Jewish Labour Movement harassed Labour activists

Jeremy Newmark speaking with other Jewish Labour Movement leaders during Labour Friends of Israel’s conference reception in 2016. (Al Jazeera/YouTube)

Asa Winstanley - 4 April 2019

The Jewish Labour Movement harassed Labour and trade union activists at the party’s conference in 2017, The Electronic Intifada can reveal.

The group’s then chairperson Jeremy Newmark verbally attacked and repeatedly filmed Labour councilor Nikki McDonald and two of her female friends.

The same day, her husband Tosh McDonald, a union leader, was also photographed by two young activists on the conference floor.

All had been applauding a Palestine campaigner’s speech to the conference, and some had been wearing lanyards adorned with the Palestinian flag.

Newmark continued to film the three later in the day, despite being told to stop by conference stewards.

“It was awful. It made me feel really uncomfortable,” Nikki McDonald told The Electronic Intifada. She said Newmark’s actions had constituted “harassment.”

“I’m not a delicate little flower but … he was really, really quite frightening,” she said. “I was actually quite shaken,” she recounted.

Fear

McDonald said that she and her two friends – activists from train drivers union ASLEF – had been loudly cheering left-wing Jewish activist Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi when Newmark began filming them.

McDonald said that ahead of the conference, the ongoing campaign to misrepresent Labour as an anti-Semitic party had intimidated her and her friends and left them “really fearful.” She said she had been “absolutely dreading the conference” – so Wimborne-Idrissi’s interventions had come as a breath of fresh air.

“We were so relieved that we could actually talk about Palestine without feeling that somebody would jump on you,” she said.

Newmark was part of a group of around 20 mostly young activists sitting nearby, McDonald said.

The Jewish Labour Movement is a group that works closely with the Israeli embassy in London.

The Electronic Intifada put McDonald’s account of events at conference to Jeremy Newmark, without naming her.

Newmark responded in an email, “Perhaps you might explain exactly where and when this is supposed to have happened?”

After being told it took place in 2017, Newmark asked for “proper details of these allegations” – while also stating that he wholly denied them.

When asked if he had filmed people against their will when finding them “deeply offensive” at Labour Party conference on more than one occasion, he claimed to have “no such habit.”

The Jewish Labour Movement did not respond to a request for comment.

Palestine campaigners

Wimborne-Idrissi, a Jewish Voice for Labour leader, and veteran Palestine solidarity activist, had been contributing to a debate on a rule change which focused on allegations of anti-Semitism in Labour. You can watch her speech in the video below.

Later that day, Newmark took to the TV studios to attack Wimborne-Idrissi and her left-wing Jewish comrades. At a fringe meeting, he even accused her of anti-Semitism in her speech, calling for the party to “take action” against her.

“Newmark’s intimidation of pro-Palestine delegates to conference was a warning sign of what was to come,” Wimborne Idrissi told The Electronic Intifada this week.

“Barely two years on, his pro-Israel friends have succeeded in making it virtually impossible for members to call for justice for Palestinians without being condemned as anti-Semites, while undermining the necessary work of uniting all vulnerable minority groups in opposition to real and rising racist threats,” she said.

Since Palestine solidarity campaigner Jeremy Corbyn was elected party leader in September 2015, the Jewish Labour Movement has been a leading force in driving the false narrative that Labour is “institutionally anti-Semitic.”

But Wimborne-Idrissi and other left-wing Jewish activists have argued that, while there is a real need to challenge anti-Semitism, its prevalence in the party has been wildly exaggerated for political purposes.

While Wimborne-Idrissi was speaking, McDonald says, she looked to her side and noticed “this chap with his phone out and he’s filming me.”

She recalled that she asked “Why are you filming me?” He replied, “Because I find you deeply offensive.”

She had not known who the man was at the time, but later noted his name from his conference badge.

After the first incident, McDonald and her friends went to complain to conference stewards, she told The Electronic Intifada. They later informed McDonald that they had told Newmark not to repeat his actions.

Later they came across Newmark again, who proceeded to film them once more.

McDonald and her friends then went to conference officials to complain, but no action was taken. They “weren’t in the least bit interested,” she said. “It never got official.”

Local councilor and union activist Tosh McDonald speaking at Labour conference in 2018. (Labour/YouTube)

Around the same time, Nikki’s husband Tosh was also targeted by mysterious activists with their phones out.

