What Changes Needed for the US

Start with a quote from Matt Stoller (2011)
Change needs to happen—and it will happen, either through good leadership or through collapse.
The US has choices, most other countries dont.

With all the chaos and rioting there are no specific goals to make the US equitable, specially for the lower rungs of society.  My thoughts of specific goals.

What should be done immediately
a) Give aid to direct individuals
   This includes free testing and health care

b) Debt Jubilee, i.e. forgiveness of debt. 
   Rent, Mortgage forgiveness based on income/job.
   NOT a deferral with a huge amount coming due in the future

Electoral Process
The President, Congress and Senators need to be more answerable to the public.  The way the current system works, public votes and President, Congress and elected officials do the bidding of their paymasters, the big money  Multinationals and Military Industrialist.  This change is imperative for a proper functioning democracy.

So
a) No lobbyists, period.  Caught lobbying or accepting lobby, at least a few years in Jail.
    Lobbying is legalized bribery and corruption.
b) Campaign Finance: I would prefer only a govt funding, equal to all contestants. 
    Or only donations by individuals with cap on amount.
c) Two term limit for Senators

Finance Specific*
a) Let Too Big to Fail companies/banks go bust if they are not profitable ,
    instead of propping them up with more and more trillion dollar handouts.
b) Stop derivatives being used for speculation/betting.
    Can be used as hedge against asset on the books. 
    If the asset is sold, the derivative needs to be unwound.
c) Share buybacks be made illegal.

I dont think USD 6 Trillion injection into financial markets will solve the Covid19 pandemic or the chaos in the US. 
To put the 6 Trillion into perspective.  US GDP is USD 19 Trillion.  Public debt is  USD 18 trillion Interest public debt USD 479 billion/0.5 Trillion (10% of Budget)

*Some suggestions by VijayVan

Manufacturing
Its not about cutting costs per se. Think the Henry Ford saying, workers should be able to buy what is produced. For that the US must first throw out Free Trade and embrace protectionist. Start Manufacturing and give Price protection to what is manufactured.   Same for Oil, the US is self sufficient. 
But all of this means ditching the Petro dollar, and the global monetary power that comes with it.  So very unlikely those changes will be by choice.

Society:
A push for polices that re vitalize small towns with self reliant economies.   Not just a suburban enclave dependent on commuters working in a nearby big city.  Coupled with small or medium manufacturing.  i.e. Supply chain is mainly within the US.

Maybe even a partial break up of Big Ag and land distribution (100 acres or so) specifically for Agriculture.  I think subsidies for small scale farmers is fine.  Much better that trillion dollar bail outs for Big Ags.

Wars
The US will have to make some serious decisions about being the global policeman, and conducting wars. (I doubt will happen without change in Campaign Finance/Electoral Process).  The US Might has turned to "might happen". Trillions on war, has not made the US safe.  Never ending Wars and nary a benefit except debt and death.
This does not mean disbanding the military.  Any country needs to defend itself against invasions.  The choice is wars of aggression in distant lands or developing the economy.
US Spending on wars Iraq War: +1 Trillion Afghan War: 1 Trillion  Military: 500 billion/year

2019 Easter Massacre in Sri Lanka.

There were plenty of indications that some kind of incident was going to occur.  Some Muslim Leaders/Politicians had warned the govt of possible terror attack, some even naming possible suspects*. The incidents or information were either ignored or worse perpetrators were released.

*This is quite different from main stream Tamil politicians who kept shielding at minimum or encouraging the LTTE who were referred to as our "boys". eg SJV Chelvanayagam, Amirthalingam etc who finally were assassinated by the "boys".

Possible reasons for Inaction by the Govt
a) In fighting within the govt and finger pointing at the previous Rajapakse regime.
b) Current govt and President were elected on a minority vote and reluctance to clamp down on a segment of their constituency.

A simple timeline
a) December 2018.  Buddhist Statues vandalized in Mawanella
b) December 2018: Pattern of denial that radical Muslims exist.  See comments in link below.
     https://twitter.com/azzamameen/status/1078290050498977799?lang=en
c) January 2019:  Two suspects in Mawanella traced to coconut estate in Wanathavilluwa**. 
                              Large quantities of explosives found.
      http://mirrorcitizen.dailymirror.lk/2019/01/23/damaging-buddha-statues-father-of-the-two-accused-arrested/

d) March 2019: Mohamed Razak Taslim,  Minister Kabir Hasims's Coordinating Secretary is shot by muslim extremists.  Taslim had been assisting the CID  in investigating December 2018 vandalizing of Buddhist statutes.
e) April 2019: Easter Sunday Massacre targeting Christians and Westerners: 300+ killed.

**Wanathavilluwa is kind of middle of nowhere, big (for SL) rolling coconut Farms/estates and scrub jungle, but still a center.  10 km from Wilpattu National Park (Jungle).  140 km from the Colombo center.   From nearby Kalpitiya or Karaithivu by  boat approx 100 km to Dhanuskodi or Toothukudi

Mohamed Zahran (Abu Ubaida) also called Moulvi Zahran Hashim

Ancillary Information
a) National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) and leader Mohamed Zahran (Abu Ubaida) also called Moulvi Zahran Hashim were responsible for the massacre.
b) Note there is Sri Lanka Towheeth Jamaath (SLTJ)., Ceylon Towheeth Jamaath (CTJ)and a  Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamaath.
c)  Apparently Moulvi Zahran Hashim and NTJ have/had YouTube videos in Tamil calling for killing of Kafirs (non Muslims) and jihad. The local villagers say those videos were common and had watched at least some of them.

What can be done

a)  Stop teaching of Arabic after school.  All the Muslim children in this village do two hours of Arabic lessons after school. Prevention is better than cure
b) Moulavi/Lebbes visiting Pakistan or Saudi Arabia should be kept under investigation.
c) Madrassas should be investigated.
d) Either heavy military presence in mono ethnic enclaves, including Jaffna. Or change in population composition, if needs be by State intervention, so be it.
e) Foreign Aid, donations cannot be to a single ethnic group or religion.

Some excerpts

http://www.ft.lk/top-story/Blame-game-over-terror-attacks/26-676853
Meanwhile, Highways and Road Development Minister Kabir Hashim claimed that some of the members linked to the NTJ and suspected to be responsible for the terror attacks on Sunday had earlier been arrested over the Wanathawilluwa explosives raid on 18 January but were later released.

