Why are small parties seen big in Bangladesh politics now?

In this situation, a national election is about to happen shortly in Bangladesh, and this election is a big political game for both the ruling political alliance and the BNP.

by Swadesh Roy-Sep 22, 2018

Sep 22, 2018

( September 22, 2018, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) The eleventh parliament election of Bangladesh is coming soon. Most probably, it will be held in the last week of December. The alliance running the government, basically, their leader Sheikh Hasina, the present Prime Minister is now in an absolute vigorous position. There is no leader in the country to compete with her.

She has changed the politics into a dynamic one in the country. Although her party is a big party in the country, she made her party more inclusive and adaptable for making an alliance in the history of this longstanding party. She is adapting all kind of thoughts in her alliance from left ideas to religious based politics. Her inclusive mind and direction of politics availed her to build up a robust, basically most sustainable economy. So, she needs a peaceful election and needs to continue in power for reaching her development goal.

Ironically, the politics of Bangladesh has yet not reached in a position where Sheikh Hasina has reached. The country’s politics is still in the dirty water. One of the major parties, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), basically not a true political party, but this party relished a longtime power in Bangladesh. This party is not only created by the military ruler but also it is still in the club of opportunist privileged class and the religious extremists. The party ruled the country for a long time, enjoyed the power, and sucked the economy by the power- tube. However, this party is now in a very bad shape. Their main leader, Khaleda Zia, is now passing a prisoner life by being awarded five years’ jail in a corruption case. The second highest leader of the party is living an absconding life being awarded jail sentence in different cases, even including the same case which convicts Khaleda.

In this situation, a national election is about to happen shortly in Bangladesh, and this election is a big political game for both the ruling political alliance and the BNP. Five years ago, BNP and their Islamic fundamentalist alliance did not participate in the last general election rather they went to prevent the election. They terrified the country, burnt to death an abundance of people by their petrol bombs, burnt enormous numbers of the wealth of the country, but ultimately they failed to stop the election. This time, BNP is in a big dilemma, whether they will participate in the election or not? They know it very much that their main leader and the second highest leader are not eligible to participate in the election. So they are searching for a leader who can lead them in the election if they participate. So they targeted two senior leaders in Bangladesh politics; one, Dr. Kamal Hossain, and another Dr. Badrudojha Chowdhury. Both are now orphan in the politics of Bangladesh but have a long past. Dr. Chowdhury was basically the man of BNP, but he was thrown out poorly by the BNP from the post of the president of the country. After that he made another political party. On the other hand, DR. Hossain was a personal officer of the father of the nation of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Although he was the personal officer and trusty to Mujib, his role in the time of 9-month freedom fight of Bangladesh was mysterious.

However, Bangabandhu Mujib saved him. But he did not play a proper role after the death of Mujib. Then he was the foreign minister of Mujib cabinet. However, he was lucky, the daughter of Mujib, the present Prime Minister nominated him as a president candidate from her party. On the contrary, he was in a conspiracy within the party against Sheikh Hasina. However, at a stage, he left the party of Sheikh Hasina, and by the help of the communist party leaders who then became orphan after the debacle of the then Soviet Union, he formed a new party, but now his party is basically a one man show party though he is a prominent lawyer in the country. Some of the think tanks of the BNP are thinking that in this present condition, Dr. Kamal or Dr. Chowdhury can lead their election campaign as a leader of the same alliance.

However, some of the leaders of the present government do not think that Dr. Kamal or Dr. Chowdhury will join the alliance of the BNP rather they are waiting for an opportunity in the forthcoming election. Their prediction is BNP will not participate in the upcoming election and these small parties’ alliance will take the advantage of it. Then they will participate in the election and they are expecting that a good number of BNP candidates will join and participate in the election under the banner of their alliance. So, through the election, they will be the main opposition party of the country.

In this situation, the present government party and their alliance are waiting and observing the situation because what may come by these small parties will help them to hold an inclusive election that they are expecting. So these small parties game is now a big game in the eyes of both alliances.

Swadesh Roy, Executive Editor. The Daily Janakantha, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is one of the highest state award-winning journalists and can be reached at swadeshroy@gmail.com 

Exclusive: U.S. accuses Myanmar military of 'planned and coordinated' Rohingya atrocities

FILE PHOTO - A Myanmar soldier stands near Maungdaw, north of Rakhine state, Myanmar September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

Matt Spetalnick, Jason Szep-SEPTEMBER 24, 201

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. government investigation has found that Myanmar’s military waged a “well-planned and coordinated” campaign of mass killings, gang rapes and other atrocities against the Southeast Asian nation’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

The U.S. State Department report, reviewed by Reuters ahead of its expected public release on Monday, could be used to justify further U.S. sanctions or other punitive measures against Myanmar authorities, said U.S. officials.

But it stopped short of describing the crackdown as genocide or crimes against humanity, an issue that other U.S. officials said was the subject of fierce internal debate that delayed the report’s rollout for nearly a month.

The findings resulted from more than a thousand interviews of Rohingya men and women in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, where almost 700,000 Rohingya have fled after a military campaign last year in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.

“The survey reveals that the recent violence in northern Rakhine State was extreme, large-scale, widespread, and seemingly geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents,” according to the 20-page report. “The scope and scale of the military’s operations indicate they were well-planned and coordinated.”

Survivors described in harrowing detail what they had witnessed, including soldiers killing infants and small children, the shooting of unarmed men, and victims buried alive or thrown into pits of mass graves. They described widespread sexual assault by Myanmar’s military of Rohingya women, often carried out in public.

