Lest history repeats

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Lest history repeats

 

When Sri Lanka was fast becoming a near pariah state on the world stage and where rampant corruption by the kith and kin of the ruling elite was the order of the day. He urged people to use their vote wisely to prevent a return to such a past.

Rajapaksas have neveradmitted error
In the course of the campaign for the LG elections, in the run up to the same and before then, the Rajapaksa’s nor their surrogates the SLPP or their allies in the Joint Opposition (JO) have never acknowledged the errors, faults and shortcomings of the Rajapaksa Administration, especially during its second term. There has been no regret mentioned at all for sacking a Chief Justice, jailing a presidential election opponent, victimizing the war time Army Commander, permitting newspaper editors to be murdered in broad daylight, seeing mosques burnt and Muslim businesses attacked, appalling human rights violations, economic mismanagement, taking on crippling debt and rampant corruption. While it should be conceded that in our cultural ethos, at least for a majority of people, the concept of repentance saying “mea culpa” or my fault is alien and a loss of face, a candid acknowledgement of error and a commitment to a new path is not politically uncommon and is actually required.

When the SLFP in 1994, returned from a seventeen-year political wilderness in the opposition, under the leadership of Chandrika Kumaratunga, there was a clear break from the disastrous and failed socialist policies of the 1970-77 period and commitment to a managed free market economy.

The UNP has radically moved away from its disastrous approach to ethnic relations which witnessed the fiasco of the District Development Council (DDC) elections of 1982, the resultant burning of the Jaffna public library and the 1983 anti-Tamil riots under their watch. Even the JVP, counter ideologically has renounced armed revolution, which it had twice waged both in 1971 and 1988/89 as a means of bringing in socialism and most crucially for national reconciliation and social cohesion, the TNA used the destruction of the LTTE’s entire senior military leadership to renounce both separatism and the armed struggle, committing instead to a robust democratic political engagement with the Sinhala polity.

In contrast, the only political force to have expressed no regrets, remorse or a commitment to a political course correction are the Rajapaksas, their fellow travellers of the Joint Opposition and their political surrogates in the SLPP.

The Rajapaksa political project seems intent on taking Sri Lanka back to a darker past, the contours of which we can all remember and President Sirisena urges us never to return to.

A serious Rajapaksa return will require a reexamination of what went wrong, especially in its second term, candidly admitting the same and committing very publicly to never repeat its dark, disastrous and corrupt track record. Paradoxically it may require a new, younger generation leadership, like young Namal to be the standard bearer for the “kurakkan shawl” rather than either brother number one or brother number two (no pun intended).

Where is Gotabhaya?
The issue of succession within the Rajapaksa family is the issue which clearly remains unresolved, demonstrated most recently by the departure from Sri Lanka of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and his decision to sit out the LG election in the United States. His political organisation “Eliya” and its associates have become totally silent and are not active in support of the SLPP pohottuwa.

The Rajapaksa top echelon has divergent interests, which work against a quick return to power. Mahinda is constitutionally barred from seeking election as president, son Namal requires time to build himself up as a national leader with broad acceptance, Basil has too many political enemies from his decade as Mahinda’s political hitman and henchman and Gotabhaya is a polarizing figure, with no experience in politics, a military mindset unsuited to democratic governance together with a complete lack of understanding that compromise can lead to consensus and is anathema to the Muslims who comprise 10% of the electorate.

These are significant drawbacks, not helped in any way that their political allies are mono ethnically Sinhala only and comprise such political lightweights as Dinesh Gunawardena, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, Tissa Vitharana, Udaya Gamanpila and Wimal Weerawansa, all leaders of very small political parties, which all except the last, being only capable of electing their leader and no one else to Parliament. One-man parties and the exception of the NFF with five MPs has been imploding of late, with cross overs to President Sirisena’s SLFP.

From August 2015to February 2018
The real story of February 2018 and how it differs from the general election of August 2015 is that overall the national vote but especially the UPFA vote will now be broken up between the SLFP led by President Sirisena and the SLPP led by the Rajapaksa’s.

The Rajapaksa’s SLPP’s pohottuwa claims the opposition or political dissent space and the Sinhala nationalism political space, while President Sirisena has the SLFP’s party machinery, the anti-corruption platform and the political moral high ground. Exactly how the UPFA / SLFP vote will split up and how much of the floating vote would swing towards President Sirisena remains to be seen. It is uncharted political territory and we shall know the answer soon enough on February 11th, when the election results are known. Either way as President Sirisena says, we must avoid a return to the past.

- http://www.dailynews.lk

What right does Thilak Marapana have to judge Ravi?

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What right does Thilak Marapana have to judge Ravi?

Thilak Marapana was forced out the Cabinet for not knowing how to select his clients. He got huge sums of money from Avant-garde Chairman Nissanka Senadipathi, knowing very well that Senadthipathi was destroying the UNP. He hardly appeared for any people in the UNP when the UNP was out of power.  UNP lawyers say, many times the man is to dodge supporting the party.

A UNP minister told us that Marapana has had a track record of ruining the UNP, in 2001-2004 the Prime Minister gave him two portfolios. He ruined both. He was responsible for the collapse of the CFA with the LTTE. The PM has now brought him back to the cabinet, after being forced to ask him to resign and made him Foreign Minister. The Foreign Ministry is now collapsing. 

Marapana has a track record of underperforming but our Prime Minister keeps recognizing him. Marapana and the UNP are in government because people like Ravi Karunanayake took the risk. Now this is how he is being treated by the UNP leaders he concluded. Very sad state of affairs.

Journey from nobodies to somebodies - Bahu

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Journey from nobodies to somebodies - Bahu
A key principle of the human rights movement is its appeal to universality: the idea that all human beings should struggle in solidarity for a common security and human values. This is exactly the basic Samasamajist principle. Due to the rise of Stalinism and association of communism in Russia and China with regimes without political freedom, there came a split between Samasamajism and human rights.
 
The activities of the International Federation for Human Rights (originally the International Labour Organization)—founded in France by the international labour movement in the 1920s—can be seen as a precursor to the modern movements. This organisation was quickly embraced by the United States and European powers. They wanted to show; at that stage, that Liberal democracy is the counter to the dictatorial ‘Communism’. Hence for them human rights is a way to counteract the Stalinist call for global solidarity among workers.
 
Today we are living in the era of Samasamajism of Bernie Saunders and Jeremy Corbin. Western bourgeoisie has turned to fascistic leaders in order to escape the pressure of modern human rights agitation. Women today are in the forefront of the fight against human rights violations. Since the 1970s the human rights movement has played an increasingly important role on the international scene. Although government support for human rights decreased, international organisations increased in strength and number.
 
The present regime in Lanka, in its present form was able start up the economy which was on a standstill and will end up stabilizing it by showing budget surpluses by 2020, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said recently.
 
“We did not take over a stable government but an economy which was on a standstill just like a power station with broken generators. Generator of the power station, which is called the economy, is development. This power station was on a standstill when we took over the government as the country was in a debt trap and as there were no investors. However we have managed to fuel this power plant with investments and by settling the debts. We will complete what we started and will end up showing a budget surplus by 2020,” the Prime Minister said.
 
Premier Wickremesinghe is perhaps trying to follow the example set by Mahathir Mohamed of Malaysia. In Malaysia too there were nationality conflicts, basically between Malays and Chinese. The constitution grants freedom of religion and makes Malaysia an officially secular state, while establishing Islam as the “religion of the Federation”.
 
New economic policy
 
According to the Population and Housing Census 2010 figures, nationality and religious beliefs correlate highly. Approximately 61.3% of the population practice Islam, 19.8% practice Buddhism, 9.2% Christianity, 6.3% Hinduism and 1.3% practice Confucianism, Taoism and other traditional Chinese religions. 0.7% declared no religion and the remaining 1.4% practiced other religions or did not provide any information. Sunni Islam of Shafi'i School of jurisprudence is the dominant branch of Islam in Malaysia, while 18% are nondenominational Muslims.
 
This strife culminated in the May 13 race riots in 1969. After the riots, the controversial New Economic Policy was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, trying to increase the share of the economy held by the Bumiputera. However under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad this nationality problem was controlled by expanding the power of the federation and secular nature of the constitution.
 
After the conclusion of this process there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization beginning in the 1980s. The economy shifted from being agriculturally based to one based more on manufacturing and industry. Numerous mega-projects were completed, such as the PETRONAS Towers, the North–South Expressway, the Multimedia Super Corridor, and the new federal administrative capital of Putrajaya. However, in the late 1990s the Asian financial crisis almost caused the collapse of the currency and the stock and property markets. Federation brought heightened tensions including a conflict with Indonesia as well continuous conflicts against the Communists in Borneo and the Malayan Peninsula.
 
Malaysian model
 
Hence if PM Wickremesinghe wants to follow the Malaysian model he has to expedite the work of constituent council and create united nation in Lanka. Malaysians improved rapidly the basic knowledge of English and empowered the people. This should be done in Lanka too, with an island wide campaign.
 
The premier said the previous government borrowed funds and constructed a port without ships and an airport without planes. “This is like mixing water with kerosene. However when we took over we managed to show an excess in primary accounts by making difficult decisions such as increasing VAT,” he said.
 