“I have been informed that one or two persons that were arrested during Wanathawilluwa explosive haul were released by the Police because of political influence. There is speculation that one person that got released was involved in a suicide attack on Sunday,” he added. However, Hashim said that he could only confirm this information within the next couple of days.

Police also identified the suicide bomber of the Shangri-La Hotel as Imzaan Seelavan. Presenting evidence before the Colombo Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, Police said that Seelavan’s wife, his brother and two children had died in the explosion in Dematagoda on Sunday.

Seelavan, who was an owner of a factory in the Wellmapitiya area, had about 100 people in his employment, Police told courts. Nine of his employees had been arrested during a joint operation by the Colombo Crimes Division and Terrorist Investigation Department (TID). The nine suspects were remanded till 6 May. Court ordered Police to conduct an in-depth investigation and present the findings to Court. The magistrate also gave permission for Police to obtain phone records of the nine suspects.

The three Policemen who died in the Dematagoda blasts were posthumously awarded promotions.

-----------------------------------------------

Video of alleged Sri Lanka suspect moments before blast. Looks a nice peaceful run of the mill guy.
Pats the head of a little child before he walks into the church and detonates the bomb.

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/04/22/sri-lanka-attack-new-surveillance-video-kiley-pkg-lead-vpx.cnn

The Norwegian Tamil Diaspora

Life on the Outside: The Tamil Diaspora and Long Distance Nationalism by Øivind Fuglerud (1999).

Not a review of the book, just excerpts.  I found the book unbiased in my opinion.  The first chapters are a background of how the separatist movement evolved. The latter chapters are on the dynamics of the Tamil Diaspora in Norway.  The excerpts are from that part of of the book.

• Link to the pdf of the book at end of post.  
• YouTube video of life in the Tundra at end of post.

Vasanthan, Thank you very much for sending the book link

Excerpts

A more radical change in climate and nature than that between Sri Lanka and Norway is difficult to imagine and if one is going directly the journey may be made in less than twelve hours. One Tamil lady explained to me how, arriving in the middle of winter with the snowdrifts high against the houses, she believed that people in this part of the world lived in underground caves

A refugee counsellor in the northern part of the country told me how a young Tamil boy due to be settled in the township where she worked had desperately clung on to the aeroplane steps, refusing to come with her into town. Seeing the barren, snow-covered environment he was convinced he was being banished to somewhere outside human habitation.

When he was moving to another town I asked Sri, a moderate LTTE supporter, how he would go about getting acquainted if he met a fellow countryman at his new working place. He answered: I will begin by asking him if he has any news from home, that is our standard opening. Then I will ask him what he thinks about this or that of the recent development in Sri Lanka. If I understand he supports the movement I may invite him home. If he criticises the Tigers but is basically neutral, we may keep on talking at work. I am not a fanatic, I don’t mind that. If I understand he is a member of one of the other groups, however, I will break off. I don’t want to socialise with traitors.

In dealing with fellow countrymen there is always the possibility that actions in Norway will have consequences in Sri Lanka. Tamil refugees are not fleeing a common enemy, the violence is within as much as on the outside. ‘They are here, don’t speak’, newcomers will be informed upon arrival. ‘LTTE is here, I cannot speak’

Even Wilson, a founding member of the LTTE who was permitted to leave the organisation after a dramatic escape from Batticaloa prison in the early 1980s, found that after finally obtaining a visitor’s visa for his mother she was being held back byhis former friends in Jaffna. ‘ Theyjust want to remind me that they know where I am’, he said to me. ‘They are afraid that after ten years in Norway I may be tempted to write a book or something.’ In fact, from 1990 this effort to execute control beyond their own borders has been institutionalised through a very strict exit control in the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka, which includes the obligatory signing of a ‘contract’ by a guarantor staying behind.

As already indicated, in Norway many Tamil refugees have in fact violated the ‘first-country’ regulation on their way. To remain in Norwaytheymust make up a storyand stick to it.

The idea that Tamils in exile tend to give each other away is part of the current self-understanding, a situation which prevents a communicative sharing of life histories. Most of my informants asked me not to tell their stories to other Tami

Another man asked me to take care of his passport when he was kicked out by his wife and had to staywith friends for some time. ‘You cannot trust Tamils when it comes to passports’, was his laconic comment

When the possibility of sending home Tamil asylum seekers came up for renewed
discussion in 1994, a frenzybroke out in one of the small northern settlements. It incited people to go to the police on their own initiative and provide what little information they had about their neighbours. Within a few days local immigration authorities were able to establish that, of the 120 Tamils resident in the village, more than 40 had been living in Switzerland before coming to Norway.

For example, it is a well-known fact among Tamils that in Norway the local LTTE people were for a number of years allowed to monopolise positions as interpreters for the immigration police.
That interaction between a police officer and a refugee in a situation of interrogation is on unequal terms, defined by the context and scale of Western immigration, is readily understandable. But when the refugee is afraid of telling his story to the police officer because of the interpreter’s connections to the militant opposition in Sri Lanka and this interpreter is employed by the Norwegian police, where do we draw the boundary of the system?


In terms of inter-personal relationships social fragmentation is not readily apparent to outsiders. To a Norwegian the first impression of Tamil life is one of dense sociality.

the divide among Tamils in Norway has been on an LTTE /anti-LTTE basis. LTTE is today the only militant group with a properly working organisation in Norway, keeping offices in the main cities and having more or less official representatives in most Tamil settlements.

Prabhakaran, lacking resources of his own, had temporarily joined the organisation TELO which was then under leadership of two militant leaders called Kuttimani and Thangathurai. Together with them he was supposed to have taken part in a famous armed robbery of the Neervely Bank in Jaffna. The second was that subsequently Prabhakaran had personally tipped off the Sri Lankan police on the whereabouts of Kuttimani and Thangathurai, this information leading to their arrest and, as a result of this arrest, their death in the Wellikade prison massacre.

