Hospitals and clinics in areas of fighting in central Iraq are struggling to operate at full capacity due to crossfire, electricity and fuel shortages, and an exodus of staff, officials say.

In addition, health services in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, which is hosting hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the fighting between militants and government forces, are struggling to keep up with the needs of the displaced.

In early June, heavy shelling damaged two hospitals in the city of Mosul – one of the most affected by the fighting, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Militants seized government buildings and the airport and raided the central bank in Mosul, which is suffering from a shortage of electricity and other power supplies. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says that although hospitals are still treating injured people, some of them have either stopped functioning completely or are working at reduced capacity.

Several hospitals and clinics in the cities of Tikrit and Fallujah have also been damaged by the fighting, according to aid agencies. On 13 June, shelling badly damaged a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) clinic in Tikrit.

Fuel shortages, due to both blocked roads and a militant takeover of the country’s largest oil refinery, Baiji, are affecting staff mobility, restricting delivery of drugs and supplies and limiting the use of ambulances, the UN warned on 26 June.

Electricity shortages, which cannot be plugged by generators due to the lack of fuel, are also restricting clinics to operating on limited schedules, in spite of the growing need for medical support amid escalating violence and injuries, officials have told IRIN.

Fighting between government forces, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and other armed Sunni groups began months ago in western Anbar Province over perceived marginalization of Sunnis by the Shia-led government. In June, the fighting spread to Salaheddin, Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces, causing an estimated 500,000 people to flee in the past fortnight and bringing the total number of displaced to approximately 1.2 million people since the start of the year.

Teams from WHO, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and other local and international NGOs are delivering emergency kits and other core medical supplies to health centres in the violence-hit areas, but humanitarian access is limited due to the unpredictable security situation.

“The challenge is getting into the most affected areas, as well as the fact that displaced people are scattered all over and that makes it very difficult to allocate services,” said Fabio Forgione, MSF head of mission in Iraq.

“Providing the most basic assistance and medical care is extremely challenging in such an environment where the medical activities themselves are under attack,” he said, adding that in many clinics across central Iraq, drugs were running low and medical staff themselves were leaving for their own safety.

Blocked distribution channels

Although there is currently no fighting in the semi-autonomous Kurdish north, health services there are being stretched to the limit by the sudden influx of several hundred thousand people fleeing the fighting.

Many of the arrivals have injuries or chronic illnesses; and the maternity hospital in Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, reported this week that its daily Caesarean caseload had risen from 8-10 a day, to more than 20.

At the same time as the surge in patient numbers is denting Kurdistan’s drug stocks, there have been major delays bringing supplies from the capital Baghdad, where all the country’s medicines are centrally procured by the federal government of Iraq.

“There is a critical demand for drugs,” Hussain Syed Jaffar, a medical doctor and WHO representative in Iraq, told IRIN. “There are ample supplies in Baghdad but the issue is getting them up to Kurdistan because the roads are blocked by insurgents.”

WHO has flown in 20 tons of medicines and other items from Dubai, and this week organized a military plane to deliver 15 tons of medicines from Baghdad to Erbil.

Polio, measles

The surge in violence across Iraq and the disruption that has been caused to the public health system has been blamed for the re-appearance of polio, which resurfaced in Baghdad earlier this year for the first time in 14 years.

A countrywide vaccination drive was held in April, but monitoring reports show fighting and displacement limited the campaign’s reach in some areas, especially Anbar, which has been out of government control since January. This is likely to continue being a challenge next month when another vaccine round is due to take place.

Health workers are also now on high alert for measles, which is endemic in Mosul. UNICEF has set up vaccination posts at the borders between central Iraq and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north in an effort to contain any potential outbreak.

Ahead of the upcoming polio campaign, UNICEF this week procured and delivered one million doses of oral polio vaccine with 400,000 measles vaccines also on order.

Fears of cholera outbreak

As summer temperatures soar, aid agencies fear disease outbreaks due to a lack of clean water and sanitation for the displaced, especially those staying in Kurdistan’s Duhok Province, where cholera is endemic.

A team of WHO experts from the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR-B) have deployed to Iraq to analyse the likelihood of an outbreak of cholera and other communicable diseases.

MSF has a mobile hospital for emergency cholera treatment based in Duhok’s Domiz Camp (hosting around 60,000 Syrian refugees), which Forgione said could be quickly mobilized if needed. WHO has been supporting cholera prevention training sessions at the request of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Jaffar, of WHO, warned that although steps were being put in place to manage the situation, additional funds and human capacity were desperately needed.

“The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is already feeling the pressure on its health system from hosting Syrian refugees and now there is this new influx [of IDPs] with more expected and they won’t be able to cope alone,” he said.

“There is not enough human capital available to deliver the services required and we also have health workers themselves displaced due to violence.”

Kurdistan appeals for support

“There is a war happening on our border and a lot of injured people are coming to Erbil for emergency medical services,” explained Raad Najmaddin, focal point for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and head of medical operations and specialized services at KRG’s Department of Health (DOH).

“This is a big new load on our hospitals and we need support both in terms of staff and medicines,” he said, adding that KRG had asked the UN to urgently source paramedics, doctors and medical supplies.

As fighting between ISIS, other Sunni militant groups and the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) intensifies across the country, the displacement tally is likely to grow, and there are major concerns about how and where the fleeing families will be sheltered.

A handful of camps have been set up close to checkpoints between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq, and more are planned, but most people have moved into towns and cities. Many are sleeping rough in parks or camping out in collective shelters.

Protection teams from UNICEF as well as other UN agencies and NGOs are combing the towns and cities of Kurdistan in a bid to locate such groups and connect them to health services and other support networks.

“We are really worried about the hidden people at risk, the people living in basements and construction sites, the people in parks,” Colin MacInnes, UNICEF’s deputy representative in Iraq, told IRIN. “We can’t see these people… It’s hard to identify the needs of the most vulnerable people because they are not out there in the open.”

And he added: “Some of them are injured or have chronic health needs and they are not getting access to health care services. Many are traumatized… There are young boys and girls out begging to support their families.”

Tucked away behind Erbil’s colourful main bazaar, in the shadow of the city’s ancient citadel, IRIN found a group of nearly 50 people, who had fled Mosul a week earlier, standing in the slithers of shade of the sun-parched courtyard of a mosque.

Some waved prescriptions saying they needed medicines and one woman in a black robe sobbed as she held up her young child whose face was covered in a red rash.

“Look at my daughter,” the woman, who declined to be named, cried out. “She is sick; we need help.”

Next to her, and clutching her swollen stomach, heavily pregnant mother-of-four Shada Salah also begged for help. “We cannot stay here. People are getting sick from the cat [droppings]. I am worried for my unborn child,” the 30-year-old said tearfully.

Jaffar described the health needs as “enormous” and “growing daily” but he said the biggest challenge was the political uncertainty.

“You can develop effective plans and strategies but these need to be modified on a daily basis because the situation is so fluid and evolving so rapidly,” he said.

The post Violence And Displacement Stretch Iraq’s Health Services – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ravi Nitesh

A well-known and most accepted fact is that art, music and culture are beyond boundaries. It is true in all the cases, even in the case of India and Pakistan where in spite of so much visa restrictions and restrictions on communications with each other, the fact has survived.

It is true that people of both countries are eager to know about each other and are very much interested in culture and the arts. Still Indian saris in Pakistan and Pakistani suits in India are a common choice. When we talk about music and arts, there are so many names in the Indian film industry as well as in Pakistan that are popular in both countries.

There is a big market for Indian films and songs in Pakistan and people there are so fascinated with it. Similarly in India, every music lover likes Rahat Fateh Ali, Nusrat Sahab and others. In other forms of arts, there are theatre groups as well who frequently travel each other’s country as a part of cultural exchange.

In spite of all this, sadly, the governments of both India and Pakistan did not provide free access and broadcast permission to each other’s TV channels. It is still a setback for people of the two countries. Many in Pakistan enjoyed Indian TV channels until it was officially restricted.

With this permission and restriction game, they have tried to restrict the information and knowledge sharing of culture. Free access and broadcast of TV channels of each other’s country can lead to a very positive effect by providing an opportunity to know each other’s culture.

TV is a strong medium of communication in these days. It is available in most of the houses of India and Pakistan. I can say, based on my observation in India, that even the permanent migratory laborers carry their own TV and dish antenna and slum areas of Delhi have TVs in their huts. This shows the importance that people attach to the television. It is seen as a tool of both entertainment and information. As we know, television has a capacity to transform minds through its audio visual impression.

It is also a fact that it is our natural curiosity to know and communicate beyond our society and other boundaries. For this, we have developed several means of communication. Media is one of the tools through which we can feed this thirst of the mind.

With the availability of a big market in India and curiosity of the people, an Indian television group is going to launch a new television channel. The specialty of this channel will be that it will cater to an Indian audience with its Pakistani content. This channel will present handpicked stories from Pakistani writers and telecast them in India. These stories will be about the everyday life of people in Pakistan.

In prima view, it may look simple, but when we think about the above mentioned facts, we find that it is an innovative step to match media and technology with the desired goal of peace. It is a step to prove the fact that arts, music and culture must survive in all conditions and must be taken beyond boundaries.

Regarding business advancement, it will certainly increase profit to the group in view of the ‘different’ content for the Indian audience; but this is something more important than business. It is because, by bringing these stories from Pakistan, it will be helpful in breaking stereotyping of minds.

It will become a medium for people to understand that everyday life, emotions, values are similar across the border. By bringing this channel, it will be a new experiment in Indian television industry that may be followed by others, and it may pave the way for a new era of entertainment. Hopefully, the new channel named ‘Zindagi’ will connect the ‘lives’ of people and contribute to a culture of mutual love and understanding.

(Ravi Nitesh is a columnist for the Daily Times, Pakistan and core member of Aghaz-e-Dosti, a friendship initiative for youth from India and Pakistan. He can be contacted at southasiamonitor1@gmail.com)

This article appeared at South Asia Monitor.

The post Zindagi: A Channel To Connect Lives Across The Border – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Just days after the Afghans braved the Taliban threats to vote in the second round run-off of the presidential elections on June 14, presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah accused Afghan President Hamid Karzai of orchestrating a political stalemate and that Karzai would be responsible for any political crisis that follows.

Abdullah said whatever results that have been announced, are not acceptable to him. Observers fear allegations of fraud on both sides could lead to a bitter and drawn out tussle for power along ethnic lines, which could derail attempts to transfer power democratically for the first time in Afghanistan’s history.

Abdullah’s team at a press conference on June 22 released audio recordings indicating collusion between the Independent Election Commission (IEC) officials and a member of rival Ashraf Ghani’s team. The IEC, a day earlier, had announced it is delaying release of the results of the presidential election run-off.

Run-off

The second round run-off had pitted Abdullah, a former anti-Taliban fighter with a support base among the ethnic Tajik voters, against Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun, after neither secured the required 50 percent votes polled to win outright the April 5 first round. In the first round, Abdullah had secured 45 percent votes compared to Ghani’s 31 percent.

On June 14, Afghans hailed another successful election after conclusion of the second round run-off polling with millions turning out to choose a new president amongst the two remaining contenders. The election took place at the height of the summer fighting season and the polling day saw at least 150 minor attacks, after the Taliban threatened to launch “nonstop” assaults during the vote.

Officials said more than seven million people (or 52 percent of the estimated electorate of 13.5 million) cast their votes. The higher than expected turnout matched the first round turnout of seven million (though the first round was revised to 6.6 million after more than 350,000 ballots were deemed fraudulent). The votes were cast at 6,365 polling centers across the country and the attendance was so high that some 333 voting centers ran out of ballot papers. Preliminary results are expected on July 2 with final results to be announced on July 22.

The Controversy

Abdullah has demanded suspension of vote counting and declared that he has no trust in electoral bodies after initial reports on the run-off put Ghani in the lead by close to a million votes. Abdullah said his opponent’s apparent million-vote lead was due to massive fraud and questioned the figures given out by IEC, which put the turnout at more than five million of an estimated 12 million eligible voters.

Abdullah alleges a surge of votes have come from the country’s eastern and southeastern provinces, the power base of Ghani. Incidentally, these are the areas where in 2009 the biggest frauds were uncovered; the IEC then had discarded more than one million votes as ineligible. This time, in Khost, a province wracked by insecurity, some 400,000 votes were cast as against just 113,000 in the first round.

The chief of the IEC had earlier said that vote tabulation would not stop and that the authority was willing to respond to any complaints raised by Abdullah. The election complaints body has received more than 560 complaints of fraud so far, according information available

The UN mission in Afghanistan had warned that if candidates abandon the legal process and framework to appeal directly to their supporters on the issue of electoral inconsistencies, it could incite violence. Not surprisingly, about 100 supporters of Abdullah demonstrated in Kabul on June 19 chanting slogans against the IEC and Karzai. Protests are likely to intensify if the situation is not defused soon.

On June 20 Karzai changed course and endorsed Abdullah’s call for the UN to get involved in investigating his claims of election fraud. In a meeting with Jan Kubis, the UN special envoy, Karzai said the involvement of the UN would be “a good step toward ending the problems, because any organization that can help Afghanistan in this issue is appreciated”. Earlier, Abdullah had suggested that a resolution to the crisis might involve the United Nations, a notion that the agency had shot down. Ghani too has welcomed the idea, and his spokesperson said: “We don’t have any problem with the UN conducting an investigation of the votes and that any neutral organization that wants to investigate the issue is welcome.”

Preliminary results of the run-off are not due until July 2, but Abdullah’s complaints of electoral fraud and refusal to accept the outcome has raised the risk of a protracted political crisis as most International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops prepare to leave Afghanistan by the end of this year and the threat of the Taliban looms large.

Assessment

Analysts had assessed that the second round run-off would pose its own set of challenges. It was expected to expose the Afghans to the risk from the Taliban, delay the signing of the Afghan-US security pact and also threaten to inject more bitterness between the two candidates, making it harder for the winning side to form a stable government afterwards.

Jandad Spenghar, director of an Afghan election watchdog, had expressed concerns about the ethnicization of the election in the second round, as he expected the number of people voting on ethnic basis would be higher; and further intensification of ethnic divisions could create an environment for fraud and challenge the entire process. The events unfortunately seem to be unfolding as predicted.

The first round elections conducted in April have been hailed, in context of the Taliban, for two reasons: one for the security provided by Afghan security forces to enable voting, and two, that the Taliban appeared to bow to the wishes of the Afghan people with regard to holding of elections. Worryingly, it appears that the Taliban may have willingly conceded these “gains” as it read the political situation in Afghanistan better than any of the other stakeholders.

Three aspects are clear to the Taliban: it cannot control all of Afghanistan by force; two, deepening of the ethic divide will facilitate its game plan, and three, it needs Afghans to be disenchanted with the democratic process to succeed politically.