Tosh McDonald, then the president of ASLEF, told The Electronic Intifada that two young women “started taking photos of us if we clapped.” Tosh McDonald was there as part of the ASLEF delegation.

Nikki McDonald thinks it possible they might have been targeted because they had both attended the launch of Jewish Voice for Labour the previous evening.

At that meeting, Tosh had publicly announced he would recommend to his union that they affiliate to the new group.

Earlier in 2017, Tosh had been attacked for using part of his speech at a Spanish civil war memorial event to express solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

A Zionist activist walked out of the event, objecting that McDonald had made comparisons “with other struggles … such as apartheid in South Africa … [and] the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.”

Jeremy Newmark has long been a leading figure in the UK’s Israel lobby. In recent years, he has reinvented himself as a right-wing Labour Party activist.

At an Israel lobby conference in 2011, Newmark encouraged the audience to join their local political parties and trade unions to “become a voice for Israel” and fight against “Israel’s deteriorating position.”

A video from the conference, obtained by The Electronic Intifada, was deleted by organizers from YouTube. You can watch it above.

As Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Finchley and Golders Green, Newmark narrowly failed to capture the North London seat from the ruling Conservatives in June 2017’s general election. A few months later, however, he was elected a Labour councilor, after a local by-election in October.

Despite stepping down as the Jewish Labour Movement’s chairperson last year, he remains leader of the Labour group in a suburban North London council.

Fraud investigation dropped

Last month, the Jewish Chronicle reported that police had shelved a fraud investigation into Newmark.

The paper reported that more than $146,000 in Jewish Leadership Council funds from around the time Newmark was chief executive of that pro-Israel group “could not be accounted for.”

But police dropped the case after forensic accountants found their work “seriously hampered” by missing documents.

Newmark denies any wrongdoing. “No evidence was provided that any evidence was removed or destroyed” by him, he told the Jewish Chronicle.

The Jewish Labour Movement, founded in 2004, was revived in September 2015, the same month Jeremy Corbyn was first elected leader.

This was done in order to “battle” the new left-wing, Palestine campaigning leader, a transcript of an undercover recording obtained by The Electronic Intifada last month shows.

As part of this effort, Newmark hired a new staff member, recruiting her out of the Israeli embassy.

In another secret transcript, obtained by The Electronic Intifada last year, former director Ella Rose admitted that her group worked in close coordination with the Israeli embassy and its agents.

“We work with Shai, we know him very well,” she told an undercover journalist in 2016.

“National security issue”

Shai Masot was exposed by the Al Jazeera undercover investigation in 2017, after a plot with a civil servant to “take down” Alan Duncan – a senior Conservative government minister deemed critical of Israel.

When the Mail on Sunday previewed some of the film’s contents in a front page story, the Labour Party initially called for an inquiry into “the extent of this improper interference in our democratic politics by other states.”

Shadow Foreign Minister Emily Thornberry even described the affair as “a national security issue.”

But later, after the full film was broadcast, it became clear that the bulk of the Al Jazeera documentary focused on Masot’s interference in Labour. Thornberry and the rest of the Labour leadership went silent on the issue.

Nothing substantial was done by political leaders to investigate this “national security issue.”

Masot was thrown under the bus by his boss, ambassador Mark Regev, who downplayed the role of his “senior political officer.”

The Jewish Labour Movement has previously refused to comment, accusing The Electronic Intifada of “wild conspiracy theories.”

It has also responded to requests for comment with empty legal threats.

John Abraham On R&AW

Patriotism is something that you must feel in your heart, and you project it in a certain sensitive, credible, sensible and responsible way in your storytelling. 

by Radhika Bhirani-3 Apr 2019

New Delhi, April 3 (IANS) There's a thin line that divides patriotism from jingoism. But as Bollywood is riding on a high tide of films with nationalistic themes, actor John Abraham, who plays a spy in thriller "RAW", says it's totally worth it to have a stream of movies on what people need to see in the current socio-political environment.

"Patriotism is something that you must feel in your heart, and you project it in a certain sensitive, credible, sensible and responsible way in your storytelling. Jingoism is when you wear that on your sleeve. I think there may be some films that may go over the top in trying to be opportunistic, but if there is a wave of films that do address what the country needs to see at this point of time, I feel it's absolutely worth it," John told IANS over phone from London.

"Uri: The Surgical Strike", "Raazi", "Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi" and "Kesari" have turned out to be a success.

