Deep concerns in New Zealand ruling elite over Brexit vote

John Braddock

The political establishment in New Zealand has reacted to the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom with a sudden expression of interest in, and alarm over, the potential emergence of a popular “revolt” at home.

While both the “Leave” and “Remain” camps in the UK were dominated by nationalism and anti-immigration rhetoric and neither represented the interests of the working class, the outcome contained a profound rebuke to the British ruling elite.

The vote to leave, as the WSWS explained, was “a cry of social distress, particularly from the poorest layers of workers, who know that the European Union has been no less ruthless in its attacks on the working class than the Tories in Britain, above all in its destruction of Greece.”

Similar hostility and alienation from the political establishment was reflected in the July 2 Australian election, which saw a surge in support for minor parties, producing a fractured parliament and an unstable government.

In New Zealand, the apparent stability of the National Party-led government of Prime Minister John Key, which has been in office since the end of the 1999-2008 Labour administration, is showing signs of weakening. The country is experiencing a profound social crisis, with one in 100 people homeless and more than 300,000, or one in four, children living in poverty.

Running through much of the media commentary on the Brexit vote is seething hostility to the working class. It is falsely assumed that working people—labelled “NZ’s festering malcontents” by one newspaper headline—will inevitably blame immigrants for the worsening social conditions, with the main beneficiary being the racist and xenophobic NZ First Party.

As part of an attempt to promote NZ First, its leader Winston Peters was interviewed on television following the Brexit result, attacking immigrants and comparing New Zealand to Britain. In a speech at the British House of Lords in May, Peters had told the British to be “bold and courageous” and ditch the European Union. He raised the issue of British “apprehension and dismay” at the “invasion” of European nationals from countries like Poland and Romania and England’s “seeming inability to do anything about it.”

In reality, the entire New Zealand ruling elite is promoting nationalism and scapegoating immigrants. The Reserve Bank last week warned the government that it needed to reduce immigration in order to control spiralling house prices.

There is already mass disaffection toward all the official parties in New Zealand. In the 2008 election, Labour’s vote collapsed as many workers abstained from voting. In 2011, only 74 percent of registered voters turned out, the lowest percentage in 120 years. The 2014 election continued the trend, with the third lowest turnout in 100 years. About one million eligible voters abstained, including 280,000 predominantly young people who did not enrol to vote. The Labour Party received just 24.7 percent of the vote, its worst result since 1922.

A recent study commissioned by Victoria University’s Institute of Governance and Policy Studies, showed a “crisis of distrust” in parliament. The level of trust in MPs had fallen by 54 percent since 2013, with less than one in 10 saying they had complete or lots of trust in elected officials.

Another survey of “trust,” cited in the New Zealand Herald on July 6 by Otago University lecturer Bryce Edwards, showed a gap of 12 percentage points between wealthier social layers and the mass of the population. Only 41 percent of the population overall expressed any confidence in the existing political set-up. Edwards noted that widening economic inequality, both internationally and in New Zealand, was “leading to various forecasts of proletarian revolt.”

According to journalist Duncan Garner, social inequality is “a ticking time-bomb” and should be a “wake-up call” for politicians. Referring to statistics showing the bottom 40 percent of the population own just 3 percent of the wealth, he declared one could “shudder at the thought” of them all voting.

Herald business editor Liam Dann warned of “growing unease” in financial and banking circles as “political upheaval is stoking turmoil in currency markets as a wave of populist anti-globalisation sentiment sweeps the world.” While New Zealand has been depicted as a “safe haven” for investors, ANZ bank chief economist Cameron Bagrie warned that the NZ dollar will “come under pressure” if “populist-driven unease” spreads to emerging economies, which include many of New Zealand’s export markets.

In a particularly hypocritical blog post, former Labour prime minister Geoffrey Palmer suggested that “some sense of democratic renewal is needed to avoid alienation.” As a member of Labour’s 1984-90 cabinet, Palmer carried a special responsibility for initiating its widely detested pro-market onslaught against the working class, including mass redundancies and privatisations. The National government continued the attacks in the 1990s, including brutal reductions in unemployment and sickness benefits. The 1999–2008 Clark Labour government did not reverse any of these cuts.

Former Labour leader David Cunliffe, falsely promoted in the media as a “left” figure, wrote on the Daily Blog, that “extremist nationalist figures are converging far right and left wing dissatisfaction thinking under a nationalistic, populist banner.” The question, he asked, was how to fix it. “People want to feel good about their country. They want to feel proud and connected. They need to feel their country is progressive and has a plan.” Only Labour “can and will deliver on” such a plan, Cunliffe asserted.

Labour is far less concerned about the growth of right-wing nationalism than a leftward movement of the working class that would come into conflict with all the established parties. Labour and the unions, supported by various pseudo-left organisations, bear the prime responsibility for promoting right-wing nationalism. Labour has joined NZ First in whipping up xenophobia and nationalism by scapegoating immigrants, particularly Chinese, for unemployment and the housing shortage. Underscoring the right-wing nationalist orientation of the New Zealand pseudo-left groups, Socialist Aotearoa joined NZ First in supporting the “Leave” campaign in Britain.

The anti-immigrant rhetoric and economic nationalism is aimed at dividing the working class and preventing a united struggle against austerity and war. Anti-Chinese xenophobia, in particular, will be used more and more openly by Labour and NZ First to justify New Zealand’s alignment with the US military encirclement and preparation for war against China.

The New Zealand ruling elite has already once in its recent history been forced to modify its election process to try to head off mass disenchantment with the two major parties and the institution of parliament. Following a referendum in 1992, a German-style mixed member proportional representation system was adopted to open the way for smaller parties. The Greens, NewLabour, the Alliance, NZ First and many other parties were established. Without exception, they have all, at one time or another, collaborated with Labour or National governments in the assault on living standards and participation in overseas military interventions.

Social inequality escalates in Denmark amid bonanza for banks and corporations

Ellis Wynne

“Income inequality is on the rise. The rich control more of the country’s wealth …The ranks of the poor are growing. Sounds like the United States? Actually it’s Denmark.”

So read an article “Actually, Denmark is becoming more like us” published by CNN Money last October.

Indeed, a sober analysis of class relationships in Denmark would confirm a growing inequality. As liberal newspaper Information put it baldly, “From 2003 to 2013 the richest tenth of Danes became 29 percent richer whilst the poorest ten percent became 1 percent poorer.”

An article by the journalist Kirsten Nilsson published in Politiken last year noted, “The Gini coefficient [a widely used statistic to measure income inequality] has risen from 22 in 2002 to above 27 in 2012. It looked better during the economic crisis but inequality has begun to rise again since the crisis has abated.”

She points out that Denmark is no longer the world’s most equal society, as it was at the beginning of the millennium, but now ranks 14th in the list of European countries. Not only are the other Scandinavian countries “more equal” but so are some east European nations.