On 1 May 1994 the writer and publisher, Sabaratnam, was killed by unidentified gunmen at his home in Paris

Critics of the LTTE in Norway pointed out to me that shortly before his death Sabaratnam had written an article in the Canadian magazine Thayagam. In this article Sabaratnam had observed that all who participated in the Neervely Bank robbery, except Prabhakaran himself, were now dead, killed either by the Sri Lankan authorities or by the LTTE. He implied that Prabhakaran saw it in his interest to remove the other participants in the action in order to conceal his own co-operation with TELO.
Sabaratnam had promised to return with another article disclosing the real story behind the robbery and the capture of Kuttimani and Thangathurai, but was killed before this could take place – allegedly by the LTTE itself. By the adherents of the Thayagam version, the killing of Sabaratnam and Prabhakaran’s betrayal in the late 1970s were seen as closely connected events which should make people turn their backs on LTTE activities in exile. Not only did Prabhakaran’s tip-off constitute a collaboration with the enemy, but the killing of Sabaratnam reached the lowest possible level of human baseness. It was claimedby people familiar with the early history of the militant movement that in the mid-1970s, years before the Neervely robbery, when Sabaratnam himself was a political activist in Jaffna, he had taken Prabhakaran into his house while he was wanted by the police and had kept him in hiding for several weeks, putting his own life in danger. Repaying this old debt with murder constituted a breach with the militants’ most fundamental ‘code of arms’ and, by implication, left his organisation, LTTE, without any legitimate claim for support.

Tamils are the group of immigrants with the highest rate of employment and with the lowest level of welfare support in Norway. One reason for this situation is the acceptance of the kind of work which is not in demand. In Oslo, according to a recent statistical survey (Djuve and Hagen 1995), only 1.3 per cent of Tamils’ income comes from welfare, as compared to, for instance, 41.7 per cen among Somalis and 37.5 per cent among Vietnamese. In fact, the Tamil level of welfare support is lower than among Norwegians (2 per cent).

In this rather inhospitable area Sri Lankan Tamils have won a reputation as workers in the factories where fish is cut and packed. Even if the numbers are small, seldom more than 50 to 100 in one village, statistics will show that in several villages Tamils represent 5 to 10 per cent of the total population

In the anthropological literature the dowry has generally been regarded as a pre-mortem inheritance to the daughters of a family (Comaroff 1980). In the prevailing war situation it is normally a chosen son who pre mortem inherits the realisable capital of the family and invests it in migration against taking further responsibility for his native family upon himself. This implies, inter alia, that he must procure his sisters’ dowries before establishing a family on his own.  (my comment: This is one of the biggest differences between Tamil and Sinhalese culture, among the Tamils (and northern muslims) the house goes to the daughters, among the Sinhalese the house goes to the son)


most Tamil asylum seekers arriving in the early 1980s had been granted recognition as refugees while those arriving after 1986 had not. In their understanding this was related to the fact that most of these early applicants had been active LTTE-members, in other words that Norwegian authorities intervene and take sides in internal conflicts, caring less about the killed than about the killers.

from people who have fled to get away from their dictatorship in Sri Lanka and have relatives still suffering under their rule there. It is here, at this precise point, that the spirit of selfsacrifice of the LTTE soldiers becomes important. The actual materiality of death makes it difficult not to believe the LTTE when they say that their fighters die on behalf of the Tamil nation. Even people who in public take upon themselves the burden of speaking against the LTTE may sometimes admit in private conversations that, emotionally, they are not able to free themselves from sympathy for the organisation and its cause.

In 1903, for example, there were 2021 Jaffna-Tamils employed as functionaries in the federated Malay States Railways compared to 84 Sinhalese, 278 Malays and 1084 Chinese (Ramasamy 1988).In 1903, for example, there were 2021 Jaffna-Tamils employed as functionaries in the federated Malay States Railways compared to 84 Sinhalese, 278 Malays and 1084 Chinese (Ramasamy 1988).

The main reasons why Ceylon Tamils were favoured by the British administrators were their recognised industriousness and their fluency in English. As noted in Chapter 2, at the turn of the century the Tamil community already had a long-standing relationship with English speaking missionaries. The acquiring of language proficiency was, however, not a passive process. Education was an asset seized upon by the ambitious, something that aspiring Jaffna families put their minds to without regard for the costs.

Migration to areas like British Malaya was clearly one way of ‘converting . English education into cash’. The Money Order remittances returned to Ceylon in a good year like 1918 totalled 736,652 Ceylon rupees from the Federated Malay States and 289,651 rupees from the Straits Settlements, quite substantial amounts at that time. The importance of these remittances was such that on two occasions, with a twentyseven years’ interval, the government agent in the Northern Province found it necessary to point out that it was the money coming from Malaya which accounted for the relative prosperity of Jaffna (Ceylon Administrative Report 1903 and 1930).https://zodml.org/sites/default/files/%5BIvind_Fuglerud%2C_Oivind_Fuglerud%5D_Life_on_the_Outs.pdf

Bi Kidude, Sri Lankan Baila and Traditional Drums

Recently saw a music video by Bi Kidude (Little Granny) from Zanzibar.  I was struck by the similarities to Sri Lankan Kaffiringha or Manja music and old traditional music as in Panama Vannam and Yak Thovil.

Bi Kidude (Little Granny)
Fatma Baraka Khamis was Taarab singer from Zanzibar who was born around 1910. Bi Kidude won several awards including a WOMEX
Award for her role in the culture of the Zanzibar Island.  The iconic artist sadly passed away on April 17^th, 2013.   She very well might have been a century old. (see more here and video documentary“As old as my tongue – The Myth and Life of Bi Kidude” by director Andy Jones). In Bi Kidude's words, I smoke, drink and sing.  Not bad for a life to a hundred years.

So here is one music video by Bi Kidude. A few other links, Dancing,  Traditional Drums, and her Voice range (Alminadura)



Manja Music of Sri Lanka
Its the music of the Kaffirs (not a derogatory word in Sri Lanka). They were brought mainly by the Portuguese from Angola and Mozambique. The Tabbowa/Sirambiadi community in the west coast is a mix of African descendants and Sinhalese.  Their music is now very much part of the Sri Lankan tradition.  Below the group Ceylon African Manja performing in their village.  This is youtube clip of the same group in a more formal setting.


