Old Pretexts for Mass-Murderous Aggression: A New War Against Russia in Ukraine Unfolding Before Our Eyes?

We are now entering yet another US-UK led war build-up against the cornerstone of Western ideology, the designated Enemy Russia.

By Prof. John McMurtry- March 28, 2018

As usual there is amnesia of the ever-recurring big-lie pretext, the need for another crisis to keep the two-billion-dollar a day NATO war machine going, the baleful puppet moves of Canada in the process, the crisis of legitimacy of the lead attacker’s government, and the silent diversion from the whole nightmare scenario unfolding by all NATO-member governments, mass media and even ‘peace activist’ organisations.

This time the big-lie pretext is about the alleged poisoning by the Kremlin/Putin of a double-agent, usually a stock move in espionage entertainments, but here with no evidence of the claimed origin of the lethal nerve-agent, but rather expert denial within British defence and weapons research itself, with devious political word games to get around the absence of evidence in familiar denunciations of Russia that are full of aggression and hate. Not even a death is recorded while US-led and UK-armed ally forces are still mass-murdering poor civilian Yeminis, drone-murdering endless targets and civilians abroad, continuing on unblamed for the ongoing NATO-executed eco-genocides of Iraq and Libya societies, and on the 19-years anniversary of the mass bombing of, once again a society, Yugoslavia, with the most evolved social infrastructures of health, education, housing and life security in the region.

What this latest war pretext for US and NATO-backed aggression is really about is justifying more war in the Ukraine now that the massive war preparations along Russia’s Western borders following the self-declared Nazi-led and proven US- orchestrated and commanded mass-murder coup d’etat in February 2014 . As usual there is amnesia of the ever-recurring big-lie pretext, the need for another crisis to keep the two-billion-dollar a day NATO war machine going, the baleful puppet moves of Canada in the process, the crisis of legitimacy of the lead attacker’s government, and the silent diversion from the whole nightmare scenario unfolding by NATO-member governments, mass media and even ‘peace activist’ organisations.

This time the big-lie pretext is about the alleged poisoning by the Kremlin/Putin of a double-agent traitor, usually a stock move in espionage entertainments. Yet there is no confirmed evidence of the claimed origin of the lethal nerve-agent, but rather denial within Britain’s own Defence Science and Technology Laboratory unreported in the press, with devious PR word games of Downing Street crafted to get around the absence of fact in the familiar denuciations of Russia full of aggression and hate. Not even a death is recorded as, all the while, US-led and UK-armed ally forces are still mass-murdering poor civilian Yeminis, drone-murdering endless targets and civilians abroad, continuing on unblamed for the ongoing NATO-executed eco-genocides of Iraq and Libya societies, and on the 19-years anniversary of the mass bombing of Yugoslavia – yet another a socialist society with the most evolved social infrastructures of health, education, housing and life security in the region.

What this latest war pretext for US and NATO-backed aggression is really about is justifying more war in the Ukraine now that the massive war preparations along Russia’s Western borders are in place following the neo-Nazi-led and US-orchestrated mass-murder coup d’etat in February 2014 and the uprising of Eastern Ukraine. As always, the US-directed mass murder in the Kiev coup was reverse-blamed on the ever shifting Enemy face – Russia’s allied but duly elected federal government of the Ukraine. It was only after this violent-coup of the elected government of Ukraine’s very resource-rich country – “the breadbasket of Europe” and sitting on newly discovered rich fossil fuel deposits – that Russia annexed its traditional territory of the Crimea next to Eastern Ukraine. In predictable censorship by state proclamations and corporate media in NATO societies, all of these facts are elided.

In reality, Crimea was returned to Russia in a referendum-backed bloodless transition in reaction to the war-criminal putsch that put it under the rule of a US-appointed and neo-Nazi-led junta as the dispossessed Russia-speaking people of Eastern Ukraine simultaneously fought for their own government – Russia refusing pleas for annexation – in the now NATO-targeted Donetsk and Lugansk republics (the former by the way with a publicly adored competitive national soccer team in the European Champions League).

What is new now is that we are about to enter yet another NATO-member war build-up against the cornerstone of Western ideology, the designated Enemy Russia. As usual there is amnesia of the ever-recurring big-lie pretext, the need for another crisis to keep the two-billion-dollar a day US-led NATO war machine going, the baleful puppet moves of Canada in the process, the crisis of legitimacy of the lead attacker’s UK government, and silent diversion from the whole nightmare scenario unfolding in NATO-member states, mass media and even ‘peace activist’ organisations.

Cui Bono?

