More than 20 dead as violence flares between Gaza and Israel

Air and tank strikes kill 19 Palestinians after Netanyahu orders ‘massive attacks’, while rockets kill four in Israel
Smoke billows from a targeted neighbourhood in Gaza City during an Israeli airstrike on Sunday. Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

Oliver Holmes in Jerusalem and Hazem Balousha-Sun 5 May 2019

Militants in Gaza and Israeli forces engaged in a bloody and spiralling clash over the weekend, with Palestinian factions launching hundreds of rockets towards towns and cities in Israel, which retaliated with more than 250 strikes.

In exchanges that marked some of the worst fighting in recent years, 19 Palestinians, including two pregnant women and a toddler, have been killed since hostilities began on Friday, the health ministry in Gaza said. The dead included at least eight militants and a Hamas commander killed in the first targeted assassination Israel has conducted in the strip for years.

Four Israelis were reported as killed by rockets, the highest death toll on the Israeli side since the 50-day war in 2014.

The violence is following a pattern established over the past year in which short-lived exchanges have erupted on a near-monthly basis, usually dying down quickly under Egyptian and UN mediation. However, the battling sides vowed to pursue each other aggressively on Sunday and moved further than in previous flare-ups.

Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the armed forces to conduct “massive strikes” on Gaza and reinforce the edge of the enclave with tanks, artillery and soldiers.

“This morning, I instructed the [military] to continue massive attacks against terrorist elements in the Gaza strip. I also ordered the reinforcement of the units around the Gaza strip with armour, artillery and infantry,” the prime minister said.

A woman is loaded into an ambulance by Israeli emergency personnel after a rocket attack in the southern town of Ashdod. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF), which had halted its targeted assassination to avoid escalating tensions, said it killed Hamas commander Ahmed Khudari in an operation, believed to be a strike on a car. The army said Khudari was responsible for cash transfers from Iran to militants in Gaza.

The IDF said it had also targeted Palestinian militants inside a weapons warehouse. In another attack, an IDF attack helicopter shot at a militant, and the army said it was bombing “weapons warehouses hidden in houses of terror operatives”.

In previous rounds the Israeli air force has sought to avoid high casualties, even among militants, often telling residents of Gaza by phone that they are going to bomb a building so it can be emptied.

Hamas, which rules the strip, and a separate armed group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, continued to fire off rockets late into Sunday evening. Israel said more than 600 had been launched in total and the militant factions put out a statement threatening to use longer-range rockets to bombard deeper into Israel. “The resistance decided to respond to the crimes of the occupation in an unprecedented manner,” it said.

Israel’s anti-missile Iron Dome system had intercepted many of the projectiles but several landed in residential neighbourhoods. In one strike, a primary school was hit and a hospital was damaged by shards of debris from an intercepted rocket. Several Israelis, including an 80-year-old woman, were wounded.

In Gaza, the dead included a pregnant woman and her 14-month-old niece. Israel denied responsibility for their deaths, saying they were hit by accidental militant fire. The health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday evening a second woman, who was nine months pregnant, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. The IDF said it would not comment.

Israel’s bombing campaign also flattened a building containing the Gazaoffice of the Turkish state-run news agency, an attack the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said was an act of “terrorism”. The IDF said it had hit a building in Gaza City containing Hamas military intelligence and general security offices.

Fatima Al-Zaeem, a 45-year-old from Gaza City, said she and her four children had been hiding from the strikes all weekend. “We are not heroes, we are the victims of aggression and siege,” she said. “It’s a situation of horror for two days now. I’m a mother of four kids and we are on the eve of Ramadan.”

Fighting is often sparked by an incident that ignites tensions. On Friday, Palestinian militants fired across the border, wounding two soldiers, which Israel responded to with airstrikes, killing two Hamas militants. Israeli snipers also killed two people in Gaza demonstrating near the frontier.
UN peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov has since called for calm.

“Continuing down the current path of escalation will quickly undo what has been achieved and destroy the chances for long-term solutions to the crisis,” he said in a statement. “This endless cycle of violence must end, and efforts must accelerate to realise a political solution to the crisis in Gaza.”

Jeremy Stoner, Middle East regional director for the aid agency Save the Children, said the humanitarian community “believes we may have entered the most serious stage in this crisis since the 2014 Gaza war.

“We echo the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process’s call on all parties to immediately de-escalate the situation,” he added.

An Egyptian-led ceasefire agreement was designed to ease the conditions of a 12-year air, land and sea blockade on Gaza while halting rocket fire into Israel. Following the rocket strikes, Israel closed entry and exits to Gaza and restricted its fishing zone.

The escalation comes as Israel prepares to host the high-profile Eurovision song contest in Tel Aviv. The week of the competition will also mark the one-year anniversary since Israeli snipers killed nearly 60 Palestinians protesting at the frontier.

The 140 sq mile strip is home to about 2 million people but has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since Hamas took control in 2007. Israel and Hamas have fought three wars and the economy has imploded, with youth unemployment over 70%. Hamas’s rival, the Palestinian Authority, based in the occupied West Bank, has also imposed sanctions on the strip, cutting off money transfers and deepening the crisis.

Killings Under Protection

The people of Indian Held Kashmir have no trust and no confidence in the investigation agencies and even in the courts. 

 

by Ali Sukhanver-2019-05-05

• 
  

Yes they proved it by murdering a Chemistry teacher that all is fair in love and war. His name was Rizwan Asad, age 28. He worked at a private school in Awantipora area of the Pulwama district, south Kashmir. The National Investigative Agency of India arrested this young teacher in the second week of March during a so-called crackdown on socio-political and religious organizations. According to media reports, Rizwan was kept at the dreaded anti-insurgency Special Operations Group head-quarter, commonly known as Cargo Camp, in Srinagar. He could not bear brutal violence there and died during the intervening night of 18th and 19th March. Commenting on the brutality committed in the name of investigation and inquiry, a top Kashmiri human rights’ activist Khurram Parvez said talking to media, “There have been several thousand custodial killings and custodial disappearances by Indian forces in Kashmir. None of them has received any justice; it is because of the complete lack of accountability and total lawlessness.”

