Israel demands its monetary “pound of flesh” for any US-Iran deal

May 20, 2015

It would seem that much of the Israeli objections to any US-Iran deal regarding Iran’s nuclear programme may be more of a negotiating ploy than driven by any real concern about their own security. Everything has its price and Israel also seems to have a price for swallowing their public objections. The price for acquiescing to any US-Iran deal seems to be the “purchase” of additional military aircraft and weapons systems from the US. Israel’s “purchases” of US equipment are paid for from moneys received as “US Defense Aid”. Currently Israel gets a recurring grant of around $4 billion every year augmented by many additional “one-off” grants.

From this Haaretz article it would seem that Israel has determined the monetary value of the “pound of flesh” it requires to swallow its objections to any US-Iran deal. Israel has not failed to note that “According to Stockholm’s International Peace Research Institute, in 2014 Saudi Arabia bought $80 billion worth of weapons while the emirates bought $23 billion worth of arms.” It stands to reason that Israel’s total “price” will be something in excess of $100 billion. The US will not have missed in their calculation either that this will “enable” fresh, real sales of military equipment to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States of at least twice that amount.

Haaretz:

….. However, the Israeli defense establishment and the Pentagon have already begun preliminary contact on the type of defense package Israel would receive. Another incentive for these talks is the arms deals between the United States and the Gulf states, which have not waited for the final deal before acquiring defense systems designed to deter Iran. A well-placed source said that both countries have begun their “homework” ahead of such a deal. ….. 

The Israeli defense establishment estimates that the future weapons deal between Israel and the United States will include more F-35s. So far, the sides have agreed that Israel would buy 33 of these combat aircraft using U.S. defense aid. The first two planes are scheduled to arrive in late 2016. The first operational squadron of the planes will begin operations about two years later, with the last of the planes arriving in 2021. However the defense establishment believes this is not enough and hopes to acquire at least 50 of these fighter planes so the Israel Air Force will have two fully operational squadrons. Each plane in the current deal is priced at $110 million.

Another key component in any future arms deal with Washington will be an anti-missile system. So far Israel has acquired an Arrow 2 system to intercept long-range missiles and nine Iron Dome batteries against short-range missiles. Next year, the David’s Sling system for medium-range threats is slated to go into operation. All these systems were funded with American defense aid and the United States has invested about $1 billion in developing interception missiles, above and beyond the $3.1 billion annual aid.

Israel is also likely to request additional aid to finance an improved Arrow 3 battery and to acquire some more Iran Dome batteries. According to an analysis by the Knesset Foreign and Defense Committee from three year ago, which is also accepted by the army, Israel requires at least 12 or 13 batteries in order to effectively defend the country. Israel is also expected to ask the U.S. to allow it to buy advanced precision-guided munition, especially for the Air Force. The sides may also discuss the acquisition of technological systems for intelligence-gathering purposes. 

The defense industry in the US must be quite pleased.

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In Argentina, judges believe crimes deserve lower sentences if victim has been abused before

May 20, 2015

Judges are privileged and protected in all societies. Of course each has his own foibles and is subject to pressure. In many countries they are subject to political agendas and their decisions can be seen to have political dimensions. Often they are just part of a corrupt system where “justice” is for sale. Their ivory towers are meant to help isolate them from undue influence so that they can dispense justice objectively and evenly. But lately, whether in India or in the US or in the EU or in Egypt I perceive a reduction of “common sense”. Maybe it is the privileges and protection itself which warps their minds?

In this case – from Argentina – it is the judges – not in this case the law – who appear to be asses.

BBC:

Two Argentine judges are facing calls for their impeachment after reducing the sentence of a paedophile on the grounds that his six-year-old victim had been abused before. The ruling was made last year but only came to light this week.

Mario Tolosa, a sports club official, was originally given a six-year sentence, but the judges halved it.

Among the arguments they used to justify this was a claim that the boy showed signs of transvestite conduct. The Interior Minister, Florencio Randazzo, said the ruling was “an embarrassment”. He said: “It’s repugnant to say that the presumed sexual orientation of an abused six-year-old boy is a reason to reduce the sentence of the abuser.”

