .The issue that sprang up was , how is that other professionals are coming under the SLMC?
Currently the Medical council is administered by the GMOA. According to Dr. Gunaratne , when 8 doctors were being elected by the ballot , bus loads of doctors were brought like voters during a general election . Besides the GMOA today is less a trade union and more a group serving a political party , dancing and prancing according to their agendas.
Like how GMOA is not an independent trade union , it is the GMOA which is a big stumbling block to the Medical Council militating against its independence . During the entire recent past GMOA has been disparaging and discrediting the professionals of other health services. They are grabbing the studying opportunities and career opportunities by force. Besides they are exerting pressures to sabotage the academic courses. In the circumstances , it is a pertinent question , how can a medical council that is under such a group regulate the other professionals ?
If we are to elevate ourselves as a medical council to international standard , in addition to making it independent , a reasonable number or more of medical professionals from outside must be brought in. That does not mean admitting medical professionals from out who do not know what is regulating and who will destroy the Institution. There are plenty of suitable individuals in society . Articles 12 , 13 of the Medical council have to be amended for this purpose. At the same time ,the power of those who are not of the medical profession to regulate the other health sector professionals should also be changed.''
--------------------------- by (2018-08-25 22:40:56)
In 1977, when JR Jayewardene launched the Free Trade Zone he famously proclaimed ‘Let the Robber Barons come’. With his kinsman as Prime Minister today, we are inviting more than Robbers. We are calling the Dirty Destroyer Barons.
The Garbage Barons from Singapore are invited to make a Hellhole of Garbage, in what is known through history as this ‘Other Paradise’.
This desire for Singaporean Garbage began with the election of the Yahapalana in January 2015. It did not take long for a Sri Lankan born Singapore resident Robber and Garbage Baron, to be given the keys to the Central Bank. The robberies that took place at the Central Bank, known today as the Bond Scam, is a part of the huge garbage of politics and government that prevails here.
The Presidential Commission on the Bond Scam exposed Garbage Mahendran and his political backers here. We had a Finance Minister whose Penthouse rent was paid by such garbage funds. The Prime Minister was hardly asked any garbage dealing questions at the Commission.
Our desire for Singaporean dirt was such that Garbage Mahendran was kept in an office of the Prime Minister, after his crooked time at the Central Bank ended.
Singapore is a frequent stop for our politicians – for brief holidays, health facilities, and no doubt for plans to increase the load of garbage here. We have signed a Free Trade Agreement with that huge garbage source in Asia, to dump loads of it in this country. It could very well be ten times that of Meethotamulla, and keep rising, as Singapore keeps getting cleaner.
We are told it is only a clause in the FTA, which does not mean all that garbage, including highly dangerous stuff, would come here. Come on, then why include it in the FTA?
Did those who drafted it not know that China, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia have stopped taking foreign garbage? Was China with its One Belt – One Road that we talk so much about, not a good example to follow? Did we have to do better than China, and tell the world that we are the Dumping Ground in South Asia?
There is much to be bothered with the possibility of Singaporean garbage being dumped here. It is the reality of our own garbage. Don’t we have enough, already? Just think of the garbage in politics. Those side-jumping, highly forgetful, salary hike hunting, commission seeking, cheque encashing, perpetually crooked politicians, so well supported by the crooked and dirty officials waiting for the next leap into dirty profit.
We keep hearing about Singapore being a clean country – in politics and government. We hear about how Lee Kwan Yew, its first national leader, was so impressed with the Sri Lanka of his early days much. Have any of our leaders ever thought of asking Singapore to give lessons or guidelines to our politicians on managing a clean government. What nonsense. We seek their garbage.
Isn’t it funny that President Sirisena has appointed a committee to study the Singapore- Sri Lanka FTA that has already been signed? That is presidential stuff in this land of dirty wonders. Didn’t the President, who is the Minister in charge of Environment, know anything about the Dirty Dumps from Singapore? Was he not bothered because of the heavy garbage in our governance?