One witness described four Rohingya girls who were abducted, tied up with ropes and raped for three days. They were left “half dead,” he said, according to the report.

Human rights groups and Rohingya activists have put the death toll in the thousands from the crackdown, which was sparked by attacks by Rohingya insurgents on security forces in Rakhine State in August 2017.

U.N. REPORT FOUND ‘GENOCIDAL INTENT’

The results of the U.S. investigation were being released nearly a month after U.N. investigators issued their own report accusing Myanmar’s military of acting with “genocidal intent” and calling for the country’s commander-in-chief and five generals to be prosecuted under international law.

The military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, where Buddhism is the main religion, has denied accusations of ethnic cleansing and says its actions were part of a fight against terrorism.

U.S. Senior State Department officials said the objective of the investigation was not to determine genocide but to “document the facts” on the atrocities to guide U.S. policy aimed at holding the perpetrators accountable, but the report proposes no new steps.

One of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it would be up to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo whether to make such a “legal” designation in the future and did not rule out the possibility.

A declaration of genocide by the U.S. government, which has only gone as far as labelling the crackdown “ethnic cleansing,” could have legal implications of committing Washington to stronger punitive measures against Myanmar.

The International Criminal Court last week said it had begun an examination of whether the alleged forced deportations of Rohingya could constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Asked whether the new U.S. findings could be used to bolster such international prosecution, the State Department official said no decision had been made on seeking “judicial accountability” over the Rohingya crisis.

Sarah Margon, director of the Washington office of Human Right Watch, said: “What’s missing now is a clear indication of whether the U.S. government intends to pursue meaningful accountability and help ensure justice for so many victims.”

“The stories from some refugees show a pattern of planning and pre-meditation” by the military and other attackers, the report said, citing confiscation in advance of knives and other tools that could be used as weapons.

About 80 percent of refugees surveyed said they witnessed a killing, most often by military or police, according to the report.

“Reports of mutilation included the cutting and spreading of entrails, severed limbs or hands/feet, pulling out nails or burning beards and genitals to force a confession, or being burned alive,” the report said.

In a few cases, witnesses said Rohingya were either killed in pits bulldozed by the military or buried alive.

The State Department’s investigation was modelled on a U.S. forensic examination of mass atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region in 2004, which led to a U.S. declaration of genocide that culminated in sanctions against the Sudanese government.

The Trump administration, which has been criticized by human rights groups and some U.S. lawmakers for a cautious response to Myanmar, could now face added pressure to take a tougher stand.

The United States on Monday announced it was almost doubling its aid for displaced Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh and Myanmar, with an extra $185 million.

Any stiffer measures against Myanmar authorities could be tempered though by U.S. concerns about complicating relations between civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the powerful military which might push Myanmar closer to China.

The U.S. government on Aug. 17 imposed sanctions on four military and police commanders and two army units but Myanmar’s military chief, Min Aung Hlaing, was spared. Further targeted sanctions have been under consideration, officials said earlier.

The Rohingya, who regard themselves as native to Rakhine state, are widely considered as interlopers by Myanmar’s Buddhist majority and are denied citizenship.

Reporting By Matt Spetalnick and Jason Szep; Editing by Alistair Bell

Trump’s Trade War With China Could Hit Energy Exports

China places tariffs on natural gas, a fast-growing U.S. export.

U.S. natural gas cargoes, such as this shipment from Louisiana on Nov. 6, 2017, have increasingly gone to China but could be at risk from the trade war. (VCG/VCG via Getty Images) 

BY KEITH JOHNSON-

 SEPTEMBER 24, 2018, 2:35 PM
President Donald Trump’s trade war with China has already hurt U.S. farmers and manufacturers and now threatens a more recent export business that has been booming: energy.

On Monday, the trade war escalated dramatically, with U.S. tariffs going into effect on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. This was immediately countered by Chinese tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. exports. While earlier Chinese retaliation took aim at things such as soybeans, the latest round includes a 10 percent tariff on U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, the first time Beijing has targeted U.S. energy exports.

That could be bad news for the U.S. energy patch, which has taken advantage of a decade-old fracking revolution to become a big supplier of natural gas and crude oil to countries all over the world, including China. The Chinese tariff, though smaller than the duty Beijing threatened to levy earlier this year, makes U.S. gas a bit more expensive and less competitive in the world’s second-largest LNG market.

As a result, Beijing will probably look to get more energy from other suppliers, experts said. Russia is already building a massive gas pipeline to supply China from Siberia, and this month the two countries announced plans to fast-track another Siberian pipeline, which if built would double Russia’s gas trade with China.

But the Chinese tariff also threatens to have implications in years to come. By essentially limiting U.S. access to one of the most important gas markets, the tariff could have a chilling effect on the next wave of U.S. gas export projects under planning. Many of the proposed projects need China and its voracious appetite for gas to line up financing.

“I think these tariffs, and the escalating trade war, are a significant headwind for the next wave of U.S. LNG,” said Jason Bordoff, the director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a former energy advisor in the Obama White House.

The United States only started exporting big amounts of LNG beginning in 2016, and China has become one of the biggest buyers of U.S. LNG, behind only Mexico and South Korea. Beijing is snapping up increasing amounts of natural gas as it seeks to reduce the use of coal, which has driven dangerous levels of air pollution in many Chinese cities. Expectations that China will need to buy more and more cleaner-burning gas, and especially dirt-cheap U.S. gas, underpin the gas business for many upcoming U.S. export projects. That could make China’s retaliatory tariffs especially painful a couple years from now.

