Monday, March 25, 2019

From Vacation to Workation: Lessons for Lankans

The latest travel trend of working remotely while enjoying a vacation

Monday, 25 March 2019

Vacation is something we know and look forward to in our lives. What about workation? The relatively newer term comes with a mixed bag of promises and pitfalls. Some even call it a sad trend of our times. How do we Sri Lankans behave? Are we drifting towards workation in turning vacation also where we remotely work away from the real workplace? Today’s column attempts to share some insights on these aspects.

Overview

We are living in a changing world where the rate of change is also accelerating. In such a context, consistent performance is increasingly becoming critical. This is particularly true for managers. They are supposed to achieve results in an efficient and effective manner utilising the existing resources, as any management text book tells us.

The crux of the matter is that they have to do so, whilst playing multiple roles in professional and personal fronts. Does that really require to sacrifice vacation in becoming workaholics? Will working smart instead of working hard with ample assistance from technology will fulfil the need? Workation comes into to the scene in such a context.

Meaning of workation

As the word itself highlights, it refers to a working vacation. In other words, working remotely while enjoying a vacation. As a recent Bloomberg documentary revealed, it is the latest travel trend. Apparently, entrepreneurs do it more than others in order to ensure survival and sustenance of their endeavours. It is increasingly becoming popular among the so called “digital nomads” where working remotely by way of converting where you stay as a virtual office is the norm.

How can we determine whether workation is good or bad? For an example, as the Bloomberg documentary discussed, if you have got airfare to Thailand to enjoy the sun and sea, an additional amount of dollars will get you accommodations and access to a beachfront workspace through Digital Outposts, which offers “brand-new facilities including a 50 Mbps dedicated high-speed Internet connection with a redundant 50 Mbps backup”.

Have such enticing offers to emerging decision makers become a competitive necessity? How will they affect the work, family and society? To find answers, we have to locate workation in the broad context of harmony in life.

Harmony in life

Harmony is all about the accord. According to Oxford Dictionary (online), it is the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole. It is a pleasing arrangement of parts with congruity. A busy manager dropping off his son to school and coming to work, continue till late evening, whilst being in touch with the family, and enjoying a refreshing Sunday with them could be one such example. It touches a deeper level than the so called “work-life balance”.

I would suggest that there are two facets of harmony, inner and outer. Inner harmony deals with mind, body and spirit. Outer harmony deals with work, family and society. Eastern wisdom is abundant with refreshing resources with regard to inner harmony. Zen has paved the way with practices such as meditation and yoga to sustain such an inner harmony.

Loehr and Schwartz (2001) in their seminal HBR article titled ‘Making of a Corporate Athlete’, describe vividly the importance of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual ‘capacities’. This essentially points to inner harmony. The spillover effect of it will facilitate the challenge to achieve outer harmony. Figure 1 depicts such combination of inner and outer harmony.

Harmonising work, family and society does not necessarily mean perfection. There will be events that you need to prioritise more on office front. Launching a new telecom product or establishing a new bank branch can be such examples.

The deprivation of the family front in such cases should be recovered by paying more emphasis on a priority basis, without interrupting the office front. The situation can be more difficult for a manager following an MBA with demanding academic work.

There can be simultaneous peaks occurring such as an upcoming exam, looming project timeline and a sick child at home. It requires understanding between the manager and his/her superiors on one side, and between the loved ones on the other side. That is where institutional support becomes useful, even though not always possible.

There is even a macro level where political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal and ethical (popularly known as PESTEEL) factors come into the scene. The challenge here is to maintain the inner and outer harmony within the macro factors that can be favourable or unfavourable. In moving further, it is interesting to see how the inner and outer harmony contributes to ‘work in life’ and ‘life in work’.

Work in life

This essentially refers to locate work meaningfully in the broad sphere in life. In this respect, the twin terms, Niskam Karma (NK) and Sakam Karma (SK), offer valued insights. As reported by Chakraborty and Chakraborty (2006), NK is a term derived from the revered Hindu text Bhagawad Gita. It literally means detached involvement.

Performing work, accepted on the basis of agreed remuneration, with little calculation or comparison with others, or concern for additional personal recognition, gain or reward during or completion of the work.
A verse in Bhagavad Gita enunciates the principle of NK as follows.

“Thou hast a right to action, but only to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruits of thy works be thy motive, neither let there be in thee any attachment in inactivity.”

The opposite of NK is termed as SK meaning attached involvement. As Chakraborty and Chakraborty (2006) elaborate, it means performing work, accepted on the basis of agreed remuneration, with anxious comparative calculation vis-à-vis others, for additional personal recognition, gain or reward during or on completion of the work.

It by no way means one has to leave the worldly affairs in becoming an ascetic. As Sri Aurobindo aptly pointed out, “action done with NK is not only the highest, but the wisest, the most potent and efficient even for the affairs of the world”.

A desirable scenario would be to see the engaged employees becoming detached, yet continuing to be involved. A simple example could be, a bank manager devoting himself/herself for the achievement of the given objectives, in a whole-hearted manner, without thinking of what one would get in return. The opposite of this will be another manager working hard on a personal agenda, aspiring to get the next promotion early.

The acid test here is the ability to be ‘detached’ yet getting involved, particularly in the professional front of life. The much-published statement by former US President John F. Kennedy, “ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do to the country”. Such an approach is very much relevant to a wide variety of institutions, in order to build employees who are ethical and effective.

Life in work

What I mean here is the liveliness that is required at work. In other words, it is about showing interest and enthusiasm at work. The closest resemblance I found to this is the term, employee engagement. It has become a buzz word in management circles, mainly due to its attractiveness as a tool in getting work done.

