The web at 30

Sanjana Hattotuwa-March 16, 2019,

Our wait for a telephone was just a few years. At the time, in the early 90s, we knew of families who were on a waiting list for close upon a decade. I was at school when Sri Lanka Telecom had installed the rotary device. Like the first mobile phones from Motorola to hit Sri Lanka, the unit weighed about the same as and was more akin to gym equipment than anything remotely akin to what is today considered a phone. I was enthralled, and dialled, for no reason than to just use the telephone, a friend I had seen not more than an hour ago. He lived in Mount Lavinia. We both had five-digit phone numbers. We were both excited to talk at length about nothing of consequence before my father subtley reminded me that the call was expensive. It was the first time I learnt of peak and off-peak charges. It wasn’t yet possible to just dial an international number. That required prior approval and an up-front payment, in addition to hundreds of rupees a minute, depending on the country dialled. There was no Internet. There was no web. Smartphones hadn’t been invented. Social media hadn’t been invented. I didn’t own or even have access to a computer. It was a purely analogue world, with the only sign of digital made by Casio and strapped to my wrist. The few conversations I had, at the time, were always prefaced by a few minutes of sheer wonder that the call connected, followed by amazement we were talking over a telephone.

The godayata magic moments continued after I was given my first PC, with access to what at the time was a web just six years old. Before this, and even around this time, there were several bulletin board systems that Sri Lankans had set up which I had heard about, but never once accessed. The entire processing power of that first computer is now exceeded, many times over, by the phone in my pocket. Back then, the promise of the web – to connect people, no matter where they were geographically located – was fresh, wonderful and exciting especially for someone who had never left the country or travelled much within. I was drawn to the early Yahoo and Alta Vista. My father started what at the time was a very expensive subscription to the British PC Magazine, which every month, bundled a CD-ROM full of content ranging from videos and photos to trial programmes (Shareware). This was also a time in my life where I was an avid gamer, going for first-person shoot ‘em ups and flight simulations (Quake, Duke Nukem 3D and Super Eurofighter 2000 were firm favourites) overrole-playing or strategy games.

I got into dissembling my computer and putting it back together again, in the process learning about integrated circuits, motherboards, electronics and how everything worked. If something worked perfectly, I broke it, but only to figure out why things ran without a hitch. But it was the web that I kept returning to the most. Having taught myself the HTML – I set out to build my own websites and hosted the first on Geocities. I cannot recall anything close to the toxicity now taken for granted in any social media platform. I signed up with Hotmail, where I was delighted to get all of 2Mb as storage. A few years later, just before I left for University in the late 90s, I signed up with Yahoo, which at the time offered twice as much storage. In Delhi, I used ramshackle computers in cybercafes to access Yahoo – almost exclusively to write to my parents. Occasionally, and as a treat to myself, I used to go to the British Council in New Delhi and pay dearly, for half an hour, to use a computer (Compaq’s, if I recall correctly) that looked clean, smelt fresh and worked without frequent crashes. I still have those emails, with those two accounts. But for Archchi and Seeya, I still used to handwrite and post aerogrammes.

It was not until 2004, with the introduction of Gmail featuring at the time a mind-boggling 1Gb of storage, that emails weren’t something one sent and almost immediately deleted. I recall how at the time, the few invitations one got to share with others to join Gmail became a high valued currency of their own. In Australia and doing my Masters at the time, I recall a friend who even inveigled a date based on the promise of sharing an invite to Gmail if it went well. The web by the mid-2000s was already very different from what it was in the 90s. Netscape and Microsoft had had their browser wars. Chrome hadn’t yet been developed. I preferred Netscape, but everything at the University was designed to run only on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The iPhone was still many years away, but I had a Nokia phone that could take photos and video – the sort of pixelated junk that today would be considered art, if any of it survived. I got into blogging around this time, joining a small community on Kottu.org – a blog aggregator that is around even today.

By 2008, based on a hunch that mobile phones would in years to come dominate access to web content, I created the country’s first Facebook page for a media platform and also mobile-specific versions of the site. A YouTube video of my old Nokia 3110c accessing a text-only version of a website on its tiny, low-resolution colour screen never fails to bring a smile to my face. We have come a very long way technically but regressed in the tone, timbre and tenor of public communications, conversations and content creation.

Though often asked, I don’t quite know what the next 30 years of the web holds. If the past three decades have been anything to go by, it is an entirely futile task to envision today what connectivity and digital content will be like in 2049. If I’m around then, I will miss even more the sound of modems connecting to the internet – a cacophony of communications protocols agreeing to be nice to each other, rendered loudly through both a tiny and tinny speaker that made it impossible to connect on the sly, or quickly. I will still remember my parents asking me to disconnect from the Internet so that they could make a call. I will remember, but not miss the relatives who said they could never call my parents, because the phone seemed to be always engaged. I will sorely miss the indestructibility of old Nokia phones, which connected me through what are now rudimentary but far more meaningful ways to those I really wanted to be in touch with. I already miss – as I am sure most connected to the web in the 90s also do – the spirit of a large, essentially welcoming community, collegiality and an essential decency on it. The web then was entirely peripheral to life, society and politics, which is perhaps why it attracted only hobbyists, geeks, the very young or a much older demographic.

The creator of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is rightfully concerned that his creation has transmogrified in ways he never imagined or intended. Last week, celebrating the first three decades of the web, he issued a manifesto around how things must change. It is unclear if he will succeed because what was at first technical, with high barriers to access and mostly peripheral to socio-political life and civic identity, is now central to it. The web Berners-Lee created really only exists as a network protocol.His original creation is now indistinguishable from what frames and fuels politics, elections, society, institutions, identity, communications, relations and community. To be alive, for billions, is to be connected.The next 30 years will see the effects of all this, for better and worse.