John's own "Parmanu: The Story of Pokhran" was a narrative around India's 1998 nuclear tests. "RAW", releasing on Friday, talks about a common man who turns into a spy. And his upcoming "Batla House" traces the story of the shootout between a seven-member Delhi Police Special Cell team and suspected Indian Mujahideen terrorists allegedly involved in the September 13, 2008 serial blasts in Delhi.

The actor cited Hollywood's example, saying how films like "Lone Survivor" and "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi" have worked wonders.

"I think we have graduated from the 'Border' and 'LOC Kargil' days to a different style of screenplay that the audience would perhaps find palatable. The audience is also very smart. They know the difference between jingoism and patriotism. So, the minute they will see something jingoistic, they will say, 'Listen, drop this. We don't want this'," John said.

Of his own projects, he said: "When I did 'Madras Cafe', it was because I was very impacted by Rajiv Gandhi's death. I did 'Parmanu...' because it was a story that stayed with me for the longest period of time and I felt how do the youngsters in India do not know what happened in Pokhran. When I am doing 'RAW', it's another side of our defence forces that I want to show to everyone out here, and if I do a 'Batla House', it's a very sensitive space.

"'Batla House' is perhaps the most contentious subject in India after Babri Masjid. So, I am actually attempting something where I know the probability of failure is high, but the probability of success is even higher."

Having said that, the actor-producer believes that the credibility one gets by associating with films that "make a difference, have a voice and take a stand is different than saying 'Hey, my film did Rs 200 crore'."

The story of Robbie Grewal's "RAW" has in the backdrop the 1971 India-Pakistan war which had marked the first time India used air power against Pakistan. Given that it has just been over a month to the air strike by the Indian Air Force (IAF) on a terror training camp on Pakistan soil, "RAW" in a way resonates with current times.

But John said: "I wish this film wasn't topical at this time because it's at the cost of these 40-plus lives of our (CRPF) soldiers that we lost (in Pulwama, Kashmir). So, given an option, I would have rather prayed for the lives of our soldiers than have a film that's opportunistic, simply putting it. But the case is such that we made this film over a year ago and we had no idea things would pan out this way.

"The mood of the country is such that people want to see something on India but at the same time, it's very important that we explore different facets of the country, if you choose to do so in a sensible way."

(Radhika Bhirani can be contacted at radhika.b@ians.in)

--IANS

Microsoft employees confront CEO over company's treatment of women

• Workers dressed in white confront Satya Nadella at Q&A
• Discrimination and harassment widespread, workers allege

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The protest followed weeks of internal discussion about sexism on an email thread that began. Photograph: Jason Redmond/Reuters

Julia Carrie Wongin San Francisco @juliacarriew Email-Thu 4 Apr 2019

Microsoft employees are protesting against the company’s alleged failure to stem gender discrimination and sexual harassment, according to reports.

A group of Microsoft employees dressed in all white challenged the company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and top human resources executive, Kathleen Hogan, over the company’s treatment of women at a Q&A session on Thursday, according to Wired. The all-white outfits were a reference to the US congresswomen who wore white during Donald Trump’s State of the Union address this February.

The protest followed weeks of internal discussion about sexism on an email thread that began on 20 March, when a female employee who had been in the same position for six years asked other women for advice on advancement, according to Quartz.

Dozens of female employees of the company responded by sharing their experiences of harassment and discrimination on the email thread.

“This thread has pulled the scab off a festering wound,” one employee wrote, according to Quartz. “The collective anger and frustration is palpable. A wide audience is now listening. And you know what? I’m good with that.”

Another employee alleged that it was common for female employees to be “called a bitch at work”, and a third said she was twice asked to “sit on someone’s lap” during a meeting when executives and HR representatives were present.

Hogan joined the email thread, and Microsoft provided her email as comment.

“We are appalled and sad to hear about these experiences,” Hogan wrote. “It is very painful to hear these stories and to know that anyone is facing such behavior at Microsoft. We must do better.”

The executive wrote that the company’s chief diversity officer would be holding sessions to hear feedback in April, and invited employees to report negative experiences directly to her.

The plot just thickened on William Barr and the Mueller report

The message from Mueller’s team, whether deliberate, seems to be: Stay tuned, and be wary of Attorney General William Barr.

