Monthly Archives: March 2017

(Geneva) The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights decried Sri Lankas slow progress on its reform pledges in his report to the UN Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch said today.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein speaks during a news conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka on February 9, 2016.

2016 Reuters

High Commissioner Zeid Raad Al Hussein acknowledged certain positive developments, but said that the government failed to adopt a time-bound comprehensive strategy on transitional justice, and called on the council to continue monitoring Sri Lankan compliance with resolution 30/1 of October 2015.

The UN high commissioner paints a picture that is in stark contrast to the rosy claims of the Sri Lankan government, said John Fisher, Geneva director. Zeids report bolsters findings by UN independent experts and Sri Lankan rights groups that meaningful government action is needed, particularly on accountability and justice.

The high commissioners report expressed particular concern that the government had not even begun preparatory work on establishing a judicial mechanism with foreign judges and other judicial officers, one of the four transitional justice mechanisms under the resolution. Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations have cited presidential statements in opposition to that undertaking as evidence of the governments unwillingness to create a court that would try serious crimes committed by both sides in the countrys 27-year-long civil war, which ended in 2009.

Geneva Director

The report also raised other human rights issues in Sri Lanka, including the wide use of torture and the lack of security sector reform, notably the failure to repeal the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act. It highlights the governments poor record in investigating and prosecuting emblematic cases of killings, enforced disappearances, and torture during and since the armed conflict, and in bringing an end to longstanding impunity.

The high commissioners report notes progress on public consultations involving constitutional reforms and transitional justice. However, it strongly recommends that the government embrace the report of the government-appointed transitional justice Consultation Task Force, which calls for a hybrid judicial mechanism based on wide-reaching consultations across all communities. Human Rights Watch and others have pointed out the governments disregard for the task force in Sri Lanka even while it takes credit for its report in Geneva and other international forums.

The high commissioners report spotlights just how far there is to go before the promise of reconciliation, justice, and reform in Sri Lanka becomes a reality, Fisher said. The Human Rights Council needs to engage meaningfully with both the high commissioners report and the Consultation Task Force report, and adopt a substantive resolution to urge acceptance of its recommendations, request an implementation timetable, and ensure continued international scrutiny until the Sri Lankan government delivers on its commitments in full.

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Sri Lanka: UN Official Calls Progress 'Worryingly Slow' - Human Rights Watch

On Monday, the second day of Interstate 10 closures at San Simon caused by blowing dust from a nearby farm, state inspectors and farm managers agreed that more aggressive measures would be taken the next day.

Specifically, three water trucks starting around 7 a.m. would be used to wet down a recently prepped 50-acre plot, instead of the two that proved insufficient at Davids Agrigold Farms on Monday. An additional and closer water source was also to be used.

Instead, the first truck didnt get going until 9:30 a.m., a half hour before the Tuesday I-10 closure started, and the second didnt start until 10:30 a.m.

The third truck never got going because there was no one to drive it and the extra water source was not able to be used due to lack of correct parts until 3 p.m., resulting in lag time to refill the trucks, according to an inspection report obtained by the Star.

Caroline Oppleman, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, which conducted the inspections, said that all three days of closures including Tuesdays were avoidable.

David Turner, the farms owner, and two farm managers did not respond to requests for comment. Nicki Frank, of David Turner International, said the farm has no comment.

Asked if the farm had been meeting its commitments more consistently since Tuesday, Oppleman said it had. There have been no I-10 closures near San Simon due to dust since Tuesday.

An inspection report dated Wednesday stated the portion of the 50-acre plot nearest the interstate was heavily saturated after a microsprinkler system was set up the day before.

Oppleman said the microsprinkler system for the whole plot was installed a day ahead of schedule. A farm manager said it would be run through the weekend. ADEQ inspectors will also be on the property through the weekend.

Progress is being made, Oppleman said.

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Arizona: Progress made to keep I-10 dust down near San Simon - Arizona Daily Star

Black History Month drew to a close this week, and Im guessing the White House is relieved. After all, the month that is reserved to celebrate African Americans began with President Donald Trump boasting his abject ignorance about the mortality of Frederick Douglass. Then, this week, the observances concluded with his education secretary revealing her lack of knowledge about the history of black colleges.