Unlike the first wave of U.S. export terminals, which weren’t predicated on feeding the Chinese market, the next wave of investment relies on China’s sheer size and growth potential. The expansion this year of the first big U.S. export terminal, for example, depended in large part on a new supply contract with China. More investment like that could be in doubt if China is off-limits.

“It takes the wind out of the sails a little bit,” said Giles Farrer of Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy. The Chinese tariff “restricts the target market a bit for second-wave developers” in the United States, he said.

That would only help rivals in other countries hoping to boost their own LNG exports. Russia, the Middle East, East Africa, and the eastern Mediterranean are all areas hoping to develop more liquefied gas export capacity.

The United States still has the advantage of cheap gas to lure developers, but projects with unfettered access to a massive market such as China will likely gain an edge in attracting investment dollars, Bordoff said.

“To the extent you have the most rapidly growing LNG market effectively off-limits to U.S. sales, that would be a strike against investment in the U.S relative to other options,” he said.

One project in particular seems caught in the crosshairs of the trade war: a $43 billion project to pipe natural gas from the North Slope of Alaska across the state to an LNG export facility near
Anchorage. A state-owned Chinese bank is helping with the project’s financing, and a state-owned Chinese energy company is meant to buy much of its production. Alaska LNG was one of the Trump administration’s much-touted takeaways from his 2017 trip to China. A final investment decision is expected to be made in 2020 with an eye toward starting construction a year later.

For now, the developers of Alaska LNG are sanguine. “There is no indication the current trade issues will jeopardize the development of the Alaska LNG project,” said Jesse Carlstrom, a spokesman for the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation.

He said the developers expect “the current trade tensions between the United States and China will be resolved well in advance of Alaska LNG exports to China.”

The project is also lining up other potential customers, he said, with negotiations advancing with 15 big Asian LNG users, including Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam.

Rod Rosenstein to stay in job for now, will meet with Trump on Thursday, White House says

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein has been the target of President Trump's ire for months. Here's a look back at their history. (Jenny Starrs, Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

By Devlin Barrett ,Ashley Parker ,Carol D. Leonnig andRosalind S. Helderman-September 24 at 6:40 PM

White House officials said Monday that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein will stay in his job for now, following a chaotic morning of speculation that he was about to resign — a development that would have further destabilized a Justice Department already under siege because of the Russia investigation.

Job insecurity has been a regular feature of Rosenstein’s life for more than a year, as the president and his allies have publicly attacked him over special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and whether any Trump associates conspired with those efforts.

But his hold on his job never seemed as tenuous as on Monday morning, after reports last week that Rosenstein, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, had suggested secretly recording the president and mounting an effort within the Cabinet to remove him from office. Rosenstein has disputed the accuracy of those accounts, but his denials have left plenty of room for interpretation.

Now, President Trump plans to meet with Rosenstein on Thursday to discuss the situation — and the deputy attorney general’s fate remains uncertain.

[A chaotic opening to what could be a fateful week]

Multiple officials said that during weekend conversations between and among White House and Justice Department officials, Rosenstein indicated that he was considering resigning. During some of those conversations, Rosenstein said his resignation might be warranted to end the controversy, according to people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal deliberations.


Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein left his Bethesda, Md., home en route to Washington on Sept. 24. The Post reported that he has offered to resign. (Reuters)

Some Trump aides had counseled the president against quickly firing Rosenstein, arguing that such a move could be exploited politically by the Democrats and would be better done after the midterm elections.

Friday night, Rosenstein spoke with White House counsel Donald McGahn, according to a person familiar with the discussions. In that conversation, Rosenstein said he was willing to resign, but McGahn urged him to wait until they could talk further Monday morning, this person said.

By Sunday, some senior Justice Department officials had concluded that Rosenstein was about to be out of his job and began planning for Solicitor General Noel Francisco to take over supervision of the Russia probe. As part of that contingency plan, Matthew Whitaker, chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, was slated to assume the other responsibilities of the deputy attorney general, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

When Rosenstein went to the White House on Monday morning, senior Trump advisers expected him to resign, according to several advisers. A Justice Department official, however, said Rosenstein had no intention of resigning but went there expecting to be fired.

Before the meeting, one news outlet reported that Rosenstein had “verbally resigned.” That led Justice Department officials to believe he was going to be forced out, and they drafted a statement about his expected departure.

As often happens in government, the two sides heading for a high-stakes confrontation decided instead to hold another meeting. “At the request of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he and President Trump had an extended conversation to discuss the recent news stories,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “Because the President is at the United Nations General Assembly and has a full schedule with leaders from around the world, they will meet on Thursday when the President returns to Washington, D.C.”

After Rosenstein met with White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, he went to a meeting of senior administration officials, the first sign that, at least for now, he was staying on the job.

[McCabe memos say Rosenstein considered secretly recording Trump]

Rosenstein appointed and has been overseeing Mueller, and ousting the deputy attorney general would probably raise concerns that the president or his allies were kneecapping the Russia investigation.

One Trump adviser said the president has not been pressuring Rosenstein to leave. The person said Rosenstein had expressed to others that he should resign because he “felt very compromised” and the controversy hurt his ability to oversee the Russia inquiry, said a person close to Trump.

Trump’s attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said Monday that if Rosenstein is replaced, “they should put a brief hold on the investigation and review it from beginning to end.”