The UK and the US followed by Canada and some of the EU have by expulsion of Russia diplomats prepared the diplomatic way for war in the Ukraine to seize back these lost coup-territories, and it will be in the name of “freedom”, “human rights” and “international law”. But there is much officially suppressed colour to the warring parties of this international conflict which reveals who the vile suppressor of human rights is in reality. Under mass media and corporate-state cover, the ordering the expulsion of Russia by NATO nations with its Secretary-General Stoltenberg crowing at the disbelief of Russia is preparation towards what will only be prevented by public exposure – NATO plan for war against Russia over Eastern Ukraine and Crimea separation from the illegal coup-state of Ukraine. The factually absurd but non-stop pretext of “Russia aggression” constructed out of the double-agent poisoning affair, with the guilty agents and poison having no proof but the ever louder UK-led and NATO-state assertion of it in unison, is the already building pretext.

Yet there is a clear answer to the cui bono question – which party does all this benefit? Clearly once the question is posed, as opposed to gagged, Theresa May’s slow-motion collapsing Tory government – now even challenged for its fraudulent Brexit referendum protecting the big London banks from EU regulation – has to have such a war-drum distraction to survive. The old war of aggression pattern reverse-blamed on the official enemy unwinds yet again. Now NATO-member states are clearing the way by expulsion of Russia diplomats, and the bigger prize is armed seizure of the new Eastern Ukraine republics and the Crimea itself, incalculably rich in natural and strategic resources. But all this depends on whether the peoples of Britain and NATO buy the string of big lies that grow before them propounded by hate-Russia propaganda being dinned people’s heads now.

It is revealing in this context how Canada’s government has no such ruler need of war – unless it be its Ukraine-descendent Foreign Minister up front and the very powerful and widely Nazi-sympathizing Ukraine Liberal vote bank and leadership brought to Canada after 1945 to overwhelm the preceding active socialist Ukrainian community in Canada. Canada’s government – not its people – is in any case used to being a puppet regime in foreign affairs as a twice-colonized rule by big business (why the NDP is not allowed to govern unless so subjugated).

The Human Rights Question

In light of all of this suppressed factual background and motive for more war in Ukraine which is unspeakable in the official news, interaction with the United Nations is of revealing interest. While it has been the cover for US-led NATO executed genocidal wars of aggression in the past as in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Korea, the pretexts of ‘human rights’, ‘responsibility to protect’ and ‘stopping communist aggression’, which are in fact always been the spectacular opposite on the ground in terms of diseased, mass-murdered and destitute bodies, these pretexts cannot sell when the background facts are no longer suppressed from public view. But what state leader yet has repudiated these false-pretext wars rather than sustained their illusions and thus the war crimes and crimes against proceeding underneath them?
Screengrab from The Washington Post. Click here for the full list of countries.

The NATO-executed Ukraine war now being orchestrated is especially revealing in its actual record of ‘protecting human rights’ through ‘international law’ and ‘norms of civilised nations’. Completely buried in official records is a United Nations resolution n on Ukraine that the US and Canada repudiated on November 20, 2015 after the US-led bloody coup d’etat in Ukraine was in full motion claiming all the vast tracts of land and resources that were Russia-speaking territory in the past.

The 2015 UN resolution was straightforwardly against “Nazi symbols and regalia” as well as “holocaust denial”. The Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee of the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted for a resolution to enable measures against “the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that facilitate the escalation of modern forms of racism, xenophobia and intolerance”. A total of 126 member-states of the UN voted for it for the second time. Over 100 countries also voted for the first resolution in 2014 which also included “denial of the holocaust and glorification of the Nazi movement, former members of the Waffen SS organization, including the installation of memorials to them, and post-coup attempts to desecrate or destroy the monuments to those who fought against Nazism in Ukraine during World War II”.

How could any civilised state vote against these United Nations Resolutions for human rights as Canada and the US have done and stood by ever since while mouthing opposite commitments? Well instituted group hatred of the officially designated enemy can justify anything whatsoever, and is doing so towards the next NATO-executed orgy of war crime and crimes against humanity, again inside Europe itself, flaunting reverse-blame lies and slogans as red meat for psychotically trained masses. It is not by accident that Canada’s Foreign Minister in this near century-old Nazi loyalist vs. Russia-speaking conflict was before her appointment the “proud “granddaughter of a leading Nazi war propagandist during its occupation of Poland and Ukraine described as a “fighter for freedom”.