 

The people of Indian Held Kashmir have no trust and no confidence in the investigation agencies and even in the courts. The recent court-verdict in the Samjhauta Express burning case has added a lot of disbelief and suspicions to the self-claimed impartiality of the judicial system in India. According to media reports, a few days back, an Indian court after hearing the case for more than ten years, acquitted four people, including prime accused Swami Aseemanand, in the Samjhauta Express burning case. The court said it could not find any solid proof against the accused ones. It was February 18, 2007 when a train named Samjhauta Express was burnt to ashes along with it passengers when it was on its way to Lahore from New Delhi. More than 70 passengers were killed in that brutality; most of them were Pakistanis, most of them the Muslims. In short, the investigation agencies of India, the courts and above all the government authorities, all have lost people’s trust and confidence.

 

Rizwan Asad’s brother, Zulqarnain has also expressed his distrust in the concerning authorities regarding investigation of his brother’s murder. He said talking to the media-men, “My brother has been killed in police custody in cold blood. We want an investigation of it but we know nothing is going to happen. We've all seen investigations for the last 20 years.” The Al-Jazeera says, “Rizwan's death adds to the more than 70,000 killings, more than 8,000 enforced disappearances, as well as thousands of torture and sexual violence cases in Indian-administered Kashmir over the past three decades.”

 

Custodial killings are no doubt a very horrible element making the lives of the helpless Kashmiris more painful and more agonizing. A report published in Greater Kashmir says, ‘There is no record of custodial deaths for 1947-1975.The custodial killings became a routine in 90s. According to human rights defenders around 12000 custodial killings have been reported during the past twenty-six years.’ According to a data-report prepared by Research Section of Kashmir Media Service, Indian troops in their unabated acts of state terrorism martyred 95,265 innocent Kashmiris during the past 29 years. Of those martyred, 7,120 were killed by the troops in custody. As many as 145,504 people were arrested by Indian forces during the period. The troops destroyed 109,201 residential houses and other structures. The Indian forces’ personnel molested and gang raped 11,111 women during the period. The situation of atrocities particularly of custodial killings was the same even in 1995. Amnesty International said in a report published twenty-four years back, “In the period 1990-1994 more than 715 detainees died in the custody of Indian security forces in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. They were tortured to death or shot outright. In areas where government forces are engaged in counter-insurgency operations against armed groups fighting for independence or for the state to join Pakistan, the entire civilian population is at risk of arbitrary detention, torture, even death.” The report further said,” Most of the victims are young men, detained during crackdown-operations to identify armed militants. Almost all those detained are tortured: many do not survive; others are left disabled or mutilated. Scores of women in Jammu and Kashmir claim to have been raped by security forces.”

 

Now after twenty four years, today in 2019, the situation regarding human rights violations in Indian Held Kashmir is still the same. Custodial killing of Rizwan Asad is the most recent and most horrible example in this context. This all is very much frightening and alarming too. The ‘Kashmirwala’ said in an analysis recently published on 21st March, “After the custodial killing of Awantipora based school principal, Rizwan Asad, his friend, Shahid Manzoor has picked up arms and joined armed-group Hizbul Mujaheddin, fearing physical and mental torture by government forces, as he states, ‘Today, it was Rizwan, tomorrow it could be me.’

Shaky evidence for Labour ‘youthquake’ stat

“In 2017, the number of young people who voted was the highest in 25 years”

By Georgina Lee-3 May 2019

That was the claim from a Labour party video tweeted by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell this week, urging young people to head to the polls. But it’s based on shaky evidence.

Labour haven’t given us an official account of where the figure comes from, but FactCheck understands that it’s based on this 2017 Ipsos MORI report and this section of an article in the Financial Times from the same year: “Some 64 per cent of registered voters aged 18-24 are now thought to have cast a vote on 9 June, the highest share since 67 per cent voted in 1992.”

As the FT states, the findings are based on turnout among registered voters aged 18 to 24, rather than all adults of that age. This is a key distinction for pollsters.

The Ipsos MORI report in question actually recommends using the “all adults” figures rather than those based on registered voters, because the former are “more reliable and more meaningful”.

(The authors set out their reasons for preferring the “all adults” measure in this 2016 paper.)

The “registered voters” figure picked by Labour shows youth turnout at 64 per cent, but the “all adults” measure that the authors of the study prefer puts it somewhat lower at 54 per cent.

There’s another problem: the 2017 Ipsos report was never meant to be the final word on the matter.
The Ipsos authors warned at the time that “turnout estimates given below should be treated with particular caution, including taking into account the voter validation results from the British Election Study when these are published”.

In January 2018, the British Election Study (BES), considered the “gold standard” of political polling, published figures that led them to conclude the “youthquake” alleged to have shaken the 2017 General Election was a “myth”.

(We looked at the BES results in more detail at the time and discussed why these results are considered more reliable than other polls).

The BES found a much lower level of youth turnout than Ipsos MORI: 43 or 48 per cent of all adults aged 18 to 24, depending on which of the BES’ “all adults” measures you use.

There’s some debate about how conclusive the BES figures are, and the BES responded to their critics in a 2018 article. But even the Ipsos researchers suggest that they are likely to be more reliable than the 2017 Ipsos report.

Professor Roger Mortimore, the director of polling analysis at Ipsos, told FactCheck: “although we don’t think the evidence is strong enough to conclude that our figures are definitely wrong, there is sufficient doubt that we would not recommend relying on our figures rather than the ones that contradict them. Essentially, we don’t claim to know what the 2017 youth turnout was.”

But could Labour’s “25 years” claim still stack up?

The BES has changed its methodology, so we don’t have comparable data from them going back that far.

The best figures we can find that gesture in the direction of Labour’s claim come from the British Social Attitudes survey, which suggests 2017 could have been the highest General Election turnout among young people since 1997.

