The Artificial Intelligence revolution that is coming

 Monday, 8 October 2018

Artificial intelligence, the ability of computers to perform activities associated with intelligent beings. A world where computers can think for themselves and be as intelligent as the human being. Would this be a good thing for the world? AI, has its benefits and a lot to offer but at the same time it comes with a price. As for the price, humans have already started to pay through job losses and if sci-fi movies are a prediction, our existence itself.

Forms of Artificial Intelligence

There are three forms of AI. Process automation, cognitive insights and cognitive engagement.

1.) Process automation: This is widely beginning to roll out in the manufacturing sector as manufacturing is being automated to save costs and increase efficiency. Supermarkets have started using automation globally for self-checkout reducing labor costs and quickening services.

2.) Cognitive insights: Using algorithms using a lot of data to predict what the human being can want. This is used by Facebook and YouTube. The Facebook newsfeed and YouTube recommended videos on the side of our screens are according algorithms using AI.

3.) Cognitive engagement: This is computer engagement with clients. This is used to offer 24/7 customer service where bots reply to customer queries to a certain extent offering solutions to common questions. Unique or complex questions still need humans to answer but machine learning is increasing by the day.

Benefits of AI technology

Artificial Intelligence no doubt has a lot of positives to offer to us in the coming decades. It can take over the time consuming jobs of humans and do it faster, leading to increased efficiency. Increased automation can allow humans to do creative work leaving the boring time consuming jobs like data entry and replying to emails to the machines.

It can also reduce operational costs which will result in cheaper products to the consumer and also more profits which translates into more corporate taxes.

These taxes can be used to provide welfare benefits to the citizens. There is an argument that increased taxes due to less operational costs can bring in universal basic income to the populace. Universal basic income is providing every citizen a minimum amount of money for free with no conditions.

Smart homes using AI can be energy efficient and have better security with automated surveillance around the house. Healthcare is a sector where AI is making inroads. MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2013 using IBM Watson tried to diagnose and recommend treatment for certain types of cancer but after a few years the project was halted due to high costs. But later they used it for smaller work like recommending hotels and restaurants for patients’ families and determining which patients needed help with paying bills and it was a success.

One of the main criticisms of AI is that it will take away human jobs. In the 1990s, computers were feared as they would take jobs away but it turned out that they did create millions of new jobs from software engineering to computer hardware manufacturing and created massive new tech companies which created immense wealth over the past decades.

Similarly, AI can create jobs as well, as research shows that AI related jobs have increased 5 fold in the last 5 years. AI and humans working together can immensely increase efficiency with AI being not prone to human errors.

Dangers of Artificial Intelligence

As robots become more and more intelligent and able to think for themselves, it will become very dangerous if we lose control of them or if they decide they will stop obeying human orders. This is an argument by Tesla’s Elon Musk. Elon Musk even argues that robots could take over the world. Though it sounds farfetched, it can be a possibility as robots, once they can operate on their own may think humans are a liability to this world with humans consuming a lot of resources in the world.

Though killer robots make headlines and make good movies in Hollywood, we are already seeing the effects of robot thinking in the world and have already been influenced by it. We already know that Facebook’s algorithm based on AI has influenced the voting results leading to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in the US. Also, when it comes to a fully computerised world, there is always the danger of hacking. If someone gets into the system, a lot of damage can be caused.

Where are we?

Currently around 15% of businesses in the US are using AI related technology but this is set to more than double in the coming year showing explosive growth to come in this sector. AI startups have also increased fifteen-fold since 2000 showing that many new startups in AI are springing up to meet the demand. About 40% of consumers believe AI will improve customer service showing a positive sign from the consumers and showing people do trust AI.

The general perception of artificial intelligence is that it is still in the sci-fi movies and far off but what people do not realise is that we are living in a time of rapid change and artificial intelligence is taking over more and more of the world.  AI spending is set to hit $46 billion by 2020 and this is a very serious business and if countries like Sri Lanka do not take notice they will be left behind.

Reading and social media

Sanjana Hattotuwa-October 6, 2018, 5:39 pm 

The postgraduate study of social media often dates me. Someone with a proclivity to what I have in recent months learnt is a phenomenon called ‘rage-tweeting’ sent me a letter last week that was at the time circulating amongst a limited number on Facebook. The affordances and nature of the platform, I knew, would result in the creation of outrage that would soon spill over on to Twitter and Instagram. It took less than two days. From alumni to those who wait with bated breath to join a chorus that takes issue with who they see as the elite of Colombo, the rage brigade has expressed shame, shock, disbelief, disappointment, disdain and horror, support for the victim, the condemnation of those in authority, various critiques of Sri Lanka’s education system, the small-mindedness of teachers, regressive social values, the dangers to a child’s self-expression and a whole range of opinion on gender, sexuality and queerness and its place in educational institutions. Many others took a monosyllabic route, of starred or completely spelt out expletives, to capture what I can only imagine is a disappointment so great, it has entirely robbed the power of a more comprehensive critique. Some even took to memes. Social media has made black-American actors the standard torchbearer now, through animated images and short video-clips, for an outrage so profound, it cannot be written down.