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s cabinet chief, Anibal Fernandez said the two judges, Horacio Piombo and Benjamin Sal Llargues should be “hauled before an impeachment hearing”. he said the country was “in the hands of morons” and that it was “one of the biggest disgraces we’ve ever seen in this country.”

Tolosa had been vice-president of a neighbourhood football club in Buenos Aires. He was convicted of abusing the boy in the club’s bathrooms in 2011. ………

The Argentinian judges have been defending their decision and claim they are being politically attacked. Maybe so, but they are certainly lacking in common sense.  Just as with some EU judges who put greater weight to protecting the “right to family life” of criminals than in prosecuting their actions. Or Indian judges who are blinded by the aura surrounding Bollywood stars.

I note in passing that the “sanctity of the law” is an entirely false concept. The law is just a tool which is shaped to suit the dispensing society. The laws of man (or god) are only as “good” as those men who formulated them. Whenever the “sanctity of the law” is invoked, I suspect the supposed “principle” is being used to defend a lack of common sense. If there is any sanctity associated with a law, it lies in the law’s own ability to ensure compliance. The law of gravity, I note, needs no police force or judges or priests to ensure compliance.

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Iran to the rescue as Obama’s moribund ISIS “strategy” stalls

May 19, 2015

Back in September last year, Barack Obama first admitted he had no strategy “yet” for ISIS and then announced his “hands-off” air-strike strategy

“Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy,”

But what his strategy has achieved so far is an ISIS which hunkers down during air-strikes and then rolls over new strategic targets whenever the opposition is the Iraqi army or other Sunni opponents. Resistance and attrition only occurs when ISIS faces Assad or Iran-backed Shiite groups. If and when ISIS is stopped it may be enabled by US led air-strikes, but it will actually be achieved only by Iranian-supported boots on the ground. ISIS will not be stopped by a Sunni force. And that does not make Saudi Arabia very happy. I have a hypothesis that Barack Obama’s strategies both in domestic and foreign policy are driven primarily by the avoiding of his fears. In Iraq and Syria his strategy plays into Iran’s hands.

Foreign Policy: To date, the Obama administration’s claims of progress in the campaign against the Islamic State (IS) have been accompanied by qualifications and caveats. In January, the Pentagon claimed to have killed 6,000 IS fighters since the September start of “Operation Inherent Resolve,” a statistic that became less impressive when later that month it was reported that roughly 5,000 foreign fighters had joined IS since October. At the Munich Security Conference in February, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed the anti-IS coalition had “taken out half” of the terrorist pseudo-state’s senior leadership, a boast that was subsequently discredited as inexact at best. In early April — a month before the Islamic State captured Ramadi — Vice President Joe Biden declared: “ISIL’s momentum in Iraq has halted, and in many places, has been flat-out reversed. Thousands of ISIL fighters have been removed from the battlefield. Their ability to mass and maneuver has been greatly degraded. Leaders have been eliminated.” Add to this the analytical disputes over the Pentagon’s claim that the Islamic State has lost 25 percent of its territory since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve, and it is easy to see why skeptics believe the current strategy is insufficient to achieve the president’s stated goals of degrading and defeating the terrorist proto-state.

Now Ramadi has fallen to ISIS after it was abandoned without resistance by Iraqi Sunni forces. The US has been sending very confused messages with, on the one hand, increased air sorties against Ramadi while, on the other, sending diplomats (including John Kerry) to spin the story that Ramadi was not very important anyway. In the meanwhile Iran, through its Shiite Prime Minister, has called in the Shiite militia to retake Ramadi. The Shiite militias will now probably succeed in retaking Ramadi – as ISIS melts away to open another front, somewhere else, against the Iraqi Army.

Reuters:

Thousands of Shi’ite militiamen on Monday prepared to fight Islamic State insurgents who seized the Iraqi provincial capital Ramadi at the weekend in the biggest defeat for government forces in nearly a year.

A column of 3,000 Shi’ite militia fighters assembled at a military base near Ramadi, preparing to take on Islamic State militants advancing in armored vehicles from the captured city northwest of Baghdad, witnesses and a military officer said.