What do we mean by employee engagement? It captures the essence of employees’ head, hands and heart involvement in work. It refers to employees’ psychological state (e.g. one’s identification with the organisation), his/her disposition (e.g. one’s positive feeling towards the organisation) and performance (e.g. one’s level of discretionary effort). In brief, it captures affective (feeling), cognitive (thinking) and behavioural (acting) dimensions of an employee.

There are many corporate examples to show how employee engagement is measured from the answers from employee surveys, viz. say, stay and strive.

Say: Consistently speaks positively about the organisation to colleagues, potential employees and customers

Stay: Has an intense desire to be a member of the organisation

Strive: Exerts extra effort and engages in behaviours that contribute to business success

In the case of Sri Lanka, many best practices can be found where focused effort towards engaging employees had yielded results. Despite the scarcity of documented evidence, efforts are being made in this front, with vision and vigour.

One common characteristic among the winners of many HR awards at national level has been the sustained focus on employee engagement. However, the scope is vast and the continuous improvement path remains widely open.

Workation in Sri Lanka

Do we have evidence that we exhibit inner and outer harmony as essential for managers to achieve and to enjoy? Perhaps we are in a journey towards that but not yet fully there. Increase digitalisation, on one hand, has paved way to connect with loved ones who are physically away.

It, on the other hand, may direct people to work, deviating them from a well-deserved vacation. Wider use of smartphones not only to stay in touch with mails but also with apps to monitor business tasks paves way for more workations.

The key lesson for us is not to harm the harmony. I refer to both the inner and the outer as we discussed earlier. Even if workation becomes a necessity at times, it should not be the preferred way of spending leisure time. That’s how we need to appreciate ‘work in life’ and ‘life in work’. In essence, let a deceptive workation not overshadow a deserving vacation.

(Prof. Ajantha Dharmasiri can be reached through director@pim.sjp.ac.lk, ajantha@ou.edu or www.ajanthadharmasiri.info.)

World Tuberculosis Day, March 24, 2019 The drive to ‘End TB’ reached a critical phase

25 March 2019

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the world’s most burdensome communicable diseases. Around 10 million people across the globe fall ill with TB every year; an estimated 1.6 million are killed by it. The WHO South-East Asia Region is particularly affected, accounting for around 44% of global TB cases and 50% of associated mortality. This is despite being home to just over a quarter of the world’s population.

Notably, among communicable diseases, TB remains the Region’s leading cause of death and lost years in the productive 15-49 year-old age group, condemning millions of people to life-defining, inescapable poverty. As the theme of this year’s World TB day – ‘It’s time’ – highlights,the drive to end TB has reached a critical phase, both in the Region and globally.

18 million TB patients were treated region-wide, including 1.5 mn children
Harnessing at least USD 13 billion a year to End TB’s menace

In March 2017, for example, each of the Region’s Member States issued a Call for Action, highlighting the political, technical and strategic interventions needed to out the disease. That was matched at the same meeting by WHO making ‘accelerating efforts to End TB’ its 8th Flagship Priority. In March 2018, at the WHO-supported Delhi End TB Summit, Member States unanimously adopted a Statement of Action pledging to intensify efforts towards ending TB by or before 2030.

In September of the same year, at the UNGA’s high-level meeting on ending TB, Member States made vital contributions to the Political Declaration on the Fight against Tuberculosis issued at its close. The Region’s leadership is to be commended, as are the steps Member States are taking to realize their ambition. Budgetary allocations have more than doubled. New technologies and guidelines are being rapidly adopted. Case notifications have significantly increased, while TB-associated mortality has been on a downward trajectory.

In keeping with its ambition and influence, all efforts should be made to ensure the Political Declaration’s targets are fully achieved and the Region remains on track to End TB by or before 2030. By 2022, that means diagnosing and treating 18 million TB patients Region-wide, including 1.5 million children. It means successfully treating 500,000 patients with drug-resistant TB and providing preventive treatment to around 12 million people at risk of developing the disease, and at the global level, it means harnessing at least USD 13 billion a year to End TB’s menace once and for all. Critical to achieving these outcomes is adopting a series of key interventions region-wide.

First, active case-finding – especially among high-risk groups – should be intensified. As modelling shows, intensified case finding can dramatically reduce case incidence while providing the subsidiary benefit of ensuring all patients receive quality treatment. As part of this, Member States should develop a joint road map on how cutting-edge diagnostics can be harnessed to find missing cases, and how people-centred treatment can be provided to all.

In March 2018, at the WHO-supported Delhi End TB Summit, Member States unanimously adopted a Statement of Action pledging to intensify efforts towards ending TB by or before 2030

Second, a time-bound action plan to cover all groups at risk of developing TB should be developed and implemented. This is especially important given the need to treat latent TB in low-prevalence settings and ensure new drugs that prevent latent cases becoming active are available. All plans should be aligned with WHO guidelines, which also recommend treating childhood, adolescent and adult contacts of TB cases, as well as other at-risk groups, including people living with HIV or who are immuno-compromised.

Third, all partners should support the supply of first-line drugs via south-south cooperation, as India has offered to do. Several countries in the Region produce drugs and diagnostics, while others are testing new technologies that show great promise. This should be taken advantage of. The royalty-free transfer of new technology, without patent limitations, will meanwhile improve access to diagnostics and the efficacy of outreach, allowing quantum leaps to be made across the Region.

Fourth and finally, community engagement must be a core priority for all countries -- whether low or high prevalence. Rather than passively implementing policies that come from above, affected communities should be part of the policy development process, with community recommendations reflected on paper and in on-the-ground initiatives. Importantly, affected communities should also be empowered as advocates able to monitor the quality of services as well as support outreach efforts.

WHO will continue to provide technical and operational support as part of the Region’s drive to accelerate progress towards ending TB. As high-level backing at the international level advances, and Member State funding mechanisms are streamlined, the possibility of charting dramatic progress will be enhanced. That is an outcome we should all work towards. On World TB Day, we must reflect on the momentum already developed and the accomplishments we can achieve.

