Tradition meets Twitter as Saudis pledge to new king

Yahoo - AFP, Wissam Keyrouz, 27 Jan 2015

Saudi Arabia's new King Salman attends a ceremony at the Diwan royal
palace in Riyadh on January 24, 2015 (AFP)

Decades ago, Saudis trekked across their desert kingdom to pledge allegiance to their new kings at their palaces. Now they are just using Twitter.

Thousands of Saudis have poured into the palace of King Salman who acceded the throne after the death of his half-brother Abdullah last week.

Many others exercised the entrenched tradition at the palaces of provincial princes.

Saudi blogger Raef Badawi, shown
in Jeddah in 2012, was sentenced
in May 2014 to 10 years in prison,
1,000 lashes and a fine for
"insulting Islam" (AFP)

But thousands of others have pledged their allegiance to the new ruler online, taking advantage of social media networks.

Chief among them is Twitter, whose popularity has exploded with an astounding 40 percent of Saudis now using the microblogging website.

Saudi Arabia is governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law, but authorities have stopped short of banning Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, unlike in the Islamic republic of Iran.

Ultra-conservatives tweet as much as liberals in the tightly censored absolute monarchy, with clerics attracting the most followers, like Mohammed al-Arefe who has 10.8 million of them.

However several users have faced jail over their posts that have been deemed offensive to the authorities or to Islam.

King Salman himself has an account that saw its number of followers surge to 1.6 million as he became the monarch.

"I pray to God to help me serve our dear people and achieve their aspirations, and to keep our country secure and stable," read a tweet posted on the account following his accession.

A hashtag in Arabic declaring "I pledge allegiance to King Salman" spread quickly among Saudi tweeps after King Abdullah died on Friday, as users of the site mourned the late monarch.

'Progress without abandoning tradition'

"I have pledged my allegiance through Twitter because as we progress technologically, we do not abandon our identity and traditions," said Twitter user Salman al-Otaibi.

"This pledge is a duty on every Muslim," he told AFP.

Metab al-Samiri tweeted: "With full obedience, I pledge allegiance to you Salman."

The pledge is both an Islamic obligation to provide the ruler with legitimacy and a tribal commitment to obey the new leader.

Twitter has also proven to be a headache for authorities in Gulf monarchies as social media blogging sites render their censorship largely helpless.

Users calling for reforms in the kingdom have taken to the platform to voice discontent and demand concessions from the ruling family.

"We want a consultative Shura Council that is elected by the people, capable of legislating laws and holding the cabinet to account," said one tweet.

"This way, the alleged reforms could be achieved," it added, using another popular hashtag that said: "Demands for King Salman."

Despite timid steps to introduce reforms, Saudi Arabia under Abdullah remained a tightly controlled kingdom, where conservatives continue to play a strong role.

The case of blogger Raef Badawi serves as an example of the Gulf state's ever-tightening freedom of expression.

Badawi is serving a 10-year jail sentence for insulting Islam, and he has also been sentenced to 1,000 lashes, having received 50 of them in public this month.

Twitter is "the source of all evil and devastation", said the kingdom's top cleric Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh in a fatwa edict in October.

"People are rushing to it thinking it's a source of credible information but it's a source of lies and falsehood," he said.

Despite such warnings, there are no signs of Twitter's popularity waning in Saudi Arabia, whose five million users give the kingdom the world's highest penetration.

A woman's open & direct msg to Saudi authorities worth much more than her husband's words. #Michelle_Obama_NotVeiled pic.twitter.com/PV7K5imDEn
— Ali Batu Karaali (@abkaraali) January 28, 2015

THANK YOU @MichelleObama for standing up for women. Now can we also tell them that lashes & beheadings are not ok. #Michelle_Obama_NotVeiled
— Piccia (@Piccia) January 28, 2015

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Sri Lanka says will refuse entry to UN war crimes investigators

Yahoo – AFP, Amal Jayasinghe, 19 Aug 2014

File picture shows Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the southwestern
 town of Beruwala, about 58 kms from capital Colombo, on June 18, 2014
(AFP Photo/Lakruwan Wanniarachchi)

Colombo (AFP) - Sri Lanka will not grant visas to UN investigators probing war crimes allegedly committed during the island's decades-long separatist conflict, President Mahinda Rajapakse said Tuesday.

Sri Lanka has refused to accept the authority of the UN Human Rights Council, which voted in March to investigate allegations that the military killed 40,000 civilians in the final months of the separatist war, which ended in 2009.

But it is the first time that Rajapakse has said UN investigators will not be allowed into the country, effectively barring them from face-to-face access to Sri Lankans wanting to testify.