Kony 2012 on Youtube, over six years ago, is now a well-studied harbinger of the manufacture of outrage over social media, with an intended aim and outcome. I distinctly recall sharing it on my newsfeed at the time, and how much it went on to be commented on and shared subsequently, at a time when Facebook had not yet been tainted by scandal, breach and distrust. That was then. The banality of outrage today is brilliantly framed by digital anthropologist John Postill as an ‘age of viral reality’, where political reality is increasingly if not entirelyframed by rapidly and widely shared digital content, particularly amongst a younger demographic. In an age of triumphant populism, the weaponisation of social media, misinformation, socio-political divides over decades exacerbated by digital echo chambers, poor media literacy, catastrophic breaches of privacy, unprecedented and complex attacks on electoral processes, sophisticated influence operations, disinformation campaigns, partisan media coupled with the myopia of social media users and you have a perfect storm – endlessly interesting and fodder for academic research, yet deeply worrisome, beyond partisan lines, for the health of democracy.

Rather than rant and rave against the evil of it all, or seeking through censorious legislation, overbearing government, panoptic surveillance and most of all, terrible parenting, the reinstitution of an ostensibly more straightforward analogue world, it bears some reflection as to how our better angels can be harnessed through the technologies that govern our comprehension of context, country and citizenship. For starters, and counter-intuitively, it is through encouraging the lost art of reading. And by this, I don’t mean the style, nature and pattern of reading that I recognise I am also now hostage to when dealing with a tsunami of social media. It is a very different pace, focus, engagement and selection of reading that comes from borrowing or buying books. Here too, I care little for the distracting debate on whether Kindle or paper is most effective. It is the substance of what one reads, and the breadth of subjects that matters more to me than the form of how text is consumed. I remain biased to print. The tactile nature of spine, page and jacket, coupled with the olfactory signature of each book, brand new or much thumbed, gives me as much pleasure as reading whatever I’ve picked up.

But I have no issue with those who prefer e-books. What matters more is that critical reading is encouraged, as something sorely lacking amongst those who are some of the most ardent consumers and producers of social media. An individual who is one of the most gifted photographers I know of, I discovered, hadn’t read Sontag’s seminal work, to better understand framing, politics and craft.

The adoration and adulation generated by fans online serve to boost ego without the necessary often painful realisation through critical review, editing, marking or wider reading, that one is wrong, misguided, ill-informed and unoriginal. The private realisation of all this comes with reading. The more public lessons are learnt in university, but also through the friendship or tutelage of friends, family and colleagues. At its simplest, it is to impart the joy of getting lost in a library amongst rows of books, which is a life experience unmatched by even the most amazing recommendations by Amazon. Many on or over social media are enraged by minutiae, confusing or conflating the episodic with the systemic. Academic literature calls this ‘momentary connectedness’ or ‘digital togetherness’ – the feeling of being part of a larger community who by collectively raising their voice over social media, brings about change.

Critical reading can help harness what is today an unprecedented potential to raise awareness about social injustice, where it matters the most. Around long overdue education reform, the overhaul of pedagogy and the reboot of syllabi, instead of a single school, student or teacher. Around the need to be more open to critical reflection and narratives that are different to and contest core beliefs, instead of the screening or censorship of a particular film. Social media masks the need for systemic reform by the proclivity, anchored to the nature of online networks, to frame specific incidents, individuals and institutions. Critical reading, around a range of subjects, gives pause to the immediate sense of outrage by helping us locate the episodic in a landscape of similar incidents, or a history of injustice, a longer process of discrimination or evolution, or parallel developments that may complement or content.

My first impulse of an acerbic response, share, like, quip or jibe I now increasingly hold in check, realising how quickly the spell of social media blinds me to what is more important – which is the study of the drivers, motives and intent of the most emotive or explosive content online. It is easy to stop at bemoaning at how ill-informed and self-referential these cycles of outrage are. To dismiss everyone on social media and decry how everything today is a fad – what Sontag called being a tourist in one’s own reality as the defining frame of our online cultures. And yet, through the simple yet subversive emphasis on more, wider and deeper reading - books, journals, long-form, magazines, poetry, prose, fiction – we can expand what is a reductionist and limited frame of reference blindly paraded on online with a sense of time, place, relative merit and scale.

There is today abundant optimism, verdant activism and an innate sense of justice amongst so many on social media, from a young age. Yet, the worst of us and our worst impulses rendered in the most appealing ways online, stunt the potential of this reservoir to fertilize a better, more just society.This must change – not by eschewing the digital, but by leveraging it to prise open minds and eyes enslaved to ephemera.