#trashtag – a trend for change

The #trashtag challenge has gone viral and is raising awareness on the current waste crisis 

Friday, 15 March 2019 

Recently a new social media challenge has emerged where in various countries individuals or groups are implementing small waste-related activities and take pictures of the area before and after they have cleaned it. The #trashtag challenge has gone viral and simply by looking at the number of people who share information related to this subject, one can assume this is developing into a global trend.

Where we had all sorts of social media challenges throughout the past years, more or less “useful” for the planet, this one seems to be something which has the potential for raising awareness on various aspects of our current waste crisis. First it shows that all over the world, communities are facing the issue of polluted habitats; second again globally more and more citizens are being disturbed by pollution; and third and maybe most importantly, more and more people are taking action – individually.

“It is just one straw,” said one million people. Similarly “it is just one area I clean,” said one million people maybe? Each one of us has responsibility to be a sustainable citizen, no matter which roles we take on professionally and privately.

Too often the assumption that “only one” cannot change anything, cannot do anything, cannot have the power to influence sustainability. Well this we have been confirmed more and more in the recent years, is a false statement. It is merely a perceived impotence looking at the unsustainable developments which are taking place in front of our eyes day by day.

Sometimes these developments seem so complex, large and absolute, that one feels frustrated and tends to “give up”. But then we see that even a school girl like Greta Thunberg, by being committed in raising awareness about our climate situation, can attract global attention and finds followers all over the world.

Each and every one can contribute to change. “Be the change you want to see in the world” by Mahatma Gandhi is probably one of the most used phrases in this regard, but it also expresses the core of what I try to express here. One person can only start with oneself. By living and implementing a certain type of lifestyle, others will follow. It won’t be easy always, however it is the most efficient way I have experienced to bring change.

A country is the sum of its people. Surely there are imbalances and inequalities and many power relations which make it seem that some parts of society have no influence. I am a strong advocate of equality, however I would like to challenge the perception of impotence of the seemingly powerless. A forest is the sum of its flora and fauna. There might be big trees and small ones, there might be large animals and tiny ones. However the ecosystem needs each and any of them to survive and strife – even the smallest components such as bacteria.

While I understand that there are parts of society who have almost no choice in where they can receive their daily products from, those parts of society who waste most are also considered those who have a choice. Each one of us can refuse a plastic straw, can bring a reusable bag to the shop, can clean up a small area which is polluted, can hand out reusable cups and plates during a get together, can reuse and exchange items which are not needed for a certain purpose anymore – the list is long. These are small things we can do, which will create large scale change if we all do it.

For sure, we need policies as well and implementation of these policies is crucial. However we can’t wait for this. We also should not excuse our behaviour and point fingers at those who do not live up to their responsibility. What is the difference for one individual’s behaviour of others do it or not? It won’t change at all. If I give the best I can, even if others do it, I cannot give more than the best I can, right? I might be more motivated, however the situation we live in globally, should be motivation enough.

We need a better waste collection and recycling system, for sure, however the lack of this should not paralyse us. Clean ups are not on top of the priority list for change, we are well aware of that, however they are needed. The most important for us as consumers is to refuse! Refuse single use plastic, refuse unsustainable products, refuse to join behaviour which has a negative affect onto the planet.

Another aspect which can go hand in hand with individual responsibility is to raise awareness on the sustainable behaviour someone is involved in. Exactly to motivate others, to join those who are already involved in it and need some fresh support as well and also, to highlight the possibility to change to those who are still completely unaware. In this regard I find it crucial to include corporates into the activities in a way to raise awareness on the origin of the waste which is collected. Leaders of companies are citizens and consumers as well and thus should live up to their responsibility in society.

If everyone in whatever role and position a person is, can take on the responsibility of being a sustainable citizen, this world would be a different place. A long way to go? Maybe, but observing the current trend of activities around the globe, maybe the way is shorter than we think!

Israeli arms industry’s “great leap” in Central America

Israeli arms sales to Central America are soaring as Israel takes advantage of Donald Trump’s presidency to deepen its ties to countries like Honduras and Guatemala.Newscom

Gabriel Schivone -15 March 2019

Halfway through Donald Trump’s presidency, Israel’s decades-long role in Central America is scaling new heights of military and political influence.

Israel has wasted no time securing valuable arms deals in this part of the world, deals that now account for nearly 20 percent of its arms exports. This scale of activity hasn’t occurred since the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s, when far-right rulers in Central America circled the wagons.

Tacit US approval for the purchase of such weapons has ensured Honduran and Guatemalan support at the United Nations for Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The changeover from Barack Obama’s two terms as president to Trump has heralded a resurgence of policy trends among the US, Israel and US-dominated Central American countries reminiscent of the transitional Carter-Reagan years.

The migrant caravans in fall and winter, meanwhile, have focused attention on the plight of Central Americans fleeing three countries ravaged by decades of US intervention: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Sparse attention has been placed on how the caravans travel across a more than 2,000 mile Israeli-exported military and homeland security terrain that has expanded across Central America since the 1980s, escalating after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US.

The monitored terrain now covers all of Mexico as well as up through, and beyond, the US-Mexico border. Israeli boundary enforcement and surveillance products are deployed along the migrant and refugee trail, the subject of this author’s next book that traces Israeli involvement throughout the international regions between Central America and the US-Mexico border.

As the regional conditions that prompted the caravans’ repeated departures demonstrate no signs of quieting, the Israeli arms industry interests in the region will likely grow.

But while the military-security dimension is both Israeli and American, the US asserts ownership over the geography. In 2012, Alan Bersin, Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection under Barack Obama, declared that “Guatemala’s border with Chiapas [Mexico] is now our southern border.”