It’s time to seize the moment and do what’s needed to End TB.

The author is a Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia Region and can be reached by visiting: www.searo.who.int

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Palestinians sue settlers over stolen property listed on Airbnb

Ali Abunimah - 20 March 2019

Two Palestinians in the United States are suing Israeli settlers for profiting from property stolen from their families in the occupied West Bank, by listing them on the home rental website Airbnb.

The lawsuit is in the form of a counterclaim against the settlers, who themselves filed a lawsuit against Airbnb over its decision last year to remove listings of settlement properties.

The two Palestinians, Ziad Alwan and Randa Wahbe, are being joined in their lawsuit by two towns in the occupied West Bank, the municipality of Anata, east of Jerusalem, and the village council of Jalud, near Nablus.

They are being represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the counterclaim in federal court in Delaware on Monday.

In their original lawsuit , the settlers claim that Airbnb is discriminating against them under the Fair Housing Act, a civil rights-era US law that guarantees people access to housing regardless of their race, ethnicity or religion.

But the attorneys for the Palestinian landowners say this turns reality on its head, as the properties the settlers are listing on Airbnb are located in Israeli settlements where Palestinians are prohibited from entering.

All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Syria’s Golan Heights are illegal under international law.

“Anyone looking at the facts can tell that we are the rightful owners of this land, no matter how the settlers try to spin it,” said Ziad Alwan, a Chicago resident who has a registration document showing that the land on which the settlers are running a bed and breakfast is registered in his father’s name.

“I am filing this lawsuit in my father’s memory, and for my own children, whom I’ve taught to never forget that this land is rightfully theirs.”

Alwan tells his story in the brief video above.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the lawsuit filed by the Palestinian landowners argues that “the Israeli settlers who sued Airbnb have participated in war crimes by aiding in Israel’s seizure of land in occupied Palestinian territory, including the specific lands on which the Airbnb properties stand.”

“The settlers who sued Airbnb are cynically using the language of discrimination in order to further their own unlawful ends,” Center for Constitutional Rights staff attorney Diala Shamas said. “Our clients’ experiences – Palestinians who are directly affected by these settlers’ actions – show where the real discrimination and illegality lies. This case puts the settlers on trial in a US court.”

The municipalities of Anata and Jalud joined the lawsuit because Israeli settlers are listing on Airbnbproperties built on their lands:

“I’m bringing this lawsuit because I want to live in peace with my family and among my community without the constant looming threat of arrests, killings, nightly raids, demolition of homes, restrictions on movement and so on – all part of the military occupation that serves to protect discriminatory settler practices,” said Randa Wahbe, the second individual Palestinian plaintiff.

“If Airbnb were to allow Israeli settlers to rent out their homes, they would be normalizing a violent and brutal military occupation,” Wahbe adds in this video:

Israel promotes settler tourism

Meanwhile, the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq underscored this week the active role of the Israeli government in promoting tourism in settlements.

In February, the Israeli government sponsored the International Mediterranean Tourism Market, a major expo targeting tour operators.

It featured prominent exhibits aimed at encouraging tourism in settlements across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

Al-Haq noted that settlement enterprises, including tourism services “fuel the expansion of Israel’s settlements and incentivize the transfer in of settlers [which] constitutes a war crime under international law.”

Al-Haq warned that “tour operators, travel agents and businesses promoting settlement tourism” may be complicit in furthering “Israel’s unlawful settlement enterprise.”

Pressure to release UN database

Since 2017, the UN human rights office has been compiling a database of Israeli and international companies involved in business in the settlements.

The creation of the database was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council.

Last year, the UN published a report on the initiative, but under intense US and Israeli pressure withheld the names of the companies.

That report specifically mentions how the “tourism industry, including tour companies, online accommodation and travel booking sites and rental car companies” all help to make the settlements “profitable and sustainable.”

Last week Al-Haq sent letters to UN member governments urging that the database be published.

This came after Michelle Bachelet, the current UN high commissioner for human rights, announced yet another delay in releasing the database.

On Monday, almost 100 organizations from all over the world wrote to Bachelet expressing “deep concern” over the delay, saying it would hamper efforts to ensure respect for Palestinian rights and international law.

In February, more than a dozen Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations wrote to Bacheletmaking the same demand.

They stated that further delay would “foster an already existing culture of impunity for human rights abuses and internationally recognized crimes” committed by Israel and the businesses that aid and abet its settlement enterprise.

'Tip of the spear': The US Christian movement praying for Trump and Israel

AIPAC faces noisy scrutiny over its lobbying for Israel, but is it Christian Zionist evangelicals who wield real influence in the White House?

A poster on a street in Jerusalem paid for by the pro-Israel Christian evangelist group Friends of Zion on 11 December 2017 (AFP)

By Azad Essa- 24 March 2019

In the United States, criticising Israel often comes at a cost.

In the case of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a black Muslim and former refugee, the price came in the form of death threats, online abuse, and attempts to have her removed from office.

'Tip of the spear' ... by on Scribd

Fifty-two tweets in 34 hours: How a Trump Twitter frenzy defined a weekend

President Trump waves as he and first lady Melania Trump depart from St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington on March 17. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

By Ashley Parker-March 24 at 8:00 AM

The first tweet came just after 11:50 a.m. last Saturday morning, and the final one landed at 10:04 p.m. the next evening.

What should have been a quiet weekend at home for President Trump — a small birthday gathering to celebrate his son, Barron, turning 13, and a Lenten service at the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church — instead mushroomed into a manic blur of frenzied, raging Twitter messages.

Trump tapped out 52 tweets in just 34 hours, marking his second-most prolific two-day stretch since becoming president — surpassed only by a 53-message flurry last fall focused largely on the arrival of Hurricane Florence.