Attorney General William P. Barr is planning key redactions to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's report. (Taylor Turner/The Washington Post)

By Aaron Blake-April 4 at 9:11 AM

For the entirety of its probe, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team has been leakproof. When we learned things about its Russia investigation, it was almost always through people who found themselves mixed up in it. Mueller lived up to his by-the-book reputation.

Which makes what we saw Wednesday night all the more notable. The New York Times broke, then The Washington Post matched, the news that investigators on Mueller’s team were grousing about how Attorney General William P. Barr has handled summarizing their report.

Even if the leaks weren’t deliberate — the Times initially reported this secondhand as the Mueller team complaining to associates, not them — the fact that the investigators are complaining enough that this would leak is significant. It suggests a serious level of dissatisfaction and concern, if not a concerted effort to send a message before Barr’s big reveal of the Mueller report this month. These investigators may feel liberated to vent now that the probe is over (and some of them have even left the Justice Department), but you have to think this represents a very serious level of concern about Barr’s conduct, rather than just a few offhand comments.

The Post’s Ellen Nakashima, Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman report:

Members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant. 

“It was much more acute than Barr suggested,” said one person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity. 

The New York Times first reported that some special counsel investigators feel that Barr did not adequately portray their findings. 

Some members of the office were particularly disappointed that Barr did not release summary information the special counsel team had prepared, according to two people familiar with their reactions. 

“There was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work instead,” according to one U.S. official briefed on the matter.

The Mueller team is reportedly saying it wrote summaries for each section, which it believed Barr could release immediately and without a need to redact. Instead, he chose to summarize the report almost completely in his own words and didn’t even include complete sentences from Mueller’s report.

The Justice Department has fought back, saying that even Mueller’s summaries included potentially sensitive information. Spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said every page was marked as possibly including materials obtained via grand jury, which is information the Justice Department legally can’t release. “Given the extraordinary public interest in the matter, the attorney general decided to release the report’s bottom-line findings and his conclusions immediately — without attempting to summarize the report — with the understanding that the report itself would be released after the redaction process,” she said.

Barr’s summary has been at issue ever since it was released, as has his decision to exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice when Mueller’s team pointedly declined to either accuse or exonerate. Since then, the question has been how damning the evidence is and whether Barr’s decision to exonerate Trump on his own was necessary. Some have even alleged Barr was protecting the man who appointed him or doing his bidding. (Barr’s history of criticizing the Mueller probe as a private citizen certainly could lead one to draw conclusions.)

The Times put it like this: “Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.”

That’s an interesting point. There is certainly something to be said for setting the terms of the debate. 

If people have processed that the report doesn’t accuse Trump of crimes, perhaps they’ll look at even highly questionable behavior and simply conclude, “Well, they didn’t say it was a crime.”

But there is also something to be said for setting expectations low. Generally speaking, before a big reveal, you want to lower expectations so that it looks like good news for you. There is a very credible case to be made that the Trump team setting the bar at “complete and total EXONERATION” could make the ultimate report look especially bad for him.

The message from Mueller’s team, whether deliberate, seems to be: Stay tuned, and be wary of William Barr.

India's election curbs on key highway spark anger in Kashmir

FILE PHOTO: Traffic is stopped as the Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy moves along a national highway in Qazigund March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Ismail/File Photo

Fayaz Bukhari-APRIL 4, 2019 

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Tough curbs on civilian traffic along a highway linking disputed Kashmir to the rest of India have provoked outrage in the insurgency-hit region, as authorities free up access for troops guarding general elections set to begin this month.

India has tightened security in the Himalayan region since a suicide bombing on the highway killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel in February in an attack claimed by a militant group based in neighbouring Pakistan.

The incident nearly pitched the nuclear-armed rivals into a fourth war, and prompted India to launch a massive crackdown on militants and separatists in Kashmir, which is also claimed by Pakistan.

Politicians, rights activists and school operators in the region labelled Wednesday’s move “collective punishment” for Kashmiris because a militant from the area carried out the attack.

“We can’t run schools under these circumstances,” said G.N. Var, chairman of an association of privately run schools in Kashmir. “They are pushing Kashmir into darkness.”

Late on Wednesday, the government of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir said civilian traffic on the highway was banned from 4 a.m. to 5 p.m. every Sunday and Wednesday until May 31, to allow for exclusive movement of security convoys.

Shaleen Kabra, an official of the state’s home department, said the curbs aim to protect lives during the movement of troops around India’s staggered general election that starts on April 11, with votes to be counted on May 23.