With millions of dollars in US military aid poured into Mexican immigration enforcement practices, “Mexico is doing the dirty work, the very dirty work, for the United States,” observed Franciscan Friar Tomás González Castillo.

Castillo runs the “72” migrant shelter to aid Central Americans desperate to cross Mexico, which acts, spatially speaking, so much like a vertical border of death (rather than a horizontal one) that Mexican human rights advocates call the entire country “a graveyard for migrants.”

In effect, with its security aid utilized at all junctions, Israel has contributed to the US Border Patrol’s strategic “layered approach” of ratcheting up Mexico’s proxy enforcement measures.
This is the border-bolstered world that Trump has inherited and is now pushing to enlarge.

Trump’s Israeli “deputy”

By the end of Obama’s tenure, Israel’s burgeoning presence in Central America was in the cards. Just ahead of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, historian Greg Grandin, writing in The Nation, advised those watching events to the south: “If you want to know how Donald Trump’s Latin American policy will play – and how he might deputize Israel to conduct a good bit of it – keep an eye on Honduras.”

The 2016 $200 million Israel-Honduras security cooperation agreement that Grandin flags in his report, has continued to evolve and expand since it was signed. At that time, it was lauded as the Honduran military’s “great leap” forward by Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.

Obama’s outgoing administration had scaled back some forms of military collaboration in its last years in office after Honduras overplayed its hand by using US-supplied weapons to down civilian airplanes suspected of carrying illegal drugs.

The US rebuke, minor though it was, prompted Honduras to look elsewhere for military assistance. Israel stepped in to play its historical role as a faithful, bipartisan US proxy, just as it did during the Carter and Reagan years.

With Trump in office, it didn’t take long for Grandin’s prediction to bear out.

In March 2017, the military business press reported more information on the “great leap” deal, according to Israeli human rights and legal sources familiar with the agreement. This included a 10-year timeline boosting Honduran cyber security, naval and air power. This time the reported figure jumped to $300 million. And with continual new components being reported, such as six Skylark drones from Elbit Systems, the deal appears to be a work in progress.

Israeli boundary enforcement and surveillance products are deployed throughout the international regions between Central America and the US-Mexico border.
 Issam RimawiAPA images

By implicitly authorizing the Honduras security deals, the US “deputized” Israel to gallop into the region and whip up a posse of right-wing proxy reinforcements in Central America that the US could count on when needed.

By December 2017, massive social upheaval rocked Honduras amidst a transparently fraudulent election in which the electoral commission, controlled by the incumbent president, allowed too many “irregularities”, according to the conservative and usually passive Organization of American States in its ignored call for a new election. Facing international scandal over the election results, both the US and Israel quickly congratulated the Hernández administration on its new lease over the country.

The saga continued just days later as an opportunity presented itself for Honduras to return the favor to its US and Israeli patrons. President Trump’s pledge to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem elicited international condemnation, but not from Honduras.

Now that Israel had stepped into the arms breach left by the Obama administration, Washington and Tel Aviv could both count on Honduras – and neighboring Guatemala, as their other faithful right-wing ally in the region – to join the isolated US-Israeli caucus at the UN. A toothless UN General Assembly vote decreed the embassy move illegitimate, in line with decades of past resolutions.

By balking at the UN resolution, Guatemala and Honduras departed from a long-held international consensus over the status of Jerusalem. Investigative journalist Allan Nairn has noted how Honduras jettisoned its own past voting pattern, paving the way to a modern “arms diplomacy” – a phrase coined by political scientist Aaron S. Klieman in his 1985 book, Israel’s Global Reach: Arms Sales as Diplomacy.

A history of right-wing arms dealing

Israel’s deepening global pariah status between 1967 and 1982 – pockmarked by habitual regional aggressions which preceded multiple illegal occupations from Gaza to Lebanon and unlawful annexations of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – necessitated seeking out other pariahs with which to do business. As Michael Shur, director of the state-owned Israeli Military Industry (Ta’as) weapons manufacturer, remarked in 1983, the “welfare of our people and the state supersedes all other considerations,” adding, “If the state has decided in favor of export, my conscience is clear.”

The logic of Israeli arms transfers to other world outcasts was obvious. Tom Buckley of The New York Timesasked Shmuel Mirom, an Israeli embassy official, why Israel was willing to sell arms to Guatemala during the purported US arms embargo then in place in spite of what Amnesty International called President Fernando Romeo Lucas García’s “government program of political murder.” Mirom replied: “We would rather sell them toys, I assure you, but it is weapons that they want to buy, and we have to keep making weapons to remain an efficient source of supply for our own army.”

Yohanah Ramati’s estimation, put bluntly in 1985 when she spoke as a former member of the Israeli parliament’s foreign relations committee, further clarified Israel’s position: “Israel is a pariah state.

When people ask us for something, we cannot afford to ask questions about ideology. The only type of regime that Israel would not aid would be one that is anti-American. Also, if we can aid a country that it may be inconvenient for the US to help, we would be cutting off our nose to spite our face not to.”

The feeling was mutual, as a Guatemala City political and business leader observed: “We are isolated internationally. The only friend we have left in the world is Israel.”

This “friendship” with Guatemala was the single biggest reason why the Israeli arms trade in Central America enjoyed a golden age after receiving a green light from the US. The Israel-Guatemala relationship thrived so much that Israel eventually planned to set up Guatemala’s very own munitions factory to mass produce Israeli guns and armaments, even Guatemalan-model combat tanks.