Just as Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered in the intimate fireside chat through his mastery of radio, and John F. Kennedy skillfully manipulated the new medium of television, Trump has redefined presidential communication with his use of Twitter. The 45th president has deployed the social media platform to fire Cabinet members, belittle his rivals, rally his base, befuddle world leaders and entertain, or infuriate, the masses.

But what impact did his outburst last weekend really have? If a president hunkers down in the White House to tweet alone, how much does it matter?

The missives formed the unofficial soundtrack for official Washington on a chilly but sunny weekend, as cellphones buzzed and skittered with every fresh thought or grievance. They also provided a case study of the ramifications of Trump’s eager Twitter finger — moving global markets and outraging politicians for days to come, or slipping forgotten into the ether until the next one.

A team of Washington Post reporters — Ashley Parker, Heather Long, Sarah Ellison, Tony Romm and Rachael Bade — examined the impact of the president’s tweets on five key areas on which he weighed in last weekend.

Trump played media critic with unsolicited advice for Fox News, and conspirator in chief with retweets of white nationalists. He had nothing at all to say about the slaughter of 50 Muslims in New Zealand, but found time to proclaim that Fox should reinstate an anchor who questioning the patriotism of a Muslim congresswoman.

“When he’s sending 34 tweets on a Sunday afternoon, he’s saying, ‘Which is the thing that can get everyone talking about me?’” said Nick Bilton, author of “Hatching Twitter,” an account of the site’s early years. “It’s almost like a kid who is screaming for a lollipop and an ice pop and a caramel and a chocolate, and is eventually going to get one of them, and it’s like, ‘Which is the thing that’s going to work?’ ”

While Trump was pecking out angry nuggets, press secretary Sarah Sanders spent her weekend on vacation in West Virginia, and chief of staff Mick Mulvaney did the same in Las Vegas. White House officials made no real effort to intervene or rein Trump in, according to people familiar with how the president spent his days.

One Republican strategist in frequent touch with the White House said the staff had largely “given up” on trying to control their boss.

When asked by the Daily Beast Sunday night whether Trump’s tweets and retweets “speak for themselves,” Sanders answered, simply, “Yes.”

'I just want it open!'

Clad in safety goggles and a gray suit, GM chief executive Mary Barra walked into the Orion Assembly Plant in Michigan Friday and announced an electric vehicle that was slated to be built abroad was instead coming to Michigan, along with 400 new jobs.

It had been six days since GM was the target of a lashing on Twitter and five days since Barra got an angry phone call, as a livid Trump complained about the loss of thousands of jobs at factory in Lordstown, Ohio, earlier this month.

Friday’s news conference was put together hastily in the hope of mollifying Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. In fact, the Michigan investment had long been in the works.

“This is something that’s been planned for a while,” Barra said in an interview on Fox Business, quickly adding, “General Motors and the president are very aligned. We want to create good-paying jobs.”

Mary Barra, chief executive of GM, speaks at the GM Orion Assembly plant in Orion Township, Mich., on March 22. (Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg)

Trump’s corporate strong-arming has had mixed success. When Foxconn was about to abandon plans to open a facility in Wisconsin, Trump called the company, and suddenly the investment was back on, if still significantly smaller than once promised. Elsewhere, like Carrier in Indiana, large firms have gone ahead with layoffs despite pushback from Trump.

GM appears to be giving Trump the equivalent of a vegetarian meal when he asked for his preferred well-done steak with ketchup. The announcement covered a $300 million investment at the Orion plant in the Detroit suburbs, but the company didn’t budge on Lordstown.

“I am not happy that it is closed when everything else in our Country is BOOMING,” Trump tweeted after talking to Barra about Lordstown. “I asked her to sell it or do something quickly. She blamed the UAW Union — I don’t care, I just want it open!”

GM says now is the time to transition the company into a future of electric and self-driving cars, something Trump has been lukewarm about. Last year the Trump administration rolled back Obama-era rules that forced the auto industry to become more fuel efficient.

The company said Friday it would make a new electric vehicle at the Orion Assembly Plant as part of $1.8 billion in new investment in the United States in the coming years, about $1.4 billion of which had not been previously announced.

But Trump never tweeted about it.

The president praised Ford in a tweet Wednesday after it announced a nearly $1 billion investment in Michigan. For GM, there was only silence.

'Bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro'

Trump is obsessed with Fox News. He watches the conservative-leaning networkevery day, often with running commentary on Twitter. He talks with Rupert Murdoch, whose family controls the company, about once a week or more.

And he values his relationships with the Trump-friendly anchors there, including Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and — as he made clear at 9:18 a.m. on Sunday — the suspended celebrity host known as Judge Jeanine.

“Bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro,” he exhorted. “The Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country. They have all out campaigns against @FoxNews hosts who are doing too well. Fox must stay strong and fight back with vigor. Stop working soooo hard on being politically correct, which will only bring you down, and continue to fight for our Country.”

Pirro had been forced to miss her regular show the night before after she had suggested that the Muslim headscarf worn by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was, by definition, anti-American. Fox News placed her on suspension, which she and Trump discussed, according to a person briefed on their conversations.

Pirro is a longtime friend dating back to her days as a media-savvy district attorney in Westchester County. She and her then-husband ran in the same social circle as then-real estate developer Donald Trump.

Ads with Fox News personalities, including Tucker Carlson, cover the front of the News Corp. building in New York. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The connections between Trump and Fox are symbiotic. Bill Shine, until recently his deputy chief of staff in charge of communications, is a former Fox News executive who got his job in part because Hannity advocated for him. Kimberly Guilfoyle, also a former Fox host, is dating the president’s son Don Jr. Both were known inside the building as belonging to the Trump wing of support inside Fox, unlike more establishment Republican figures such as Dana Perino and Brit Hume.

Four hours to the minute after his Pirro jeremiad, Trump was angry at Fox again — this time at a pair of little-known weekend anchors who hosted segments he didn’t like.