By manipulating the voting pattern in areas controlled by it in the south and southeast of the country, the Taliban has ensured that Abdullah leads the first round, but falters in the second round just when the possibility of his being the next president had taken root. This would ensure that emotions among the minorities run high when Abdullah cries foul, and the polarisation between the Pashtuns and the rest is significant and deep. The stage would be then set for Taliban to claim most of Afghanistan.

Few Afghan rulers have successfully passed on the mantle of leadership, and since 1973 no Afghan ruler has peacefully transferred power to another. If controversy around Abdullah’s allegations, right or wrong, persists it will damage the possibility of a democratic transition of power in Afghanistan.

This article appeared at South Asia Monitor.

The post Run-off Logjam Threatens Afghanistan’s Political Transition – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Efforts are being made to project a notion that Tamils are oppressed. The mischief behind this endeavor has nothing to do with Tamils but simply as a slogan to create precedents. The organization outsourced to create precedents legally is the UN. Conflicts have become easy to engineer and all it takes is a single skirmish or isolated event for paid media to go to town. There are many ways to silence people and to make people talk as well. Conflicts are begun never to end which is why international charities, humanitarian organizations, peace builders, are all in a thriving profession. The notion that Sri Lanka has an ethnic problem has been an effective mechanism for a handful of people. This notion has bled the country because the problem was never identified as a terrorist problem and dealt with as a terrorist problem. Caught into this milieu are Tamils in whose hands rests the extent to which foreign interference is allowed.

Let us be clear that Sri Lanka faced a Terrorist problem and not an Ethnic problem. Therefore, it is imperative that solutions being proposed do not confuse the two.

The confusion has prevailed because Tamils have not voiced their opinion against LTTE terrorists. If they had done so, we would not be faced with such confusions. Tamils have enjoyed using the conflict to settle in foreign climes as refugees. Anyone claiming right of stay in a country needs to protect the country from foreign incursions. It is a good time for Tamils to wake up to the manner states are being re-divided according to a template that suits imperialists motivated to ride on conflicts and create armed groups so that the imperialists can take over the resources for themselves. Kosovo is an example that Ta mils now need to look carefully upon wondering how far the bogus ‘self-determination’ bid will lead Sri Lanka.

No one can claim 1/3 of Sri Lanka’s land & 2/3 of Sri Lanka’s sea & call it Tamil Eelaam whilst also gaining the right to live in other parts of Sri Lanka. Which country will allow this when historically Sinhalese have been living far longer than any other ethnic group throughout Sri Lanka?

30 years of terrorism was inflicted mostly upon non-Tamils, it was they who were the targets of LTTE. The only other Tamils to be targeted were those that were moderate and wanted to get along with the rest of the communities and the Vanni Tamils from whom the LTTE plucked its foot soldiers. The hierarchy of the LTTE enjoyed all the comforts and are still enjoying fooling Tamils with a promise they know is not real.

The Tamil population at independence was just 880,000. The high caste English educated, English speaking Tamil representatives of this 880,000 began asking for 50-50 representation because they were enjoying benefits virtually on par with the Sinhalese though population-wise they were less than 7% of the total population at independence. The Tamils brought from India by the British numb ered far more even at independence.

LTTE’s first target was a Tamil. He was a Tamil Mayor. LTTE went on to shoot Tamil police officers on duty in the North. It was this that made Tamils fear to join the police force.

LTTE’s next targets were Tamil public officials – mayors, principals, intellectuals, politicians even Lakshman Kadiragamar Sri Lanka’s foreign minister. LTTE has killed over 200 such Tamil public servants.

The negative propaganda makes the world believe that Tamils are discriminated. Sri Lanka’s media are not interested to set the story straight.

Let us see how the Constitution has provided for Tamils.

• Sinhala & Tamil have been made official languages of Sri Lanka under the 1978 Constitution, Chapter IV (Language Provisions) – Article 18 (1) & 18 (2) amended by 13th amendment. Under Article 20 amended by 16th Amendment – a member of Parliament or a member of a Provincial Council or a local authority shall be entitled to perform his duties and discharge his functions in Parliament or in such Provincial Council or local authority in either of the National Languages.

• Article 21 (1) amended by 16th Amendment entitles a person to be educated through the medium of either of the national Languages .=

• Article 22 (1) amended by 16th Amendment entitles Sinhala and Tamil to be languages of administration throughout Sri Lanka. – Article 22(1)

• A person has the right to receive communications from, communicate with in Sinhala, Tamil or English.

• Article 24 (1) amended by 16th Amendment –

Let us now move on to look at what Tamils enjoy presently in Sri Lanka.

• In the national flag, ethnical minorities are denoted by color orange for Tamils and Green for Muslims

• All public documents are in both Sinhalese & Tamil – marriage certificate, death certificate, immigration fo rms etc

• All Sri Lankan currency and notes are in Sinhalese & Tamil

• All public events are presented in Sinhalese, Tamil and English

• Tamils have rights to own property, land, run business ventures (together Tamils and Muslims outnumber Sinhalese in Colombo) Non-Tamils cannot own land in Jaffna. Tamils openly say they will not sell land or property to Sinhalese.

• Tamils work in both private and public sectors

• Tamils can send their children to public, private, semi-government, international schools.

• Tamils enjoy all healthcare – private and public without impediments. No doctors have denied treating Tamils because they were Tamil. No hospitals have refused admission because they were Tamil, no hospital, doctor or nurse have refused to administer medicine because anyone was Tamil.

• Tamils enjoy access to every mode of public transport. No Tamil is denied a seat because they are Tamil. There are no separate seats allocated for Tamils. There are no places anywhere in Sri Lanka that is allocated only for Sinhalese. Sadly even the sacred sites of Sinhalese Buddhists are now been transgressed/trespassed under bogey of multiculturalism.

• Tamils enjoy access to all public utilities.

• Tamils enjoy access to indulge in any sports and are even selected to represent Sri Lanka at national sports event not because they are Tamil but chosen because of selection criteria.

• Tamils can visit any hotel, restaurant, guesthouse etc. No Tamil is denied access because they are Tamil. There is no sign board that says ‘Tamils are not welcome’ or ‘No Tamils’.

Where there was and perhaps is discrimination

Discrimination, existed not in Sri Lanka. Discrimination in its essence took place in America, in the UK and in South Africa and by the whites against the black people. Discrimination in its essence took place earlier during colonial rule again by whites against the Africans and Asians.

Blacks of America – were treated as slaves, they had to eat separately, sit separately, attend separate schools, use separate toilets, sit on separate park benches, drink from separate water fountains. Blacks had to sit separately at restaurants and some stores forbid blacks from entering. Cinemas had separate ticket booths, libraries had separate black sections, blacks had separate telephone booths. Signboards were everywhere ‘Whites Only’ ‘White neighborhood’. Blacks had no rights to even vote. Democracy prevailed in US but not for blacks.

Blacks of UK – Treated no differently to the blacks of America, UK was home to plenty of racial riots and many types of discrimination in employment, housing allocation and social services exists still.

Blacks of South Africa – their homeland was taken over by whites who ruled South Africa plundering the nation of its resources. Apartheid is a dark chapter in the lives of these black people.

Tamils Treating Tamils

Tamils in Tamil Nadu – Tamil Nadu means State of Tamils and there are 72million of them. However, close to 20% of Tamils in Tamil Nadu are Dalits (low caste) 60% of them are illiterate. In a state that 99.9% are Tamils, these Dalits suffer verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual harassment, assault, and 23.2% of them are even raped. The Tamil Nadu Tamils are asking Sri Lanka to take care of Tamils when in Tamil Nadu, Tamils are themselves suffering and living in poverty.

Discrimination of Tamils by Tamils in Sri Lanka

It is not just in India’s Tamil Nadu, but Tamils in Sri Lanka are divided themselves. The Jaffna Tamils think they are superior to the rest. The Trinco Tamils think they are superior to Batticoloa Tamils and Tamils of Jaffna, Trinco and Batticoloa together have no regard towards the estate Tamils.

In Jaffna members of the same caste only eat together. High caste Tamils don’t marry low caste – those that do are shunned. Unclean Tami ls are forbidden from entering Tamil kovils.

At post independence low castes were forbidden from entering schools. S W R D Bandaranaike Prime Minister of Sri Lanka changed this by introducing the Social Disabilities Prevention Act 21 in 1957. The high caste Tamils opposed giving education to their own people. They even wrote to UK against this.

Post-conflict the Government Agent in the North is on record for the number of rapes rising – these were Tamils raping Tamils.

What happened to the peace between Sinhalese & Tamils

We need to go back in time to recall a history where Sinhalese & Tamils lived at peace with each other until that peace was destroyed shrewdly by the Portuguese, the Dutch & the British. Essentially, the dharmic religious connection must prevail between the Buddhists and Hindus. It is a strength that needs to be nurtured. We suffered 443 years of brutality & oppression whilst a handful benefited from education & conversion. Of the 64 years of independence half of it was plagued with terrorism. Much of the trouble in reality prevails not amongst the ordinary citizens but politicians and their henchman who see opportunities by keeping people divided under whatever theme they can devise. The same opportunities are viewed by external players for these become avenues to advance their power blocs, bases and remunerations.

We have to now rewrite our history books. The older generation need to separate the realities from the lies, the younger generation should not be taught to carry the aspirations of the old and must be encouraged to live in peace & harmony in a country that belongs to all wherever they choose to live. Those communities that have made their home Sri Lanka arriving as immigrants and traders must acknowledge the historical truth that Sri Lanka was built by the toil of Sinhala Buddhist blood and it was these people that sacrificed their lives to save the nation from those out to invade it.

We must say no to homelands, no to ethnic based solutions or devolutions and no to external interference. This message needs to be clearly carried to all external stakeholders and the local lascoreens who have greatly contributed to the lies that prevail. To this list we need to also add those in Government and those who had previously served in Government because they have by their self-centered decision making created worse problems whilst keeping unworthy characters who are not serving the nation.

What needs to be clearly said is that Tamils were never discriminated by any constitutional, legislative, judicial provision and that should clearly negate the false propaganda made to the advantage of a handful.

The post Tamils Are Not Oppressed In Sri Lanka And Never Were – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

No matter how entrenched animosities in the Middle East may be, one principle is upheld by all: never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The controversy over access to broadcasts of World Cup matches makes that clear.

Pricing by Qatari entities holding World Cup rights for the Middle East and North Africa, including Al Jazeera’s belN Sports channel, puts broadcasts beyond the reach of many football fans in the region. Inevitably, that is a public issue in a soccer-crazy part of the world. Add into the mix Arab-Israeli animosity and hostility towards Qatar because of its support of the Muslim Brotherhood and the issue becomes politically explosive.

In Lebanon, high Qatari pricing for access to World Cup matches commanded the attention of a Cabinet preoccupied with shielding the ethnic and religious mosaic from further fallout of sectarian and jihadist violence in Syria and Iraq. In Egypt, where Qatar is loathed by opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Jazeera journalists were made scapegoats in a kangaroo court earlier this week, Qatari pricing policy is the equivalent of scoring an own goal. belN charges $140 for access to World Cup matches; Egypt’s average monthly income is $360 a month.

Qatari pricing closed down an opportunity to try to win back hearts and minds by ensuring that large numbers of people in the region would have affordable or free access to World Cup matches at a time that Al Jazeera is under fire for its alleged support for the banned Muslim Brotherhood and has lost regional market share.

Al Jazeera’s operations in Egypt have been shut down for much of the past year. Market research company Sigma Conseil reported last year that the network’s market share in Tunisia had dropped from 10.7 in 2011 to 4.8% in 2012 and that Al Jazeera prior to the crackdown was no longer among Egypt’s 10 most watched channels. Tunisia’s 3C Institute of Marketing, Media and Opinion Studies said that Al Jazeera Sports was the only brand of the network that ranked in January among the country’s five most watched channels.

The beneficiary of Qatar’s political faux pas, Israel, seems equally incapable of capitalizing on the fact that many in countries that border on the Jewish state tune into Amos, the Israeli satellite station that grants free access to World Cup matches.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman for Arab media, Ofir Gendelman, initially welcomed Arab viewers in remarks on social media. “I hear that many football fans in neighbouring countries are watching the World Cup live on Israeli channels. We welcome you,” Mr. Gendelman said on Facebook and Twitter.

Access to a massive Arab audience constituted an opportunity for Israel to subtly attempt to forge links where peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan have failed to build cultural and public diplomacy links. Instead, Mr. Gendelman provoked a torrent of abuse several days after his welcoming comment by publishing Hebrew soccer slogans written with the Arabic alphabet that he hoped would prove useful to Arab fans.

Responses by Egyptian fans on social media reflected conflicting feelings of on the one hand favouring a boycott of Israel because of the Jewish state’s occupation of Arab territory for almost half a century and its attitude towards the Palestinians and on the other the desire to take advantage of the free access Israel grants.

“We are taking what we want from you but after the World Cup, Goodbye Amos Satellite,” said one Egyptian fan on Twitter. “Get us an Arabic commentator and I will pray for you that you die soon!” said another. A third asked: “How do you translate: a prayer in Al Quds?” using the Arabic name of Jerusalem to affirm Arab claims to the Israeli-occupied eastern half of the city.

Israel and Qatar’s lost opportunity was further evident in widely circulated conspiracy theories that sought to make sense of the predicament of average World Cup viewers in the region.

The Egyptian Sports Writers Association denounced what it said was an “Al Jazeera conspiracy to force Arab nations to watch Zionist channels.” The association’s evidence: Al Jazeera, which is suing the Egyptian government for $150 million in damages for disrupting its business in Egypt since last year’s coup that toppled President Mohammed Morsi has failed to take Israeli channels to task in a bid to force a normalization of relations between Arabs and Israelis. “We demand all Arabs not to watch Zionist channels, even at the price of not watching the World Cup,” the association said.

Former Al Masri player Ibrahim El-Masri in remarks to Egypt’s state-owned Al Ahram newspaper asserted that Israel was exploiting Egyptian poverty. “”Israel is … targeting poor and badly-educated people,” he said. El-Masri described free access to Israeli broadcasts as “obvious propaganda” that was “just the beginning” of a television strategy designed to “hook Arab viewers.”

Indeed, a smarter Israeli approach may just have had that effect, an effect Qatar could have countered had it approached World Cup matches as a public diplomacy rather than a commercial opportunity.

The post World Cup Broadcasts: The Middle East’s Opportunity To Miss An Opportunity – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Two goals from James Rodriguez gave Colombia a 2-0 win over Uruguay in Rio de Janeiro this afternoon, and sent Colombia into the quarterfinals for the first time.

Before the game, most of the discussion had centered on banished Uruguay striker Luis Suarez. At the final whistle, there was a new name on everybody’s lips: James, who opened the scoring with a fantastic chest, turn and volley move from 25 yards in the 28th minute.

