(Lanka e News -03.Oct.2018, 11.30PM) The incumbent President Palewatte Gamaralalage Maithripala Sirisena has made an official request to the UNP to extend its support to him to field as the common candidate at the 2020 presidential elections , based on reports reaching Lanka e News.
The official representatives sent by the president to hold discussions in this regard are UPFA secretary cum fisheries minister Mahinda Amaraweera and and State minister of finance and mass media Lasantha Alagiyawanna . The two representatives from the UNP appointed in this connection by prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe are Foreign investment minister Malik Samarawickrema and Finance plus mass media minister Mangala Samaraweera.
It was while the president was in New York to attend the UN general assembly , the first round of this discussion was held .The UNP representatives have clearly told, following the attacks launched by the president during the entire past on the UNP and its leadership which were responsible to put him on the pedestal of power , , he has created an environment which makes it impossible for them to go before the UNP members and explain this.
The president’s representatives Amaraweera and Alagiyawanna have countered that by revealing , when the president recently went to Hambantota , the people’s representatives- UNP provincial council and pradeshiya sabha members met and requested the president to contest again at the presidential election , and that they assured they would extend their support to the president.
The two UNP representatives who did not accept their view had said, if a presidential election is to be held without the 20 th amendment being implemented , definitely the UNP will be fielding a UNP candidate.
The discussion ended without any decision being taken , and a date for another discussion had also not been fixed.
It is a strange quirk of fate , Mangala Samaraweera who moved heaven and earth to promote Sirisena as the common presidential candidate at the last elections is now compelled to reject him as presidential candidate at the next election. Moreover , Sirisena could choose as his representatives for this discussion only two individuals who worked openly and left no stone unturned to defeat Sirisena at the last elections. It is also a pity the incumbent president is in such a dire and hopeless situation that he was unable to enlist even Duminda Dissanayake who worked for him with heart and soul at the last election to represent him at the recent discussion. It is hoped at least now the president will realize he is the architect of his own misfortune.
Sources close to the president disclosed , after learning of the UNP view , president Pallewatte Gamaralalage Maithripala Yapa Sirisena following his return from New York is determined to employ his full force to launch attacks on the P.M. while having also decided to somehow win over Flower Bud leader Basil Rajapakse to his side through the Gotabaya group by exerting pressures.
The president has told with his own mouth ‘I shall not allow UNP to win , and I shall bulldoze Ranil.’
The masses are anxious to learn how a double tongued double faced leader who is precariously clinging on to a meager 4 % vote base is going to bull doze a leader who has a 35% to 40 % minimum vote base.
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by (2018-10-03 22:08:19)
Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran’s request for approval to import a super luxury vehicle at a cost of US$ 60,000 (Rs. 102,00,000 approximately) had been rejected by the Cabinet on Tuesday (02) Cabinet Spokesman Dr Rajitha Senaratne said yesterday.
He told the media at yesterday’s Cabinet news briefing that the Government could not afford the extra luxury to Wigneswaran while suspending vehicle imports for Ministers, MPs and public servants who were entitled to tax-free vehicle imports.
Co-Cabinet Spokesman, Lands and Parliamentary Reforms Minister Gayantha Karunathilaka said 228 Parliamentarians and nearly 8,000 Public Servants had already imported vehicles on duty-free permits. Another 5,000 public servants were still to put order to import duty-free vehicles.
“The Government would relax restrictions on vehicle imports after six months and I believe the situation would be improved by December with the drop of fuel prices in the global market and the rupee becoming steady against the dollar,” Minister Senaratne said.
He added that the prices of essential commodities were still lower than the process before 2015 and added the budget 2019 would be a relief budget giving people a lot of benefits.
Minister Senaratne flatly rejected the notion that the Cost of Living and prices of essential commodities were much higher than the prices in 2014 and also that a large majority of people were struggling to make ends meet under the prevailing economic situation in the country.
Responding to a journalist’s suggestion that the Police had failed to contain the underworld and crime wave in the North and as such the Sri Lanka Army had appealed the Government to give armed forces personnel to control crimes in the north, Minister Senaratne said the Army had helped the Police to control public unrest and crimes right throughout since Independence.
“But the Sri Lanka Army under this Government will not kill people when they stage protests like the Rajapaksa Government did at Rathupaswala and Katunayake,” he stressed. (Sandun A Jayasekera)
04/10/2018
October 4th 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka: The second reading of the ‘Office for Reparations Bill’ (the Bill) is listed to be taken up in Parliament on Wednesday, 10th October 2018. The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) raises serious concerns with the present form of the Bill and notes, yet again, that the Bill will adversely impact the proposed Office for Reparations (the Office) and ultimately reparations themselves if enacted in its present form.