But it doesn’t go back to 1992, as Labour did, and using this figure would require us to overlook the fact that the turnout in the 2016 EU referendum was higher. And the Social Attitudes Survey is not the “gold standard” in this field.

FactCheck verdict

Labour said this week that “In 2017, the number of young people who voted was the highest in 25 years”.

The evidence to back up this claim is now out of date. The idea that the 2017 general election saw a “youthquake” was widely reported at the time – but it has been pretty much demolished by better data from the British Election Study.

We can’t find reliable evidence to back Labour’s wider claim that youth turnout in 2017 was the highest since 1992.
We’re grateful to Dr Christopher Prosser at the British Election Study for his help with this article.

‘Investigate the investigators’ is new Trump rallying cry to counter Mueller report

President Trump spoke to reporters about coverage of him and the nature of "free press" in the Oval Office on May 3, World Press Freedom Day. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Toluse Olorunnipa-May 4 at 4:15 PM

For President Trump’s reelection effort, “Investigate the investigators!” is becoming the new “Lock her up!”

Trump and his allies, seeking to amplify claims that the FBI spied on his 2016 campaign, are seizing on news reports and statements by Attorney General William P. Barr to launch a political rallying cry they view as an antidote to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings.

Dismissed by critics as an outlandish conspiracy theory, so-called “spygate” is fast becoming a central feature of the Trump campaign as it seeks to go on offense in the wake of a report that identified 10 instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump. The campaign is publicly calling for criminal investigations into former FBI officials, making “spygate” fundraising pitches and selling spy-themed merchandise. The goal, officials said, is to turn the Russia probe into a political winner that could help him secure another term.

“After two years of [investigations] and being vindicated, and now in fact the tables are turning in that the investigators will be investigated, there’s a certain amount of righteous indignation that’s warranted,” said Tim Murtaugh, communications director for Trump’s reelection bid. “The president has already shown that he wants to talk about it. He’s been tweeting about it. I’m sure he’ll talk about it at rallies. It’s something that the campaign will continue to point to.”

Murtaugh highlighted a Thursday article from the New York Timesdescribing how the FBI sent an investigator posing as a research assistant to meet with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos in 2016 — a covert effort to better understand the campaign’s links to Russia. Murtaugh said it was “astounding” that the story had not received as much media coverage as some Russia-related episodes unearthed by Mueller.

Referring to the story on Friday, Trump said it was “bigger than Watergate, as far as I’m concerned.”

Attorney General William P. Barr repeatedly appeared to misrepresent or misstate special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings on May 1. (Video: JM Rieger/Photo: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Trump has long sought to paint his political opponents as criminally suspect, spending much of 2016 leading “Lock her up!” chants that targeted his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

After Trump’s own conduct became the subject of Mueller’s criminal investigation — which did not establish that his campaign conspired with Russia’s election interference but indicated that he may have obstructed justice — the president is aiming to change the narrative by highlighting the allegations of improper spying by the FBI.

[Mueller report lays out obstruction evidence against the president]

Trump has gotten a boost from Barr, who used recent congressional hearings about Mueller’s probe to express concerns that the Trump campaign may have been the victim of improper surveillance. When pressed, Barr declined to offer evidence and said he was simply “concerned about it” and “looking into it.”

Republicans have long claimed that the FBI’s actions targeting Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser whose communications were secretly surveilled in late 2016 and early 2017 under a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, amounted to political spying. 

Surveillance of Page took place after he left the Trump campaign and was authorized by several judges.

Since the Mueller report was released, President Trump has attempted to flip the script by casting himself as a victim. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Democrats have criticized Barr’s allegations as irresponsible and have dismissed Trump’s charges of spying as a political smokescreen aimed at distracting from Mueller’s findings.

“The Trump campaign is trying to use a debunked conspiracy theory to distract from the Trump administration’s attacks on the rule of law and its attempts to cover up Mueller’s findings,” said Daniel Wessel, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. “Voters won’t be fooled.”

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is conducting an internal investigation into aspects of the Russia probe, including the FISA warrant targeting Page. Barr has said Horowitz’s report would probably be completed in May or June.

Trump has also said he will soon be declassifying documents related to the warrant.

“Declassifying that and much more — yes,” Trump said Wednesday in an interview with Boston Herald Radio’s “The Adriana Cohen Show.” “I will be releasing that and many other things.”

Trump’s focus on re-litigating the origins of the Russia probe serves a purpose beyond ginning up his political base, campaign aides and allies said.

It helps the president create a new narrative casting himself as a victim even as House Democrats pursue multiple investigations into Trump, his administration and his businesses.

As Democrats issue subpoenas, hold hearings and seek to interview witnesses identified in the Mueller report, Trump and his allies plan to offer counterprogramming by intensifying their public scrutiny of the Russia probe’s origins.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump confidant and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has said he plans to investigate the investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“When the Mueller report is put to bed, and it soon will be, this committee is going to look long and hard at how this all started,” he said Wednesday during a hearing with Barr.

[Barr spars with Democrats over ‘snitty’ Mueller letter]

The Mueller report documented that the FBI’s counterintelligence probe began after a foreign government alerted U.S. officials that Papadopoulos claimed in 2016 that he had heard about a Russian effort to help the Trump campaign by anonymously releasing damaging information about Clinton.

The Mueller report also documented multiple contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials as the Kremlin was taking action to interfere in the election. Several Trump aides were receptive to Russian help, and some were convicted of lying to investigators about their communications with Russians, the report found. Mueller did not establish that Trump’s campaign conspired in Russia’s effort to influence the election.

Trump allies believe there’s political benefit in continuing to talk about the Russia investigation, as it allows the president to cast himself as a victim of powerful forces like the FBI. Most do not mention that the FBI did not reveal its investigation into Trump’s campaign until after the election, while it made unprecedented disclosures about its investigation into Clinton’s use of private email for government business.

Clinton, who was not charged, has said that her loss was partially caused by those FBI disclosures in the days before the election.