Guatemala wasn’t Israel’s only beneficiary, or ally, in the region. Although mainstream US media have studiously avoided pulling from their vast (yet, at the time, underreported) historical archives of Israeli involvement in Central America, the countries themselves can’t hide the record.

Honduras, for its part, received a transfer of Israeli fighter jets on top of its receipt of Israeli small arms, artillery, ammunition, transport aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft. All this came in while Honduras was both collaborating with Salvadoran state counterinsurgency efforts and providing the largest base of operations for the US war of aggression against Sandinista-led Nicaragua.

At that time, Israel provided El Salvador with approximately 83 percent of the arms (including napalm) the state used against the Salvadoran population during its counterinsurgency wars between 1980-1992 that killed more than 75,000 civilians.

Costa Rica, too, has its own past of Israeli state security aid (arms and training of police forces despite having no military), including a tristate US-Israel-Costa Rica settler-colonist-modeled “land development” project in which it militarized its border with Nicaragua during US-sponsored state terror and aggression there.

Although Israeli military export sales are underreported for this period, political economist Shir Hever and other experts estimate that Israel’s global arms sales were then a “significant” part of Israel’s industrial sector. By the mid-1980s, Latin America amounted to half of all Israel’s known global arms sales.

In recent years, Israel’s Latin American arms market consistently accounts for a sizable 18 percent of Israeli arms sales worldwide, in terms of major conventional weaponry. Israel today remains a major player in Guatemala’s private security and resource extraction industries.

Mixed results

The jockeying for diplomatic favors in exchange for arms deals also goes back decades, as scholars Milton Jamail and Margo Gutiérrez document in their 1986 book, It’s No Secret: Israel’s Military Involvement in Central America. Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica, at times, had their diplomatic missions based in Jerusalem.

Guatemala, the first country to place its embassy in Jerusalem, retreated to Tel Aviv in 1980, obeying a UN dictate to withdraw diplomatic missions after Israel enacted a “basic law” codifying its 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem. Guatemala’s reversal also came after Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia threatened to boycott Guatemalan cardamom, which then generated a revenue of some $70 million, mostly from Arab states.

From the 1980s through today, Israel’s “arms sales as diplomacy” has, at best, achieved mixed results. In October, for example, the UN General Assembly elected Palestine to chair the G-77 convention of developing nations, a title usually reserved for states. The resolution passed despite US and Israeli opposition. Honduras abstained and Guatemala did not bother casting a vote.

Pariahs against the world

As the US has sparked a revival of 1980s-era Israeli involvement in Central America, the region’s two leading client states, Honduras and Guatemala, have been cultivating right-wing domestic rule.
Both Guatemala and Honduras remain politically isolated in the region and dependent on US aid. The countries’ behavior at the UN over Jerusalem came as leaders in both countries were seeking favor with Tel Aviv that would, in turn, earn them goodwill in Washington. While the US increasingly follows its own tune in world affairs, antagonizing allies and foes alike, the US, Israel, Guatemala and Honduras, global pariahs, big and small, continue to stick together.

The latest president of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, whose support base includes the rightist Guatemalan military, has been embroiled in a corruption investigation but is eager to assure Washington that he can tough it out while at the same time looking to be rewarded for moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Morales will surely want to avoid the fate of his predecessor, former President Otto Pérez Molina, who was forced out of office on corruption charges (along with every single one of his ministers) and remains incarcerated.

Israel’s role in the region has received scant media scrutiny over the last 30 years, making the limited coverage in the late 1970s and 1980s seem copious by comparison. At that time, Israeli involvement in Central America was underreported by generally uncritical US media and mostly met with silence by leftist and progressive forces – a recurring concern slowly being broken.

Meanwhile, observers lamented their place in the crossfire between armed guerrillas and state security forces. In 1983, Guatemalan journalist Victor Perera asked a grave digger in Chichicastenango, who was burying a local townsperson slain by the Guatemalan military, if anyone had taken up arms against the state since the killing.

“Even if we wanted to join the guerrillas, where would we obtain arms?” the gravedigger asked in reply. “In church they tell us that divine justice is on the side of the poor, but the fact of the matter is, it is the military who get the Israeli guns.”

Today’s Trump era presents an opportunity to raise oppositional voices as a revival of 1980s-era Israeli security and arms diplomacy deepens its shadow over Central America and beyond to potentially greater levels than ever before.

If today’s grave-digging truth tellers in the region aren’t abandoned but supported at the source by more solidarity efforts that started in the 1980s and continue today, Israel may find it harder to keep its footing in the region.

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).

Hamas cracks down on protests over Gaza living conditions

Palestinians in Gaza have protested for three days against poor living conditions

Protesters in Deir al-Balah have gathered for three days against deteriorating living conditions (Twitter)

By Kaamil Ahmed-16 March 2019 

Hamas forces have reportedly cracked down on protests for better living conditions in the blockaded Gaza Strip, blaming the demonstrations on the rival Palestinian Authority. 

Protests went on for the third day in a row on Saturday to highlight poor economic conditions, rising living costs and tax increases.

Demonstrators went out across Gaza, but protests were focused on Deir al-Balah, a town south of Gaza City. 

Live broadcasts posted on social media from Deir al-Balah appeared to show Hamas security forces in riot gear beating protesters with batons. 

The panicked onlookers, mostly filming from their homes, screamed as they saw other residents chased, including a man who appeared to be asking other protesters to stop throwing objects at the police. 

Gaza-based journalist and MEE correspondent Hind Khoudary said protesters, including women, had been beaten, and that security forces raided homes around the site of the protest. She added that the sound of live ammunition was heard during the protests. 

Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq criticised the "grave assaults" of protesters, including three members of the Gaza-based rights group Independent Commission for Human Rights.

