Three arrested with illegal firearms



March 30, 2016 

Two individuals have been arrested for possession of illegal firearms and live ammunition from a house in Habaraduwa, the police said.

 Acting on a tipoff, a team from the Habaraduwa police made the arrest last evening.

 The police have seized five firearms and 69 live bullets during the raid. The suspects have been identified as residents of Unawatuna and Boralesgamuwa, according to the police. 

They will be produced before the Galle Magistrate today. Meanwhile, in another raid, a 29-year-old was arrested with a T-56 firearm and 29 live bullets in Elpitiya. 

Detection of bombs , suicide kit in Chavakacheri : Truth uncovered – Did MR’s brother in law and wife conspire with LTTE Oothaselva 

(Lanka-e-News -30.March.2016, 11.30PM) Following the discovery of highly explosive materials and a suicide kit today at Maravanpulaw, Chavakachcheri , the intelligence division has been able to unearth a wealth of information in that  connection.

Three bags containing highly  explosive materials , a suicide  kit , 4 bombs, 10 packets of cartridges, along with two batteries were found  hidden at this venue . The intelligence division is harboring suspicions that these explosives , kits and devices were meant to be used on the 3 rd of April targeting the president and VIPs at the  function to be held  in Jaffna district under the leadership of president Maithripala,

Based on information received by the Intelligence division , by the time the security division  discovered these bombs , explosives ,suicide kit , batteries and cartridges today , the owners of the house had fled away.  These explosives etc . being kept wrapped in a Sinhala  newspaper had drawn the attention of the security division. 

Previously , a conspiracy that was hatched by ex president Mahinda Rajapakse along with some LTTE cronies in a camp of the forces was exposed by Jaffna UNP organizer Thyagaraja Thuwarakeshwaram . Thereafter , the security division based on the  veracity of that exposure  , was very vigilant .

The prominent pro Rajapakse conspirators Hendavitharane and Wakishta formerly of the intelligence division co ordinating the elections at Kurunegala on behalf of ex president Mahinda Rajapakse ; fielding a pro LTTE er as a candidate on behalf of Mahinda Rajapakse for Kurunegala ; the statement made by Thyagaraja Thuwarakeshwaram ‘ and the discovery of these explosives etc . are being extensively investigated by the security division to ascertain whether all these have any connection.  

The exposure made by Thyagaraja Thuwarakeshwaram is as follows : 

''I have most clearly and  strongly explained  this matter to His excellency the president Miathripala Sirisena , Hon. Prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and defense minister Ruwan Wijewardena .At  the next Thai pongal day , there is need for heavy security  . Therefore , it is only  with detailed security plans  the Thai Pongal day shall be held here. I am openly stating this .
You know on the 20 th , Oothaselva ,Oothasedhu  and Dr. Lohan Gunawardena plotted a conspiracy to murder president Maithripala Sirisena on his way to a camp . This was planned  together with Mahinda Rajapakse’s brother in law , a high ranking officer of the intelligence division   and his wife who arrived at a place at Nelliady belonging to Oothaselva where the conspiracy was hatched. 

They have 17 weapons in their possession . Those are the weapons that were robbed from the LTTE. He is one who had been in high ranks. In addition ,he is engaged in diverse fund collecting activities .''  Thyagaraja revealed with grave concern. 

Meanwhile defense secretary Karunasena Hettiarachi stated, simply because explosives were found at Chavakacheri, it cannot be concluded that there is a threat to national security. After the war , on various occasions there had been reports of such explosives etc . having  been detected . If anybody is saying by that there is a threat to national security  , he is making such  statements because he does not know anything about  country’s security , Hettiarachi went on to point out. 

On the other hand  , Dr. G.L. Peiris who participated in a media conference on behalf of  the opposition of coconut  robbers exclaimed, ‘don’t  consider  the Chavakacheri  incident as trivial.’