“Were @FoxNews weekend anchors, @ArthelNeville and @LelandVittert, trained by CNN prior to their ratings collapse?” Trump fumed.

But the real power at the network resides with the opinion hosts — Hannity’s show is the highest-rated on the network, and even Pirro’s garners about 2 million viewers each Saturday. They can be divisive inside Fox. There was one view, voiced by a high-level insider, that Pirro is “a bit of an embarrassment,” given her outspoken comments.

But not that embarrassing, apparently. According to one person familiar with the network’s plans, Pirro is scheduled to return to her show on March 30.

'They are losers, we are winners!'

On 8chan, an anonymous message board infamous for allowing anyone to post whatever they want, followers of the fringe QAnon conspiracy theory took sudden notice Sunday. The president of the United States had just retweeted one of their own.

“LOOKEY LOOKEY,” wrote one of the site’s anonymous users, after seeing Trump’s amplification of a Twitter user named VBNationalist.

“Look what POTUS retweeted and what’s in the upper left corner,” noted another user, referring to a profile photo on the account that Trump shared, which contained the letter “Q” wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

Still another 8chan user added: “Best POTUS EVER!”

To the casual observer, Trump’s retweet seemed aimed only in the defense of Pirro, sharing a message that “we have to fight back. They have not let up on President Trump, nor his supporters since they lost. They are losers, we are winners!”

In the end, though, Trump’s mere act of retweeting started a chain of events that would amplify one of the Web’s most pernicious conspiracy theories — much to its followers’ delight.

To researchers, the problem wasn’t so much what VBNationalist said, but what the user’s profile contained — a photo and a series of hashtags showing support for QAnon. The baseless conspiracy theory rests on the idea that an anonymous government official, or “Q,” is sharing messages with followers about a secret plot to undermine Trump. Adherents to QAnon parse updates, or “crumbs,” for hidden meanings — especially for signs that Trump knows and supports the cause. And followers see the number 17, the numerical placement of Q in the alphabet, as a special symbol in its own right.

David Reinert holds a large "Q" sign at an Aug. 2 Trump rally in Wilkes Barre, Pa. (Rick Loomis/Getty Images)

So Trump’s decision to retweet a user whose profile clearly referenced QAnon — on March 17, no less — sparked great interest in the darkest depths of the Web, including on 8chan. Over that same weekend, as Trump tweeted, 8chan had found itself in the headlines for a different reason: Its users were uploading videos of the New Zealand massacre and scheming over ways to facilitate its spread online.

It is unclear how the tweet first surfaced on Trump’s radar. But Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who studies social media, political memes and conspiracy theories such as QAnon, said Trump is highly susceptible.

“You can sneak a lot past his gatekeepers … simply by being loyal to him and expressing fidelity,” she said. “That opens him up then to these kinds of influence campaigns.”

On Sunday, VBNationalist rejoiced at the president’s attention.

“What a glorious day for #WWG1WGA #Q,” the account tweeted a day later, using a hashtags referring to a popular QAnon phrase — “where we go one, we go all.”

In a screenshot posted by VBNationalist that afternoon, the user appeared to have roughly 8,000 users. By Friday, it had nearly doubled.

'Last in his class'

Trump traveled to Lima, Ohio, Wednesday to peddle his vision of economic success. But first, the president had something he wanted to clear up.

Early into his speech at a manufacturing plant that produces military tanks, the president paused to turn his attention to McCain, the former GOP presidential nominee and war hero who died of brain cancer last year. “I have to be honest: I’ve never liked him much,” Trump said.

“I wasn’t a fan of John McCain . . . not my kind of guy,” he concluded.

Trump’s unprompted riff was simply a continuation of an attack on the late Arizona senator that began during his weekend tweetstorm.

Angered by a news report highlighting McCain’s role in providing a copy of an intelligence dossier to the FBI about Trump’s possible ties to Russia — a dossier Trump incorrectly blames for launching special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe — the president lashed out with tweets. He called the dossier “a very dark stain” against McCain, and falsely claimed he was “last in his class” at the U.S. Naval Academy. (McCain graduated fifth from the bottom — a fact that the self-deprecating senator often noted).

That kicked off a week-long news cycle focused on the feud, with Trump getting asked about it while sitting next to the president of Brazil on Tuesday, venting his frustrations in front of the military crowd in Ohio on Wednesday, and ending the week by reiterating he was “not a fan” of McCain in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Friday.

It also prompted rare rebukes of the president from some Republican lawmakers. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) called Trump’s comments “deplorable,” while Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) wrote on Twitter, “I can’t understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain.”

McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, said on ABC’s “The View,” that defending her dad against Trump is “extremely emotionally exhausting” but added that in attacking someone who is dead, the president had hit a “new bizarre low.”

Yet Trump’s rants against McCain are unlikely to hurt him politically with those in his base who viewed the senator with distrust. Nor are they likely to undermine the legacy of McCain, a Navy prisoner of war during the Vietnam War who rose to become his party’s nominee for president in 2008.

“He’ll be fine,” said Mark Salter, a former longtime aide to McCain. “McCain died a much admired man, and he’ll be remembered a much admired man because he earned it.”

'There should be no Mueller Report'

One of Trump’s biggest targets during his weekend tweetstorm was one of his favorites — the Russia investigation overseen by Mueller, who transmitted his final report to the Justice Department on Friday.

The wave of tweets and retweets arguably gave House Democrats more ammunition for their probe into whether Trump obstructed justice and has abused his power, Democrats said. Yet many responded with a shrug.

For weeks, the House Judiciary Committee has been slowly building a case to argue that Trump has undermined vital democratic institutions — including by calling the motives of law enforcement and the Justice Department into question as well as attacking the credibility of the media.