Teachers & Principals to join ‘People’s Protest’ against treacherous government

October 6, 2018

Teachers and Principals of schools will join the ‘People’s Protest’ to be held in Colombo organized by the JVP and participated by forces of the farmer community, fisher folk, youths and other working masses on the 23rd to protest against the fisherfolk that follows a destructive economic policy which torments masses with exorbitant taxes, increase in prices of essential commodities including fuel and fails to increase the salaries of state employees says the General Secretary of Lanka Teacher Services Union (LTSU) Mahinda Jayasinghe.


Mr Jayasinghe said at the press conference held in Colombo yesterday (5th) that a large number of teachers and Principals were waiting to join ‘People’s Protest’ against the failure of the government to increase the salaries of all teachers and Principals and the denial of a 30 month arrears for them.

The President of LTSU Dhammika Alahapperuma, the Organizing Secretary of the Union Lal Kumara, the President of Colombo Zonal organization of LTSU Gayan Sangeeth Edirisinghe were present.

 

Tomorrow, October 9, is World Philatelic Day: Collecting history in STAMPS

2018-10-08
ulshan Ellawela went to England in 2005 to work as an electronic engineer and returned to Sri Lanka as a philatelist so involved with that he has written two books on the subject.   Philately remains esoteric to Sri Lankans even today because it is known to many as stamp collecting, a matter of children’s albums.   
Even adult collectors who indulge in the hobby remain ignorant of philately’s depth and each as a social science.   
While working as an electronic engineer in London, Dulshan Ellawela began collecting stamps and other philatelic items related to the colonial era (pre-independence Sri Lanka).   
While studying at Ananda College, Colombo, he began collecting stamps as a schoolboy hobby. As his knowledge of the subject grew, he realised that Victorian Era stamps are hard to find in Sri Lanka and expensive.   

In London, he began frequenting auctions and was able to buy Victorian Era philatelic items related to Sri Lanka at bargain prices. He discovered the highly valuable ‘Dull Rose’ stamp in one such lot. The Dull Rose is the  postage stamp that is considered to be the rarest and most valuable stamp issued in the country.
He found out that most of the ‘British Ceylon’ stamps were in the UK, not here. He began buying them as much as he could, with the intention of establishing a Victorian Era philatelic collection in Sri Lanka.   
Dulshan has first-class honours in engineering. But his hobby seems to take priority over everything else. Ceylon fiscal stamps are his pet research area (Revenue and telegraph stamps of the Queen Victoria era). These include foreign bills, stamp duties, judicial, warehouse warrants, Receipt stamps and telegraphs.   
There have been dire predictions that philately will die out in a changing world. But Dulshan sees the future differently.   
Digital technology may replace the postage stamp in the foreseeable future, in the same way, it is used to send parcels in the UK.   

"He found out that most of the ‘British Ceylon’ stamps were in the UK, not here. He began buying them as much as he could, with the intention of establishing a Victorian Era philatelic collection in Sri Lanka."

The process is as follows – the weight is measured, the payment is made online, the bar code is printed and pasted on the parcel, which is then dropped into the depot or courier service; finally, at the sorting office the barcode is scanned and sent to the relevant area for distribution.   
The same thing can happen with the postage stamp. But that won’t mean the extinction of philatelic science. On the contrary, the adhesive postage stamp would become a sought-after collector’s item, giving the hobby a new boost.   
He is the author of two books in philately – Ellawela’s Ceylon/Sri Lanka Stamp Catalogue (1857-1948) and The world’s first postage stamps issued in philatelic history. He is also a collector of Victorian memorabilia such as ceramics.   

The author says that the first and bigger book (Ellawela’s Ceylon/Sri Lanka Stamp Catalogue) is the first book of its kind published in Sri Lanka with correct colour variations, specimen stamps and Gutter Pairs. This book contains stamps from the Queen Victoria era (1857) to King George VI (1948).It contains too, some very rare specimen stamps and Ceylon Gutter pairs, altogether some 635 stamps from 1857 to 1947.
The author is offering to conduct free lectures on philately for schools.

Two Israelis shot dead by Palestinian in West Bank, army says

Israeli army calls shooting by 23-year-old at industrial zone a terrorist attack

Palestinians wait at an Israeli checkpoint near the scene of a shooting attack at Barkan industrial zone in the West Bank. Photograph: Majdi Mohammed/AP

Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem-Sun 7 Oct 2018

A shooting by a Palestinian at an industrial zone for a West Bank settlement has killed two Israelis and wounded another, the army said.

An Israeli Defence Forces spokesman, Jonathan Conricus, said the 23-year-old Palestinian had worked in the Barkan industrial zone where the attack took place, in the occupied West Bank.

Conricus called it a terrorist attack but said other unspecified factors were involved.

The Palestinian used a homemade gun in the attack, known locally as a Carlo, according to Conricus. He said it appeared to be a “lone-wolf attack” and that security forces were searching for the suspected perpetrator.

Magen David Adom emergency medical services said their medics had entered a building at Barkan where they found a man and a woman without pulse, and pronounced them dead.