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by     (2016-03-30 21:29:50)

Israel’s West Bank land grabs biggest in decades

A Palestinian olive farmer inspects damage to his trees cut down by Israeli settlers from the settlement of Eli, close to the village of Qaryout, near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, on 19 October 2013. Israel recently declared village lands to be part of the settlement.

Charlotte Silver-30 March 2016

This month, Israel announced two sweeping land grabs in the northern and central occupied West Bank, prompting anti-settlement group Peace Now to warn that the Israeli government had reverted to its major land confiscation policies pre-dating the 1993 Oslo accords.

On 21 March, Israeli authorities began notifying Palestinian residents of the Nablus-area villages of al-Sawiya, al-Lubban al-Sharqiya and Qaryout that their land would be declared “state land” and become part of the Israeli settlement Eli.

The villages had been appealing the inclusion of their lands in the settlement to Israel’s high court since 2014.

The total amount seized is unclear, with Palestinian sources reporting 1,200 dunums (300 acres) and Israel’s occupation administration COGAT reporting 612 dunums would be added to Eli.

A week prior to that, Israel announced it would confiscate 2,342 dunams (579 acres) of land near Jericho and along the corridor between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, a valuable thoroughfare for the tourism industry.

According to Peace Now, the land will be used to construct hundreds of new housing units, as well as tourist sites and souvenir shops along the road.

Within this area are also 20 villages of the Bedouin Jahalin tribe, which Israel has been trying to forcibly displace.

Israel intends to build thousands of settler housing units in the area between Jerusalem and Jericho, in the occupied West Bank, which it calls E1.

The new Israeli colonies would further isolate East Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied West Bank and divide the West Bank from north to south.

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delayed the massive E1 project in 2013 in response to international pressure, he has quietly revived construction plans.

Last December, Peace Now reported it had obtained documents under the freedom of information law that showed the housing ministry was planning to build thousands of homes in E1.

Lip service

The United Nations criticized this month’s land seizure near Jericho, calling the move an “impediment to the two-state solution.”

The UN reiterated the long-standing position that “settlements are illegal under international law,” but other than occasional verbal admonishment, the international organization and its member governments have taken no action to hold Israel accountable.

The US State Department also criticized Israel for “fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.”

“In a way, they are cutting off the West Bank with this latest announcement because the lands are located in a strategic area,” Jamal Juma, the coordinator for the Stop the Wall grassroots campaign, told Middle East Eye.

“They lie next to the Green Line on one side and extend all the way to the Jordan Valley,” he added, using a common term for the 1949 armistice line that separates Israel as it was established in 1948 from the West Bank, which it occupied in 1967. “If carried out, this will mean that the entire north of the West Bank will be cut off from the middle of the West Bank.”

Less than two years ago, Israel announced the seizure of 1,000 dunums near Bethlehem, eliciting similar disavowals – and a similar absence of concrete action – from US and UN officials.

Peace Now said then that there had not been such a large land seizure in the West Bank since the 1980s.

Uninterrupted confiscations

Peace Now, an organization as committed to preserving Israel as a Jewish-majority state as it is to ending the occupation of the West Bank, has maintained for years that despite a tripling of the settler population since theOslo accords, the two-state solution remains viable.

Peace Now has based its argument on the fact that most of the growth has occurred within so-called settlement blocs that would remain under Israel’s control according to hypothetical “land swaps” which would retroactively legitimize its land grabs.

By expanding the definition of these settlement blocs, Israel can conceal the extent to which its control over the West Bank has continued to deepen in spite of the peace process.

Yiftah Curiel, the spokesperson for Israel’s London embassy, recently claimed that “90 or 95 percent of the settlements are within what’s called settlement blocs … So, I think that the settlements are not the main obstacle perhaps to peace as some would like to view them.”

Indeed, most of the land on which settlements now stand was declared “state land” by Israel’s military during the 1980s, after Israel’s high court ruled that settlements could not be built on private Palestinian land expropriated through military orders.

So instead, after that 1979 ruling, Israel began expropriating large swaths of Palestinian land simply by declaring it “state land.”