“The local administration and police will regulate civilian emergencies on the highway during these days,” he told Reuters.

But the limits will hurt the tourism-dependent economy in India’s “paradise on earth”, said Khurram Parvez, a human rights activist and coordinator of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies.

“This is an attempt to choke the economy and daily life,” Parvez said. “These militaristic policies are aimed at collective punishment of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”

 

Instead of closing the only highway connecting the main cities of Jammu and Srinagar, security forces should use special trains wherever possible, said Omar Abdullah, the state’s former chief minister.

“There has to be a better, less people unfriendly way of protecting forces using the highway,” Abdullah said on social network Twitter.

“Patients will not be able to reach hospitals, students will be deprived of access to schools, employees won’t be able to reach work and the list goes on and on.”

Writing by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Clarence Fernandez

Female business owners face a unique set of challenges

Women SME owners encounter four distinct types of constraint: human and social capital limitations, financial disadvantage, societal and cultural expectations, and institutional barriers. Source: Shutterstock

3 Apr 2019

ALTHOUGH all businesses face issues such as access to finance, technology and market information, women business owners face distinct challenges in their entrepreneurial endeavours — particularly in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector.As long as these challenges prevail, the potential contribution of women’s entrepreneurial activity to economic growth will remain curtailed.

A 2017 OECD study estimates that ASEAN self-employed men are 2.24 times more likely also to be employersthan are self-employed women. This is one indication that women are much less likely to be involved in entrepreneurial activity, creating employment for others, than are men.

More women tend to engage in early-stage entrepreneurial activity, but they are less likely to have established businesses compared with their male counterparts.

SEE ALSO: How single women are driving gentrification in Hong Kong

A 2015–2016 report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reveals that Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines had higher established-business rates for men than women business owners. Male entrepreneurs tend to be opportunity-driven, the report noted, while more female entrepreneurs are necessity-driven, often only turning to entrepreneurial activity because few alternative employment options are available.

Women SME owners encounter four distinct types of constraint: human and social capital limitations, financial disadvantage, societal and cultural expectations, and institutional barriers.

Human and social capital constraints include lack of access to formal education, entrepreneurial skills training and business networks, as well as lack of confidence. In Southeast Asia, women entrepreneurs have 7 percent less access than men to business networks — a crucial source of know-how and contacts for entrepreneurs looking to develop their business.

Discrimination in day-to-day business activity is also a problem. In Malaysia, for instance, male suppliers and customers prefer to deal with male business owners, thus pushing women owners to let male family members take over.

Women tend to be at a disadvantage in accessing financial resources for their business, notably in accessing the full range of debt and equity alternatives. They may be disproportionately confronted with corruption.

Research shows that women business owners and managers are more likely to receive requests to pay bribes when obtaining an operating license in economies that have a greater number of laws discriminating against women.

Societal and cultural expectations that women will manage work and family responsibilities also limit their ability to expand their business.

Women entrepreneurs also face institutional and regulatory challenges that limit their capacity to scale up. In various countries, cumbersome business licensing requirements are likely to be associated with a lower proportion of firms run by female entrepreneurs. 

SMEs owned by women tend to be disproportionately affected by these regulations, given their smaller size and lower access to resources. In some countries women have limited or no access to property rights, hindering access to capital markets because of lack of collateral against which to obtain credit. These challenges hinder their capacity to grow.

In the Philippines, though more than half of new businesses in 2017 were registered by women, fewer women tend to renew their businesses.

SEE ALSO: Can Japan’s ‘womenomics’ achieve better work–life balance?

A new study finds that only 134 out of 480 Philippine SMEs surveyed had scaled up in the past two years. Scaling up is defined as an increase in firm size using employee numbers and an increase in sales by at least 10 per cent over two years.

While there are no significant differences in firm performance by gender, SMEs owned by men earned twice as much from share of exports to total sales compared with those owned by women.

Technology-intensive SMEs owned by women are significantly more likely to scale up, but tend to make limited use of more sophisticated technology — for example, e-commerce, websites, digital payment or cloud-based storage.

Policies encouraging these entrepreneurs to make better use of their technology could boost their capacity to develop. In the Philippines, fostering this kind of innovation could help boost economic performance.

Having an entrepreneurial mindset plays a critical role when women SME owners decide not to apply for a loan, not export or not expand their business. The number one reason given for not exporting was that the owner was content with the current state of business. For not applying for a loan, it was an aversion to taking on any debt.