Despite CPA and others in civil society previously raising and attempting to engage with key actors in government on alternative proposals to strengthen the Bill, the government has failed to factor in key considerations that could have ensured a victim-centred and independent Office. CPA reiterates its concerns with two clauses in particular. Clause 11(1)(g) provides that policies and guidelines formulated by the Office will only be adopted upon approval by the Cabinet of Ministers. Clause 22(4) further provides that any such policies and guidelines authorising the disbursement of funds require Parliament’s approval. These clauses create a total dependency on Cabinet vis-à-vis policy formulation and an unnecessary layer of Parliamentary approval to disburse funds for an Office intended to be independent, nonpartisan and autonomous.
This dependency on the executive and legislature generated by the current Bill will likely lead to a situation of political bargaining, trade-offs and politicisation that will eventually undermine the integrity of reparations and lose the confidence of victims and affected communities.
Media reports highlight the politicisation and ethnicisation related to compensation schemes. It is in this deeply problematic context that the Bill envisages further and heavier reliance on politicians.
CPA has repeatedly emphasised the critical importance of reparations in the transformation of societies that have experienced violence, loss and discrimination. Coupled with other reforms, reparations are critical to empower victims, give them dignity and build trust. A weak Office is unlikely to achieve this. Concerns with the Bill’s substance and process and a lack of genuine interest by key government entities to engage begs the question of whether this is merely a box ticking exercise than a genuine attempt at addressing a crucial aspect of reconciliation.
The government will use the present Bill and the establishment of the second transitional justice mechanism it committed to in UN Human Rights Council Resolution 30/1 as evidence of positive progress. The first mechanism, the Office for Missing Persons (OMP), was legislated for in August 2016 and operationalised after numerous delays in March 2018. While some will accept these moves as progress, the frequent delays, inactions and obstructions in actually fulfilling the promises it made in 2015 are sadly indicative of a government that is clearly fudging in delivering on transitional justice. It is not too late to correct course and display genuine political leadership to address Sri Lanka’s past. This can start immediately with the establishment of an Office for Reparations that is victim-centred and independent.
OCT 04 2018
In a sudden turn of events Police clarified that the Indian national alleged to have been a part of the assassination plot to kill President Maithripala Sirisena and several other high ranking citizens had not revealed such information to the Authorities.
Mercil Thomas was arrested by the CID on 21 September, according to the Police Media Spokesperson SP Ruwan Gunasekara. The suspect was arrested based on a complaint lodged by the Anti Corruption Movement’s Director Operations Namal Kumara. Kumara had noted in his complaint that the Indian national had behaved in a suspicious manner on many occasions when he visited Kumara’s residence.
Thomas had arrived in the country on January, 2017 and had resided in several parts of the country. The CID is further investigating his source of income as he has not revealed this information to the authorities.
“This individual had not under any circumstances revealed information pertaining to a latent assassination attempt on the high ranking individuals of the country. The suspect however has revealed to the authorities that he had visited Kumara because he had sensed a threat to several individuals, following Kumara’s disclosure of the conspiracy to the Media. The suspect had told CID officers that he visited Kumara’s residence to inquire about these threats,” SP Gunasekara added.
The CID in its B-report filed in the Colombo Magistrate’s Court on 25 September had not mentioned anything about an assassination plot revealed by the Indian national.
Sri Lankan Ambassador to Qatar, controversial businessman A.S.P. Liyanage was seen welcoming Yoshitha Rajapaksa and Rohitha Rajapaksa, the two sons of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa – when they arrived in the country this morning.
The gesture is not in line with any diplomatic protocol as the Rajapaksa sons do not hold any positions in the government, at the moment. Liyanage was seen welcoming them and carrying their bags when the CH Rugby team arrived in Qatar for a match.
While Ambassador ASP Liyanage is seen carrying Rohitha Rajapaksa’s bag, Sri Lanka Embassy official and Minister for Rajitha Senaratna’s close associate Ruwan Dananasooriya is pictured pushing a trolley containing Yoshitha Rajapaksa’s bags.
The Ambassador drove them to Mercure Grande Hotel where they were staying. They were Chauffer driven Ambassador in front seat with two sons at the back.
Liyanage, a billionaire businessman, claims to be a close friend of the Rajapaksa family. After the former President fell out of power in January 2015, he even offered his Colombo house, the Peacock Mansion, to the Rajapaksa family.
Despite his questionable links with the Rajapaksa family, President Maithripala Sirisena appointed him the Sri Lankan Ambassador to Qatar raising many an eyebrow.
Liyanage’s appointment recently came under fire in Parliament with some Parliamentarians calling him a “mad man” who was ruining Sri Lanka’s image overseas.
UNP Deputy Minister Buddhika Pathirana slammed Liyanage for getting involved in the operations of the Stafford Sri Lankan School in Doha, without discharging the duties of his diplomatic posting.
(Lanka e News – 03.Oct.2018, 11.30PM) The personal bank account of a high profile minister was frozen on the orders of Central bank , and investigations have begun.
This most ‘honorable’ minister has recently received Rs. 150 million into his account . This sum has been remitted to his account by a Muslim national residing abroad.