Following the Oslo accords, the Israeli government stopped officially establishing new settlements and slowed down on issuing declarations of “state land.”

This led to the spread of “outposts” – Israeli settlements that are illegal according to Israeli law, but have nonetheless been enabled through secret government assistance followed by retroactive approval.

Israel also continued to officially expand existing settlements, often onto lands that had been expropriated previously.

All Israeli settlements are illegal according to international law.

Since 1999, Israel has continued to declare tens of thousands of dunums of land in the West Bank “state land” through a process of supposedly reexamining declarations made in the 1980s, as well as land with “undefined ownership.”

Through this process, Israel has retroactively legitimized at least two dozen outposts.

For example, last October, Israel announced that it intended to authorize a cluster of five West Bank outposts containing hundreds of buildings spread across six square kilometers.

Occupation authorities revealed the step in response to a petition filed by human rights group Yesh Din calling for the immediate evacuation of the settlers because they were living on Palestinian land and had been involved in violent attacks on Palestinians.

The recent land confiscation near Nablus is being described by Israeli authorities as a border correction, not a confiscation, because it is based on the findings by the so-called Blue Line Team that re-examines the earlier “state land” declarations.

Between 1999 and 2011, the Blue Line Team reviewed 195,000 dunams of land and classified the “overwhelming majority” as state land.

Libya's unity leader promises to 'turn the page' after arrival in capital

Fayez al-Sarraj sets up temporary seat of power in naval base but faces immediate calls to leave or hand himself in from rival Tripoli authorities

Wednesday 30 March 2016

The leader of Libya's unity government has arrived in Tripoli, promising to "turn the page" on the country's troubled post-Gaddafi era despite opposition to its authority from two rival parliaments already vying for control.

Fayez al-Sarraj, named prime minister-designate under a UN-brokered power-sharing deal, arrived from Tunisia on Wednesday with six deputies to set up a temporary seat of power in a naval base despite threats from competing factions.

The six deputies are members of the Presidential Council, which was established based on a UN-mediated deal signed by splintered groups from the two parliaments last year. The council formed the new unity government headed by Sarraj.

But Sarraj faced immediate challenges to his authority with Khalifa Ghweil, the prime minister of Tripoli's General National Congress, calling his government illegal and urging Sarraj to leave or hand himself in.

Sarraj and other officials were prevented from flying into Tripoli by a rival parliament based in the capital, with authorities even closing the airspace several times to prevent them flying in.

A third parliament, based in Tobruk in the east, also has not ratified the UN-backed administration.

"It is time for all of us as Libyans to work together for the sake of Libya," Sarraj said upon his arrival, according to his government's Facebook page.

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Watchdog Chief: Corruption Is An ‘Existential’ Threat to U.S. Efforts in Afghanistan

BY DAVID FRANCIS-MARCH 30, 2016 

The United States has spent 15 years fighting in Afghanistan; more than 2,000 American lives have been lost there since the war began, and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in an attempt to rebuild it.  A watchdog who oversees U.S. spending there warned it could all be for naught.

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko, speaking Wednesday at the University of Pittsburgh, said government corruption in Afghanistan is an “existential” threat both to the future of the country and American efforts to stabilize it.

“I thought I knew all about corruption, but I can tell you that what I have seen and heard in the last four years in Afghanistan puts to shame what we call corruption here,” Sopko, who has been head of SIGAR since 2012, said in prepared remarks. “And this pervasive corruption poses a deadly threat to the entire U.S. effort to rebuild Afghanistan.”

Sopko, who has issued similar warnings in the past, said graft in Afghanistan has yet to receive the attention it deserves, despite the threat it poses. His office is preparing a report on how the U.S. government failed to understand corruption and how to combat it. Sopko said Washington has little idea of how fraud could threaten the entire U.S. security and state-building mission.