This rising inequality finds expression not only in the number of people who are below the official poverty line—in round figures 22,000 in 2002, 44,000 in 2012—but also in life expectancy. “The richest quarter of men live ten years longer than the poorest quarter,” the article continued. That is 82 years and 72 years respectively.

Nilsson quotes Torben M. Andersen, an economics professor at the University of Aarhus, who writes: “If we summarise the development … the bottom finds it difficult to keep up with the middle, that is the middle class, and the top has run from the rest.” She concludes, “Society is being split.”

Research carried out by both Kraka, an independent research organisation, and the Economic Council of the Labour Movement indicates that the widening gap between the richest Danes and the rest of society has been developing over the last 20 to 30 years.

Kraka’s August 2015 study, titled “Are the absolutely richest Danes running albeit slowly from everybody else?” shows that the richest 0.1 percent has enriched itself considerably over this period. The income threshold for membership of this tiny group has risen by 425 percent. In 2012, the richest had to have a minimal annual income of DK3.5 million (£350,000) to enter the 0.1 percent.

The survey states, “The share of total income that falls to the top 5 percent of incomes has barely risen from 17 to 18 percent over the last thirty years whereas the top 0.1 percent’s share has risen by around 40 per cent.”

Whereas 30 years ago small businessmen comprised about half of this layer, they now make up only a third. Instead, it is from the financial and consultancy sectors, together with the IT sector and pharmaceutical industry, that the top 0.1 percent is increasingly drawn.

It is this tiny layer that owns more than 40 percent of shares and bonds and has 88 percent of net wealth. And its interests lie not in actual production but in property and speculation.

Jonathan Perraton, a senior lecturer in economics at the University of Sheffield in England, wrote a chapter “Corporations and capital accumulation” in a compilation edited by Mogens Ove Madsen and Finn Olesen,Macroeconomics after the Financial Crisis: A Post-Keynesian Perspective(London and New York 2016).

Addressing developments in Scandinavia, he writes, “Although there was some tendency for wages to rise in the 1970s (albeit less pronounced than in other European economies) they have fallen from the 1990s in these economies.”

Profits on the other hand have been “rising from the 1990s to rates that are comparable to those during the post-war golden age or, for Denmark and Norway, even higher.” (op cit p. 63).

Moreover, he concludes, “Whereas earlier decades saw strong investment from retained profits and some further borrowing, investment has fallen sharply since” (ibid, p. 66).

This process is illustrated by the fact that 16 of the biggest companies registered at the Copenhagen stock exchange that submitted accounts for 2014 sent around DK79 billion (£8 billion) to their shareholders, up from DK60billion (£6 billion) in 2013. Last year one company by itself, the pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, distributed DK28 billion (£3 billion) to its shareholders.

Reflecting this, the C20, the index for the biggest companies on the Copenhagen exchange, has risen exponentially since the Lehmann Brothers bank crash that heralded the global financial crash of 2008.

In contrast, the “real economy” has been described as sluggish at best. Tore Stramer, senior analyst at Nykredit, described 2015 as a “dud.” In June, Nationalbanken, Denmark’s central bank, lowered its prognosis for economic growth in 2016 from 1.3 percent to 1 percent.

The parasitism of capitalism is clearly shown in the case of the Danish banks, who following the crisis of 2008, were bailed out to the tune of DK200billion (£20 billion) in a series of “bank packages.” Berlingske reported June 15 on a Nationalbanken report, “Financial Stability: First Half-Year.” It states: “credit institutions as a whole made in 2015 their highest profits since the financial crisis. The gain in earnings was aided by a big fall in write downs on loans and guarantees in relation to the year before.”

In fact, Tune Revsgaard Nielsen wrote in Modkraft in March that the banks made DK200 billion (£20 billion) in 2015, gifting DK15 billion (£1.5 billion) to shareholders and retaining DK30 billion (£3 billion) as interest-bearing capital.

The financial aristocracy is not, however, merely parasitic. It is a kleptocracy. In January 2014, the Social Democratic-led coalition government sold 18 percent of its shares in DONG, the energy company, to New Investment S.a.r.l. a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, for DK31.5 billion (£3.2 billion). On June 9, these shares were offered on the stock exchange and their price estimated at DK100 billion (£10 billion).

Amongst those gaining were Henrik Poulsen, DONG’s administrative director, who was allowed to buy shares at the same price as Goldman Sachs. It is estimated he will make up to DK27 million (£2.7 million).

Commenting in Politiken on May 29, Kristian Weise, director of Cevea, a reformist think-tank, stated openly that a “bonus of millions to Dong bosses reeks of kleptocracy.” “Such a situation,” he writes, “is reminiscent—in truth—of what happened in Russia during the transition from communism to a market economy ... In Russia state-owned concerns were sold for peanuts to a new group of oligarchs.”

He added, “The richest of the rich do not become rich through creating new wealth but by acquiring a greater share of the wealth already created.”

In stark contrast to the ever-increasing wealth of this layer, a 2014 Cevea report found that between 1991 and 2010, 146,000 industrial jobs were lost in Denmark. It noted, “In the same period 24 percent of all new Danish jobs have been created in low-wage sectors or categories at a wage that is 75 percent lower than the average wage.”

This is confirmed by the Economic Council of the Labour Movement in its November 2015 report, “Decline in the wages of workers since the crisis.” It reported, “Since 2008 wages for ordinary skilled and unskilled workers have fallen in real terms by DK6000 (£600). In the same period they have risen by DK130,000 (£13,000) or 8 percent for people in the upper class.”

The Turkish coup: A warning to the international working class

Bill Van Auken

While Turkey’s abortive military coup of July 15 appears to have been crushed, after the deaths of nearly 300 people, the country remains in a state of extreme political instability, overshadowed by the threats of fresh violence and repression.

A World Socialist Web Site correspondent reported from Turkey late Sunday that cell phone messages were again sent to the population urging people to return to the streets and take control of public squares, an apparent admission that the danger is not over and the army could renew its intervention at any moment.

The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has responded to the coup attempt with a dictatorial crackdown, arresting some 6,000 people in addition to detaining thousands of officers and soldiers. The scale of the roundup is indicated by the use of a sports stadium to hold some of the prisoners, a disturbing echo of the bloody events in Chile in 1973.

Arrest orders have been issued against thousands of judges and prosecutors, who are now branded as participants in an “armed terrorist movement.” In addition to its vow to “cleanse” the state institutions of all possible opponents, the Erdoğan government has indicated that it will push for the restoration of the death penalty to use against them.

The government has unleashed onto the streets Islamist mobs that have wreaked violent revenge against Turkish soldiers, in many cases teenage conscripts. There have been reported beatings and lynchings. A video circulated on social media purports to show the beheading of a soldier on Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge.

It is difficult to see, under the circumstances now unfolding, how Turkey can maintain even a semblance of democratic forms of rule or return to any meaningful state of political stability.