Secretary Betsy DeVos, whom the Senate barely approved to lead the U.S. Department of Education, let the nation know that she has no understanding of the role or significance of historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. In a statement released after a Monday meeting with an audience of black college and university presidents, DeVos suggested the colleges were created to give black students choice in their educational options, seemingly linking the founding of HBCUs to the administrations efforts to promote federal support for private, charter, and religious schools as alternatives to public education. DeVos wrote:

HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.

This is verifiably untrue. The often-told and well-known origin story of the nations black colleges and universities dates to the end of slavery, when black Americans were rebuffed from attending white schools. Indeed, in many Confederate states, it was illegal under slavery to allow blacks to learn to read. After the Civil War, black preachers and white philanthropists built collegesmost were glorified grammar and high schoolsacross the South to educate newly freed slaves. The schools, some 100 or so still graduating students to this day, may have started in church basements or abandoned buildings but now are now proud institutions that have produced black engineers, doctors, lawyers, and educators who have long contributed to building this nation.

Of course, DeVos didnt know this. She doesnt have a clue about race, education, or history, let alone putting it all together into a coherent understanding of the historic struggle of black Americans quest for education. Rather, she seized the meeting with the HBCU presidents as an opportunity to score brownie points with an equally unknowing White House.

Predictably, her comments drew withering ridicule, so a day after uttering what should never have been said in the first place, DeVos refined her opinion of HBCUs. Speaking at a luncheon for the HBCU presidents at the Library of Congress, she acknowledged in prepared remarks released by her office and quoted in The New York Times that white racism played a part in the creation of their institutions: But your history was born, not out of mere choice, but out of necessity, in the face of racism, and in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Still, her mulligan came up short, adding yet another choice argument in her backpedal on the earlier statement. Bucking that status quo, and providing an alternative option to students denied the right to attend a quality school is the legacy of HBCUs, she said at the luncheon.

No! HBCUs were not a choice; there was no alternative option to attending schools that refused to allow them to enter. Marybeth Gasman, who directs the Penn Center for Minority-Serving Institutions at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Huffington Post that DeVos statements were completely ahistorical, representing a whitewashing of HBCU history. African-Americans did not have a choice when black colleges were establishedthat was the only thing they could do.

All this seems par for the course inside a Trump administration that cant seem to avoid doing or saying the wrong thing, no matter the issue or how desperately it tries to sound presidential. Indeed, this weekthe last of Black History Monththe White House invited the black HBCU presidents to Washington, putatively to listen to their concerns and as the prelude to an executive order that the presidents hoped would profit them with tangible financial support for their schools.

This point bears a bit of elaboration. During the Obama administration, many HBCU supporters expressed frustration that the former president never invited them to the Oval Office and complained that his administrations policies made their financial situations more perilous. Nevertheless, President Barack Obama invested more than $4 billion in HBCUs over seven years, according to a U.S. Department of Education HBCU fact sheet released in October 2016.

President Trump sought to exploit HBCU presidents, using them as the cutting edge of a wedge issue. The idea was to cleave some restless support from among black college and university presidents to cripple a strong base of support among Democrats. The ham-fistedness of his effort revealed itself when the White House posted a McClatchy report, which makes clear that Trump was using the HBCU presidents in a transparent, window-dressing effort to outdo his predecessors.

It didnt work. The White House meeting turned out to be more of an embarrassing photo opportunity and not much listening to what the black presidents had to say. And what about that presidential executive order on HBCUs? Well, there wasnt a lot of fiscal meat on the bones of that either. While President Trump did answer the presidents plea for a tour of the Oval Office, he didnt give them the money they were expecting to receive.

As BET reported, Although the Trump administration has made much effort [to] show its alignment with historically Black colleges and universities, the recently signed executive orderdoes not increase the amount of federal funding given to HBCUs. The black-oriented website noted, In a nutshell, Trumps executive order does not strongly depart from an order signed by the Obama administration in 2009.