Rosenstein has been a target of Trump’s public ire and private threats for months, but uncertainty about his future deepened after it was revealed Friday that memos written by Andrew McCabe, then deputy FBI director, said that in May 2017, Rosenstein suggested secretly recording the president and invoking the 25th Amendment to replace him.

McCabe memorialized discussions he had with Rosenstein and other senior officials in the stress-packed days immediately after James B. Comey’s firing as FBI director. At that moment, the bureau was deeply suspicious of Rosenstein’s role in the decision, and the Justice Department was worried that it had lost credibility with Congress for giving Trump a memo that said the FBI needed new leadership.

Others involved in those May 2017 discussions said Rosenstein’s comments about secretly recording Trump were sarcastic and came as McCabe was pressing the Justice Department to investigate the president’s firing of Comey as possible obstruction of justice.

[How removal under the 25th Amendment works: A beginner’s guide]

In statements Friday, Rosenstein denied that he ever seriously contemplated secretly recording Trump or pursuing the 25th Amendment to replace him, as was first reported by the New York Times.

“The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” Rosenstein said. “I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”

In a second statement hours later, Rosenstein said: “I never pursued or authorized recording the president and any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the President is absolutely false.”

That second statement was issued after a tense meeting at the White House between Rosenstein and Kelly, according to people familiar with the encounter. Those people said Kelly had urged Rosenstein to issue a more forceful denial, but officials in the White House and the Justice Department said they thought the second statement was in some ways weaker than the first — putting Rosenstein on even thinner ice.

For more than a year, Trump’s comments about the Russia investigation have fueled demands on the right that Rosenstein be forced out of his job — countered by alarm on the left that his removal would signal a collapse of the traditional independence of the Justice Department.

Trump congressional allies who have been hammering Rosenstein over access to Justice Department documents, including McCabe’s memos, said reports that he might resign or be fired highlight their need to see such documents.

“The latest reports on Rod Rosenstein underscore the desperate need for transparency at the DOJ,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) wrote in a tweet Monday. “Release the documents. Declassify everything. Stop the games and show Americans the truth about this Russia investigation. If they have nothing to hide, they should act like it.”

Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have also called for Rosenstein to come back to Capitol Hill to testify this week, as the House is set to break for the campaign season soon.

“We’ve got to have Rod Rosenstein in front of the Judiciary Committee answering questions,” Jordan said in an interview.

There are no indications that leading Republicans have agreed to call Rosenstein to testify, and House Judiciary Committee Democrats said Monday that they had received no notice from Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) about an official summons.

That makes it unlikely that Rosenstein will head to Capitol Hill before his expected meeting with Trump on Thursday to discuss his fate.

Democrats said Rosenstein should hang tough. “Under no circumstances should Rod Rosenstein resign,” Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wrote in a tweet. “This would place the Mueller investigation in even greater jeopardy. Rosenstein should continue to do his job, protect the independence of the DOJ, and if the President intends to obstruct justice, force Trump to fire him.”

Rosenstein, a Republican and career Justice Department official who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, came into office on a wave of bipartisan support, but Comey was fired soon afterward, and Rosenstein was immediately drawn into fierce partisan battles surrounding the Russia inquiry.

He became deputy attorney general in April 2017 and assumed oversight of Mueller’s investigation after Attorney General Jeff Sessions — who did not disclose to Congress that he had met during the 2016 campaign with Russia’s ambassador to the United States — recused himself from the inquiry.

Just days into his job as the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Rosenstein wrote a memo criticizing Comey’s handling of the earlier investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for government work when she was secretary of state.

The White House used Rosenstein’s memo to justify Comey’s firing. Days later, Rosenstein appointed Mueller, and the special counsel has since been examining the firing of Comey and whether it was part of a pattern of behavior that amounts to obstruction of justice by the president.

Karoun Demirjian, Josh Dawsey, Robert Costa, Sari Horwitz, Matt Zapotosky and Robert Barnes contributed to this report.

Second woman accuses US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of misconduct

In this Sept. 6, 2018, file photo, after more than an hour of delay over procedural questions, President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh waits to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the third day of his confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington.   | Photo Credit: AP

SEPTEMBER 24, 2018 22:35 IS

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday defended his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after a second woman came forward with an allegation of sexual misconduct against the judge that has further complicated his confirmation prospects in the Senate.

“Judge Kavanaugh is an outstanding person. I am with him all the way,” Mr. Trump said after arriving in New York to attend the UN General Assembly, calling the allegations politically motivated.

On Sunday night, the New Yorker magazine published an article in which a second woman, Deborah Ramirez, described an instance of alleged sexual misconduct by Mr. Kavanaugh that dates to the 1983-84 academic year when both attended Yale University.

Mr. Trump stood by Mr. Kavanaugh as the new allegations threatened to upend a Senate Committee hearing scheduled for Thursday to hear testimony from Christine Blasey Ford, a professor in California who has accused Mr. Kavanaugh of sexual assault in 1982.

Mr. Kavanaugh, also due to testify at the Judiciary Committee hearing, has denied the accusations by Ford and Ramirez.

After the new allegations surfaced, Democrats called for a delay in Thursday’s hearing.
Mr. Trump made clear on Monday he considered the allegations politically motivated. “For people to come out of the woodwork from 36 years ago, and 30 years ago and never mention it — all of a sudden it happens,” Mr. Trump said. “In my opinion it’s totally political. It’s totally political.”