In addition his corporation with trade unions has won the support of Western world workers movement. On the other hand countries such as China, India and Japan had come to assist Lanka after the government signed an agreement with IMF. All these countries will not help Lanka if the agreement with IMF is abolished. In addition, it is necessary to settle the HR issues which are fundamental to a democratic society. 

Boris Pasternak -the Man who saw the other side of the Bolshevik Revolution

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Boris Pasternak -the Man who saw the other side of the Bolshevik Revolution
Although the novel was written during the years surrounding the revolution (1910-1920), it was published several decades later. Pasternak’s vision of cosmology, and passion for the individual as well as for life splendidly written in this great novel.  It is a snapshot into Russian life Russian Revolution and the early Soviet era of life.
 
Pasternak highlights the problem of modern sociopolitical existence through his masterpiece Dr Zivago.  It is a panoramic social and political chronicle, which describes the social turmoil during and after the Russian Revolution and how the Russian upper middle class was despondently affected by it. Pasternak’s revelation highlights a dramatic question. Is it fare to sacrifice personal freedom and personal life for a social ideology?
 
The concept of ideology is most generally associated with power relations and often has no regard to human feelings. The ideology can be interpreted as the way in which people think about the world and their ideal concept of how to live in the world. It is a shared belief of a group of people, groups deliberately planning to oppress people or alter their ‘consciousness. In this process violence, torture and terror are used and people are judged by their ideological views.
 
The Bolshevik Revolution had brought about a fundamental change in the organization of Russian society. The Bolshevik idea of “building a new man via social construction was an indigestible paragon for people like Uri Zhivago. Such people should adopt, perish or leave the system. When there is a dynamic social, change it, gives no place for personal feelings and everybody should get used to a collective life. Ideology and slogans become the center of life. People are judged politically. In such an environment, individuals are given less choices. Dr Yury Zhivago  was one of the countless victims of such a system.
 
The romance between Yuri Zhivago and Larissa Antipova was a personnel issue and it had no place in the Bolshevik concepts although Lenin enjoyed his private married life with Krupskaya and Stalin with Nadia Alliluyeva.  Even though the Red hardliner Strelnikove states that, the personal life is dead in Russia it was not applicable  for everyone.
 
Uri Zhivago a doctor and a sensitive man dramatically torn apart by forces beyond his control. Dr Zhivago became a victim of a personal tragedy as well as a collective tragedy. Yuri’s mother died when he was a child, leaving him only a balalaika. Young Uri was adopted by his uncle. While living in Moscow he had a passionate interest in poetry. Doctor Uri Zhivago was recognized as a professional as well as a poet in the Russian society. But his life was   torn between his two lovesTonia Gromyko his wife and Lara Antipova the beautiful nurse.
 
When the Civil War erupted, Doctor Zhivago was forcibly removed from his wife and family by the Red Partisans and eventually his wife Tonia escapes to Paris with the children. When Strelnikove was arrested, Lara’s life was in danger and she was compelled to go with Victor Komarovsky –the immoral man and an opportunist. Thus, Dr Uri Zhivago lost Lara as well and becomes a fragile man.  Lara disappeared off the street during Stalin’s Great Purge. “Perhaps in a labor camp,” narrated General Yevgraf, “A nameless number, on a nameless list which was later mislaid.” Love and innocence lost he was aimless. Dr Zhivago dies of a heart attack while pursuing a woman he believes to be Lara  down a Moscow street.
 
The collective tragedy fell upon on him with the Revolution. The bourgeois Moscovites   grand lifestyle of enjoying champagne, caviar and vodka came to a hold with the Revolution. Their lives became topsy-turvy. Doctor Zhivago’s   family wealth was confiscated and their house had been divided into tenements by the new Soviet Government. Zhivago’s family was confined to a small room. Dr Uri Zhivago was hated by the Bolsheviks   because of his middle class bourgeois roots. His poetry was considered as lines of petty indulging verses.
The revolution brought them misery and disappointments. Thousands were shot dead. The Revolutionary Committee could arrest or execute anyone labeling a counter revolutionary. Wealthy landowners were exterminated classifying them as Kulaks. There was no clear definition or a demarcation of a Kulak. A person owned thousand hectares of land was considered a Kulak. At the height of the state terror under Joseph Stalin, a farmer owned two pounds of grain also labeled as a Kulak and executed.
 
Bolsheviks believed that they had found the pathway to Utopia. They rationalized the devastation followed by the Revolution stating that if you want to make an omelet, you’ve got to break some eggs.’  Boris Pasternak indirectly puts the question to Bolsheviks through his book Dr Zhivago.Pasternak is questioning –`I see the broken eggs, but Where’s the omelet?’
 
Pasternak passionately renounced the Bolshevik idea of “building a new man” according to the Revolutionary measurements. Pasternak knew it was against nature. He argued that you could cut the tumors of injustice, which is a painful operation, provided that the patient should be kept alive.
 
The novel Dr Zhivago is a saga, spanning Zhivago’s life depicting several authentic characters.Boris Pasternak adored the poet Alexander Block Dr. Zhivago may have been based in part on the real life Russian poet Alexander Blok who was the most famous and influential in Russia. Alexander Block was a symbolist poet who sought to convey individual emotional experience through the subtle, suggestive use of highly metaphorical language. In the years after the revolution, Blok was very involved in social and political journalism and in criticism. Blok’s disillusionment with the Soviet bureaucracy and censorship is suggested in his fierce and eloquent essay in 1921 “On the Poet’s Calling” Blok died in Petrograd on Aug. 7, 1921 at the age of thirty-seven. Like the fictitious character, Dr Uri Zhivago Block died under physical and emotional exhaustion and with a great disillusionment.
 
The second character Pavel  Antipov or Strelnikov’s personality is much similar to Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronshtein). Pavel Antipov  was a son of a railway worker. He marred Lara and  moved to the Urals. He joined the army as a volunteer during the World War One and fought in the German lines.  Wounded in the battle Pavel  Antipov was   presumed dead but later returns, using the pseudonym Strelnikov with a total personality change. He was not a warm caring man anymore, turned in to a bloodthirsty military commissar.
 
Like Pavel  Antipov,  Trotsky was against the Bolsheviks in the early stages but later deeply embraced the Bolshevism. Leon Trotsky formed the Red Army that fought with the White Guard in the Civil War. Leon Trotsky spent his time during the civil war in a train traveling widely across the young Soviet Union. According to the novel   Pavel  Antipov alias  Strelnikov was a ruthless character who travels by a special guarded train destroying  villages and eliminating people who help the Whites.
 
When Dr Zhivago accidentally encountered Strelnikov’s well-protected locomotive he was arrested and taken before Strelnikov.  When Strelnikov sees Dr Zhivago he immediately recognizes the famous Russian Poet. These were the words of Strelnikov when he denounced Zhivago ’s poetry.
 
I used to admire your poems. I shouldn’t admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don’t you agree? Feelings, insights, affections… it’s suddenly trivial now. You don’t agree; you’re wrong. The personal life is dead in Russia. History has killed it. I can see why you might hate me.
 
Leon Trotsky and Strelnikov shred a common fate. Both of them fell from grace.  he Bolsheviks relinquished both.  Strelnikov committed suicide while he was taken to a firing squad and Trotsky was murdered in Mexico.
 
Yevgraf  Zhivago is another  Character Pasternak  introduced in this novel.  According to the bookYevgraf was Dr Uri Zhivago ‘s younger illegitimate half-brother who was working for the Cheka.Cheka was a secret police force that was founded soon after the Revolution.  Cheka had power to arrest people.  No judicial process was involved in assessing the guilt or innocence of any of its prisoners. Punishments, including the death penalty, were arbitrarily applied. The Cheka was granted the power of summary trials and execution of   death sentence.
 
There are much resemblance between Yevgraf  Zhivago and Felix  Dzerzhinsky – the founder of Bolshevik secret police the Cheka. Dzerzhinsky was not a Russian, he was a Polish. InPasternak’s book Yevgraf  Zhivago was illegitimate (non Russian ?). Like Dzerzhinsky, Yevgraf Zhivago combats internal political threats executing suspects.
 
Dzerzhinsky once publicly stated that   “We represent in ourselves organized terror — this must be said very clearly and   the terrorization, arrests and extermination of enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their pre-revolutionary roles.”
 
Yevgraf  Zhivago ‘s words correspond to the power that Cheka members had.
Indeed as a policeman I would say, get hold of a man’s brother and you’re halfway home. Nor was it admiration for a better man than me. I did admire him, but I didn’t think he was the better man. Besides, I’ve executed better men than me with a small pistol. 
 
Cheka became ill famous  for large-scale human rights abuses, including torture and mass summary executions, carried out especially during the Russian Civil War.
 
Another relatively small but rousing character was introduced in the novel whose name is Lieutenant Razin. He was categorically against demobilizing Dr Zhivago from the Red Army Partisan unit. In a public debate, he expresses his opinion thus …
 
 As the military struggle draws to a close, the political struggle intensifies. In the hour of victory, the military will have served its purpose – and all men will be judged politically regardless of their military record. (Please compare this with the   power struggle between President Rajapaksha and General Sarath Fonseka. Was Pasternak a genius?)
 