"We will not allow them into the country," said Rajapakse, who is under international pressure to cooperate with the UN-mandated investigation.

Rajapakse said however that his government was cooperating with all other UN agencies.

"We are saying that we do not accept it (the probe). We are against it," he told Colombo-based foreign correspondents at his official residence.

"But when it comes to other UN agencies, we are always ready to fully cooperate and fully engage with them," he said.

Leaders urge cooperation

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other leaders have urged Colombo to cooperate with the UNHRC after ending a prolonged separatist war that pitted ethnic minority Tamil rebels and the largely Sinhalese army in a drawn out ethnic conflict.

Outgoing UN rights chief Navi Pillay earlier this month suggested that her investigators looking into allegations of mass killings may not have to travel to Sri Lanka at all.

She said there was a "wealth of information" outside the country.

Her remarks prompted allegations from Sri Lanka's foreign ministry that her investigation was on a "preconceived trajectory" and that her "prejudice and lack of objectivity" were unfortunate.

Colombo insists that its troops did not commit war crimes while crushing the Tamil Tiger rebel movement at the end of a conflict which stretched for more than three decades and claimed more than 100,000 lives.

Pillay, who visited Sri Lanka last year, has previously accused Rajapakse's government of becoming authoritarian, and warned that rights defenders and journalists were at risk in the country even after the end of the war.

The government conceded a degree of ground last month when it asked a panel already investigating missing persons to expand its work and investigate actions of both troops and Tamil rebels.

Rajapakse said Tuesday that he was naming two more foreign experts -- an Indian and a Pakistani -- to join three other international legal experts already on a panel of advisors helping the presidential Commission of Inquiry.

Rajapakse said he was willing to give "even two more years" to the commission to complete its work. The commission said it was probing 19,471 cases of missing persons as of Tuesday and completed hearings only in respect of 939 cases.

The president on Tuesday added Indian rights activist Avdhash Kaushal and Pakistani lawyer Ahmer Bilal Soofi to join British lawyers Desmond de Silva and Geoffrey Nice and US law professor David Crane, all former UN war crimes prosecutors.

The president denied that the foreigners were named as part of a whitewash and insisted that the government was serious about investigating rights abuses.

"We appointed these foreign experts because the commission itself asked for it. They (the commission) thought it would be helpful if we had these experts to advise them," Rajapakse said.

In a government decree published last month, Rajapakse said the commission would investigate the military's "adherence to or neglect... of laws of armed conflict and international humanitarian law".

The commission is the latest investigation initiated by Colombo. Experts and activists have said earlier attempts amounted to a whitewash.

Sri Lanka's president said that only Sri Lankan authorities
could investigate allegations of war crimes

Related Article:

Sri Lanka visa ban won't stop UN inquiry - Navi Pillay

Welby calls for Church to join the sexual ‘revolution’

The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned the Church of England that it had to face up to a “revolution” in attitudes to homosexuality.

The Telegraph, John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor,  05 Jul 2013

Mr Welby was enthroned earlier this month at Canterbury Cathedral
Photo: Getty Images

In his most widely anticipated address since taking over the leadership of the Church, the Most Rev Justin Welby insisted that it was now “absurd and impossible” to ignore an “overwhelming” change in social attitudes.

In a deliberate echo of Harold MacMillan’s 1950 speech which attacked apartheid in South Africa, the Archbishop warned church leaders that they needed to reassess their own attitudes to gay people – even if they do not “like it”.

While insisting he had no immediate plans to change policy on issues such as gay marriage, he announced a major campaign to curb anti-gay bullying in the Church of England’s more than 5,000 schools.

He is understood to have approached Stonewall, which led the campaign in favour of gay marriage, to invite it into church schools to teach up to a million children about homosexuality.

“We may or may not like it but we must accept that there is a revolution in the area of sexuality,” the Archbishop said.

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His comments, signalling a dramatic change in tone from the established church, came in his first address as Archbishop to the Church’s General Synod which is meeting in York as it attempts to come up with a new solution to the fiasco over women bishops.

In a wide-ranging address he said that Britain, like other countries, is living through a “time of revolutions” affecting the economic and political sphere but also in social attitudes.

He acknowledged a “radical” decline in religious affiliation, as borne out by the recent census and other polling, as well as an “overwhelming” shift in public attitudes on issues such as sexuality where “predictable attitudes” were disappearing.

But he insisted that the Church could benefit and even begin to grow again if it was willing to “respond radically and imaginatively” to a changing world.

The Archbishop, who visited Egypt last week, drew comparisons with the fast-moving situation in the country.