Now that we are in this Garbage Dumping Free Trade Agreement, why not make a special proposal to Singapore. We can certainly hit the headlines the world over with this novel garbage deal.
Can we export and dump all our corrupt, crooked and dirty politicians in Singapore, in exchange for their garbage?
Getting rid of all this garbage in our politics and governance will be a great relief to this country. We may be able to go back to even before independence 70 years ago, and make a good re-start in governance. Getting rid of such a huge burden from this country, will give us both time and good thinking, on how we could handle the Singaporean Garbage. Singapore, with its good record on handling corruption, will surely be able to put such political garbage in the places they would never come out, and burden any other society.
Caught in this huge Garbage Trap, why not think of a fair exchange of dirty garbage? Your dirt for our dirt. Shiploads of your physical garbage, and planeloads of our political garbage. The Garbage Saga from Paradise.
The Colombo Fort Magistrate yesterday issued an order directing managers of 46 financial institutions to release transaction details of 19 bank accounts belonging to six relatives of Udayanga Weeratunga including his wife and mother-in-law be provided to the FCID for their investigations.
State Counsel Udara Karunatilleka appearing on behalf of FCID informed court that Udayanga Weeratunga who is currently being detained under UAE federal judicial custody will have to face an extradition trial on September 10.
The Colombo Fort Magistrate had issued an open warrant written in English through the Interpol for the arrest of former Ambassador to Russia Udayanga Weeratunga.
Magistrate Lanka Jayaratne had made this order pursuant to a request made by FCID citing that he is continuously evading courts.
The FCID conducting investigations into the MiG aircraft transaction had named Udayanga Weeratunga as a suspect in the case through a B report filed in the Fort Magistrate’s Court.
The Court was informed through the FCID that INTERPOL had issued a ‘Red Warrant’ on Udayanga Weeratunga, naming him as a fugitive wanted by the Sri Lankan authorities.
The FCID had informed Court that Udayanga Weeratunga had directly intervened into the questionable transaction in procuring MiG-27 ground attack crafts. The FCID said the deal amounted to US$14 million.
On June 9, 2016 the Colombo Fort Magistrate had issued notices on Udayanga Weeratunga to appear in Court July 15 but he did not turn up. Thereafter, on October 20, 2016 court Had issued a warrant for the arrest of UdayangaWeeratunga.
The FCID had told Court that they were investigating whether the former Sri Lankan ambassador in Russia had invested money in a company called Sri Lankan Limited Liability Company in Moscow, which were earned through the Mig-27 transaction.
The FCID named several foreign nationals and foreign companies as suspects regarding this case.The FCID launched this investigation following a complaint lodged by defence columnist and political writer Iqbal Athas.
Israeli group submits freedom of information request as evidence grows of meddling by Netanyahu government in UK politics
Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn addresses a crowd in Trafalgar Square protesting against the UK visit of US President Donald Trump (AFP)
Has Israel been covertly fuelling claims of an "anti-Semitism crisis" purportedly plaguing Britain's Labour Party since it elected a new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, three years ago?
The Trump administration has decided to cut more than $200 million in bilateral assistance to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, the State Department said Friday.
The money will be redirected to “high priority projects elsewhere,” a notice sent to Congress stated.
The amount cut by the Trump administration represents most of the $250 million in aid requested annually by the State Department for 2018 and 2019.
The US had already frozen millions in aid to the Palestinian Authority earlier this year after Congress passed the Taylor Force Act. That legislation requires the suspension of funds benefiting the PA until it terminates payments to the families of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel and those of slain alleged attackers.
The suspension of funding has already diminished Palestinians’ access to medical services and food aid.
The US has continued to transfer funds to Palestinian Authority security forces that serve as an enforcement arm of the Israeli occupation.
In 2016 the Obama administration and Israel signed the largest aid package in US history, giving Israel $38 billion in military assistance over 10 years. President Donald Trump recently signed a defense bill codifying that aid pledge into law, one of the few parts of his predecessor’s legacy that he has wholeheartedly embraced.