The goal came at the end of a cagey spell of play, in which the Colombians had struggled to break down an obdurate Uruguay defense.

Five minutes after the interval, individual brillance was replaced by a fine team goal that effectively killed the game as a contest.

Defender Pablo Armero gathered the ball on the left, crossed goalward to the far post, Juan Cuadrado sent a downward header back across the box for James to drive home from close range. James becomes the tournament’s leading scorer with five goals; ahead of Brazil’s Neymar, Argentina’s Leo Messi and Thomas Muller of Germany, who have four goals apiece.

Colombia will play Brazil in the quarterfinals in Fortaleza on Friday. The host nation defeated Chile on penalties after a 1-1 tie in Belo Horizonte.

The post Colombia Moves Into Quarters After Win Over Uruguay appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Fatih Karimov

Iran will start importing 10 million liters of gasoline per day in the next two weeks.

Iranian deputy oil minister, Abbas Kazemi, said the administration has taken the decision to import gasoline with the highest international standards, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported on June 27.

He also said that imports of MMT (Methylcyclopentadienyl Manganese Tricarbonyl) — a gasoline additive that enhances octane to reduce knock, has been banned.

The administration has called the Oil Ministry to import gasoline meeting the Euro-4 standard, and has banned the importation of gasoline meeting the Euro-2 standard.

On May 18, Kazemi said Iran will export 10 billion liters of fuel oil and diesel in the current year.

Importing gasoline is economically justified, he added.

Under the international sanctions, three petrochemical units produced gasoline, he said, adding that the domestically produced gasoline was mixed with octane boosters and was supplied to the market. But, there is no longer need to produce such gasoline.

He added that the expansion of CNG stations can prevent excessive gasoline consumption.

The Iranian solar year starts on March 20.

On May 16, Saeid Mahjoubi, an official at the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company, said although a consignment of MMT has been imported by Shiraz Oil Refinery, it has not been permitted to use MMT in its gasoline output.

He also said that just 10 percent of the country’s total gasoline output is mixed with methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) — a fuel oxygenate that can help gasoline burn more cleanly.

The post Iran To Import 10 Mln Liters Of Gasoline Per Day appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The three day visit to the UK by Premier Li Keqiang demonstrated a further deepening of relations between both countries. This was perhaps best symbolised by the Queen inviting the Chinese Prime Minister to tea at Windsor Castle, an honour rarely bestowed on foreign dignitaries who are not head of state.

The royal diplomatic tea party was a clear demonstration of the Sino-British rapprochement after the UK was frozen out of contacts with senior Chinese politicians as a result of David Cameron meeting the Dalai Lama in 2012.

Speaking before his visit Li said that he had three main reasons for visiting the UK at this time; to deepen economic cooperation; to learn from Britain’s experience in modernisation; and to change misperceptions and ease misgivings about China.

The visit certainly led to closer economic cooperation with over £14 bn of business deals signed. These include major investments by the China Development Bank (CDB) in the new High Speed 2 rail network and the next generation of nuclear power stations. There was also agreement on energy cooperation with a major 20 year deal on the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) signed between BP and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

Perhaps of most significance was the agreement to encourage CDB and Bank of China lending in the UK as well as trading in China’s currency, the renminbi, which will open up two-way trade opportunities. This deal will also boost London’s hopes of becoming the top exchange for renminbi after Hong Kong.

Another deal agreed was between the UK’s MAP Environmental and China’s ZNShine Solar to set up a joint venture to purchase, develop, and manage £400m of UK solar panel assets. The project will involve a three year construction programme in conjunction with some of the UK’s largest engineering and construction contractors.

The UK also announced a simplified new visa service for all business visitors and tourists. They will now be able to use a single application for their visas for Britain as well as for a Schengen visa, which allows access to 26 European countries.

Premier Li also found time to speak at two British think tanks offering his view of China and world politics.

Interestingly the joint statement made a positive reference to the EU-China 2020 strategic agenda as providing the framework for future cooperation.

Following President Xi Jinping’s visit to four EU member states and EU headquarters just two months ago, this further visit would seem to suggest that China seems to be taking its commitment of 2014 as the ‘year of Europe’ seriously.

The post Li Keqiang Visit Boosts UK-China And EU Ties appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Baher Kamal

One does need to think back half a century ago, to remember how much harmony and peaceful coexistence reigned in Arab countries between Muslims, Christians and Jewish.

Nor does one need to recall how hundreds of Muslims gathered to protect Christians praying in their churches in Egypt during and after the 2011 popular upraising. Or how organised groups of Copts acted as a human shield to save Muslims praying in Cairo’s Tahrir Square from extremists’ attacks during the successive waves of popular protests.

Coexistence between adepts to the three monotheist religions in the Arab region has always been taken for granted. In Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine or Syria, Iraq and Morocco, no citizen would ever ask another citizen to which religion does he or she belong.

What happened then?

“Politics… always politics”, says Ahmad Aly, an Egyptian young IT engineer who grew up in a family of Muslim believers. “Politicians deliberately created tensions and divisions between Muslims and Copts in Egypt to have a pretext to impose more repression and this way stay eternally in power.”

Languages professor Ramsis Ishaac (62) thinks no different. “We never thought here (in Egypt) of who is Muslim and who Christian. We are all Egyptians. Just to give you an example: I like very much the Muslim traditions during Ramadan (the fasting Muslim month)… my Muslim neighbours usually invite me to share with them their “breakfast.”

Here Aly says that “we (Muslims) also celebrate Christian Easter. I remember that my parents used to hang olive and palm branches in our balcony. And I and my six brothers and sisters used to colour eggs on that occasion. No problem. We are all brothers.”

If you explore the opinion of Muslims and Christians in other Arab countries, you will most certainly find similar reactions.

“This is a problem that the West has created,” says telecommunications expert Hani Youssef. “I do not know why, but it is true that they consider all of us (the Muslims) as if we were all Osama Bin Laden. 99 per cent of us are peaceful people . . . we love peace… we need peace.”

Whatever the roots of the current religious, politically-guided divide are or may be, many religious leaders, and many civil society organisations, have sounded the alarm.

This is the case – among many others – of United Nations bodies like the Paris-based UNESCO and Alliance of Civilisations (AoC); the Tokyo-based Buddhist organisation Soka Gakai International (SGI) and the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Inter-religious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) in Vienna.

“[...] we are surrounded by a world, ridden with conflict and turmoil. Our vision of a united human family, coexisting peacefully with our differences rather than despite them, is, an ideal concept that is yet to be fully achieved,” said earlier this year Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, the UN High Representative For the Alliance of Civilisations.

“The harsh fact is that turmoil exists in a number of countries around the world. Steps which have been initiated towards peace offer a hope for dialogue in several conflict regions. While the locations differ, there is a common thread connecting them.”

According to Al-Nasser, “Radical notions embodying a distorted perspective of religion often fuel acts of violence. But why? The idea that religion could be used to justify violence is a contradiction in itself.”

The UN High Representative recalled: “The late, former U.S. President John F. Kennedy once declared: ‘Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others’.”

“Whether you follow a certain faith, or are not practising any at all, there is no set of beliefs that endorses violence, destruction and harm. In fact, every major religion and philosophy is based on the idea of doing unto others, as you would have them do to you,” Al-Nasser added.

Promote views that are open-minded

“So what does this mean for us? We must promote views that are open-minded, not restricted. We must reject intolerance and encourage a culture of acceptance and understanding. This can be done through education, communication, and restructured policies. We need to start addressing the issue of extremism as not always a question of religion, but a problem having economic, social, political and humanitarian dimensions.”

These views are shared by other active organisations working for harmony among religions. In fact, the UN Education, Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recently took a step further in this direction.

UNESCO’s Director-General Irina Bokova, on May 25, 2014 signed with the Secretary General of the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Inter-religious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID), Dr. Faisal Bin Abdulrahman Bin Muaammar, a Memorandum of Understanding reaffirming their “commitment to promoting dialogue among people of different cultures and religions.”

Bokova underscored UNESCO’s leadership of the “UN Decade for the Rapprochement of Cultures (2013-2022)” and the opportunity it provides “to advance new forms of global citizenship based on the sharing of knowledge, respect for human rights, and the promotion of cultural and religious diversity as fundamental principles, to foster social inclusion, the prevention of conflicts and build lasting peace.”

The UNESCO-KAICIID agreement aims at “developing joint programmes and outreach initiatives to strengthen mutual understanding, tolerance, peaceful coexistence, cooperation across and between societies, contributing to a culture of peace respectful of the principles enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity.”

For his part, KAICIID’s Secretary General Bin Muaammar stated: “UNESCO and KAICID are working together to strengthen a culture of dialogue that enables diverse cultures and religions to contribute towards a more peaceful and harmonious inter-religious relationships. This will, in turn, resolve conflict.”

The agreement engages both parties to join forces for four years in order to promote the importance of dialogue in formal and non-formal education, to advance knowledge on intercultural and inter-religious dialogue for peace, to support institutional cooperation through youth-targeted initiatives and to use the media as a tool for fostering dialogue and mutual understanding.

KAICIID was founded in 2013 “to enable, empower and encourage dialogue among followers of different religions and cultures around the world.” Its Founding States (Saudi Arabia, Austria and Spain) constitute the “Council of Parties” responsible for overseeing the work of the Centre; the Holy See is admitted as a Founding Observer to the Centre.

KAICIID’s Board of Directors comprises high-level representatives of the major world religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism) and cultures. The Centre is headed by a Secretary General.

Among other activities, it held earlier this year, the “Images of Faith: Clash of Perceptions?”: KAICIID Panel Discussion at International Press Institute World Congress Examines Questions of Representation and Media Ethics.”

The KAICIID Public Panel on April 15, 2014 in Cape Town, South Africa, aimed to bring the participants of the International Press Institute World Congress into dialogue on accurate reporting on religious diversity.

The panel followed a day-long working meeting on this topic which highlighted good practice in the field. Journalists, TV producers and senior writers from Liberia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, were key speakers.

Participants focused on inter-religious dialogue, the complicated layers of meaning contained in reporting on religion, the role of religion in various news stories in the Middle East, and the role of the media as a channel for dialogue, and for promoting positive images of religion.

KAICIID’s Director of Communications, Peter Kaiser, stressed the importance of press freedom in ensuring quality reporting.

As the starting point in its work towards peace and social cohesion, KAICIID focuses on “The Image of the Other” in education.

SGI and Daisaku Ikeda

In this regard, Daisaku Ikeda, President of Soka Gakkai International (SGI) – a lay Buddhist movement linking more than 12 million people around the world – has been described as “a pioneering champion of dialogue as a means to bridge cultural divides and seek solutions to global issues facing humanity.”

In fact, Ikeda has conducted extensive dialogues, many of which have been published, with leading representatives of the worlds of education, culture, politics, the sciences and the arts.

“Dialogue,” Ikeda asserts, “reaffirms and reinvigorates our shared humanity.”

The SGI leader states: “There is no such thing as a person who is bad from birth; we all have the seeds of goodness within. The work of nurturing these seeds and bringing them to fruition is the purpose of learning and education.”

“Education is not simply the transfer of knowledge, nor simply the development of specific talents. Authentic education is aimed at nurturing the complete personality, including both character and intellect; it is the great enterprise of passing on the fullness of humanity from the past into the future, ensuring its development.”

Meanwhile, SGI groups around the world actively participate in interfaith dialogue and initiatives aimed at building understanding between peoples of different faiths. In addition, SGI is a regular participant in the Parliament of the World’s Religions and has also held a series of interfaith symposiums with the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Inter-faith organisations active in social issues, education and dialogue are everywhere. One of them, for instance, is the International Committee of (Christian) Red Cross and (Muslim) Red Crescent.

Examples of other international organisations are: the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions; the European Council of Religious Leaders; the Institute for Inter-religious Dialogue; the International Council for Inter-Religious Cooperation; the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace; the United Religions Initiative; the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; the World Conference of Religions for Peace; the World Congress of Faiths, and the World Council of Churches Team on Interreligious Relations, just to mention some.

Meanwhile, tens of meetings of different religious leaders are held nearly every week in one place or another.

Why then all these efforts have not apparently succeeded so far in achieving their objective of spreading the tolerance and co-existence message?

Retired teacher Mohamed Mostapha (69) tries to answer. “There will be no peace until two critical conditions are met,” he says. “The first one is the power and influence of the military establishments everywhere… They just focus on testing new weapons and military plans… and here religious and culture divide are for the a very fertile field.”

“The second condition is to create a new consciousness both in the Muslim communities and in the Christian Western societies,” he adds. “We (the Muslims) have an historically accumulated rejection of whatever comes from the West… they occupied us, oppressed our people, exploited our resources… Our rejection is due to their domination, not against their religion.”

Baher Kamal is an Egyptian-born Spanish national with nearly 40 years of professional experience as a journalist. He is Publisher and Director of Human Wrongs Watch, Spain.

The post Faith Can Move Mountains, And Remove Hatred – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Susan Abad

Outside the campaign headquarters of Juan Manuel Santos in Bogotá, Concepción Acero jubilantly celebrated the president’s reelection. For her, his victory with 50.1 percent of the vote during the second round of elections on June 15 means “peace won” and “many young Colombians will no longer die in vain.”

According to political analyst Carolina López, the perception of Acero and just over 7.8 million other Colombians who voted for Santos is because “the president’s decision to make the peace talks the government is holding with the Revolutionary Armed Forced of Colombia (FARC) since November 2012 in Havana, his key campaign point, gave the result.”

The hope of an end to a 50-year-old conflict that has killed more than 220,000 people and displaced 5 million “was such a determining factor that people who oppose the president joined [his] campaign to keep the peace talks with the FARC going,” echoed legislator Óscar Lizcano, a member of the Senate Peace Commission.

In the second round of voting, Santos faced ultra right-wing candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga of the Democratic Center party — the same party of former president and Senator-elect Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010). Zuluaga won the first round on May 25 with 29.2 percent of the vote, pushing Santos into second place with 25.7 percent.

“[Santos] was able to plant the seed in the minds of many Colombians that Zuluaga would throw away any progress and, in line with the position of his mentor former President Alvaro Uribe, the country would go back to war,” López told Latinamerica Press.

Last chance for the FARC

Although Zuluaga changed his position in recent months from a staunch opposition against the peace talks to “negotiate with conditions”, several politicians, like former Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus, and leaders from the left headed by president of the Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) party Clara López, admitted their decision to vote for Santos was to prevent Uribe’s ideas from once again coming to fruition, this time through Zuluaga.

In his concession speech, Zuluaga claimed to take into account the views of the more than six million Colombians who voted for his proposed peace model: a negotiated peace. He promised to continue talks, as long as the FARC agreed to a unilateral ceasefire, a cessation to child recruitment, and a minimum sentence of six years in prison for guerrilla leaders accused of serious offenses.