The special counsel, Trump wrote in one message retweeted Saturday, “should never have been appointed and there should be no Mueller Report. This was an illegal & conflicted investigation in search of a crime. Russian Collusion was nothing more than an excuse by the Democrats for losing an Election that they thought they were going to win.”

Trump’s tweets were more of the same to some Democrats, who feel they have more important priorities now that the battle to release the report has begun.

Rather than his tweets, for example, some Democrats were more interested last weekend in a CNN report that the White House wanted to review the Mueller report before it became public to claim executive privilege.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said little about Trump’s weekend tweets, focusing on the CNN report instead.

“There is no provision in the regulations for White House review,” Nadler tweeted, “and it would be unacceptable for President Trump — the subject, if not the target of the Special Counsel’s work — to edit the report before it goes public.”

'MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!'

If Trump’s goal was to inject himself into the public debate last weekend, he unquestionably succeeded. One of the world’s largest corporations scrambled to appease him, Pirro will return to work, senators responded to his attacks and the fringe Internet swooned.

But the sheer volume of his tweets — roughly one-and-a-half per hour, once he logged on and starting typing — was arguably almost as notable as the content.

Bilton, the Twitter author, said that for all the hype that surrounds Trump’s tweets, they are more often ephemera rather than pronouncements with abiding consequences.

“We could have had this conversation last week about a different set of tweets that we can’t even remember today,” he said. “I don’t remember what the scandal was three days ago; I truly do not remember what the scandal was a month ago; and if you tasked me to name one a year ago, it would take me 15 minutes to remember. And what that says is the tweets are just noise and what they’re doing is making the two sides louder and more unintelligible.”

Before Trump signed off Sunday night, he sent a final one-sentence tweet — an all-caps version of his 2016 rallying cry: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

With about 48,000 retweets a week later, it was the most frequently shared message of all.

Heather Long, Sarah Ellison, Tony Romm and Rachael Bade contributed to this report.

Is the “stop Brexit” petition reliable?

By Patrick Worrall-22 Mar 2019

A petition on the UK parliament website calling for the government to stop Brexit has attracted more than 3 million signatures.

Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage told the BBC’s Today programme a lot of the signatures were “from Russia”.

It’s true that some of the signatures have come from overseas, and we know that hackers have targeted official petitions relating to Brexit before.

We also know that it is relatively easy to sign the petition using a false identity. So how seriously should we take the petition?

The petition

The petition calls for the government to “revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU”.

It quickly passed the threshold of 100,000 signatures needed for parliament to have to consider the question for debate.

The numbers are being updated quickly, but at time of writing, the petition has just over 3.3 million signatures.

You “sign” by clicking a button on the website, entering a name, email address, location and postcode, and ticking a box that says you are a British citizen or UK resident.

An email gets sent to the address you entered, and you click on another link to complete the process.

It has been suggested today that it’s possible to sign more than once using different names and the same email address, but FactCheck has not been able to replicate that result – we get an error message telling us we have already signed.

It’s possible that people who thought they were signing multiple times missed the fact that they needed to get an email and click on the link to get your signature added.

The security problems

Residency and nationality

People can sign from all over the world, and there doesn’t appear to be a way of definitively checking their nationality or residency.

If you click on the “get petition data” link, you get a list of countries where signatures originate.
The list is enormous, covering almost every country in the world and some fairly obscure overseas territories: Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, anyone?

This is not necessarily evidence that hackers are gaming the system. After all, a British citizen living anywhere in the world can legitimately sign the petition, and sometimes people use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) based overseas to hide their real online location.

Of course, it would be suspicious if very large numbers of people in places with small populations – say British Antarctic Territory – were signing up.

But they aren’t. The obscure island territories are showing handfuls of signatures, and the countries with the most are ones with large British expat populations like France, Spain, Germany and the US.

How many of the signatures were made by computers overseas? Only 3.8 per cent, according to the latest data on the petitions site (the numbers are being updated all the time, so you may get a different result if you run the calculation yourself after reading this).

So at the moment, it doesn’t look like enough signatures are coming from overseas to skew the results significantly.

But ultimately, we can’t be sure about where people are from, because the petition relies on honesty. You tick a box declaring yourself to be a British citizen or resident, but there is no detailed check on your status.

It’s also worth noting that people who are resident in the UK but not citizens can legitimately sign the petition, whereas the voting rules in the 2016 EU referendum were very different.

Most EU citizens living in Britain could not vote for or against Brexit, so it’s possible that a significant number of people signing the petition did not take part in the referendum. How many? We don’t know.

You can sign using a false name

We tested the system in the newsroom, and we found that it’s very quick and easy to sign the petition using a false identity.

We created an account under a made-up name with an email platform that doesn’t have strict rules about verifying the identification of its users.

The petition sent an email to the bogus email account and we could have registered our signature if we had clicked on the link.

This opens the question of whether individuals have signed the petition multiple times using pseudonymous accounts, perhaps using different devices with different IP addresses.

Our understanding, based on conversations with cybersecurity professionals, is that this would be fairly easy to spot if it was being done with thousands of signatures at a time.

Many signatures coming from a device with the same IP address – or made at exactly the same time – would raise red flags.

When hackers used software to automatically add large numbers of multiple signatures to an earlier Brexit-related petition in 2016, the site administrators went back and looked for patterns of suspicious behaviour, then removed tens of thousands of dodgy signatures.

We can speculate that they might do the same again, but the House of Commons is being fairly tight-lipped about its security measures.

A spokesman told us: “The Government Digital Service use a number of techniques, automated and manual, to identify and block signatures from bots, disposable email addresses or other sources that show signs of fraudulent activity.

“They also monitor signing patterns to check for fraudulent activity. Much like the traditional paper petitioning system, which asks people to provide an address and signature, the e-petitions system aims to strike a balance between allowing people to easily register their support for issues which are important to them, whilst discouraging dishonesty.

“We can’t comment in more detail about the security measures.”