Yet on the other hand, we must not lose ourselves in ad hominem responsibility. Chrystia Freeland, her Canada name, is interestingly propagandist in itself from her birth – Christian Free Land – but not observed in the corporate press. Minister Freeland is only a symptom of something far deeper and more systemically murderous and evil in state-executed unlimited corporate greed and immiserization of innocent millions of people masked as ‘human rights’ , ‘freedom’ and ‘the rule of law’ . Her more sinister double in the US is also a renamed person of the region, Victoria Nuland (read New Land) who orchestrated the whole 2014 mass-murder coup in Ukraine and now tub-thumps on public television for the ‘need to teach Putin and Russia a hard lesson’, aka another war attack by US-led NATO on Russia’s borders.

The difference now is that the absurd pretext and geostrategic mechanisms now in motion can be seen in front of our eyes beforehand – that is, if we can still see through the engineered prism of the US-UK led NATO war machine. This alone will stop it.

John McMurtry March 27, 2018

John McMurtry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada whose work is translated from Latin America to Japan. His most recent book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: from Crisis to Cure. John McMurtry is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

A year to go before Brexit

Gary Gibbon-29 Mar 2018Political Editor

With a year to go until Brexit happens, Theresa May has spent the day on a tour of all four nations of the UK. She said she was listening to people’s hopes for the country after we leave the EU. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair said he hoped that day would never come – and the people should have another vote on the final deal before it happened.

With Freedom and Justice for Sisi

The arc of Egypt’s history is flat, and it bends toward autocracy.

A polling station in Cairo on March 25, 2018. (MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images) 

BY STEVEN A. COOK

 | MARCH 30, 2018, 10:56 AM

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has officially been taken into custody for a second term as president of Egypt.
The outcome of Egypt’s election this week wasn’t surprising, though in one sense the whole spectacle was quite odd. The vote was supposed to give Sisi the electoral legitimacy that he has always lacked. Sure, he was elected in May 2014 — after first coming to power in a coup the previous summer — but by then voters had become indifferent, so much so that polling places were kept open an extra day so that Egyptians could be bribed and bused in to cast a ballot. But the same thing happened this time around; if anything, the runup to the vote was significantly more thuggish. Every marginally credible potential candidate was taken into custody based on a variety of mostly absurd allegations, all of which a complicit press and political class of bootlickers worked tirelessly to justify.

But Sisi’s hollow victory — like the coup that brought him to power in the first place — fits neatly within the flat arc of modern Egyptian history. The lesson of that history isn’t that Egyptian citizens are unprepared for a more just, open, and democratic society. Rather, it’s that Egypt’s political elites have always benefitted from the country’s authoritarian system and thus will go to great lengths to defend it.

None of Egypt’s presidents has ever enjoyed the kind of legitimacy that democracy confers on elected leaders, but one of the country’s stunning ironies is the way nondemocratic forces have often used democratic, even liberal, ideas as mechanisms of legitimation. Why bother holding elections if you have no intention of respecting the rights and views of those who did not vote for you, of governing through consensus and compromise, and of submitting to the uncertainty of the electoral process when your term is up? Yet in the last four decades, Egypt has had political parties and regularly scheduled elections, even as the country’s leaders have only ruled by coercion and force.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser built the standard Middle Eastern security state, but it was his successor, Anwar Sadat, who first sought to leverage democratic ideas and practices to legitimize authoritarianism and, in the process, advance his narrow political interests. Thus, there were Sadat’s dramatic pronouncements about building a “state of institutions” and the establishment of manabir, or platforms, within the Arab Socialist Union that eventually became political parties, which Sadat intended to be loyal oppositions of the left, right, and center. When they proved not to be, he ignored them and arrested his opponents. Yet Sadat and his supporters could always claim — albeit disingenuously — that he corrected Nasser’s excesses and began Egypt’s path toward democratic change.

About the Author

Steven A. Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His new book, False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East, was published in June.

Hosni Mubarak picked up where his predecessor left off. Never mind that to be in Egypt during one of his presidential referendums was to exist in a world in which ostentatious “truthiness” had taken over. Although there was only a single candidate on the ballot — Mubarak — and voters were asked to simply mark “Yes” or “No,” the exercise had the trappings of an actual political campaign. The National Democratic Party and the government press described these referendums as a marker of Egypt’s democratic development. No one was willing to comment publicly on the farce of it all, leaving authorities with the satisfaction that if it looked like a campaign and felt like a competitive election, then that was good enough to call the endeavor democratic — something it approximated but clearly was not. The government even made a mockery of their own mockery, distributing elections flyers (paid for by five private companies) that declared:

The president, the leader, Mohammed Hosni Mubarak
With you always … with loyalty, appreciation, and recognition
Yes … to the leader who has devoted himself to his nation, his people, and his community

A few years later, Mubarak began talking about how the government had undertaken a program of “strengthening” and “deepening” democracy. It was rhetoric that few actually believed, but it served two important, related purposes, especially toward the end of the Mubarak era: First, it sought to outmaneuver those who genuinely sought democratic reform and others like the Muslim Brotherhood, which had also appropriated the vocabulary of political reform, and, second, it was an effort to deflect international criticism of Egypt’s predatory politics. Neither worked very well.