A woman aged 54 was also found wounded, the medical services said.

Speaking at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting, Benjamin Netanyahu called the shooting “a very severe terror attack”. The prime minister said he was certain the perpetrator would be caught and brought to justice.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group called the attack a “natural response” to Israeli crimes in Gaza, Jerusalem and Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin village in the West Bank slated for demolition.

The industrial zone is located next to the Israeli settlement Barkan and near the settlement of Ariel in the north of the West Bank.

Palestinians work side by side with Israelis in the industrial zone.

Gaza “laboratory” boosts profits of Israel’s war industry

Gaza functions as a live testing area for Israeli weapons manufacturers-Mohammed ZaanounActiveStills

Gabriel Schivone- 5 October 2018

After exploring the vast surveillance regime along the US-Mexico border and finding Israeli systems installed at every turn, the author Todd Miller and I were drawn to investigate Israel as the largest homeland security industry in the world. Israel’s arms industry is twice the size of its US counterpart in exports per capita and employs a percentage of the national workforce double that of the US or France, two of the top global arms exporters.

During our 2016 trip, it didn’t take us long to zero in on some of Israel’s most enterprising industrialists who told us how they do it while controlling an area roughly the size of New Jersey.

On our first day there, while attending an annual drone conference, we met Guy Keren, the middle-aged and charismatic CEO of an Israeli homeland security firm called iHLS. Keren’s iHLS had organized the drone conference.

Several days later, we sat down with Keren in iHLS’s then brand new headquarters in the Mediterranean coastal city of Raanana, known for its high-tech industrial park. We spoke to him in the fishbowl conference room above his company’s computer lab.

Below us, gaggles of junior technologists clacked eagerly at their keyboards. This Lighthouse complex, Keren said, could host up to 150 startups.

Keren explained how the Gaza Strip affords Israel – and iHLS – a competitive advantage over other countries because of the real-time opportunities to test new products year-round. Israel has earned the moniker of “start-up nation” among business elites around the world.

Human Petri dish

We asked Keren why it is that Israel’s technology industry performs at an astonishing level of productivity, especially in the military sector.

“Because we are checking our systems live,” he said. “We are in a war situation all the time. If it’s not happening right now, it will happen in a month.”

“It’s not [just] about building the technology” and having to wait years to try out the systems, Keren told us. The secret of the Israeli tech sector’s success, he explained, lay in “operating the technology faster than any other country in live situations.”

Keren isn’t the first to make this connection. Gaza is widely perceived as a human Petri dish – to improve killing capacity and cultivate pacification methods – among the movers and shakers in the Israeli high-tech and military sectors.

When Roei Elkabetz, a brigadier general in the Israeli army, addressed a 2012 convention of specialists in border control technology in El Paso, Texas, he clicked onscreen a photo of the wall, built by Magal Systems, that isolates Gaza from the outside world.

“We have learned lots from Gaza,” he said. “It’s a great laboratory.”

Leila Stockmarr, a Danish scholar, has attended the same kinds of Israeli security expos as Todd Miller and I. “As most of the company representatives I interviewed imparted, it is central to Israel’s cutting-edge military and policing capacities that new pieces of technology are developed and tested in a concrete situation of controlling a population, such as in the Gaza Strip,” she writes in her 2016 essay, “Beyond the Laboratory Thesis: Gaza as Transmission Belt for War and Security Technology.”

Fine tuning in real time

As one representative of a major security company told Stockmarr: “Once an order has been made by the Israeli military, and after initial deployment in the field, the company’s technical departments are often contacted with demands for corrections and tweaks based on experience. Thus every time the military uses Israeli HLS [homeland security] technology, it automatically tests it. Companies benefit greatly from this and every time a new order is placed, this feedback from the battlefield is injected to improve the process of tendering and guarantee quality and effectiveness.”

Unusually for a country’s arms industry, Israel has a laboratory in a territory it occupies – Gaza – very close to the production facilities for its weapons and surveillance technology. Engagement in the Gaza Strip, as Stockmarr noted in 2016, helps companies generate and refine new ideas and fine tune product lines.

In April 2018, Saar Koursh, then the CEO of Magal Systems – a contender for President Donald Trump’s proposed additions to surveillance infrastructure on the US-Mexico border – was even reported as having described Gaza as a “showroom” for the company’s “smart fences” whose customers “appreciate that the products are battle-tested.”

Stockmarr notes that Palestinians in Gaza themselves play a role in the testing phase, performing a “crucial part” of this homeland security industry cycle: “In order to evaluate a given product, the systematic inclusion of the targeted populations’ responses to new security technologies are crucial for foreign buyers.”

Plenty of global customers are sold on the idea, at least if the profit margin is anything to go by. “Magal’s US traded shares jumped in late 2016 as Trump talked about a Mexican border wall,” according to Bloomberg.

And during the first month of Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza, the share price of Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems, increased by 6.1 percent. More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in that attack.