Bryan Lanza, an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign and transition, said the president can prevail politically by using the Russia investigation to attack the Democrats.

“There are partisan Democrats that want to turn the page on an ugly part of American history,” he said. “But we’re not going to let them do that.”

The Trump campaign has already sought to turn the spying allegations into a fundraising pitch. 

There’s some evidence it’s working. A Republican Party official said that Trump’s campaign has had two days of fundraising totals above $1 million since the Mueller report was released last month. A campaign official said fundraising in the 24 hours after the report was released to the public and Congress on April 18 was up about 250 percent from previous days. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal fundraising figures.

The campaign, meanwhile, has been selling spy-themed merchandise. One T-shirt for sale depicts former president Barack Obama donning a set of spy glasses while lurking in thick green shrubbery.

Is New Zealand’s relationship with China on the rocks?

China's President Xi Jinping (R) shakes hands with New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern before their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on April 1, 2019. Source: Kenzaburo Fukuhara/Pool/AFP

ByJason Young-6th May5 

EARLY April 2019 saw New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern travel to Beijing for her first state visit to China. The visit included high-level meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, reinforcing previous government’s efforts to develop constructive relationships with regional partners.

Travelling so soon following the 15 March Christchurch terrorist attack attests to the priority New Zealand places on managing relations with China. Considering the challenges New Zealand’s closest partners are facing and New Zealand’s similarly shifting debate on China, the visit came at an opportune moment for both countries.

Before the trip was announced, New Zealand and international media ran headlines suggesting relations with China were on the rocks. This followed a number of delays in official visits and an Air New Zealand plane turning back from a scheduled flight to Shanghai.

New Zealand’s usually bipartisan approach to China even broke down momentarily as the National-led opposition criticised the coalition government’s handling of the relationship. Talk show hosts called it how they saw it and Australian commentators argued New Zealand had joined Australia in the diplomatic doghouse.

SEE ALSO: China secures relationships in the Middle East as US ties falter

But there was no official statement to support this view and no evidence that the economic relationship has been impacted. China maintains its spot as New Zealand’s top goods and services trade partner, with a considerable trade surplus for New Zealand.

While the state of the relationship was being debated publicly, New Zealand officials were busy working towards building resilience and maturity in the relationship. Negotiations to upgrade the 2008 Free Trade Agreement continued as memorandums for greater cooperation on double taxation, climate change, science and research were drafted and negotiated. The work plan for New Zealand participation in the Belt and Road Initiative rumbled on.

Nevertheless, many are not persuaded by messaging from both governments that continues to stress engagement and proactive resolution of issues.

Arguably then, the most important outcome of the state visit was to demonstrate, in the words of the Prime Minister, that “China is an important and valued partner” and that “New Zealand is committed to sustaining a constructive and comprehensive relationship.”

China’s President Xi Jinping (L) attends a meeting with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (2nd R) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on April 1, 2019.
Source: Kenzaburo Fukuhara/Pool/AFP

But as previous months have shown, maintaining a constructive and comprehensive relationship with China will remain challenging as New Zealand learns to deal with a more confident China increasingly engaging the world on its own terms and in the context of an intensified US–China rivalry.

Such challenges come to a head over the proposed use of Huawei technology in the development of New Zealand’s 5G telecommunications network. Last year the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) rejected a bid by a New Zealand company to use Huawei gear on the grounds that it identified a “significant network security risk.”

This intensified the debate about China in New Zealand, adding fuel to the international debate on China and leading to much lobbying and creative advertising on the part of Huawei in New Zealand.

During the Prime Minister’s state visit, President Xi stated that the ‘two sides must trust each other’, while Premier Li conveyed his wish that “the business communities of both countries enjoy a more enabling and more transparent environment.”

These statements signal unease with the Huawei decision in Beijing but should also be taken in a context where Huawei is already deeply invested in, and continues to invest in, New Zealand’s telecommunication network.

SEE ALSO: Foreign influence: With China, it’s a blurry line between corporate and state

Huawei will need to satisfy the GCSB’s risk assessments — as companies from all jurisdictions must — to move into the 5G network. If it cannot meet these requirements, New Zealand must explain clearly how such a decision is neither a blanket ban nor a move to discriminate against investment from China — something New Zealand legislation does not allow.

The danger is that the Huawei bid gets mixed up in the heated narrative around a US–China tech battle and the US shift toward strategic competition with China.

New Zealand’s own strategic anxieties also play into this narrative.

The June 2018 Strategic Defence Policy Statement publicly raised concern over New Zealand’s changing security environment and the return of great power rivalry in the region. The following December, Foreign Minister Winston Peters called for more US attention and involvement in the Pacific. He stated that the Asia Pacific is “more contested”, “more fragile” and reaching “an inflection point… that requires the urgent attention of both Wellington and Washington.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (C) walks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on April 1, 2019. Source: Greg Baker/AFP

China’s own policies — such as the concerning reports of ‘re-education’ camps in Xinjiang, stricter controls on media and intellectual freedom, and its actions in the South China Sea — do little to counter this narrative.

Such changes in China — and among New Zealand’s partners’ approaches to China, especially Australia’s — have rebalanced New Zealand’s attention to seeking a more mature and comprehensive relationship. This involves disagreements being dealt with constructively and frank conversations being had.

As the Prime Minister’s visit shows, it is unlikely that New Zealand policy will move away from the goal of sustaining a constructive relationship with China. New Zealand remains reluctant to seek regional architecture that excludes China or other major regional powers.

Promotion of an inclusive rules-based regional order and the pursuit of interest through engagement is part of the DNA of New Zealand foreign policy.

Dr Jason Young is the Director of the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre and an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Victor.

This article is republished from East Asian Forum under a Creative Commons licence. 