Lieutenant Razin could be Kliment Voroshilov who was the commissar of the 1st Cavalry Army and later became the People’s Commissioner for Military and Navy Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR.   Voroshilov gave his full support to Joseph Stalin’s 1930 Great Purge, denouncing a large number of his colleagues who served in the Army.
 
John Locke and Jeremy Bentham described society as comprising individuals interacting through market relations. However, Bolsheviks went further and wanted to create a socialist Utopia through revolution and subsequently via Stalinism. Nonetheless, Pasternak viewed it as a colossal social upheaval caused millions of human lives in Gulags or slave labor concentration camps that became a symbol of tyranny and oppression.
Pasternak’s novel Dr Zhivago was banned in Russia for 30 years when  he attempted to publish in 1957. As the protagonist of the novel, Uri Zhivago Pasternak was once considered by the system as a misfit. He was persecuted by the Soviet authorities as a traitor. Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but he was compelled to deny it following the pressure put by the Soviet regime. In 1987, the Union of Soviet Writers posthumously reinstated Pasternak.Doctor Zhivago was finally published in Russia in 1988 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 
Pasternak left us with moral questions that are convoluted to find answers.    But words of Alexander Berkman coincide Pasternak’s inner thought about the revolution.
 
“No revolution has yet tried the true way of liberty. None has had sufficient faith in it. Force and suppression, persecution, revenge, and terror have characterized all revolutions in the past and have thereby defeated their original aims. The time has come to try new methods, new ways. The social revolution is to achieve the emancipation of man through liberty, but if we have no faith in the latter, revolution becomes a denial and betrayal of itself.”
 
http://ift.tt/2BGmOM3

What right does Thilak Marapana have to judge Ravi?

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What right does Thilak Marapana have to judge Ravi?

Thilak Marapana was forced out the Cabinet for not knowing how to select his clients. He had huge sums of money from Avant-garde Chairman Nissanka Senadipathi, knowing very well that Senadthipathi was destroying the UNP. He hardly appeared for any people in the UNP when the UNP was out of power.  UNP lawyers say many times the man is to dodge supporting the party.Many people in the UNP are questioning the credibility of Marapana to sit in judgement over Ravi Karunananayake. Thilak Marapana was forced out the Cabinet for not knowing how to select his clients. He had huge sums of money from Avant-garde Chairman Nissanka Senadipathi, knowing very well that Senadthipathi was destroying the UNP. He hardly appeared for any people in the UNP when the UNP was out of power.  UNP lawyers say many times the man is to dodge supporting the party.

A UNP minister told us that Marapana has a track record of ruining the UNP, in 2001-2004 the Prime Minister gave him two portfolios. He ruined both. He was responsible for the collapse of the CFA with the LTTE. The PM has now brought him back to the cabinet, after being forced to ask him to resign and made him Foreign Minister. The Foreign Ministry is now collapsing. 

Marapana has a track record of underperforming but our Prime Minister keeps recognizing him. Marapana and the UNP have jobs because people like Ravi Karunanayake took the risk. Now this is how he is being treated he concluded. Very sad state of affairs.

Ladies wish to purchase liquor -- a different case filed by Swarna too

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 Ladies wish to purchase liquor -- a different case filed by Swarna too


Ladies wish to purchase liquor -- a different case filed by Swarna too

Sometime back a gazette was issued by the Ministry of Finance granting permission for ladies to purchase liquor and the President intervened in that instance and a petition was filed today at supreme courts for the second time against it. Distinguished actress Swarna Mallawaarachchi together with 20
others had filed this petition and in the petition it was mentioned that the necessity for ladies to consume liquor should not be disregarded and saying that ladies do not have a similar right as much as men would demean the female folk and it is a violation of human rights.

Prior to this, actress Samanali Fonseka of the new generation including 11 others had filed similar action through a different petition and both petitions would be taken into consideration in the future, it is hoped.

Human rights activist Menaka Galgamuwa who placed her signature to the said petition said that the 1979 constitution has treated women with a different spoon and had thereby humiliated them. "This is not about women who consume liquor. Nowhere is it stated in the law of 1979 that women cannot consume liquor. As far as the men-folk could purchase liquor ... the women-folk could consume liquor". Among those who placed their signatures to the petition are pioneer chairman of Ladies Commercial Board Claude de soysa and social activist Savithri Rodrigo.

CB issues the 1000 rupees commemorative currency notes to mark 70th Independence

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CB issues the 1000 rupees commemorative currency notes to mark 70th Independence

The size, predominant color and the security features of this commemorative currency note are same as in the current circulating Rs. 1000 note in 11th currency note series except the following changes only.

On the front of the note (shown below):

(i) Celebrating Diversity logo is appearing at the lower left corner of the note replacing the butterfly in the current circulating Rs. 1000 currency note in 11th currency note series;

(ii) Images of a Temple, Mosque, Tamil Kovil and a Church are appearing at the center of the note replacing the image of Ramboda Tunnel in the current circulating Rs. 1000 currency note in 11th currency note series; 
and

(iii)Prefix of the note appears as S70 replacing the prefix S.

On the back of the note: the same images remain as in the current circulating Rs. 1000 note in 11th currency note series.

A quantity of 5 million currency notes will be issued and the serial numbers of the notes will be from S70/1 000001 – S70/5 1000000. The date on the note is 2018.02.04.The currency note will be legal tender in Sri Lanka for the payment of any amount and will be a liability of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka whilst in circulation.

The currency note was officially presented to the Hon. Minister of Finance, Mr. Mangala Samaraweera by Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka on 30.01.2018.

The commemorative currency note will be issued to circulation through Licensed Commercial Banks, commencing from 06.02.2018. At the same time, a limited number of notes with early serial numbers, in an attractive folder will be sold at a price of Rs. 1,300 each at the Economic History Museum, at No. 54, Chatham Street, Colombo 1, and Central Bank Regional Offices at Anuradhapura, Matara, Matale, Trincomalee, and Kilinochchi.

How Rajapaksa Walawwa servant’s wife became rich

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How Rajapaksa Walawwa servant’s wife became rich
After being Mahinda Rajapaksa’s driver, he introduced himself as Capt. Tissa by the time that rule ended. However, no one in the Army knows how he was promoted. He should be given the captain rank for the crimes he committed on behalf of the Rajapaksas. This Tissa is the main suspect in the murder of Wasim Thajudeen. Attempts by the Rajapaksas to send him out of the country were prevented by the CID.
 
From the outside, he looks blameless. He has 12 bank accounts and Rs. 1.1 million to his name. His properties include two motorcycles only. But, the CID found what his wife, an average housewife of Wellawaya, has – a Land Cruiser jeep, seven lorries and 10 buses, a two-acre land in Wellawaya, 25-perch land at Rajagiriya, two roods and 21 perches at Medalanda in Delgoda and 15 perches at Kendalanda in Delgoda.
 
Those are only what have been reported to the CID. Investigations are ongoing. Only Tissa and his masters, the Rajapaksas, know how he earned those.
 
The best part is yet to come. Knowing that if Tissa falls into trouble he too, would be in trouble, Mahinda tried to send him out of the country. After failing that, what he did was to send him to Dudley Sirisena, brother of his successor. Now, Dudley is Tissa’s boss. No better example is needed to describe today’s politics.

It’s better if Ravi resigns – PM

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It’s better if Ravi resigns – PM
Headed by Thilak Marapana, it investigate if any UNP MP is involved in the fraud, and advises the party leadership on action against those found guilty.

Amendments to expedite bribery cases!

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Amendments to expedite bribery cases!
Lack of experience of the magistrates and the lawyers of the commission have delayed the hearing of these cases. Hence is the empowerment of the high court. 
 
Another reason for the delay identified by the commission was that a case was being heard by only one judge. That was amended too, allowing financial cases be heard by permanent three-member benches, and it was referred to the presidential secretariat yesterday afternoon (29). That decision too, is up to the DG of the commission. If these amendments are not passed today, they will be submitted to the next cabinet meeting.
 
Ashika Brahmana

Visiting Prince Edward Urged to Raise Persecution of Tamils with Sri Lankan Leaders and to Meet Tamil Victims: TGTE

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Visiting Prince Edward Urged to Raise Persecution of Tamils with Sri Lankan Leaders and to Meet Tamil Victims: TGTE
TGTE submitted a memo, highlighting the abuses faced by Tamils to be raised with Sri Lankan leaders.
 
“While you receive the Guard of Honor during the Independence Day celebrations, please remember that these troops that give Guard of Honor are the same troops that according to UN killed over 70 thousand Tamils in six months in 2009 and raped scores of Tamil women” said TGTE. "There are around 90 thousand Tamil war widows facing numerous challenges."
 
Furthermore, a recent report by the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) (http://www.itjpsl.com/reports/submission-to-cedaw ) published details of Sri Lankan Military run "Rape Camps", where Tamil women are being held as sex slaves.
 
“Given the gravity and serious nature of these killings and sexual violence, your own British Government sponsored a Resolution at the UN Human Rights Council stipulating that Sri Lanka to bring those responsible for these international crimes to face justice with the participation of International Judges, Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys.”
 
“Instead of bringing those responsible for these mass atrocities, they were promoted, given diplomatic and other senior positions and even made as senior Cabinet Ministers. There are also allegations that even the President himself is responsible, given his position as the acting Defense Minister during the final phase of the war when thousands of Tamil civilians were killed and starved to death. Please remember the victims when you shake hands with these military officers now camouflaged as Cabinet members and the President himself” said TGTE.
 