The implications are far-reaching for the entire capitalist world. Turkey is by no means a political or economic backwater. A country of 75 million at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, it is a key member of the US-led NATO imperialist alliance, boasting its second-largest military after the US itself. It constitutes the sixth-largest economy in Europe. While not a member of the European Union, Turkey is closely integrated into the EU’s economic and political structures.

Turkish history is replete with coups and coup attempts, but there had not been such an event in the country in two decades. In 1960, 1971 and 1980, the military seized power in Turkey, as it did throughout much of Latin America and in Greece, Indonesia and elsewhere during the same period, with the close backing of the Pentagon and the CIA.

If large sections of the military can once again attempt to seize power in a country like Turkey, the inescapable conclusion is that the age of military coups has returned, not just in Turkey, but on a world scale. The extreme violence, instability and crisis fueled by twenty-five years of US-led wars in the Middle East, the Balkans and elsewhere are now spreading inexorably to the major capitalist centers of Europe and throughout the entire planet, amid unprecedented levels of social inequality and the sharpening of geopolitical and military tensions.

That these tensions were at the root of the bloody events in Istanbul and Ankara over the weekend is manifested in the reactions in the US and Europe—as well as Turkey itself—to the coup attempt and its aftermath.

Suleyman Soylu, Turkey’s labor minister, went so far as to charge that “The United States is behind the coup.” Erdoğan himself has attributed the entire affair to followers of his former ally and current enemy, the pro-American Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, who lives in exile in Pennsylvania and apparently enjoys protection from within the US state. When Erdoğan denounces Gülen, it is safe to say that he is really talking about Obama.

Washington’s initial reaction to the reported coup was at best equivocal, with US Secretary of State John Kerry voicing only US hopes for “stability and peace and continuity within Turkey.” Only after it became apparent that the coup was failing did the White House issue a statement indicating support for “the democratically elected government of Turkey.”

The German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel similarly took its time in condemning the coup. Since the official statement, the German media and many politicians have centered their fire on Erdoğan, warning him against extra-constitutional measures while saying next to nothing about the implications of a coup inside a NATO country.

Suspicion of US involvement is hardly unwarranted. Just three years ago, the Obama administration lent its all but open support to the military coup led by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, refusing to call the overthrow of Egypt’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, a “coup.” Washington continued to pour in military aid as the Sisi regime massacred, imprisoned and tortured its opponents. Then, in 2014, together with Germany, it engineered the fascist-spearheaded coup to oust the government of Ukraine.

Whether or not the attempted coup in Turkey was explicitly sanctioned by the United States and Germany, one cannot escape the impression that its success would not have been unwelcome to Obama and Merkel.

Tensions between Washington and Ankara have intensified in relation to the five-year-old civil war in Syria, in which the Erdoğan government has until now functioned as a key supporter of the Islamist militias serving as proxy forces in the US-orchestrated war for regime change. Ankara has viewed with increasing anger Washington’s close reliance on Syrian Kurdish forces. It fears that the Kurds’ military successes in Syria will strengthen demands for Kurdish autonomy within Turkey itself.

With the war next door exacting ever-greater political and economic costs upon Turkey, Erdoğan last month issued an apology to Russia over Turkey’s November 2015 ambush and downing of a Russian warplane. The attempted rapprochement with Russia reportedly involves discussions on a political settlement in Syria outside the control of the US government.

There have even been reports that Erdoğan has threatened to give Russian warplanes, instead of those of the US, access to the strategic Incirlik airbase, where the US keeps its largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in Europe. The base’s Turkish commander was reportedly a leader of the coup and is now under arrest.

The British Telegraph newspaper elaborated on the growth of tensions between Washington and Ankara in the weeks before the coup attempt:

“Mr. Erdoğan suddenly launched a dramatic diplomatic revolution in the month before the coup. In rapid succession, his government repaired its relations with Russia, Egypt and Israel. Overnight Mr. Erdoğan’s descriptions of Putin, Sisi and Netanyahu as murderers were forgotten. Then, on the eve of the coup, Turkey’s new prime minister even talked of reviving relations with Syria.

“At the same time, relations with the United States have taken a nosedive. The Pentagon was taken by surprise when the Turkish government included US planes and drones operating out of their Incirlik airbase against Isil in Syria in the “no‑fly zone” imposed over Turkey following the coup. Worse still, electricity was cut off to the base. Then the Turkish base commander was arrested, which sparked a flurry of rumours in Turkey that he was the ‘link-man’ between the putschists and the Pentagon. That may be dismissed out of hand abroad, but it is a symptom of how alienated Mr. Erdoğan’s support base is from its American ally.”

Whatever the precise tensions and conspiracies that have given rise to these events, the question is clearly posed: is Turkey the only NATO member where the threat of a military coup is on the political horizon? Recent developments suggest that the chain may have broken first at its weakest link, but it is the chain that is severed and the threat is universal.

What of Britain, where Brexit has thrown both major parties into profound crisis while threatening the breakup of the UK and the disintegration of the European Union as a whole? Only recently, military commanders threatened a “mutiny” in the event that Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, became prime minister. Corbyn’s rivals for the leadership of the party, who are heading up an internal party coup to remove him, have pledged their willingness to use nuclear weapons in a bid to win the military’s support.

In France, President François Hollande warned in the wake of the Nice terrorist attack that prolonging the country’s state of emergency would endanger the country’s status as a republic based upon laws. In short order, however, he extended the extraordinary powers for another three months, while calling the military onto the streets.

And in the US itself, the capitalist two-party system is in a state of terminal crisis, with the prospect of an electoral victory by the fascistic Republican candidate Donald Trump. Unending war abroad is inevitably accompanied by repression at home, with the increasing integration of the police and the military, carried out in the name of fighting “terrorism,” but directed against growing opposition and radicalization within the working class.

The Turkish events are a harbinger of what may come in countries around the world, where democratic forms of capitalist rule are becoming untenable under the weight of a global economic crisis, the relentless growth of militarism and war and, above all, the intensification of the class struggle.

Avoid ‘Miracle’ Rice, Just Eat A Carrot!

Vandana Shiva

Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, died on September 9, 2009. Alfred G. Gilman died on December 23, 2015. Both were Nobel laureates and now both dead. Gilman was a signatory to a recent letter condemning Greenpeace and its opposition to genetic engineering.

How many Nobel laureates does it take to write a letter? Easily ascertained—the dead Gilman and 106 others were enlisted in “supporting GMOs and golden rice”. Correct answer—107, dead or alive.

The laureates were rounded up by Val Giddings (senior fellow, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation), Jon Entine (author of Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People) and Jay Byrne (former head of corporate communications, Monsanto). Real people don’t have the luxury of getting Nobel laureates to write 1/107th of a letter, “chosen” folk do. Evidently.

Cornell University is a “chosen” institution — central to genetically modified public relations. The Cornell Alliance of Science is funded by Bill Gates, just like the failed golden rice experiment.