A never-ending experiment

This year, since the Great March of Return protests began on 30 March, Israel’s latest line of crowd-control drones to make their Gaza debut include the appropriately named Sea of Tears drone – a commercially-produced Chinese camera drone modified by the Israeli police to discharge tear gas onto the human throngs below – and the Shocko Drone that unleashes “skunk water” on protesters.

The Gaza health ministry has observed over the past six months the human effects of Israel’s “butterfly bullets” – which explode on impact. These are among the deadliest bullets Israel has ever used.

Doctors Without Borders personnel treated butterfly bullet-like injuries in 50 percent of the more than 500 patients they treated during the protests.

Many of the protesters who weren’t killed outright were severely injured, earning butterfly bullets a new place in the Israeli military’s long history of shoot-to-maim practices, which Jasbir K. Puar details in her book, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability.

As of 1 October, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in the Great March of Return, including more than 30 children. More than 10,000 have been injured, half of them by live fire.

Meanwhile, back at the Raanana industrial park, Keren and his staff in the air-conditioned offices of iHLS are busy developing the next players in Israel’s arms industry, updating their systems and expanding their profit margins.

Gabriel M. Schivone is a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona and author of the forthcoming bookMaking the New “Illegal”: How Decades of US Involvement in Central America Triggered the Modern Wave of Immigration (Prometheus Books).

Wife of Israeli prime minister goes on trial for fraud

Sara, wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arrives to a court hearing in the fraud trial against her, at the Magistrate court in Jerusalem October 7, 2018. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Maayan Lubell-OCTOBER 7, 2018

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, appeared in court on Sunday for the first hearing in the fraud trial against her, in which she is alleged to have misused state funds in ordering catered meals.

According to the indictment, Sara Netanyahu, along with a government employee, fraudulently obtained from the state more than $100,000 for hundreds of meals supplied by restaurants, bypassing regulations that prohibit the practice if a cook is employed at home.

Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing.

She was charged in June with fraud and breach of trust and of aggravated fraudulent receipt of goods. If convicted, Sara Netanyahu could face up to five years in prison.

Looking tense, Netanyahu made no comment to reporters who had packed the tiny courtroom. She sat on a bench behind her lawyers.

“Can we ask them to move the cameras away?”, she asked the lawyer for the other defendant, who replied: “You’re used to it.”

“Not like this,” Netanyahu answered. She shook her head as the prosecutor described the gravity of her case.

The session, however, dealt mainly with procedural matters. The judge set a meeting with the prosecutors and the defendants’ lawyers for Nov. 13 in which he said he hoped all sides could narrow their differences “or even resolve the case”.

But a settlement at this stage appears remote because the prosecutors would likely demand Netanyahu plead guilty, something her lawyer has ruled out. She was not asked at the hearing to enter a plea.

Netanyahu’s lawyers contend the indictment does not hold up because the regulations for ordering meals were legally invalid and a household employee had requisitioned the food despite Netanyahu’s protestations.

The prime minister, who himself is embroiled in corruption investigations, has called the allegations against his wife absurd and unfounded.

Sara Netanyahu, 59, has inspired a multitude of headlines in the past over what family spokesmen call an undeserved reputation for imperiousness.

In 2017 the Netanyahus won a libel suit against an Israeli journalist who said Sara once kicked her husband out of their car during an argument. In 2016, a Jerusalem labor court ruled that she had insulted and raged at household staff in the prime minister’s official residence.

So far, Sara’s present legal woes have not politically damaged her husband, now in his fourth term as Israel’s leader and riding high in opinion polls despite the allegations against him.

 

Accusations he has made against the Israeli media of orchestrating a politically motivated witch-hunt against him and his wife appear to have struck a chord with his right-wing voter base, which has rallied in support of the 68-year-old leader.

Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Dale Hudson

Jamal Khashoggi: A different sort of Saudi

The journalist thought that, wherever he was, it was his duty to speak out and call for reform in Saudi Arabia. He paid with his life

David Hearst

Sunday 7 October 2018 

This is the darkest day of my time as editor of Middle East Eye. It should not be. Jamal Khashoggi is not the first Saudi exile to be killed. No one today remembers Nassir al-Sa'id, who disappeared from Beirut in 1979 and has never been seen since.

Prince Sultan bin Turki was kidnapped from Geneva in 2003. Prince Turki bin Bandar Al Saud, who applied for asylum in France and disappeared in 2015. Maj Gen Ali al-Qahtani, an officer in the Saudi National Guard, who died while still in custody, showed signs of abuse including a neck that appeared twisted and a badly swollen body. And there are many, many others.

Thousands languish in jail. Human rights activists branded as terrorists are on death row on charges that Human Rights Watch says "do not resemble recognised crimes". I know of one business leader who was strung upside down, naked and tortured. Nothing has been heard of him since. In Saudi, you are one social media post away from death.