When their chance came after the 2011 uprising that forced Mubarak from office, the Muslim Brotherhood positioned its members as responsible stewards of political change for which they were rewarded during the parliamentary elections. It did not take long, however, to recognize that the Muslim Brothers were products of a system that saw democratic practices as a means to establishing political control. The Brotherhood turned out to be unsuccessful for a variety of reasons, notably its incompetence and the hostility of those who benefited from the old order. Yet they also proved themselves no different from the people they hoped to replace when it came to manipulating the outcome of the presidential elections — through suspect exit polls and implicit threats of violence — and power grabs in the name of democratic change.

Sisi’s election referendum only differs from this unfortunate history in the details. The Washington Post story on the vote referenced the “ghosts of the Arab Spring” that hovered over the three days of balloting, but it was the July 3, 2013, coup d’état that was most resonant. That intervention was planned and executed by people (not just in the military) who sought to reset what they believe to be the natural order of politics in Egypt. Five years on, mission accomplished.

A question now hangs over Washington (or at least that tiny community inside the Beltway that pays attention to Egypt): What should the United States do about all this? Among the raft of analyses and reporting on the election, there is a significant amount of exhortation but little new in terms of practical advice. Ahead of the vote, Sens. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) declared their support for the rights of the Egyptian people, which was commendable, but they otherwise did nothing to alter the conduct of the Egyptian government. Perhaps in the future, congressional censure will influence Egyptian decision-making. Still, a skeptic might ask when the U.S. Congress, as a body, ever really cared about the Egyptian people.

Of course, there is Egypt’s annual military assistance, which is often invoked as a means of behavior modification. That aid has at various times been threatened, delayed, or cut to no avail. Perhaps Congress will see fit to do more in this area, but the Trump administration, like others before it with an emphasis on fighting terrorists, would likely regard the aid as a national security priority and waive Congress’s effort to punish the Egyptians. It is a problem made worse by the fact that Washington seems to be waking up to the new era of great power competition that Russia has been waging, starting with the Middle East. Egypt does not want to replace the United States with Russia, but it could play both ends for advantage. As a result, the United States will most likely do what it has always done in Egypt and accommodate itself to the outcomes that Egyptians themselves produce.

Let’s just hope no one congratulates them.

Amal Clooney steps in to defend Burmese journalists on trial

Amal Clooney has confirmed that she will serve as counsel to Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters reporters facing charges for allegedly posessing classified government papers. Source: Reuters

By Asian Correspondent Staff | 30th March 2018

INTERNATIONALLY acclaimed human rights lawyer Amal Clooney will be joining the legal team of the two Burmese reporters on trial in the Southeast Asian country, her office said on Thursday.

Clooney, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers specialising in international law and human rights, has confirmed that she will serve as counsel to Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters reporters facing charges for allegedly possessing classified government papers

The office in a statement said Clooney has been instructed jointly by Reuters and the two defendants in the case.

SEE ALSO: 100 days locked up: Reuters reporters appear in Burma court for 11th time 

The two on trial are investigative reporters who were arrested last December following their reports of a massacre of 10 Rohingya men and boys in Rakhine State state during an army crackdown that began in August, which has sent nearly 700,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh.

They are accused of violating the country’s Official Secrets Act, a colonial-era statute which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, and are currently detained in a Yangon prison during the criminal trial.

Detained Reuters journalist Wa Lone is escorted by police after a court hearing in Yangon, Myanmar March 7, 2018. Source: Reuters/Stringer

“Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are being prosecuted simply because they reported the news. I have reviewed the case file and it is clear beyond doubt that the two journalists are innocent and should be released immediately,” Clooney, who is married to actor George Clooney, said.

“Yet they have been denied bail and face 14 years in prison. The outcome of this case will tell us a lot about Myanmar’s (Burma’s) commitment to the rule of law and freedom of speech.”

Gail Gove, Chief Counsel of Reuters, said: “We will pursue all avenues to secure our reporters’ release. Retaining Ms Clooney greatly strengthens our international legal expertise and allows us to broaden those efforts.”

Zaw Htay, a spokesman for Burma’s civilian government, declined to comment.

SEE ALSO: Mounting calls for Burma to release jailed Reuters journalists

Government officials have previously denied the arrests represent an attack on press freedom, which rights advocates say is under growing threat in the Southeast Asian country.