The decision by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is a Shi’ite, to send in the militias to try to retake the predominantly Sunni city could add to sectarian hostility in one of the most violent parts of Iraq.

Washington, which is leading a campaign of air strikes to roll back Islamic State advances and struggling to rebuild Baghdad’s shattered army, played down the significance of the loss of Ramadi, the capital of the vast western Anbar province.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it was a “target of opportunity,” that could be retaken in a matter of days, and U.S. officials insisted there would be no change in strategy despite a failure to make major advances against Islamic State.

Warplanes in the U.S.-led coalition had conducted 19 strikes near Ramadi over the past 72 hours at the request of the Iraqi security forces, a coalition spokesman said.

The Shi’ite militia, known as Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilization, “reached the Habbaniya base and are now on standby,” said the head of the Anbar provincial council, Sabah Karhout.

It may only be a temporary alliance between the US and Iran for retaking Ramadi, but it will only reinforce my view that Iranian strategy is a relatively low-cost, proxy strategy which has succeeded in absorbing and diverting Obama’s strategy to its own advantage.

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The all white, all Oxbridge, representatives of the British “working class”

May 19, 2015

I hear that the Union “Unite” and its leader Len McCluskey have effectively taken over the Labour Party leadership contest. So whoever is elected leader will have little choice but to lead the party into a decade of oblivion.

But interestingly the qualifications of the contenders for leadership to represent the British “working class” are very revealing as to how the “working-class” can be defined today:

All white, all Oxbridge and all bar one even have the same haircut!

And I don’t suppose that any one of them has ever worked in a factory that actually manufactures wealth.

This from Guido:

Guido Labour party contenders

All of the Labour Party leadership candidates are scions of privilege:

Andy Burnham:
English, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

Yvette Cooper:
PPE, Balliol College, Oxford.

Mary Creagh:
Languages, Pembroke College, Oxford.

Liz Kendall:
History, Queens’ College, Cambridge.

Doctor the Honourable Tristram Julian William Hunt:
History, Trinity College, Cambridge.

The British “working class” that I first came across, 50 years ago, as a green apprentice on the shop-floor of a factory in the Midlands, seems to have changed considerably – but not in the manner I would have expected. Maybe the people who actually work and make things no longer qualify as the “working-class”.

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Dangerous, brown cow shot dead after 3 hour chase in its bid for freedom

May 18, 2015

It’s true.

A dangerous, brown cow has been shot dead by police after it escaped from a field near Newcastle during a three-hour operation involving armed units and a helicopter.

Perhaps this will be a deterrent for other cows which try to escape from lawful slavery.

The Chronicle:

The cow which was later shot by police in Wallsend

The brown cow which was later shot by police in Wallsend – The Chronicle

Police shot dead an escaped cow following a massive operation involving armed officers and a helicopter. The beast was one of three to escape from a farm in Wallsend yesterday afternoon. Northumbria Police deployed marksmen, aerial support and, eyewitnesses said, 15 to 20 cars, closing roads in a bid to keep the animals off the busy A1058 Coast Road.

Witnesses said they believed three cows escaped from the Rising Sun Farm in Wallsend, though two were later recaptured. However the manager of the farm later told the Chronicle that the farm did not have any cows. 

Up to 20 police cars were reported at a field behind O’Hanlon Crescent where armed police were tracking one brown cow. Residents approached the animal, which one bystander claimed to be “distressed”, although others said it was not moving. Resident Barry Aitchison, 56, said people were watching police deal with the cow.

He claimed armed officers then asked to enter his house to shoot the beast from an upstairs window but that there was not enough room for them to do so. Instead, Mr Aitchison claims, they went to his neighbour’s property from where the cow was shot and killed at around 5.15pm.

 

 

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Norway forcibly “kidnaps” half of all Roma children

May 18, 2015

There is something very peculiar going on in the State of Norway and it is the Child Welfare Agency which is arousing great suspicion. It may just be cultural ignorance or it may be a deep-seated racism or – and this is much more worrying – it may be a social experiment which has some political backing.