The controversy over Mr. Kavanaugh is unfolding just weeks before Nov. 6 congressional elections in which Democrats are trying to take control of Congress from Trump’s fellow Republicans, against a backdrop of the #MeToo movement fighting sexual harassment and assault.

Ms. Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California, has said Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in 1982 when both were high school students in Maryland. She accused him of attacking her and trying to remove her clothing while he was drunk at a party when he was 17 years old and she was 15.

In a television interview on Monday, White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said the White House took the allegations seriously and that Ms. Ramirez should contact the committee if she also wants to testify.

The Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, Senator Dianne Feinstein, called on the panel’s Republican chairman, Senator Chuck Grassley, to postpone Thursday’s hearing in order to investigate Ms. Ramirez’s accusations.

“We will attempt to evaluate these new claims,” Grassley’s spokesman Taylor Foy said in a statement on Sunday night.

Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation would cement conservative control of the Supreme Court and advance Mr. Trump’s goal of moving the high court and the broader federal judiciary to the right. Republicans narrowly control the Senate.

Freedom Where Did You Go?

When privacy disappears, there are no private persons. So what do people become? They become Big Brother’s subjects.

by Paul Craig Roberts-Sep 22, 2018

( September 22, 2018, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) My Generation is the last one to have known privacy and to have lived out most of our lives in freedom.

I remember when driving licenses did not have photos and most certainly not fingerprints. A driving license was issued on proof of birth date alone.

Prior to the appearance of auto-mobiles IDs did not exist in democratic nations. You were who you said you were.

The intrusive questions that accost us every day, even when doing something simple as reporting a telephone or Internet connection being out or inquiring about a credit card charge, were impermissible. I remember when you could telephone a utility company, for example, have the telephone answered no later than the third ring with a real person on the line who could clear up the problem in a few minutes without having to know your Social Security number and your mother’s maiden name. Today, after half an hour with robot voices asking intrusive questions you might finally get a real person somewhere in Asia who is controlled by such a tight system of rules that the person is, in effect, a robot. The person is not permitted to use any judgment or discretion and you listen to advertisements for another half hour while you wait for a supervisor who promises to have the matter looked into.

The minute you go online, you are subject to collection of information about yourself. You don’t even know it is being collected.

According to reports, soon our stoves, refrigerators, and microwave ovens will be reporting on us. The new cars already do.

When privacy disappears, there are no private persons. So what do people become? They become Big Brother’s subjects.

We are at that point now.

This interview with Julian Assange is worth the 53 minutes:

Think about Assange for a minute. He has done nothing wrong. There are no charges against him. All charges have been dismissed. But he cannot walk out of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London without being seized by the British police and handed over to Washington whose prosecutorial apparatus intends to prosecute Assange for treason although he is not a US citizen but an Australian and Ecuadoran citizen.

What did Assange do? Nothing but practice journalism. His problem, his only problem, is that his journalism embarrassed Washington, and Washington intends revenge.

Law is nowhere in the picture. The UK is breaking all known laws including its own by the forced detention of Assange in the Ecuadoran Embassy.

The US in its determination to get Assange has no law whatsoever on which to stand. It only has raw unbridled power that can operate without law.

In other words, the Anglo-American world is totally lawless. Yet the Russian government holds firmly to its delusion that the US and Britain are countries with which agreements can be made.

The digital world makes Big Brother’s Memory Hole possible. No need to burn books. Just push a button and information disappears.

As I write Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, and so forth are all making non-approved information disappear.

In a digital world, not only can our identities be stolen—indeed, it can be stolen multiple times so that there are many of you at the same time—but we can also be erased. Poof—push a button and there you go. This makes murder easy. You never existed.

As I said before and will say again, the digital world and artificial intelligence are a far worse disaster for mankind than ever was the Black Plague. All the smart people busy at work creating the new world are destroying the human race.

International students flocking to China’s low-cost, high quality universities

Participants dressed in replica red army uniforms perform the "Yellow River Cantata" to celebrate the upcoming founding anniversary of Chinese Communist Party, at the Yellow River Hukou Waterfall scenic area in Yanan, Shaanxi province, China June 29, 2018. Source: Reuters

By Lee Lian Kong | 24th September 2018

NEWS on international students often focuses on how the People’s Republic of China is the biggest sender of students to countries like the US, UK and Australia. The inverse doesn’t get as much talk time, even though the number of foreigners attending Chinese universities has increased tenfold since 1995.

A study recently published in the Journal of Studies in International Education looks closer into this phenomenon, specifically looking at why these individuals head to Zhongguo.

The most important factor when deciding to study in China is the academic reputation of the region’s institutions, the study has uncovered. Students from elsewhere in Asia (except Japan) were particularly concerned about this, more so than students from Europe, North America and sub-Saharan Africa.

Some Chinese universities offer courses in martial arts open to foreigners. Source: AFP

“Findings reveal that the quality reputation of China’s higher education (HE) is the major pulling force of international mobility to China, while the booming economy escalates its HE reputation and has become the driver of China’s emerging regional hub appearance,” the report notes.

The authors – Wen Wen, Associate Professor of Higher Education at China’s Tsinghua University, and Die Hu, a PhD candidate in international education at the University of California, Los Angeles – surveyed and interviewed 30 international students.

SEE ALSO: China aims to dominate higher education via 42 world class universities

Money matters too, according to Wen and Die’s study, with low cost of living and available scholarships found to be successful in drawing students over. Last year, a Ministry of Education report stated that the 2017 budget for ‘overseas students who come to China to study’ was 2.86 billion yuan (around US$420 million). It’s been increased to more than three billion yuan ($469 million) this year to account for the growth in interest among international students choosing China as their study destination, The PIE News reports.

