HOW SIRISENA WAS BOUGHT-Manoeuvred to bid for Presidency as puppet -Harvard Health award a pre-planned design
Posted on December 10th, 2014
Courtesy The Daily News
The Harvard Health Leadership Award-2013 was presented to then Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena at the annual leadership conference of the Public Health Research Institute of Harvard University in June 2013.
This is the first occasion at which a Sri Lankan won the award, further supporting the claim by many observers that the US wanted Sirisena at the helm to further its geopoltical designs.
The award has been handed over, it was stated, for the contributions made by Sirisena for minimising the public consumption of alcohol, and smoking and adopting a National Drug Policy.
The USAID Washington is one of the major fund providers of the Harvard Public Health Education Institute of the Harvard University.
It is observably a part of the plan for the two offices, USAID and US Embassy – to jointly nominate Sirisena as a recipient of the prestigious Harvard Award, and Washington to give its approval, despite the fact that the National Drug Policy was not fully successful, which speaks volumes of American manoeuvring in a host country to go well beyond the ‘tobacco and drug policy’ to manipulate the internal political environment to further US foreign policy objectives.
Maitripala Sirisena seems to have fallen into the trap in the middle of this manoeuvring of the ‘external forces’ that endeavour to impose a different trajectory upon our motherland, Sri Lanka,” these observers say.
Around 36 political parties and groups signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Sirisena on Monday. The joint platform for the Sri Lankan presidential election, scheduled for January 8, is a cynical exercise aimed at duping voters into believing that Sirisena will end the onslaught on living standards and democratic rights.
This alliance, based on A Common People’s Agenda for Just, Democratic and People-friendly Governance, though committed to people friendly Governance, reduce the oppressive burden of the Cost of Living” will no doubt implement the ruthlesess austerity measures that characterised the 70 -77 Sirima Bandaranaike government to whose party the SLFP, Sirisena belongs to.
Those signing the MoU included the right-wing United National Party (UNP) and the Democratic Party of Sarath Fonseka, who stood as the common opposition candidate against President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the 2010 election. Former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who is a leading figure in the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and took the initiative to organise the alliance, also signed up.
In a political conspiracy instigated by Kumaratunga, assisted by UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sirisena quit as health minister on November 21, along with several ministers and parliamentarians, and announced he would stand as the common opposition candidate against President Rajapaksa. The US, which is hostile to President Rajapaksa’s ties with China, certainly knew of and approved the intrigue to install a new president.
Sirisena promised to implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).
By declaring that he will carry out the recommendations, Sirisena signalled a shift in foreign policy toward Washington, plus an appeal to the country’s Tamil elite. One of the LLRC’s proposals is for a political solution” that would involve a power-sharing arrangement with the representatives of the Tamil bourgeoisie.
– See more at: http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=local/how-sirisena-was-bought#sthash.8gYJ6Lm8.dpuf
December 10th, 2014 at 5:08 am
“The award has been handed over, it was stated, for the contributions made by Sirisena for minimising the public consumption of alcohol, and smoking and adopting a National Drug Policy.”
WHAT A JOKE!
In 2013 Ceylon TOBACCO Company became the country’s most valuable corporate!
2 alcohol companies in the list of top 15 corporates in the country!
The tobacco and alcohol situation in the country WORSENED in the past decade as these indices show.
Sirisena cannot take credit for this award.
December 10th, 2014 at 5:25 am
Well, this article is saying what I have been saying all along. What did MS actually do to EARN the Harvard award? Has cancer, lung disease, heart disease, HIV, liver and kidney disorders, dengue fever, or ANY metric of health in Sri Lanka improved under MS’s leadership as health minister? No! So the Harvard award is a TOTAL JOKE!
The author of the above article is also correct to note the REAL reason the US gave MS the Harvard award is the same reason MIT gave Ranil the Wilhelm Fellowship (Google: “Ranil Wickremesinghe, Former Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Joins MIT”), to affect regime change in Sri Lanka and using the Abolishing the Executive Presidency to accomplish this change. In fact, in Ranil’s case, his entire work as a MIT Wilhelm Fellow in April of this year was to find ways to abolish the executive presidency in Sri Lanka and transfer these executive powers to the Prime Minister – the job that MS has promised to Ranil if he is elected.