Norway has a very dark history in the treatment of its Roma population. Forced sterilisations of Roma women were taking place as late as 1977. Norway denied reentry to many of its Roma citizens if they left the country during WW2. Inevitably those denied reentry ended up in Nazi concentration camps. Many died. The Norwegian State’s Child Welfare Agency has a reputation for cultural ignorance and racism in their very frequent “kidnapping” or “confiscation” of children of parents they don’t understand. Now, it seems they are being accused by the European Commission of forcibly taking half of all Roma children in Norway away from their parents.

UPDATE! The report is available here.

“Serious concerns have been raised by civil society representatives about extremely frequent placements of Roma children in child welfare services, including foster care. It is estimated that over 60 Roma children are in foster care currently and that a further 60 children may be vulnerable to such interventions in the future; this represents about half of the total number of (non-immigrant) Roma children in Norway”.

Swedish Radio:

Around 120 Roma children in Norway have either been forcibly placed in foster care or are at risk of it, which is equivalent to half of those who are counted as Norwegian Roma children, according to the  Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe in a report to be published later today.

They Council of Europe gives no details on how it has arrived at this previously unknown total. However the report says that Norwegian NGOs are very concerned that the so-called Barnevernet is forcing taking so many Roma children away from their parents.

Most of the children end up in foster families and some in institutions. According to the Council of Europe sources many Roma women in Norway avoid giving birth to their children at hospitals for fear that the authorities will take away their newborn babies.

The Norwegian government said in a response to the Council of Europe that the country does not register people based on ethnicity and that the government therefore can not comment on this new information that such a large proportion of Roma children are being forcibly taken away.

The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, is said to be seriously concerned about the situation of the Roma in Norway. He claims that there has been an increase in violent and discriminatory statements in Norway against Roma. The Commissioner also points to the lack of education for Roma children. In 2012 data from Oslo shows that just over half of the city’s Roma children of school age were registered in a school class.

This is not the first time that Norway’s child services have been the subject of very disturbing reports. The Nordic Page reports:

The recent conflict over the Norwegian authorities putting two children of an Indian couple in foster care gets resolved with political intervention. But there are still questions that will not go away about the Norwegian Child Welfare Agency (Barnevernet).

One of the best illustrating examples of this problem is the latest barnevern crisis between India and Norway. Two kids of the NRI couple were taken under protective care last May by Barnevernet, which claimed emotional disconnect with the parents, and placed them in foster parental care as per the local Norwegian court’s directive. The family had accused the Norwegian authorities with cultural misunderstandings and prejudice as they were taken for being fed by hand and sleeping in the same bed as their parents in addition to insufficient toys to play in the house. After Indian Foreign Ministry intervened the investigation, the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre helped children to be handed to children’s uncles.

But the stories of Russian children being forcibly taken by the Norwegian Child Welfare Agency are even more disturbing. There is a hint of some of the children being “trafficked” to paedophiles posing as foster parents and being abused.

Russian media have recently run a series of issues about how more and more Russian women living in Norway are deprived of their children. Especially two cases on Russian media were strong enough to mobilize the protestors. One of these news stories featured a Russian citizen, who lives in Norway, whose name is Maya Kasayeva. Her shocking statements took many newspapers’ front pages: “During the court hearings, the judge told me: ‘We give you residence permit, and you give us your son.’ I refused, and then the repressions started.”

Irina Bergseth Frolova, a Russian woman living in Norway, had found out that her ex-husband, a Norwegian citizen, as well as his friends and relatives, had been raping their four-year-old son. The reports also remind another foster father who was previously been found guilty for child pornography and child sexual abuse in Stavanger.

In fact, the practices of Barnevern do not only worry Russians and Indians. There is a deep rooted skepticism among local groups towards an increased use of home based measures. A report prepared by Gruppen til Familiens Selvstendige Rett (GFSR), Redd Våre Barn (RVB) and BarnasRett concludes that current practices in the Norwegian Child Protection system are not compatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Kidnapping children is often driven by a very lucrative adoption industry. And a small but significant part of the adoption industry is to satisfy the desires of paedophiles. But 50% of all Roma children being forcibly taken away suggests some political motive. It is not plausible – as the Norwegian government claims – that these numbers come as a surprise. It could well be that Norway is trying out a new policy to integrate Roma children — by taking them away from their Roma parents and brainwashing them to be something else.