Since the questions , why this money was received ? What is the transaction between the remitter and the account holder ? were not satisfactorily answered by both parties , the Central bank has frozen this account temporarily and commenced investigations.
There had been a balance of Rs. 400 million in the account of the most ‘honorable’ minister even at the time the sum of Rs. 150 million was received .All these monies have been received after this government came into power.
According to information garnered by Lanka e News , this most ‘honorable’ minister has plundered Rs. 1700 million from the public via a scam during the recent past. Lanka e News always frank , forthright and fearless in its exposures regardless of the rank or status of the culprit shall soon disclose details including his name with all the evidence.
--------------------------- by (2018-10-03 22:31:10)
Wednesday, 3 October 2018
Recently, I was on route to Sri Lanka from India and was killing time at the Kochin airport when I got my hands on the autobiography of the owner of the world’s top brand, Alibaba.
The founder’s actual name was Ma apparently and he had started business in a small apartment in Hangszou in the backdrop of China wanting to become a member of the World Trade Organization.
Ma had grown up in poor communist China and had failed the final exam twice at secondary school. In 1972, accidentally, Richard Nixon had visited China – the town that Ma lived. Post the visit the town became a tourist site.
Ma, having entrepreneurial blood, embarked on a part-time job of showing tourists the city in exchange for learning English from the visitors. A foreigner gave him the name Jack and hence the name Jack Ma.
Little did this tourist know that that the name he gave would go on to be one of the top-of-the-mind ‘personality brands’ globally in 50 years.
Ma - $ 29 b
Ma started his life as a school teacher. Today he is Jack Ma. He is worth $ 29 billion, owning 7.9% of Alibaba, the largest technology company in China which has a product portfolio ranging from e- commerce and cloud computing to entertainment. Jack Ma also owns more than 50% of the company Alipay. He was the first Chinese and the first person globally to launch a $ 150 billion IPO offering to the listed companies in the New York Stock Exchange successfully.
Alibaba
Just three years back, in 2015 the brand was recording a revenue of $ 12.3 billion in top line but today in 2018, the company is touching $ 39 billion whilst as a brand the company that was worth $ 11.3 billion is today crossing $ 54 billion, which means that the brand value is more than the revenue generated in financial year.
Alibaba three years back was registering a bottom line of $ 6.5 billion but today in 2018, it has doubled the profits to $ 15.4 billion which signals to the world the sheer ruthless growth the company has been driven on.
Ma – the teacher
Jack Ma has an amazing philosophy of life that comes from a typical Chinese upbringing I believe. He says: “At 20 years you must learn, in the 30s and 40s you must take risks and by 50 years you are good at what you do. So train and make others take over your business.”
Jack Ma is a man who walks the talk. At the ripe age of 54 he has announced his retirement and announced his successor whilst grooming the candidate to lead the world’s number three brand next year. His latest quote is: “I don’t want to die in the office room,” which is the confidence he is showing on the next challenge.
Apparently Jack Ma wants to devote his time to education. Some now refer to him as ‘Teacher Ma’ at Alibaba, which is the respect that the people of Alibaba have towards their leader.
Jack Ma – by accident
It is said that Jack Ma came into business by accident. He was rejected from over 30 jobs after college, which included KFC. It was at the age of 30 that he realised that he was good at business. He advocates that at the age of 30 a youngster must work for a good boss rather than searching for a top company. The logic being that “you must learn to do things properly. Then, when you become a leader it’s easier to earn respect,” says Jack Ma. An interesting analogy for a youngster of today.
At the recently-concluded World Economic Forum there was a set of youngsters who got an audience with Jack Ma. His advice was: “No matter how smart you are, you will encounter mistakes. You will overcome mistakes over time but what is important is for you to experience the suffering when you make a mistake. That is where the learning happens. That is where you learn how to face life. Learn it.” This is the essence of Jack Ma’s philosophy. I guess this is how he made Alibaba mature enough for him to pass the baton to Daniel Zhang Yong.
2016-2017 Alibaba
Alibaba became the fastest growing retail brand in the world in the year 2016-2017. It beat Amazon and IKEA on brand value, recording a stellar performance of a 94% growth from $ 17.9 billion to $34.8 billion. The source of growth was essentially fuelled by new product categories.
If one does a deep dive on 2016-2017, China retail and wholesale grew by 41% and 28% respectively whilst the International retail and wholesale grew by 35% and 16% respectively. The winner in the portfolio for Alibaba was ‘cloud computing and internet infrastructure’ which grew by a commanding 175% which comes from strategic thinking that Jack Ma brought to the business. I guess when he said that he realised he was good at business, he may have been referring to this talent.
Today – Alibaba
Jack Ma on the strong foundation of ‘Alibaba’ has now expanded to acquire China’s video streaming – Youn Ku, thereby entering into the booming digital marketing and entertainment business. This directional change makes Alibaba move to the dynamic market of youth.
To strategically increase the company penetration geographically, Alibaba has purchased Lazada, which covers Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore – the key markets in South-East Asia that the ASEAN and the Pan Pacific economic agreements cover.