Lets put it another way: Those black presidents who posed with a grinning President Trump in the Oval Office came to Washington and left with nothing but a swell souvenir selfie with Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump.

Mercifully for this White House, Black History Month is over for 2017. Ill bet everyone over there is relieved at not having to showcase another week of cluelessness about black Americans.

Sam Fulwood III is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Director of the CAP Leadership Institute. His work with the Centers Progress 2050 project examines the impact of policies on the nation when there will be no clear racial or ethnic majority by the year 2050.

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A Black History Lesson for the Ages - Center For American Progress

The most important news in golf this week wasn't the joint USGA/R&A announcement of a proposal to modernize many of the game's stodgy rules. Or the PGA of America's decision to allow competitors to wear shorts during practice rounds for championship events. Or the PGA Tour and its fellow international circuits jumping into uncharted waters by holding a WGC event in Mexico for the first time.

No, the most important news wasn't any of this individually. It was all of this. It was the prevailing theme of progression in an industry that too often remains stuck in the past.

Examine any report on the state of the game and you'll find what sounds suspiciously like some doomsday scenario. Recreational rounds are decreasing annually, more courses are continuing to close, and Tiger Woods -- the player who single-handedly ushered golf from niche to mainstream over the past two decades -- is still dealing with injuries which have left his future in doubt.

Of course, the situation isn't that dire. Recreational golfers will still play, the large majority of courses will remain open and young, talented superstars will take Woods' place on that hierarchy. But if the caretakers of the game want it to flourish instead of simply endure, there needed to be change.

That's the biggest takeaway from all of these recent developments. Those charged with how the game functions and operates have finally started to embrace this concept.

None other than Gary Player tweeted his approval of the latest rules proposals by quoting Winston Churchill: "Change is the price of survival."

Many of the proposed changes have a common goal. Eliminate gray areas and allow common sense to prevail. That might sound like a no-brainer, but in a game often too steeped in tradition to move ahead, this should serve as a giant leap forward.

It's not just the proposed rulings, either, which in many cases will eliminate frivolous penalties for unintended violations. There will also be a new, shorter, more user-friendly handbook to guide players through these rules, one which will casually refer to them in the second person.

As Dustin Johnson learned at the 2016 U.S. Open, golf's rule book can be frustrating and intimidating. That's why the announcement that changes are coming is so welcome.

There's a lot to like about the plan to overhaul golf's rule book, but there will always be something to complain about. Our expert panelists react to the long-awaited announcement.

Dustin Johnson, who still doesn't understand why he was penalized a stroke at last year's U.S. Open, is glad to see a proposal to change the rule that threatened his first major victory.

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"Our two organizations came together with an objective to make the rules easier to understand and easier to apply for all golfers throughout the world," said Thomas Pagel, the USGA's senior director of rules and amateur status. "That's very important as part of this initiative, and as we looked at that, we didn't just look at the outcomes. We've also addressed the delivery of the rules and how the rules are written, presenting them now in a more modern form, using plain language and language that can be easily translated and understood."

If the actions of the USGA and R&A to guide the game into its next iteration aren't enough to inspire universal optimism about the future, then parallel maneuvers from other organizations should serve to help that idea.

The powers that be at golf's highest professional levels not only continue to spread the game internationally -- of the year's first three WGC tournaments, this week's event will be the first played outside the United States in more than a decade -- they also continue to produce creative ways to break away from the status quo.

One example is the upcoming Zurich Classic, an official event which will feature two-man teams. Meanwhile, the European Tour already has experimented with a unique match play-style shootout and has looked into the possibility of hosting a night tournament under lights.

By comparison, the PGA of America's decision to let players show a little leg during their summertime championships isn't exactly earth-shattering news, but it all plays into the same endgame: Remove some of the stodginess from the game and try to appeal more to the masses.

That's an important initiative, one which could help the game bridge the gap from simply enduring to flourishing. It's also the most important news of the past week. In a game that's been too resistant to change for too many years, progress is finally being made.

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With recent changes, golf breaks from tradition to embrace progress - ESPN