Friday’s announcement of further cuts in aid to Palestinians comes days after a UN official warned that essential services in the occupied Gaza Strip will soon shut down if the purchase of emergency fuel isn’t immediately funded.
Gaza running out of fuel
It is the latest such warning regarding Gaza, whose two million residents have long been kept dangling over a cliff.
Donor-funded emergency fuel has become a lifeline in Gaza after 11 years of Israeli blockade that has deflated the territory’s economy and sharply increased residents’ dependence on humanitarian aid.
Emergency fuel is used to operate health, water and sanitation facilities, particularly backup generators at Gaza’s hospitals. Chronic power shortages mean that most households in Gaza have electricity no more than four or five hours per day.
“We have now run out of funds and are delivering the final supplies in the next few days,” humanitarian coordinator Jamie McGoldrick said on Monday.
“Without funds to enable ongoing deliveries, service providers will be forced to suspend, or heavily reduce, operations from early September, with potentially grave consequences.”
Gaza patients depending on electrical equipment in intensive care units, those on dialysis or in trauma departments are most vulnerable to electricity shortages, according to McGoldrick’s office.
The electricity crisis has also forced doctors to postpone complex surgeries since they cannot guarantee that essential equipment can operate for long enough without interruption.
Almost the entire population in Gaza would be affected by reduction or cessation of health services if Gaza’s main hospitals run out of emergency fuel, McGoldrick’s office said.
Half the population of two million faces the risk of sewage overflow if fuel for pumping stations is exhausted.
UNRWA schools to open – for now
Meanwhile the school year is set to start on time for more than 240,000 Palestinian refugee children in Gaza who are educated in United Nations facilities after fears that funding cuts would necessitate delay.
But UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said last week that it only has enough money to keep its more than 700 schools in the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria open until the end of September.
Another $217 million is needed to keep its schools running the rest of the year, according to UNRWA commissioner-general Pierre Krähenbühl.
The agency is in crisis after the Trump administration withheld $300 million in funding earlier this year. The US was UNRWA’s single largest donor.
Last month UNRWA announced cuts to emergency services which would result in layoffs of more than 100 of its nearly 13,000 employees in Gaza and salary reductions for hundreds more. That is a huge blow in Gaza, where half the population is unemployed.
UNRWA has faced fierce protests, causing it to “lose control” of its compound in Gaza for more than two weeks, according to Krähenbühl.
This week Krähenbühl suggested – as had already been made clear by Trump administration officials themselves – that the withholding of funding was meant to punish Palestinians for protesting the president’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in early December.
US squeezes UNRWA
Krähenbühl told the Associated Press that “I can say with a great degree of confidence that the decision [to withhold funding] was not related to UNRWA’s performance, because in November I had received very constructive and openly positive feedback on those issues.”
After “tensions increased around the question of Jerusalem” following Trump’s announcement, Krähenbühl added, “It appears that the humanitarian funding to UNRWA got caught up in the deep polarization around that question.”
It was revealed by Foreign Policy magazine earlier this month that Jared Kushner, Middle East envoy and son-in-law to President Trump, advocated for “an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA.”
In an email sent to several other senior Trump administration officials on 11 January, Kushner stated that UNRWA “perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace.”
Israel and its most fervent advocates have long argued that the existence of UNRWA is what perpetuates the question of Palestinian refugees, rather than Israel’s refusal to respect their rights.
Such advocates therefore believe that dissolving UNRWA would make the issue of Palestinian refugees – whose fate has been repeatedly kicked down the road as a “final status issue” during decades of fruitless peace negotiations – disappear as well.
Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that UNRWA “needs to pass from this world.”
Israel refuses to allow Palestinians to return to the homes and lands from which they were ethnically cleansed because they are not Jews.
“One cannot simply wish five million people away,” Krähenbühl has said in multipleinterviews.
Yet that seems to be the strategy the Trump administration is pursuing, regardless of the dire humanitarian and political consequences.