“The president’s announcement [a few days before the elections] that since January, he had been engaged in a rapprochement with the National Liberation Army [ELN] was also key,” López said.

With “peace” written on the palm of his hand, Santos acknowledged in his celebratory speech that the “mandate given today by Colombians was for peace,” but that the message “wasn’t only for the government, but also for the FARC and ELN. This is the end of road, and we have to get there with quickly and decisively.”

“The FARC has to be very cautious with this vote of confidence from Colombians. They can’t, as the Colombian saying goes, poner conejo [defraud] the will of the people,” Senator Lizcano said. “This is the last chance the FARC will get to lay down their arms and reintegrate into society.”

Santos believes an end to the conflict will not only significantly reduce violence and fear in the country, but also lead an improved economy.

“Without the conflict, the gross domestic product growth in 2013 would have been 8.7 percent, not 4.3 percent, and income per capita would be US$16,700 instead of $11,000,” he said.

But to promise is one thing and fulfill the promise is another. Santos should read the election results and consider that he has the backing of 25 percent of Colombians, opposition from another 25 percent, and indifference from the remaining half of the country. For political expert Felipe Botero, of the University of the Andes, “the president has been committed to delivering concrete results in obtaining peace and in a short amount of time.” And it won’t be easy.

Analyst López said Santos “will have a weak administration to take on big challenges. The first of those is the application of post-conflict policies if he is able to succeed in the peace process.”

Congress ruled by the opposition

Santos, who in his last term benefited from a powerful majority in Congress, will this time face a strong opposition in the legislature, which will be in charge of approving and regulating any peace accords.

“Opposition from the Democratic Center is going to be strong. This party has several important members in Congress, including Uribe himself, and it’s going to be difficult to get the countersignature on whatever is agreed to in Havana,” Botero said.

In a press conference with foreign media a day after his win, President Santos rejected the notion that good governance would be at risk in his next term. He told Latinamerica Press he sees “no difficulty in maintaining the majorities in Congress to pass the necessary laws.”

He added that there is a need for a “national accord” that promotes a policy of peace, and called for all parties, social sectors, and politicians — including his staunchest opponents Uribe, Zuluaga and Conservative Party candidate Martha Lucía Ramírez — to join the pursuit of peace.

“After the election results, we turned the page on hate, rancor, revenge, and false accusations,” said Santos, who begins his new four-year term on Aug. 7.

He invited the PDA and the Green Alliance party to join his government; although they supported him in the second round of elections, they have been critical of certain aspects of the FARC talks. Furthermore, as Senator Iván Cepeda told Agencia Andes, “we [the country’s left] told Santos this isn’t a blank check and we aren’t going to back down from being a staunch opponent of his policies, especially in demanding that he fulfill the promise he made to follow through on the peace process with the FARC and ELN.”

The post Colombia: Santos Victory A Referendum For Peace appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Andrea Gagliarducci

A new Italian edition of a book about the life of Father Michael McGivney tells the story of his extraordinary life as a parish priest, the inspiration that led him to found the Knights of Columbus, and the chronicle of his ongoing canonization process.

“In reading this book, it will be clear that Father McGivney isn’t only a model for American priests, but for all priests as well,” Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, stressed at a June 25 presentation in Rome.

The Italian edition of “Parish Priest,” by Douglas Brinkley and Julie M. Fenster, has been published by Vatican Publishing House.

The book provides a portrait of the situation of the American Catholicism in the mid-nineteenth century.

In that period, the United States was still considered a land of mission. The dioceses were few in number and the bishops were under the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Propagation for the Faith, which supervised missionary lands.

The Catholic community was a minority in New Haven, Conn., where Fr. McGivney served as a parish priest. American Catholics at the time were building the social structures that would later cause them to become one of the most important Catholic communities in the world.

“Waves of Irish immigrants swelled the Catholic population in northeastern cities like New Haven, and waves of anti-Catholic sentiment greeted them,” said Kevin Coyne, professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism, who is currently writing a book on the history of the Knights of Columbus.

Fr. McGivney had expressed the wish to become a priest when he was 13, but it took him three years to convince his father. After having worked for three years in a factory, his father gave finally his consent. The young man joined a Jesuit seminary in Canada.

One year later, his father died. McGivney’s family would not have been able to afford the expense for another year of seminary, except that his local bishop paid the rest of his education. The future priest moved from the Jesuit seminary to “a seminary where he would become the kind of parish priest the diocese needed,” recounted Coyne.

“And that’s exactly what he became,” Coyne stressed. “He was not the kind of priest who believed his ministry ended with Sunday Mass.”

Anderson echoed Coyne, saying that “as the book makes clear, the Venerable Servant of God Father Michael McGivney was no ordinary priest – he accomplished no ordinary feat, and he lived in no ordinary time.”

“Nearly a decade before ‘Rerum Novarum’ formally launched the social doctrine of the Church, Father McGivney was founding a lay Catholic organization that would be dedicated to both the spiritual and temporal well-being of its members,” he added, referring to the landmark encyclical of Pope Leo XIII.

Fr. McGivney founded the Knight of Columbus in 1882. The organization saved numerous families from poverty and endured difficult times in the face of anti-Catholic discrimination. No wonder that the first Catholic candidate to the presidency of the United States, Al Smith, was a knight. And no wonder that the first Catholic president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was a knight as well.

“Father McGivney’s vision had prepared the Knights of Columbus to fully embrace the reinvigoration of the role of the laity in life of the Church in the Second Vatican Council and in the subsequent pontificates of St. John Paul II, and Popes Benedict XVI and Francis,” Anderson said.

The Supreme Knight noted that Fr. McGivney is important not only in America, but in Europe and throughout the world. He cited the priest’s inspiration “in the areas of charity, of the family and in the model for unity and cooperation between laity and clergy he forged.”

Fr. Giuseppe Costa, director of the Vatican Publishing House, praised the book “Parish Priest.” He said it “deepens the knowledge of American Catholicism in its numerous experiences, still not very well known in the Old Continent, in the fields of evangelization, of hospitality and charity.”

As the title of the book suggests, the strength of Fr. McGivney was in parish work.

In the preface of the book, the authors stressed that “too often American Catholic history focuses on the Church hierarchy.”

“Over the years, grand biographies have been written about famous bishops and cardinals. That’s fine, but the heart of Catholicism in the United States lies with the parish priests, who become so much a part of their parishioners’ regular lives,” Brinkley and Fenster said.

“It’s the parish priest to whom many of America’s 65 million Catholics turn in times of personal crisis or if poverty strikes a family. They serve on the level of human helping another,” the authors wrote.

Fr. McGivney’s process of canonization was begun in 1997 by Archbishop Daniel A. Cronin of Hartford.

The results of the diocesan process were formally presented to the Congregation of the Causes of Saints in 2000, thus starting the Roman phase of the cause for canonization.

If the process recognizes a miracle attributed to the intercession of Fr. McGivney, he will be proclaimed a blessed, a process called beatification. If a second miracle is recognized, Fr. McGivney will be proclaimed a saint.

He would be the first U.S.-born parish priest to be proclaimed a saint. Even now Catholics around the world include Fr. McGivney in their prayers and contemplation.

The post The Story Of Father McGivney, Extraordinary Priest appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Collections of Vatican Museums reportedly include a portable temple of Hindu deity Vishnu.

This colorful 18th century Vishnu temple reportedly folds and unfolds revealing many stories of Vishnu and is made of wood, mirror, paper, pigments and glass paste. Collections of Vatican Museums also include bronze statues of Hindu divinities dating from 8th to 14th century.

Vatican Library carries extensive collection of ancient Hindu scriptures and various other Hinduism related texts; including books on Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Bhagavad-Gita, Panchatantra, Krishna, Brahma, yoga, Shakti, Hindu theology, Hindu pantheon, etc. This Hindu collection is in various languages and some of the editions are as old as 1819.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA)
today, commending Holy See and His Holiness Pope Francis, said that it was a remarkable gesture and a step in the right direction to understand each other.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, also lauded the Vatican for including well-known verse from Brhadaranyaka-Upanishad (“Lead me from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, from death to immortality.”), line from Tagore’s Gitanjali (“Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.”), and reference to Mahatma Gandhi in “Way of the Cross at the Colesseum” Meditations and Prayers on Good Friday 2009 led by Pope and put together by Vatican Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff.

Rajan Zed further said that in 200-page “Verbum Domini” (The Word of the Lord) apostolic exhortation released on November 11, 2010, Pope Benedict wrote about “the sense of the sacred, sacrifice and fasting…” in Hinduism.

Zed argues that in our shared pursuit for the truth, we can learn from one another and thus can arrive nearer to the truth. Dialogue may help us vanquish the stereotypes, prejudices, caricatures, etc., passed on to us from previous generations. As dialogue brings us reciprocal enrichment, we shall be spiritually richer than before the contact.

The post Vatican Library Carries Extensive Collection Of Ancient Hindu Scriptures appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The migration route of the Amur falcon, probably the longest bird
migration from Mongolia to Africa via Assam and Nagaland, has been confirmed recently.

It was confirmed earlier that these birds migrate from Siberia, Mongolia and North of China. But their route via Assam and Nagaland and return journey was not confirmed until recently.

The two birds – Naga and Pangti – which were also fitted with similar devices have already returned to Mongolia from South Africa where they had gone from Nagaland in November along with flocks of birds they were travelling with and have reached their roosting sites in Mongolia.

The initiative to satellite track these migratory raptors was taken
jointly by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Ministry of Environment & Forest (Government of India) and Wildlife Institute of India (Dehradun) and Forest Department of Nagaland. It may be recalled that in November 2013, local communities in Nagaland embarked on the biggest conservation movement by satellite tagging of Amur Falcons by international scientists who declared Doyang as one of the biggest congregation of Amur Falcons (nearly one million) roosting there. The scientists declared Nagaland as the falcon capital of the world.

On November 7, 2013, the birds were satellite tagged and released.

One of the three birds fitted with satellite-tracking devices in
Nagaland last year, has either died or the tracking device has fallen
off the bird. The tracking device fitted to the bird named Wokha had
been sending signals from an area near Phuthanditjhaba in the Free
State Province of South Africa constantly since a month now. This is
something unusual and we firmly believe that the bird is either dead
or the device fell off. Naga, a male, and Wokha and Pangti, two
females were named after Nagaland, Wokha district and Pangti village and were fitted with the satellite devices on November 7.

They left Nagaland a few days later to South Africa and finally
reached South Africa on January 9 this year after crossing difficult
journey over Arabian Sea. The Amur Falcons spent their winter in South Africa.

While starting their journey back home, the Amur Falcon named Naga was the first one to lead the journey and has reached Gujarat
coast after taking different route during its backward journey.

The device has an small antenna and a solar panel which were fitted to the back of the birds. It weighs about 5 gram and hampers nothing to the birds movement. The cost of each device is about 7 lakh. Naga
and Pangti has taken a different route while returning from South
Africa and had entered the Indian Subcontinent through the Gujrat
coast. The two birds – Naga and Pangti flew over Gujrat, Madhya
Pradesh, Jharkhand, Meghalaya and Manipur and avoided the Bay of
Bangal while returning to Mongolia.

Moreover, twenty eight other Amur falcons were also fitted with leg
bands or rings for proper study of these migratory species, which
travel about 22,000 km every year from Mongolia to Africa via Assam and Nagaland. It was in 2010 that 10 Amur falcons were fitted with satellite-tracking devices in South Africa by a group of scientists led by Bern-Ulrich Meyburg of Germany. However, only one bird returned to Newcastle in South Africa after completing the migration route.

Amur falcons raptors with pigeon looks are said to have one of the
longest migratory routes. These birds travel from Siberia, Mongolia
and North China to Africa via India where they rest at Doyang in
Nagaland and at Nellie in Assam. They feed on insects during the day
and the rest on trees and electric wires in Assam and Nagaland. They spend about one month in Assam and Nagaland every autumn to gain fitness for their onward journey to Africa over the Arabian Sea.

Until 2012, the Doyang roosting site was dubbed the killing fields of
falcons. They were killed in large numbers by villagers. After
initiatives taken by forest departments and NGOs including Wildflowers (a conservation group of CCER) in Assam, not a single bird was killed in 2013-14. The state also made international headlines with the conservation achievement and the authorities and the Pangti villagers of the state were praised for their effort.

After reaching South Africa, Naga and Pangti have taken different routes during their return journey flying over Somalia Crossing Arabian sea Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Meghalaya, Manipur, entered Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, China now reached inner Mongolia. The birds are expected to visit Assam and Nagaland roosting site next October.

The post Amur Falcons Return To Mongolia Via Assam-Nagaland appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Oleg Shynkarenko

The recently reintroduction of conscription in Ukraine has been unpopular, with many young men unwilling to join a badly-resourced army to fight separatist forces in the country’s east.

However, thousands of volunteers in several dozen paramilitary units appear ready to pick up the slack.

Ukraine had compulsory military service until early this year, although many 18-year-olds avoided enlistment, citing health reasons or religious objections. Conscription was reintroduced in May by interim president Oleksandr Turchynov in response to the ongoing crisis.

After training for one year – or nine months for university graduates – conscripts can return to civilian life, but are required to remain available in the reserve. That means that the armed forces, currently numbering around 130,000, could be massively boosted by reservists, but the military remains badly resourced and trained.

Kevlar helmets and modern communications equipment are considered luxuries, and volunteers have been collecting money to buy and deliver kit to units in the east.

The defence ministry even ran a funding appeal in which donations of five hryvnas (50 US cents) could be made by SMS text. The appeal netted hundreds of thousands of dollars to help soldiers who often lack body armour.

The response to the call-up has been less than enthusiastic.

“People don’t come to our office,” an official from the military enlistment office in Zhytomyr in northwest Ukraine, told local journalists in April. “Yesterday we sent out 350 notices and no one came. The people who do come are 45 years old, with all their ailments. I don’t want them joining the army.”

Some people bribe doctors to dodge army service.

“My sister told me about a mutual acquaintance who got a notice as a reservist,” Volodymyr Parasyuk, a well-known Euromaidan activist, wrote on his Facebook page. “But instead of joining the army, he bribed the doctor, who invented a fantastic disease especially for him.”

There are, however, many others who are willing to engage in the fighting in the east.

Interior minister Arsen Avakov announced on June 16 that 30 volunteer battalions had been formed, with a total of 5,600 combatants. Of this number, around 3,000 were already serving in eastern Ukraine.

Some units like the Azov Battalion have been subordinated to the interior ministry and incorporated into the reconstituted National Guard – at least in theory.

“Azov are men who organised themselves to fight for the freedom of Ukraine,” declares the battalion’s official Facebook page. “We don’t need a command from above to defend us from gangsters, separatists, ‘little green men’ [Russian soldiers without insignia] and other devils.”

The page goes on to make it clear that “the Azov men cannot be stopped at the command” of the Kiev authorities.