Why does the US want regime change in Sri Lanka? Again, the author of the article above is spot on – the US wants to use Sri Lanka in its failed China Containment Policy but Rajapaksa is not cooperating. In fact, Rajapaksa has his foot on the accelerator in building a multi-faceted relationship with China, which is the ONLY country in the world that is putting up the multi-BILLION dollar investments needed for Sri Lanka to rise economically.
You can’t make this up folks, this is REAL US regime change maneuvering for the benefit of the US – not Sri Lanka – using willing saps like MS and Ranil that have no loyalty at all to the people of Sri Lanka.
December 10th, 2014 at 6:43 am
Rajiv Shah is the boss of US Aid which has a lot to do with the Harvard Health Leadership; this third world project. US Aid a 22 billion dollar outfit though US debt to China is more than 3 trillions. This guy is another Indian vermin in Obama-Dempcrat outfit. While blacks and whites are killing each other Indian vermin are running the US. Indians never leave their baggage in India so you can see where all these are coming from. India want to get rid of anyone who satnds up to Indian Empire.
December 10th, 2014 at 7:08 am
WATCH OUT FRIENDS !! There is going to be a clash very soon between the Sly Fox Runil and the Banditkween, Chandrika for the position of “”PRIME-MINISTER “”
How come Banditkween Chandrka have one election Office, and the Sly Fox Runil having his own at Sri Kotha, both ostensibly to promote MY3 ? This is where the RUB is going to be.
The tremblngs down the grape wine is that Banditkween has signed a secret pact with Sampndung, and wants My3 to adhere to her plan of action. Runil too has signed a secret pact with Sampandung, of a different nature. Sampandung is taking both for a gallant ride. Ranil and Chandrika are not comparing the notes on these two secret pacts, as they are both vying for the Prime Ministers Post, and both have different routes with Sampandung to achieve it. SAMPANDUNG IS A RUSSELS VIPER. HE WILL GIVE THEM THE KISS OF DEATH AT ANYTIME. Ranil is a BATALANDA MAN, and Chandrika will have to be very careful about her ambitions.
I fervently believe that someone should file a case in the Supreme Court to get a stay order before the election results are announced, to stop both Ranil and Chandrika from trying to Govern the Country by perverse illegal means, as they have absolute no mandate from the People to touch the post of Prime Minister. Equally true, My3 should be hauled up in the Supreme Court for entertaining an unconstitutional, perverse, illegal, and fraudulent TORT, which is punishable under Civil Law. He is attempting to do something, which is going to land him in JAIL.Period.
December 10th, 2014 at 8:16 am
SAMPANDUNG IS INFLUENCING THE TAMILS TO CROSS FROM GOVERNMENT, AS PART OF THE PLAN WITH RANIL AND CHANDRIKA. WHEN PRESIDENT WINS, HE MUST THROW HIS CHICKEN HEART AWAY, AND DISSOLVE THE NPC. THERE ARE MANY REASONS TO DO SO. MAKE THEM INVERTIBRATE.
December 10th, 2014 at 8:43 pm
A treacherous back stabber, turncoat, hypocrite and Foreign REGIME CHANGE Puppet: should we TRUST Palwatte Gamaralage Maithripala Yapa Sirisena with the KEYS TO THE Nation?
I THINK NOT!!
December 10th, 2014 at 9:30 pm
“You can’t make this up folks, this is REAL US regime change maneuvering for the benefit of the US – not Sri Lanka – using willing saps like MS and Ranil that have no loyalty at all to the people of Sri Lanka.”
Spot ON, Vimutti! Well said!
These PUPPETEERS are SALIVATING at the prospect of achieving a REGIME CHANGE, and doing an END-RUN against the Sri Lanka-China Alliance, but like Rumpelstiltskin of old, they will SPLIT IN TWO in sheer FRUSTRATION come January 8, 2015, when their BEST LAID PLANS come CRASHING TO THE GROUND!
Isn’t it AMAZING HOW MANY REGIME CHANGE PLOTS of these highly advanced “war-games experts” have come to NOUGHT and REBOUNDED against them in RECENT YEARS?
