‘NRIs, be part of India’s growth’

3 December 2011

DUBAI - The 11th annual Khaleej Times Indian Investment Seminar and Meet opened in Dubai on Friday with business leaders, major banks and fund managers urging non-resident Indians to be a part of the remarkable growth opportunities the emerging global economic powerhouse offers. Siddharth Balachandran, chairman of the India Club and managing director of the Bumga Group, kicked off the two-day investment event with a call to invest in India’s great future. Siddharth Balachandran at the Khaleej Times Indian Investment Seminar and Meet in Dubai on Friday. — KT photo by Mukesh Kamal In his inaugural address at the event, which has lined up noted financial analysts and economists, Balachandran pointed out that the enhanced value proposition that the current currency conversion rates offered was a major factor in the renewed investment thrust of the average Indian expatriate, especially in the Gulf region. Siddharth Balachandran, Chairman India Club visiting the India Investment Seminar and Meet after inaugrating it in Dubai on Friday. –K.T.Photo by Mukesh Kamal “NRIs [non-resident Indians] are seizing the opportunity with regard to remittances to India and also are enjoying the added benefits of better value for loan repayments, debt servicing and asset procurement,” he said. Balachandran maintained that the fundamental cause for the remittance spurt was not only the current value proposition, but also “the unstinting belief in the Indian economy.” “India is indeed shining, and what is adding to the lustre are India’s financial markets, India’s regulatory framework and its strong financial institutions,” he said. Siddharth Balachandran, Chairman India Club cutting the ribben to inaugrate the India Investment Seminar and Meet after inaugrating it in Dubai on Friday. – K.T.Photo by Mukesh Kamal Balachandran said the relationship an Indian citizen has with his motherland could be encapsulated like this: “You can take an Indian out of India, but you can never take India out of an Indian.” Bankers and fund advisors participating in the investment seminar said they expected an increased response from NRIs looking for lucrative and safe investment options in their homeland in the backdrop of a very irresistible remittance rate with rupee plunging to an all-time low against the dollar-pegged dirham. They said for NRIs it was the most opportune time to get their earnings from the Gulf converted to Indian rupees and parked in their non-resident external bank deposits to avail of the prevailing better returns of investment in India. According to Somer Massey, chief executive of Kotak Mahindra Financial Services, the exchange rate-interest rate tango has presented a big opportunity for NRIs in the UAE. “With the rupee at unprecedented lows, we have witnessed a surge in remittances to India over the past few months.” In fiscal 2010-11, India witnessed a dramatic spurt in remittances at $56 billion. With rupee at its weakest at present, remittances might skyrocket again this year, analysts at the seminar said. Battered by a widening current account gap, slowing economic growth, climbing oil import bill, deepening euro crisis, and plummeting stock markets, the Indian rupee had touched historic low of 52.73 against the dollar on November 22, albeit on Friday, it showed strong signs of resilience by touching 51.37 as traders unwound long dollar positions in anticipation of a pick-up in foreign inflows after global moves to ease the pressure on European banks. Speakers taking part in the two-day seminars include Anunaya Kumar of DSP BlackRock Investment, Amier Hamsa of State Bank of India, V.R. Iyer of Central Bank of India, S.C. Baral of Bank of Baroda, K.V. Rao of Karur Vysya Bank, Selvan Rajadurai of Tamilnadu Mercantile Bank, Satyajit Mohanty of Union Bank of India, K.R. Vijayakumar of Federal Bank, Dinesh Ahuja of SBI MF, P.R. Yeshodhar of Canara Bank and K.V. Shamsudheen of Barjeel Geojit Securities. On the better investment climate of India vis-a-vis the rest of the world, analysts believe that as a well-regulated economy India is a in better position compared to the increased levels of stress that the US and eurozone economies face. With the rupee at record lows they believe India is becoming sought-after destination for NRI funds. Given India’s strong economic fundamentals and its vibrant industrial growth rate, investors from around the world are assured of the long-term growth prospects the third largest Asian economy offers, economists argue.

CSIS head urged government to fight ban on information obtained through torture

Canada’s spy agency was so reliant on information obtained through torture that it suggested the whole security certificate regime, used to control suspected terrorists in the country, would fall apart if they couldn’t use it.