The Nobel laureates accuse Greenpeace of killing millions by delaying ghost rice — something the biotech industry accuses me of doing, for the same reason. Unlike golden rice — whose failure to launch is the industry’s own failure, the opposition to genetic engineering (and hence golden rice) is very real and successful. As Glenn Stone, a rice scientist at Washington University, states: “The simple fact is that after 24 years of research and breeding, golden rice is still years away from being ready for release.”

It is Borlaug’s Green Revolution monocultures that contributed to malnutrition by destroying biodiversity, which destroys the diversity of nutrients we need to be healthy. As Navdanya research has shown, biodiversity produces more food and nutrition per acre. Borlaug’s ghost is still shaping the industrial agriculture “miracles” based on monocultures of the mind and spin in place of science.

It is now more than 20 years since the “miracle” golden rice began to be promoted as the excuse to allow patents on life. The last time golden rice was resurrected when Patrick Moore of Allow Golden Rice Now was sent to Asia to push the failed promise. Women of the world organised and responded to Moore — Diverse Women for Diversity issued a declaration on International Women’s Day in 2015 titled Women and Biodiversity Feed the World, not Corporations and GMOs.

Golden rice is genetically engineered rice with two genes from a daffodil and one gene from a bacterium. The resulting GMO rice is said to have a yellow colouring, which is supposed to increase beta-carotene — a precursor of Vitamin A. It has been offered as a potential miracle cure for Vitamin A deficiency for 20 years.

But golden rice is a false miracle. It is a disease of nutritionally empty monocultures offered as a cure for nutritional deficiency. In fact, golden rice, if successful, will be 400 per cent less efficient in providing Vitamin A than the biodiversity alternatives that women have to offer. To get your daily requirement of Vitamin A, all you need to eat is one of the following:

Two tablespoons of spinach or cholai (amaranth) leaves or radish leaves
Four tablespoons of mustard or bathua leaves
One tablespoon of coriander chutney
One-and-a-half tablespoon of mint chutney
One carrot
One mango

So, if you want to be four times more efficient than 107 Nobel laureates, just eat a carrot!

Not only do these indigenous alternatives based on women’s knowledge provide more Vitamin A than golden rice ever will, and at a lower cost, but also provide multiple other nutrients. Our critique of golden rice is that even if it is developed, it will be inferior to the alternatives women have in their hands and minds. Women are being blocked from growing biodiversity and spreading their knowledge to address malnutrition, by rich and powerful men and their corporations who are blind to the richness of the earth and our cultures.

Through their monoculture of the mind, they keep imposing monocultures of failed technologies, blocking the potential of abundance and nourishment. As I wrote in 2000, blindness to biodiversity and women’s knowledge is a blind approach to blindness prevention.

Grain.org concluded in Grains of delusion: Golden rice seen from the ground, way back in 2001: “The best chance of success in fighting Vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition is to better use the inexpensive and nutritious foods already available, and in diversifying food production systems in the fields and in the household. The euphoria created by the Green Revolution greatly stifled research to develop and promote these efforts, and the introduction of golden rice will further compromise them. Golden rice is merely a marketing event. But international and national research agendas will be taken by it.”

The Giddings-Entine-Byrne Nobel PR stunt was timed to coincide with the US Senate vote on the Dark Act — the denial to Americans of the right to know what they eat. With two decades of the GMO experiment failing to control pests and weeds, creating super pests and super weeds instead, there is now an attempt to push through the “next generation” of GMOs — such as “gene drives” for exterminating nutrient-rich species like the amaranth. Amaranth, a weed to the 107 Nobel laureates, is a richer source of Vitamin A than golden rice has promised it will be, when it grows up. The laureates would have us round up all the Vitamin A we already have in abundance, create deficiencies by exterminating it with RoundUp, and provide golden rice to alleviate the absence of Vitamin A.

Mr Gates is also supporting this failed miracle, as well as the failed communication through the Cornell Alliance for Science. He also funds the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and Harvest Plus, the corporate alliance for biofortification.

The corporate-controlled World Food Prize for 2016 has been announced for “Biofortification”. Scientists funded by Mr Gates have been given the prize for inventing an orange sweet potato. But the Maori in New Zealand had developed kumara, orange (beauregard) sweet potato, centuries ago.

Mr Gates is also funding the biopiracy research of James Dale of Queensland, who took the Vitamin A-rich indigenous bananas of Micronesia and declared them to be his invention.

The biopiracy of people’s biodiversity and indigenous knowledge is what Mr Gates is funding. The Gates fortification or Nobel fortification, will not nourish people. Fraud is not food.

How To Prevent Anti Democratic Forces In Turkey

Vivek Kumar Srivastava

The unsuccessful coup in Turkey is a matter of great relief to the Turkish people and world at large. The coup has been widely condemned even the HDP party and the government of Iran have condemned the coup attempt.

Why did the coup take place? There are domestic and regional factors behind it.  President Erdogan in the recent time has adopted certain domestic policies which    have not pleased a section of the military; an institution which feels every reason to interfere in the affairs of the state if it feels that government policies are not in right direction. Erdogan’s dictatorial behavior seems to have affected a section in military in negative terms. Turkey is faced with a liberal-conservative dichotomy in which the President has taken a conservative stand. Turkey has shifted much in this respect from the days of 1923 of Kamal Pasha when reforms were made. At present even the President speaks in favour of conservative ideas which differ much from the early years of its establishment as a modern state. This development is very important due to the fact that the country is located in the region where the instability is a common thing due to conservative ideas. From Yemen, Iraq to Syria everywhere the political instability is visible. Turkey has involved itself in this regional war with conservative ideas.

The region is at boil and Erdogan has attempted to exploit it for his own political interests. Turkish  policy towards the Syria is a major point where it has acted as a typical US ally. Its policies are largely governed by the USA whenever the regional issues are concentrated upon. Turkish support to anti Assad forces in Syria has imprint of US. The diplomatic standoff with Russia is another example where both countries had moved towards the negative zone after the downing of a Russian plane by Turkey. These policies may not have been liked by a group in military which came up with the illegal decision to overthrow the democratically elected government of Erdogan. These forces may lie low but are not eliminated as Erdogan has himself indicated. President Erdogan in the background of such developments needs to focus on certain issues. One such issue relates to the emergence of Hizmet movement led by Fethullah Gulen. Its leader has been blamed by the Turkish government as the main guiding force behind the coup. If it is so then government needs to find out the reasons of coming military or some section of society under its influence which some may find more modern and secular. President Erdogan will have to search out the function of his government in wider scale as to why  such ideology is gaining ground in the country and what best can be done. It appears that within the country ideological polarization is taking place which may take deep roots in the time to come. Erdogan has overlooked this fact; perhaps the regional milieu is much impactful and the conservative approach has dominated all the major players in the region. Erdogan will have to craft a mild policy to save the democracy in the country.