The respondents also mentioned studying in China would give them an edge in their future jobs and optimism about economic cooperation between their home countries and China.

China’s contemporary culture, however, wasn’t found to be a great pulling force, with respondents deeming it vague and ambiguous.

This article originally appeared on our sister site Study International. 

Revolutionary spinal cord implant helps paralysed patients walk again

Researchers implanted electrodes in the lower backs of five patients, all of whom regained some movement

It took Kelly Thomas 15 weeks, and 81 sessions of electrical stimulation, to learn to walk again. Photograph: Tom Fougerousse/University of Lousiville

Nicola Davis @NicolaKSDavis-Mon 24 Sep 2018

A small group of paraplegic patients have once again been able to take steps after researchers implanted a device to electrically stimulate their spinal cords.

Two separate teams of scientists have revealed for the first time that the technique, together with physical training, has allowed three out of the five people treated to walk again after losing all voluntary movement below the site of an injury.

“It is incredible to be able to be in there and actually see them taking their first steps,” said Dr Claudia Angeli of Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center at the University of Louisville, and a co-author of one of the studies. “It is an emotional time for the individual [themselves] because it is something that they have been told they are never going to be able to do again.”

In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Angeli and colleagues report that they implanted an array of 16 electrodes in the lower back of four patients, paralysed after mountain bike or traffic accidents several years before. The device, originally developed many years ago for pain control, was placed below the site of injury, covering regions that send sensorimotor signals to the legs while a battery was implanted in the abdominal wall, allowing the frequency of the stimulation, its intensity and duration, to be tweaked wirelessly. Electrical activity produced by muscles in the legs was monitored during the sessions.

The approach – called epidural stimulation – works on the principle that there are still some small signals from the brain that cross the site of the spinal cord injury – even though these are not enough on their own to generate voluntary movement.

“We know the spinal cord has the ability to organise very detailed motor activity,” said Angeli. “But before the injury it was getting commands from the brain and it was getting information from the environment as well.”

The injury, she said, disrupts this. “The spinal cord is isolated, it potentially still receives information from the environment, but it is losing the big driver, which was the brain.”

Angeli said that it is thought that when the implanted device is turned on, the resulting electrical stimulation raises the excitability of the spinal cord – in a sense making it more alert.

“It is like it is more aware, it actually can listen to that little whisper from the brain that is still there and it can generate the motor pattern,” said Angeli, adding that training to link movements with these signals is crucial.
All four of the people had lost all motor control below the site of the injury, although two had some level of sensation.

After implantation of the device and locomotor training, the latter two were eventually able to walk over ground unassisted. Kelly Thomas was able to walk after 81 sessions of stimulation over 15 weeks, although she had to use a walking frame, while Jeff Marquis was able to walk just over 90 metres without a break after 278 sessions over 85 weeks. Thomas, a 23-year-old from Florida, said: “being a participant in this study truly changed my life, as it has provided me with a hope that I didn’t think was possible after my car accident.”

The other two people became able to stand and sit independently and one was also able to make some stepping motions on a treadmill when supported – however the other sustained a spontaneous hip fracture after one week of training and only began training again a year later.

A separate paper by researchers from the Mayo clinic in Minnesota and UCLA, published in the journal Nature Medicine, also reports success with the same approach. The team reveals that after 43 weeks of training with the implant 29-year-old Jered Chinnock, paralysed after a snowmobile accident and left with no sensation or voluntary motion below the injury, could walk without assistance on a treadmill – holding on to the rails – and across the ground, albeit with a moving frame and a little human assistance to maintain balance. He did not, however, regain sensation in his legs.

“The patient’s own mind, or thought, was able to drive the movement in the legs,” said Dr Kendall Lee of the Mayo Clinic, one of the principal investigators of the study, but he stressed that much about the mechanism remained unknown.“You have to deliver a very specific type of stimulation parameters. A random stimulation does not work,” he added.

None of the people were able to achieve such actions when the stimulator was turned off.

Angeli said programming the device to give the best results takes time, and that there is a fine balance to be struck when tuning the intensity of the stimulation. If it is too low, the brain signals will still not be “heard” while, if it is too high, it can trigger involuntary movement of the legs.

But she said there are hopes the approach could help with more than leg movement. “A future direction that we are actually starting right now is to see if we target the epidural stimulation for [the] bladder itself, if we can actually improve the bladder control.”

Prof Grégoire Courtine from the EPFL research institute in Switzerland, who was not involved in either study, said he welcomed the research. But he said a key problem is that the current applied to the electrodes is continuous, meaning it can only be of low intensity – which may not result in the “whisper” from the brain being heard loudly enough by the legs. Courtine said he is working to solve this issue by synchronising the electrical stimulation with intended movements – his previous work in monkeys used brain implants to pick up on movement signals from the brain and send them to the legs, by-passing the site of injury and allowing a greater amplification of the signal to produce more robust muscle activity.

Mike Milner, CEO of the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation was also cautious, saying while the research looked promising, the charity supports another approach to tackle spinal injury using special cells taken from a patient’s nose, as well as nerve fibres, to patch the site of the injury.

“We are looking for not only a natural, or biological, cure for paralysis – but a permanent one,” he said.

Protesters demand release of political prisoners

23Sep 2018

Protesters in Jaffna on Friday demanded the release of Tamil political prisoners, eight of whom are currently engaged in a hunger strike. 