Jack Ma by launching Ali Express gave a window to the SMEs of China to meet the global marketplace; in fact in the key markets of Russia, Spain and Israel, Ali Express is the market leader which tells the world how Ali Express has customised its offering to cater to different cultures.
Jack Ma – Don’t work with governments
At one point, Jack Ma advised the private sector not to work with governments on business opportunities. He did not go into detail but speculation is that Alibaba failed to secure Moneygram as the US Government did not approve of the purchase. I guess this was a wise move that actually worked in favour of Jack Ma given the trade war between the US and China on the 600 billion taxes imposed by the US and China retaliating with the 300 billion counter trade initiative.
Alibaba – Unique pricing
Jack Ma strongly practices the Chinese value system of unique strategies collectively taken to be competitive. Alibaba competed with EBay by removing intermediate costs. The revenue model for Alibaba is from advertising by suppliers and selling key word bidding. Incidentally this method of revenue generation contributes to 60% of the profits that Alibaba earns from the e-commerce site.
As at now Alibaba has a penetration of 0.5 billion people from the total population of around seven billion on earth which is the strength that Jack Ma has brought into the company. Now the company has expanded to Alipay, which is the most popular mobile payment system in China, logistical and infrastructure platform – China Smart Logistics, and the marketing and technology platform for Alibaba on line – AliMama.com that adds to the companies that constitute the value chain.
Jack Ma’s key DNA at Alibaba is ‘Gold standard execution’. I guess without such a stance Alibaba could have not become the third most valued brand in the retail space globally crossing $54 billion dollars as at end 2018 and growing at 58%.
What next at Alibaba
If I go back in time, when Steve Jobs passed away, many thought that the Apple era was over, but today the company has further expanded and consolidated the business with the successor. I guess we will see a repeat of history when it comes to Alibaba. The logic being that we now have in the world young talent that can always take over the mantle of powerful personalities.
Let’s see what Daniel Zhang will do with Alibaba in the years to come. As the popular notion states, “Alibaba was never about Jack Ma, but Jack Ma will forever belong to Alibaba.”
(Dr. Rohantha Athukorala has a double degree in Marketing and is an MBA alumnus of Harvard University Executive Education. The thoughts are strictly his personal views.)
“kadda” is a corruption of “kaduwa” and it is derived from the saying “kadden kotanawa” (“using language as a sword to brush away people”)
2018-10-04
In a speech titled “Can the Subaltern Speak English?” delivered at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Kandy on August 9, Dhanuka Bandara takes to task those he sees as academic messiahs who write about emancipating the marginalised Other who cannot wield English as the privileged can. For Dhanuka, such “messianism” is a cover for “crass careerism”, a path to de-hegemonisation of language standards that promotes traditional intellectuals (“reactionary appendages of dominant minorities”) over organic intellectuals (“at the forefront of social change”). Such careerists can only speak of the marginalised Other (the “native non-English speaker”) in terms they can relate to, based overwhelmingly on Western scholarship.
Over the course of his speech Dhanuka refers to, among others, Arjuna Parakrama, Godfrey Gunatilleke, and the late Manique Gunasekara, and contends that the work of these three intellectuals revolves around one pressing question: how does one deliver an English education to a country to which “English” has always been at best an alien experience, and if so, how can one deliver it via an authentic “ Lankan” experience?
Parakrama condemns the inability of English educationalists to relate what is taught to the society around them (because of texts which overwhelmingly relate foreign items, from fruits to films), an issue that is supplemented by an even bigger one: “the current paradigm that Lankan history is the triumphal march of Buddhism.” In other words, according to Parakrama, not only is the rural student unaware of what is taught in English textbooks, he is made to grapple with another tier of exclusion: the Sinhala Buddhist hegemony that holds sway over our education system.
Dhanuka’s issue with this line of thinking is that, at one level, it is a promotion of a way of teaching English that limits the rural child’s way of seeing. Which is true, I should think. Much of the discourse surrounding English Our Way (which Malinda Seneviratne tore to pieces years ago), after all, is rooted in the assumption that we should all speak English the way we and our countrymen want, free of grammatical and syntactical constraints. This culture of “linguistic licentiousness” has, at the end of the day, the effect of promoting a rift between those who speak and those who “spik”, between those who can wield the language and those who can barely put two words together. Dhanuka’s speech in that sense sheds light on another aspect of this debate: are those who idolise Sri Lankan English, as Orwell once put it, saints who should be “judged guilty until they are proven innocent”?
Dhanuka himself an eloquent writer of English that he is, he came from a Sinhala speaking background, didn’t go to a popular or private school,
In my experience so far, limited though it is, “English education” is not a problem prefixed by social class and background. At a basic level, there are “poor” children, coming from rural backgrounds, who can speak the language better than their more privileged counterparts from the city. It is also not a problem of experience, which means that the debate over whether our textbooks should limit the items and other things (again, from fruits to films) to what is “local” is actually a nonentity.