"We urge you not to miss this opportunity to raise the persecution of Tamils with the Sri Lankan President and Prime minister and to meet Families of the Enforced Disappearance, families of those killed, family members of those currently in prison and women who were sexually assaulted and raped during your visit to Trincomalee and Batticalow Districts. There are thousands of these victims and victim’s families who will be waiting for you when you visit these districts. We urge you not to turn a blind eye to these victims and families of the victims" said TGTE. "Sri Lankan Government will take you on a “guided tour” and avoid you see the true picture of the plight of Tamils".
 
TGTE URGE THE FOLLOWING ISSUES TO BE RAISED WITH SRI LANKAN LEADERS:
 
1) Rape Camps run by Sri Lankan Security Forces, where Tamil women are held as Sex Slaves. 
2) Justice for victims of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide.
3) Plight of the “Disappeared”.
4) Tamil Prisoners of War (POW).
5) Military occupation of Tamil Lands. 
6) Very large Military presence in Tamil areas.
7) Tamil’s safety in danger.
8) Restrictions on Freedom of Expression (6th Amendment restrictions).
 
BELOW, PLEASE FIND THE DETAILS OF THESE CONCERNS:
 
1) RAPE CAMPS RUN BY SRI LANKAN SECURITY FORCES, WHERE TAMIL WOMEN ARE HELD AS SEX SLAVES:
 
A recent report by the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) (http://www.itjpsl.com/reports/submission-to-cedaw ) published details of Sri Lankan Military run "Rape Camps", where Tamil women are being held as sex slaves.
 
The report states the following:
 
"A senior officer came into the room and was asked to take his pick, like we were meat in a meat market. He looked around and chose me. He took me to another room and raped me"
 
"Two of the women describe being detained in a group in one room, available for any soldier to come and choosefrom and take to an adjacent room or tent to be raped,"
 
48 of the victims had been detained under the Government of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and seven of them under the new Government of President Maithripala Sirisena.
 
ITJP has also provided details of six military men including a major and a lieutenant colonel who are alleged perpetrators of rape and torture in the military.
 
 
2) JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS OF WAR CRIMES, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY AND GENOCIDE:
 
Getting Justice for victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide received a setback due to Sri Lankan Government’s unwillingness to prosecute civilian and security forces for have committed mass killings of Tamils and rape. According to UN Internal Review Report on Sri Lankan up to 70 thousand Tamils were killed in six monthsin 2009 and scores of Tamil women were sexually assaulted and raped by Sri Lankan Security forces.
 
UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) got involved to bring justice to these abuses and Resolution (30/1) was cosponsored by Sri Lanka in the September 2015 Session of the UNHRC and Sri Lanka committed to bring perpetrators to face justice by March 2017, in a hybrid court consisting of foreign judges, prosecutors and investigators.
 
But Sri Lanka reneged in its commitment and came to UNHRC in March 2017 to seek extension of two years, which was granted. But the Sri Lankan President and Prime Minister have already rejected one of the main conditions of the UNHRC Resolution of establishing a Hybrid Court with foreign judges, prosecutors and investigators.
 
The current President, who as Acting Defense Minister during the war had command responsibility and a possible suspect for committing war crimes, crimes against humanity. 
 
Due to Sri Lankan Government unwillingness to bring perpetrators to face justice, Tamil victim’s quest for justice is denied.
 
Tamils now appeal UN Human Rights Council to refer Sri Lanka to the UN General Assembly, along with a recommendation to the UN Security Council that Sri Lanka be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or that an ad-hoc International Criminal Tribunal be created on Sri Lanka, similar to the procedure followed to assure accountability for North Korea’s Crimes Against Humanity.
 
 
3) PLIGHT OF THE DISAPPREARED:
 
The plight of thousands of Tamils who were subjected to enforced disappearance, including several who surrendered to the Sri Lankan Security forces, remain unknown for several years.
 
The Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wikramasinghe made a statement that thousands of Tamils who surrendered to the Sri Lankan Security forces are no longer alive. The Sri Lankan Prime Minister made this statement on January 15, 2016 in Jaffna, when he spoke at a celebration of Thai Pongal, a Hindu festival. Despite repeated requests by family members of the “disappeared” the Prime Minister refuges to give details about how these “disappeared” were killed and where their remains are.
 
The relatives have a right to know what had happened to the victims, the relatives are also victims. The denial of the right to know is a violation of article 7, 9, and 10(1) of the convenant. E.Quinteros and M.C. Almeida de Quintero v Uruguay Doc A/38/40
 
4) TAMIL PRISONERS OF WAR (POW):
 
Hundreds of Tamil Prisoners of War (POW) are imprisoned, some for over fifteen years. 
They are held primarily under Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which Sri Lankan Government promised to repeal to UN Human Rights Council, but still using PTA to arbitrarily arrest Tamils and detaining.
The current Government gave several assurances that these prisoners will be released. But years have passed without any results.
 
5) MILITARY OCCUPATION OF TAMIL LANDS:
 
Large number of private lands belonging to Tamil civilians are forcibly occupied by the Sri Lankan Security forces. Using them to commercial projects like farming, luxury hotels, shops, fishing etc., depriving Tamil’s livelihood.
 
The above is a deprivation of property without due process. Taking lands belonging to the Tamils on account of their nationality also constitutes a violation of article 2 of the covenant.
 
6) VERY LARGE MILITARY PRESENCE IN TAMIL AREAS:
 
According to several independent sources, Tamil areas have a ratio of one soldier for every five civilians, the highest number of soldiers to civilian ratio in the world.
 
In one Tamil District in the North, the ratio is one Sri Lankan soldier to every two Tamils civilians (Source: Report by think-tank Adayaalam Center for Policy Research).
 
Eight years have passed since the war came to an end but not a single soldier was brought to justice and the Government is trying to shield the soldiers even from the UN mandated inquiry.
 
Sri Lankan President and Prime Minister have already rejected one of the main conditions of the UNHRC Resolution of establishing a Hybrid Court with foreign judges, prosecutors and investigators. 
 
The current President, who as Acting Defense Minister during the war had command responsibility and considered a possible suspect for committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and Genocide.
 
According to the UN, Sri Lankan security forces have committed mass killings and large scale rape of Tamil women. The same security forces that committed these abuses are still stationed in very large numbers in Tamil areas; among the same women they committed sexual violence. Tamil women have to undergo fear and humiliation to live among these soldiers and to see them walking free and enjoying full protection and support of the Government.
 
The suffering of 90,000 Tamil war widows is continuing, having to live with pain of losing their husbands and to take care of the children with great difficulty and facing threats, intimidation and abuse from the same soldiers who killed their husbands.
 
7) TAMIL'S SAFETY IN DANGER:
 
Since UN Human Rights Council’s decision to give extension of time to Sri Lanka for the Resolution 30/1, Tamil’s fear for their safety since it embolden and encourage Sri Lankan security forces to commit human rights abuses against Tamils without any fear.
 
Tens of thousands Sri Lankan Security forces who committed mass killings and sexual violence are still stationed in Tamil areas and live among the victims.
 
There are numerous reports of current abuses against Tamils, including a recent report by UN Special Reporter on torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment Mr. Juan Mendez.
 
A recent report by Associated Press (AP), highlight the abuses faced by Tamils in a story titled: "Dozens of Men Say Sri Lankan forces raped and tortured them."
 
To Ensure Tamil’s safety UN is urged to deploy UN Human Rights Monitors in Tamil areas.
 
Here is the link to Associated Press (AP)Report: https://apnews.com/ced017bd441f46ba838aaedf6ff5dbe2
 
8) RESTRICTIONS ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: 1,705 LAWYERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD APPEAL TO UN.
 
The 6th Amendment to Sri Lanka’s Constitution, criminalizes freedom of speech and conscience, guaranteed in Articles 18 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
 
Recently, One thousand seven hundred and five lawyers (1,705) from around the world have joined the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) and filed a complaint on December 8th, 2017 with the UN Human Rights Committee that the 6th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution is a violation of freedom of speech and conscience, and the right to self-determination guaranteed in Articles 18, 19, and 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
 
The Complaint was filed by former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, Justice K.P. Sivasubramaniam (Retd), Former Judge of the High Court of Madras, India, and the Prime Minister of The Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran.
 
1,705 Lawyers from across the globe including heads of Bar Councils, law professors, and retired judges from U.S.A., U.K., Canada, France, Switzerland, South Sudan, and India (Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka & New Delhi), provide legal representation to the above complaint.
 
Here is the link: 
 
ABOUT TRANSNATIONAL GOVERNMENT OF TAMIL EELAM (TGTE):
 
Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) is a democratically elected Government of a million strong Tamils (from the island of Sri Lanka) living in several countries around the world. TGTE was formed after the mass killing of Tamils by the Sri Lankan Government in 2009.
 
TGTE twice held internationally supervised elections among Tamils around the world to elect 132 Members of Parliament. It has two champers of Parliament: The House of Representatives and Senate and a Cabinet. 
TGTE is leading a campaign to realize Tamils’ political aspirations through peaceful, democratic and diplomatic means. The Constitution of the TGTE mandates that it should realize its political objective only through peaceful means.
 