MONTREAL — Canada's spy agency was so reliant on information obtained through torture that it suggested the whole security certificate regime, used to control suspected terrorists in the country, would fall apart if they couldn't use it.

That's the essence of a letter written in 2008 by the former director of CSIS, Jim Judd, obtained by the Montreal Gazette.

It suggests a disturbing acceptance by the national security agency of torture as a legitimate strategy to counter terrorism.

The letter, dated Jan. 15, 2008, was sent from Judd to the minister of public security just as the government was finalizing Bill C-3, legislation to replace the security certificates law which was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in February 2007.

The government had been given a year to come up with new legislation that would respect the charter rights of those targeted by the certificates.

In the letter, Judd urges the minister to fight an amendment to C-3 proposed by Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh that would prohibit CSIS and the courts from using any information obtained from torture or "derivative information" — information initially obtained from torture but subsequently corroborated through legal means.

"This amendment, if interpreted to mean that 'derivative information' is inadmissible, could render unsustainable the current security certificate proceedings," Judd writes. "Even if interpreted more narrowly to exclude only information obtained from sources and foreign agencies who, on the low threshold of "reasonable grounds" may have obtained information by way of torture, the amendment would still significantly hinder the Service's collection and analysis functions."

Despite Judd's opposition, the amended Bill C-3 was adopted in February, 2008. But the letter calls into question CSIS's previous assurances that it did not countenance torture abroad. And observers wonder whether anything has changed in CSIS' approach since C-3 was adopted.

Lawyer Johanne Doyon, who successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the original security certificate law on behalf of Adil Charkaoui, said after C-3 was passed the government immediately issued five new security certificates — including one for Charkaoui. CSIS had not had time to re-analyze the evidence it was presenting, Doyon said.

"The government was well aware before signing the certificates that they were based on information derived from torture," Doyon said. "It's very disturbing — they just closed their eyes and signed."

Charkaoui, a Moroccan citizen who CSIS alleged was an al-Qaida sleeper agent, was facing removal from Canada until the Federal Court struck down a security certificate against him in 2009.

Doyon is now arguing for a stay of proceedings in the case of Mohamed Mahjoub, held on a second certificate since 2000, and for his release from house arrest next week. Mahjoud was detained in June, 2000, accused of being a high-ranking member of an Egyptian terrorist group.

In his case, a federal court judge ruled in June, 2010 that ministers and special advocates for Mahjoub had to sift through the evidence in the Security Intelligence Report and exclude any that might have been obtained through torture. Justice Edmond Blanchard also said the approach taken by CSIS to filter information so as not to use any derived from torture was not effective.

"It's shocking and it's worrisome for society in general," Doyon said. "It's illegitimate, illegal and unconstitutional to (use information derived from torture.) Who in the name of Canada can be above the law this way?

"And it's not just in one case, but in so many, and with Canadian citizens too — Maher Arar for example (who was sent to Syria and tortured with CSIS complicity) Just where will it lead?"

In an email message Friday, a CSIS spokesperson did not address the 2008 letter from the director. But Tahera Mufti said: "We oppose in the strongest possible terms the mistreatment of any individual by any foreign entity for any purpose. We do not condone the use of torture or other unlawful methods in responding to terrorism and other threats to national security." Mufti also said CSIS uses "appropriate caveats or instructions when sharing information" and that its activities are subject to review by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which has access to all CSIS "foreign arrangement files. "

In the 2008 letter, the CSIS director says part of the difficulty facing the agency lay in not being able to adequately assess which information came from where; foreign agencies do not often divulge the source of their information.

For Judd, the worst-case scenario would be that the federal court, in reviewing a security certificate, asks CSIS to certify that intelligence was gathered without resort to torture, or renders inadmissible "any and all information provided by agencies in countries whose human rights records are in question — of which there are many."

Amnesty International's 2007 State of Human Rights Report, referenced but redacted in Judd's letter, lists 102 countries which that year had cases of torture and ill-treatment by security forces, police and other state authorities, including the United States.

Judd does not express any concern about the reliability of such information, however. Rather, he suggests an alternative amendment to the bill, which would read "the judge may receive into evidence anything — other than a statement obtained under torture — that in the judge's opinion is reliable and appropriate."