"We live in a time of revolutions,” he said.

“And the trouble with revolutions is that once they start no-one knows where they will go.”

Turning to the “many revolutions” underway in Britain, he said: “The cultural and political ground is changing, there is a revolution.

“Anyone who listened to much of the Same Sex Marriage Bill Second Reading Debate in the House of Lords could not fail to be struck by the overwhelming change of cultural hinterland. Predictable attitudes were no longer there.

“The opposition to the Bill - which included me and many other bishops - was utterly overwhelmed, with amongst the largest attendance and participation and majority since 1945.

“There was noticeable hostility to the view of the churches”.

He admitted that it had been “close to the bone” to evidence of young gay people driven to suicide because of uncaring attitudes from churches.

“In some things we change course and recognise the new context.

“In others we stand firm because truth is not set by culture, nor morals by fashion.

“But let us be clear, pretending that nothing has changed is absurd and impossible.”

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, said: “Of course we will always help an education provider in helping to tackle homophobic bullying in schools and there are already several dozen Church of England schools working with Stonewall.

“But the cynic would be tempted to think perhaps that the Archbishop is trying to distract attention from his failure to engage gay people - when they requested it over the issue of marriage.”

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Kryon Q&A

Question: Dear Kryon: Regarding homosexuality or transsexuals. WHY are they the way they are and WHY are they not accepted in mainstream society?

Answer: [From the Kryon Office]

There is often a tremendous amount of information on subjects that are not necessarily part of the on-line magazine Q&A database. Kryon has been channelling for fourteen years, with 9 books covering many, many topics. Homosexuality was one of them from the very beginning. Please see our "Books index page" for subjects contained in the Kryon books: [http://www.kryon.com/direct.html]

An excerpt from Kryon Book 6, page 306

Question from the book: Dear Kryon, I am gay, and an enlightened man. I live in an American society that barely tolerates me, and actually has some laws against my way of life. The church I used to belong to cast me out as being evil and anti-God. I don't feel that I am violating some Human ethic. My love is as true as any heterosexual, and I am a light worker. Tell me what I should know.

Answer from the book: Dear one, less than two generations from now, there will be those who find this book and laugh at the quaintness of this very question. Before I answer, let me ask you and those reading this to examine a phenomenon about Human society and "God."

Thirty years ago, interracial marriage was considered to be wrong by the laws of God. Now your society finds it common. The spiritual objections around it were either dropped or "rewritten" by those divinely inspired and authorized to do so. Therefore, your actual interpretations of the instructions from God changed with your society's tolerance level--an interesting thing, indeed, how the interpretations of God seem to change regularly to match a changing culture!

The truth, of course, is that you find yourself in a situation that is known to create a test for you. Right now, in this time, you have agreed to come into your culture with an attribute that may alienate you from friends and religious followers. You have faced fear of rejection and have had to "swim upstream," so to speak, just as an everyday life occurrence. Your contract, therefore, has been set up well, and you are in the middle of it. Additionally, like so many like you, you have a divine interest in yourselves! You feel part of the spiritual family. What a dichotomy indeed, to be judged as evil by those who are the high spiritual leaders--interpreting God for today's culture.

Now I say this: What is your intent? Is it to walk with love for all those around you and become an enlightened Human Being in this New Age? Is it to forgive those who see you as a spiritual blight on society? Can you have the kind of tolerance for them that they seem not to have for you? Can you overlook the fact that they freely quote their scriptures in order to condemn you, yet they don't seem to have the love tolerance that is the cornerstone of their own message?

If the answer is yes, then there is nothing else you must do. Your INTENT is everything, and your life will be honored with peace over those who would cause unrest, and tolerance for the intolerable. Your sexual attributes are simply chemistry and setups within your DNA. They are given by agreement as gifts for you to experience in this life. Look on them in this fashion, and be comfortable with that fact that you are a perfect spiritual creation under God--loved beyond measure--just like all humans. But then you know that, don't you?

US Senate passes comprehensive immigration reform

Google - AFP, Michael Mathes (AFP), 28 June 2013

Senators John McCain (L) and Charles Schumer leave a test vote on

Capitol Hill June 27, 2013 in Washington, DC (AFP, Brendan Smialowski)

WASHINGTON — After months of wrangling, the US Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly passed its comprehensive immigration reform bill that aims to put 11 million undocumented people on a path to citizenship.

Chants of "Yes we did!" erupted from the public galleries after senators voted 68-32 to approve the landmark legislation, which bolsters border security, revamps legal immigration and requires a 13-year wait before those without papers can apply for citizenship.