Portuguese Burgers (Creoles) of Batticoloa (East Coast)
The Portuguese Burgers too sing and dance Kaffiringha music.  Its is unknown if they have African roots.



Sri Lankan Traditional Music
A gravel voice and rhythms (as against melody) define traditional music. Immediate below women playing the rabane,  a instrument played by women at village events, specially Sinhalese New Year.  This particular video is from a five star hotel !!.  

Second below the traditional Gajaba Wannama (dance of the King’s Tuske) with a modern dance ensemble.  More Wannamas here.

Unheard of a couple of decades back, upper middle class girls/women playing the drums, or for that matter a traditional instruments.  Now we have and all girl/women traditional drumming (watch it is good, their website http://www.thuryaa.lk/). The times are a changing. 





Also see
http://sbarrkum.blogspot.com/2013/03/music-papare-video-angola-or-brasil.html
http://sbarrkum.blogspot.com/2011/01/galle-heliwela-exorcism-and-yak-natum.html

Thanks Mohamed Rizwan for linking the Bi Kidude video, Anton James for identifying Bi Kidude.

For Domestic Agriculture Protection

Just a few hours ago Jack Point had an article against Tariffs that protect the local farmer.  One of the arguments he uses are the Corn Laws of 1840''s that protected aristocrat large landowners in the UK.

For a start there is no comparison because Corn Laws were protective for large aristocrat landowners in UK, whereas most agricultural land in Sri Lanka are small holdings of about 2-3 acres (except Tea/Rubber). 
 Note: Sri Lanka has one of the highest population densities  #43, (309/km2, 800/km2), and one of the lowest rates of urbanization with a 15% urban population # 191 out of 198

The other is that Jack Point is probably unaware of the history prior to the creation and repeal of Corn Laws.

In point form,

• Law (Enclosure Acts  (also here) 1750-1860) pushed rural poor out of countryside.
• Cheap Labor for factories. (Think life described by Dickens and Thomas Hardy)
• Oligarch/aristocrat consolidate land.
• Oligarch/aristocrats Pass laws (Corn Laws) to get higher prices for their products.
• Laws to keep Factory Wage Slaves in check.
• By time the laws were repealed the damage was done. It was near impossible for one time rural poor, now factory wage slaves to move back into and buy property in the villages. 
• To Quote
  The lands seized by the acts were then consolidated into individual and privately owned farms, with large, politically connected farmers receiving the best land. Often, small landowners could not afford the legal and other associated costs of enclosure and so were forced out

Win win situation for the Oligarach/aristocrat/Factory Owner.
Similar laws were enacted in the US too to ensure urbanization and cheap factory workers.

All that Free Market stuff is bullshit.

In Sri Lanka, most land holdings are small holders 2-3 acres. When you see large acres  of paddy land it does not belong to a single owner.  There would be many owners in this paddy tract, Also agricutural workers are not just 24% of population.  Many Govt workers, police officers/constables, private sector employees in cities towns except for Kandy/Colombo  have an acre or two, typically paddy land in their ancestral villages.  They would not be classified as agricultural worker, even though they take leave and go and work on planting and harvesting.

Yes, rice and other agricultural produce is cheaper from India Pakistan and Bangaladesh.  And produce imported is taxed for revenue and hopefully protect agriculture in Sri Lanka.

At least one of the reasons for  cheap agricultural produce from India Pakistan and Bangaladesh is because large land holdings with dirt cheap labor in those countries. 

Do we want Sri Lankas small holder farmers to live a life of poverty like in India/Pakistan/Bangaladesh.
Do we want small holder farmers to flock to cities and become wage slaves.

What was said in England should also be applicable in Sri Lanka

Every cottage shall have his porcyon [portion, ie plot of land] assigned to him according to his rent, and then shall not the riche man oppress the poore man with his catell, and every man shall eate his owne close at his pleasure.

International Olympiad in Informatics: Sri Lanka has 26 medalists

While reading about Coding Jocks got interested in checking out International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).   I was pleasantly surprised to see that Sri Lanka had won 26 medals since 1992, i.e 23 years (facebook and SL website).  The IOI  has been around for 28 years.  Thats not bad for a country of 20 million, though you have small places like Latavia (68),  Lithuania (68) and Singapore (69) having won much more.  China has won 107 and has the highest number of medals.  India has a measly 39 medalist, which is low compared to its fame as the premier outsourcing software center.  Sri Lanka has won 3 Golds, 7 Silvers, whereas India has only 1 gold and 11 Silvers. 

Now for some non politically correct stuff.  In a previous post on winners of the Google Science Fair, I noted there was large amount of South Asian among the winners.   However,  in the IOI the south Asians are severely under represented.  Even in the US there seems to be more East Asians (Chinese/Koreans etc) as winners, specially in recent years. Only one lone name recognizable as of South Asian origin.
Now for the hot potato; looking at the SL winners, there isnt even one name that recognizable as of Tamil origin.  What gives, Tamils cant code or more to the point cant code to compete?.

$25 Ebola Test: Science Win for 16 year old

Olivia Hallisey.16 yrs, from Greenwich Connecticut won the Google Science Fair. Her invention: a test for Ebola in 30 mins,  even in patients not displaying symptoms . The test cost just $25 and does not need refrigeration.  Previous tests took up to 12 hours and cost a few thousand dollars.

Other finalists for the fair included Pranav Sivakumar, 15, from Aurora, Illinois, who devised an automated method for discovering and analyzing gravitationally-lensed quasars; 14-year-old Krtin Nithiyanandam from Surrey, England, who designed a test for detecting Alzheimer's in its early stages (there was also another test by Anika Cheerala, 13 USA) ; Lalita Prasida Sripada Srisai, 13, from India, who found a way to make waste water clean by filtering it through corn cobs; and a French 14-year-old, Eliott Sarrey, who built a robot capable of tending to gardens.

For Sri Lanka, Lalita Srisai's project of cleaning waste water using Corn Cobs is probably very useful.  Very, very cool.  Plenty of corn cob (බඩ ඉරිඟු) in SL.

Adriel Sumathipla, 16 USA (sounds like he is of Sri Lankan descent) was a global finalist with his  Multi-Biomarker Diagnostic for Cardiac Disease:Rapid. Portable. Ultra-Low Cost.