Dhanuka himself is a case in point: eloquent writer of English that he is, he came from a Sinhala speaking background, didn’t go to a popular or private school, and learnt the language on his own. But then, as he points out, he “first experienced snow two years ago” and “learnt by rote Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening’ in Grade Eleven”, and yet “[did] not recall any particular difficulty relating to it.”
I myself can think of several encounters I’ve had with students who, while alienated from foreign experiences, nevertheless relate to them quite instinctively. (Just get them to watch an American thriller film and you’ll see how they react.) Neither social class nor inability to relate to foreign experiences, factors though they may be, seems then to have much of a say in determining why one class grows up ignorant of English and another grows up wielding it as though it were the most natural thing.
The issue of class, in the context of English education, has been examined from every angle by scholars like Parakrama and Gunasekara. Parakrama’s didactic assessments of this problem (read his essay “Naduth Unge Baduth Unge: Some Thoughts on the Language of Privilege and the Privileges of Language”, which Dhanuka refers to in his speech) can be simplified to an observation Doric de Souza once made: that the items exhibited in English textbooks are outside the frame of reference of the typical Sri Lankan child. Parakrama offers a more academic take on this:
“There is no room for the radical alterity of these who are not caught within the nexus of power/access to power/the possibility of access to power in the future. For those outside the pale, as it were, the logic of resistance and protest as we understand it does not clinch. For this group for whom the trendy term would be ‘subaltern’, other paradigms of resistance and protest need to be conceptualized, since, to echo Ranajith Guha, there is dominance without hegemony.”
In other words, the subaltern, who happen to be the majority, are denied the very tools of resistance which a proper English education should equip them with. English in this sense can be both a “kaduwa” (oppressive) and a “hiramanaya” (utilitarian), and in the right hands, it can turn from the one to the other.
The reductionism of this Elite/Other dichotomy is felt in every debate, but nowhere else has it been felt more than in the debate over English education. What it does, as Dhanuka and other scholars opposed to the tenets of Sri Lankan English have argued, is to presume the ignorance of the rural child and the eliteness of the urban child, and the God given right of academics to “safeguard” the “innocence” of the rural child by (inadvertently) preserving the rift between him and his urban counterpart, when the reality can and should be quite different. Or as Dhanuka puts it:
“... the assumption is that so called subalterns remain as empty vessels, they do not have the language to curse, are bereft of means of resistance, unless they receive their liberation as a benevolent gift from those who oppress them.”
Given that I certainly am not up to the task of examining this issue from an academic standpoint, a few heretical thoughts on the way English is viewed by the typical child, and the gradation in perceptions, prejudices, and perspectives regarding the subject of English between the rural and the urban child, are, I feel, called for.
The typical Sinhala speaking student (I unfortunately have not had encounters with Tamil speaking students, yet) has a name for English in their dictionary: “kadda”. It is a corruption of “kaduwa” and it is derived from the saying “kadden kotanawa” (“using language as a sword to brush away people”).
Interestingly enough, perhaps owing to the culture of complacency regarding the teaching of the language we’ve institutionalised over the decades, “kadda” is not a term of disparagement or fear. On the contrary, it is used whimsically, not to ridicule the non speaker of English, but to refer to and ridicule the speaker. (Whenever I pick up the phone and speak in front of them, I hear their giggles as they try to imitate me and poke fun at the mistakes they make.) The young non English speaker no longer regrets his lack of English education; he laughs at it and that by consciously laughing at the errors he commits. Be it Royal College or Kekirawa Central, this process plays out in almost exactly the same way.
This presents us with rather interesting cultural phenomena, the way I see it: the ability of the non English speaking child to compensate for his failure to wield the language by resorting to a colloquialism with obvious colonial overtones (“kaduwa” as a term of disparagement of English traces its roots to postcolonial Ceylonese society) while being indifferent to or ignorant of those same overtones. In other words, the Sinhala speaking child views English through a dualistic lens: he realises its importance in a society that prioritises spoken over written English (most of the students I interviewed wanted to speak and pronounce, not to read and write), but he no longer views it as the step up the social ladder it used to be before.
Ironically, globalisation, which has “advertised” elocution in our society (which belong to the “outer circle” of Braj Kachru’s “World Englishes” model), is to blame for that: it has made it possible for the non English speaker to let go of the language, since he seeks other ways of climbing that ladder: through material things that are marketed day in and day out, rather than through ideas.
Dhanuka’s speech thus stands out because the Elite/Other dichotomy no longer holds water, since English is no longer the dominant hegemony it used to be. 50 years ago, the English speaker was privileged. He still is today, but the structures of poverty in our society have emboldened the non English speaker to “ignore” his ignorance and yet enjoy “the good life.” As a final point, we can therefore say that the non English speaker, regardless of whether he attends Royal College or Kekirawa Central, has succeeded in compensating for his weakness in the language via casual, illusory self-mockery. This, for me, is the real tragedy we should be looking at.