President Barack Obama hailed the vote, saying: "Today, with a strong bipartisan vote, the United States Senate delivered for the American people, bringing us a critical step closer to fixing our broken immigration system once and for all."

Fourteen Republicans joined a unanimous Democratic side in what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid deemed a historic vote, as he took the rare move of calling on members to cast votes from their Senate desks, as Vice President Joe Biden presided over the chamber.

"We've taken giant steps forward towards solving our immigration problem today," an elated Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the four Democrats who crafted the bill with four Republicans in the so-called "Gang of 8," told reporters immediately after the vote.

The measure now faces a rocky road in the Republican-led House of Representatives, but Schumer and Republican Gang of 8 Senator John McCain made a direct appeal to their colleagues on the other side of the US Capitol: work with us to achieve the most important immigration reform in a quarter century.

"To our friends in the House, we ask for your consideration, and we stand ready to sit down and negotiate with you," McCain said.

"We may have different views on different aspects of this issue but we should all of us here have the same goal, and that is to take 11 million people out of the shadows, secure our borders, and make sure this is a nation of opportunity and freedom."

The legislation's authors spent months crafting the 1,000-plus-page document, which pours $46 billion into border security and other efforts, including electronic employment verification and a modernized entry-exit system.

The bill, which had Obama's support, was debated for three weeks on the Senate floor and dozens of amendments were added as Republicans squared off against one another over the merits of the legislation.

"It's been a very tough negotiation," Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu acknowledged. "It's not perfect, but it's balanced."

Obama has said he hopes to sign immigration reform into law this year, but several House Republicans have said the bill will be dead in the water without significant changes, particularly on border security.

"The House is not going to take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes," Republican House Speaker John Boehner told reporters, noting that House members would put together their own language for legislation that would work its way through committee and eventually to the floor.

Senator Chuck Grassley, an adamant opponent of the Senate bill, said he wants to eventually agree on a better bill, adding he is counting on the House to pass legislation that is "much more tough."

"Hopefully I'll have a vote to send to the president," Grassley said.

IMF fears 'social explosion' from world jobs crisis

America and Europe face the worst jobs crisis since the 1930s and risk "an explosion of social unrest" unless they tread carefully, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

Telegraph.co.uk, By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 13 Sep 2010

Duration of unemployment in the US, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"The labour market is in dire straits. The Great Recession has left behind a waste land of unemployment," said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF's chief, at an Oslo jobs summit with the International Labour Federation (ILO).

He said a double-dip recession remains unlikely but stressed that the world has not yet escaped a deeper social crisis. He called it a grave error to think the West was safe again after teetering so close to the abyss last year. "We are not safe," he said.

A joint IMF-ILO report said 30m jobs had been lost since the crisis, three quarters in richer economies.

Global unemployment has reached 210m. "The Great Recession has left gaping wounds. High and long-lasting unemployment represents a risk to the stability of existing democracies," it said.

The study cited evidence that victims of recession in their early twenties suffer lifetime damage and lose faith in public institutions. A new twist is an apparent decline in the "employment intensity of growth" as rebounding output requires fewer extra workers. As such, it may be hard to re-absorb those laid off even if recovery gathers pace. The world must create 45m jobs a year for the next decade just to tread water.

Olivier Blanchard, the IMF's chief economist, said the percentage of workers laid off for long stints has been rising with each downturn for decades but the figures have surged this time.

"Long-term unemployment is alarmingly high: in the US, half the unemployed have been out of work for over six months, something we have not seen since the Great Depression," he said.

Spain has seen the biggest shock, with unemployment near 20pc. Britain's rate has risen from 5.3pc to 7.8pc over the last two years, a slightly better record than the OECD average. This contrasts with the 1970s and early 1980s when Britain was notoriously worse. UK jobless today totals 2.48m.

Mr Blanchard called for extra monetary stimulus as the first line of defence if "downside risks to growth materialise", but said authorities should not rule out another fiscal boost, despite debt worries. "If fiscal stimulus helps avoid structural unemployment, it may actually pay for itself," he said.

"Most advanced countries should not tighten fiscal policies before 2011: tightening sooner could undermine recovery," said the report, rebuking Britain's Coalition, Germany's austerity hawks, and US Republicans. Under French socialist Strauss-Kahn, the IMF has assumed a Keynesian flavour.

The report skirts the contentious issue of whether globalisation lets companies engage in "labour arbitrage", locating plant in low-wage economies such as China to ship products back to the West. Nor does it grapple with the trade distortions caused by China's currency policy, except to call on "surplus countries" to play their part in rebalancing.