Holding placards condemning the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and the prolonged, indefinite imprisonment of Tamil political prisoners, protesters gathered by Jaffna bus station. 

Eight Tamil political prisoners at Anuradhapura prison, M Sulaksan, E Thiruvarul, S Jeyachandran, R Rupan, S Thillairaj, E Jegan, S Sivaseelan and T Nirmalan, launched a hunger strike this month demanding they be released following a quick rehabilitation. 

Four of the hunger-strikers have been admitted to hospital due to a deteriotion in their health. 

Related Articles: 

22 September 2018 : 4 Tamil political prisoners admitted to hospital after ongoing hunger strike

19 September 2018 : Military harassment continues says mother of Tamil political prisoner

19 September 2018 : Tamil political prisoner hospitalised whilst on hunger strike

17 September 2018 : 8 Tamil political prisoners continue hunger strike at Anuradhapura prison

Star CID witness in Navy abductions case faces persecution

Lt. Commander Krishan Welagedara

BY MANESHKA BORHAM-23 September, 2018

Lt. Commander Krishan Welagedara provided damning evidence to CID sleuths in 2012, when he was able to help the agency to establish that the 11 youths abducted by a suspected navy gang were held in detention at Gun Site at the Trincomalee Naval Base. A Navy Intelligence officer, Welagedara was privy to the information because he had been tasked by his commanding officer in 2009 to determine if innocent people were being held at Gun Site on the pretext that they were terror suspects. His evidence not only helps to establish the boys’ last known location, but also tells a horrific story about how they might have met their end. Now he claims he has faced endless persecution within the Navy for telling the CID his story

On a small hill inside the Trincomalee Eastern Naval Command is known among local residents as ‘Gun Site’ because of a mounted weapon at its summit. A soundtrack of crashing waves, stunning views of the ocean side city of Trincomalee and the choppy blue waters of the Bay, would make ‘Gun Site’ a picturesque little hillock at the Naval Base if not for the eerie colonial era buildings that stand near the summit. The subterranean parts of the building get no sunlight and the darkness at night is only dispelled when the naval guards decide to switch on electrical lighting.

These underground detention cells are believed to be the place 11 young men, allegedly abducted by Sri Lanka Navy personnel for ransom, were last seen alive. Here, with the waves crashing overhead and salty winds carrying an evening chill even down to the subterranean holding cells, a key witness in the CID investigation claims to have seen Rajiv Naganathan, the 19-year-old university freshman from Kotahena, his friends, and other victims of the Navy abduction racket shortly before they disappeared forever.

Naganathan and four others were abducted exactly a decade ago, on September 17 2008. They were on their way to see another friend, Ali Anwer, when they fell prey to the abductors. First held at the naval prison known as ‘pittu bambuwa’ in Colombo Fort, the five boys abducted in September 2008 and several others taken between August-October 2008, were transferred a few months later to the Sri Lanka Navy’s ‘Gun Site’ holding cells, CID investigations have uncovered. Anwer, who was initially determined to be an informant to the abduction ring, was finally abducted himself and transferred to Gun Site with the other abductees.

When Lt. Commander Krishan Welegedara first met Anwer, his skull was cracked and bleeding and the boy was still bewildered about what had led to his own abduction at the hands of the gang he had been helping all along.

In evidence collected about the abduction racket so far, Lt Commander Welagedara is the CID’s star witness. According to Lt. Commander Welagedara’s statement to the CID, he met the abducted men between March - April 2009 – about six months after they were taken from their families. Despite being the 71st witness to the case, Welagedara’s revelations were damning, with top naval officials including Commodore D.K.P Dassanayake and Commander Sumith Ranasinghe only being further implicated in the case as a result.

Transferred to the Trincomalee Eastern Naval Command as its acting area Intelligence Officer on March 25, 2009, Welagedara had been tasked with seeking out information about those being held at Gun Site after being brought there by various intelligence units of the Navy by his superior officer, Admiral Guruge. Guruge was Director of Navy Intelligence at the time. Admiral Guruge had received information that innocents were also being held in detention on suspected terror activity, whereas the real aim of those detentions was to obtain ransom from the families.

Evidence
Technically, Lt. Commander Welagedara did not have clearance to visit the holding cells. But he traveled to the site one day in civvies, accompanied by another sailor, in the guise of meeting a guard on weapon duty there. According to his evidence before the CID, this was the day that Welagedara first came into contact with the 11 men.

“They had been brought out to have a shower. Their hair looked overgrown and they did not look particularly well kept. One man, who later identified himself as Mohamed Ali Anwar, was injured badly, his head had split open after a severe beating. Anwer’s shirtless torso showed severe bruising. Anwer claimed he had been beaten in Colombo before being brought to Trincomalee” according to Welagedara’s evidence.

According to information provided by the Naval Intelligence official, Anwer had also revealed he had been an informant to the abduction gang, luring innocents to be entrapped. During his conversation with Welagedara at Gun Site, Anwer revealed the names of several of the main accused in the case, including Commodore D.K.P Dassanayake and Commander Sumith Ranasinghe, who were ranked Captain and Lt. Commander at the time, according to the CID B reports presented to court.

Welagedara was also able to recall seeing several of the abducted boys, including Rajeev Naganathan – who he said had curly hair and a small beard – and John Reid. Welagedara had claimed Anwer had profusely pleaded with him ensure their release.