The Prime Minister of TGTE is Mr. Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, a New York based lawyer.
 
For information contact: pmo@tgte.org
 
BACKGROUND:
 
Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka faced repeated mass killings in 1958, 1977, and 1983 and the mass killings in 2009 prompted UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to appoint a Panel of Experts to report on the scale of the killings.
 
According to UN internal review report on Sri Lanka, over 70,000 Tamils were killed in six months in early 2009 and Tamil women were sexually assaulted and raped by the Sri Lankan Security forces. There are over 90,000 Tamil war widows and thousands of Tamils disappeared due the conflict.
 
According to this UN report, the killings and other abuses that took place amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Independent experts believe that there are elements of these abuses that constitute an act of genocide.
 
Members of the Sri Lankan security forces are almost exclusively from the Sinhalese community and the victims are all from the Tamil community. A Buddhist Monk shot and killed a Sri Lankan Prime Minister 1959 for having talks with Tamils.
 
Tamils overwhelmingly voted in a Parliamentary election in 1977 to establish an independent and sovereign country called Tamil Eelam. This Parliamentary election was conducted by the Sri Lankan Government.
 
einnews.com

Is Time Running Out for Sirisena, Wickramasinghe and Rajapakshe

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Is Time Running Out for Sirisena, Wickramasinghe and Rajapakshe
On January 8th 2015, the people of this country exercised their true democratic grit to dispel the rule of Presidnet Rajapakshe and his family. The right of the people was exercised in a clear wave of hope to end corruption, inequality and establish justice, which most thought was diminished under the Rajapakshe rule. The result was unexpected and happened against the series of overwhelming public endorsements received by the Rajapakshe Government in successive elections prior to the people’s presidential verdict.  The scenario brings to mind a saying of Niels Bohr, “The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness”.  
 
High expectations were set on the coalition Government formed with the advent of Maithreepala Sirisena as President and the then minority United National Party. Three years have now passed, but the country still hangs over a wave of corruption, injustice and inequality. Despite many inquiries and court house dramas, the so called corrupt deals of the previous regime are yet to be justified and proven under a court of law.  The Government is also overshadowed by the Bond Scam, which has lost billions of rupees for state institutions and the impact to the country is in such high propositions that is yet to be accounted in full. In simple terms “Yahapalanaya” has not yet been established. 
 
One could argue the fact that the wrongdoers in the bond scam were exposed in the wake of good governance and the establishment of the Presidential commission was a result of such conducive atmosphere. The reality is that such measures were adopted as a result of the surging public uproar that spread throughout the country against such day light robberies.   
 
It has been over thirteen years with the country under the rule of President Rajapakshe and thereafter the coalition Government led by President Sirisena and Premier Wickramasinghe. The years of these rulers have witnessed the country making way for prosperity, but with no clear implementation plan to reach its vision. President Rajapkashe should be credited with the defeating of terrorism and subsequent drive in infrastructure development, despite the questions raised over its economic feasibility. The coalition Government spearheaded the movement to create better international relations, media freedom and establish economic freedom. Despite the positives, one thing common that we observe in all three political celebrities is the hunger and greed for power. The true nature and interest of such desire is unknown to the common voter. 
 
Will the Premier Ever Become President?
 
Twenty three years as the leader of the country’s biggest political force and four time prime minister, serves well to fall into the category of qualified personal to hold the office of President. However, the premier is thus far the most unsuccessful leader of the Grand Old Party which under his leadership has failed to produce a President from the party for the past 23 years and even having to sacrifice the candidature of the party to common candidates at two prior presidential elections. Even Mr. Wickramasinghe tried his luck at the presidency only to fall short on each time. The UNP under his tenure has detached itself from the common masses and even failed to from a Government that is stable and capable of implementing the policies owned to the UNP. On both occasions that the UNP came to power under the leadership of Mr. Wickramasinghe, the result was hinged on crossovers of key personal from the SLFP. Taking into consideration the past performance of the premier it seems that he might not be destined to become President despite the ambition that rests within. 
 
Will President Sirisena Contest Again
 
In his inaugural address to the nation as President, His Excellency (HE) highlighted that he had no intention of contesting another election. In further speeches that followed his term in office, the president reiterated his stance and made it clear on one occasion that he would consider shortening his term to four years given the possibility. However, the post of high office seems too attractive to give up easily, even for those who came to power to relive it off its superior powers. Many ministers in the camp of President Sirisena have already pronounced that the President in deed would seek another term, even though no clear indication came from HE. Though President Sirisena is yet to comment on his desire for re-election, he has also not rejected that possibility. His recent comments on seeking the view of the Supreme Court on his term and the speech made at a recent election rally clamming that his rule will end the day corruption ends in this country, are blurred but indicative that the President has a high propensity to seek re-election. 
 
After taking his Presidential oath, President Sirisena went on to snatch the leadership of both SLFP and UPFA  and even went on to the extent of appointing his own henchman to key positions of the party. However, the leadership of President Sirisena has not been convincing or spineless as one would call it, as he is yet to take action against prominent personal of SLFP, such as President Rajapakshe for his active involvement with the competing party, Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna. President Sirisena seems to be in fear of the popularity of Rajapakshe and the subsequent repercussions of expelling him from the party. The same goes with the rest of the UPFA defectors that have resorted to supporting the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna. 
 
Will President Rajapakshe Ever Come to Power Again
 
President Rajapkshe will always carry the title of the leader that ended the bloody conflict that cursed this nation for the past three decades or so. However, his rule also was marked by allegations of corruption, malpractices, lavish expenditure on his family, nepotism and uneconomical mega projects. The named reasons were the decisive factors behind the people’s verdict to end his rule. Despite nine long years in power, the greed for power never seems to die within Rajapakshe, as seen with the other two. The main positive with President Rajapakshe is that he is still a popular leader and major crowds flock to embrace his political wisdom. However, time will be the best answer on his future as the 19th amendment to the constitution now prevents Rajapakshe from seeking re-election as President. Despite the technicalities preventing the former President from holding top office again, the former Commander in Chief does not seem to be deterred by such impediments in his quest to regain the top office.  
 
Is There an Alternative? 
 
The imminent alternative is the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). However, questions can be raised over their administrative competence despite their rhetoric and vibrant orations of their frontrunners including their leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake. 
 
In the ranks of the UNP, Sajith Premadasa seems to be the next in line for the leadership, at least on paper. Sajith Premadasa made an unsuccessful attempt for the post during the crises years of the UNP which only resulted in him luring Karu Jayasuriya to vie for the leadership position, who eventually went on to suffer a heavy defeat at the hands of Wickramasinghe.
 
The current structure of the leadership in the Maithree fraction, does not indicate a leadership candidate or a prospective individual. In the Rajapakshe camp it is evident that the former president is grooming his elder son Namal to take up the reigns of his new party and even go on to capture the leadership of the SLFP, succeeding President Sirisena. Despite many calls for the former Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakshe to seek office, it is yet inconclusive of his eligibility to contest for president. In spite of the growing calls for the Former Defense Secretary to main stream politics, it is clear that Presidnet Rajapakshe’s first choice is his son. The question now rests with how long President Rajapkshe is willing to stay in the opposition fray for his son to emerge as the next successor to the Presidency.  
 
Conclusion
 
It is apparent that President Rajapakshe, President Sirsena and Premier Wickramasinghe have an inherent greed for power and the perks that follow the post. Judgement on their suitability is a matter of the people and they will have the ultimate right of excise and decide the fate of each of them. In helping the people come to a conclusion as to whom to reject and whom to retain, it is evident that none of them is suited to hold the position of Presidency in leading Sri Lanka towards prosperity. The reasoning for such a conclusion is based on the observations that none of the three leaders mentioned above have been able to fulfill the very promises that they sought office for, in the first place. Attractive slogans such as “Wonder of Asia” have only been left as dear dreams for the population. Their rule has failed to curb the rise in corruption, and has been slow & inactive against the corrupt, spread of inequality, and economic depletion of the population, deteriorating state of Government services, misuse of public property, slow & mediocre growth in economic prosperity including exports and finally the fine establishment of a sound judicial system. 

India estimates 21 million of its girls are 'unwanted'

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India estimates 21 million of its girls are 'unwanted'


The finance ministry report found many couples kept on having children until they had a boy.

Authors called this a "subtler form" of son preference than sex-selective abortions but warned it might lead to fewer resources for girls.

Son preference was "a matter for Indian society to reflect upon", they said.

The authors also found that 63 million women were "missing" from India's population because the preference for sons led to to sex-selective abortions and more care was given to boys.

Tests to determine a foetus's sex are illegal in India, but they still take place and can lead to sex-selective abortions.

The cultural preference for male children has even led one newspaper to list scientifically unfounded tips for conceiving boys, including facing west while sleeping, and having sex on certain days of the week.

The states most affected by son preference were Punjab and Haryana, while the least-affected was Meghalaya.

In Punjab and Haryana states there were 1,200 boys under the age of seven for every 1,000 girls of the same age, the authors of the Economic Survey found.