The IMF said there may be a link between rising inequality within Western economies and deflating demand.

Historians say the last time that the wealth gap reached such skewed extremes was in 1928-1929. Some argue that wealth concentration may cause investment to outstrip demand, leading to over-capacity. This can trap the world in a slump.

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A backlash builds up against China

The Economic Times, 22 Dec 2009, 0153 hrs IST, NYT News Service

HANOI: Trung Son, Vietnam — It seemed as if this village in northern Vietnam had struck gold when a Chinese and a Japanese company arrived to jointly build a coal-fired power plant. Thousands of jobs would start flowing in, or so the local residents hoped.

Four years later, the Haiphong Thermal Power Plant is nearing completion. But only a few hundred Vietnamese ever got jobs. Most of the workers were Chinese, about 1,500 at the peak. Hundreds of them are still here, toiling by day on the dusty construction site and cloistered at night in dingy dormitories.

“The Chinese workers overwhelm the Vietnamese workers here,” said Nguyen Thai Bang, 29, a Vietnamese electrician. China, famous for its export of cheap goods, is increasingly known for shipping out cheap labour. These global migrants often work in factories or on Chinese-run construction and engineering projects, though the range of jobs is astonishing: from planting flowers in the Netherlands to doing secretarial work in Singapore to herding cows in Mongolia — even delivering newspapers in the Middle East.

But a backlash against them has grown. Across Asia and Africa, episodes of protest and violence against Chinese workers have flared. Vietnam and India are among the nations that have moved this year to impose new labour rules for foreign companies and restrict the number of Chinese workers allowed to enter, straining diplomatic relations with Beijing.

In Vietnam, dissidents and intellectuals are using the issue of Chinese labour to challenge Vietnam’s governing Communist Party. A lawyer has sued Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung over his approval of a Chinese bauxite mining project, and the National Assembly is questioning top officials over Chinese contracts, both unusual moves in this authoritarian state.

Chinese workers continue to follow China’s state-owned construction companies as they win bids abroad to build power plants, factories, railroads, highways, subway lines and stadiums. From January to October 2009, Chinese companies completed $58 billion of projects, a 33% increase over the same period in 2008, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. From Angola to Uzbekistan, Iran to Indonesia, some 740,000 Chinese workers were abroad at the end of 2008, with 58% sent out last year alone, the Commerce Ministry said. The number going abroad this year is on track to roughly match that rate.

Chinese executives say that Chinese workers are not always less expensive, but that they tend to be more skilled and easier to manage than local workers. “Whether you’re talking about the social benefits or economic benefits to the countries receiving the workers, the countries have had very good things to say about the Chinese workers and their skills,” said Diao Chunhe, director of the China International Contractors Association, a government organisation in Beijing.

But in some countries, local residents accuse the Chinese of stealing jobs, staying on illegally and isolating themselves by building bubble worlds that replicate life in China, not unlike American military bases in the Middle East. “There are entire Chinese villages now,” said Pham Chi Lan, former executive V-P of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “We’ve never seen such a practice on projects done by companies from other countries.”

At this construction site northeast of the port city of Haiphong, an entire Chinese world has sprung up: four walled dormitory compounds, restaurants with Chinese signs advertising dumplings and fried rice, currency exchange shops, massage parlors — even a sign on the site itself that says “Guangxi Road,” referring to the Chinese province that most of the workers call home. One night, eight Chinese workers in blue uniforms sat in a cramped restaurant that had been opened by a man from Guangxi at the request of the project’s main subcontractor, Guangxi Power Construction Company. Their faces were flushed from drinking Chinese rice wine.

“I was sent here, and I’m fulfilling my patriotic duty,” said Lin Dengji, 52, an equipment installation manager. Such scenes can set off anxieties in Vietnam, which prides itself on resisting Chinese domination, starting with its break from Chinese rule in the 10th century. Vietnamese are all too aware of the economic juggernaut to their north. Vietnam had a $10-billion trade deficit with China last year. In July, a senior official said that 35,000 Chinese workers were in Vietnam, according to Tuoi Tre newspaper. The announcement shocked many Vietnamese.

“The Chinese economic presence in Vietnam is deeper, more far-reaching and progressing faster than people realise,” said Le Dang Doanh, an economist in Hanoi who advised the preceding prime minister.

Conflict has broken out between Vietnamese and Chinese labourers. In Thanh Hoa province in June, a drunken Chinese worker from a cement plant traded blows with the husband of a Vietnamese shopkeeper.

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Supporters rally for rights activist Liu Xiaobo during his trial in Beijing. (AFP Photo)