A Saudi plane dropped a US-made bomb on a school bus in Yemen killing 40 boys and 11 adults on a school trip. Death is delivered by remote control, but no Western ally or arms supplier of Saudi demands an explanation. No contracts are lost. No stock market will decline the mouth-watering prospect of the largest initial public offering in history.  What difference does one more dead Saudi make?

As a journalist he hated humbug. The motto in Arabic on his Twitter page roughly translates as: "Say what you have to say and walk away."

And yet Khashoggi's death is different. It's right up close. One minute he is sitting across the table at breakfast, in a creased shirt, apologising in his mumbled, staccato English for giving you his cold. The next minute, a Turkish government contact tells you what they did to his body inside the consulate in Istanbul.

Last Saturday, Khashoggi told a Memo (Middle East Monitor) conference in London's Euston Road that the kingdom realised it had gone too far in promoting President Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century" by promoting Abu Dis as the future capital of a Palestinian State, and backed away from what is proving to be a burning issue in Saudi.

"This proves a very important point. It is only the Palestinians who will decide, not the Saudis, not the Egyptians. No matter how much they control the payroll of the Palestinian government, no-one can decide for them," he said. A week later, his voice is no more.

Electronic insects

The Arab world calls them "electronic insects," the trolls the Saudis deploy to create a blizzard of false news around any one of the regime's routine crimes. Even before news of Khashoggi's presumed murder, they were gloating about the fate of a man they considered a traitor.

Supporters of Khashoggi stand outside Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate demanding his freedom (AFP)

"You leave your country arrogantly ... we return you humiliated," Faisal Al Shahrani tweeted. One pro-regime troll did not even bother to disguise what had happened at the consulate. Prince Khalid Bin Abdullah Al Said sent a message to another Saudi dissident: "do not you want to bypass the Saudi Embassy? They want to talk to you face to face."

But Khashoggi's tweets and articles went completely over their grubby heads. He was concerned about absolutes like truth, democracy, freedom. Khashoggi always considered himself a journalist, never an advocate nor an activist. "I am Saudi, but a different one," he wrote.

As a journalist he hated humbug. The motto in Arabic on his Twitter page roughly translates as: "Say what you have to say and walk away."

He did just that to the fury of those who wanted to shut him up. And it's clear from his tweets why they went to such desperate lengths to do so.

He laughed at the idea that Saudi Arabia under Mohammed bin Salman was fighting for "moderate Islam".

Khashoggi never really talked to me about the danger he was in. As an analyst he hated hypotheticals. 

"Saudi Arabia, which is today fighting political Islam, is the mother and father of political Islam ... the Kingdom was founded on the idea of political Islam, to start with," he tweeted.

Khashoggi was reviled for being sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. "Tweet about freedom and you are a Brotherhood member. Tweet about rights, and you are a Brotherhood member. Tweet about your homeland, and you are a Brotherhood member. Tweet about power-sharing and dignity, and you are a Brotherhood member. Reject despotism, and of course, you are a Brotherhood member. Tweet about Gaza or Syria, and you are definitely a Brotherhood member. To those who hate the Brotherhood, I'd say you have attributed to them all the virtues and have therefore made them the favour of the best promotion."

Khashoggi was an unreconstructed democrat: "Only with freedom of choice can religiosity reach the soul and lift the observant high up."

He was unsparing on the issue that caused his final rift with Riyadh: Trump. "From time to time, Trump tweets that he is protecting us and that we must pay for such protection to continue. He protects us from what? Or he is protecting who? I believe that the greatest threat facing the Gulf countries and their oil is a president such as Trump who sees nothing in us apart from the oil wells," Khashoggi wrote.

Khashoggi was right. None of what was about to happen to him could have happened without Trump.

On three separate occasions recently, Trump has gone out of his way to humiliate the Kingdom, simply because he believes he can. No forum is too public. Trump told a campaign rally in Southaven, Mississippi: "We protect Saudi Arabia. Would you say they're rich? And I love the King ... King Salman but I said 'King, we're protecting you. You might not be there for two weeks without us. You have to pay for your military'." 

Khashoggi was living in self-imposed exile in Washington (Supplied)

In return, bin Salman said: "I love working with him." But it is all too clear why. He would not have been crown prince and one step away from the throne were it not for Trump. Trump knows this and therefore thinks he can say anything he likes. Trump is the bully, the master. And his slave can do whatever he likes, to whomever he likes, even to a journalist embedded in Washington, because ultimately bin Salman knows that Trump has his back.

Khashoggi never really talked to me about the danger he was in. As an analyst he hated hypotheticals. He knew he had passed the point of no return with this regime and that he could never go back, and he set about creating a new life, a new job as a Washington Post columnist in DC.

But he thought too that, whereever he was, it was his duty to continue to speak out.

"The Arab Spring did not destroy ... those who fought it and conspire against it are the destroyers, otherwise you, young man, would be by now enjoying its breeze, freedom, tolerance, jobs and welfare," he wrote.

My bet is that nothing will happen as a result of Khashoggi's murder. Bin Salman has calculated that Turkey is too weak to reply, with something of the order of $700bn in public and private debts which have to be repaid by a falling lira.