They did add that they had introduced “additional measures” after the 2016 hack “to stop the abuse of free and disposable email addresses to add fraudulent signatures to a petition”.

The verdict

In the absence of more detail from the people who run the petitions website, it’s hard to say exactly how resistant the system is to fraud.

When hackers used bots to add bogus signatures to another Brexit petition in 2016, they boasted about it on the 4Chan message board.

We can’t find evidence of people bragging on that site a about large-scale security breaches this time around. And the House of Commons says it has stepped up security since then.

There is a question mark around overseas signatures, but these are not happening in large numbers.
Perhaps more worryingly, it is pretty easy for individuals to sign the petition more than once using fake email addresses, and we simply don’t know if the security protocols are good enough to spot these duplicates and remove them from the final tally.

The Mueller Report Is a Test for the United States

As the world looks on, it’s up to Washington to demonstrate the strength of its institutions.

Photographers outside the U.S. Justice Department in Washington on March 22, after special counsel Robert Mueller delivered his report to Attorney General William Barr. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

BY DANIEL B. BAER| MARCH 23, 2019, 4:04 PM

There’s no question that the primary audience for U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s much-anticipated report, which he delivered to the Justice Department on Friday, is a domestic one. But around the world, foreign ministries and intelligence services will be watching how the United States responds to the findings for clues about the country’s strength.

While Russia’s successful intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and President Donald Trump’s erratic behavior and manifest ignorance have already diminished any sense that the United States was immune to the vulnerabilities associated with demagogic populism that have strained other countries, the institutions of U.S. democracy have nonetheless held up reasonably well—so far. The reception of the Mueller report will be a test of those institutions and Americans’ level of faith in and commitment to them.

Let us acknowledge at the outset: In most other countries, the very idea of creating a genuinely independent special counsel would be as preposterous as the idea of riding a unicorn.
In most places, the rule of law and independent institutions are not strong enough to withstand the political pressure of a leader attempting to avoid investigation. On this count, Mueller’s apparently diligent and professional handling of the process has likely impressed adversaries and reassured allies.

Now that his report has been delivered, it’s up to the United States to demonstrate strength on two main measures.

First, the domestic challenge: The attorney general and Congress should proceed according to U.S. laws and the Constitution (and their sworn duty to uphold it) in dealing with Mueller’s conclusions. The institutions of justice must follow the findings of Mueller’s report, not the president’s Twitter feed.Members of Congress should focus their efforts to examine the report’s findings and their implications through formal proceedings rather than through cable news appearances.

This is not to say that there should not be public discussion of the report: It will almost surely be released or leaked, and there will be a public debate about its findings. And the report is not the final word on these matters; other investigations continue and Congress has an ongoing oversight responsibility. But in response to Mueller’s findings, U.S. institutions must do their work and must be allowed to do so.

The eyes of the world will focus on whether Washington has kept to a rule of law process in addition to the inevitable political one. Furthermore, many observers may ultimately find themselves disappointed by the outcome of such a process. The world will judge them by whether they can separate that disappointment from their commitment to uphold the function of the institutions themselves.

Second, the foreign-policy challenge: To the extent that Mueller’s report adds new information to the already overwhelming and conclusive evidence of foreign intervention in the 2016 election, there must be additional consequences for implicated actors. Beijing will be watching. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will be watching from Pyongyang. The failure to mete out consequences will invite further foreign intervention. In addition, the United States must take purposeful, strategic action, some of it visible to would-be adversaries, to counter the threat of intervention in the 2020 elections. Mueller’s report may give Americans additional information on how foreign powers were able to sabotage a U.S. election. This may help supplement the good ideas that have already been put forwardabout how to protect the next one.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime will be watching this process especially closely.
While on the one hand Putin and his cronies may be most concerned with findings that implicate them and could bring further consequences, the Russian leader will be watching the U.S. domestic process closely, too. And he will be looking to have his cynicism confirmed.

Even after years of working with Russian officials—when I was serving as U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, I may have been the only U.S. official to have a standing weekly meeting with my Russian counterpart—I still found myself taken aback at the depth and consistency of the cynicism that Russian officials would express in private. “None of this matters—it’s all theater that doesn’t matter,” one of them once told me; he was referring to diplomacy. He thought those of us trying to solve problems were cute (and not in a good way). Those officials never believed that we really believed in concepts like human rights or the rule of law. They thought that because they had a dark and zero-sum outlook on human relations, everyone else did, too. A commitment to institutions and universal principles was, in their view, all theater.

Video: Meet the women of Gaza’s wheelchair karate team

21 March 2019

This karate team in Gaza is comprised of all women who use wheelchairs.

The team was established by coach Hasan al-Rai in 2016, when he was training a karate team for the blind and they scored third place in an international tournament.

“At first, I faced difficulty with my parents, how a girl with a disability would practice karate. I faced the same difficulty with society,” Suha Muqat, a member of the team, told The Electronic Intifada.

The team lacks consistent funding for uniforms and transportation costs, but members are determined to practice in the hopes of one day representing Palestine internationally.

“I wish the Israeli siege would be lifted and we can represent Palestine abroad, and to prove that people with disabilities have a big role in society,” Rabab Anwar, another member of the team, said.

Video by Mohammed Asad.

Insight: The making of militants in India's 'paradise on earth'

Sister of Owais Malik, a suspected militant, displays her phone with the picture of Malik, at her home in south Kashmir's Kulgam district February 16, 2019. REUTERS/Zeba Siddiqui/File Photo

Zeba Siddiqui, Fayaz Bukhari-MARCH 24, 2019

KULGAM, India (Reuters) - Kashmiri farmer Yusuf Malik learned that his son Owais, a 22-year old arts student and apple picker, had become an armed militant via a Facebook post.

Days after Owais disappeared from his home in this picturesque valley below the Himalayan ranges, his picture appeared on the social network, posted by a user the family said they did not recognise.