- BBC-

International Chamber of Commerce moves to New premises in 7th floor of Aitken Spence building in Vauxhall street

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International Chamber of Commerce moves to New premises in 7th floor of Aitken Spence building in Vauxhall street

 

Reeligious leaders, the heads of the ICCSL Mr. Dinesh Weerakkoddy, Malik Samarawickrama and  some of the business pioneers were participated for the ceremony

Photo by Ajith Senevirathna

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President's Social Media Team Throws Sirisena Into New Soup

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In a farcical turn of events, President Maithripala Sirisena's official Facebook profile harshly responded to a person who commented on a Live Facebook coverage of the UPFA rally in Nuwaraeliya. 

As President Sirisena does not handle his own Facebook profile, it is quite evident that his social media operators have used the President's profile to have a go at a person who posted a negative comment. 

'Mahesh danna deyak kiyapang. E kamkaru congress kodiya'  ( You don't know what you're talking about. That's the flag of the CWC)) the President's Facebook profile said, responding to a person who posted a comment about a flag that appeared in the background. 

This is the second time President Sirisena found himself in embarrassing situations due to the conduct of his support staff. 


It was reported last week that a letter had seen sent to media heads inviting them for a meeting by the President on a date that is long past. 

The letter signed by the head of the President's media division invited them for a meeting with the President on "wednesday, the 26th of January, 2017".

Kabul military academy hit by explosions and gunfire

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Kabul military academy hit by explosions and gunfire

 

The Marshal Fahim National Defense University came under attack early Monday morning, reports said.

It comes days after the deadliest bombing for months hit Kabul when an ambulance packed with explosives killed at least 100 people.

Islamic State and the Taliban have recently carried out attacks in the city.

Several explosions were heard, as well as small arms fire, as the attack began at about 05:00 local time (00:30 GMT), the BBC's Mahfouz Zubaide reported from Kabul.

Security forces have blocked off all roads in the area, Afghan media outlet Tolo said.

According to Tolo, the president's spokesperson has confirmed the attack, saying that none of the attackers had been able to get further than the first gate.

News agency AFP cited a police spokesman confirming rocket and gunfire but saying it was now calm.

According to Reuters, police said there had been an incident inside at a military site but said it was not clear if it was an attack by militants.

Reports say some of the gunmen have been killed in the attack.
- BBC_

The importance of MS and RW batting together - Dinesh Werakkody

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The importance of MS and RW batting together - Dinesh Werakkody

 

Ranil-Sirisena despite many weaknesses have tried hard to push through genuine reform, Take a long hard look at what the Yahapalanaya Government set out to do and look at the issues that was confronting our country pre-2015. That will literally convince us, that we are missing the woods from the trees. Fast-forward to 21 November 2014. President Sirisena on that day stated that leaving the then Government was a vital move in order to save the country from being steered towards a total dictatorship. He pledged to abolish the executive presidential system within 100 days of his election and to restore complete media freedom in the country.  The presidency was partially reformed and media freedom restored. Some more remains to be done together. The Rajapaksa years had rebuilt Sri Lanka’s confidence, but had sapped its soul. The Unity Government to its credit has tried very hard to promote a “kinder, gentler” country.

The MS-RW combination has helped to reawaken the generosity of our civil society. MS unlike Ranil understands that local issues are every bit as important as national or global issues. On the other hand Ranil understands the country has a long road ahead, and one can only get there together. This is what we need to find a genuine political solution for the north and east.

Reality

Part of the SLFP and the Ppposition is predominated by loyalties to the previous President. They seem to be hell bent on either challenging their mandate or shoot holes in the effort MS-RW has taken to bring the country and the economy to an even keel, without realising what these initiatives are and what favourable outcomes they will bring to the country.

For Maithripala working with Ranil is the best option for him and the country. On a personal level Ranil is a gentleman, a man, who believes even when he is under fire not to react negatively, a respecter of the rights of all ethnicities and often to a fault. As Prime Minister he has given the incumbent President all the respect despite friendly fire against him.

Many people in politics don’t see the value of working towards or arrive at a consensus of values. It was Pope Francis who said: “We all need each other, none of us is an island, an autonomous an independent I, separated from the other, we can only build a future by standing together, including everyone.” We all need to be afraid of the future if we fail to understand this.

Improving competitiveness

As a country today one of the biggest challenges we have is improving our country’s competitiveness.

The resistance we have when services are included in a FTA is a classic case in point. We need to clearly understand what competitiveness is and have leaders who believe in a conducive business environment where every entrepreneur, big or small has the ability to move up the business hierarchy on his or her own merit.

We need leaders who understand what is necessary, to improve our skills, including attracting FDI at a minimum of 30% of GDP in order to maintain a 6% plus growth target that the country needs. Besides improving the ‘Doing Business Index’ to strengthen investor confidence. In this direction we need to adopt the core business values such as integrity and transparency in doing business by making sure political interference is totally removed from the decision making process.

In addition, the capital market needs to be run according to ethical standards to encourage genuine investors to invest. We need more opportunities for a broader group of investors to benefit by investing in the stock market. The current checks and balances we have within the two party system can only facilitate that. All this requires is bipartisanship all round.

Good signs

The Sirisena Government in the last 36 months has made a huge effort to rebuild international confidence amongst international leaders and investors, both locally and internationally particularly with the US and EU (where are our major markets remain) is paramount. Through a well-orchestrated foreign policy the Yahapalanaya has and continues to succeed in this direction.

The Government has largely restored the independence of the Judiciary and the Public Service, which not only will boost confidence of investors but also generate a positive climate in the country. The results of their efforts will come slowly but surely. Meanwhile for the remaining period of this Government our hope is that MS-RW will overcome the many political challenges and deliver what they both promised together on 8 January 2015.

Fortunately despite many hiccups and the occasional outbursts from the duo, there is much hope that Sri Lanka can become a nation defined by values rather than a land of sink or swim with no discipline.
- Daily FT

A president’s fireworks and a country’s misery - Kishali Pinto Jayawardene

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A president’s fireworks and a country’s misery - Kishali Pinto Jayawardene

But the question is as to how much of this is pure showmanship aimed at the upcoming local government elections?

Challenging party leaders
On the face of it, the President’s anger is underpinned by solid factors. His challenge to party leaders on Thursday, to debate the two Presidential Commission reports detailing major financial scams implicating the country’s two political parties before the Local Government elections on 10th February this year had all the hallmarks of classic theatre to it.

One Commission of Inquiry Report related to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) treasury bond issuance in 2015 and 2016 implicated the Prime Minister’s handpicked appointee for the Governor of the Central Bank and the Governor’ son-in-law, the head of Perpetual Treasuries. Alleged fraud and corruption of a similar nature from 2008 (before the Commission’s mandated period of inquiry) causing massive losses to the Employees Provident Fund was also recommended to be investigated. The irreparable damage to the country’s premier financial watchdog by these disclosures will take a very long time to repair, if at all, regardless of any number of ‘internal actions’ or forensic audits that may be initiated.

As observed in these column spaces previously, the ‘cover-up’ of the scandal by the ruling UNP was as bad as the impugned transactions themselves. This sorry saga stands completely at odds with the Prime Minister’s (surely tongue-in-the-cheek) injunction this week that his party was like a ‘glass mirror’ in its adherence to transparency. This may be too much to swallow even for its die-hard loyalists apt to dismiss the ‘bond scam’ with flippant waves of their hands.

Systemic thievery and the public purse
Equally disquietingly, the second Report by the tongue twistingly named Presidential Commission of Inquiry to Investigate and Inquire into Serious Acts of Fraud, Corruption, Abuse of Power, State Resources, and Privileges (PRESIFAC) related to several gigantic frauds of the previous regime benefitting corrupt politicians and Rajapaksa acolytes of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) including members of the entertainment industry.

The loss to the public purse from the sum total of this systemic thievery is colossal, literally boggling the imagination as it were. Both Reports were released at the same time though the President has, with some reason, dispensed with the snide allegation that the dual release was anything more than purely coincidental. So his challenge to ‘VIP robbers’ on both sides of the House called them out in right royal style. The self-styled Joint Opposition (JO) led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa had been loudly demanding the Commission report on the CBSL bond scandal to be furnished to the House and a debate to follow as if their very lives depended on it. Indeed, the political lives of utterly corrupt JO members may certainly depend on this great lifeline thrown to them by the UNP. Yet the furnishing of the second Commission of Inquiry report, which implicates all if not most of them, have rendered these once snarling parliamentarians to docile kittens.

In that background, the agreement by all party leaders to hold the parliamentary debate on these reports on February 20th and 21st 2018 after the February 10th polls is telling. The President’s acerbic barbs therefore are understandable, except for the fact that, as the UNP has expostulated in response, his own representatives at the party leaders meeting also agreed to these dates. Reportedly, his most recent broadside meanwhile is to reiterate allegations that the UNP was to blame in holding up the prosecutions against Rajapaksa frontliners, including on charges of murder and assassinations.

Political gambles that may backfire
The Presidential outbursts are to be expected. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) is facing the electorate divided and torn with the Rajapaksa breakaway group exerting significant political pressure. Assessed against traditional voting tendencies in this country, these are formidable obstacles to fight against. The heady glow with which he came into power in 2015 has largely diminished. In some part, this is due to political jostling that he engaged in after a misconceived positioning as the ‘saviour’ of his party. But in larger part, it is owing to the UNP’s mortifying entanglement in a muddle of bond corruption and inefficient government.