The millions of pounds the Saudi prince has just paid to PR companies to burnish his image in the West as "a reformer in a hurry" have just been trashed by a murder that comes straight out of a scene of Pulp Fiction. Maybe he too will pay a price, when he absorbs the reaction of the media in Washington. Americans who cared nothing for Saudi Arabia now know who Jamal Khashoggi is.

"If a prince can pay $1 billion in return for his freedom, how much will a prisoner of conscience have to pay? How much will we all pay to get our freedom?" Khashoggi tweeted.

We now know the price one humble journalist had to pay so that Saudis can one day get their basic human rights. He paid with his life. May he rest in peace.

- David Hearst is editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He was chief foreign leader writer of The Guardian, former Associate Foreign Editor, European Editor, Moscow Bureau Chief, European Correspondent, and Ireland Correspondent. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Photo: Khashoggi had set about creating a new life, with a new job as a Washington Post columnist in DC (AFP)

STATEMENT ON ARREST OF JOURNALISTS

The Editors Guild of India, Human Rights Watch and other civil society organizations have expressed concerns about the freedom of the media

 2018-10-06

To mark the 20th anniversary of the 1998 Colombo Declaration on Media Freedom and Social Responsibility, THE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM unequivocally condemns the arrest and continued detention of Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam, the issuing of a non-bailable arrest warrant to Pakistani journalist Cyril Almeida, the conviction of two Myanmar journalists, U Wa Lone and U Kyaw Soe Oo, and the enforced disappearance of Maldivian blogger Ahmed Rilwan. 

 

Maldivian blogger Ahmed Rilwan

Cyril Almeida, who works at Dawn newspaper, is being hauled up for an interview with Nawaz Sharif, in which the former Prime Minister made remarks that were interpreted in India as a tacit admission that the Pakistan security establishment was behind the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The warrant against Almeida is for a summons to appear before the Lahore High Court, which is hearing a case of treason against Sharif. 

Across the region, journalists are being intimidated, harassed and arrested just for being journalists. The trend must not be left unchallenged. Freedom of the media is embedded in the concept of democratic freedoms

The 63-year-old Shahidul Alam, an internationally reputed photojournalist, was taken into custody on August 5 this year under the draconian Information Technology Act for “damaging the image of the nation.” He is alleged to have done this by giving an interview to Al Jazeera on the strike by students in Dhaka following a bus accident. There appears to be a deliberate attempt to keep him inside a jail, given the fact that at least twice his bail applications were the last item on the agenda – and was not taken up on two separate occasions. 

The two Myanmar journalists, working for Reuters, were on trial for almost nine months in a case that even a police officer, testifying before the court, said was a set-up. At the time of their arrest, the two were working on an investigation that revealed that the Myanmar shot dead 10 Rohingya in cold blood at a village in northern Rakhine. Their conviction highlights the perilous conditions under which Myanmar’s journalists work. 

Bangladeshi Photographer Shahidul Alam arrested

Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla, a popular Maldivian blogger, disappeared in 2014. President Yameen Abdulla, who just lost an election, showed no urgency in getting to the truth of the disappearance, and this has had a chilling effect on the media in Maldives. 

The Editors Guild of India, Human Rights Watch and other civil society organizations have expressed concerns about the freedom of the media. 
Across the region, journalists are being intimidated, harassed and arrested just for being journalists. The trend must not be left unchallenged. Freedom of the media is embedded in the concept of democratic freedoms. This Symposium demands the release of all journalists held under various pretexts across the region, and urges the governments to recommit themselves to media freedom as an inalienable part of democratic norms and values.   

Pakistani journalist Cyril Almeida

Are farmers’ Agitation in India Justified

While farmers’ suicides are regrettable and shake the conscience of the nation, the fact is that hundreds of suicides from those who are not involved in farming activity have also been taking place all over India.

by N.S.Venkataraman-Oct 7, 2018

( October 7, 2018, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Indian Agriculture sector employs more than 50% of the total workforce in India and contributes 17 to 18 % of country’s GDP. 70 per cent of it’s rural households still depend primarily on agriculture for their survival..

India has been witnessing repeated scenes of thousands of farmers organizing themselves and marching on the streets protesting against the “ injustice meted out to them” and sometimes indulging in violent activities demanding loan waivers , rise in the level of minimum support price etc.

Traditionally, farmers are held in high esteem in India, though this scenario may not have benefited the farming community economically. When the farmers protest, large section of country men tend to support them emotionally, as farming is considered as the noblest profession in India. No government in India can afford to displease the farming community when the demands are raised, as agriculture is considered as ` the soul of India. Whatever the agitational approach adopted by the farmers, if any government would criticise them, certainly that government would be voted out of power.

However, as the farmers’ agitations have become too frequent and farmers indulge in all forms of protest such as pouring thousands of litres of milk on the streets, throwing tons of potatoes and tomatoes on the road, it is high time to introspect as to whether the farmers’ protests are justified and their agitational approach are needed.