US deploys aircraft carrier and bombers after 'troubling indications' from Iran

National security adviser John Bolton says any Iranian attack on US or its allies will be met with ‘unrelenting force’

 The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strikes group is heading to the Middle East in response to ‘troubling indications’ from Iran, said John Bolton. Photograph: Jiji Press/EPA


Julian Borger-Mon 6 May 2019 02.43 BST

The US is sending an aircraft carrier and a bomber task force to the Middle East in response to a “number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran, the national security advisor John Bolton has said.

It was unclear on Sunday night what Iranian actions Bolton was referring to. There have been no recent incidents in the Persian Gulf where US and Iranian navies are routinely in close proximity and the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was already bound for the Gulf a month before Bolton made his announcement.

However, the tone of Bolton’s declaration looked likely to escalate tensions in the region, and it comes days after the Iranian government expressed concern that Bolton and other hawks were seeking to draw the Trump administration into a new war.

In a written statement, Bolton said the ships and planes were intended “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

“The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces,” the statement said.

Rotations of aircraft carrier “strike groups” and bomber fleets happen routinely. At present there are none in the US Central Command region, which encompasses the Middle East and Afghanistan. The Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, left its base in Norfolk, Virginia, on 1 April and was due to sail to the Mediterranean for exercises and then on to the Gulf.

The US withdrew its B-1 bombers from the Middle East in March for maintenance and upgrades amid concerns the bomber force was over-stretched.

While such changes in global deployment are made regularly, it is rare for the announcement of such deployments to be made by a national security advisor rather than the Pentagon.

“A carrier into CentCom is not unusual and was likely routine and long planned,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former state department and Pentagon official, now a senior fellow at the Centre for a New American Security in Washington. “The inflammatory language from Bolton is unusual provocative but my guess is just an opportunity to try to intimidate the Iranians. Nothing more.”

Bolton has been pushing for a tougher stance by the US towards North Korea, Venezuela and Iran. Before taking his White House position, he argued that bombing Iran was the only way to stop it acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Last May, the Trump administration walked out of a multilateral agreement with Iran by which Tehran accepted strict curbs on its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief. Since then the US has threatened sanctions against any companies or individuals around the world doing business with Iran, and has sought to reduce Iranian oil exports to zero.

The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has certified that Iran continues to meet its obligations under the 2015 nuclear deal, and other parties to the agreement, the UK, France, Germany, European Union, Russia and China, also insist they will honour its terms, despite US pressure.

During a visit to New York last month, the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, warned that what he called a “B Team” consisting of Bolton, Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Emirati crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed and his Saudi counterpart Mohammed bin Salman, were seeking to goad the US and Iran into a conflict.

“We don’t believe that President Trump wants confrontation. But, we know that there are people who are pushing for one,” Zarif told the CBS programme, Face the Nation. “I think the US administration is putting things in place for accidents to happen. And there has to be extreme vigilance, so that people who are planning this type of accident would not have their way.”

Bolton gave no details of the alleged “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran. Mark Dubowitz, the head of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies who has long supported a tough approach to Iran, argued that Hamas rocket attacks against Israel could have been orchestrated by Iran as part of a campaign against the US and its regional allies.

“Actually, ‘intimidating’ the regime in Iran by promising overwhelming force in response to intel that they may be considering striking US assets or allies is called deterrence and could help dissuade them,” Dubowitz wrote on Twitter.

What A Way To Lose Local Government Elections In England?

Thousands of teachers in England have warned that there is a crisis in schools caused by the lack of money given to them by Government. 

 

by Victor Cherubim-2019-05-05

• 2019-05-05

 

Trust in politicians, in their ability to create change for the better in peoples’ lives, has been shaken recently both in Sri Lanka and now in Britain, particularly in England at the Local Government elections held on 2 May 2019.

 

With more than 8000 (a total number of 8773 seats) due for election in England and Northern Ireland as well as 248 Councils, everyone knew the result before polling day, as both the Conservatives and Labour parties had hardly delivered on their promises.

 

The Conservative (government) lost face as there was a link between squeeze on budget funding for Local Government with the loss of so many local services, let alone the dissatisfaction centring around Brexit. The Conservatives lost over more than 1300 Councillors and control of over 16 Council up and down England mostly to the Liberal Party and to the Greens.

 

The Labour Opposition was down around 80 seats and out of power in 3 Councils. This was due to their lack of drive displayed at the Local polls, avoiding contest tactically, by not wanting to test their strength in all their available seats.

 

The Liberals made notable recoveries, gaining 703 seats and recovering in areas where they were strong before the Coalition years. While small parties, like the Greens and Independents did well at the expense of the major parties and UKIP lost 145 seats.

 

Out of tune with the mood of the country?

 

The turnout in local government elections is always low as voter perception of apathy is given as excuse. But this time round there really seemed to be a “disconnect” between politics and their everyday lives.

 

After 9 years in Government, the Conservatives seem to have lost a significant number of seats or share of the vote. Call it “tiredness” or any other name, but there are serious other reasons. They may blame their defeat on the failure to deliver Brexit. We will hear more in the European elections later this month.

 

Warnings not taken seriously

 

The High Street is in crisis, people haven’t got the purchasing power any more. We notice an increase in boarded up businesses, charity shops and pubs particularly, on our high streets. Some famous names have announced a wave of closures in recent months. Behind the alarming trend of retailers, restaurants, banks and other businesses that are downsizing their “bricks and mortar meltdown,” are also people speaking about encounters in streets, in schools.

 

Crisis in Schools due to funding?

 

Thousands of teachers in England have warned that there is a crisis in schools caused by the lack of money given to them by Government. Nobody talks about schools being forced to sell their land, stop teaching certain subjects and reduce the number of people they employ. More than 7000 heads of schools according to verifiable reports, have written letters to 3.5 million families to raise awareness of the problems they face.

 

The issue according to them in their schools is all caused by lack of funding from Government. Almost a third of all secondary schools in England are run by Local Councils. They maintain that they haven’t enough money to pay for everything they need. The number of schools with debt problems has almost quadrupled in four years. School Debt is money owed to someone else. A child taking their GCSE’s this year will have seen an increase of around £6,500 across their education since the age of three.