Dmytro Lynko, 26, signed up to fight with the Azov unit a month ago. Since he had previously avoided conscription, his firearms experience was limited to funfair shooting galleries.

“I decided to join Azov because a lot of my friends from Maidan had done the same,” he told IWPR. “I didnt plan to join the regular army because they might send me to rearguard service. I am a patriot and I wanted to go and fight from the time Crimea was occupied, but there were no military operations at that point.”

Lynko was quickly promoted to the rank of company commander, and his most recent battle was in Mariupol, in the Donetsk region, when the city was held by separatists.

After Ukrainian troops regained control of Mariupol earlier this month, Lynko returned to Kiev for a short spell of leave, but he plans to return and fight on.

The volunteer battalions draw their funding from either the state or from private donors, with each fighter receiving about 400 dollars a month.

The best-paid unit is said to be the Dnipro battalion, formed in April 2014 with backing from the interior ministry from Igor Kolomoysky, a wealthy businessman who is governor of the Dniepropetrovsk region.

Privates in this well-supplied battalion are paid 1,000 dollars a month and officers between 3,000 and 5,000 dollars.

Then there is the Donbas territorial defence battalion, numbering around 900 fighters, many from the eastern regions, who have sworn to lay down their arms only when the separatists are completely defeated.

In an interview with the Ukrainian Channel 24 television network, a Donbas member who identified himself only as “Doberman” explained his motivation.

“I was born in Georgia, spent ten years in the Georgian police, and then I met a girl from Ukraine, married her and we have a son,” said the 39-year-old, his face hidden by a black balaclava, a Kalashnikov rifle in his arms, and a soiled flag of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic under his feet.

“I’ve been living in Ukraine for five years and I’m ready to defend the integrity and independence of this country. Actually it isn’t a war, but… an indirect invasion,” he said, adding that he had tried unsuccessfully to join the army. “Then I started to search for some other ways to fight. So I found myself in Donbas and I’m really happy.”

Oleg Shynkarenko is a Ukrainian journalist based in Kiev.

The post Volunteers Bolster Ukraine’s Fighting Force appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Benjamin Beasley-Murray

One hundred years on, Gavrilo Princip, the man who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, is as contentious a figure as ever, and communities in Bosnia and Serbia are unable to agree how the event – and the assassin himself – should be remembered.

Just memorialising the act that lit the touchpaper for the First World War is proving hugely divisive.

Commemorations this weekend in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, the scene of the assassination on June 28, 1914, are being boycotted by Serb leaders who had earlier agreed to attend. Instead, an alternative event is to be held in the predominantly Serb-populated Republika Srpska, one of the two administrative entities that make up Bosnia and Herzevovina.

The centrepiece of the Sarajevo event, a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, due to be broadcast by Eurovision on June 28, might not even go ahead, according to an international diplomat in Sarajevo.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said two obstacles stood in the way. First, the venue is the city hall, which was destroyed by incendiary shells in August 1992 during the siege and has been newly restored – but it might not even be structurally ready. “At the moment, only the atrium has been properly finished,” the diplomat said, “so the chances of the event going ahead there are low.”

As of the morning of June 26, the building was still ringed with fencing with a sign saying it was closed due to ongoing construction.

Second, the diplomat said, because the building is state property, permission to use it needs an official signature. “Given that the minister of civil affairs, who is ultimately responsible for granting the permit, is a Serb, how likely is he to do so in time for the weekend? For a concert by Austrians in the building in Sarajevo where Archduke Ferdinand was visiting literally minutes before he was killed? Where there is a plaque on the exterior referring to the ‘Serb criminals’ who destroyed the library?”

The final lines of the plaque refer to the destruction of the library the building housed in 1992, noting that two million books, periodicals and documents “vanished in the flames”.

“Do not forget. Remember and warn!” it says.

Republika Srpska’s president Milorad Dodik, who had originally been expected to attend the planned event, announced earlier this year that no representatives from the entity would be present.

Two weeks ago, Serbia’s prime minister Aleksandar Vucic said he would not be taking part, and claimed that what was meant to be a joint commemoration had been hijacked by the Bosniak Federation, Bosnia’s other entity. Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic said at the same time that he could not attend an event that amounted to an “accusation” against his people. And Nebojsa Radmanovic, the Serb member of the tripartite Bosnian Presidency, declined his invitation in a letter to Austrian president Heinz Fischer, stating that the Sarajevo city government had abused the commemoration and “subordinated its meaning to the context of the 1990s civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.

So instead, Serb officials plan to gather in East New Sarajevo – which lies within Republika Srpska – where they will unveil a statue of Princip.

Assuming that the concert goes ahead – the Office of the High Representative could presumably intervene to clear the bureaucratic obstacles – it will be loaded with significance. Second on the Austrian orchestra’s list for the evening, following the Bosnian national anthem, is Haydn’s Third String Quartet, nicknamed the “Emperor” because it borrows from “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser” (“God save Emperor Francis”), another Haydn piece that later became Austro-Hungary’s national anthem.

PRINCIP’S ROLE RESHAPED AFTER THE FACT

Long after his death, Princip’s legacy is still disputed. Celebrated as a hero by Serbs, he is regarded as a terrorist by many Bosnian Muslims.

Over the years, he has been depicted as a Serb expansionist, an anti-imperialist and a pan-Yugoslav idealist, and his motivations ascribed variously to upholding or undermining Serbian statehood, a desire to unite the southern Slavs, or a bid to shake Bosnia free of its Austro-Hungarian shackles.

“People are owned by history,” says Branislav, 48, an anthropologist whom I meet for coffee on a bright morning in Pancevo, a city nestled on the north of the Danube, near Serbia’s capital Belgrade. “History shapes and reshapes people, and our interpretation of them changes all the time.”

Branislav’s piercing stare from over the rim of his coffee-cup is reminiscent of the photos of Princip I had been looking at. He seems to look two inches behind me as he speaks, his eyes glinting beneath dark eyebrows and a sweep of jet black hair.

It is no surprise, then, that his surname is Princip and that he is a great-nephew of Gavrilo. Perhaps it is only my imagination, but he appears to have the same jawline and nose as his great-uncle.

Branislav’s brother Sasha, 51, joins us under the shade of a parasol. Living in Canada where he works as an engineer, he is visiting Serbia on holiday. Like Sasha, he is aware that for many people, Gavrilo Princip is a blank canvas on which they paint their own picture of him.

“In my mind he was just a young guy trying to change the world for the better,” Sasha says, “but people are trying to use him. There are Serbs who try to use him as an Orthodox Serb.”

Sasha is referring to the fact that many nationalist Serbs have adopted Princip as their poster-boy, the very image of a selfless young man who they say acted to better the lot of Serbs as an ethnic group.

According to this narrative, Princip was trying to unite the homelands of Orthodox Serbs across Serbia and Bosnia when he assassinated the Archduke. This project – the creation of a Greater Serbia – would foreshadow the terrible acts committed during the Bosnian war of the 1990s.

And so it was that General Ratko Mladic, who stands accused of war crimes in The Hague, began a pre-trial hearing in 2012 by saying he wanted to offer up some words about the “knight” Gavrilo Princip. The judge refused, but Mladic went on regardless, prompting the court to switch his microphone off.

“Gavrilo Princip gave his life for his people just as I did,” the defendant shouted as he hammered the table with his fists. Mladic said that in 1914 and 80 years later, the Bosnian Serbs were “under blockade”.

Judge Alphons Orie explained to Mladic, “The nation or the country are not in the dock, but you as an individual.”

The problem with Mladic’s account is that it robs Princip of his individuality and historical context, and turns him into a cipher responsible for anything done by any Serb.

Many would say that reducing Princip’s motives to monoethnic nationalism misses the point entirely. Living under Austro-Hungarian rule, he was driven by anti-imperialist zeal, and wanted the Balkan Slavs, whether Serb or not, to live unoccupied by great powers.

“Gavrilo was acting as somebody who wanted an end to the occupation of Bosnia by the Austro-Hungarians and who wanted the southern Slavs to live together,” says Sasha.

HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS MODIFIED TO SUIT THOSE IN POWER

Dubravka Stojanovic, a professor of history at Belgrade University, says that under successive regimes, the reputations of Princip and his co-conspirators – who, she reminds me, included a Croat and two Muslims – have been revised to suit whichever historical view is in vogue.

“In socialist Yugoslavia, they were celebrated as socialist heroes, as freedom fighters for the workers and for the oppressed,” she says. “It was that socialist component that was emphasised. And it wasn’t until [post-socialist leader Slobodan] Milosevic that suddenly, for the first time, Princip becomes a Serbian national hero rather than a Yugoslav. Every regime has misused him – in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia it was conveniently forgotten that he was a left-wing anarchist. Under socialism, it was forgotten that he was a nationalist, albeit a Yugoslav. And then with Milosevic, Princip becomes – wrongly – a Serbian nationalist. Then in the 1990s, he starts to be seen as the father of the fight for Republika Srpska in Bosnia.”

She concludes, “These changes of understanding show that you can do whatever you like with history. History is always about the present rather than the past.”

The picture painted by Sasha and Branislav is one of a romantic idealist.

“He was a poet,” says Sasha. “He was in touch with [Nobel prizewinning Croat writer] Ivo Andric, with whom he shared thoughts about poetry. He destroyed all his poetry before he carried out the plot, however.”

Princip died in prison of tuberculosis in April 1918 in Terezín, now in the Czech Republic – he had been spared the death penalty because he was not yet 20 when he carried out the assassination. Denied books or paper, he carved into the stone wall of his cell: “Our shadows will walk through Vienna, stroll around the court and frighten the gentry.”

I ask Sasha whether he believes his great-uncle would have thought that the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was worth the enormous cost in human lives.

“He would,” Sasha answered, “but it depends on the time-frame – were he to have seen Yugoslavia in the decades after World War I, he would have said it was worth it. But looking further, if he were to know what happened to Yugoslavia, how it met its end, he would definitely say it was not worth it.”

MONUMENTAL CHANGES

Striking out on a hired bicycle in Sarajevo, I ask a pedestrian for directions to Principov Most – Princip Bridge. I am politely shown the way, but reminded that the bridge is called Latinska Cuprija. It reverted to its old name – Latin Bridge – in 1992 with the onset of hostilities.

Cycling on, I am sure I’ll spot the bridge from some distance. Surely there will be some large monument to mark the site of the most famous event in Sarajevo’s history. But no, there is only a very missable inscription on the side of a nearby building, once a café and now the city museum, outside which Princip pulled the trigger.

That has since changed – the museum now has large pictures of Princip and the archduke on its front façade, put there in time for the anniversary.

Few historical locations can have undergone so many different rememberings as this one, at the intersection of two roads and a bridge. In the wake of the assassination, the Austrians erected a memorial to Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie at the site, consisting of two enormous columns with medallions and a marble plaque. It marked the memory of the royal couple who died “martyrs’ deaths by a treasonous hand”.

The columns were pulled down with the establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1918, and a metal plate embedded in the road to mark where the archduke’s car was fired on disappeared, as well. No replacement was put in place for 12 years, because regicide – Franz Ferdinand was heir to the throne – is not something monarchies tend to publicly celebrate. But in 1930 a monument, officially funded by private citizens but with a nod and a wink from the government, was put up to celebrate Princip, who “proclaimed freedom on St Vitus Day”.

In 1941, the plaque was torn down by invading Nazi forces and handed to Adolf Hitler as birthday present. At around the same time, their allies in the Croatian Ustase brought in Princip’s younger brother, grandfather to Branislav and Sasha. A doctor called Nikola Princip, he was executed, they say, for no other reason than the family connection.

As in a children’s party game, a plaque appeared in 1945, again in Cyrillic letters but this time with a Partisan star. This was “a symbol of eternal gratitude to Gavrilo Princip and his comrades, to fighters against the Germanic conquerors”.

When Bosnian Serb forces began shelling Sarajevo in April 1992, the plaque swiftly came down.

Shoeprints – actually dating only to 1953 – that were embedded in the pavement to show where Gavrilo stood at the fatal moment also disappeared.

In 2004, a bilingual inscription was put in place stating, now in Latin script, simply that this was the spot where Princip assassinated the Archduke and his wife.

For many Serbs, that is not enough. Emir Kusturica, a Sarajevo-born Serbian filmmaker who has twice won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is adamant that Princip should be publicly acknowledged as a hero.

This April, he unveiled a statue to Princip in the Serbian town of Tovarisevo. Unveiling the statue in the town centre, an emotional Kusturica kissed its cheek.

“If we cannot agree on this one thing, if Serbs and Muslims cannot agree on the simple fact that Princip was a freedom fighter, we cannot agree on anything,” Kusturica told me in a telephone interview. “I have tried to find just one thing to agree on, but they cannot. Bosnia was the last colony in Europe. Princip was an anti-colonial revolutionary and his shot was the beginning of freedom.”

Kusturica is orchestrating an alternative celebration on June 28 in Andricgrad, his theme-park-like construction in Visegrad, Republika Srpska. A host of Serb dignitaries are expected to attend.

A large mosaic mural will be unveiled dedicated to Princip and Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia), the revolutionary group he was part of.

“We will make a performance, reconstructing the events of the day,” says Kusturica. “And there will be a 35-minute alternative trial of Princip.”

Kusturica believes that Princip’s trial for treason was illegitimate. “The Austro-Hungarian empire was not the sovereign power of Bosnia. Their law was not applicable and the trial was illegal,” he says.

The filmmaker says that on June 28, he will launch a petition that he hopes will win support all across Bosnia for a “retrial” to be held in Sarajevo. He hopes this will vindicate those who carried out “the most amateur assassination in the history of the world”.

POLITICAL CONTROVERSY AS “CONTINUATION OF WAR”

In the official Bosnian Serb ceremony, one statue to Princip will be unveiled in a park in East New Sarajevo on June 28. When plans for the monument were announced this spring, officials in Belgrade said another statue of Princip would go up, at the top of Kalemegdan, the historic fortress in the Serbian capital, in time for the centenary. This project seems to have been dropped, though.

It is possible the Serbian government is reluctant to obstruct its growing relationship with the European Union by marking so publicly its pride in a figure viewed as the originator of the continent’s Great War. Having roads, schools and hospitals named after Princip is one thing, but having him standing proud on the capital’s skyline might be too provocative.

Provocation is all too often the norm in Bosnia, whose two entities, Republika Srpska and the Federation, grind against each other as much as they interlock.

“The Serbs in Bosnia who are wanting to glorify Princip have the intention of provoking a fresh crisis,” says historian Stojanovic. “They are wanting to show that they are still on the Serbian side, that they are still fighting the war of the 1990s.”

Stojanovic cites the dictum of Prussian general and military thinker Carl von Clausewitz that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.”

“This may be true,” says Stojanovic, “but we can see the other side of this in Bosnia. There, politics is the continuation of war by other means.”