Palestinians march against Israel’s siege on Gaza during a demonstration near Erez checkpoint, northern Gaza Strip, 4 September.Mohammed ZaanounActiveStills
The Electronic Intifada3 October 2018 Twenty-three Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and armed civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip during the month of September.
All but three of those fatalities occurred in Gaza, where Israeli forces shot and killed seven Palestinians during mass protests on 28 September alone.
German leader has told Israel not to demolish Bedouin village during her visit, and West Bank tourism is up
Bedouin children hold pictures of German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of her expected visit to Israel. (AP)
Wednesday 3 October 2018
Merkel to Israel: Don't destroy Khan al-Ahmar while I'm here
The demolition of Bedouin village Khan al-Ahmar is being delayed once again at the behest of an unlikely source – German Chancellor Angela Merkel – an Army Radio journalist reported.
Merkel is due to touch down in Israel on Wednesday evening, two days after a deadline passed after which the military said it would demolish the village.
However, with several rights groups and western countries condemning the impending demolition as a war crime, Israeli authorities have agreed not to begin until the German leader has left.
According to Army Radio journalist Ilil Shahar, Merkel told the Israelis she would cancel her high profile trip if the demolition went ahead during her visit.
The small West Bank village of Khan Al-Ahmar has been populated by Bedouins, members of the Jahalin tribe, since 1953, after the Israeli army drove them off of land they occupied in the Naqab desert.
Israeli authorities issued notices to residents on September 23, ordering them to evacuate the village of their own accord, Haaretz reported. Residents have refused Israel’s offer to relocate to the Abu Dis area, onto land critics complain is currently in use as a garbage dump.
On Tuesday, Khan al-Ahmar’s residents held up pictures of Merkel, appealing for her help.
Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right member of Israel’s parliament, responded to Shaher’s report by tweeting: "If I was prime minister, I would evict the village while Merkel's aircraft is in the air. So she will land and then turn around and go back..."
West Bank tourism up 25 percent on last year
Tourists from across the world have been flooding to the West Bank, Israel’s Channel 20reported, increasing 25 percent on last year.
The statistics, first published by the United Nations last year to mark World Tourism Week, show Palestine is seeing the fifth-largest year-on-year increase globally.
While the West Bank benefitted from more visitors, so did Israel. The UN report notes that Israel also saw an increase in arrivals of nearly the same percentage. Between 2016 and 2017, the number of tourists arriving in the West Bank increased by 25.7 percent, while tourist arrivals to Israel increased by 24.6 percent.
Figures published by the Palestinian Authority show that in the first half of 2018, nearly half of tourists to the West Bank were from Israel.
The next largest groups of tourists were American and Russian nationals, each amounting to 7 percent of the total. Polish tourists accounted for 4 percent, while Romanian tourists made up 3 percent of visitors.
Former US secretary of state John Kerry enjoys some time out at a shop in Ramallah (US Department of State)
In terms of sheer quantity, however, tourism to Israel is seven times as large as tourism to Palestine, UN figures show.
Only four other countries saw increases in tourism that exceeded Palestine’s last year: Egypt, Togo, Vietnam and Georgia. The increase posted by Egypt was nearly twice as great as the Palestine’s, totaling 55.1 percent.
Road traffic stresses Israelis out twice as much as security
Israel’s precarious security situation weighs heavily on the country’s citizens, but not nearly as much as the state of its road traffic, a new study shows.
A survey carried out for the Israeli navigation app Waze reveals that while 37 percent of the public is worried about national security, more than twice as many Israelis – a whopping 80 percent of the public – is stressed out about street traffic, Mako reported.
According to the survey, just driving to work and back is a source of stress in the lives of 48 percent of the population. For 68 percent of respondents, the violence of the drivers that they share the roads with is a source of major tension.
Israel suffers from a lack of practical public transportation options. The country’s commercial capital, Tel Aviv, is only now building a light rail system to service its residents, and a train line between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is still only in the construction phase.
In related news, the acting director of the Israeli Public Transportation Authority was arrested today on allegations of granting favours to certain transportation companies in exchange for gifts. Four others - high-level officials at those firms - were arrested, Maariv reported.
Ultra-Orthodox bastion gets public library at long last
The Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak will finally receive its first municipal library, Kikar HaShabbat reported.
For years, leaders of the town, whose population is overwhelmingly ultra-Orthodox Jewish, have resisted efforts to establish a state-sponsored reading library within city limits.
According to Bnei Brak’s master plan, the city already has nine libraries, but these are all private institutions, most of which cater exclusively to the religious community.
One privately funded library lends books both of general interest and of a religious nature.
The library will have separate hours for men and women, and will only lend out books that are approved by Bnei Brak’s council of rabbis, Kikar Shabbat noted.
The municipality approved funding for the new library in February, two decades after the issue was first raised at city council.