In several countries military has become quite strong and wants to participate in the political process. Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar and Turkey are some of its example. The involvement of military in the political processing is always dangerous to democracy because the basic philosophy of military is always against to the tenets of democracy. Whenever the military participates in effective manner in the political field; a new type of political system emerges in which the military-administrative nexus becomes predominant and the basic freedoms of the people are curtailed. Pakistan is a classic example of it where four times military rule was imposed and destroyed the roots of the democracy. Turkey is no exception where military if comes to the power as was aimed by its small section in the recent coup then fundamental freedoms were to be the first victim. President Erdogan overlooked the simmering in a section of   rank and file of the military.

The democracy rests upon certain premises; the biggest is the liberal approach of the top leader who should never be so exclusive and authoritarian that people start distrusting the same. As happening in USA where due to ultra radical approach to the political issues the Republican candidate Donald  Trump is losing the people’s support.

Recently Erdogan has shown shift in its foreign policy which is now more accommodative at the regional level. The same need is also required at the domestic level where his government needs to take note of the troubles in the society and military. As Greek philosopher Aristotle said that revolution is always caused when some policies of the leader cause the disenchantment. Erdogan needs to modify its regional policies as well the hard stand on certain issues. He will have to follow the path as founders had enlightened to the Turkish land. Though much has changed since those days but a shift from conservatism in domestic politics, abandoning the aggressive foreign policy and keeping military and anti democratic ideologies at bay is needed in Turkey. Erdogan is key to it. If military increases the control in anyway then region may go more  into troubles. In this respect role of US is also quite critical which is the closest ally of Turkey and has not taken worthwhile policy decisions with respect to the region and Turkey. It should work for peace in the region with Russia and allow Turkey to be able to deal the domestic and regional problems. Otherwise it may lose its close ally in the region as happened with it in 1979 when it lost Iran.

Life Turned Upside Down In Gaza

Sarah Algherbawi 

Inas Abu Muhadi cannot understand that she will never see her dad again.

She remembers that her dad had a scooter. And each time she hears one, she expects to see her dad arriving home.

The young girl’s father passed away from natural causes in July 2013.

“Our life turned upside down after that day,” said her mother, Rajaa Abu Khalil. “Now, I have to be their father and mother at the same time. The burden is too heavy and I am tired.”

On top of Rajaa’s loss of her husband, the home where the couple lived with their six children in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah was bombed and destroyed during Israel’s 51-day onslaught in the summer of 2014.

Her eldest child, Muhammad, now 12 years old, is constantly nervous and often loses his temper.

Trauma is widespread in Gaza, which has endured three major Israeli assaults since December 2008.

The World Health Organization has estimated that 20 percent of Gaza’s population — or approximately 360,000 people — may be suffering from mental health problems caused by the 2014 assault.

Rajaa and her children had already evacuated their home and were taking shelter in a school run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, when their house was bombed.

“Living in graves”

The family’s home has still not been rebuilt. Today, Rajaa and her children live in a caravan.

“When we moved here, we thought it would be temporary,” said Rajaa. “But the suffering seems endless. It’s like we are living in graves.”

Eight meters long and six meters wide, the caravan is “like an oven in summer and a fridge in winter,” said Rajaa.

In hot weather, the caravan has been infested with rodents, insects and snakes. The children have suffered from heat rashes, according to Rajaa. At times of heavy rainfall, the caravan has become flooded.

Her children find living in such a cramped space stressful. “I only wish I could have a room of my own — somewhere to keep my books tidy and where I could do my homework quietly,” said Ahmad, her 9-year-old son.

“Once, my mother came to visit me and I was embarrassed that I couldn’t find any place for her to sleep at night,” Rajaa added.

Rajaa’s mother lives about three miles away in Nuseirat refugee camp.

Rajaa Abu Khalil’s children play outside of their temporary home. Ahmed Salama

More than 142,000 refugee homes in Gaza were damaged during Israel’s 2014 attack, according to a recent assessment by UNRWA. Of those, more than 9,000 were totally demolished. A further 9,000 suffered severe or major damage.

“Only a matter of several hundred totally destroyed houses have been rebuilt,” UNRWA told The Electronic Intifada by email.

Explaining the shortfall, the agency added: “There are two reasons: a lack of funds and restrictions on materials allowed to enter.”

Two months after the August 2014 ceasefire, $3.5 billion was pledged by third-party states towards rebuilding Gaza.

At the end of March, only 69 percent of those pledges had been disbursed.

Meanwhile Israel limits the importation of many building supplies into Gaza, claiming that some items could prove useful to Hamas or other armed groups.

Israel restricts the amount of concrete, steel bars, electrical goods, pipes and wood thicker than one centimeter allowed into Gaza.

UNRWA reported, too, that 8,000 families still displaced because of the 2014 attack did not receive “transitional shelter cash assistance” during the second quarter of 2016.

Ashraf al-Qedra, a spokesperson for Gaza’s health ministry, said that health problems are widespread among the displaced. He told The Electronic Intifada that 300 to 400 caravan dwellers are admitted to Gaza’s hospitals each month with respiratory and intestinal complaints.

He added that the ministry does not have sufficient resources to organize medical visits to those who remain displaced.

Promises not kept

Concerns have also been raised about the structural safety of the caravans.

In May, 7-year-old Majdi al-Masri was killed when part of a caravan where his family lived in the Beit Hanoun area of northern Gaza fell on top of him. He had just returned from school when the accident occurred.

The al-Masri family home had been bombed by Israel in 2014.

Sufyan Hamad, a representative of the Beit Hanoun municipality, said that many of the caravans in the area had been assembled quickly and in a haphazard manner following the 2014 attack.

Rajaa Abu Khalil does not know how much longer she and her children will have to live in a caravan.

UNRWA has taken note of the damage to her home, but has been unable to tell her when it will be rebuilt.

“There is no cement for the reconstruction,” she said. “Until now, it’s all promises. Nothing has happened on the ground.”

Cow Worshippers Chew Up The Rule Of Law

Samar

A magisterial / judicial order directing the police to register a first information report and investigate a family that lost its provider in a mob lynching would seem impossible for anyone living in a rule of law system. But in the self-designated largest democracy of the world, this is what happened on 14 July 2016.

Here is a quick recap for the uninitiated. On the evening of 28 September 2015, a mob set out for the house of Mohammad Akhlaq, 52, after a public announcement from the local temple that the family had consumed beef in Bishahra Village in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh. The consumption of beef, read “cow or its progeny” is not banned in the Province – unlike some other provinces because of the majority Hindu community’s treatment of cow as sacred. This fact did not deter the fanatical mob in the least.

The mob reached Akhlaq’s house, dragged him out, and lynched him, while also grievously injuring his son, Danish. The police officers who reached the scene confiscated the meat remaining in the family fridge, and sent it for forensic investigation, confirming if it was really beef or not! Instead of arresting the culprits and providing security to the surviving members of the family, this was the first thing they did. A preliminary inquiry by the Uttar Pradesh Veterinary Department, three months later, in December 2015, found it to be meat of “goat progeny”, and not beef. No one knows when it changed/mutated, but then another 6 months later, in June 2016, University of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Mathura, found it to be beef, or meat of “cow or its progeny”.