Note: South Asians seem over represented among finalists and specially the winners.

https://www.googlesciencefair.com/en/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3246820/Clever-16-year-old-girl-sweeps-Google-Science-Fair-cheap-fast-temperature-independent-test-deadly-Ebola-virus.html

Saudi Arabia: Head of UN Human Rights Council Panel

Saudi Arabia's Faisal bin Hassan Trad has been named as Head (or is it Behead) of a Panel of independent experts on the UN Human Rights Council. This panel is tasked with naming experts that determine global human rights standards.

I guess Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein from Jordan (another country with exemplary Human Rights Record) will be a nice fit with the Panel.

Saudi Arabia is a great example for Human Rights.  They have the most number of executions (one every two days), Christians are not allowed to practice, the list goes on.  I am sure this panel can give Sri Lanka some pointers to get our miserable human rights record to the great heights of Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

In the first half of 2015, Saudi Arabia beheaded more than 100 people. The country is known for using corporal punishments, which include decapitations, whippings and mutilations.

Crimes which may be punished with beheading in Saudi Arabia include murder, rape, armed robbery, using recreational drugs, and smuggling, in addition to homosexuality, false prophecy, apostasy, adultery, witchcraft and sorcery. The country has also been criticised for the way it keeps women from driving and enjoying other rights, its treatment of LGBT citizens.

According to a Human Rights Watch report, Saudi Arabia continues to "try, convict, and imprison political dissidents and human rights activists solely on account of their peaceful activities". HRW also condemned the systematic discrimination against women and religious minorities and claimed that the Kingdom failed to "enact systematic measures to protect the rights of 9 million foreign workers".

So far (Sept 22nd, 2015) the big news sources such as NY Times, CNN, MSN, BBC have not reported on the appointment.  The moderate news scources that have so far reported are The Independent of UK and International Business Times

The New York times however in March, 2015 thought that "Saudi Justice, Harsh but Able to Spare the Sword". Maybe they had advance notice of the pending appointment.

Saudi Arabia’s justice system is regularly condemned by human rights groups for violating due process, lacking transparency and applying punishments like beheading and amputation. Criticism has grown as Saudi cases have made news abroad: a liberal blogger caned for criticizing religious leaders; activists jailed for advocating reform; a woman held without charge for more than two months for driving a car.

Mr. Yehiya’s reprieve was the product of a justice system little understood outside the kingdom, one that is based on centuries of Islamic tradition and that prioritizes stability and the strict adherence to Islamic mores over individual rights and freedoms.

Ratification of International Human Rights Treaties - Saudi Kingdom

• International Bill of Human Rights not signed by Saudi Arabia
• Convention relating to the Status of Refugees not signed by Saudi Arabia
• International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombing not signed by Saudi Arabia
• International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination not signed by Saudi Arabia
• Slavery Convention not signed by Saudi Arabia

And the list goes on and on.

Other Links
Record Beheadings and the Mass Arrest of Christians – Is it ISIS? No it’s Saudi ArabiaNeed a Job? Saudi Arabia is Looking for Eight Swordsmen to Keep up with Record Beheadings
Saudi Arabia executes 'a person every two days' as rate of beheadings soars under King Salman

Prostitutes: 3 million College going Women in US

Inequality of income, with predominantly low wage jobs for those who are lucky to have a job and

Vegas_Blondie 32 • Las Vegas, Nevada, United States

high rents and exorbitant college fees are forcing women to augment their income by finding a sugar daddy to pay the bill.

Enter SeekingArrangement.com   a website catering to men and women who exchange sex for compensation, like an allowance or paying bills like student loans and rent.  It has 4.5M registered users

• 3.3M Sugar Babies
• 1.2M Sponsors (aka Sugar Daddies & Mommies)
• Average age of Sugar Baby: 21
• Average age of Sugar Daddy/Mommy: 45
• Average Income of Sugar Daddy/Mommy: $500K
• Average compensation: $5K per month

The Economic Relevance of SA - It's where the 1% converges with the 99%.

Earning $500K or more and spending $60K per year on a mistress: this is the 1%.  Needing help with college loans and rent: this is the other 99%.

It's not an online dating website.  If someone wants a relationship or a liaison, there are plenty of other sites like Craigslist and Ashley Madison.

Is it a prostitution website?  According to SA they are not, repeat not, engaged in prostitution.  Their disclaimer: "An arrangement is not an escort service.  SeekingArrangement in no way, shape or form supports escorts or prostitutes using our website for personal gain." 

Seeking Arrangement: A Form of Prostitution, for the 1%.  As a prostitution website, it may not be as explicit as WhatsYourPrice or Backpage, but SA has at its core a business transaction: companionship with extras in return for cash and/or the equivalent.

Mainstreaming Prostitution: Beginning last year, the Bank of England included prostitution in GDP measurements.  According to the Office of National Statistics, prostitution generated $9B a year, adding 0.7% to the UK GDP.  They aren't alone: Sweden, Norway and a few other European countries already include it.  And if you can measure it, you can tax it.  And legalization is necessary for measurement.
Prostitution is legal in most of the developed world.  In fact, of the G20 countries, prostitution is illegal in just 5: China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and, of course, the United States.

From http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-24/less-10-years-federal-reserve-has-driven-millions-american-women-prostitution

Sustainability of Increasingly Complex Societies

A must read article along the lines of Joseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies.  Examines the

viability and sustainability of increasing complex societies.  Is “doing more with less”, i.e. is ever increasing productivity sustainable.

One should also think of increasingly complex Finance and Financial Instruments, and increased instability of finance and economies (kind of touched here) when reading the article.  Its all connected.

Excerpts from the Archdruid Report

recent chatter about “cloud computing.” What is this thing we’re calling “the cloud?” Descend from the airy realms of cyber-abstractions into the grubby underworld of hardware, and it’s an archipelago of huge server farms, each of which uses as much electricity as a small city, each of which has a ravenous hunger for spare parts, skilled labor, and many other inputs, and each of which must be connected to all the others by a physical network of linkages that have their own inescapable resource demands. As with Fuller’s satellite analogy, the ephemeralization of one part of the whole system is accomplished at the cost of massive capital outlays and drastic increases in complexity elsewhere in the system.