A Russian flag is seen on the laptop screen in front of a computer screen on which cyber code is displayed, in this illustration picture taken March 2, 2018. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain accused Russian military intelligence on Thursday of directing a host of cyber attacks aimed at undermining Western democracies by sowing confusion in everything from sport to transport and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In a British assessment based on work by its National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), Russian military intelligence (GRU) was cast as a pernicious cyber aggressor which used a network of hackers to spread discord across the world.
GRU, Britain said, was almost certainly behind the BadRabbit and World Anti-Doping Agency attacks of 2017, the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016 and the theft of emails from a UK-based TV station in 2015.
“The GRU’s actions are reckless and indiscriminate: they try to undermine and interfere in elections in other countries,” said British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
“Our message is clear - together with our allies, we will expose and respond to the GRU’s attempts to undermine international stability,” Hunt said. Britain believes the Russian government is responsible for the attacks.
Though less well known than the Soviet Union’s once mighty KGB, Russia’s military intelligence service played a major role in some of the biggest events of the past century, from the Cuban missile crisis to the annexation of Crimea.
RUSSIAN CYBER POWER?
Though commonly known by the acronym GRU, which stands for the Main Intelligence Directorate, its name was formally changed in 2010 to the Main Directorate of the General Staff (or just GU). Its old acronym - GRU - is still more widely used.
It has agents across the globe and answers directly to the chief of the general staff and the Russian defence minister. The GRU does not comment publicly on its actions. Its structure, staff numbers and financing are Russian state secrets.
The GRU traces its history back to the times of Ivan the Terrible, though it was founded as the Registration Directorate in 1918 after the Bolshevik Revolution. Vladimir Lenin insisted on its independence from other secret services.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has said GRU officers used a nerve agent to try to kill former double agent Sergei Skripal, who was found unconscious in the English city of Salisbury in March. Russia has repeatedly denied the charges.
After the Skripal poisoning, the West agreed with Britain’s assessment that Russian military intelligence was to blame and launched the biggest expulsion of Russian spies working under diplomatic cover since the height of the Cold War.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB spy, said on Wednesday that Skripal, a GRU officer who betrayed dozens of agents to Britain’s MI6 foreign spy service, was a “scumbag”
who had betrayed Russia.
Britain said the GRU was associated with a host of hackers including APT 28, Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Pawnstorm, Sednit, CyberCaliphate, Cyber Berkut, Voodoo Bear and BlackEnergy Actors.
“This pattern of behaviour demonstrates their desire to operate without regard to international law or established norms and to do so with a feeling of impunity and without consequences,” Foreign Secretary Hunt said.
The United States sanctioned GRU officers including its chief, Igor Korobov, in 2016 and 2018 for attempted interference in the 2016 U.S. election and cyber attacks.
“Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), a Russian military intelligence organization, knowingly engages in significant activities that undermine cybersecurity on behalf of the Russian government,” the U.S. Treasury said in March.
Theresa May danced on to the stage at the Conservative Party conference to announce that the end of austerity is in sight.
She said that support for public services would go up next year, but she didn’t explain where the money would come from and said it depended on a good Brexit deal.
She appealed for unity in her party, warning her critics that if they split over their “own visions of the perfect Brexit”, they might not get it at all.
We talk to Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and Brexiteer and former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith.
Some experts figure Beijing might risk further driving down the renminbi against the dollar.
A panda sleeping at the Shenyang Forest Wild Zoological Garden in northeastern China on Dec. 30, 2017. (AFP/Getty Images)
BYKEITH JOHNSON-
OCTOBER 3, 2018, 3:26 PM
Long before he became U.S. president, Donald Trump railed against what he called China’s manipulation of its currency for economic advantage, even when that wasn’t quite true. Now, thanks to Trump’s escalating trade war, China is increasingly tempted to let its currency further slide in value—precisely what the president and the rest of his administration have warned Beijing not to do.
China so far has responded to the Trump administration’s trade war, especially tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, with tariffs of its own on U.S. goods, especially agricultural products. But China is running out of tit for tat responses, as it imports much less from the United States than it exports, leaving Beijing looking at other ways to get back at Washington such as throwing up fresh barriers to U.S. businesses and undermining U.S. foreign-policy goals.
But there are still powerful—if risky—economic arrows left in China’s quiver. Over the spring and summer, Beijing found one way to take much of the sting out of U.S. tariffs, by letting its currency slide by about 9 percent against the dollar to the lowest level in several years, making its own exports that much cheaper and largely offsetting the impact of U.S. duties.
For the value of the Chinese renminbi—also known as the yuan—to fall that far, that fast, was a conscious decision, because Beijing still largely controls the value of its currency and could have intervened to stop the slide. And some China trade experts are betting that China’s rulers are now dug in enough against Trump that they could soon let the currency slide again.
“It was a signal to Washington that we don’t like what you are doing, and if you keep slapping on tariffs, our currency is going to weaken significantly, and you’re going to have a currency war on top of a trade war,” Robin Brooks, the chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, the global association for the financial industry, said of this summer’s dive.