The short, thin, curly-haired young man in casual jeans and a T-shirt stared resolutely at the camera, both hands clutching an AK-47 rifle.

In blood red font on the photo was scribbled his new allegiance: the Hizbul Mujahideen, or ‘The Party of Warriors’, the largest of the militant groups fighting to free the mostly-Muslim Kashmir from Indian rule.

“He was a responsible kid who cared about his studies,” said Yusuf, 49, staring down at the carpeted floor of his brick home where he sat on a recent winter morning, clasping his folded hands inside his traditional pheran cloak.

The family said it has not heard from Owais since.

Owais is one of a rising number of local militants fighting for independence of Kashmir - an insurgency being spread on social media amid India’s sustained, iron-fisted rule of the region.

Hundreds of thousands of Indian troops and armed police are stationed in this lush region at the foot of the Himalayas. India and rival Pakistan have always disputed the area and in the past three decades, an uprising against New Delhi’s rule has killed nearly 50,000 civilians, militants and soldiers, by official count.

Historically, that insurrection has largely been led by militants from Pakistan, who have infiltrated into the valley.

But now, an increasing number of locally-born Kashmiris are picking up arms, according to Indian officials. About 400 local Kashmiris have been recruited by militants since the start of 2016, nearly double the number in the previous six years, according to government data. India says Pakistani groups continue to provide training and arms - a claim Islamabad rejects.

Just a month before Owais Malik showed up on Facebook, another young man, Adil Ahmad Dar, left his home in a nearby part of Kashmir to join a militant group. This February, his suicide attack on a paramilitary convoy killed 40 Indian policemen, and took India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

After Dar’s attack, Indian security forces launched a major crackdown, searching Kashmiri homes and detaining hundreds of supporters, sympathisers and family members of those in armed groups. At least half a dozen gunbattles broke out between Indian police and militants.

The families of Dar and other young militants, as well as some local leaders and political experts, say run-ins between locals and security forces are one of the main reasons for anger and radicalisation. After the recent crackdown, they expect more young people to take up arms.

“FREEDOM, MARTYRS”

Outside the narrow lane that leads to the Malik family home in Kulgam in southern Kashmir, children walk to school past shuttered shopfronts and walls spray-painted with the word “azadi”, the local word for “freedom”. The graveyard at the end of the lane has an area for militants, who are remembered as “martyrs”.

Dar’s family claims he’d been radicalised in 2016 after being beaten up by Indian troops on his way back from school for pelting stones at them.

“Since then, he wanted to join the militants,” said his father Ghulam Hassan Dar, a farmer.

India’s home and foreign ministries did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

In news conferences since the suicide bombing, Lt. Gen. K.J.S. Dhillon, India’s top military commander in Kashmir, has dismissed allegations of harassment and rights abuses by Indian troops as “propaganda”. He said the recent crackdown by security forces has resulted in the killing of the masterminds of the attack, and militant recruitment has dipped in recent months.

Syed Ata Hasnain, a retired army general who has served in Kashmir for over 20 years, said the rise in homegrown fighters does not surprise him.

“Those who were born in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the conflict started, have now come of age,” he said. “This is a generation that has only seen the jackboot. The alienation of this generation is higher than the alienation of the previous generation.”

A 17th century Mughal emperor called Kashmir “paradise on earth”. But violence has ebbed and flowed in the valley since the subcontinent was divided into predominantly Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan after independence from Britain in 1947.

The question of Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, was never resolved, and it has been the catalyst for two wars and several violent clashes between the countries.

Tensions have risen after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in New Delhi in 2014. Modi promised a tougher approach to Pakistan and gave security forces the licence to retaliate forcefully against the insurgency.

CULT FOLLOWING

Around that time, many young Kashmiris started rallying around Burhan Wani, who had left home at the age of 15 to join the insurgency. Wani had a large following on social media, where he appeared in videos dressed in military fatigues and armed with an assault rifle, calling for an uprising against Indian rule.

Slideshow (3 Images)

He and his brother were beaten by security forces when they were teenagers, his family told local media. Wani was 22 when he was killed by security forces in 2016 and thousands attended his funeral despite restrictions on the movement of people and traffic.

The United Nations said in a report last year that in trying to quell mass protests in Kashmir since 2016, Indian security forces used excessive force that led to between 130 and 145 killings, according to civil society estimates.

Thousands were injured, including around 700 who sustained eye injuries from the use of pellet guns by security forces, it said. Thousands of people had simply disappeared since the insurgency began, it said.

The Indian government has rejected the report as false. Indian forces have long been accused of rights abuses and torture in custody in Kashmir, but officials routinely deny the charges.

Instead, India points the finger at Pakistan. Officials say the rebellion in Kashmir is being funded and organised by Pakistan and if they cut off those resources, the insurgency will weaken and it can then focus on building Kashmir’s economy. The Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group claimed responsibility for the latest attack, which was the deadliest in the insurgency.

Pakistan says it only provides moral support to the Kashmiri right to self-determination.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the Muslim spiritual leader of Kashmir who is considered a moderate separatist, contests that India has true plans to engage politically with the people of Kashmir.

“In the past five years we have seen that the government of India has only spoken to Kashmiris through the barrel of the gun, that’s it. There is no political approach,” he said.

“Nobody is dying in Kashmir for lack of roads, electricity and water.”

LOSING ANOTHER SON

A few miles south of Owais Malik’s home in Kulgam lives Masuma Begum, who said her son and brother had been called in to an army camp two days after the latest bombing and have been held since then.

A military spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Behind the glass panes of a wall shelf above her were photos of a smiling young man, an assault rifle slung on his shoulder.

“That’s my other son, Tausif,” Masuma Begum said. The 24-year-old had joined the Hizbul Mujahideen in 2013 and been killed by the army the same year, she said. “I don’t want to lose another son.”