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Weak El Nino conditions but timely monsoon still expected

May 18, 2015

El Nino conditions can suppress the Indian southwest monsoon. Weak El Nino conditions exist for the second year running but the IMD’s forecast is for the monsoon to hit the mainland at Kerala on 30th May ± 4 days.

Whenever an El Nino is about, the doomsayers compete with catastrophe scenarios, but the possibility of a “bad” monsoon in 2015 is diminishing.The economic and industrial recovery should not be adversely affected to any great extent.

Forecasts for the last nine years (2005 to 2014) were as in the table below.

Monsoon onset dates.emf

A timely monsoon (onset during May) does not necessarily mean a “good” monsoon during the official 4 months (June to September) of the season, but does decrease the probability of a “bad” monsoon. The pre-monsoon rains during May have been somewhat higher than normal but not uniformly across the country. Rainfall at the wrong time is not that useful of course but early rainfall in May and late rainfall in October does still have value.

IMD Forecast: For the last about six months, positive SST anomalies have been prevailing over the western and the central Pacific Ocean. However, the SSTs over eastern Pacific after remaining near to below normal between late December 2014 and mid-March 2015 have now become above normal. Thus currently, weak El Nino conditions are prevailing over the Pacific.

The latest forecast from the IMD-IITM coupled model forecast indicates El Nino conditions are likely to persist during the southwest monsoon season.

At present, slight negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) conditions are prevailing over Indian Ocean. The latest forecast from the coupled model indicates negative IOD conditions are likely to persist during the monsoon season. ……. the extreme sea surface temperature conditions over Pacific and Indian Oceans particularly ENSO conditions over Pacific (El Nino or La Nina) are known to have strong influence on the Indian summer monsoon.

 Quantitatively, the monsoon seasonal rainfall is likely to be 93% of the Long Period Average (LPA) with a model error of ± 5%. The LPA of the season rainfall over the country as a whole for the period 1951-2000 is 89 cm.

It is early days yet, but currently the advancing monsoon front is past the Andamans and slightly ahead of the long term average.

Monsoon front May 2015 IMD

Monsoon front May 2015 IMD

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Post-election leadership battles provide the entertainment lacking in UK election campaign

May 16, 2015

The UK general election was just like the Eurovision song contest. No substance in the songs and great excitement during the vote. There was no substance either during the rather lacklustre campaign and then intense excitement during the vote count. The foregone conclusion of a hung parliament with a possible Labour/SNP “majority” first morphed into possibly another Conservative/Lib Dem majority and then – almost unthinkably – into an outright Conservative win. High drama on election night. I was switching between BBC (TV and radio) and Sky TV´and the BBC tried valiantly to be objective but could not quite hide their Labour bias. (For the education of the judges of the EU General Court, there was absolutely no confusion in my mind between Sky TV and Skype).

But now after the election, the contortions of the Labour party to elect a new leader and the non-election of a UKIP leader after Farage’s non-resignation are providing much of the entertainment that I had hoped for, but did not materialise, during the campaign. The Lib Dems are also choosing a leader after Nick Clegg but there is no excitement here and it is difficult to see that it is of any great relevance.

For the Labour party, battle lines are being drawn up between the New Blairites and the union supported left-wing. It is no longer politically correct to be considered a straight Blairite because Tony Blair has brought himself so much into disrepute with his money-grubbing ways. However, when he was leader, he held the centre ground with his New Labour which addressed all those with aspirations. The New Blairites see that it is necessary to attract more than just those who live on handouts. They have to appeal, they think, to the aspirational centre.  This makes for a rather clear distinction with the left wing who want to increase the number of people getting handouts and thereby increase the number of voters beholden to Labour. The New Blairites want to shift policy to address  the middle-ground, while the unionists want to increase the size of the “left”. If the unions succeed in getting one of their candidates elected as leader, we shall probably not see the Labour party governing in Britain for the next decade.