Everything gets said, nothing gets done. When President Donald Trump met President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last month we were promised all sorts of goodies- progress in reconciliation in Ukraine and Syria, and not least nuclear disarmament. If there is progress behind the scenes it’s not noticeable to the naked eye.
People talk about Trump being in Putin’s pocket yet when, soon after Trump became president, Putin suggested major cuts in nuclear weapons Trump turned him down. This would have been a fantastic way to start his presidency. He could have upped Barack Obama’s achievement of getting the arsenal down to 1550 warheads each. In nearly everything else he wants to destroy Obama’s legacy or minimize it. This would have been a way to do it.
Judge a person by what he does, not by what he says. The Trump Administration in its new nuclear review suggests the deployment of smaller nuclear bombs that will make them more usable, for example by blocking an advance of troops
This doesn’t sound to me like Putin, the supposed puppet master, was pulling the strings on his marionette, Trump.
Let that be, maybe we’ll find out the truth soon enough. Meanwhile the massive stockpile remains, despite enormous cuts (80%) since Cold War days. The US is committed to a 1.7 trillion dollars’ improvement over 30 years in its nuclear arsenal, the price Obama had to pay to get the new treaty with Russia approved in the Senate. (It’s called START.)
In Helsinki, Putin suggested that they extend the life of START, due to expire in 2012, since it only requires both presidents to agree. Parliamentary approval is not necessary. But again Trump seems to be procrastinating.
Meanwhile, many rockets still remain on hair-trigger alert. Many military men worry that under pressure Trump might authorise their use and that a military used to obeying orders would initiate a launch. “A demented commander-in-chief could start a conflagration that no one could forestall, veto or stop”, says the Arms Control Association. Added to that are false warnings caused by birds, computer malfunctions etc. There’s also the danger of rogue submarine commanders who can fire their nuclear missiles without a confirming radio signal since they have to surface to receive one. In wartime they might not be able to safely surface.
Once a Russian attack is launched (or a US one on Russia), the presidents have only six minutes to make a decision if retaliation is to be implemented. Zibigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security Advisor, has talked about how he was awakened in the night and informed by the military that an attack might be on its way. He waited three minutes before he had to phone President Jimmy Carter who was also asleep. Fortunately, at that moment a second call came in, saying it had been a false alarm.
Last week in an amazing statement a group of former intelligence chiefs more or less said, according to an op-ed article in the New York Times, that the military should think twice before following Trump’s orders in a crisis.
The arms race continues. Both sides are developing hypersonic missiles, new missile defence capabilities, offensive cyber weapons and anti-satellite and counter-space weapons. Any of these could disturb the rough equilibrium of the Cold War days when it was clearly obvious that one side couldn’t have an advantage over the other. Putin is still swallowing the bitter pill of President George W Bush’s decision to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, allowing it to press ahead with a land-based missile system that Russia views as a direct, deliberate threat.
Shuffled into a back corner is the joint statement of presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Judge a person by what he does, not by what he says. The Trump Administration in its new nuclear review suggests the deployment of smaller nuclear bombs that will make them more usable, for example by blocking an advance of troops. It is also leaning towards widening the conditions under which nuclear weapons may be used first in response to a non-nuclear act of aggression. This will revoke Obama-era assurances given to non-nuclear countries that the US would never attack them with nuclear weapons. This would sabotage the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that has done much to keep limited the number of countries that want to develop nuclear weapons.
For the last seven decades, since the end of World War 2, the world is probably living in its most benign years of peace. Yes, there are a number of civil wars but interstate wars have fallen precipitously. As a result territorial conquest has nearly disappeared. Before 1928 the average state could expect to be conquered about once every lifetime. Now the average country will be subject to conquest roughly once or twice in a millennium. So write Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro in their book, “The Internationalists”.
Strategists say nuclear weapons help keep this peace. Maybe they do- until something goes wrong. We can’t afford to live with a gamble like that, especially so when Trump has his finger on the button. The writer was a member of the International Commission on Common Security, chaired by Prime Minister Olaf Palme of Sweden. The subject was nuclear weapons.