“During the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and for some years to follow, the United States partnered with abusive warlords and their militias to pursue al Qaeda and the Taliban, and supported the installation of these warlords and their militias at high levels of the Afghan government,” he said. “The United States also failed to recognize that vast sums of money injected into the Afghan economy, with limited oversight and pressures to spend, created conditions for corruption.”

An existential threat is something that could upend an entire country. For instance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu views a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to its very existence. As recently as last week, President Barack Obama said the Islamic State is not an existential threat to the United States. Whether graft could cause Afghanistan to collapse is unclear.

Sopko has been sounding the bell on wrongdoing in Afghanistan for years. Since SIGAR was created in 2008, it has issued 210 audits, alert letters, and inspections that contained 630 recommendations. He also said SIGAR investigations led to 103 arrests, 139 criminal charges, 103 convictions or guilty pleas, and 86 sentencings. But even he acknowledged that this has not been enough to change U.S. or Afghan practices; he noted Afghanistan ranked 166 out of 168 countries in Transparency International’s CorruptionIndex.

He then outlined the vast extent of fraud within Afghanistan. He said firms there pay a 35 percent bribe for government services or licenses, a practice commonly known throughout the Mideast and South Asia as baksheesh. More than one-third of private firms operating in Afghanistan are expected to pay out bribes during tax inspections, and 60 percent to get construction permits, Sopko said. According to Integrity Watch Afghanistan, close to $2 billion in bribes were paid from 2012 to 2015.

“In 2016, the Afghan government faces the risk of a political breakdown,” Sopko concluded. “But we at SIGAR are convinced that the dangers of letting corruption run rampant are greater than the risk of disrupting the entrenched practices of Afghan officials.”

Photo credit: Getty Images

Cambodia: Wealthy prisoners can soon pay for cushier digs

The prison cell believed to have once been occupied by the infamous gangster Al Capone. Image for representational purposes. Pic: Nicolas Raymond / Freestock.ca

 30th March 2016 

PUTTING a new twist to the phrase, “paying for your crime”, Cambodia’s wealthier criminals may soon be able to pay for upgraded facilities at a soon-to-be-built private prison complex in the country’s capital, Phnom Penh.

Interior Minister Sar Kheng proposed the plan last week, saying that it had already received a stamp of approval from Prime Minister Hun Sen, wrote the Phnom Penh Post.

“The prisoners and the families who have money, they can [pay] rent and stay there,” Kheng said, adding that such a facility would also help the government generate revenue.

According to Kheng, the idea to have a privately-run prison as a means to address the problem of overcrowded prisons was inspired by Australia’s penal system.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry’s General Department of Prisons, Nuth Savna, approved of the proposal, saying it was a good idea to build additional facilities for moneyed prisoners, as they could afford to pay for more comfortable lodgings while serving their prison term.

“They are used to living in good conditions and they may want to continue living in good conditions. So they have that option,” he said.

However, experts have chimed in with their doubts about the plan’s efficacy.

Speaking to Phnom Penh Post, University of Canberra School of Law and Justice associate professor Lorana Bartels questioned whether private prisons were more efficient than their government-run equivalent.

In addition, Australia National University criminology professor Roderic Broadhurst had ethical concerns over whether it would be fair for private contractors be in charge of an detainee’s punishment, particularly if wealthy prisoners could pay for better treatment.

Human rights lawyer Keo Bunthea concurred, saying that the government should fulfill its duty to all Cambodian prisoners before attempting to outsource the service.

“They need to provide adequate services for all inmates, not just the wealthy,” he added.

Main image via Freestock.ca

Boeing says it will cut more than 4,500 jobs

The Boeing logo is seen at their headquarters in Chicago, April 24, 2013.

REUTERS/JIM YOUNG/FILES

Wed Mar 30, 2016

Boeing Co will eliminate about 4,000 jobs in its commercial airplanes division by the middle of this year and another roughly 550 jobs in a division that conducts flight and lab tests, company spokespeople told Reuters.