The chaos of Libya, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Sudan, to name but a few of their collected disasters, and the rise of EVEN MORE VIRULENT enemies worldwide, gives AMPLE TESTIMONY to the UTTER FAILURE of their “Human Rights” and “Democracy Building” “Arab Spring” strategies of the recent past.
You would think that with ALL the wealth, weapons, and expert WAR-GAMES ANALYSTS they have deployed, they can be successful at least in ONE FOREIGN COUNTRY, and that they would LEARN A FEW LESSONS of what not to do from the FAILURE of ALL of their Foreign Interventions? THey can start with NOT DESTABILIZING the few Asian Nations that have a long history of democratic self-government, among them Sri Lanka.
Their IDIOCY is in doing the same thing OVER & OVER AGAIN and expecting a DIFFERENT RESULT! And these are the self-proclaimed Highly Intelligent people on this Earth? Bah!
Read the article below on how the systematic use of TORTURE by the Highly Intelligent Eggheads of the CIA failed to deliver the intelligence they desperately sought in the bGeorge W. Bush years!
These are the minions of the Human Rights and Democracy Champions straddling the globe today, ACCUSING other sovereigns nations, like Sri Lanka, who through their own efforts, at great cost in blood and treasure, have already rid their own territory of foreign sponsored terrorism. This was done not in far-off places across the globe, but right where Sri Lankans live, and were subjected to 30 years of unremitting separatist terrorist violence.
When THEY TORTURE people, at “Black Sites” spread across the GLOBE, and indiscriminately kill civilians using stand-off weapons like DRONES that cannot distinguish between the terrorists and innocents … it is a LEGITIMATE SELF-DEFENSE; but if Sri Lanka wages a war of Liberation from Terrorism, using ground troops at much greater cost in lives and treasure, to rescue its people from murderers hiding behind HUMAN SHIELDS, without using highly destructive stand-off weapons, it is a WAR CRIME!
It is HIGH TIME that the Community of Nations in the world CONDEMNED the DOUBLE STANDARDS of these powerful hypocritical Western Powers, and labelled their “Human Rights and DEmocracy” excuses for what they really are: PRETEXTS for undermining targeted nations and enforcing and sustaining their GLOBAL HEGEMONY! They are destroying the world and denuding it of people.
HYPOCRITES INCARNATE using DOUBLE STANDARDS to preserve their HEGEMONY in PERPETUITY!
…………………
Senate Report Says Torture Program Was More Gruesome, Widespread Than CIA Claimed
December 9, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released the highly anticipated 500-page summary of its report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, providing a sobering glimpse into one of the darkest chapters in the U.S. government’s history.
In the report, a product of a 5-year investigation, Senate investigators reveal sordid details of the systemic and individual failures by the agency personnel who ran the “enhanced interrogation program” — the government’s euphemism for systematic torture — during the George W. Bush administration. The program involved capturing terrorism suspects and shipping them to secret overseas prisons, where they were subjected to techniques such as waterboarding.
The CIA’s program has long been criticized as un-American and a chilling departure from the nation’s values. Opponents allege that it resulted in gross abuses and inhumane treatment of detainees, some of whom were eventually revealed not to have been involved in terror organizations.
The 6,300-page report may be the most unsanitized official account to date of the agency’s program, which the Senate investigators say was mismanaged, poorly conducted and characterized by abuses far more widespread than the CIA previously conveyed to lawmakers.
The newly released document tears apart the CIA’s past claims that only a small number of detainees were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques. The agency has said it held fewer than 100 detainees and subjected fewer than one-third of those to controversial tactics such as waterboarding. But Senate investigators found that the CIA had actually kept 119 detainees in custody, 26 of whom were illegally held. And despite CIA insistence that the program was limited in scope, Senate investigators conclude that the use of torture was much more widespread than previously thought.
The study reveals several gruesome instances of torture by mid-level CIA officers who participated in the program, including threats of sexual violence using a broomstick and the use of “rectal hydration” in instances of harsh interrogations that lasted for days or weeks on end. And, contrary to the agency’s prior insistence that only three detainees were subject to waterboarding, the Senate report suggests it was likely used on more detainees.
The report cites the presence of materials typically used for waterboarding being present at certain “blacksites,” or secret prisons, where the agency had previously said waterboarding was not used.