The report was published on the front page of The New York Times. I wrote for the Times the same day an op-ed piece.)
Donald Trump’s presidency, it has been widely observed, bends the laws of time. Scandals that would have dogged other presidents for years tend to be here today, gone tomorrow. Fifteen minutes of fame is now likely to count for no more than 15 seconds.
But even by the standards of the Trump universe, this week has been a blur. And at its heart was a single, devastating hour on Tuesday 21 August that effectively turned the president of the United States into an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal crime.
But first, there was Rudy Giuliani. Trump’s lawyer, the former New York mayor, set the tone last Sunday with an Orwellian comment on the NBC network’s Meet the Press. Asked whether the president would give his version of events in testimony to Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Giuliani warned of a perjury trap and said: “Truth isn’t truth.”
Interviewer Chuck Todd put his hand on his forehead and said: “This is going to become a bad meme!” And it did.
At the White House on Monday, Trump hosted an event to highlight success stories of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He said that a border patrol agent, who is Latino, “speaks perfect English” as he beckoned him to the stage. He also misstated the acronym for US Customs and Border Protection at least eight times, referring to it as “CBC”, as in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
So far, so Trumpian – fairly typical of this extraordinary presidency. But then came, to use primary election parlance, Super Tuesday. At around 4.30pm, in courtrooms 200 miles apart, a pair of Trump associates delivered a one-two punch that stunned the White House and revived whispers of impeachment.
In New York, Trump’s longtime lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen implicated the president in a crime to influence the 2016 presidential election. Pleading guilty to dodging taxes and campaign finance violations, he alleged that Trump directed him to pay hush money to prevent two women – a Playboy model and pornographic actor – speaking out about extramarital affairs.
In Alexandria, Virginia, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was found guilty of eight tax and bank fraud charges and could now spend the rest of his life behind bars – unless Trump chooses to pardon him.
Fittingly for the reality TV presidency, the courtroom dramas unfolded just minutes apart, and continued cable news channels’ love-hate relationship with the president. At 4.48pm, CNN host Jake Tapper told viewers: “I apologise. We have more breaking news. It’s like a Saturday Night Live skit.”
“No day during President Trump’s 19 months in office could prove as dangerous or debilitating as Tuesday,” wrote Dan Balz in the Washington Post. “Everything that happened in a pair of courtrooms hundreds of miles apart strengthened the hand of special counsel Robert S Mueller III and weakened that of the president of the United States.”
Cohen’s plea bargain statement could be exhibit A if Democrats win the House of Representatives in November and launch a campaign to impeach the president, though the party continues to play down such talk. And Cohen’s lawyer embarked on a media tour saying his client was eager to sing like a canary for Mueller.
But the day from hell was far from done. The Republican congressman Duncan Hunter and his wife were indicted on corruption charges, namely converting more than $250,000 in campaign money to pay for personal expenses, including dental work, fast food, golf outings and holidays and trips for their family and nearly a dozen relatives.
Set against all this, Trump would not have been pleased to find his latest campaign rally something of an anticlimax. Somewhat subdued in Charleston, West Virginia, he made no mention of Cohen, Manafort or Hunter, but he did taunt the media: “Where is the collusion? You know they’re still looking for collusion. Where is the collusion? Find some collusion. We want to find the collusion.”
And with irony clearly dead, Trump’s supporters chanted “Lock her up!” – an old refrain about his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton.
By 8.53pm, the TV news veteran Dan Rather, who has seen it all, was tweeting: “I’ve been saying ‘Wow’ since about 4 o’clock this afternoon, and have yet to stop.”
And then, in one more dose of humiliation, the candidate Trump endorsed for governor of Wyoming, Foster Friess, lost the Republican primary to the state treasurer, Mark Gordon.
The day was a vivid illustration of a news cycle operating at hyperspeed. Bob Shrum, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, drew comparisons with Watergate – particularly the “Saturday Night Massacre”, when Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor and accepted the resignations of the attorney general and his deputy – and the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001.