"The assaults against them appear to indicate that the security services in Gaza intended to prevent them from carrying out their human rights work, including to hamper their monitoring and documentation of violations and their follow-up on the human rights situation," Al-Haq said in a statement on Saturday. 

The organisation said hundreds of protesters had gathered in various cities, raising signs calling both on the de facto Hamas government and its rival, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the occupied West Bank, to improve living conditions. 

Gaza has been the target of a more than decade-long land, sea and air blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt that limits the movement of both goods and people. During the same period, there has been a stand-off between Hamas and Fatah, after the former took control of Gaza in 2007 following 2006 legislative elections where Hamas' victory was contested by Fatah. 

Fatah's leader and PA President Mahmoud Abbas has tried to heap pressure on Hamas since 2017 by cutting Gaza's electricity supplies and stopping the payment of salaries of PA employees in Gaza.

Gaza's breadwinners defiant in the face of Palestinian Authority salary cuts

Read More »

After the PA's withdrawal from Gaza in 2007, it had nonetheless continued to pay those employees on condition that they did not work for Hamas. Amid the dire circumstances in the besieged enclave, PA salaries have often been a lifeline for many Gaza families.

A Hamas statement on Saturday blamed the territory's economic conditions on the blockade and the Palestinian Authority's measures, calling them a "national, moral, and humanitarian crime" aimed at sowing disunity among Palestinians. 

After Friday's protests, the UN's Office for the High Commissioner of Human Rights said it was "shocked at the violent response of Hamas security forces in dispersing demonstrations across the Gaza Strip".

"Security personnel in plainclothes, a number of whom were carrying batons, raided the demonstrations and forcibly prevented participants from filming or photographing including beating and hospitalising a number of demonstrators. An undetermined number of protesters were arrested and detained by security forces," the statement said.

The protests over the living situation in Gaza have emerged just as a Great March of Return protest was cancelled for the first time on Friday, after Israeli jets pounded the enclave overnight and rockets were launched at Tel Aviv.

Gaza's future hangs in the balance as Egypt looks to broker Hamas-Israel truce

Read More »

The Great March of Return, which first began on 30 March 2018, has been calling for an end to the siege and the implementation of the right of return for Palestinian refugees whose families were displaced during the creation of the state of Israel. Israeli forces have killed more than 255 Palestinians and injured over 29,000 in Gaza since the beginning of the march. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed during the same time frame.

The suspension of the Great March of Return comes as Egypt is reportedly brokering a truce agreement between Israel and Hamas - amid fears that, if nothing is done, existing tensions might boil over into full-blown war.

The Brutal Massacre At Christchurch Mosques In New Zealand

 We pray for all those people who lost their lives in this brutal massacre. We also send our condolence for the families and friends of all these victims. 

 

by Dr SLM Rifai-March 15 at 1:41 PM 

 

This can be described as one of darkest days in Muslim migration into western countries. Since 1940s, many Muslim communities have been living in many parts of western world. It is reported that Muslim communities settled in England in late 19th century. Yet, no time in Muslim history in any western nation, the Muslim community suffered like this. This is a well-planned brutal massacre of innocent devotees in the mosques. There is no any logical or rational reason to kill people in any worshiping place. No religion in the world would accept this kind of barbarism in this modern world. To kill innocent people including children, ladies, elderly and youths randomly like this in this so-called civilised world is not acceptable at all. It is reported that 49 people have been killed and more 20 have been seriously injured. It is expected that the causality numbers may go up.

 

This shows that deeply rooted hatred and resentment against Muslims are still existing in some segment of western society. It would be utterly wrong to generalise this attitude and mindset. 95% people in western countries are so kind and so compassionate. They care for migration communities. They welcome migrant communities into their localities. Today, more than 30 million Muslims live in many parts of western world from Australia to Canada. The Muslim integration into western societies is gradually taking place in positive and constructive manners now than ever before. The Muslim communities in western countries today are contributing immensely in the field of business, heath, education, and in many other fields both in private and public sectors.

 

In fact, they have been integrating into western communities gradually and yet, some extremist far right groups across the western world do not like to see this peaceful co-existence and community harmony. Some extremist elements have been trying to harm inter-community peace and social harmony. Some time ago, some elements attacked Muslims near Finsbury Park mosque during the month of Ramadan. Many racial incidents against Muslim communities have been reported in many parts of western world in recent time. These are orchestrated against Muslim communities in order increase hatred against Muslim community and to create a sense of anti-Muslim trends against Muslim communities in many countries. This is like what Hitler did for Jewish community in Germany. All what they want to do is to create panic in the minds and hearts of Muslim communities in these countries.

 

Moreover, these extremist groups want to incite and provoke Muslim radical groups to damage inter-community relation between Muslims and Christian communities.

 

Today, Muslim communities are cleaver enough to know how to deal with this type of racial attack. 

They have been experiencing these kinds of extremist attacks since 9/11. Today, Muslim community leaders are working with law enforcement agents and religious leaders to maintain peace and harmony across western countries. Unlike in the past, today, the trend of extremism among Muslim youth is vanishing. In the name of war on terror, millions of Muslims have lost their lives across the Muslim world. Any kind of extremism does not produce any good at all rather it produces destruction and devastation to the humanity. After all, Islam stands for peace and community harmony. |I think that Muslim communities in the western countries will react to this incident with the sense of common sense.

 

Thankfully, the perpetrators of this attack have been detained and we hope police and security forces in New Zealand will deal with incident in accordance with the law of land and punish these people for their crimes. PMs in New Zealand and Australia have already condemned this attack. They all unanimously described this attack as an act of terrorism. Many Muslim political leaders also condemned this attack. In fact, all humanity must condemn this uncivilised attack. No human soul will accept this. We hope that religious leaders of all religious groups condemn this attack.