The planemaker will reduce 1,600 positions in the commercial airplanes division through voluntary layoffs, while the rest of the cuts are expected to be completed by leaving open positions unfilled, spokesman Doug Alder said.

"While there is no employment reduction target, the more we can control costs as a whole the less impact there will be to employment," Alder said.

The job cuts, which will include hundreds at executive and managerial positions, will not done through involuntary layoffs, Alder said.

Boeing will also cut about 10 percent of the approximately 5,700 jobs in its test and evaluation division, which conducts flight and lab tests, spokeswoman Sandra Angers told Reuters.

The company had a total of 161,400 employees as of Dec. 31.

Reuters had reported last month that Boeing was considering offering voluntary layoffs to its professional engineers and technical workers.

In February, Ray Conner, chief executive of Boeing's airplane business, warned employees that job cuts were necessary to "win in the market, fund our growth and operate as a healthy business."

The Seattle Times had earlier reported that Boeing has taken steps to reduce its workforce. 

(bit.ly/1q05U62)

(Reporting by Bhanu Pratap; Editing by Savio D'Souza)

Book Sales Are Up. Reading Is Down. Are You on the Side of the Competitive Edge?

David Sable-Mar 29, 2016

28% of American adults say they have not read a book in the past year – book as in words…be it digital, print, whatever. And while I don’t know the matching statistics globally – help me if you can by checking your country’s stats – I imagine most of us are facing the same sad fact.

Sad as in this isn’t a print vs. digital coup or a traditional vs. new triumphor some Luddite vs. leading-edge victory…it plainly and simply means some people are just not reading, and I find this profoundly disturbing and potentially harmful to the future evolution of humanity.

And yet:

According to last week’s New York Times, “Sales at bookstores rose 2.5 percent in 2015 over the previous year, to $11.17 billion, for the first annual increase since 2007, according to the United States Census Bureau.”

And, as I have written before about the increase in sales of children’s printed books…all over the world…a trend I find exciting, powerful and a sign of hope for the future, as parents rediscover the joys of a fully tactile, immersive, interactive experience that involves and benefits both the reader and the audience.

Tell the truth! Have you bought a book recently…digital or otherwise? Read it? Enjoyed it? Experienced it? Immersed in it? Shared it?  Old author or new…makes no difference…

Full confession time – as one who used to haunt bookstores and buy tens of books at a visit, and then, as time moved on, download even larger quantities to my Kindle and then my Kindle App, I find that I have slacked off.

Maybe it was time…I had so much “content” to cover; maybe it was fatigue…how much could I really absorb; maybe it was lethargy…who cares because I’m reading short summaries of everything…

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Beyond Pedagogies of Repression

One of the most serious challenges facing teachers, artists, journalists, writers, and other cultural workers is the task of developing a discourse of both critique and possibility. This means developing languages and pedagogical practices that connect reading the word with reading the world, and doing so in ways that enhance the capacities of young people as critical agents and engaged citizens.

by Henry A. Giroux
Courtsey: Monthly Review

Introduction

( March 29, 2016, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) At a time when the public good is under attack and there seems to be a growing apathy toward the social contract or any other civic-minded investment in public values and the larger common good, education has to be seen as more than a credential or a pathway to a job, and pedagogy as more than teaching to the test. Against pedagogies of repression such as high-stakes testing, which largely serve as neoliberal forms of discipline to promote conformity and limit the imagination, critical pedagogy must be viewed as crucial to understanding and overcoming the current crises of agency, politics, and historical memory faced by many young people today. One of the challenges facing the current generation of educators and students is the need to reclaim the role that education has historically played in developing critical literacies and civic capacities. Education must mobilize students to be critically engaged agents, attentive to important social issues and alert to the responsibility of deepening and expanding the meaning and practices of a vibrant democracy.