Shrum added: “But we now just go from one stunning story to another. Instead of Alpha to Omega, it’s Cohen to Omarosa,” – a reference to the reality TV star turned White House aide whose gossipy memoir already feels like an aeon ago.
Then there was Wednesday. At 8.44am, Trump tweeted: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” He described Manafort as “a brave man” who took the rap and suggested that the fact 10 of his charges were undecided was proof of a “witch hunt”.
Michael Cohen leaves federal court in New York. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Later, the president gave an interview to Fox News which, as always, had sought to play down the firestorm. He denied instructing to Cohen to commit a crime. “They weren’t taken out of campaign finance, that’s the big thing,” Trump said. “That’s a much bigger thing. Did they come out of the campaign? They didn’t come from the campaign. They came from me.”
He also claimed that he did not find out about the payments until “later”, contradicting earlier statements. For the first time, the Washington Post’s factchecker said the president was lying rather than merely misleading or false. “The president’s statement was a lie – and the people speaking for him repeated it,” the Post commented.
Even Trump, the irrepressible force of nature who fights every crisis by punching back harder, “seemed subdued”, the New York Times reported.“He appeared to realize the serious nature of what had just taken place, and yet his relative calm – contrasted with his more typical lashing out when he is anxious – unnerved some of his aides.”
Not for the first time, perhaps seeking affirmation, on Wednesday night he turned to Fox News. There he saw a spurious Tucker Carlson report pushing a white nationalist conspiracy theory that white farmers in South Africa are being persecuted and murdered in Zimbabwe-style land grabs. Trump tweeted his outrage and promised to consult the state department, whose own human rights report on South Africa had made no mention of the issue.
It was one more white grievance dog whistle to add to all the rest. The South African government issued a swift rebuke and summoned US officials. Patrick Gaspard, the former US ambassador to South Africa, described the intervention as “astounding and deeply disturbing”. He said: “I can draw a line from the irresponsible statements he made in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville and him lifting up tropes from white nationalists in South Africa.”
On Thursday there was no let-up. It emerged that David Pecker, chairman of American Media Inc, which owns the pro-Trump National Enquirer, had been granted immunity to provide information about Cohen and Trump’s involvement with payments to the two women who allege sexual affairs. The Associated Press added fuel to the fire by reporting thatthe Enquirer kept such secrets locked in a safe, lending it extraordinary power.
How to impeach a US president – video
That night, the New York Times reported that the Manhattan district attorney’s office was considering pursuing criminal charges against the Trump Organization and two senior company officials in connection with one of the hush money payments.
Meanwhile Trump traded verbal blows with Sessions, whom he said he had only appointed because of his campaign support. On Friday morning he kept going with tweets, urging the attorney general to investigate Hillary Clinton and Democrats in the interests of balance. “Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!” Speculation that Sessions will be fired intensified – again, a public feud that in any other era would have dominated headlines.
But instead attention turned back to Trump’s legal crisis as the Wall Street Journal reported that Allen Weisselberg, his longtime financial gatekeeper, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors for providing information about Cohen. There was an ominous sense that the walls are finally closing in on the president.
But as ever during Trump’s wild weeks, there were things being missed or not receiving sufficient information. Buried under the news avalanche: the White House released a greenhouse gas emissions plan that could boost output from coal-fired power plants rather than push them towards closure.
Trump’s supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, moved closer to confirmation as he appeared to get the nod of approval from the Republican senator Susan Collins.
Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted: “i understand the focus on politics here at home, but 1) NK is not denuclearizing; 2) Venezuela is on the precipice; 3) a crisis with/over Iran is brewing; 4) climate change is worse sooner than predicted; 5) US relations w China and Russia are at post-Cold War nadir. just sayin’”.
It got off to a bad start, and President Trump’s venomous relationship with Sen. John McCain probably won’t end well either.
The president was reportedly disinvited to McCain’s funeral months ago, after McCain’s battle with brain cancer took a turn for the worse, and now the veteran Arizona Republican senator has decided to discontinue medical treatment.