 

We pray for all those people who lost their lives in this brutal massacre. We also send our condolence for the families and friends of all these victims.

Russia’s Next Land Grab Won’t Be in an Ex-Soviet State. It Will Be in Europe.

First he came for Georgia, then for Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s next target is likely to be a non-NATO nation in the EU.

A Ukrainian soldier stands guard aboard the military vessel "Dondass" moored in Mariupol, the Sea of Azov port on Nov. 27, 2018, after three Ukrainian navy vessels were forcibly seized off the coast of Crimea by Russian forces. (SEGA VOLSKII/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

BY MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI-| MARCH 15, 2019

 

Not many observers would consider the world’s coldest shipping lane a geopolitical hotspot. But that may be about to change. Last week, reports emerged that a new Kremlin policy will require all international naval ships to give Russia 45 days’ notice before entering the Northern Sea Route, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Arctic waters north of Siberia. Every vessel on the route, where Russia has invested heavily in sophisticated military infrastructure, will also be required to have a Russian maritime pilot on board. Ships found in violation of these restrictions may be forcibly halted, detained, or—in unspecified “extreme” circumstances—“eliminated.”

The Kremlin’s latest threat has gone largely unnoticed, perhaps because it’s no surprise. Russian officials justify the new naval restrictions with a familiar explanation, claiming that “the more active naval operations in the Arctic of various foreign countries” require such a response.

This is the same tactic Russian President Vladimir Putin has used to justify his military adventurism for years: From Georgia in 2008, to Ukraine in 2014, to Syria in 2015, Putin has always laid the blame for Russian aggression squarely at the West’s feet. Kremlin-backed media outlets amplify this message, subjecting audiences to a constant deluge of scaremongering about “NATO encirclement” and pointing to the West’s condemnations of Putin’s actions as evidence of “Russophobia.”
Many wonder what Putin gains from pushing this narrative. In violating international norms, he has become a global pariah. U.S. and European sanctions have dealt serious blows to Russia’s already dismal economy—raising the question of why would Putin pay such a staggering price to carve out a few more pieces of territory.

Those who attempt to answer this question miss the point. In Crimea, eastern Ukraine, South Ossetia, or anywhere else Putin considers Russia’s backyard, territorial gain has never been an end in itself. Putin’s goal today is the same as when he invaded my country in 2008: to tighten his grip on the levers of power in Russia. Whenever Putin’s domestic popularity dips, he either escalates an ongoing conflict or launches a new offensive.

And, clearly, it works. Putin has ruled the largest country in the world for nearly two decades, consolidating more control as he weathers each crisis. Ordinary Russian voters may struggle to survive on pensions of $200 each month, but Putin’s base can be proud to live in a superpower.

Putin is both predictable and logical: Invading a weaker neighbor delivers a cheaper and faster ratings boost than, say, improving Russia’s dystopian health care system. It’s no coincidence that Putin’s approval rating peaked in 2015, after the annexation of Crimea. Later that year, as the Russian economy foundered, the intervention in Syria served to shore up patriotism. Moreover, Russia’s actions in Syria marked Putin’s graduation from military adventurism in the former Soviet states to power projection beyond Russia’s “near abroad.”

To be sure, these steps earned Putin harsh criticism from Washington and Brussels. But condemnation from outside Russia only boosts his popularity within. With every foreign election the Kremlin meddles in, every violation of human rights in occupied Crimea, and every time Russian soldiers move barbed-wire fencing to carve out a few more acres of Georgia’s territory, the standard U.S. and European response—a diplomatic expression of “deep concern”—sounds more like a tired cliche.

From the invasion of Georgia to the hybrid offensive in Ukraine, Western leaders have demarcated red line after red line for Putin to trample with impunity.The weakness of international norms, of the rules-based liberal order which many in Washington and Brussels endorse but few dare to defend, makes Moscow look ever stronger. In the eyes of his domestic supporters, Putin is calling the West’s bluff.

But the status quo cannot hold. If we have learned anything from the past two decades, a new crisis is on the horizon. According to a March 7 poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, Russian voters’ trust in Putin has fallen to 32 percent—the lowest level since 2006.

 

True to form, Putin has been escalating provocations in recent months as his popularity has declined. In November, Russian forces fired upon and detained three Ukrainian naval ships attempting to pass through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov. More than 100 days have passed, and the outcry from the international community has long since died down. But the 24 Ukrainian sailors arrested during that incident remain in illegal detention.

Putin’s violations of laws and norms in Russia’s “backyard” no longer seem to shock the world. He has already redrawn the borders of Europe by force and gotten away with it. Now, to provoke the West’s ire, he will have to do something even more egregious.

It is not a question of whether he will attack, but where. Some point to Belarus, but Putin stands to gain little through a show of force in a country that most Russians already consider an integral part of Russia. Others predict that the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania will be the next target. Putin certainly views the small Baltic countries as a threat; after all, they are functioning democracies on Russia’s border. But, for now, the Baltics are probably safe, for two reasons.

First, the next frontier of Russian aggression is unlikely to be a NATO ally. The inconsistent responses of the West to Moscow’s various land grabs have only emboldened Putin, but he is not quite bold enough to risk triggering NATO’s Article 5—which could lead to all-out conventional war against a U.S.-led alliance. Putin understands when he is outmatched. If that weren’t the case, he would not have survived this long.

Second, Putin’s next adventure will likely be outside the former Soviet Union. The West has grudgingly accepted his neoimperialist ambitions in the region. Further incursions into Ukraine, Georgia, or other non-NATO Soviet successor states would be deja vu all over again, which would do little to bolster Putin’s position.