Government’s response :

During the farmers’ agitation, it is now common to hear that the recommendations of Swaminathan Commission on agricultural reforms ,which was submitted in the form of five reports between 2004 and 2006 ( more than ten years back) should be implemented in letter and spirit .

Swaminathan Commission has made many suggestions relating to land reform, irrigation reform, productivity growth etc.

The fact is that the governments during the last several years have been striving to implement various meaningful measures to strengthen the agriculture sector. Most of the proactive measures initiated by the governments broadly follow the recommendations made by Swaminathan Commission .

Many schemes implemented by the governments to support the farming community include the issue of kisan card, crop insurance, free electricity for conducting agricultural operations, promotion of e commerce to enable smooth agri products marketing and eliminate the middle men, providing fund support for agri related diversirfied activities such as goat rearing etc. In a vast country like India where millions of farmers are involved , it certainly takes time to implement proactive measures to the satisfaction of all concerned . Certainly, it is work in progress with benefits steadily reaching the farmers , though not with the speed that the farmers expect.

Of course,. there are some suggestions relating to land reforms, where Swaminathan Commission has said that top 10% of the farmers hold 54% of the land ownership and the commission wanted the land ownership in the country to be redistributed in favour of the poor farmers . Such suggestions are hard to implement in practice . A few decades back, when Kerala government tried to implement land reforms to shift the ownership pattern in favour of the agricultural workers by adopting coercive methods ,when E.M.S. Namboodripad was the Chief Minister , it only resulted in violence and heart burn leading to further class conflicts and bitterness in the agricultural farms and in the society.

Who are the farmers ?

While discussing the farmers protests, one has to think as to which segment of the farmers are protesting and agitating. Today, the farmers can be divided into three segments namely absentee land owners who are employed elsewhere and give their agriculture land on lease ; the other type of farmers who employ labour and never physically work themselves on the field and the third segment of agricultural workers who are known as the tillers and mostly unskilled and consist of both men and women who physically work in the agri field getting daily wages and without job security or any long term benefits.

The most depressed section of farming community are the tillers and not the agri land owners. These tillers are certainly not in significant number amongst the crowd of protesting farmers and such tillers are millions in number and no one talks about their grievances during the farmers’ agitation.

Why farmers’ suicides ?:

The entire country writhes in agony when news spread about the suicides by farmers due to distress conditions. Many investigations have led to the conclusion that farmers are led to commit suicides mostly due to debt burden and harassment by private money lenders.

The fact is that there are many government schemes to provide loans to the farmers for agricultural operations at very low interest rate . In most cases, farmers take loan from private money lenders at exhorbitant interest rates not to meet their need of money for farming operations but for other reasons such as may be towards medical treatment, education for their children, expenses on social functions etc. for which, the loans are not available from commercial banks.

While farmers’ suicides are regrettable and shake the conscience of the nation, the fact is that hundreds of suicides from those who are not involved in farming activity have also been taking place all over India.

If economic distress could be considered as adequate justification for committing suicides, then not only farmers but hundreds of other people belonging to other areas of activities can be included in this category.

Knee jerk reaction :.

When farmers protest , the governments become panicky and in knee jerk reaction, it concedes several of their demands including massive loan waivers , increasing the minimum support price etc. without analyzing the financial implications for the government and national economy, in it’s anxiety to buy peace with the farmers,.

Of course, the farmers are adopting the same strategies and tactics as adopted by the central and state government employees , bank staff and others and even government teachers , who agitate frequently and bring the government to it’s knees and get their demands met, though they are all much better off than the farmers. Farmers ask that when the government treat it’s employees with kid glove, why not it extend similar treatment to the farmers also.

Need fundamental solutions :

No doubt , the farming community is vulnerable to several factors beyond their control such as excess rain fall or drought conditions, pest attacks etc.

The farmers do have genuine grievance that unlike the much pampered government employees , bank staff and other organized employees , who have assured income and regular increments irrespective of their efficiency and performance, the farmers are left to themselves to suffer. Most crucial role of farming community in the economy and welfare of the country should be duly recognized, appreciated and rewarded. But, then , to achieve this end, meaningful and fundamental solutions are called for.

Realising the importance of agriculture sector, Prime Minister Modi has announced that the government would strive to double the income of the farmers by 2022. While the Prime Minister has taken several initiatives, farmers seem to be skeptical whether their income would really double by 2022.

Several suggestions made by Swaminathan Commission are appropriate and number of suggestions have been implemented earnestly by the governments. Of course, there are pitfalls due to poor efficiency and corruption in the government machinery, exploitation of the middle men etc.

It is high time that Prof. M.S.Swaminathan should be requested to revisit the recommendations of Swaminathan commission submitted more than ten years back review the progress and modify and improve the recommendations in tune with the trend in the present days and rising expectations amongst cross section of people in India.