Throughout McCain’s illness, Trump has continued to publicly snub him — including a recent appearance in which the president declined to say McCain’s name when signing a bill that was named for him. As of late Friday, Trump had said nothing about McCain’s medical decision.
Trump does not want to comment on McCain before he dies, White House officials said, and there was no effort to publish a statement Friday as many politicians released supportive comments on the ailing senator.
Their increasingly combative relationship has served as a metaphor of sorts for the Republican Party: the former Vietnam POW and “proud conservative” who fell short to Barack Obama in his run for president in 2008 versus the loud draft avoider who rapidly seized control of the GOP and White House eight years later.
McCain rarely disguised his distaste for Trump as the real estate developer ran for president on a platform that included attacks on immigrants and U.S. allies. In July 2015, after then-candidate
Trump rallied an estimated 15,000 in Phoenix and claimed to represent a “silent majority,” McCain said Trump had “fired up the crazies” in his state. The battle was on.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and President Trump have been at odds with each other for a while. Here's a look at their war of words.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
By the end of that month, Trump had disparaged McCain’s Vietnam War service, saying McCain was “not a war hero” despite spending more than five years as a POW and enduring torture.
“He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said during a forum in Ames, Iowa.
Trump refused to apologize at the time, despite criticism from nearly every corner, and has never retracted the statement. He has occasionally told people that he does not regret the comment.
“The reality is that John McCain the politician has made America less safe, sent our brave soldiers into wrongheaded foreign adventures, covered up for President Obama with the VA scandal and has spent most of his time in the Senate pushing amnesty,” Trump wrote in an op-ed for USA Today that month. “He would rather protect the Iraqi border than Arizona’s.”
Left: An injured John McCain is seen in North Vietnam. Right: Donald Trump in 1976. (AP; The Washington Post)
McCain did eventually endorse Trump in 2016, then withdrew his support weeks before the election after release of an “Access Hollywood” tape where Trump is recorded bragging about groping women.
Trump’s immediate and angry response: “The very foul mouthed Sen. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks!”
In office, McCain has supported much of Trump’s economic and national security agenda, despite his misgivings about Trump’s dismissive approach to traditional U.S. alliances. But he has also shown frustration toward Trump’s White House, dismissing nominees abruptly from his office or growing angry at senior West Wing aides.
McCain crossed the White House last year over the GOP attempt to repeal Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and Trump has never forgiven him. After the vote, Trump said that McCain voted no out of a personal vendetta against him and that he would never vote yes to something that helped Trump.
He repeatedly told advisers that McCain should step down from the seat and let the Republican governor appoint another senator. Trump has also told White House aides that his supporters are not big fans of McCain and boasted that he became president while McCain did not.
Trump’s retelling of the health-care vote, usually without mentioning McCain by name, has continued throughout the senator’s more than year-long treatment for brain cancer. The 81-year-old’s family said Friday that he is discontinuing treatment.
“Obamacare, we got rid of the individual mandate, which is the most unpopular aspect,” Trump said during a political speech Aug. 13 in Utica, N.Y. “I would have gotten rid of everything, but as you know one of our, one of our wonderful senators said, ‘thumbs down,’ at 2 o’clock in the morning.”
Trump’s aggrieved references to the health-care vote “never stops being gross,” McCain’s daughter Meghan wrote on Twitter in June.
“I’ve let him know several times that was beneath the office and it doesn’t reflect well on him,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, a South Carolina Republican and longtime McCain friend, said of Trump’s attacks. “He’s an American hero by any stretch of the imagination, and I don’t see how it helps the president.”
Graham said Trump “feels like he helped McCain in his primary, and John is sort of picking on him.”
In May, Trump and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to apologize for an aide’s remark that McCain’s opposition to Gina Haspel, nominee for CIA director, “doesn’t matter” because “he’s dying anyway.”
The aide, Kelly Sadler, left her job the next month but White House aides said her departure was not a punishment for the remark. Trump told advisers he did not care if she apologized or not and was more determined to suss out who leaked the comments, calling advisers in for a West Wing scolding.