President Sirisena’s consequent withdrawal into narrow corners of traditional conservatism, best illustrated by his sexist command to restore a long ignored excise notification banning women from buying liquor in the premises of a tavern, is a long cry from the enlightened and progressive President that he promised to be. From his viewpoint, these are liberal niceties to be sacrificed on the altar of the far more overwhelming need to stay politically relevant during the remainder of his Presidential term. That is a path that the President is now firmly on, come what may.

These are of course gambles that may badly backfire. Whatever may be the sins of the UNP, there is no doubt that there is a block vote for the party, heightened also by the cold logic to the Prime Minister’s injunction that it is the Government which holds the public purse, including spending on local government projects. Where the Rajapaksa vote is concerned, that too has solidly survived through the past three years. And with ‘floating voters’ more inclined to float away entirely from an election which has dishearteningly degenerated to a monstrous test of competing political strengths, the President’s skills in capturing public attention may not be quite enough.

From the mud to the trees
So what can Sri Lankans extract as positive factors where systemic reform and accountability is concerned? First, the two Reports of the Presidential Commissions of Inquiry have established without a doubt, the murky and serpentine tentacles of the ‘deep state of the corrupt.’ Glimpsed in vague and indeterminate forms earlier, the precise details expose a terrifying confluence of an elite and amoral few forming privileged connections across political and establishment lines. Second, the recommended use of Section 70 of the Bribery Act (as amended) against these crooks in the PRESIFAC report in particular, is encouraging. It may actually be that the power of the 1994 amendments to the Bribery Act, which had been dormant for decades, may now come into its own.

If so, then this ugly tumult that we see on the political stage may just about be worth it. And a President who once promised the sun, moon and stars in 2015 may conceivably be able to allow his unhappy countrymen and countrywomen to glimpse at least the top of the trees from the mud in which they are presently in.
- The Sunday Times

'I get you're transgender, but what's up with your face?''

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'I get you're transgender, but what's up with your face?''

Fans of YouTube vlogs may already be familiar with 22-year-old Stef Sanjati, known for her make-up tutorials - a popular theme on the video site.

She has over half a million subscribers known as her Breadsquad, a name born from a running joke involving baguettes and how great bread is.

As a child, Stef was diagnosed with a genetic condition which has caused her to be deaf in her left ear, have bone mutations on her face, very blue eyes which appear further apart than on an average person, and pigmentation of hair and skin - a collection of symptoms known as Waardenburg syndrome.

Though she looked different from her peers, it was never something she worried about until she started getting bullied at school.

"Fish face, frog face or any aquatic animal that has wide spread eyes," became the go-to insults for the then male teenager.

"I remember when I was learning to draw faces in art class they would tell me 'put one finger-space between the eyes' and I was always, like - that's not my face, that's not true... for me it's two and a half."

As well as being called unkind names because of her face, Stef was also bullied for not being very masculine.

"I had this moment when I was a kid when this bully was picking on me for being a little bit feminine. He was insinuating that I was a scary homosexual."

Being a feminine boy with a non-standard face led her to struggle with identity and appearance throughout her school years - she knew she was different but couldn't work out exactly why.

Growing up in a small town in Southern Ontario, Canada, she says there were no resources to help her explore her "true self". At that point the web, where she now thrives, wasn't the seemingly endless and diverse source of information it now is.

Knowing little about gender identity, she figured she must be gay and so "came out" in ninth grade at the age of 13 - and lost all her male friends as a result.

"The first day of the second semester of ninth grade, I went to sit next to my best friend in my science class and he told me - he looked me dead in the eye with a stone face - he said 'If you sit next to me I will kill you'."

Stef describes herself as a "ball of self-loathing" at this time, and "hated" everything about herself.

"I couldn't look in the mirror without hyperventilating. I kind of just withdrew from the community and from my peers."

She felt abandoned, isolated and confused and so turned to her computer as a "digital escape".

"I pretty much took my life and moved it from the small town I grew up in and onto the internet."

While online, she played a lot of games that were very different to real life. She says: "I plunged myself into fantasy worlds, where there were people with faces like mine and people that were a little gender divergent - and it was cool."

Stef got into social media because it was a place where she could express herself away from the bullies. But, despite trying hard, reality kept seeping in.

Still identifying as a young man, though not feeling it, she felt isolated and, when she reached college, she adopted what she calls a "hyper masculine image" by growing a beard and wearing blazers. But it didn't make her feel better.

"That is when I ended up falling back into the femininity. That's when I realised this has to mean something and I had to do some research," she says.

Part of Stef's self-exploration was facing the discomfort, or dysphoria, she had with her body.

But it was only when her mind wandered onto matters of parenthood that she started to realise the problem.

Stef found herself asking "Why am I so uncomfortable with the word father or dad though I want to be a parent so badly?" She says that it was in realising she wanted to be a mother, not a father, that made her appreciate that all her discomfort was about gender.

"Then I realised I was transgender. Then I understood what I needed for myself to be truly happy."

It was at this point she started to document her transition to becoming female on her YouTube channel.

After making videos about it for a while, Stef began to get a different type of question - not about gender, but "what happened to your face?"

She responded with a video called My face: Waardenburg syndrome. It went viral and presently has over eight million views. Stef believes the syndrome hadn't been represented in media before she created the video, and it also got her noticed.

"I'm very grateful for that video," she says. "It gave me my audience."

Stef continues to be a role model for people struggling with appearance and gender.

One fan comments: "I've been watching since you came out, and it's so buck-wild to see you through your transition and become happier and excited about your progress. I can't wait until I go on HRT so I can start feeling more like myself too."

Stef uploads every week on her YouTube channel where she tells her Breadsquad to "embrace" who they are, and gives updates on her next surgery.

Viewers hear a lot about her self-exploration. In hindsight, she says, the difficulties she had with her appearance were never about those syndrome traits she was born with - she still has eyes which are slightly further apart than other people and she has a white stripe of hair at the front of her head.

She says it was about her gender and the way puberty affected her face - and that was what her facial-feminisation surgery addressed, not her impairment, as she has come to love the other-worldly look she has.

"I was very specific with my surgeon to not alter any of my Waardenburg syndrome features."

- By Lucy Edwards

BBC News, Ouch

She championed the idea that freezing your eggs would free your career. But things didn’t quite work out.

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She championed the idea that freezing your eggs would free your career. But things didn’t quite work out.

Adams remembers feeling a wonderful sense of freedom after she froze her eggs in her late 30s, despite the $19,000 cost. Her plan was to work a few more years, find a great guy to marry and still have a house full of her own children.

Things didn’t turn out the way she hoped.

In early 2017, with her 45th birthday looming and no sign of Mr. Right, she decided to start a family on her own. She excitedly unfroze the 11 eggs she had stored and selected a sperm donor.

Two eggs failed to survive the thawing process. Three more failed to fertilize. That left six embryos, of which five appeared to be abnormal. The last one was implanted in her uterus. On the morning of March 7, she got the devastating news that it, too, had failed.

Adams was not pregnant, and her chances of carrying her genetic child had just dropped to near zero. She remembers screaming like “a wild animal,” throwing books, papers, her laptop — and collapsing to the ground.

“It was one of the worst days of my life. There were so many emotions. I was sad. I was angry. I was ashamed,” she said. “I questioned, ‘Why me?’ ‘What did I do wrong?’ ”

In an age when egg freezing has become so popular that hip employers such as Apple and Facebook cover it as a perk and grandparents help finance the procedure as they might a down payment for a house, there’s surprisingly little discussion about what happens years later when women try to use them. Fertility companies tend to advertise egg freezing — “oocyte cryopreservation” — in scientific terms, as something that can “stop time.” And many women believe they are investing in an insurance policy for future babies.

But the math doesn’t always hold up. On average, a woman freezing 10 eggs at age 36 has a 30 to 60 percent chance of having a baby with them, according to published studies. The odds are higher for younger women, but they drop precipitously for older women. They also go up with the number of eggs stored (as does the cost). But the chance of success varies so wildly by individual that reproductive specialists say it’s nearly impossible to predict the outcome based on aggregate data.

A number of Adams’s friends were also early adopters of egg freezing; today they are facing a similar reckoning.

Amy West, 43, a professor in Los Angeles who attended the D.C. area’s Sidwell Friends School growing up, is one of the lucky ones. She had a baby boy 22 months ago and has numerous eggs left over. Carolyn Goerig Lee, 46, a nurse from Haymarket, Va., froze 25 eggs and planned to have a large family with them. She successfully gave birth to twins, but the other eggs were abnormal or lost to miscarriage. Then there is MeiMei Fox. After the 44-year-old Honolulu-based writer got married, she tried to use her frozen eggs. The whole batch of 18 was destroyed while being shipped from one clinic to another.

The four women’s experiences underscore the incredible uncertainty involved in egg freezing. James A. Grifo, a fertility specialist at NYU Langone Health who is one of the pioneers of the procedure, calls the whole notion of being able to “control” your fertility — perpetuated by the media and embraced by feminists — destructive.

“It’s total fiction. It’s incorrect,” Grifo said. “Your whole life it’s beaten into your head that you’re in control and if you can’t have a baby, you blame yourself. There has to be more dialogue about what women can be responsible for and what they are not responsible for.”