 

A Government spokesman has said that school funding will rise from about £41 billion in 2017 to £43.5 billion in 2019/20.

 

Consumption Fatigue?

 

The average person in UK buys 26.7 kg of new clothing each year. It is the world’s third most polluting industry after oil and plastic. It is fuelled for cheap low-quality price sensitive clothing.

 

Clothing factories are mostly in poorer countries due to cheap labour. Clothing factories release toxic bleach pesticides and dyes into the environment whilst wasting huge amounts of water, which in the years to come will be a very scarce resource in developing nations.

 

Does any of this have an impact on our lives in Sri Lanka in the future?

 

With the throw away society in the West coming to realise in the not to distant future the value of wearing a garment and consumption fatigue sets in, we in Sri Lanka need to think and plan years’ ahead. We are already warned in the West that if consumers think they will not wear a garment at least 30 times, they will hardly buy cheap clothing?

 

We should expect and prepare for a meltdown of our own cheap Clothing factories in the outskirts of our big cities, as people abroad will refuse to buy the garments we manufacture now?

 

We must cater for upmarket, luxury clothing.

 

Our economy depends on three things now. First, the foreign exchange received from expatriate labour. Secondly, our tourist trade and Thirdly, our export of Garments abroad.

 

We need to seriously downsize our dependence on the cheap Garment trade in the years to come and divert attention instead to high tech industries?

 

This takes years of advance preparation. We need this to plan ahead?

Australia has a drug problem

When will the country open up about its addiction issues?



JOHN COYNE-1 MAY 2019

Despite all evidence pointing towards a glaringly obvious drug problem, Australian politicians have yet to address it in this year’s federal election campaign, John Coyne writes.

Let’s be clear: Australia is currently staring down a number of drug crises that are already directly negatively impacting communities from country towns to capital cities.

While the use of methamphetamine and synthetic opioid continues at alarming rates, demand reduction and harm minimisation measures are failing. Despite this, in the lead up to the federal election, neither of Australia’s major political parties have offered a policy position on what they’ll do about it.

When it comes to methamphetamine, or ‘ice’, it’s easy to assume that 2015 was a watershed moment for Australia. In April of that year, then Prime Minister Tony Abbott, publicly admitted Australia had a problem with ice. In response, he created the National Ice Taskforce to examine the extent of the problem. Eight months later, the taskforce handed down its findings to Abbott’s successor, Malcolm Turnbull, who then released the National Ice Action Strategy.

While media reports of ice-induced psychosis attacks on streets and in hospitals have reduced, the problem itself has not. As I have written in the past, our National Waste Water Monitoring Program revealed that the strategy has failed: by the end of 2018, Australia’s volume of ice use had increased by 17 per cent. The ice epidemic prevails and continues to destroy the lives of addicts, their families, and the wider community.

While many, including myself, had thought that Australia might avoid the scourge of a synthetic opioid epidemic, we were all wrong. In 2016, deaths caused by drug overdose in Australia – mostly a result of opioid abuse – had reached a record high of 1,704. During the US opioid crisis, more than 40,000 Americans died each year from overdose.

And again, Australia’s Waste Water Monitoring Program has shown that its use of synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, is at a two-year high by volume. Initial information from this study seems to indicate that much of this use might be related to increasing access to prescription painkillers. Interestingly this drug problem is likely to be impacting middle-aged Australians addicted to prescription drugs rather than the young.

On the plus side, the National Drug Strategy’s focus on demand-and-supply reduction and harm minimisation remains best practice.

Unfortunately, our national demand reduction and harm minimisation efforts are failing to achieve results. Young Australians are continuing to experiment and use a range of illicit substances at an alarming rate.

Some might be quick to argue that the deaths of a half a dozen young Australians from overdosing at music festivals hardly makes a national crisis. But such thinking fails to engage with the extent of and the wide ranging impacts of Australians’ unquenchable thirst for illicit drugs.

In 1984, then Prime Minister Bob Hawke cried on Australian television as he revealed that his daughter was a heroin addict. We would also do well to learn from the experiences of former New South Wales Premier Neville Wran’s daughter Harriet Wran’s addiction to ice. Drug addiction crosses all genders, ages, and cultural and economic demographics.

Australia’s law enforcement officers are fighting a losing battle against supply and non-government organisations are swamped with rehabilitation demands. Families are being torn apart as they struggle to access effective rehabilitation for their loved ones. And while they search for assistance, they’re fighting daily to keep their addicted loved ones alive.

With the impending federal election, there is an opportunity for Australia to hit the reset button on its National Drug Strategy. Through strong leadership, either or both parties could start treating addiction as a serious health issue, and this need not detract from supply reduction efforts.

A good start for such a policy would be to commit to reviewing the strategy, to funding drug rehabilitation services, and, in principle, to exploring new harm minimisation efforts.

The central argument for such a change would be simple. Addiction, which leads to petty crime and much lost potential, proves costly to the community in both direct and indirect ways. But also, just simply, Australia has a major problem with illicit drug use.

Modi's war chest leaves India election rivals in the dust

Supporter of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wearing cut-outs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party president Amit Shah walk during an election campaign in Ahmedabad, April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Amit Dave

Alexandra Ulmer, Aftab Ahmed-MAY 1, 2019

MUMBAI/DELHI (Reuters) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is flush with cash, giving his Hindu nationalist bloc a massive advantage over the main opposition Congress party as he seeks to win a second term in India’s general election.

Opaque campaign financing in the world’s largest democracy makes it tricky to get a full picture of money in politics here. But current and former BJP supporters, opposition politicians, businessmen and activists interviewed by Reuters say Modi has an unprecedented advantage, thanks to support from businesses and expectations he will be the winner.

Staggered voting in the general election is currently in progress across India, with results to be declared on May 23.

The BJP war chest has allowed it to unleash a massive amount of advertising on social media and send Modi and party officials crisscrossing India to campaign.