During occasional Oval Office conversations about McCain’s health or status in the Senate, Trump would usually say nothing, current and former officials said. He grew angry regularly that McCain was portrayed as the “good guy” in the news media and he as the “bad guy,” according to a former senior administration official who spoke to Trump about McCain.
Trump has fumed to friends about McCain’s role in receiving research compiled by a former British intelligence officer that alleged Russia had potentially compromising information about Trump. He has complained that McCain has criticized him over Russia and foreign policy, questioning his expertise and noting that he won the presidency and McCain did not.
“Even a remote risk that the President of the United States might be vulnerable to Russian extortion had to be investigated,” McCain wrote in what he called his last book, “The Restless Wave,” published this year.
“I could not independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about our nation’s security should have done. I put the dossier in my office safe, called the office of the director of the FBI, Jim Comey, and asked for a meeting,” McCain wrote.
McCain’s assessments became more withering the longer Trump was in office.
In August 2017, McCain denounced white supremacists who held a deadly rally in Charlottesville after Trump had said the event was attended by “fine people on both sides.”
“White supremacists aren’t patriots, they’re traitors — Americans must unite against hatred & bigotry,” McCain tweeted at the time.
In accepting the Freedom Medal at the National Constitutional Center in October, McCain condemned “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems,” a clear dig at Trump.
Asked about McCain’s remarks the following day, Trump said “people have to be careful, because at some point I fight back.”
“You know, I’m being very nice, I’m being very, very nice, but at some point I fight back and it won’t be pretty,” Trump said in a WMAL interview.
Not long afterward, McCain appeared to take a shot at Trump for avoiding the draft during the Vietnam War.
“One aspect of the [Vietnam] conflict by the way that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur,” McCain said during an interview with CSPAN.
McCain did not mention Trump by name, but his meaning appeared clear. Trump received five wartime deferments, including one in which a doctor diagnosed him with bone spurs.
Finally in July, McCain pilloried Trump for his chummy performance alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin at a news conference in Helsinki, calling it “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”
The U.S. president had rhetorically embraced Putin and appeared to side with him over U.S. intelligence officials on Moscow’s aggressive election interference.
“The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate,” McCain said. “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.”
Trump said nothing in response. As McCain spends his final days in Arizona, aides say, Trump is inclined to still say nothing at all.
There has recently been a flurry of comment and speculation about whether, due to a technical flaw in the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (2015), former President Rajapaksa may actually be eligible to offer himself for election at the next presidential election, although it had so far been universally assumed that he was disqualified by virtue of having been twice elected previously to the presidency.
Democratic elections alone do not remedy the crisis of confidence in government. Moreover, there is no viable justification for a democratic system in which public participation is limited to voting. ~ Beth Simone Noveck
(Lanka e News 26.Aug.2018, 4.00AM) Following the criticism leveled by Prof. Colvin Gunaratne that the SL Medical council (SLMC) is a place ‘Horage ammagen pena ahana thenak” ( the place where rogue’s mother is asked to reveal by ‘light foretelling’) when tendering his resignation from it , heated discussions have been triggered among society in regard to the Council’s composition.
August 26, 2018
Gaza hospitals rely on backup generators to keep the lights and life-saving devices running. APA images
2018-08-25
Everything gets said, nothing gets done. When President Donald Trump met President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last month we were promised all sorts of goodies- progress in reconciliation in Ukraine and Syria, and not least nuclear disarmament. If there is progress behind the scenes it’s not noticeable to the naked eye. 
Donald Trump on Friday in Columbus, Ohio. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s presidency, it has been widely observed, bends the laws of time. Scandals that would have dogged other presidents for years tend to be here today, gone tomorrow. Fifteen minutes of fame is now likely to count for no more than 15 seconds.
Michael Cohen leaves federal court in New York. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
McCain did eventually endorse Trump in 2016, then withdrew his support weeks before the election after release of an “Access Hollywood” tape where Trump is recorded bragging about groping women. 