Burma’s ambassador to the United Nations, Hau Do Suan, said last month that the Reuters journalists were not arrested for reporting a story, but were accused of “illegally possessing confidential government documents”.

Detained Reuters journalist Wa Lone is escorted by police during a break at a court hearing in Yangon, Myanmar February 1, 2018. Source: Reuters/Jorge Silva

The pair have told relatives they were arrested almost immediately after being handed some rolled up papers at a restaurant in northern Yangon by two policemen they had not met before, having been invited to meet the officers for dinner.

The district court in northern Yangon will hear arguments from prosecutors and defence lawyers on the motion to dismiss the case on April 4.

Integrity Has Vanished From The West

 

The corruption in the West extends beyond politicians, presstitutes, and an insouciant public to experts.

by Paul Craig Roberts-Mar 27, 2018

( March 27, 2018, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian)  Among Western political leaders there is not an ounce of integrity or morality. The Western print and TV media is dishonest and corrupt beyond repair. Yet the Russian government persists in its fantasy of “working with Russia’s Western partners.” The only way Russia can work with crooks is to become a crook. Is that what the Russian government wants?

Finian Cunningham notes the absurdity in the political and media uproar over Trump (belatedly) telephoning Putin to congratulate him on his reelection with 77 percent of the vote, a show of public approval that no Western political leader could possibly attain. The crazed US senator from Arizona called the person with the largest majority vote of our time “a dictator.” Yet a real blood-soaked dictator from Saudi Arabia is feted at the White House and fawned over by the president of the United States.

The Western politicians and presstitutes are morally outraged over an alleged poisoning, unsupported by any evidence, of a former spy of no consequence on orders by the president of Russia himself. These kind of insane insults thrown at the leader of the world’s most powerful military nation—and Russia is a nation, unlike the mongrel Western countries—raise the chances of nuclear Armageddon beyond the risks during the 20th century’s Cold War. The insane fools making these unsupported accusations show total disregard for all life on earth. Yet they regard themselves as the salt of the earth and as “exceptional, indispensable” people.

Think about the alleged poisoning of Skirpal by Russia. What can this be other than an orchestrated effort to demonize the president of Russia? How can the West be so outraged over the death of a former double-agent, that is, a deceptive person, and completely indifferent to the millions of peoples destroyed by the West in the 21st century alone. Where is the outrage among Western peoples over the massive deaths for which the West, acting through its Saudi agent, is responsible in Yemen? Where is the Western outrage among Western peoples over the deaths in Syria? The deaths in Libya, in Somalia, Pakistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan? Where is the outrage in the West over the constant Western interference in the internal affairs of other countries? How many times has Washington overthrown a democratically-elected government in Honduras and reinstalled a Washington puppet?

The corruption in the West extends beyond politicians, presstitutes, and an insouciant public to experts. When the ridiculous Condi Rice, national security adviser to president George W. Bush, spoke of Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction sending up a nuclear cloud over an American city, experts did not laugh her out of court. The chance of any such event was precisely zero and every expert knew it, but the corrupt experts held their tongues. If they spoke the truth, they knew that they would not get on TV, would not get a government grant, would be out of the running for a government appointment. So they accepted the absurd lie designed to justify an American invasion that destroyed a country.

This is the West. There is nothing but lies and indifference to the deaths of others. The only outrage is orchestrated and directed against a target: the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Iran, Assad, Russia and Putin, and against reformist leaders in Latin America. The targets for Western outrage are always those who act independently of Washington or who are no longer useful to Washington’s purposes.

The quality of people in Western governments has collapsed to the very bottom of the barrel. The British actually have a person, Boris Johnson, as Foreign Secretary, who is so low-down that a former British ambassador has no compunction in calling him a categorical liar.  The British lab Porton Down, contrary to Johnson’s claim, has not identified the agent associated with the attack on Skirpal as a Russian novichok agent. Note also that if the British lab is able to identify a novichok agent, it also has the capability of producing it, a capability that many countries have as the formulas were published years ago in a book.

That the novichok poisoning of Skirpal is an orchestration is obvious. The minute the event occured the story was ready. With no evidence in hand, the British government and presstitute media were screaming “the Russians did it.” Not content with that, Boris Johnson screamed “Putin did it.” In order to institutionalize fear and hatred of Russia into British consciousness, British school children are being taught that Putin is like Hitler.

Orchestrations this blatant demonstrate that Western governments have no respect for the intelligence of their peoples. That Western governments get away with these fantastic lies indicates that the governments are immune to accountability. Even if accountability were possible, there is no sign that Western peoples are capable of holding their governments accountable. As Washington drives the world to nuclear war, where are the protests? The only protest is brainwashed school children protesting the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment.