NYU Langone began offering elective egg freezing in 2004, one of the first programs in the nation. Since then, about 150 babies have been born using thawed eggs, Grifo said. That represents a 50 to 60 percent success rate — hardly a guarantee.

 

Increasingly popular

Forty years ago, before “let’s chill” egg freezing parties were in vogue, before “The Bachelorette’s” Kaitlyn Bristowe and other celebrities were tweeting about “taking control” of their future, young working women were already being warned about their waning fertility. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen famously wrote in 1978 that a woman’s “biological time clock can create real panic.” Since then, countless scientific experiments, advice books and talk show hosts have delved into the topic.

Doctors now know that the No. 1 factor affecting a woman’s ability to have children as she grows older has to do with eggs. At the moment she is born, a woman has all the eggs she will ever have already in her body. They are finite, and they sit there in the ovaries, aging. Each month, beginning at puberty, a single egg is released. Even in a healthy young person, the eggs are of varying quality with a certain percentage being flawed in structure or number of chromosomes. That’s one reason it can take months or years to get pregnant, and why miscarriage is common.

Around the age of 35, women confront a “fertility cliff,” when the chances of becoming pregnant decline sharply as the eggs decrease in number and quality. By age 40, the average woman has a 5 percent chance of getting pregnant in any given month. By 45, it’s 1 percent.

In an unfortunate and unfair twist of nature, men are believed to replenish their sperm at a rate of 1,500 a second through most of their lives; there are documented cases of men remaining fertile into their 90s. Age also affects the quality of sperm, according to numerous studies. But the effect on fertility is markedly less dramatic than in women.

Thus the need for “social” egg freezing as it exists today, and why more and more women are willing to pay $10,000 to $16,000 per retrieval cycle, plus hundreds of dollars in yearly storage fees, to put their eggs on ice. While there are no comprehensive national statistics, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, which represents the majority of fertility clinics in the United States, found in its latest survey that the number of women freezing their eggs is skyrocketing — from 475 in 2009 to nearly 8,000 in 2015.

The procedure is growing rapidly in popularity: Gina Bartasi, the former chief executive at fertility benefits company Progyny, predicts that as many as 76,000 women could elect to freeze their eggs this year.

Amy

Amy West, an academic with degrees from the University of Virginia and Stanford University, is well aware of the research on female fertility. In her 20s, she vowed to have a child by the age of 37. But as 37 approached, she was unmarried and working long hours as a not-yet-tenured assistant professor. So in 2011, she decided to freeze her eggs.

Everything went great, and she got 26 eggs — a very large number.

Three years later, at the age of 40, West was ready to use them. It took two tries and four months to get pregnant, but today, West is the mother of a healthy toddler, with plenty of eggs left over.

“Those eggs really paid off for me. I never imagined being a single mom. Now I think about having more,” she said.

Carolyn Goerig Lee embraces David Lee, 2, while Clara Lee and Michael Lee, both 4, play at their home in Haymarket, Va. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Carolyn

Carolyn Goerig Lee first got the idea to freeze her eggs from Oprah Winfrey. The show aired many years ago, before the procedure was commercially available, but Lee vividly recalls a female doctor, single and in her 30s, talking about the need for the technology.

In 2008, Lee was 37 and starting to think about children just as egg freezing was taking off. She had been dating a great guy she met at the McLean Bible Church and, despite their different backgrounds — he is a Korean American engineer and entrepreneur, she is a Hungarian-German-Irish nurse from a military family — they seemed to click. But she was in Seattle and he was in Virginia, which made their future somewhat iffy.

So with his support, she froze her eggs. Because of her age — 39 by the time she decided on a clinic and went through with the procedure — and the results of her blood work, her doctor advised two rounds. It nearly doubled the cost, but it gave her a better shot at having a baby. She got a total of 25 eggs.

Fast forward a few years: Lee and the engineer married and were ready to have a family. Initially, they were worried they had too many eggs.

“The idea of fertilizing 25 eggs was a little overwhelming,” Lee recalled. But once they started the process, they realized that each egg was not necessarily fated to become a child.

Reproductive health specialists sometimes describe the success rates of thawing eggs, fertilizing them and transferring them to the womb as resembling an inverted pyramid: You start with a certain number of eggs and lose some at every step.

While the freezing process has advanced significantly in recent years, 5 to 15 percent typically don’t survive the thawing process. The eggs that make it are fertilized with sperm. The resulting embryos are left to grow for three to five days and graded on certain characteristics. The most promising are then transferred to the woman’s womb, where only some adhere to the wall of the uterus, the first step in a successful pregnancy. From there, the pregnancy faces the usual risks, including spontaneous, unexplained miscarriage.

Lee says she is grateful for her twins, a boy and a girl who are now 4 ½ . But she and her husband always yearned for a larger family. After losing the rest of her eggs, Lee had another set of twins using eggs donated by her younger sister and, last week, she gave birth to a fifth child also using a donor egg. She says she’s “over the moon” happy.

“The best piece of advice I have is have a backup plan if your eggs don’t work. It’s not the end of the world,” she said. “You can still be a mom.”

MeiMei

When MeiMei Fox froze her eggs at 37, the process went more smoothly than she expected. The retrieval, where the doctor removes eggs from the ovaries with a long needle, went without a hitch. She remembers going home and taking a nap.

“I was thrilled and thought it was the best decision I ever made,” she said.

Fox immediately started dating “without thinking about long-term commitments but just enjoying the moment.” She blogged about her experience in HuffPost. As fate would have it, she found “the love of her life,” a filmmaker and fellow writer, months later. The two were soon married.

For almost two years, they tried to get pregnant naturally. When Fox was about to turn 40, she decided to use her frozen eggs.

She was living in Los Angeles; her eggs were in San Francisco. Her new clinic called her old clinic and had them shipped south.

“They knew from the minute they opened the package something was wrong,” Fox recalled. A lab tech later showed her the straws in which the eggs were stored, and how they had leaked.

Fox was beyond devastated. But after three years of traditional IVF and fertility treatments with her current eggs, she gave birth to twin boys.

“There’s a happy ending, but with a lot of pain and heartbreak and $100,000 along the way,” she said. “Their grandparents are always asking if I started their college fund. I’m like, ‘The college fund went into creating them.’ ”

Brigitte

Soon after the Bloomberg Businessweek story ran, emails began pouring into Brigitte Adams’s inbox. Women from all over the world wrote to ask for her advice. She launched a blog, Eggsurance, which grew into a thriving community where people shared tips about egg freezing.

In Adams’s story, many other young women saw a road map for a happy life. As the years passed and egg freezing took off, she became the de facto poster child for a generation of women considering the procedure.

But that painful March day, when the last of her frozen eggs failed to produce a pregnancy, Adams said she realized how one-sided the conversation about egg freezing had been, and how little information was available about what she calls “part two” — when you actually try to use those eggs to get pregnant.

“There is a huge marketing hype of it, and overpromising,” she said.

So Adams dusted off her laptop and began trying to make sense of her situation.

First, she said she learned that the fertility industry is very “cagey” about providing data on success rates. “It’s easy for them to say there isn’t data right now. And really there is. There is some data. It’s just not pretty data,” she said.

Individual clinics are often reluctant to share their own information, she said, and many don’t refer patients to academic studies that attempt to quantify the probability of success. Only a few such studies exist: A 2016 Fertility and Sterility study of 137 women who tried to use their frozen eggs found that women who froze 10 eggs at the age of 36 faced a 30 percent likelihood of achieving a live birth. Last year, researchers writing in Human Reproduction calculated that the same women should have a 60 percent success rate based on their mathematical model.

Brigitte Adams goes through the paperwork for her egg freezing, IVF and other fertility procedures and treatments. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Second, Adams said many clinics sell women on a single egg retrieval procedure without mentioning that more may be needed to harvest enough eggs to produce a successful pregnancy. This is what happened with Adams. When she recently reviewed her tests, she said they clearly showed that her fertility already had been in decline, suggesting that she would need more than 11 eggs to conceive. The lack of advice was “unconscionable,” she said. “I was never told that x, y and z were a possibility.”

While she is still a proponent of egg freezing, Adams said women need to be better educated about the possible outcomes, including the bad ones, and the industry needs to be more transparent.

“We are only seeing half the story, which is a very optimistic story,” she said. “But, really, you need to see both.”

Her own story has a happy twist.

After a dark period of mourning and soul-searching, Adams began IVF again, this time with a donor egg and donor sperm. On a recent weekday afternoon, she was lying on an exam table staring at a computer screen — her first ultrasound.

Brigitte Adams holds sonogram prints of her pregnancy at the Center for Fetal Medicine in Los Angeles. After her own frozen eggs failed, she is pregnant with a donor egg and donor sperm. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Picking out a sperm donor was fun, she said, like perusing an online dating site to find the ideal mate. Trying to select an egg donor, on the other hand, was “excruciating,” she says: “You are thinking, ‘This should be me.’ ”

Adams says she is trying to control her emotions, given the ups and downs of her long journey. But then the doctor comes in and locates the thud-thud of a heartbeat, and her eyes start to water.

The baby, a girl, is due in May.


- By Ariana Eunjung Cha with Magda Jean-Louis

- The Washington Post

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