Although barriers facing women-owned SMEs are not dissimilar to those that male entrepreneurs face, there are significant gender differences in the reasons that women give for not scaling up — such as loans, innovation, expansion or exporting. These differences have policy implications for government and business stakeholders in understanding the enabling factors and barriers that women entrepreneurs face.

Apart from strengthening overall social protection schemes, offering policy incentives to create women’s business associations and increase the number of women business network leaders would help to elevate the social capital of women entrepreneurs.

Likewise, raising awareness in business networks about gender discrimination would help to encourage more equitable behaviour towards women entrepreneurs. Strengthening institutions must be at the core of policy reform to support the scaling up of women-owned SMEs.

Given the crucial role SMEs play in lifting developing economies, it is in every country’s interest to coordinate policy for providing a level playing field for women-owned businesses to scale up.

By Maribel A. Daño-Luna, Senior Researcher, and Rose Ann Camille Caliso, Research Associate at the Asian Institute of Management Rizalino S. Navarro Policy Center for Competitiveness.

This article appeared in the most recent edition of East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘Investing in Women‘. It has been republished under a Creative Commons license.

May and Corbyn hold Brexit talks

Gary Gibbon-3 Apr 2019Political Editor

You honestly could not make this up. A deadlock in Parliament over a plan to break the Brexit deadlock – a vote in the Commons ending in the first tie for 26 years.

The Speaker, citing convention, used his casting vote to defeat the plan to give MPs more indicative votes.

But could talks between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn actually lead to a breakthrough?

They talked for two hours this afternoon, though Mr Corbyn said without “as much change as I had expected”.

Two more ministers resigned over the fact the meeting took place at all.

And then another whisker-thin vote, with a majority of one, allowing MPs to debate a bill which would force the government to negotiate a Brexit delay.

Startling Similarity Between Politicians And Psychopaths

A politician spends more time, energy and money trying to get elected/and reelected to public office than any other single pursuit or pastime. 

by Zulkifli Nazim-4 Apr 2019

Robert Hare, the leading expert on psychopathy as a mental disorder, who devised a psychopathic checklist, observed that psychopaths representing just one percent of the general population possess an especially heightened need for both power and prestige, seemingly prerequisite essentials for every aspiring politician. A startling accuracy of referring to Politicians as 'Psychopaths'

It is an understanding among honourable and educated elite to think of politicians being natural-born psychopaths - Callous, manipulative, exploitative, unrepentant and smarmy – these are the diagnostic traits of the psychopath. And it seems so right.

As the twenty-first century gets into its stride, we judge politicians to be self-serving and not straight-talking but also out of touch, all the same, and a joke.

This finding cannot be dismissed as simply a reflection of a general culture of deference at the time.

In the same responses, people wrote about doctors as ‘selfish’ and ‘ignorant’, scientists as ‘inhuman ’with ‘one-track minds’, and lawyers as dishonest, thieving‘ sharks ’Citizens described their ‘loathing’ for politicians who made them ‘angry’, ‘disgusted’, and‘ depressed.

The current economic, political, and legal system in Sri Lanka breeds political psychopaths. We are on a path, rewarding psychopathic behavior and punishing those with conscience and integrity.

Political Psychopaths are in love with power and risk taking, masters of manipulation, self-serving opportunism and self-aggrandizement, and hold virtual doctorates in deceit and deception; and they can comfortably operate without conscience, guilt or any genuine level of empathy toward others.

The behaviour and speeches of our politicians both in and outside the parliament, show that these political psychopaths are highly skilled at playing others in order to get what they want.

We have been primed for extravagant hope. We’ve been deceived into thinking that if we work really, really hard, we’ll own that dangling carrot. But nothing could be further from the truth. We are a nation awash in hope.

These scheming politicians are keenly perceptive at reading people, understanding their motives and values, brilliant at learning their weaknesses and blind spots, and highly effective at inducing both sympathy and guilt in others. They appear to be caring and considerate, but only on the most superficial, disingenuous level – It means that they are not straightforward, giving a false appearance of frankness at every turn.

The supporters of politicians, collaborators, confederates and partners in crime have an uncanny ability to pick brains, soliciting information, knowledge, creative ideas and even secrets from others. These scoundrels opportunistically utilize them to their own advantage parading them as their own ideas and knowledge, and craftily taking and receiving undeserving credit and accolades from bosses and those in power.