I have had the misfortune of getting to know Putin better than most people. Drawing on this firsthand knowledge, I predict a different direction of escalation.

Russia’s most likely target in the near future is either Finland or Sweden; although both are members of the EU, they are not members of NATO. By attacking a non-NATO country, Putin does not risk a proportional response in accordance with Article 5. But by targeting a European country, he can expect to reap the rewards of public approval at home from voters who are desperate for a victory.

This is a simple cost-benefit analysis that Putin has conducted, openly, many times before. Each investment of Russian force has paid dividends. Finland and Sweden meet both requirements.

I do not expect Russian tanks to roll into Helsinki or Stockholm unopposed. But it would be relatively simple for Moscow to execute a land grab in a remote Arctic enclave or on a small island
, like Sweden’s Gotland, considering the strategic capabilities Russia has built on its northern flank. After all, who would go to war over a frozen Baltic island or piece of Finland’s tundra? NATO wouldn’t, but Putin would—because the stakes are higher for him.

Russian aggression on Scandinavian terrirory—in countries everyone in the West considers part of the West—might seem far-fetched. However, it was not long ago that Putin’s annexation of Crimea, which I predicted, struck even Russia hawks as an outlandish doomsday scenario. A few years earlier Russia’s invasion of Georgia, despite my dire warnings, also took the world by surprise.

Former Soviet states, even if they are NATO members like Estonia, are widely perceived as not quite Western. This perception may be inaccurate, but in politics, perception often matters more than reality. For Finland and Sweden, though, perception and reality are aligned. They are not ex-Soviet republics; they are unquestionably part of the West.

From Georgia to Ukraine, Syria, and beyond, Putin’s trajectory has been clear. By defying the norms imposed by the West, he has—in his view—taken progressively greater steps toward emancipating himself. But he will only achieve full emancipation by confronting the West directly.

This may sound shocking, but Putin has shocked the world many times over. The West cannot afford to be caught off guard again.

Cyclone Idai batters Zimbabwe, at least 31 people dead

MARCH 16, 2019

HARARE (Reuters) - At least 31 people have died in eastern Zimbabwe while dozens were missing as homes and bridges were swept away by a tropical storm, state television reported on Saturday.

Cyclone Idai, which brought floodwater and destruction to areas of Mozambique and Malawi, hit Zimbabwe on Friday, cutting off power and communications.

Pictures shared on Twitter and television footage showed roads, houses and bridges that were washed away while communication towers were knocked down and electricity cables blocked roads in Chimanimani district, 410 kilometers (255 miles) east of the capital Harare.

State television ZBC said 31 people had died in the district while more than 70 people were missing.

The information ministry said the army had moved in to rescue 197 pupils trapped at a local school.
“This a very challenging operation as it’s being undertaken as a ground effort because of unsafe weather conditions for air efforts,” the ministry said in a statement.

Joshua Sacco, a member of parliament in Chimanimani earlier told Reuters the district had been cut off from the rest of the country as the storm left a trail of destruction reminiscent of Cyclone Eline in February 2000, which devastated southern Zimbabwe.

Sacco said the death toll was expected to rise as rescue efforts continued.

Chimanimani, which borders Mozambique, has been worst affected, with the storm causing floods as well as destroying crops and plantations, Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Information said.

 

Air force helicopters were rescuing people, but flights were being slowed by heavy winds.

Zimbabwe has faced a severe drought this year that has damaged crops and a United Nations humanitarian agency says 5.3 million people will require food aid.

The country’s meteorological services expect rains to continue throughout the weekend.

Dozens killed in New Zealand mosques attack

15 Mar 2019

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has described this as one of the country’s “darkest days”, while around the world political and religious leaders have expressed their condemnation of the attack.

One man has been charged with murder, and two men and a woman have been arrested.

A warning: there are shocking scenes in this report.

Former Putin adviser had neck fracture at time of death in Washington hotel

New report raises questions about Mikhail Lesin, whose death was ruled an accident but has been shrouded in suspicion
Mikhail Lesin was officially ruled to have died accidentally after falling while intoxicated, but controversy has lingered. Photograph: Sergei Ilntsky/EPA

Associated Press in Washington-Sat 16 Mar 2019

Newly released documents show that a former adviser to Vladimir Putin sustained a complete fracture of his neck “at or near the time of his death” in a Washington hotel room in 2015.

The documents from the city’s medical examiner were released to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE) in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed nearly two years ago.

In a report published on Saturday, RFE said the finding offered no clear-cut evidence of foul play in the death of Mikhail Lesin, who was a key adviser during Putin’s rise to power in Russia.

But RFE said the documents provide “the most precise scientific description” yet of a death that has been shrouded in suspicion.

The official ruling was that Lesin, 57, died accidentally of blunt force traumaafter falling repeatedly in his room while intoxicated.

Yet there is intrigue surrounding the case, fed by circumstantial evidence: it seems odd for someone Lesin’s age to die of blunt force trauma while alone in a room. There is also a gap in security video footage for the hours after Lesin was last seen alive. The police report eventually released to the public has been heavily redacted.

Above all, there is a long history of high-profile Russians turning up dead or seriously ill in foreign countries.

RFE said the documents released by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner show that Lesin’s hyoid bone had been completely fractured. An official, whose name was redacted, is quoted as saying such breaks “are commonly associated with hanging or manual strangulation”, but that it was also possible that the bone was damaged during the autopsy.

Lesin amassed a fortune through a company he set up in the 1990s to sell television advertising. He then spent years as Putin’s media czar, helping bring national television under Kremlin control.