One of the main New Blairites, Chuka Umunna, threw his hat into the ring and then, 3 days later, withdrew from the fight saying that the pressure and stress of the increased scrutiny was too much. There are hints in some papers that actually there was a fear about the increased scrutiny revealing tax avoidance on the purchase of his house or that his “girl-friend” had been rolled out for PR purposes. Whatever the real reason, Umunna has effectively put paid to his chances of ever becoming the leader of the Labour party. If he could not withstand 3 days of pressure just as candidate for leader, it would be quite irresponsible of the party to ever actually make him leader. And if they made him leader he would never become a Prime Minister who was unable to withstand any pressure.

Within UKIP the entertainment has the character of pure farce. Nigel Farage said he would resign if he failed to win a seat. When he lost, he duly announced that he was going to resign. But he never actually did resign. (Which also emphasises my perception of noise without substance). So then when the UKIP executive committee met they had no decision to take since thay had no resignation to consider. This was then presented as being a unanimous call for Farage to remain leader. He then withdrew the resignation that he had never submitted. Clever Nigel! Tricky Nigel! Douglas Carswell who shifted from the Tories to join UKIP won his seat handily – but he was the only UKIP candidate to do so. His joining UKIP was entirely opportunistic and his decision to shift paid of – at least for himself. But his view of the UKIP is through his blue-tinted glasses and  what he sees – or would like to see – is not quite what UKIP actually is. As the only UKIP MP he “controls” the £650,000 the party is entitled to every year for the number of votes it won. This puts Farage in the frustrating position of not being able to sack Carswell from the party, but also gives Carswell the nuclear deterrent of threatening to leave. I suppose he could sit as an independent but I am not sure what would happen to the money if he did.

Labour and UKIP, at least, are now providing the light entertainment that was so lacking during the campaign.

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3 UK relief helicopters not allowed into Nepal as retaliation for prosecution of Nepalese Army officer

May 16, 2015

The report today is that 3 RAF Chinook helicopters, which were sent by the UK as part of the earthquake relief effort, have now returned after spending a week grounded in Delhi and never having even entered Nepal. The undertone in all the British reports is that this was an inexplicable and callous act of an incompetent Nepalese government.

But of course, there is more to the story than that and the roots lie in the Nepalese Army and its efforts against the Maoist terrorists in late 1990s and early 2000s. During the height of the conflict the UK intelligence services assisted the government but some retired British Army officers are known to have advised and helped the Maoist terrorists. Then in 2013 a Nepalese Army officer, Colonel Kumar Lama, was charged by the UK in London for torture against Maoist prisoners under the UN’s conventions.

Why Colonel Lama was singled out by the UK for prosecution was partly due to the fact that he had settled in “St Leonard-on-Sea, East Sussex, with his family. He had been serving as a UN peacekeeper in South Sudan shortly before being detained”. But it was also because the British Army officers – all now retired – who had helped the Maoists and some so-called human rights groups were either instigating or assisting the prosecution. Some of the Maoist leaders are now within the normal political process.

The bottom line is that the Nepalese government declined to accept the 3 RAF Chinook helicopters because of the prosecution – perceived as being totally unjustified – of Colonel Lama and the history of British mercenaries in helping the Maoist rebels. The UK has also been accused of assisting the government of the time against the Maoists and to have been complicit in some of the torture – which no doubt took place. But making Colonel Lama the scapegoat by mounting a prosecution in London has irritated the Nepalese government intensely.

The two decades of conflict was marked by abuse by both sides:

S Singh et al, Nepal’s war on human rights, Int J Equity Health. 2005; 4: 9.

…, both the Maoist rebels and the Royal Nepalese Army are engaged in regular intimidation and extortion leading to a climate of intense fear in Nepal. The government forces have resorted to large-scale arbitrary arrests, detentions, “disappearances”, extra judicial executions and torture including rape. Human rights defenders, including lawyers; journalists and members of NGO’s have been arrested, tortured, killed or “disappeared” in Nepal. Nepal held the unique distinction for the highest number of “disappearances” of any country in 2003 and 2004. The Maoists have resorted to torture and deliberate and unlawful killings. According to INSEC (Informal Sector Service Centre), a human rights organisation, nearly 3000 people were killed and about 26,000 people were abducted in 2004 in Nepal. The Maoists have abducted civilians, including teachers and schoolchildren for the purpose of ‘political indoctrination’. 