And, lo and behold, the recovery memo prepared by the police had duly recorded that this meat was collected from the place where the mob allegedly gathered to attack Akhlaq, not from his fridge! The judge would not have any of this. That the fact of the public announcement of the family having consumed beef, followed by the attack, and the site of recovery of the aforesaid ‘beef’, reeks of outright conspiracy has not bothered him. He has nonchalantly ordered registration of an F.I.R and consequent investigation, against the still traumatized family, for cow slaughter.

It is not the fault of the judge alone. The case has exposed the rot that runs deep in the system as few cases have done before. Here is a state probing what ‘progeny’ the meat was from – cow or goat – instead of prosecuting the murderers. If that was not absurd enough, here are the police collecting the meat from a place where the lynch mob gathered, and not from the fridge of the family, for which the family members were lynched. Here is a judge who did not even blink over this huge sham and passed an order to investigate the family, instead of throwing the petition out of the window.

But wait a minute. Where was the public prosecutor to oppose such miscarriage of justice and argue against passing such an unjust order? Was he in the court in the first place? Did the government of Uttar Pradesh remember to ask him to be there in court? And if it did, and he was indeed in the court, whose brief was he carrying? Also, did the victim’s family have their lawyer present in the court to intervene against precisely this eventuality? Could the family afford to have one monetarily? Could it also find one ready to go and represent them in a court full of hostile relatives and friends of the accused without fear of bodily harm?

And what of the civil society? Where were the champions of justice, liberties, secularism, and other isms? One remembers them duly “outraging” after the lynching, after the meat was sent for “forensic investigation”. Where did they disappear after that? One cannot be naïve enough to think that they are ignorant of the labyrinth of injustice that is the Indian judicial system. How could they simply move on to ‘other cases’, of which there is no dearth due to this system that underpins it all.

And all this while similar lynch mobs kept committing such “beef murders” across India on mere suspicion. They happened in Jharkhand, in Haryana, in Himachal Pradesh, and elsewhere, with perpetrators hardly ever brought to book. The last of these beef murders occured in Una, Gujarat, wherein the perpetrators were brazen enough to beat up 4 Dalit youth right in front of a police station.

Blaming it all on the right wing Hindutva regime that has come to power in the country in 2014 is a mere easy way out. The regime, of course, wants to hammer in its beliefs and values on the body politic of the Republic, with utter disregard to pluralism. But, food habits are not the only thing it wants to alter. It has also attempted, and failed, in many other endeavors, toppling democratically elected opposition governments in the provinces for instance. It failed to have its way, first in Uttarakhand and then in Arunachal Pradesh, with the Supreme Court of India striking down the imposition of President’s rule and even the installation of a government later.

Why does the same Judiciary fail to do justice to the victims of criminal lynch mobs – that are often referred to as cow vigilante groups in the media – by taking the criminal tag away? The answer to this question exposes the facade that the justice system of the country has successfully maintained despite its gigantic failures in delivering justice to the poor and the needy. It has failed the victims of mass violence repeatedly: remember sectarian carnages from Nellie in Assam, Delhi, or Gujarat. It has also repeatedly failed to deliver justice to victims of other mob crimes, more so if they are poor and needy.

Why does it fail to deliver justice to those who need it the most, like Akhlaq’s family in this case? It fails, because it is just as much, if not more corrupt than any other organ of the state. It fails because it is biased against the poor and the marginalized and is infested with the vested interests organized around the hundreds of fault lines, like those of caste, religion, ethnicity, and gender that define the country.

It was not for nothing that the prosecutor, public or otherwise, did not point out to the judge that meat was not from the victim’s home in the first place. It is not for nothing that the victim’s family, likely, had no lawyer to defend it from such travesty.

The justice system of the country has already been chewed up virtually entirely. Cow defenders are now grazing on the last clumps of grass left.

Will Indians Start Listening To Kashmiris?

T. Navin

For the mainstream Indian mindset on Kashmir, the land called Kashmir is an Indian property which should be protected and remain with India at any cost. The use of military is to protect this property. For them it is assumed this property might be grabbed away by the indigenous Kashmiris who are inspired by a neighboring country. It is never understood by them that Kashmir which is under the control of six lakh army personal, still encounters a situation where thousands of people come out on streets. Even logically speaking a mere foreign hand cannot instigate such large number of people to express their disenchantment in presence of such large number of military force. This is with complete knowing of the fact that they may die, become blind or get injurious. The logic used by them that if people come out on streets, it is natural for military to take action is dubious. Then what about the countless killings of unarmed people including the innocent, rapes of unarmed women reported by human rights groups even at times when such protests were not open.

The argument put forward by this so called mainstream is that about the status of Kashmiri pandits. Aren’t they part and parcel of Kashmir?What were the critics doing then? Yes they are part and parcel of Kashmir. The mass migration happened out of fear during the peak of militancy. Fear of spying led to killings of some Kashmiri pandits. The fear and threat led to migration. There was also the role of Jagmohan the Governor who tried to give it a communal touch. Migration also happened with some sections of Muslims. Yes, instances of mistrust continue between Kashmiris and Kashmiri Pandits. At the same time it is also true that mistrust exists among Kashmiris with the Indian state too. Kashmiris are disenchanted with Indian state, the fact which cannot be pushed into the dustbin by the so called ‘Nationalists’ or ‘Indian mainstream’. It is important for them to recognize that.

From the readings of some Kashmiri sections, it is clear that even the militant groups are not against the Kashmiri pandits coming back to Kashmir. They have a welcoming approach towards them. There have been constructive engagements with Kashmiri pandits to come back to Kashmir. They consider them as part and parcel of Kashmir.

But these positive engagements neither are not shown in Indian mainstream media nor reported. Definitely ‘Kashmiriyat’ is a much more secular and accommodative concept and calls for co-existence. This is unlike ‘Hindu Rashtra’ where other religious groups can only enjoy a second grade status. There are efforts being made out by Kashmiri sections to reach out to Kashmiri Pandits. But whether the Indian mainstream or the ‘Hindutva’ brigadeis making a similar effort to reach out to Kashmiris, not just kashimiripandits based on their religious identity. The answer is a definite no.

Moreover, Indian mainstream is creating this binary between Kashmiri and Kashmiri Pandits, Hindus and Muslims. Kashmiriyat definitely is not about Hindus and Muslims, which Indian mainstream seems to think of. Like the Hindu rightwing playing out Hindu-Muslim differences in Indian Mainland, a similar approach is being adopted in Kashmir. Ideas of creating ghettos for Kashmiri pandits are being propagated by the Indian government for resettlement of Kashmiri pandits. Large sections of Kashmiris have been trying to put across the point that Kashmiri pandits are part and parcel of Kashmir. There is no need for ghettoization. They consider them part of their own.