Western democracy is a hoax. Consider Catalonia. The people voted for independence and were denounced for doing so by European politicians. The Spanish government invaded Catalonia alleging that the popular referendum, in which people expressed their opinion about their own future, was illegal. Catalonian leaders are in prison awaiting trial, except for Carles Puigdemont who escaped to Belgium. Now Germany has captured him on his return to Belgium from Finland where he lectured at the University of Hesinki and is holding him in jail for a Spanish government that bears more resembance to Francisco Franco than to democracy.  The European Union itself is a conspiracy against democracy.

The success of Western propaganda in creating non-existent virtues for itself is the greatest public relations success in history.

Indo-Pak row casts shadow over 19th SAARC Summit

The fate of the 19th Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) hangs in the balance.

 Saturday, 31 March 2018 

The 19th Summit was to have been held way back in November 2016, but had to be postponed indefinitely because India boycotted it complaining of attacks by Pakistan-based terror groups on Indian military bases in Pathankot and Uri. Other members like Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives followed suit for their own reasons.

According to the SAARC charter, the heads of government of the eight member States should meet once year. But this has not been observed to the letter. And between 1998 and 2002, no Summits were held, again because of India-Pakistan conflicts.

This time round too, India-Pakistan bilateral issues appear to be stalling Pakistan’s efforts to hold the 19th.Summit. It is Pakistan’s turn to hold the summit. But while Pakistan insists that it is the legitimate venue, India has a major issue with that claim because, in its view, there has been no let-up in cross-border terrorism sponsored by Pakistan since 2016.

And if India decides to boycott a Summit held in Pakistan, the summit cannot be held as the charter requires the representation of every member State.

But Pakistan, looking for a role in South Asia (basically to contain India), is working assiduously but quietly, to garner support for holding the Summit and holding it in Islamabad as scheduled earlier. Pakistan sees SAARC as a forum which will help it face India in conjunction with the rest of the members, who also have issues with India.

On Thursday, at the Pakistan National Day function in Colombo, High Commissioner, Dr. Shahid Ahmad Hashmat gave primacy to SAARC in his speech. Stressing the need for member States to pool in efforts to strengthen SAARC, he said: “SAARC is needed for political and economic cooperation in South Asia.”

Hashmat also said that Pakistan’s relations with Sri Lanka are based on “mutual respect and not mutual interest”, thereby hinting that cold interest based on real politik should not be the only criterion for having bilateral and multilateral ties.

Janjua’s visit

Significantly, Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary, TehminaJanjua, chose to visit Sri Lanka first after taking over the post at the end of 2017. At her meeting with President Maithripala Sirisena, Janjua extracted a promise that Sri Lanka would support Pakistan’s stand on the summit.

Janjua’s visit to Colombo came a day after Pakistan scored an important victory at the UN, when it got a seat at the UN Human Rights Council thanks to Sri Lanka’s support. Pakistan was grateful to Sri Lanka for sending its cricket team to play in it after a long gap. There had been no visit by a Sri Lankan side to Pakistan since the terrorist attack on it in 2009.

“We are delighted that the Sri Lankan team is visiting Lahore. Pakistanis will cheer the Sri Lankans as much as their own team,” Janjua said, immensely pleasing her Sri Lankan audience.

Subsequently, the Pakistani President, Mamnoon Hussain, invited President Sirisena to visit Islamabad and the latter obliged him in March this year. During the visit, President Mamnoon personally came to the airport to receive Sirisena as a 21-gun salute boomed.

In his meeting with Sirisena, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, said that Pakistan is committed to the SAARC process and urged the Sri Lankan President to “play his role for the early convening of the SAARC Summit in Islamabad.”

Though it is not clear if President assented to the Pakistani request (the press communiqué gave no clue), it is likely that he would make the necessary efforts given Sri Lanka’s traditionally friendly ties with Pakistan. But diplomats caution that often, in such matters, Colombo finally tends to look to New Delhi for the cue, as ties with India are far more important to it.

And India’s stance on Pakistan has only hardened since 2016. Only recently, there had been a row over the surveillance mounted on their diplomats. The Pakistani Ambassador had even left New Delhi indicating growing discontent.

With the Indian Parliamentary elections due in May 2019, the hardline Bharatiya Janata Party-led government could tweak its anti-Pakistan posture further, in the hope of getting the Indian nationalistic vote in a closely fought election. During the Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh State Assembly elections, BJP leaders had dubbed the rival Congress Party a “stooge” of Pakistan and declared that the latter’s victory would be “Pakistan’s victory”.