Equally our politicians are also gifted actors, able to take on chameleon-like colors according to their particular social setting and company. Though they lack a capacity to feel emotions with any depth or intensity, as actors and manipulators they are able to manufacture crocodile tears for effect whenever it suits and benefits them. Their obtuse and reprehensible acts become acceptable.

They have no trouble putting on the act of emotions when they are determined to manipulate others most often into feeling guilty or sympathetic toward them. The only genuine emotion these psychoneurotics express is anger whenever their manipulations are thwarted or rebuffed.

We have seen them use intimidation tactics and behave impulsively and even violently when angered, especially in response to a perceived personal insult or perceived betrayal of trust or perceived lack of respect for their authority. They are perennial predators bloodthirstily lusting for more and more power. But most often their emotional tirades are to manipulate, gain power and control over others.

Their gamey nature and sexual impropriety, lusts for insatiable desire to win at all costs, and a gloating, short lived gratification that brings victor’s spoils.

(The term Victor’s spoils was derived from the phrase "to the victor belong the spoils" by New York Senator William L. Marcy, referring to the victory of Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828, with the term spoils meaning goods or benefits taken from the loser in a competition, election or military victory.)

A politician spends more time, energy and money trying to get elected/and reelected to public office than any other single pursuit or pastime. In this pragmatic way, the psychopathic description that they are mere public cons and hustlers selling themselves on the highest, competitively demanding stage is neither too simplistic nor an exaggeration.

Just as effective as they are at absolving themselves of any and all responsibility and culpability of being completely blameless, they are equally skilled at pointing the finger at others and throwing them under the bus. In order to get elected and stay elected, they use their chief assets of cunning charm and capacity to fabricate seamlessly at will, their power to manipulate.

Once these political degenerates believe others have served their purpose, they are deemed no longer of any real value and quickly disposed of, discarded and/or betrayed.

What are we going to do about it? We are aware that whether we like it or not we have to dwell in such an atmosphere, engage in collective conversations and try to do our best hoping for a reasonably better future for our country and its citizens.

In conclusion, we have shown that popular images of the good politician have changed and as such it has become our bounden duty to establish a new image rooted in the professionalisation of politics, the ideology of intimacy, and democratic egalitarianism.

We understand that this new image is more difficult for politicians to perform. It is more demanding, since it asks politicians to be not only for the people–to be honest, capable, moderate, and strong–but also of the people–to be ‘normal’ and ‘in touch’ with ‘real’ life and ‘ordinary’ people. In addition, the professionalisation of politics means that politicians are less able collectively to represent the different virtues expected of them. Furthermore, the contexts of interaction between politicians and citizen have changed. The modes of interaction afforded by media events and professionalised campaigning make it more difficult for politicians to perform virtues and for citizens to calibrate judgments.

Citizens want a multi-faceted relationship with their elected representatives but are offered a series of one-dimensional experiences that disappoint and frustrate and so provide the driving force behind negative attitudes towards formal politics.

We should be able to guide mainstream institutional practices that might lend themselves to a process by which citizens could judge politicians in a multi-dimensional way.

Finally, the outcomes of the political process are seldom clear-cut. For long periods, there appears to be nothing noble about politics at all. Politics, after all, is a battle for influence and the exercise of power. That this activity involves politicians in hustle, intrigue, lies, and deceit pro-vides little surprise to most citizens who have long understood that politics is prone to such a dynamic. Politics has the quality of being both the decent pursuit of the common good and a rather unedifying process that involves humans behaving badly. So, any reforms offered will have to embrace this split personality of politics and work with the grain of an inherently imperfect system.

Concluding with a point to ponder:

“In his book Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky writes about how “elementary truths” are consistently overlooked because the state does such a good job of obfuscating what is really going on. This obfuscation is essential in a free society where there always exists the threat that a free population might hinder the mechanisms of power.”

Congress Is Finally Done With the War in Yemen

U.S. lawmakers are making a historic push for peace. But a Trump veto is all but assured.

Yemenis dig graves for children who where killed when their bus was hit during a Saudi-led coalition airstrike on Aug. 9, 2018. (Stringer/AFP/ Getty Images)

BY ROBBIE GRAMER, AMY MACKINNON

| APRIL 4, 2019, 2:34 PM
The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to end U.S. military involvement in Yemen’s bloody civil war in a historic measure that sets the stage for a showdown between the White House and Capitol Hill over the president’s ability to wage wars without congressional approval.