Will out ‘nationalists’ have a similar accommodative approach towards our minorities. Are they willing to reach out to protesting Kashmiris, listen to them and understand them. This is instead of playing a Hindu-Muslim, Kashmiri-Kashmiri pandit card.

When Is Terrorism Not Terrorism To America?

Taj Hashmi

I find my White American students – even the very bright ones – totally confused, the moment I ask them if White police brutality against Black people in America amounts to terrorism. Most White students attribute the killings of black people by White police as undesirable, accidental, or simply due to bad judgment by the proverbial “bad cops”. Mostly Black students impute the killings to racism, and state-sponsored terrorism. Some of them even think White policemen who kill Black people for no genuine reasons or justifications are actually crypto-KKK activists in police uniform.

The truth might be in between the two extreme opinions. Various reports indicate, presently the KKK or Ku Klux Klan has three to six thousand active members in America. Although from any definition of terrorism, the KKK is a terrorist organization par excellence, there are strong reservations and taboos among White American politicians, intellectuals, government officials, and common people that never allow an open and candid discussion in the US about the prevalence and even growing surge of White extremism in the country. They always try to prove the KKK and discriminations against the Black people only happened in the past.

However, historically America has never been a land of the free and brave. Neither the slave owners nor their slaves were ever free; the former was bonded to their greed, hate, and power, the latter to their miserable fate, determined by their White masters.  Apparently, the end of slavery in 1865, and the grant of civil rights to the Black people a century later (1964) made every American equal in every sphere of life. This is, however, not true. Ron Paul, a former US Presidential Candidate in 2008 and 2012, calls his country “the empire of lies”, and affirms:

Truth is treason in the empire of lies…. There is an alternative to national bankruptcy, a bigger police state, trillion-dollar wars, and a government that draws ever more parasitically on the productive energies of the American people.

Many White Americans are proud, conceited, and complacent. They think the country of theirs is the best, and also “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”. Many of them don’t believe Americans ever killed millions of innocent people, from Hiroshima to Hanoi, Baghdad to Benghazi, and Kabul to Waziristan; and ever resorted to state-terrorism in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere since the end of World War II. They also deny America has ever been an empire.

The overwhelming majority of Americans – excepting a handful conscientious people like Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Cornel West – don’t believe their most important ally in the Middle East, Israel has ever terrorized and killed Palestinians, especially in the West Bank, Gaza, and in the refugee camps of Jordan and Lebanon. Americans love to use the Israeli euphemism “defensive retaliatory action against Palestinian terrorists” for Israeli state-terrorism, mostly against unarmed Palestinian women and children.

What’s pertinent to understanding the nature of the American Empire is its fundamental difference with major empires in the past, British, French, Spanish, and Dutch. Unlike empires in general, which monopolise markets, plunder wealth, and exploit cheap labour of the colonies, the American Empire mainly exploit its own people.  What Bernie Sanders is telling today, Reagan’s Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts explained earlier: “Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power…. That is how the American Empire functions.”

America’s state-terrorism at home and abroad is integral to its neo-imperialist design. Having different names and forms, excuses and exigencies, American state-terrorism starts with unnecessary invasions of countries in resource rich or strategically important countries, with a view to changing or coercing into submission of unfriendly regimes in those countries. Again, the invasions – during the last seven decades – got the stamps of legitimacy (through the compliant UN, and the US Congress) as just wars for democracy, freedom, and human rights.

Racism by default or design is the mother of America’s state-terrorism. We believe those who resort to racism, or deny its existence, also indulge in terrorism. Racism is pure, unadulterated terrorism. It involves discrimination against certain people only because of racial differences, with a view to subjugating others to plunder their wealth, or making them render cheap/slave labour to the subjugators. Since racism involves coercion, threat, intimidation, and even actual violence or terror against non-White people, we must re-define racism as terrorism. Then again, thanks to the Civil Rights of 1964, racism has become subtle, but has not disappeared at all.

Many White Americans consider racism only existed in the past. They believe the ongoing killings of Black people by White police officers are either accidental, or due to bad judgment of the concerned police officers. Despite the denial by White American police, lawmakers, jury, judges, and prosecutors that they have never been racially prejudiced against any Black person, the frequent denial of justice to Black victims of racial attacks, killing, rape, and torture, especially by White police officers, tell altogether different stories.

American bias against Muslims is so well entrenched that even six years before 9/11, on 19 April 1995 when two White Americans – Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols – bombed a government building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, American media and analysts jumped to the conclusion that Muslims were behind the terror attack. Interestingly, after the police had tracked down the original terrorists, American media, analysts, and intellectuals imputed the attack to some mentally disturbed, deranged young men. They, however, never give any Muslim terrorist – from the Shoe Bomber to the Underwear Bomber, from Major Nidal Hassan to the Boston, St. Bernardino, and Orlando killers – the privilege of getting branded not as terrorists but as “mentally deranged or disturbed” individuals.

I cite another example of when terrorism is not terrorism in America. The US administration and White Americans in general conveniently denied there had been any terrorist attack on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Austin, Texas that killed the terrorist and an IRS employee. On 18 February 2010, one Andrew Joseph Stack deliberately crashed his single-engine plane into an IRS Building, killing himself and an IRS employee. Only two US lawmakers from Austin considered the incident an act of domestic terrorism, and a USA Today headline used the expression “a chilling echo of terrorism”. One wonders, how would White America reacted had Muslims been involved in the Oklahoma City Bombing, or the suicide attack on the IRS Building in Texas!

Meanwhile, the simmering anger of Black Americans against White police brutality is a disturbing development. Black activists are decrying the lack of any justice and security for Black Americans. On an average, White police officers annually kill more than 100 unarmed Black people in America. While White police are killing Black people at an alarming rate – with no valid reasons, and almost with total impunity – instead of classifying these killings as terroristic, White supremacists are asking the Government to declare the movement called Black Lives Matter a terrorist organization.

One analyst has pointed out, besides “interpersonal racism”, there is also “systemic, structurally racist policies” in America, having bearings on the “class conflict between the police and the poorest” [Charles M. Blow, “Blood on Your Hands, Too”, NYT, July 14, 2016]. The combination of race and class has all the potential to turn terroristic.

Black Lives Matter (started in 2013) is posing a new challenge to White supremacists. On Thursday 7 July 2016, Micah Johnson, a Black lone wolf terrorist killed five White police officers in Dallas, apparently in retaliation against the killing of two Black suspects by White policemen in Minnesota and Louisiana, on Tuesday and Wednesday. The police later found at the killer’s house explosives and bomb making manual as well. Yet for some strange reasons, neither the Obama Administration nor American media ever used the “T” word to classify the attack as domestic terrorism.

One isn’t sure as to how the selective use of the “T” word will do any good to anybody! One wonders, if White America’s prejudice against Black Americans, Muslims, and Afro-Asian-Latin American countries will ever disappear, and America will pay heed to the ideals of freedom and human rights, guaranteed by its own founding fathers in the 18th century! Unfortunately, America is on the path to “permanent war”, and has become a hostage to its own arrogance, and greed of the “one percent”, which Bernie Sanders has pointed out as the single biggest obstacle to just peace, within and beyond America.