The basis of that theory is the uncontroversial fact that human societies routinely build more infrastructure than they can afford to maintain. During periods of prosperity, societies invest available resources in major projects—temples, fortifications, canal or road systems, space programs, or whatever else happens to appeal to the collective imagination of the age. As infrastructure increases in scale and complexity, the costs of maintenance rise to equal and exceed the available economic surplus; the period of prosperity ends in political and economic failure, and infrastructure falls into ruin as its maintenance costs are no longer paid.

The pulse of anabolic expansion and catabolic collapse thus defines, for example, the history of imperial China. The extraordinary stability of China’s traditional system of village agriculture and local-scale manufacturing put a floor under the process, so that each collapse bottomed out at roughly the same level as the last, and after a century or two another anabolic pulse would get under way. In some places along the Great Wall, it’s possible to see the high-water marks of each anabolic phase practically side by side, as each successful dynasty’s repairs and improvements were added onto the original fabric. rably more troublesome if the resource base lacks the permanence of traditional Chinese rice fields and workshops. A society that bases its economy on nonrenewable resources, in particular, has set itself up for a far more devastating collapse.

Buckminister Fuller had a well-earned reputation in the engineering field of his time as “failure-prone,” and a consistent habit of pursuing efficiency at the expense of resilience was arguably the most important reason why. The fiasco surrounding Fuller’s 1933 Dymaxion car is a case in point. One of the car’s many novel features was a center of mass that was extremely high compared to other cars, which combined with an innovative suspension system to give the car an extremely smooth ride. Unfortunately this same feature turned into a lethal liability when a Dymaxion prototype was sideswiped by another vehicle.

The unavoidable tradeoff between efficiency and resilience can be understood easily enough by considering an ordinary bridge.

A society dependent on vulnerable satellite networks in place of the robust reliability of oceanic cables, cloud computing in place of the dispersed security of programs and data spread across millions of separate hard drives, just-in-time ordering in place of warehouses ready to fill in any disruptions in the supply chain, and so on, is indeed more ephemeral—that is to say, considerably more fragile than it would otherwise be.

US involvement with Ebola Virus

Some interesting facts on US involvement with the Ebola Virus.  Also read this on Ebola.

#20 Researchers from Tulane University have been active for several years in the very same areas where this Ebola outbreak began.  One of the stated purposes of this research was to study "the future use of fever-viruses as bioweapons".

#21 According to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in Sierra Leone, researchers from Tulane University have been asked "to stop Ebola testing during the current Ebola outbreak".  What in the world does that mean?

#22 The Navy Times says that the U.S. military has been interested in studying Ebola "as a potential biological weapon" since the 1970s...

Filoviruses like Ebola have been of interest to the Pentagon since the late 1970s, mainly because Ebola and its fellow viruses have high mortality rates — in the current outbreak, roughly 60 percent to 72 percent of those who have contracted the disease have died — and its stable nature in aerosol make it attractive as a potential biological weapon.

#23 The CDC actually owns a patent on one particular strain of the Ebola virus...

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control owns a patent on a particular strain of Ebola known as "EboBun." It's patent No. CA2741523A1 and it was awarded in 2010. You can view it here.

It is being reported that this is not the same strain that is currently being transmitted in Africa, but it is interesting to note nonetheless.  And why would the CDC want "ownership" of a strain of the Ebola virus in the first place?

#24 The CDC has just put up a brand new webpage entitled "Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations for Hospitalized Patients with Known or Suspected Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever in U.S. Hospitals".

#11 A study conducted in 2012 proved that Ebola could be transmitted between pigs and monkeys that were in separate cages and that never made physical contact.

#12 This is a new strain of Ebola, so what we know about other strains of Ebola may not necessarily apply to this strain of Ebola.

via http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-04/25-critical-facts-about-ebola-outbreak-every-american-needs-know

also see
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-05/us-government-caught-using-humanitarian-hiv-program-front-foster-cuban-dissent

Businesses Refuse Spend a Few Cents More Per Garment to End Labor Exploitation in Emerging Markets

Fantastic article by Satyajit Das on how businesses refuse to spend a few cents more per garment to

end labor exploitation. 

The first excerpt is the last sentence in the article and is a quote from George Orwell the author of Animal Farm.

“… we all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to set free; but our standard of living and hence our ‘enlightenment’ demands that robbery shall continue." 

Excerpts:

There is a race to the bottom in costs and working conditions, as emerging market manufacturers compete for the business of foreign purchasers. Everyone in the supply chain seeks to maximise market share and profitability, sometimes by cutting corners. In emerging markets, corruption and failures of government and business compound these pressures.

Bangladesh must compete with Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar for foreign clients. Continuous cost pressures and competition make this economic model difficult to sustain. Prices have decreased by 10-12% over the last 5 years. Return on investment in the garment trade has decreased from 50% to 20%, which is close to the cost of debt in Bangladesh, effectively around 15-20%. In turn, this drives further cost reduction measures.

e.g. If you take a shirt that is sold at US$ 22.50 (appox LKR 3,000) to US consumers, 75% (LKR 2,200) of that price is profit for the retailer. If the shirt is made in Sri Lanka the labour cost is only 2.8% (LKR 81) of the price. Up to the CIF value it is only 23.1% (LKR 675) of the retail price,

None of this is new in emerging markets. Its origins lie in the colonial past.

Using superior military power and technology, European powers, such as England, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Italy, France and Germany, established and maintained colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The basic driver was cheap resources, labour (often in the form of slavery) and new markets for the colonizing nation’s products.

Colonialism fuelled the growth and prosperity of the old world. Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama was exultant at being able to buy pepper in the East Indies for 3 ducats a hundredweight from indigenous traders knowing they would fetch for 80 ducats in Venice.

Karl Marx approved: “the question is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton”. Whilst recognising that the exploitation of Indian markets and labour by the East India Company for commercial gain, Marx argued that capitalism would transform the subcontinent. India would benefit from the fruits of industrial revolution, such as improved communications and a free press. It was a sentiment worthy of George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman who regarded the Victorian empire as “the greatest thing that ever happened to an undeserving world”.