India’s moves

But India too has been cultivating the Sri Lankan leadership. President Sirisena was given a prominent place in the international solar summit held in Delhi. And out of respect for India, Sirisena made the visit to New Delhi on March 11 even though there had been communal clashes in Kandy district between 2 and 10 March.

Problematic Nepal

While close allies Afghanistan and Bhutan are expected to go along with India on the SAARC issue, Nepal is likely to exercise independence, given the fact that communist Prime Minister K.P. Oli and his Maoist ally, Pushpa Kamal Dahal “Prachanda” are not as well disposed towards India as the traditionally pro-India Centre-Left party, the Nepali Congress.
Softening Maldives
The Maldives could have go the Pakistan way, given its contradictions with India since Abdulla Yameen became President in 2013. But Maldives-India relations have recently improved with Yameen trying to reach out to New Delhi, and New Delhi’s pledging not to militarily intervene in the Indian Ocean archipelago where Yameen is locked in a no holds barred conflict with the opposition.

Bangladesh implacable

Bangladesh too is expected to oppose the location of the summit in Islamabad because Sheikh Hasina’s regime in Dhaka continues to be bitterly anti-Pakistan.

Parliamentary elections due in Bangladesh in July 2018. With the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) likely to contest and not boycott as it did the last time, Sheikh Hasina could well queer the anti-Pakistani nationalistic pitch. In fact, on 25 March, ‘Genocide Day,’ Hasina told a rally that “those Bangladeshis living in independent Bangladesh who love Pakistan should be punished.”

Special Bangladeshi courts had sentenced pro-Pakistani leaders to death for their alleged role in the 1971 killings carried out by the Pakistani forces and their local allies.

Dangers in blocking continuously

But the question that remains to be answered is: Can India continue to block the SAARC summit being held in Islamabad, without losing its moral authority in the grouping which its neighbours consider important?

Some observers feel that the current crisis will blow over as the 1998-2002 crisis did. The four-year gap between the 1998 and the 2002 Summits created by an India-Pakistan row, did not destroy SAARC. And when the wheels of cooperation started moving again after 2002, SAARC achieved much.

Others say that SAARC has already been downgraded by India which is now looking to have closer links with regional organisations which do not have Pakistan as a member, such as ASEAN and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). It is trying to linkup with Iran and Central Asia through the Indo-Iranian Chabahar Port.

But there are commentators who decry downgrading SAARC. As a former Sri Lankan diplomat said: “SAARC has a lot of achievements to its credit, in as much as, it has been the only all South Asian forum since the 1980s. It has brought people and technical experts of the region together to work towards common goals. BIMSTEC on the contrary is yet to take off though it has been in existence since 1997.”

And wrecking SAARC through the continuous postponement of the summit will only further alienate India from its South Asian neighbours, who see value in SAARC,” the former diplomat added.

Sierra Leone heads to the polls to seek successor to Koroma

A man casts his vote at a polling station during a presidential run-off in Freetown, Sierra Leone March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Olivia Acland

Umaru Fofana, and Christo Johnson-MARCH 31, 2018

FREETOWN (Reuters) - Sierra Leone voted on Saturday in a poll delayed by fraud allegations to choose a successor to President Ernest Bai Koroma who leaves a country struggling after the Ebola epidemic and a commodity price crash.

The face-off between opposition leader Julius Maada Bio and ruling party standard-bearer Samura Kamara was supposed to take place on Tuesday but was rescheduled after a complaint about ballot tampering in the first round of voting this month from a member of Kamara’s All People’s Congress.

Neither is a clear front runner after a first round that Maada Bio narrowly won with 43.3 percent of the votes versus 42.7 for Kamara, short of the 50 percent needed for outright victory. Counting had begun on Saturday evening and the elections commission said a result would be announced in the coming days.

 

Whoever succeeds Koroma, who is stepping aside after his maximum two five-year terms in office, faces an uphill struggle to overturn years of hardship. A slump in the price of its commodity exports since 2015 and the Ebola crisis in 2014 and 2015 crippled the economy, which shrank by a fifth in 2015.

“I want a better country, I want development for my country, so today I come to cast my vote for a leader who can develop this country,” said Mohamed Kamara after casting his vote at a polling station in western Freetown.

Voting was completed on a hot and humid day in mostly peaceful conditions though there were clashes between supporters in at least one polling station, according to witnesses. On the streets of Lumley in western Freetown, police opened fire during a violent dispute. A Reuters witness said no one was killed.

Many voters complained that a heavy police presence inside polling stations had deterred people from casting their ballot.