Benjamin Beasley-Murray is a freelance journalist based in London and Belgrade. This article was published at IWPR’s  TRI Issue 840.

The post Gavrilo Princip’s Legacy Still Contested – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Rita Nketiah

This essay begins in pieces. It is my attempt to piece together the realities and experiences of a group that, up until this point in Canadian history, has been under-theorized: second-generation African immigrant youth. I believe that the reasons for this are many. But before we begin the discussion, it is important to locate myself as a second-generation African woman who has spent the majority of her life in the Greater Toronto Area. My family first arrived in Toronto in 1988 from Ghana, West Africa at the height of its economic collapse. We settled in the West-end of Toronto in a predominantly newcomer residential area, amongst Caribbean, South Asian and other African communities. I was not raised as an African-Canadian. I was raised as a Ghanaian, an African living in Canada. Our parents did not think that far ahead. They were not here to fit in, nor create an identity that would be constitutive of “Canadianness”. In fact, the identity they sought to create for me would be outside of Canadian identity, and not quite reflective of contemporary Ghanaian society, either. As immigrants, they lived in this nebulous space of remembering their yesterdays, while learning to navigate their present realities. Raised within this context, three distinct cultures: the Ghanaian culture created within the home and through social networks; my immediate local neighbourhood cultural context which was predominantly Black, Diasporic and working class; and lastly, the mainstream Canadian society infused with piecemeal multiculturalism. While traversing these three worlds, I was often confronted with my inability to fully “pass” in any of them. I began to question if other African youth were having similar experiences growing up in Canada. Did they also feel dislocated when navigating these worlds? Were they completely acculturated? Were they indifferent? So, it was these salient questions that has led me to embark on an exploratory research project about African youth. What I discovered is that up until recently, most scholarship about African immigrant youth has actually been subsumed under other categories. For example, while much has been written about new and first-generation African immigrants, scholars have sometimes made the mistake of assuming that immigrant children also deal with the same types of settlement and integration challenges. In reality, African children raised in the diaspora often navigate very different socio-cultural realities than their parents. The second challenge with much of this research is that African youth are often lumped in the general category of “Black”, in what some scholars have called the “inflexibility of differentiation” (Tettey and Puplampu, 2005). And as Zaami (2012) notes, while African and [other Black] immigrants may share physical traits, “the assumption that their experiences, and the nature of their adaptation and…social exclusion, are [easily mapped onto each other] is unwarranted”. For example, African youth are often learning to navigate Caribbean hyper-visibility in the construction and presentation of Black Canadian identity, given the longer history of Caribbean migration to Canada.

Another challenge in speaking about African youth in the Global North is that much of the data about second-generationers draws from the American experience. However, given the different political, cultural and historical realities of Canada, this data is not always transferable. Prior to the 1967 Trudeau-instituted Multicultural Policy, which ushered in a diverse range of skilled and non-skilled immigrants, the Canadian nation-state was imagined as a white nation (Banerjee, 2000; Razack, 1998; Dei, 2005; Whitaker, 1991). And yet, today, this former “whites-only nation” is drowning in its own rhetoric of multiculturalism. However, research by Mensah (2000); Bannerji, (2000) and Galabuzi (2001) note that most of this multicultural ethos tends to mask the continued structural inequalities that insidiously marginalize immigrants of colour in areas of education, employment and housing. At the same time, it may be argued that Canada’s multiculturalism stance ironically opens up the space for African immigrant youth to actually identify with their parents’ culture in ways that American assimilation does not.

Indeed, I would argue that given this context there is an increasing need to articulate and study second-generation immigrant needs, experiences, and challenges. This essay will begin to unpack the ways in which African youth express and lay claim to an identity in a Canadian context. My paper is guided by two questions: First, how do African youth in the Diaspora express and/or negotiate their cultural identities in a multicultural society such as Canada? Second, what do these narratives tell us about the changing nature of “Black Canada” and globalized African identities? The paper ends with a short reflection on the way forward in this bourgeoning field of New African Diaspora studies. I believe that this paper begins to offer some insight about the potential and quality of life for African youth living in the Global North.

ACCULTURATION AND BUILDING COMMUNITY

So what do we know about African youth in Canada? Well first, research conducted in the past decade or so suggests that African youth are learning to build a sense of community amongst their ethnic groups and in the larger Canadian society. As with most immigrants, Africans engage in community building in Canada because it is often vital to their economic and social success during settlement (Yesufu, 2009; Wong, 2005; Creese 2011). Particularly, for immigrant parents in smaller cities or less diverse communities, adopting a pan-African identity becomes a political strategy with its own benefits (Creese, 2011). Foremost amongst these benefits is the ability to provide the children of African immigrants with the opportunity to learn and absorb their parents’ culture. For example, Creese (2011) finds that in the relatively small African immigrant community of Vancouver, community members engage in a range of practices and activities to build community for the second-generation, including the establishment of an African soccer league, music societies, community organizations and cultural centres, and a federation of national (African) organizations. Interestingly, parents often express a desire to counteract the perceived “negative influence of African-American popular culture” (Creese, 2011). Community members in Vancouver promote cultural centres to teach their children what they believe are the four (4) big African values: “respect for elders, respect for authority of fathers and husbands, communal solidarity, and the sacredness of life” (Creese, 2011). Indeed, the literature, here, suggests that the ability of children to create community often depends on the efforts of their parents to expose them to cultural values and beliefs.

Ojo (1997) also notes the importance of creating or re-imagining the cultural homeland in a particularly hostile Canadian environment. Her work considers how her bi-cultural African/Caribbean identity is negotiated in the space of a Trinidadian beauty pageant in Toronto. She draws on her own experience of growing up in Canada with an African parent, to suggest that connecting with her parents’ home culture was a survival strategy. In her study on African-Canadian youth involved in a cultural beauty pageant, she found that such cultural spaces make it possible for youth to connect and build community within their Diaspora. Often, within these cultural spaces, second-generation youth create an imagined homeland that meets their needs for belonging –that is, a homeland “free of racism, sexism, classism and patriarchy” (Ojo, 1997). While the obvious danger, here, is a mythical or romanticized version of what home may have actually been like for their parents, second-generation youth rely on these cultural spaces and re-imaginings in order to make sense of their own dislocation in Canada. Other research complicates these internal cultural spaces as highly contested, as second-generation youth struggle for and over meaning. In her focus group interview of second-generation Oromo-Canadian refugees, Kumsa (2005) finds that Oromo youth, many of whom arrived in Canada as refugees during Ethiopia’s civil war, are navigating be-longing within three different communities: the Canadian national community, the larger Black Diaspora community, and among Oromos across North America. The history of European expansionism in Ethiopia further marginalized the Oromo people within the nation; this minoritization becomes heightened in the migratory process as Oromos become stigmatized by the label of “refugee”. Not only do these youth have to contend with othering in broader Canadian society, but they also struggle against other black communities (including Ethiopian migrants) and amongst Oromos themselves. In fact, when it comes to be-longing with other Oromos, there is an interesting divide that occurs, whereby in the face of other difference such as racial difference with white Canadians, and cultural difference with other blacks, Oromo youth assert a strong cultural identity; however, when those variables are removed, the internal differences become magnified, such as the division between American and Canadian-based Oromos. Ironically, when the two groups meet, they assert a strong patriotism for their host countries.

In another study of second-generation African women in Alberta, Okeke-Ihejirika and Spitzer (2005) suggest that youth have a much more flexible understanding of community –one that is not constricted to place and space. Indeed, when these youth talk about their “community”, they often embrace their ancestral homes, their Black diasporic networks and the larger Edmonton community. Even more, this study suggests that African youth in Alberta operate as a “social network”, because they do not interact with Africans on a daily basis, but they draw on each other for strength and resources. Admittedly, one of the challenges in extending their notion of community to their transnational family derives in their lack of competency in their native African language(s). Often, parents act as the link or bridge between children and the homeland, as children are not able to communicate with their cousins and family members back home in their dialect. Yeboah (2008) also cites language as a major challenge in building community between older and younger generations in the Diaspora; and he argues that the lack of basic language skills in the native tongue will continue to widen the generation gap in the host country. And yet, his study of Ghanaian youth in the Ohio area also suggests that while some children have completely abandoned their parents’ native language, others retain the language, but are sometimes embarrassed by their parents speaking Twi in public. Yeboah (2008) concludes, however, that it is “still too early to tell if these second-generation youth will join the mainstream middle-class America or will become part of a marginalized rainbow underclass by learning English and neglecting Twi”.

EXPERIENCES IN EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT

In the areas of education and employment, research remains quite limited and, in fact, suggests mixed experiences for this demographic. Notably, Zhou (2000), speaking more generally about immigrant children, suggests that they tend to fare better than native-born minorities because “they are rooted in family, culture, and a community that emphasizes education and positive attitudes towards public school”. And yet, many scholars writing in the Canadian context have suggested that Black African youth, perhaps as a direct result of this inflexibility of differentiation mentioned earlier, struggle with racism within the school system. In 2008, for example, after a Toronto District School Board report was released stating that there was a 40 percent high school dropout rate amongst Black youth, community pundits were outraged, calling for the establishment of an Africentric school to correct this downward spiral (Dei, 2008). Codjoe (2005) also notes that the Eurocentric worldview of the Canadian curriculum often contributes to the push-out rates amongst Black youth. This whitewashing of education often denies the realities of African-Canadian youth, and completely erases Black people from Canadian history. Dei (1997) also argues that the education system is reflective of the greater hegemonic discourses in Canadian society. For example, youth of African descent are often constructed as unintelligible, low-achieving, lazy and criminally-minded (Codjoe, 2005; Watts-Warren, 2009). Other scholarship also suggests that teachers usually have limited knowledge about Africans, which can create feelings of dis-identification and apathy in the classroom. African students are also confronted with the ignorance of other Black students, whose knowledge of Africa and its people is usually limited to popular media representations of a poor and destitute continent (Kumsa, 2005; Nzegwu, 2009; Abdi, 2005). Indeed, there is a failure of Canadian schools to “adequately address the cultural, social, psychological and education needs of African students” (Codjoe, 2005). To cope with this lacking support, African youth turn to each other for encouragement in their studies (Okeke-Ihejirika and Spitzer, 2005; Ojo, 1997). All of this research suggests that when it comes to education, there is an upward battle for African youth; that second-generation African immigrants may have a higher educational attainment than native-born children is certainly not the result of institutional support, but often despite this lacking support.

IDENTITY, NAMING PRACTICES, AND NEGOTIATING ‘BLACKNESS’

The challenges experienced by second-generationers in the education system as discussed above provide us some context to appreciate salient issues of identity, belonging and self-naming practices. As some have noted, our identities are often pre-determined by social and historical processes; past events and circumstances, as well as contemporary configurations (Ojo, 1997). In considering identity formation for African youth in America, Clark (2008) discovered that the increasing presence of African communities across metropolitan cities has given youth a context for which to embrace and connect with their African roots (Clarke, 2008; Kumsa, 2005). And yet this research also suggested that African youth oscillate between using multiple ethnic and racial labels to identify themselves, which change depending on their setting. There is evidence to suggest that while some Africans are aware of the superimposed identities and adopt them, there are other youth who consciously resist what they see as the homogenization of blackness by identifying as “African” or with their respective nationalities (Creese, 2011; Clark, 2008; Yeboah, 2008; Okeke-Ihejirika and Spitzer, 2005; Ojo, 1997). Particularly, for African youth, there is often an early awareness of anti-Black racism (Lewis, 1992), which plays out in the socio-spatial exclusion from mainstream Canadian society and even within neighbourhoods that are predominantly racialized. Zaami (2012) notes, for example, that for Ghanaian youth in the Jane and Finch corridor of Toronto, this anti-African hostility manifests itself through their difficulty in accessing restaurants, shopping malls and recreational centres (in and outside Jane and Finch); racial profiling by police; difficulty in acquiring a driver’s license; alienation in the workplace and challenges with employers; and the general public’s often limited knowledge of Africa(ns). This often leads to a diverse array of internalized beliefs about one’s cultural identity in relation to the greater host society. For the youth in Zaami (2012)’s study, they adapt to this exclusion “through reformulation of ‘dress codes’, Anglicizing names on resumes, and masking of their actual neighbourhoods.” And for youth who arrive here at a much older stage in life, the perception that acceptance grows overtime is sometimes incorrect, much to their chagrin. In her study on African immigrants in Vancouver, Creese (2011) finds that some participants still express their ambiguity around their Canadian identity particularly when they struggle to access state resources. Even after having lived in their host country for over ten years, some participants are still navigating cultural citizenship with caution. For example, one participant, who has lived in Canada for over thirteen years still questions how Canadian she feels, especially in times when she is unable to find work. Quoting her participant, Creese writes:

‘At the time of the interview she was searching unsuccessfully for work commensurate with her Canadian university degree, a process that has again shifted her identity. As she explained, “this job thing doesn’t make me feel like I belong to Canada. That’s why I am thinking, OK, I didn’t realize, maybe I am still Ugandan.’
(Creese, 2011)

In conclusion, the current literature on African youth in Canada is a growing field that needs further exploration. These youth ultimately learn to navigate identity in a society undergirded by white domination. Unlike, European-descended immigrant children, who usually integrate in the shortest amount of time possible (Yeboah, 2008), African immigrant youth are challenged with trying to fit themselves into host country social configurations that often do not consider their presence integral to the national fabric of their host societies (Galabuzi, 2000; Ojo, 1997; Zaami, 2012; Tettey and Puplampu, 2005; Khanlou, 2008). I argue that there is a general need to expand research to consider how youth empower themselves in the context of a very white Canada. Further, the gendered dimensions of African youth social experiences has been undertheorized in Canada. Aside from a study conducted by Okeke-Ihejirika and Spitzer in 2005, in which they interview young African women in Alberta, there is hardly any information on how the social construction of gender informs youth identity growing up in Canada. The recent phenomenon of return migration to the continent should also be explored in the Canadian context. Again, most of this literature has focused on parents’ contributions to development back home, with far too little focus on the ongoing relationship that many adult children maintain with Africa. And finally, there is a need to disaggregate the data about continental African youth in the Diaspora and other black communities. While I do believe in the importance of using “Black” and “Blackness” to identify a particular political project and reality, it is also important to note that there are bodies for whom “black” is not a sensible, sufficient or complete label, because “black” does not have a country from which it comes, language of which it speaks nor tribe to which it belongs. But more to the point, within the context of migration research, I’d argue that it is a huge scholarly misstep to not disaggregate African youth experiences from their larger Black cohort, given what we know about the very different patterns of Diasporic migration in Canada.

Rita Afrakomah Nketiah is a second-generation Ghanaian-Canadian feminist trying to find her way home. She is currently obtaining her PhD in Women’s Studies and Feminist Research and Migration and Ethnic Relations at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

The post Second-Generation African-Canadian Youth: Setting A Research Agenda appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Central banks have shifted into stocks and are buying up everything that isn’t bolted to the floor.