IS In Sri Lanka: Intelligence Hoax or the Real Threat?

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Interesting but frightening reports are coming out from the mainstream media in India on the ongoing ideological covert operations by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria known as ISIS or ISIL or IS, in Sri Lanka. Almost all news stories are able to quote the Indian intelligence sources anonymously, while those news pieces have been dramatically decorating the imminent threats.

However, great stories require substantive investigation, so that they will have the authentic shreds of evidence to prove, which, unfortunately, is almost absent in the news of IS presence on Sri Lankan soil.

However, security threats are not a new phenomenon in Sri Lanka as the nation suffered from one of the most brutal terrorism effects for about three decades, costing countless human deaths and high-value human resources through mental conflicts amongst Sri Lankans. It has assassinated the opportunities towards what Sri Lanka wanted for itself.

More disturbingly, for some reason, many surrounding nations around this beautiful island have contributed to destabilisation rather than extending a helping hand to develop sovereignty. Many were interested lookers on of the political turmoil in Sri Lanka. At the same time, the conflict was a shield used by the corrupted system to strengthen its custody of power resulting in the deterioration of the commitment to Common governing principles and values of the State.

During the latter part of the conflict many neighbouring nations and other foreign counterparts, have helped us the threat of the Tamil Tigers went beyond the earlier projections. It was ultimately threatening to the neighbouring countries in addition to seriously damaging the sovereignty of the Island.

Just little more than seven years after vanquishing the Tamil Tigers, what we have confronting us is the ISIS. Indian mainstream media have been quoting their intelligence sources to alert us on how the ISIS members have been sneaking into Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan security forces, based on the media reports, have launched the “investigation”.

However, according to highly placed intelligence sources in Sri Lanka, the threat is much more than just security threats. This could be the new version of earlier strategic double-dealing steps by regional power players to counter the escalating influence of China in the country.

Was there any intelligence cooperation between the intelligence agencies of the countries in the region, before the stories popped up through selected media outlets? Will those speculations create more opportunities for those interested parties to sneak into the system? Has the government strengthened the professionalism in the country’s intelligence agencies or ignored their service on sensitive issues? The truth is out there!

Substantive intelligence cooperation is the fundamental tool to prevent any cause of harm. But, history tells us, as B. Raman, a late spymaster of the R&AW recalled in his memoir, most of the regional intelligence agencies are, strong in TECHINT but weak in HUMINT; strong in crime investigation but weak in crime prevention; strong in crisis management but weak in crisis prevention; obsessive in its secrecy but fearful of transparency; the list goes on.

In the case of IS presence in Sri Lanka also this is the underlying problem. But that does not mean we are away from the threat. What one could appreciate here is that the intelligence hoax takes the place of conspiracy theories, which will lead to an acquisition of having more political means than security cooperation strengths.

There is much information gathering going on in relation to the IS. Many of those have highlighted the danger of this vicious terror outfit which has its tentacles throughout the world. Therefore, almost every caring citizen is fearing the imminent threats.

What is important for Sri Lanka at this stage is the monitoring, gathering and analysing of an ongoing tendency of extremism in relevant segments of all communities in the country, and the economic implications in the region. Sri Lanka needs more investments by the state-friendly strong responsible investors. This could help heal the wounds in the fragile economy of the country. Will the response from the ruling parties to the IS threats in Sri Lanka, be developed on this very notion?

Time to re-read and take the necessary steps on the danger of old ghosts who felt emulous of possessing victory status in the name of development and peace in Sri Lanka.

28 Pages Raise ‘Scores Of Troubling Questions’ On US-Saudi Ties

Nadia Prupis

The just-released 28 pages of a 2002 congressional report into Saudi Arabia’s possible ties to the 9/11 hijackers have stirred speculation about the U.S. government’s continued relationship with the Gulf kingdom.

Amnesty International criticized the White House’s statement that the pages, hidden from public view for 13 years, have not changed the government’s assessment that “there’s no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi individuals funded al-Qaeda.”

“We stand with survivors of this crime against humanity: They deserve justice and the whole truth,” the human rights group tweeted.

As Murtaza Hussein wrote for The Intercept, the 28 pages “redacted in parts, detail circumstantial evidence of ties among Saudi government officials, intelligence agents, and several of the hijackers,” including by providing financial and housing assistance to those living in the U.S.

The report also offers new information about the connections between alleged 9/11 masterminds and members of the Saudi royal family, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former ambassador to the U.S. and close friend of the Bush family. The report details money transfers of at least $15,000 from Bandar’s bank account in Washington to a suspected Saudi government spy, as well as phone logs between Bandar and suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah.

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who led the charge to publish the documents, said the findings “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia,” and Congressman Rick Nolan, who also pushed for the pages to be released, said they “confirm that much of the rhetoric preceding the U.S. attack on Iraq was terribly wrong.”

Among the new revelations is the fact that Saudi officials apparently refused to cooperate with U.S. investigators seeking information about the attack.

Hussein wrote:

As the report notes, “In testimony and interviews, a number of FBI agents and CIA officers complained to the [inquiry] about a lack of Saudi cooperation in terrorism investigations both before and after the September 11th attacks.”

Referencing a May 1996 Director of Central Intelligence memo, the report cited agency beliefs that “the Saudis had stopped providing background information or other assistance on Bin Ladin because Bin Ladin had ‘too much information about official Saudi dealings with Islamic extremists in the 1980s for Riyadh to deliver him into U.S. hands.'”

The Guardian‘s Philip Shenon added:

Although much of the evidence in the report is described as preliminary and was later discounted or dismissed by the independent 9/11 commission, the congressional report will raise new concern that U.S. officials, determined to preserve Washington’s diplomatic and financial ties to the Saudi Arabia, attempted to cover up evidence that might have implicated the Saudis.

And national security expert Marcy Wheeler noted:

One really damning detail that I didn’t know, however…is that it wasn’t until the Joint Inquiry focused on the Saudis that FBI established task force to look into Saudi Arabia’s role in the attack.

That means over a year elapsed before the FBI really started investigating this angle. It goes on to reveal FBI was not focusing any counterintelligence resources on Saudis before 9/11, because “FBI received ‘no reporting from any member of the Intelligence Community’ that there was a [redacted] presence in the United States.” A very heavily redacted passage implies that’s because they were an “ally” [scare quotes original].

Saudi Arabia seemed to welcome the documents’ release.

“We hope the release of these pages will clear up, once and for all, any lingering questions or suspicions about Saudi Arabia’s actions, intentions, or long-term friendship with the United States,” Ambassador to the U.S. Abdullah al-Saud said on Friday.

But the advocacy group 28pages.org, which demanded the release of the documents for years, wrote on Twitter that the “fight for transparency isn’t over: The 28 pages prompt scores of troubling questions and the people of the world deserve answers.”