Rather than wrestling with the morality of the agency’s torture program or the operation’s damaging effect on the U.S.’ international credibility, Senate investigators instead weighed whether the agency’s tactics were effective. Through narrative examinations of 20 separate detainee cases, the panel attempted to make the case that the use of harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding did not yield valuable intelligence.
“The committee reviewed 20 of the most frequent and prominent examples of purported counterterrorism ‘successes’ that the CIA has attributed to the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the intelligence panel, said in a statement Tuesday. “Each of those examples was found to be wrong in fundamental respects.”
In some instances, the study finds, the information acquired proved irrelevant to stopping terror threats. In others, the use of the techniques resulted in detainees providing fabricated or inaccurate information, and in still other cases, the information obtained through interrogating the detainees had already been acquired through other techniques.
Given that the techniques were ineffective, the study says, the agency routinely misled Congress and the White House when it claimed that the use of torture did in fact contribute to intelligence victories. For instance, the Senate report pushes back against the CIA’s argument that torture provided the information about Osama bin Laden’s courier that helped the U.S. kill the al Qaeda leader in 2011. In a 10-page discussion on the subject, Senate investigators say the information that led the U.S. to bin Laden was obtained from a detainee while he was in foreign custody, prior to being subjected to torture.
The CIA, however, refutes these conclusions. In a roughly 100-page official response released alongside the intelligence panel’s summary, the agency contends that harsh interrogation techniques were effective.
“The sum total of information provided from detainees in CIA custody substantially advanced the Agency’s strategic and tactical understanding of the enemy in ways that continue to inform counterterrorism efforts to this day,” the agency said in its rebuttal.
The response argues that it’s not clear whether the valuable information could have been acquired by means other than harsh interrogation techniques, although the agency concedes that it’s possible.
“It is impossible to imagine how CIA could have achieved the same results in terms of disrupting plots, capturing other terrorists, and degrading al-Qa’ida without any information from detainees, but it is unknowable whether, without enhanced interrogation techniques, CIA or non-CIA interrogators could have acquired the same information from those detainees,” the rebuttal said.
Still, the CIA is not advocating a return to the use of torture during interrogations. Rather, it is most concerned with defending itself against charges that it misled Congress and the White House about the extent and value of the program. The official response vehemently challenges the Senate’s allegation that the spies acted outside the limits of what the White House had allowed the agency to do. The agency has said that the enhanced interrogations were part of a government-approved program carried out under express orders from within the Bush administration.
“The image portrayed in the Study of an organization that—on an institutional scale—intentionally misled and routinely resisted oversight from the White House, the Congress, the Department of Justice, and its own OIG simply does not comport with the record,“ the agency’s response said.
Among the Senate report’s 20 main conclusions are that the CIA misled Congress, the White House and the Department of Justice, that the agency ignored internal critiques of the program, and that the CIA’s use of the techniques went far beyond the legal authority bestowed upon it by the Bush White House.
In a statement Tuesday, President Barack Obama said, “The report documents a troubling program involving enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects in secret facilities outside the United States, and it reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests.”
“That is why I will continue to use my authority as President to make sure we never resort to those methods again,” Obama added.
“In carrying out that program, we did not always live up to the high standards that we set for ourselves and that the American people expect of us,” CIA Director John Brennan said Tuesday in his official response. “As an Agency, we have learned from these mistakes, which is why my predecessors and I have implemented various remedial measures over the years to address institutional deficiencies.”
The agency says it has no intention of revamping the current version of its interrogation program, which was curbed as a result of directives from Obama. “It is Director Brennan’s resolute intention to ensure that Agency officers scrupulously adhere to these directives, which the Director fully supports,” the statement continued.
“CIA has owned up to these mistakes, learned from them, and taken numerous corrective actions over the years. Further improvements to CIA practices continue to be made today as a result of our review of the SSCI Study,” the agency’s response noted, referring to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the intelligence panel’s full name.
The document’s release marks the conclusion of an explosive, high-stakes feud that played out between the White House’s chief spying agency and its powerful Senate overseers about how much of the report to release publicly.