That’s the gist of the story that breathlessly appeared in the Financial Times about a week ago and swept across the blogosphere like a Santa Anna brushfire. And there’s some truth to it too, if taken with a large grain of salt. Here’s a clip from the Omfif’s report the FT’s cites in the article:

“A cluster of central banking investors has become major players on world equity markets,” says a report to be published this week by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (Omfif), a central bank research and advisory group. The trend “could potentially contribute to overheated asset prices”, it warns.” (Financial Times)

So, there you have it; stocks are rising, central banks are buying stocks like mad, therefore, central banks are driving the market. That’s all there is to it, right?

And we’re not talking chump change here either. According to the Omfif”s press release “global central banks and public sector institutions now account for an eye-watering “$29.1tn worth of investments … in 162 countries.”

Hmm. It’s easy to read that statement and assume that central banks have purchased $29 trillion in stocks, isn’t it? That’s what the folks over at Zero Hedge did. Check out the headline they ran shortly after the story appeared in the FT: “Cluster Of Central Banks” Have Secretly Invested $29 Trillion In The Market” (Zero Hedge)

But that’s not what the press release says, is it? It says “global central banks and public sector institutions”. There’s a big difference between the stocks a bank buys and all the investments in public pension funds, 401Ks, sovereign wealth funds etc. A huge difference. It looks like someone might be engaging in a bit of fear-mongering to get a rise out of readers.

That’s not to downplay the fact that CB’s are distorting prices by playing the market. They are. No one disputes that. Just like no one disputes that central banks should limit their activities to doing their job, which is maintaining price stability. (We’re deliberately omitting “full employment” since the Fed thinks it’s a big joke anyway.) But, hey, everyone knows these guys are a dodgy lot to begin with, so it’s hard to get whipped up into a lather every time they get caught in some new flimflam. Besides CB stock purchases are likely insignificant compared to corporate stock buybacks which are presently just-south of $600 billion per year. CB stock purchases are no where near that, regardless of what you read at Zero Hedge. Check this out in the Wall Street Journal:

“Last year, the corporations in the Russell 3000, a broad U.S. stock index, repurchased $567.6 billion worth of their own shares—a 21% increase over 2012, calculates Rob Leiphart, an analyst at Birinyi Associates, a research firm in Westport, Conn. That brings total buybacks since the beginning of 2005 to $4.21 trillion—or nearly one-fifth of the total value of all U.S. stocks today.” (Will Stock Buybacks Bite Back?, Wall Street Journal)

Yikes. “$4.21 trillion”! Now that’s what you call froth.

Anyway, the reason CBs are buying equities is to hedge their losses on the mountain of low-yielding bonds they purchased in their effort to recapitalize the insolvent banking system. They’re already taking it in the shorts for an estimated $250 billion per year, and when rates start marching upward, (as they inevitably will) they’re going to be bleeding red ink from both eyeballs. That’s why they want to diversify their portfolio; to staunch the hemorrhaging. Even so, the whole matter looks shabby and underhanded, which of course it is. It also calls into question present stock valuations which have been soaring with the zero rates, QE and positive earnings reports, the trifecta which pushes equities into the stratosphere regardless of the shitty condition of the underlying “real” economy. So–just like everyone else–the banks want to get on the winning side of the trade. But what a firestorm they’ve set off with these latest shenanigans! Here’s a sample of the outrage you’ll find on the Internet. This is from a Bill Bonner article titled “Proof the Stock Market Is Being Rigged”:

“We are still reeling.
Yesterday, we reported that central banks are major buyers of stocks…
We hardly know where to begin…

Outraged, we sputter and spit… we search for words… we look for metaphors and narratives… anything that will put this extraordinary situation in the right light…

Ah yes… central banks create new money… it gets passed around the financial community in many ways… and ultimately ends up in the equity markets…

In short, a grand slam of deceit. The World Series of financial catastrophe will follow. But that could be a long way off.” (Proof the Stock Market Is Being Rigged, Bonner and Partners)

“A grand slam of deceit”?

Fair enough. A little hyperbolic, but that’s to be expected, right? But, c’mon now, given the long list of scandals in the last few years–High-Frequency Trading (HFT), “toxic” mortgage-backed securities, Libor, London Whale, Robo-signing, structured finance, Madoff etc etc–it’s hard not to be little blasé about the whole deal, isn’t it? I’m not sure where Bonner’s been, but if you were to ask Joe Blow on the street, whether he thought the “market was rigged or not”, he’d undoubtedly nod his head affirmatively as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Because it is the most obvious thing in the world. Heidi Moore summed it up pretty well in a recent article at the Gurdian. She said:

“Most Americans don’t think much about the stock market, and that’s just fine with Wall Street. Because once you wake up to how screwed up the stock market really is, the financial industry knows you’re likely to get very nervous and take your money out.

Many are catching on: between 2007 and 2014, investors pulled $345bn from the stock market. E-Trades are down and worries are up, with 73% of Americans still not inclined to buy stocks, five years after the financial crisis…

Let’s get one thing straight: Investor confidence is not the problem. The screwed-up stock market is the problem. It’s time to break down the polite fiction that investing in the stock market is something that sane, rational, sensible people do. It is a high-risk contact sport for your money…

The US stock market depends entirely on the ignorance of regular people who are supposed to just shovel their money into retirement funds and 401(k)s, pay a whopping one-third of your retirement in fees to high-priced managers, and never whisper a complaint.

It’s a wonder that anyone (trusts the market) at all.” (Wall Street and Washington want you to believe the stock market isn’t rigged. Guess what? It still is, Heidi Moore, Guardian)

The market is totally rigged from stem to stern, which is why it is so hard to feign outrage at this latest sign of corruption. It’s just par for the course. What we found more interesting, was the OMFIF’s contention that the experimental monetary policies, the centrals banks initiated to deal with the Financial Crisis, have changed the system to what the author calls “state capitalism”.

“Whether or not this trend is a good thing”, he opines, “may be open to question. What is incontestable is that it has happened”.

While you can’t expect the media to cover something like this, it’s certainly worth mulling over. The fact is, CBs have taken over economic policy altogether. They’re running the whole shooting match. The various congresses and parliaments across the western world now merely act as a rubber stamp for the austerity measures demanded by their corporate bosses. Fiscal policy is a dead letter in the US, Japan, Australia, Canada, UK and the Eurozone. Everywhere the bank cartel has extended it’s grip, fiscal policy has been jettisoned altogether. It’s bailouts and lavish subsidies for the 1 percenters and belt-tightening, shock therapy for everyone else. Isn’t that how it works? State Capitalism isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s just class warfare taken to the next level. Check this out from Dave Marsh at Marketwatch:

“Central banks’ foreign-exchange reserves have grown unprecedentedly fast, especially in the developing world. The same authorities that are responsible for maintaining financial stability are often the owners of the large funds that add to liquidity in many markets…

Evidence of an increase in equity-buying by central banks and other public-sector investors has emerged from a survey of publicly owned or managed investments compiled by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF)… There are worries that central banks may be over-stretching themselves by operating in too many areas.

Jens Weidmann, president of Germany’s Bundesbank — spoke yearningly last week of the need for “central banks to shed their role as decision-makers of last resort and, thus, to return to their normal business.”

He said this “would help to preserve the independence of central banks, which is a key precondition to maintaining price stability in the long run.” (Central banks becoming major investors in stock markets, Dave Marsh, Marketwatch)

You might want to read that first part over again to savor what the author is saying. Here it is: “The same authorities that are responsible for maintaining financial stability are often the owners of the large funds that add to liquidity in many markets.”

That’s what you call corruption with a capital “C”. But then the author does a 180 and waxes-on about “preserving the independence of central banks, which is a key precondition to maintaining price stability in the long run.”

Right. The whole independence thing is a big joke. Why would anyone in their right mind bestow such extraordinary powers (“independence”) on a group of voracious, cutthroat bankers who have repeatedly shown that they can’t be trusted?

Huh?

It’s insanity. This latest outrage just proves that the central bank system needs to be either reformed or terminated. Preferably, terminated.

The post Central Bank Stock Buying Binge – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Priti Patnaik

Switzerland has denied preparing a list of tax dodgers for the Indian authorities amid mounting pressure on the alpine state. Even with a global standard on Automatic Information Exchange (AIE) in the works, repatriating money from offshore havens like Switzerland may not be easy.

An investigatory body, recently set up by India’s new government to unearth black money, trumpeted the disputed cooperation to the Times of India: “This is a breakthrough development in the fight against black money. Until now, the impression was that Switzerland is creating hurdles in this battle,” Arijit Pasayat, vice-chairman of the Special Investigations Team (SIT), told the newspaper.

But an official denial of such a list from the Swiss State Secretariat for International Financial Matters (SIF) hints at a more challenging task ahead for Indian investigators. “Such reports [of lists being prepared] are untrue,” SIF spokesman Mario Tuor told swissinfo.ch.

SIF added in a later statement that there had been no further developments in the issue since Swiss negotiators met with Indian counterparts in Delhi in February. “Switzerland is committed to resolving any open question with India and trusts that India shares its understanding that any solution can only be found within the established national and international legal frameworks,” the statement read.

The expectations from the new Indian investigations team are high, but so are the challenges it faces. What will this mean for jurisdictions like Switzerland, and to the broader fight against tax evasion globally?

Trillions

Various estimates peg the amount of unaccounted Indian money between $2 trillion to $3 trillion (CHF1.8 trillion to CHF 2.7 trillion). Some CHF4.25 billion of Indian assets were parked in Swiss banks last year (down from CHF5.7 billion in 2012), according to the Swiss National Bank, but there is no way of knowing how much of this wealth has been declared.

It is easy to see why the new Indian government is keen to improve its record of collecting tax, partially by plugging these leaks of wealth abroad. Tax revenues in India represents only around 15% of total economic output – compared to nearly 40% across the European Union.

Rudolf Elmer, a Swiss banker-turned-whistle-blower, is sceptical that SIT will prove any more successful than the United States in dragging information out of Switzerland.

“The US requested information from about 350 Swiss Banks, but has so far received information on very small number of Americans who hold a Swiss account,” he told swissinfo.ch. “I hope I am wrong but I would be very surprised if the Indian investigation team will be more effective than the American team.”

Perhaps a more profitable route for India would be to utilise the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Declaration on Automatic Exchange of Information in Tax Matters, which Switzerland endorsed in May.

The standard obliges countries and jurisdictions to obtain financial account information from their financial institutions and exchange information automatically with other jurisdictions on an annual basis.

Which countries?

On endorsing the declaration, the Swiss government Switzerland said it would start negotiating bilateral tax deals with “selected” countries. “In an initial phase, priority would be given to the introduction of the automatic exchange of information with countries with which there are close economic and political ties…and which are considered to be important and promising in terms of their market potential for Switzerland’s finance industry,” a statement read.

But India should not become fixated with Switzerland, according to observers, but should also negotiate with other jurisdictions.

“I think that Switzerland has become such a talisman for Indian corruption campaigners that one could risk losing sight of the other dirty-money players: notably Britain, Mauritius, Singapore and Hong Kong, Luxembourg, the U.S. and various others,” said Nicholas Shaxson, journalist and author, Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World.

Shaxson, who also writes for Tax Justice Network – a coalition advocating for tax transparency, believes India must pursue a more coherent, organised effort, taking a global leadership position in the campaign against illicit financial flows.

“I am not sure that the Indian government has been banging the drum for transparency internationally, although it should,” he said. “It does seem odd that a country like India that has been such a victim of looting, capital flight and illicit outflows has not articulated a clear position internationally on this.”

“So many of the countries that are victims of western tax havens are led by people who are involved in those same practices. It is a terribly difficult problem to solve, but India is far from alone.”

Diplomatic dialogue

Opinion is split on how potent a tool the OECD-backed AIE will be once it is up and running on a global scale.

“India may not be a directly beneficiary of the Agreement but it definitely opens up the possibility of diplomatic dialogue by India with various countries to achieve transparency through information exchange,” Girish Vanvari, partner and co-head of tax at KPMG Mumbai, told swissinfo.ch.

Monica Bhatia, head of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes, is also optimistic. “This is expected have a significant deterrent effect on taxpayers who seek to hide money abroad and will help enforcement efforts of the tax administration,” she said.

The OECD believes the standard will be truly international and be implemented across the globe. It hopes AIE will be helpful to the Indian government in addressing the black money hidden abroad.

However, some critics believe the OECD standard focuses too much on income. Typically tax evaders do not invest their money in assets which generate reportable income such as interest and dividends.

Further assets held in vaults and free ports, real estate and trusts, among others are not covered in the standard. The standard also assumes reciprocity, and has no sanctions for “recalcitrant jurisdictions”. Countries such as Russia, Cyprus, Mauritius, Seychelles, among others have not endorsed the standard.

If AIE does not produce the desired results, India does have other tools at its disposal, according to Mark Herkenrath, head of international finances policy at Bern-based pressure group Alliance Sud.

“If transparency on tax evaders is hard to come by on account of banking secrecy, India must approach countries like Switzerland to get information of account holders via the routes of corruption, money laundering or drug trafficking. Switzerland has strong laws on such issues and has helped countries in the past,” he said.

And experts have suggested a series of urgent measures that India can address domestically such as reducing disincentives against voluntary compliance by rationalizing tax rates and reducing costs of compliance.

“Greater control and monitoring of real estate transactions in the country, insistence on routing through bank account all transactions over certain limits, reforms in vulnerable sectors such as financial services, real estate, natural resources and bullion, will all contribute to cracking down on generation of black money,” Sonu Iyer, Partner, Ernst & Young in New Delhi said.

“If one were to believe the intent communicated by the new government and considering their absolute majority in the Parliament, this would be the most opportune time to address the issues relating to tax transparency,” KPMG’s Vanvari added.

The post Switzerland-India Tax Evasion Battle Continues appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Paul Craig Roberts

The Cold War made a lot of money for the military/security complex for four decades dating from Churchill’s March 5, 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri declaring a Soviet “Iron Curtain” until Reagan and Gorbachev ended the Cold War in the late 1980s.

During the Cold War Americans heard endlessly about “the Captive Nations” whose foreign policies were dictated by Moscow. Today an even bigger group of countries have their policies dictated by Washington.

During the Cold War Americans thought of Western Europe and Great Britain as independent sovereign countries. Whether they were or not, they most certainly are not today. We are now almost seven decades after WWII, and US troops still occupy Germany. No European government dares to take a stance different from that of the US Department of State.

Not long ago there was talk both in the UK and Germany about departing the European Union, and Washington told both countries that talk of that kind must stop as it was not in Washington’s interest for any country to exit the EU. The talk stopped. Great Britain and Germany are such complete vassals of Washington that neither country can publicly discuss its own future.