At the heart of such a challenge is the question of what education should accomplish in a democracy. What work do educators have to do to create the economic, political, and ethical conditions necessary to endow young people with the capacities to think, question, and doubt, to imagine the unimaginable, and to defend education as essential for inspiring and energizing the citizens necessary for a robust democracy? In a world that has largely abandoned egalitarian and democratic impulses, what will it take to educate young people to challenge authority, resist the notion that education is only training, and redefine public and higher education as democratic public spheres?

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Sea levels set to 'rise far more rapidly than expected'

New research factors in collapsing Antarctic ice sheet that could double the sea-level rise to two metres by 2100 if emissions are not cut

 Antarctica’s snowfall was expected to keep the ice sheet in balance but it is less stable than previously thought. Photograph: Steve Mandel / Barcroft Media

Damian Carrington- 

30th March 2016

Sea levels could rise far more rapidly than expected in coming decades, according to new research that reveals Antarctica’s vast ice cap is less stable than previously thought.

The UN’s climate science body had predicted up to a metre of sea level rise this century - but it did not anticipate any significant contribution from Antarctica, where increasing snowfall was expected to keep the ice sheet in balance.

According a study, published in the journal Nature, collapsing Antarctic ice sheets are expected to double sea-level rise to two metres by 2100, if carbon emissions are not cut.

Previously, only the passive melting of Antarctic ice by warmer air and seawater was considered but the new work added active processes, such as the disintegration of huge ice cliffs.

“This [doubling] could spell disaster for many low-lying cities,” said Prof Robert DeConto, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who led the work. He said that if global warming was not halted, the rate of sea-level rise would change from millimetres per year to centimetres a year. “At that point it becomes about retreat [from cities], not engineering of defences.”

As well as rising seas, climate change is also causing storms to become fiercer, forming a highly destructive combination for low-lying cities like New York, Mumbai and Guangzhou. Many coastal cities are growing fast as populations rise and analysis by World Bank and OECD staff has shown that global flood damage could cost them $1tn a year by 2050 unless action is taken.

The cities most at risk in richer nations include Miami, Boston and Nagoya, while cities in China, 

Vietnam, Bangladesh and Ivory Coast are among those most in danger in less wealthy countries.

The new research follows other recent studies warning of the possibility of ice sheet collapse in Antarctica and suggesting huge sea-level rises. But the new work suggests that major rises are possible within the lifetimes of today’s children, not over centuries.

“The bad news is that in the business-as-usual, high-emissions scenario, we end up with very, very high estimates of the contribution of Antarctica to sea-level rise” by 2100, DeConto told the Guardian. But he said that if emissions were quickly slashed to zero, the rise in sea level from Antarctic ice could be reduced to almost nothing.

“This is the good news,” he said. “It is not too late and that is wonderful. But we can’t say we are 100% out of the woods.” Even if emissions are slashed, DeConto said, there remains a 10% chance that sea level will rise significantly.

Active physical processes are well-known ways of breaking up ice sheets but had not been included in complex 3D models of the Antarctic ice sheet before. The processes include water from melting on the surface of the ice sheet to flow down into crevasses and widen them further. “Meltwater can have a really deleterious effect,” said DeConto. “It’s an attack on the ice sheet from above as well as below.”

Today, he said, summer temperatures approach or just exceed freezing point around Antarctica: “It would not take much warming to see a pretty dramatic increase [in surface melting] and it would happen very quickly.”

The new models also included the loss of floating ice shelves from the coast of Antarctica, which currently hold back the ice on land. The break-up of ice shelves can also leave huge ice cliffs 1,000m high towering over the ocean, which then collapse under their own weight, pushing up sea level even further.

The scientists calibrated their model against geological records of events 125,000 years ago and 3m years ago, when the temperature was similar to today but sea level was much higher.

Sea-level rise is also driven by the expansion of water as it gets warmer and in January scientists suggested this factor had been significantly underestimated, adding further weight to concerns about future rises.

Recent temperatures have been shattering records and on Monday, it was announced that the Arctic ice cap had been reduced to its smallest winter areasince records began in 1979, although the melting of this already floating sea ice does not push up ocean levels.