Sources:

BBC: Three RAF Chinook helicopters sent to Nepal to help the aid effort in the country are to return to the UK having not been used, the government has said. The CH47 Chinooks left the UK two weeks ago to help transport “life-saving aid supplies” and reach stranded victims “in desperate need” of help.

But the helicopters have been grounded in Delhi, in India, for the past week. The Ministry of Defence said it was “disappointed”, saying the decision had been made by the Nepalese government. An MoD spokesman said the Nepalese government, while thanking the UK for the offer, had said the helicopters will not take part in the relief effort.

The Guardian: A Nepalese army officer has gone on trial at the Old Bailey accused of torturing two alleged Maoist rebels in his homeland 10 years ago. The prosecution of Lieutenant Colonel Kumar Lama, 47, was brought before a London court because of the UK’s obligations under the UN convention against torture to bring suspects to justice wherever they are detained. Torture, like war crimes, is subject to universal jurisdiction, allowing those who allegedly committed crimes abroad to be tried in Britain.

Lama was arrested in 2013 after settling in St Leonard-on-Sea, East Sussex, with his family. He had been had been serving as a UN peacekeeper in South Sudan shortly before being detained. Charged with presiding over the torture of two men – Janak Raut and Karam Hussain – while in charge of Gorusinghe barracks in Kapilvastu in 2005, Lama denies both counts of inflicting severe pain or suffering.

The prosecution has been brought under section 134 (sub-section 1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. The colonel has indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Opening the case, prosecutor Bobbie Cheema QC said: “The authorities in this country have an obligation in cases where torture is alleged to have been committed if the alleged perpetrators are found within England. “This commitment to prosecute alleged torturers even if the torture happened in an entirely different country and continent is sometimes called the principle of providing no safe haven for torturers.”

Southasia.com: Annapurna Dainik, a Nepali-language newspaper, has claimed the government took the ‘informal decision’ of not allowing the three Chinook helicopters to enter the Nepali airspace because of the arrest and prosecution of Nepalese Army’s Colonel Kumar Lama as well as for the relationship that existed between a senior British Army officer (now retired) and the Maoist guerrillas while they were still in war with the state. …

….. The Royal Air Force flew the helicopters in a transporter aircraft on April 30. It is understood they were originally planned to be flown straight to Kathmandu for reassembly but the aircraft carrying them was diverted to New Delhi when the Tribhuvan International Airport became clogged with relief flights due to the limited number of runways.

The Guardian: British authorities have been accused of funding a four-year intelligence operation in Nepal that led to Maoist rebels being arrested, tortured and killed during the country’s civil war.

Thomas Bell, the author of a new book on the conflict, says MI6 funded safe houses and provided training in surveillance and counter-insurgency tactics to Nepal’s army and spy agency, the National Investigation Department (NID) under “Operation Mustang”, launched in 2002.

Nepal’s decade-long civil war left more than 16,000 dead, with rebels and security forces accused of serious human rights violations including killings, rapes, torture and disappearances.

“According to senior Nepalese intelligence and army officials involved in the operation, British aid greatly strengthened their performance and led to about 100 arrests,” said Bell, whose book Kathmandu is released in south Asia on Thursday. “It’s difficult to put an exact number on it, but certainly some of those who were arrested were tortured and disappeared,” he said.

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Representing laughter

May 15, 2015

“ho ho”; a guffaw, an insincere or forced laugh

“ho ho ho”; Santa, a jolly laugh, boisterous amusement

“ho hum”; incredulity, not laughter

“ha ha”; a sarcastic laugh

“ha” = “Aha!”

“ha ha ha”; genuine amusement, open-mouthed laugh

“he he” or “tee hee”; giggling, surreptitious laughter, laugh with hand covering mouth

“he he he”; teenage laugh

“heh heh”; chuckle, laugh from the side of the mouth

“haw haw”; slapstick laughter, slapping of thighs

“hi hi”; sneer

“hi hi hi”, cackle

“hee haw”; a donkey braying

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