It marks the first time in history that legislation invoking the 1970s-era War Powers Resolution, aimed at reasserting Congress’s role in U.S. wars abroad, passed both the House and Senate. It now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk, where most officials expect the president to veto the measure.

The vote was on a bipartisan resolution, though it largely fell on party lines, with only 16 Republicans joining Democrats in favor for a final tally of 247 to 175.

The Senate passed a coinciding resolution in March to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen by a vote of 54 to 46, well short of the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto.

While the vote marks a significant political rebuke to Trump, it remains unclear what impact the passing of the resolution will have on the situation in Yemen, where the United Nations is struggling to implement a fragile peace agreement it brokered between the warring parties in December 2018.

In Washington, the U.S. role in the Yemen conflict has become part of broader political debates about both Trump’s cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia after Riyadh’s role in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the executive branch’s unfettered ability to wage war without congressional buy-in.

“Today, the U.S. House of Representatives took a clear stand against war and famine and for Congress’ war powers by voting to end our complicity in the war in Yemen,” said Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, both champions of the legislative push to end U.S. involvement in Yemen. “Finally, the U.S. Congress has reclaimed its constitutional authority over matters of war and peace.”

Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, opposed the bill, arguing that invoking the War Powers Resolution wasn’t appropriate, as the Defense Department has said no U.S. troops are engaged in hostilities in Yemen.

“This resolution does nothing to address the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. It does nothing to secure justice for the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi. It does not even make real decisions on U.S. security assistance to Saudi Arabia,” he said.

For months, lawmakers and the Trump administration have engaged in fierce debates over whether the U.S. military should continue supporting the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen as it fights Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The issue centers on the devastating humanitarian toll of the conflict, where nearly half the population, some 14 million people, are on the brink of famine, and some 22 million Yemenis require humanitarian assistance. Yemen is now considered the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, due in part to a deadly bombing campaign by the Saudi coalition that has indiscriminately targeted civilians and reduced to rubble some of the developing county’s vital infrastructure.

“The death toll is mounting, and our country’s hands aren’t clean,” said Scott Paul, an expert on Yemen with the humanitarian organization Oxfam America.

The Trump administration has strongly pushed back on congressional efforts to curb its involvement in the conflict, which includes arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition as well as intelligence and surveillance support. It argues that the civilian death toll from Saudi airstrikes would be much higher without U.S. input and precision-guided munitions, and that the United States cannot ignore the threat from terrorist groups and Iran’s influence in the country.

“If you truly care about Yemeni lives, you’d support the Saudi-led effort to prevent Yemen from turning into a puppet state of the corrupt, brutish Islamic Republic of Iran,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters in March, addressing lawmakers who opposed U.S. involvement in the war.
In an April 1 statement, the White House said the resolution “would raise serious constitutional concerns to the extent it seeks to override the President’s determination as Commander in Chief.” If it were presented to Trump, the statement said, “his senior advisors would recommend he veto the joint resolution.”

In late 2018, the United States ended the refueling of Saudi aircraft engaged in the bombing campaign following widespread congressional backlash over Saudi Arabia’s role in the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and Virginia resident.

The vote follows months of arduous behind-the-scenes politicking and Republican efforts to derail the measure through procedural gambits. In February, the House voted to cut U.S. military assistance for the war, but a last-minute procedural motion to condemn anti-Semitism was added to the bill by Republican lawmakers. The addition of the unrelated motion stripped the bill of its “privileged”
status, which according to arcane procedural rules meant the Senate no longer had to rush a vote on it to deliver it to the president’s desk. The maneuvering meant the Senate had to go back to square one with its own bill again.

Even with a veto, some Democrats say the vote reflects mounting Republican anger with the administration’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. “It’s a step in the right direction that at least on measures such as these, there is some Republican support in Congress,” said one Democratic congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Passed in 1973, the War Powers Resolution gives Congress the authority to end the deployment of U.S. military forces without an official declaration of war.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the ability to wage war is shared by the two branches of government, with Congress having the ability to fund and declare war, while the president leads military action as commander in chief. Despite this, presidents have gone to war on numerous occasions throughout the 20th and 21st century without congressional approval.

Paul, of Oxfam America, said Trump vetoing the bill would be a blow to the United States’ international standing on the Yemen conflict. “A veto from President Trump would send its own sobering message to Yemeni families caught in the daily hell of war: Our administration simply does not care,” he said.