The ruling party has showered money on Facebook and Google advertisements, spending six times more than Congress since February, according to data from the two firms. Modi merchandise abounds, as do Modi marketing sites.

The money puts the BJP in an extraordinarily powerful position, even over logistical issues like how to get its leaders to election rallies.

A Congress official said the BJP had the funds to reserve most of India’s fleet of helicopters for hire for 90 days, making it difficult for opponents to get hold of them.

“We have never ever seen an election with such disparity. Financially, we cannot compete with them,” said another veteran Congress politician, who asked to remain anonymous.

He and another high-ranking Congress official said they expected the BJP to outspend them by a factor of ten. A third Congress source estimated the disparity at twice that.

Two BJP officials declined to provide an estimate of spending, but one said the “BJP definitely has a big war chest and has more funds at its disposal than the Congress.”

Congress has received far fewer funds because of a perception it is unlikely to win the election, political strategists said. The opposition party has been hampered by its inability to forge a national alliance to take on Modi and has struggled to capitalise on discontent against the BJP over a lack of jobs and distressed farm incomes.

Modi has been topping polls as India’s most popular politician, well ahead of Congress President Rahul Gandhi.

 LONG ELECTION

Money has become critical in elections given the country’s 1.3 billion population, its voting over 39 days and the sheer complexity of the electorate, in terms of region, religion, language, and caste.

A tradition of doling out freebies to sway voters only adds to costs. Authorities say they have seized goods and cash worth about $456 million since March 26.

“This war chest gives the BJP significant advantages,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s South Asia programme. “Money is useful for wooing voters but also for keeping networks of party workers and influencers well lubricated.”

Parliamentary candidates’ expenditure is capped at up to 7 million Indian rupees (about $100,000), but the limit is widely flouted, and political parties are allowed to spend freely.

The New Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies (CMS) estimates almost $8.6 billion will be spent on this year’s vote, roughly twice the 2014 election.

The figure would surpass OpenSecrets.org’s estimate that $6.5 billion was spent in the 2016 U.S. presidential and congressional elections.

Recent reforms under Modi may have fueled the spending spree: Companies can fund parties anonymously through new ‘electoral bonds’ and they no longer face a donations cap. Activists say that gives corporations too much sway and obscures ties between politicians and businessmen.

About 95 percent of electoral bonds snapped up in a first tranche offering last year went to the BJP, according to data reviewed by Reuters through a Right To Information request and BJP filings.

When asked whether the BJP had a financial advantage, party spokesman Anil Baluni said “it is not an unfair advantage.”

“I guess maybe the BJP does believe in taking maximum donations by cheque or through bonds... We are the largest political party in the country,” Baluni added.

He said he did not have information on the provenance of funds or the uses. Pawan Khera, a Congress spokesman, said this was “turning out to be the most unequal election,” but did not provide specifics.

MODI RETAINS BACKERS

Modi was elected in 2014 as a darling of the business community.

Slideshow (2 Images)

His star has dimmed somewhat, in part due to fallout from a shock 2016 decision to scrap then circulating high-value bank notes, but with some businesses wary of a fragile opposition coalition coming to power, Modi retains backers.

“Modi has made business easier,” said businessman Sunil Alagh, who heads consulting firm SKA Advisors and sits on several boards.

Still, business titans tend to give to several parties to hedge their bets, politicians and executives say.
Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man and the boss of the Reliance Industries conglomerate, hails from Modi’s home state of Gujarat and his family has praised the prime minister publicly. Ambani even splashed Modi’s face on advertisements for the Reliance Jio telecoms launch in 2016.

But last month, Mumbai-based Ambani endorsed Congress candidate Milind Deora, appearing in a video saying “Milind is the man for South Bombay.” Deora’s politician father was a close friend of the Ambanis.

BIND OVER BONDS

Under the electoral bond scheme announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley last year, individuals and companies can anonymously buy as many bonds as they wish to in denominations ranging from 1,000 rupees to 10 million rupees and deposit them in a party account at the State Bank of India (SBI).

“The electoral bond scheme .... envisages total clean money and substantial transparency,” Jaitley said in a Facebook post.

Activists say the opposite is true.

“If you do not know the donor and you do not know who the money is given to, where is the transparency? Dubious donations are now legitimised,” said Jagdeep Chhokar, a founder of the Delhi-based Association for Democratic Reforms.

When Reuters reporters visited SBI branches during bond sales in Delhi and Mumbai this year, a handful of men who described themselves as politicians or company representatives were waiting to open bank accounts or buy bonds.

SBI officials declined to provide details on the sales.

($1 = 69.8980 Indian rupees)

Additional reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal in Delhi; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Edited by Martin Howell and Raju Gopalakrishnan

Universities catch less than one per cent of ‘bought in’ essays, own records suggest

Across the country, university students are submitting final pieces of coursework to complete their degrees.

• By Georgina Lee-1 May 2019

While the majority are acting in good faith, student surveys find that one in six privately admit to buying in essays — suggesting hundreds of thousands engage in so-called “contract cheating” each year.

But it seems universities have failed to comprehend the sheer scale of the problem.
FactCheck can exclusively reveal that about half the universities that responded to our freedom of information request were unable to put a figure on how many contract cheating cases they’d found last year.

And the 58 institutions that could provide stats only reported catching around 300 contract cheats between them. Most were students from outside the EU.

How many contract cheats were caught last year?

Nearly every university in the UK uses some form of anti-plagiarism software, which scans electronic versions of a student’s work to see if they have dishonestly copied from online sources or other publications.

“Contract cheating” is when students buy or commission others, often companies known as “essay mills”, to write bespoke essays or coursework for them because this original work won’t be flagged by such software.

Only 58 out of the 99 universities that responded to our query were able to tell us how many contract cheats they’d caught last year. A further 66 institutions didn’t respond at all.

Some gave an exact number, others quoted a range of figures (e.g. “fewer than five”) to avoid identifying individuals. Taking these ranges into account, the 58 institutions reported a combined total of between 278 and 316 cases of contract cheating in 2017-18. That’s an average of five or six cases per institution.