The feud revolved around the executive branch’s insistence that the committee redact the pseudonyms used to identify the mid-level CIA officers involved in the program. Despite a monthslong fight, Feinstein was ultimately forced to relent and allow the pseudonyms to remain blacked out in order to get her study’s summary out the door before the panel’s incoming Republican majority takes control of the report in January.
The study, which was first commissioned by Feinstein in 2009, began as a bipartisan effort with then-ranking member Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.). Republicans on the panel, though, withdrew from the study just months after it was commissioned.
The document released Tuesday will very likely be the only portion the public sees of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report. Although Feinstein suggested in April that the full report would be released at a later date, Republicans are not likely to seek further declassification once they gain control of the committee, given their opposition to the investigation.
The study set the stage for a dramatic, closed-door dispute between the agency and Feinstein, which resulted in deeply personal jabs and competing referrals to the Justice Department asking for criminal investigations. The CIA accused Feinstein’s staff early this year of taking highly sensitive material from the secure agency facility where the investigation was conducted. Feinstein, meanwhile, insisted the investigators had a right to the document, and further accused the agency of improperly monitoring the computers her staff used to construct the study.
The Department of Justice declined to investigate either the CIA’s or Feinstein’s allegations. The CIA has since conceded that it did improperly monitor Senate investigators’ computers, and is conducting an independent accountability review board to determine what consequences, if any, its employees should face.
December 10th, 2014 at 9:37 pm
Here Are The Most Horrific Details From The Senate Torture Report
December 9, 2013
On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released the long-awaited summary of its torture report, revealing horrific details about the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation program.
Many of the details in the report are sickening and graphic. They are perhaps made only more disturbing by the overarching conclusion that the torture and “enhanced interrogation” employed by the CIA failed to produce the types of significant intelligence that had been used to defend the program in the past.
You can go here to read the unsealed summary of the report, including a section on initial findings and hundreds of pages of declassified documents. Below is a compilation of some of the most abhorrent details from it.
Detainees were subjected to “rectal feeding,” a process by which food or nutrients are pumped in through the anus…
rectal feeding
[Page 115]
… even when there was no demonstrated medical need for it.
ksm
[Page 82]
Detainees were told they would never leave these “black sites” and that their families would be sexually assaulted or murdered.
sexually abused
[Page 4 of findings]
One never did. He died of suspected hypothermia after being tortured at one of the covert facilities.
death in cobalt
[Page 10 of summary]
During an extended period of stress, an interrogator operated a power drill near a detainee.
torture
[Page 69]
Detainees were waterboarded until they turned blue…
waterboarding
[Page 107]
… and were on the verge of drowning.
ksm near drowning
[Page 86]
Forced nudity was regularly used as an interrogation technique.
alshibh nudity
[Page 79]
After this brutal regimen of torture, detainees often gave false information, which the U.S. acted on.
ksm 2
[Page 83]
One detainee, a Saudi Arabian citizen who is still being held at Guantanamo Bay and was one of the first detainees held during the torture program, faced 20 days of nonstop “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
zubaydah
[Page 40]
This included extended periods of isolation and confinement in a coffin-sized box.
abu zubayda interrogation
[Page 42]
At one black site, groups of detainees were regularly stripped, beaten, hooded and bound with tape.
cobalt
[Page 4 of summary]
Detainees were subjected to seemingly unimaginable periods of sleep deprivation, in conjunction with other forms of torture.
abu jafar al iraqi
[Page 149]
Sleep deprivation often led to disturbing hallucinations.
hallucinations
[Page 16]
Detainees were also refused access to toilets, put in diapers and left hanging by their wrists in cells for extended periods of time.
al najrr
[Page 53]
Others were forced to maintain “stress positions” even on broken limbs and though medical personnel had advised against it.
broken foot
[Page 101]
An interrogator reportedly played Russian roulette with a detainee.
russian roulette
[Page 424]
The CIA detained individuals who did not meet its outlined detention standard, and they were used to extract information from family members. This included at least one “intellectually challenged” individual.
intellectually challenege
[Page 12 of summary]
Some mistakenly held detainees were subjected to prolonged periods of torture before being released.
abu hudhaifa
[Page 42]
Many CIA officials were disturbed by the techniques and torture they witnessed at these sites.
cia upset
[Page 44]
Ashley Alman, Mollie Reilly and Paige Lavender contributed reporting.