Later he founded the global news network Russia Today, now known as RT. But he abruptly resigned in December 2014 and was believed by some Moscow-watchers to have fallen out of favor with the Putin government.

Political scandals hang over Moon’s rush to populist projects

South Korea's President Moon Jae-in attends a ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of the March First Independence Movement against Japanese colonial rule, in Seoul on March 1, 2019. South Koreans commemorate the public holiday of remembrance to mark the 1919 civilian uprising against Japanese colonial rule from 1910-1945. Source: Jung Yeon-je / AFP

March 12 at 9:33 PM

AS South Korea’s left-wing President Moon Jae-in enters the third year of his presidency, he appears to be rushing into two all-out populist projects at the risk of his presidential credibility.First, Moon is rushing into joint economic projects with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un despite Kim’s commitment to denuclearisation remaining uncertain after the collapse of his recent Hanoi summit with US President Donald Trump.

The other equally controversial development is the greenlight his administration has given to 23 state-led stimulus projects estimated to cost around US$21.5 billion. The projects have not undergone any feasibility studies.

This sudden announcement of fast-track spending has raised pork-barrelling allegations among not only opposition parties and the media, but also among Moon’s own supporters including the influential Citizens Coalition of Economic Justice.

SEE ALSO: The silent majorities of Japan and South Korea grow tired of official squabbles

Why is Moon rushing into these populist projects, together with ten other inter-Korea projects under his ‘New Economic Map for the Korean Peninsula’ which alone will cost an estimated US$57 billion over the next twenty years?

This question needs to be raised not only because of the political scandals hanging over Moon, but also because South Korea’s GDP growth is slowing to a six-year low. South Korea’s unemployment rate, in particular, hit an eight-year high in August 2018. Unsurprisingly, Moon’s approval rating has fallen to a record low of 48.4 per cent.

Crucially, Moon’s disapproval rating among men in their 20s has risen to 64.1 percent, the highest across all age groups according to a Realmeter survey conducted in December 2018. The young males who were once strong supporters of Moon and the ruling Democratic Party have turned their backs on his ‘people-centred economic policy’ which, contrary to his repeated assurances, has made their livelihoods even poorer than before.

This is perhaps most evident in the country’s income inequality in the last fiscal quarter of 2018, which reached the worst levels since Statistics Korea began collecting data 16 years ago.

Nor is Moon’s political performance exhibiting brighter signs. Two mega-sized scandals are unfolding in a South Korean-style Days of Our Lives saga, exposing multiple allegations that could threaten both his presidency and the future of the Democratic Party.

The opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) revealed the first scandal in December 2018 when it submitted a petition insisting that the Ministry of Environment had created a blacklist of 24 public servants based on their conservative political leanings.

The LKP alleged that this list was the basis of a political purge. The LKP also claimed that the President’s office, the Blue House, was behind the purge and that members of Moon’s presidential election campaign had been appointed to the newly vacated posts. Following weeks of investigation, the prosecution banned former environmental minister Kim Eun-Kyung from leaving the country.

Moon’s problem is that the scandal resembles the blacklist which contributed to the impeachment of former president Park Guen-hye. Park’s blacklist also led to the imprisonment of six former top aides, including her chief of staff and two ministers of culture.

Moon’s spokesman has reportedly demanded that the media refrain from using the derogatory nomenclature of ‘blacklist’ in reference to the current administration’s personnel policy. Still, the blacklist scandal hangs over not only the moral conduct of Moon’s office, but is also the real impetus behind his rush to populist projects: general elections are about 15 months away.

The second and even more controversial political scandal involves Kim Kyoung-soo, a sitting governor of South Gyeongsang province who was sentenced to two years in jail on Jan 30 for an online opinion-rigging scheme implemented ahead of the May 2017 presidential election in which Moon rose to power.

Kim was found guilty of taking part ‘in manipulating the order of online comments under 80,000 different news articles’ which, said the presiding judge Sung Chang-ho, ‘damaged the proper generation of public opinion in the online sphere’.

Until recently, Kim was dubbed as the strongest candidate for succeeding Moon. He is a former Democrat Party lawmaker and was the last secretary of former president Roh Moo-hyun. He also assisted Moon during his 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns as the latter’s public relations manager. The court’s verdict on Kim’s jail sentence subsequently rocked the Democratic Party, which has claimed that ‘the verdict [in] immediately placing him behind bars violated the principles of the country’s criminal laws’.

The Democrat Party’s president, Lee Hae-chan, has gone all out to save Kim, forming a special committee that is threatening to impeach judges, including the presiding judge Sung. Moon’s silence on this obvious violation of the rule of law is generating public mistrust to the point of risking his presidential credibility.

SEE ALSO: South Korea should communicate if it wants peace on the Peninsula

Moon’s legitimacy is based on the claimed mission of guarding that democratic principle, since he is generally viewed as the offspring of the ‘candlelight revolution’ which led to Park’s impeachment.

By addressing the Democratic Party’s undemocratic behaviour, Moon can show the South Korean people that he is the fair and honest president he pledged to become in his inauguration address. After all, Governor Kim’s online opinion-rigging operations directly involved Moon’s own presidential election campaign.

Moon also needs to clarify the ultimate aim behind his rush towards populist projects if he genuinely wishes to create, in his own words, ‘a world without privileges and foul play’.

But under the present circumstances, it is hard to dismiss the conservatives’ allegations of pork barrelling.

The immediate and ultimate aim of Moon’s projects is also increasingly clear: a sweeping victory in the 2020 parliamentary elections as a foundation for the Democratic Party to retain power when the 2022 presidential election comes around.

By Hyung-A Kim, Associate Professor of Korean Politics and History at School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.

This article has been republished from East Asia Forum under a Creative Commons license.