The University of Bedfordshire has the dubious honour of topping this list, finding 59 cases of “work produced by a third party” last year. As well as “bought in” essays, they told us this could also include cases where friends or family had provided so much help with an assignment that it was no longer the student’s own work.

A spokesperson for the University told FactCheck: “At Bedfordshire we put a lot of work into stamping out student submission of work produced by a third party.  We regularly raise the awareness of academic staff so they are alert to the potential for cheating, and we are transparent and rigorous in our response to it.

“To keep the matter in perspective, in 2017-18 there were only 59 cases identified at the University, a hugely small percentage of the total number of essays submitted that year.”

The University of Westminster came in second place (28 cases), followed by Oxford Brookes and Sheffield Hallam (24 each), Sussex (23) and Middlesex (20).

What does this tell us about these institutions? It could be that they are hotbeds for contract cheating. But all the evidence we have suggests this is unlikely.

As we’ll see later, one in six students in the UK confess to contract cheating — which is why it’s so striking to hear from some universities that they don’t hold records of any such cases.

And as we’ve already discovered, the majority of universities either didn’t reply to our request for information, or couldn’t provide us with any figures on the number of contract cheating cases they’ve detected.

The most plausible explanation for Bedfordshire, Westminster, et.al. coming top of this list is that these institutions are simply better at spotting this type of behaviour, and/or better at centralising their records of it, than other UK universities.

Bedfordshire told us that they “carry out an early assessment of students to assess their writing style and ability” so that if suspicions are raised later, they are better placed to gauge if a piece of work is the student’s own.

One university, Brunel, told us “it is very difficult to determine if a student has ‘bought in’ coursework unless they admit it.” Asked about the number of cases, they said “no students have admitted ‘buying in’ coursework during the period of interest.”

Some universities said that contract cheating is recorded in individual departments’ files, rather than in a university-wide database. So it’s possible they are catching more cases of contract cheating than their central records show.

But unless institutions document and centralise records on this phenomenon, we are forced to rely on imperfect snapshots.

Most contract cheating cases in our sample involve international students

International students — those from overseas who are not EU nationals — were involved in 58 to 73 per cent of contract cheating cases reported by universities in our sample.

To put those findings in context, non-EU international students make up about 14 per cent of all students at UK universities.

The tip of the iceberg?

There’s no way of knowing for certain exactly how many people are buying in essays to complete their university degrees.

In 2018, Professor Phil Newton of Swansea University, reviewed 71 student surveys on the topic of cheating, going back to 1978.

The studies he looked at from 2014 onwards found that on average, one in every six students (15.7 per cent) say they have bought or commissioned work from a third party.

If that’s accurate, it suggests about 370,000 of the UK’s 2.3 million students have engaged in contract cheating at some point in their studies. Across our 165 universities, that would work out at an average of 2,200 cases per institution.

Compare that to the figures universities reported to us: in our sample, the average university detected between five and six cases of contract cheating last year. Extrapolating across all higher education institutions, we can (very roughly) estimate that UK universities caught a combined 915 contract cheats in 2017-18.



Some said they hadn’t recorded any such cases at all. And the University of St Andrew’s went further: it’s not that they don’t have records of a case, they told us they “can confirm there have been no instances of contract cheating this academic year”.

There are limits to the cheating surveys. Professor Newton points out that people who agree to take part in surveys “are more likely to be older, female, well-educated and from a higher socioeconomic background” – characteristics he says are “in complete contrast to the factors associated with an increased likelihood of engaging in cheating”.

He also notes that in some studies, there was no guarantee of anonymity for the students taking part.
All of this suggests that the already-high levels of contract cheating reported in such surveys could even understate the true extent of the problem.

What are universities doing about it?

We asked each university to tell us whether they have “policies in place to identify students who are ‘buying in’ bespoke essays, assignments and other coursework from outside”.

Of the 98 institutions that answered our request, 47 per cent could not point to a rule explicitly forbidding the practice (we verified this by checking university rulebooks for phrases like “purchased essays”, “essay mills” and “ghosting”).

However, many of those without a specific policy told us that cases of this kind would be covered by their existing rules on academic misconduct.

One university told us that they use guidelines from the higher education watchdog, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), to spot and investigate possible contract cheating.

The QAA says “one of the most effective ways of detecting cheating is familiarity with a student’s normal output (their writing style and standard of work, for example).” When examiners suspect an essay has been bought in, the QAA also suggests carrying out a “viva assessment”, where students are interviewed in person to establish whether they authored the work themselves.

Responding to our query about how they identify contract cheating, seven institutions — Aston, Aberdeen, Liverpool Hope, the London Business School, the Open University, the University of Bristol, and the University of Chichester — told us that they use software services like Turnitin to detect plagiarism.

But that doesn’t quite answer our question.

The version of Turnitin that is currently used by 98 per cent of UK universities can tell whether an essay or sections of it have been lifted from online sources or other published work. It cannot detect whether an assignment has been bought in. This is the very reason students approach so-called “essay mills” in the first place.

So we were surprised when one institution, Canterbury Christ Church University, went further, telling us: “the University uses the software Turnitin to identify potential cases of bought essays.”

We thought perhaps they were referring to a new Turnitin programme launched in March 2019, “Authorship Investigate”, which is designed to help manage contract cheating cases. The software uses “forensic linguistic analysis” to see if a given piece of work is consistent with the student’s previous writing.

But the university told us that although they “have had discussions with Turnitin and intend to use their new ‘Authorship Investigate’ tool”, they had not yet deployed the software.

And even if they had, Turnitin told FactCheck that Authorship Investigate is not a way of flagging up potential cases of contract cheating where there is no prior suspicion of foul play — it’s a tool that can provide evidence to help investigators work out whether someone who is already suspected of buying in an essay has done so.

The onus remains on universities, and academics and examiners, to raise suspicions in the first place.