Instructing an officer on duty to provide medical aid to Anwer who was in a bad state at the time, Welagedara returned to visit the site twice more. After a few visits, it became clear to the Lt Commander that the group being held at Gun Site were not terror suspects, but more likely innocent civilians. Each time, the young men told Welagedara their stories and pleaded for their release.

It was in May 2009 that Lt. Commander Welagedara rushed to Gun Site after being tipped off by one of the guards that gunshots had been heard near the detention facility. Racing there on a motorbike, Welagedara told the CID he had seen what looked like bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting being loaded into a truck. The intelligence official had no way of identifying those being loaded, but he told the CID that when he asked guards at the detention site later, they confirmed that they had never seen the group of boys since that fateful day. Reports about what he saw and heard at the eerie prison at the Trincomalee base were handed over to Admiral Guruge and the intelligence official continued to be in active service.

In 2012, Welagedara was dragged into the navy abduction case quite by chance, when Lt Commander Ranasinghe gave a statement to the CID in an attempt to implicate the naval intelligence official in the abductions case. Lt Commander Welagedara was first summoned to the CID to provide his version of the events. But his testimony proved damning. Welagedara was not only able to help CID sleuths to establish that the 11 men were being held at ‘Gun Site’ and identify them, but the extensive information he was able to provide about Dassanayake and Ranasinghe helped investigators to uncover various other misdeeds.

Welagedara went to his superiors when he was first summoned to give evidence before the CID. He had been assured protection and urged to cooperate with the law enforcement agency. But when his testimony broke the controversial case wide open, Welagedara was labeled a traitor, received several death threats and faced persecution and harassment within the Navy.

Last week, increasingly fed up, the Lt Commander filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka citing persecution for being a witness in the controversial abduction case. He had also complained previously to the Navy and the CID about his home being under surveillance by intelligence groups sent by suspects implicated in the case.

In 2016, the Navy Lt. Commander even faced a court martial on a frivolous charge of being absent without leave. Welagedara’s wife, also an aeronautical engineer with the Sri Lanka Air Force had applied for and obtained Permanent Residency (PR) in Australia.

The Naval official believed the best course of action, given his involvement as a witness in the high profile abduction case, was to ensure his family could be safely harboured overseas. Despite repeated attempts to obtain leave from the Navy to go to Australia in order to settle his family, the requests were turned down. Desperate and running out of time on the PR, in March 2016 Lt Commander Welagedara decided to travel overseas while on regular local leave. Two days after arriving in Australia, on March 28 2016, Welagedara told his superior officer Commodore Y.M. Jayarathna that he was overseas and communicated the anticipated date and time of his return to Sri Lanka.

But as soon as he arrived in the island, the Lt. Commander was arrested, handcuffed and thrown in Navy prison for 14 days. To his shock, given how minor the offence was, Welagedara was informed he would be facing a full court martial, as opposed to a summary trial as is usually the case for minor misdemeanors within the force. The Navy was trying him for acting in a manner prejudicial to naval discipline and good order, and being absent without leave.

On July 12, 2016 the Navy court martial headed by Judge Advocate General (JAG) Shavindra Fernando pronounced Welagedara guilty on both counts and sentenced him to 36 months forfeiture of seniority, and 12 months forfeiture of seniority and 17 days forfeiture of pay and allowances for the two offences respectively.

Notably, CID Director SSP Shani Abeysekara in August providing a detailed description of facts stated in B-report (B/732/2009) presented in court, claimed that the same Shavindra Fernando PC who was then serving as a Deputy Solicitor General of the Attorney General’s Department had attempted to impede the CID investigation into the navy abduction racket. Fernando PC had been seconded by the AG’s Department as JAG for Welagedara’s court martial in 2016.

Days later, President Maithripala Sirisena pardoned Lt. Commander Welagedara of several guilty charges. In a letter (Ref: No: MOD/DET/03/02/DIS/315) dated July 29, 2018 addressed to the Navy Commander, then Defence Secretary Karunasena Hettiarachchi notified the Navy of the presidential directive that Welagedara’s punishment was to be slashed to only 17 days forfeiture of his seniority for being absent without leave.

Promotions

But despite the presidential waiver of punishment, Sunday Observer learns from authoritative sources that to date Lt. Commander Welagedara continues to be denied promotions and requests for early retirement with pension on the basis of his court martial in 2016.

This is despite the fact that even Sri Lanka Navy deserters who have gone missing for over 100 days, have returned to receive lighter punishments – such as losing 14 days of seniority, Sunday Observer learns. Meanwhile, Commodore D.K.P. Dassanayake and Commander Sumith Ranasinghe, both suspects in the abduction racket case, currently out on bail, were granted promotions to their current ranks in 2016 with Dassanayake receiving a service extension in July 2018.

It is unclear why the naval intelligence official staked his career to provide this testimony to the CID about what he saw at Gun Site, Trincomalee. Perhaps it was the assurances by his senior officers that he would be protected for telling the CID what he saw. Or because what he believes he witnessed in Trincomalee from March-May 2009, were grave crimes against innocents, perpetrated by those sworn to protect and defend Sri Lanka and her people.

Whatever his motivation, for his trouble, Lt. Commander Krishan Welagedara is paying a heavy price.
****
Internal Navy matter: Navy Spokesman

The Sunday Observer contacted Navy Spokesperson Commander Dinesh Bandara to clarify the claims being made by Lt. Commander Krishan Welagedara in his complaint to the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL).

Commander Bandara said he had not received information from the Navy in this regard so far. He added that the issue in an internal matter the media would have to put any queries they might have down in writing officially.