Peter Whitfield writing in Travel: A Literary History identified the link between earthly power (wealth) and spiritual glory (Christianity) that provided the justification for colonial conquest:

It amounted to a theory of cultural destiny – that the European maritime nations were destined to bring Christianity and civilization to a pagan and savage world, and their reward was to be the wealth and riches which the indigenous populations themselves were incapable of appreciating and valuing. Underlying colonialism was what Edward Said in 1978 termed: Orientalism. This was a reference to the patronizing attitude of Westerners towards Asian, Middle Eastern and African societies. They were seen as static and under developed, which a superior West could shape in accordance with its own image.

via:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/04/satyajit-das-new-colonialism-businesses-refuse-spend-cents-per-garment-end-labor-exploitation-emerging-markets.html

What the Modern World Owes Slavery

At this time when all the talk in Sri Lanka is about human rights violations, it may

be also the time to look at slavery and its economic gains for the west.

Excerpts

Haitian slaves began to throw off the “heel of the French” in 1791, when they rose up and, after bitter years of fighting, eventually declared themselves free. Their French masters, however, refused to accept Haitian independence. The island, after all, had been an extremely profitable sugar producer, and so Paris offered Haiti a choice: compensate slave owners for lost property — their slaves (that is, themselves) — or face its imperial wrath. The fledgling nation was forced to finance this payout with usurious loans from French banks. As late as 1940, 80% of the government budget was still going to service this debt.

Corps of doctors tended to slave ports up and down the Atlantic seaboard. ..... Priceless epidemiological information on a range of diseases — malaria, smallpox, yellow fever, dysentery, typhoid, cholera, and so on — was gleaned from the bodies of the dying and the dead.

Enslaved Africans and African Americans slaughtered cattle and sheared wool on the pampas of Argentina, spun cotton and wove clothing in textile workshops in Mexico City, and planted coffee in the mountains outside Bogotá. They fermented grapes for wine at the foot of the Andes and boiled Peruvian sugar to make candy. In Guayaquil, Ecuador, enslaved shipwrights built cargo vessels that were used for carrying more slaves from Africa to Montevideo. Throughout the thriving cities of mainland Spanish America, slaves worked, often for wages, as laborers, bakers, brick makers, liverymen, cobblers, carpenters, tanners, smiths, rag pickers, cooks, and servants.

Slavery, as the historian Lorenzo Green argued half a century ago, “formed the very basis of the economic life of New England: about it revolved, and on it depended, most of her other industries.” Fathers grew wealthy building slave ships or selling fish, clothing, and shoes to slave islands in the Caribbean; when they died, they left their money to sons who “built factories, chartered banks, incorporated canal and railroad enterprises, invested in government securities, and speculated in new financial instruments.”  In due course, they donated to build libraries, lecture halls, botanical gardens, and universities, as Craig Steven Wilder has revealed in his new book, Ebony and Ivy.

Even the tony clothier, Brooks Brothers (founded in New York in 1818), got its start selling coarse slave clothing to southern plantations.  It now describes itself as an “institution that has shaped the American style of dress.”

More at
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/modern-world-owes-slavery-back-wages.html

Penis Length and GDP Growth

This was a research done by Tatu Westling of University of Helsinki in 2011.

To quote

This study has made three contributions.

First, it reveals the somewhat perplexing link between the size of male organ and economic growth.

Second, it provides some rudimentary interpretations which state that macroeconomic growth might be related to populations' risk-taking and/or self-esteem.

Third, for the best of author's knowledge the interplay between sex and macroeconomic outcomes is novel, and has not been discussed in the literature before.

Obviously the proposed `male organ hypothesis' should be tested with more elaborate methods and data. Until then it remains an intriguing statistical artefact.

Sri Lanka, like India and the Philippines had low growth and short penises. Yikes.

Some Interesting Comments

Glad someone took the time to look at the hard data.

Perhaps the engine of economic development is less about bore or stroke and more about total displacement.

https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/27239/maleorga.pdf

Am I a Seyyid, a descendant of Prophet Muhammad

A recent blog at Harappadna discusses DNA of Sayyid (plural Sadah) who are considered to be descendants of Prophet Muhammad. One of the comments links to a study on Iranian Sadat (Sayyid)  population. The study found the most common haplotype values for seven marker, and I too have most of the common markers.  One small issue, paternal ancestry is Jaffna Tamil and oral history says our paternal line originated from Kalinga (orissa) in the 12th century.  The Y-DNA haplogroup is J2b2* (not a,b.c.d or e),

Marker	Most Common DYS Value	My Value
dys 393	12, 13	12
dys 390	23, 24	23
dys 394	14, 15	not tested
dys385a	13, 12	13
dys 385b	15, 13, 17	17
dys 392	11	11
dys 389-2	29, 30	28

As Razib Khan states

The Syed lineages don't exhibit a "Syed modal haplotype." What you should see is a Syed haplotype of ~50%, and then a range of other lineages which introgressed through people lying about their origins or women being unfaithful to their husbands. Instead there are a wide range of haplotypes. Being Syed is an honorific.

I guess there is a cautionary tale somewhere it is along the lines of not being too hung up on lineages. Also possibly if you are wedded to being of a particular lineage/race better not get your DNA tested.

Anyway you can read article and comments at link below
http://www.harappadna.org/2011/06/every-south-asian-arab-a-descendant-of-muhammad/
 

Education Fever causing Low Birth Rates ?

Is the push for more education pushing down birth rates in East Asia ?.  So far Sri Lanka fertility rate has not fallen below the replacement rate of 2.1

Excerpts

There is a body of scholarship showing that the collapse of the fertility rate to dangerously low levels across east Asia is the direct consequence of school cramming and "education fever".

In this paper we argue that East Asia’s ultra-low fertility rates can be partially explained by the steadfast parental drive to have competitive and successful children…

Obsession with education in Korea has become an integral part of contemporary Korean culture and affects all aspects of social life. Deeply rooted Confucian values stress education as the best way for achieving high social status and economic prosperity. A collapse of the hierarchical social class system coupled with egalitarian ideas from the West have created the notion that any Korean child can achieve personal advancement, economic prosperity, and social mobility through education.

Variants of this education fever are visible across East Asia. Some 97pc of children in Singapore receive extra private tutorials. Very young children are sent to "cram schools" in Taiwan after normal school is finished. It is no surprise that one of the consequences observed by psychologists is delayed or incomplete emotional development.