Julius Maada Bio, the presidential candidate for the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), carries his daughter as he votes during a presidential run-off in Freetown, Sierra Leone March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Olivia Acland

Staff at two polling stations said turnout was lower than in the first round. Many were forced to walk to their nearest voting station because of a driving ban imposed on election day for security reasons.
“There is low turnout in different parts of the country because of the huge presence of security forces,” Julius Maada Bio said after voting in Freetown.

President Koroma also noted the low turnout when he spoke in Freetown, and urged people to head to their polling stations.

Slideshow (3 Images)

Concern about policing comes after the National Electoral Commission last week said that police had tried to intimidate staff in the run-up to the election.

Speaking to the media, army spokesman Major Paow Kagbo said the military personnel were there to ensure the election was “free and fair”.

Politics in the West African country of over seven million people has been dominated by two parties: the ruling All People’s Congress, now fielding ex-foreign minister Samura Kamara, and the Sierra Leone People’s Party behind Julius Maada Bio, who briefly ruled as head of a military junta in 1996.

The generally peaceful nature of the election, and the fact Koroma is stepping down while some other African presidents seek to extend their mandates, is seen as a positive sign for Sierra Leone that was ripped apart by a 1990s civil war.

Teenagers urged to take part in meningitis B vaccine trial

 Pupil overcomes needle fear to take part in meningitis vaccine trial

By Ian Westbrook-28 March 2018

Teenagers in Great Britain are being asked to take part in a study to learn if immunising them against meningitis B could protect them and other people.

The NHS wants 24,000 to take part in the Oxford Vaccine Group's Be On The Team trial, which is helped by National Institute for Health Research funding.

Bacteria at the back of the throat can cause meningitis and the study will see if vaccination can stop this happening.

The trial will take place in four waves of recruitment over the next two years.

Control group

Each of the teenagers who chooses to participate, in Year 12 in England or the equivalent in Scotland and Wales, will be put into one of three groups of 8,000 participants and will receive two doses of one of two vaccines.

Two of these groups will be in the programme for a year, with the third, which will act as a control group, taking part for 18 months.

The recruitment started this week and is planned to work around school holidays and exams, taking place in March-April and September-October this year and in 2019.

Meningitis B facts

• Meningitis B is a bacterial infection that most often affects children below the age of one
• It is the most common form of the condition in the UK
• Since 2015, children under 12 months have been offered the vaccination
• There are about 1,200 meningitis B cases each year in the UK
• With early diagnosis and antibiotic treatment, most people will make a full recovery
• It is fatal in one in 10 cases
• About one in four of those who survive is left with long-term problems, such as amputation, deafness, epilepsy and learning difficulties

Dr Matthew Snape, a consultant paediatrician at the Oxford Vaccine Group, told the BBC: "We've had great enthusiasm from the schools we have approached, with the majority of Year 12 students interested in taking part.

"The peak of carriage for the bacteria is from the teenage years through to young adulthood - there is a lot of carriage with university students.

"We are doing the study to help us understand whether an immunisation campaign in teenagers would help us to protect the whole community."

Faye Burdett was taken to an accident and emergency unit with a rash on her forehead but died days later

Dr Snape said the study's findings would be passed on to policymakers "to inform any future decisions about adolescent meningococcal immunisation". And there have already been calls for a wider meningitis B immunisation programme.

Following the death of two-year-old Faye Burdett in 2016, a petition set up to ask for all children to be routinely vaccinated attracted 820,000 signatures.

As a result, the government published a report last month explaining how it made decisions about which vaccines to fund.

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• Jeremy Hunt 'apologises' for meningitis care failures
• Family's call to highlight meningitis B symptoms

One of the report's recommendations was to lower the cost-effectiveness threshold for immunisation - widescale vaccination against meningitis B had been rejected as being "not cost effective".

A consultation on the report is running until 21 May.

What are the symptoms of meningitis?

Image copyright

Georgie Hall, whose six-year-old son died from the condition last October, told the BBC: "The government, I know, are saying that it's not cost effective to vaccinate more children against this disease. We really need the government to listen to the families."

And Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt apologised for "system failures" that led to the deaths of two teenagers from the disease in Bristol in 2016.

Claire Donovan, head of research and information at Meningitis Now, told the BBC: "We support the trial, and it's something we've been waiting to happen for a number of years - we are very keen that it goes ahead."

Ms Donovan added that if the trial was successful, "then potentially vaccinating that age group will help protect the rest of the nation".

Dr Tom Nutt, the charity's chief executive, said: "This important study is a chance for young people to make a real difference to not only their own health but that of their wider community."