When Baltasar Garzon, a Spanish judge with prosecuting authority, attempted to indict members of the George W. Bush regime for violating international law by torturing detainees, he was slapped down.

In Modern Britain, Stephane Aderca writes that the UK is so proud of being Washington’s “junior partner” that the British government agreed to a one-sided extradition treaty under which Washington merely has to declare “reasonable suspicion” in order to obtain extradition from the UK, but the UK must prove “probable cause.” Being Washington’s “junior partner,” Aderca reports, is an ego-boost for British elites, giving them a feeling of self-importance.

Under the rule of the Soviet Union, a larger entity than present day Russia, the captive nations had poor economic performance. Under Washington’s rule, these same captives have poor economic performance due to their looting by Wall Street and the IMF.

As Giuseppe di Lampedusa said, “Things have to change in order to remain the same.”
The looting of Europe by Wall Street has gone beyond Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Ukraine, and is now focused on France and Great Britain. The American authorities are demanding $10 billion from France’s largest bank on a trumped-up charge of financing trade with Iran, as if it is any business whatsoever of Washington’s who French banks choose to finance. And despite Great Britain’s total subservience to Washington, Barclays bank has a civil fraud suit filed against it by the NY State Attorney General.

The charges against Barclays PLC are likely correct. But as no US banks were charged, most of which are similarly guilty, the US charge against Barclays means that big pension funds and mutual funds must flee Barclays as customers, because the pension funds and mutual funds would be subject to lawsuits for negligence if they stayed with a bank under charges.

The result, of course, of the US charges against foreign banks is that US banks like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup are given a competitive advantage and gain market share in their own dark pools.

So, what are we witnessing? Clearly and unequivocally, we are witnessing the use of US law to create financial hegemony for US financial institutions. The US Department of Justice (sic) has had evidence for five years of Citigroup’s participation in the fixing of the LIBOR interest rate, but no indictment has been forthcoming.

The bought and paid for governments of Washington’s European puppet states are so corrupt that the leaders permit Washington control over their countries in order to advance American financial, political, and economic hegemony.

Washington is organizing the world against Russia and China for Washington’s benefit. On June 27 Washington’s puppet states that comprise the EU issued an ultimatum to Russia.The absurdity of this ultimatum is obvious. Militarily, Washington’s EU puppets are harmless. Russia could wipe out Europe in a few minutes. Here we have the weak issuing an ultimatum to the strong.

The EU, ordered by Washington, told Russia to suppress the opposition in southern and eastern Ukraine to Washington’s stooge government in Kiev. But, as everyone knows, including the White House, 10 Downing Street, Merkel, and Holland, Russia is not responsible for the separatist unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine. These territories are former constituent parts of Russia that were added to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet Communist Party leaders when Ukraine and Russia were two parts of the same country.

These Russians want to return to Russia because they are threatened by the stooge government in Kiev that Washington has installed. Washington, determined to force Putin into military action that can be used to justify more sanctions, is intent on forcing the issue, not on resolving the issue.

What is Putin to do? He has been given 72 hours to submit to an ultimatum from a collection of puppet states that he can wipe out at a moment’s notice or seriously inconvenience by turning off the flow of Russian natural gas to Europe.

Historically, such a stupid challenge to power would result in consequences. But Putin is a humanist who favors peace. He will not willingly give up his strategy of demonstrating to Europe that the provocations are coming from Washington, not from Russia. Putin’s hope, and Russia’s, is that Europe will eventually realize that Europe is being badly used by Washington.

Washington has hundreds of Washington-financed NGOs in Russia hiding behind various guises such as “human rights,” and Washington can unleash these NGOs on Putin at will, as Washington did with the protests against Putin’s election. Washington’s fifth columns claimed that Putin stole the election even though polls showed that Putin was the clear and undisputed winner.

In 1991 Russians were, for the most part, delighted to be released from communism and looked to the West as an ally in the construction of a civil society based on good will. This was Russia’s mistake. As the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines make clear, Russia is the enemy whose rise to influence must be prevented at all cost.

Putin’s dilemma is that he is caught between his heart-felt desire to reach an accommodation with Europe and Washington’s desire to demonize and isolate Russia.

The risk for Putin is that his desire for accommodation is being exploited by Washington and explained to the EU as Putin’s weakness and lack of courage. Washington is telling its European vassals that Putin’s retreat under Europe’s pressure will undermine his status in Russia, and at the right time Washington will unleash its many hundreds of NGOs to bring Putin to ruin.

This was the Ukraine scenario. With Putin replaced with a compliant Russian, richly rewarded by Washington, only China would remain as an obstacle to American world hegemony.

The post US Renews Cold War With Vengeance – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Lawyers for six prisoners at Guantánamo — four Syrians, a Palestinian and a Tunisian, who have long been cleared for release from the prison, but are unable to return home — sent a letter to the Obama administration on Thursday calling for urgent action regarding their clients. I’m posting the full text of the letter below.

It’s now over three months since President José Mujica of Uruguay announced that he had been approached by the Obama administration regarding the resettlement of five men — later expanded to six — and was willing to offer new homes to them. I wrote about the story here, where I also noted that one of the men is Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian man, consigned to a wheelchair as a result of his suffering at Guantánamo. Dhiab is on a hunger strike and being force-fed, and has, in recent months, mounted a prominent legal challenge to his treatment, securing access for his lawyers to videotapes showing his force-feeding and violent cell extractions. The other Syrians are Abdelhadi Faraj (aka Abdulhadi Faraj), Ali Hussein al-Shaaban and Ahmed Adnan Ahjam, the Palestinian is Mohammed Taha Mattan (aka Mohammed Tahamuttan), and  the Tunisian, whose identity is revealed for the first time, is Adel El-Ouerghi (aka Abdul Ourgy (ISN 502)).

All six men were cleared for release from the prison in January 2010 by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama appointed shortly after taking office in 2009, and in their letter the lawyers provided detailed explanations of how the deal has progressed since first being mooted late last year and how it appeared to be confirmed months ago, before it had first been mentioned publicly. “In February,” they wrote, “some or us were informed that, while it was not possible to ascertain precisely when transfer would occur, it was ‘a matter of weeks, not months.’”

The lawyers also asked “if there is any reasonable explanation for the prolonged delay to implement the transfer that was agreed upon months ago between the United States and Uruguay” and urged immediate action. “These men should not be used as scapegoats in the current bout of US partisan politics,” they stated, with reference to the manufactured hysteria that followed the recent exchange of five Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the sole US prisoner of war in Afghanistan, adding, “Time is not on our side.”

The Uruguay deal, as the New York Times noted, “has been awaiting the signature of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel since March.” On May 28, Hagel stated that he would “make decisions fairly soon” about President Mujica’s offer, as Reuters described it.

Hagel “said he was taking his time in reaching a decision” about the six men, “as well as other detainees, in order to be sure that releasing them was the responsible thing to do.” En route to Alaska prior to starting a tour of Asia and Europe, Hagel said, “I’ll be making some decisions on those specific individuals here fairly soon,” He added that the US Congress “had assigned him the responsibility of notifying it of a decision to release detainees,” as Reuters put it.

“My name goes on that document. That’s a big responsibility,” he said, adding, “I have a system that I have developed, put in place, to look at every element, first of all complying with the law, risks, mitigation of risk. Does it hit the thresholds of the legalities required? Can I ensure compliance with all those requirements? There is a risk in everything … I suspect I will never get a 100-percent deal.”

As the New York Times noted, “the legal, policy and political difficulties” surrounding Guantánamo “escalated after the deal last month that secured the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five former Taliban officials, sent to Qatar,” which “angered lawmakers in part because the administration bypassed a law requiring 30 days’ notice before transferring Guantánamo detainees” — even though the administration made a good case for not notifying Congress, as I explained here.

Last week, in response, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives added an amendment to next year’s National Defense Authorization Act to bar the transfer of any prisoners out of Guantánamo for any reason. The amendment passed by 230 votes to 184, with lawmakers mostly split along party lines, but, as the New York Times noted, it “faces an uncertain future in the Senate,” where Democrats currently have a majority, and where, last year, strenuous moves were successfully made by senior Democrats — including Sen. Carl Levin, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee — to ease the restrictions on releasing prisoners that had been in place for the previous two years.

The New York Times explained that, as a result of the cynical backlash to the recent prisoner exchange, they were told by officials “familiar with internal deliberations” that “Hagel and his advisers have been reluctant to proceed with transfers of even low-level prisoners.”

Their reluctance — at odds with comments made by an administration official to the Guardian three weeks ago — “would strand at least 11 low-level detainees whose transfer arrangements were cleared months ago but are awaiting Mr. Hagel’s approval and the notification to Congress,” as the New York Times reported. Officials said that, as well as the Uruguay six, the 11 also “include four Afghans the administration agreed in February to repatriate” — the first time this has been mentioned publicly, although I have been writing about it for years — and one other unidentified prisoner. Campaigners for the closure of Guantánamo will be hoping that this man is Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, whose ongoing imprisonment is inexplicable.

Shaker Aamer, unfortunately, recently received some bad news from the US courts.  In April, as I reported here, his lawyers asked a federal judge to order his release because he is chronically ill — an analysis based on a three-day visit with him that was undertaken in December by an independent psychiatrist, Dr. Emily A. Keram, who collected his statements here.

As the New York Times reported, however, District Judge Rosemary Collyer rejected Shaker Aamer’s request on Tuesday “in a terse one-page order.” As was also explained, “An accompanying memorandum opinion explaining her reasoning was sealed.” In addition, “The Justice Department’s filings in the case were also sealed, but Judge Collyer ordered it to file a public version of her order and its documents by July 9.”

Below is the lawyers’ letter about the Uruguay deal, sent to to defense secretary Chuck Hagel; Paul Lewis, the Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure at the DoD; Cliff Sloan, the Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure at the State Department; National Security Advisor Susan Rice; Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for  Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; and Stephen Pomper, Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights.

Guantánamo Lawyers’ Letter to the Obama Administration Calling for the Release of Six Men to Uruguay

Dear Madams/Sirs,

The signatories to this letter represent a number of prisoners held at the US Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba who have been approved for transfer for years and are now slated for resettlement in the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, a country that is prepared to welcome them immediately. We write to inquire about the status of that resettlement effort and to offer any assistance we can provide to expedite our clients’ transfer.

We represent the Guantánamo prisoners identified in our signature blocks, below, in connection with their habeas corpus cases presently pending in US federal court. In late-2013 and early-2014, we were independently informed by US representatives that our respective clients had been identified as candidates for resettlement in Uruguay.

As a result, many of us requested urgent calls with our clients to explain that they would be interviewed by a delegation from Uruguay. Our clients welcomed that opportunity and subsequently met with the Uruguayan delegation during its visit to Guantánamo. The Uruguayan movement then formally issued our clients invitations to resettle, which they gratefully accepted. In February, some or us were informed that, while it was not possible to ascertain precisely when transfer would occur, it was “a matter of weeks, not months.”

You can well imagine the hope these invitations engendered for our clients, and indeed for us. They were informed by the Uruguayan government delegation, as well as by the undersigned as their attorneys, that they had been formally invited to resettle in Uruguay. More importantly, after more than twelve years of internment, they would soon be leaving Guantánamo.

The principal details of the transfer arrangement were explained to us by US government representatives and, with their consent, we communicated, those specifics to our clients. They were to be transferred to Uruguay as a group so they would not feel isolated in their new home. They would receive adequate support and assistance, including proper housing, stipends, Spanish language lessons, professional training, and help finding employment.

In short, at the initiative of the United States and thanks to the combined efforts of the US Ambassador to Uruguay, Julissa Reynoso, those of Special Envoy Clifford Sloan and his team at the State Department, and the good will of the government of Uruguay and its people, these long-imprisoned men were given the promise of a new life. And, from our extensive exchanges with them, we know that our clients want nothing more than the chance to settle down and lead peaceful lives in Uruguay.

Yet, as you are aware, the long-awaited transfers to Uruguay have not taken place. In fact, to our knowledge, the Secretary of Defense has not provided Congress with the 30-day transfer notification required by statute.

This is despite the fact that our clients have all been approved for transfer by the US government’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, which included the Defense Department — indeed, some had been cleared by the US military’s Administrative Review Board under the Bush Administration. It is also despite the reality that all of the other pieces have been in place for many months now: Uruguayan President José Mujica and other relevant officials in his government signed off earlier this year on the resettlement of our clients in their country; the White House and the State Department also long ago approved the transfer; and our clients have all consented.

It would be unfortunate in the extreme, to say the least, if the reaction from Congress to the recent exchange of five Guantánamo prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has chilled the Defense Department’s willingness to proceed with the resettlement of our clients in Uruguay. These men should not be used as scapegoats in the current bout of US partisan politics. There is no real reason for their continued imprisonment at Guantánamo and Uruguay has nobly stepped forward to welcome our clients in a bid to aid President Obama’s effort to shutter the prison at Guantánamo. The moment is ripe for this step to be taken towards the realization of that oft-repeated promise.

Time is not on our side. Congress is considering further restrictions on the President’s ability to transfer prisoners out of Guantánamo. Also, upcoming elections and government turnover in Uruguay this Fall make expedition all the more critical.

In light of our common interest with the US government, we write to offer any assistance we might be able to provide and to ask if there is any reasonable explanation for the prolonged delay to implement the transfer that was agreed upon months ago between the United States and Uruguay. We respectfully urge President Obama to take urgent action and the Secretary of Defense to notify Congress formally so that our clients can finally begin the long process of rebuilding their lives.

Very truly yours,

Ramzi Kassem
Main Street Legal Services, Inc.
City University of New York School of Law
Counsel for Abdelhadi Faraj (ISN 329)

Laura Carasik
Clinical Professor of Law
International Human Rights Clinic
Western New England University School of Law
Counsel for Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan (ISN 684)

Samuel C. Kauffman
Kauffman Kilberg LLC
Counsel for Abdelhadi Faraj (ISN 329)

Stewart Eisenberg
Weinberg & Garber, P.C.
Counsel for Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan (ISN 684)

Cori Crider
Reprieve
Counsel for Abu Wa’el Dhiab (ISN 722)

Gordon S. Woodward
Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP
Counsel for Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan (ISN 684)

Michael A. Cooper
Jessica M. Klein
Anil K. Vassanji
Sullivan & Cromwell
Counsel for Adel bin Mohammad El Ouerghi (ISN 502)

Eldon V.C. Greenberg
Garvey Schubert Barer
Counsel for Abdelhadi Faraj (ISN 329)

Jerry Cohen
Burns & Levinson LLP
Counsel for Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan (ISN 684)

David S. Marshall
Law Offices of David S. Marshall
Counsel for Ahmed Adnan Ajam (ISN 326)

Michael E. Mone, Jr.
Esdale, Barrett, Jacobs & Mone, LLP
Counsel for Ali Hussein Al Shaaban (ISN 327)

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