Over-schooling is not the only reason why East Asian fertility has collapsed, but it is a big reason. There clearly comes a point when it is unhealthy. So as in all things in life, moderation and common sense are advised. And plenty of play.

From
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100026127/oecd-educational-report-pisa-fever-is-causing-east-asias-demographic-collapse/

UK: Not just Trafficking Organ harvesting

An unnamed girl was brought to the UK from Somalia with the intention of removing her organs and selling them.

Child protection charities warned that the case was unlikely to be an isolated incident as traffickers were likely to have smuggled a group of children into the country.

The case emerged in a government report which showed that the number of human trafficking victims in the UK has risen by more than 50 per cent last year and reached record levels.

A total of 371 children were exploited, with the majority of them being used as slaves or sexually abused. They included 95 children from Vietnam, 67 from Nigeria and 25 from China. Others hailed from Romania and Bangladesh. 

India: Highest amount of slaves in World

India has the  most amount of slaves in the world, 14 million, mainly Dalits.

On a per capita basis Pakistan (3rd) and India (4th) have not diverged.

On the other hand Sri Lanka who are busy committing genocide on the Tamils and have not had time to enslave their population come at a lowly 118th rank.


More at:
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-10-18/india/43177467_1_modern-slavery-modern-day-slaves-debt-bondage


Download Report
http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/report/?download

Obama wears a sarong (possibly throw over from Indonesian childhood)

First thanks to Tilak Ranaweera who commented about Obama wearing a sarong and a little googling turned up a treasure trove.  The excerpts below.

When Barack Obama met Genevieve Cook in 1983 at a Christmas party in New York’s East Village, it was the start of his most serious romance yet. But as the 22-year-old Columbia grad began to shape his future, he was also struggling with his identity: American or international? Black or white? 

Genevieve Cook came from not one but several distinguished families. Her father, Michael J. Cook, was a prominent Australian diplomat. Genevieve’s mother, born Helen Ibbitson, came from a banking family in Melbourne and was an art historian. Michael and Helen divorced when Genevieve was 10. Helen soon remarried into a well-known American family, the Jessups. With homes in Georgetown and on Park Avenue at various times, Philip C. Jessup Jr. served as general counsel for the National Gallery of Art, in Washington. The Jessups were establishment Democrats. Philip’s father had been a major figure in American postwar diplomacy.

If Barack and Genevieve were in social occasions as a couple, it was almost always with the Pakistanis. Hasan Chandoo had moved back from London and taken a place in a converted warehouse on the waterfront below Brooklyn Heights. Wahid Hamid, starting a rise up the corporate ladder that would take him to the top of PepsiCo, lived on Long Island with his wife.  

Barack for the most part declined alcohol and drugs. “He was quite abstemious,” Genevieve said. She enjoyed the warmth of the gatherings, but was usually ready to go home before him. He was pushing away from the Pakistanis, too, politely, for a different reason, she thought. He wanted something more. 

There was a riff in that book (Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man) that Mahmood thought struck close to the bone with Obama. The narrator, an intelligent black man whose skills were invisible to white society, wrote: “America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It’s ‘winner take nothing’ that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.” His friend Barack, Mahmood thought, “was the most deliberate person I ever met in terms of constructing his own identity, and his achievement was really an achievement of identity in the modern world. [That] was an important period for him, first the shift from not international but American, number one, and then not white, but black.” 

In Dreams from My Father, Obama chose to emphasize a racial chasm that unavoidably separated him from the woman he described as his New York girlfriend.

One night I took her to see a new play by a black playwright. It was a very angry play, but very funny. Typical black American humor. The audience was mostly black, and everybody was laughing and clapping and hollering like they were in church. After the play was over, my friend started talking about why black people were so angry all the time. I said it was a matter of remembering—nobody asks why Jews remember the Holocaust,  I think I said—and she said that’s different, and I said it wasn’t, and she said that anger was just a dead end. We had a big fight, right in front of the theater. When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn’t be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. She could only be herself, and wasn’t that enough.

Sri Lankan in a Sarong

In a series of diary entries from one of his lovers here in the Big Apple, a never-before-seen side of the now-guarded president is revealed — with descriptions of his “sexual warmth” and his penchant for lounging at home in a sarong. 

Obama even briefly moved into Cook’s Prospect Park, Brooklyn, apartment and they celebrated Christmas together in 1983, before the two parted ways.  

In his memoir “Dreams from My Father,” Obama provides sketchy details of his time in New York. He mentioned “there was a woman in New York that I loved” but never mentioned her name.

She talked about how Obama walked around his bedroom bare-chested, dressed in a blue and white sarong while working on a New York Times crossword puzzle.

“I open the door that Barack keeps closed to his room and enter in a warm, private space pervaded by a mixture of smells that so strongly speak of his presence, his liveliness, his habits — running sweat, Brut spray deodorant, smoking, eating raisins, sleeping, breathing,” Cook wrote.

Obama and Cook would date for a year. He was 22 and she was 25 when they met.
Cook said when she told Obama she loved him, he responded: “Thank you.”

Read the Vanity Fair article, its a lengthy description
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/06/young-barack-obama-in-love-david-maraniss

Two US bloggers banned from entering the UK

Two US blogger, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have been banned from entering the UK.  The  Sri Lankan aspect is that Pam Geller and her Atlas Shrugs website were at the forefront in preventing Rifqua Bary, a Sri Lankan girl in the US being re-united with her parents.  Pamela Geller paid and fueled the controversy to headlines by insisting Rifqua would be killed if she returned to her parents, i.e. honor killing.  Pamela Geller went on on to denounce honor killing was common practice in Sri Lanka.  Background on Pam Geller here.

Excerpts from BBC article

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer co-founded anti-Muslim group Stop Islamization of America.

They were due to speak at an English Defence League march in Woolwich, where Drummer Lee Rigby was killed

The letters, (Page 1 and Page 2)  both dated Tuesday, claim that both activists have fallen within the scope of a list of unacceptable behaviours by making statements which may "foster hatred" and lead to "inter-community violence" in the UK.

Both letters gave examples of anti-Muslim views stated by both and went on to say that should they be allowed to enter the UK the home secretary believes they would "continue to espouse such views".