In some ways, the earlier move to weaken the renminbi was an easy decision, since the currency had steadily gained in value the prior year, giving it some room to fall without causing serious damage.
But China’s currency is now being pushed downward due to a host of factors. As the United States raises interest rates, it makes Chinese rates relatively less appealing, pushing down the renminbi. Chinese central bankers are also trying to inject more cash into the banking system, essentially pursuing the kind of “looser” monetary policy meant to shore up growth that also tends to push down currencies.
Now, with Trump’s tariffs set to escalate even further, there are fears that China could just let the renminbi fall as it did this summer, essentially unleashing a currency devaluation that would further ramp up bilateral tensions.
In late September, the United States levied 10 percent tariffs on a whopping $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, and the tariff is scheduled to rise to 25 percent in January. Trump has also threatened additional tariffs on $267 billion worth of Chinese products, adding up to essentially everything the country ships to the United States. Those escalating U.S. actions, and especially the likelihood that tariffs will jump to 25 percent next year, are giving trade hawks in China a fresh hearing, Brooks said.
“The expectation is that as tariffs go up to 25 percent, the hawks will be more vocal,” he said.
Moreover, despite Trump’s confident assessment at the United Nations General Assembly meetings last week that “we are winning on every level,” Beijing shows no signs of backing down. “China will not be blackmailed or yield to pressure,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at the same gathering in New York.
But further devaluation would be a risky play for China, which stepped in to stabilize the renminbi in late summer right above a critical psychological threshold of about 7 to the U.S. dollar. If Beijing decides to let the currency slide further in value, it’s not clear when or where it would stop, which could spook Chinese savers and domestic stock markets and undermine the Chinese leadership’s sense of control.
“The challenge for China is that any further move [downward] would be perceived as a shift in policy, and it’s not clear where the limits might be,” said Brad Setser, a former economic official in the Obama administration now at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“They’re more constrained than they were a few months ago, because it would be a much more consequential decision,” he said. “Then again, if the U.S. ends up with tariffs of 25 percent on the majority of its trade with China, that’s also quite significant.”
For China, letting its currency fall in value would serve a couple of different objectives. Depending on how much it slides, it would offset most of the upcoming U.S. tariffs, making Chinese exports about as competitive as they were before the trade war began. That’s an important consideration now that the damage from U.S. tariffs is starting to percolate through the Chinese economy.
But there’s another reason that a falling renminbi might appeal to policymakers in Beijing: It could spook global stock markets, including in the United States. When China devalued the renminbi in the summer of 2015, stock markets around the world shuddered. Given the importance of buoyant stock prices to Trump’s perception of his economic stewardship, such a move could get his attention, Brooks said.
“If the trade hawks in Beijing prevail, they may argue, first of all we need to weaken the currency to offset tariffs, and, second, if we can unsettle the stock market, maybe we can weaken the resolve of the U.S. president,” he said.
But there are plenty of risks to such an action. China suffered massive capital flight during the currency depreciation of 2015 to 2016, as Chinese investors sought to move out of renminbi-denominated assets. Allowing the renminbi to fall further in value could spark another huge capital outflow. Then again, after that episode, Beijing put some restrictions in place to limit capital flight, which might make devaluation more tempting.
The big question remains: Are Chinese policymakers more afraid that the trade war will poleax the economy, or that a cheaper renminbi will lead to another exodus of Chinese capital?
“We don’t know to what extent 2015 so scarred them that they are no longer willing to look at depreciation as a tool, or whether they concluded that they have the available tools to limit capital flight, so they can with some difficulty manage a depreciation,” Setser said.
A cheaper Chinese currency wouldn’t just have impacts at home. It would likely push other emerging-market currencies further down as well, which would make their debt burdens that much harder to bear (even if it would erode some of China’s export advantage). A cheaper renminbi and a flood of Chinese imports would also further anger Japan and the European Union, which have sought to join the Trump administration in a unified response to China’s trading practices in general.
With all the forces pushing down the renminbi, including the trade war, U.S. rate hikes, and more domestic economic stimulus, the only way Beijing can likely avoid further devaluation is by stepping in and actively propping up the currency, as it did in 2015 to 2016 by spending more than $1 trillion in foreign-currency reserves.
That might make U.S. officials in Washington happy, but it would represent an odd about-face for an administration that’s been so vocal about the need for Beijing to stop manipulating its currency.
“The irony for the administration is that in the near term, the United States wants China to continue to manage its exchange rate,” Setser said.
(Lanka e News -03.Oct.2018, 11.30PM) The incumbent President Palewatte Gamaralalage Maithripala Sirisena has made an official request to the UNP to extend its support to him to field as the common candidate at the 2020 presidential elections , based on reports reaching Lanka e News.
Palestinians march against Israel’s siege on Gaza during a demonstration near Erez checkpoint, northern Gaza Strip, 4 September.
Former US secretary of state John Kerry enjoys some time out at a shop in Ramallah (US Department of State)