Asked to comment Friday on the substance of the letter, Reem Bahdi, a law professor at the University of Windsor, said the more she learns about the practices of national security agencies, the more worried she becomes about the state of national security in Canada.

"The agencies tell us they don't use torture or support torture on the one hand, and on the other hand they appear to be promoting torture — promoting it as a form of information gathering!" Bahdi said. "I worry not only because information derived from torture is not reliable, but also because of the ramifications around the world that this kind of support for torture can have. What's taking place in the Middle East is very interesting — these are repressive societies built on torture and our agencies are helping to legitimize those regimes through their practices, their relationships with the regimes and their justifications."

Bahdi said the prohibition on torture is part of international law, and was part of Canadian law long before the C-3 amendment. But CSIS needs to be held accountable, she said.

"There has to be a cultural shift in CSIS so they take seriously the prohibition on torture and understand it's not there to tie their hands behind their backs so they can't do their work, but to ensure that their work has some integrity . . .

"If torture produced national security, the regimes in the Middle East would be the safest places in the world."

Audrey Macklin, a professor of law and at the School for Public Policy and Governance of the University of Toronto, said it's not surprising CSIS would warn of the end of the security certificates regime, because so many of them depend on information obtained through torture.

"But it's worth asking, why do we have the security certificates? Before 9/11 we didn't have provisions in criminal law addressing anti-terrorism — now we do. If they are good enough for citizens, why not for non-citizens?"

Source: Montreal Gazette

Edmonton leads country in job growth

#1. Edmonton gained 44,900 jobs

Edmonton led the country in job creation over the past 12 months and Alberta bucked national employment trends in November, Statistics Canada reported on Dec. 2, 2011. The country shed 19,000 jobs last month, the agency said, bumping unemployment up from 7.3 per cent to 7.4 per cent nationwide. But in Alberta, the jobless rate shrank from 5.1 per cent to five per cent as the province added nearly 3,000 jobs in the month. Here are the changes in employment numbers from October 2010 to October 2011 for 10 Canadian cities.

Simons: Leslie Green, a leading authority in international law, dead at 91

EDMONTON - Last Saturday evening, Leslie Green, 91, one of the world’s leading authorities on international law, was with his wife Lilian at the Winspear Centre, bound to hear the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra play Brahms.

The retired University of Alberta political scientist collapsed in the centre’s elevator on the way up to his seats.

“If he’d had to script it, that’s the way he might have wanted to go,” his daughter Anne, a Calgary arts administrator, says of her father’s death. “He lived his life to the very end.”

And what a life it was. In the course of 91 remarkable years, Green was an British intelligence operative, a war crimes prosecutor, a scholar, an author, an adviser to Canadian, Israeli, and U.S. governments, a patron of the arts, an irrepressible raconteur.

His writing and teaching on the law of warfare and humanitarian law shaped two generations of lawyers, diplomats, and military officers around the world, and helped to redefine the way we prosecute international war crimes.

“He was really a giant in the field,” says Michael Schmitt, chairman of the international law department at the United States Naval War College, and one of Green’s former students. “He wrote the classic textbook on the law of armed conflict. He was the first to really focus on the subject. He was a huge and important influence on the international community.”

Andy Knight, chairman of the U of A department of political science, said Green had an enormous impact, especially in the areas of human rights and the laws of war. “Students loved him and really gravitated toward his classes, even though he could be really tough on them,” Knight said. “He didn’t suffer fools gladly, but he would go to bat for anyone who had their human rights violated.”

Green was born in London in 1920 into a Romanian-Jewish family.

He grew up in London’s tough East End, graduating from the University of London with a law degree in 1941. With the Second World War raging, he joined the British Army, where he was asked to enrol at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies to study Japanese. In 1943, he was then posted to India as a commissioned lieutenant with the Intelligence Corps.

As the war ended, Green became a military lawyer — serving both as a defender and a prosecutor of Indian and Burmese soldiers who had deserted to fight on the side of the Japanese.

In India, Green also met Lilian Meyer. She was a member of the Womens’ Royal Indian Naval Service, and of Calcutta’s deep-rooted Sephardic Jewish community. On their first date, they went horseback riding. Green was thrown, ending up in hospital with a broken pelvis. Lilian was a regular visitor. Then, she went riding, was thrown by the same horse, and broke her knee. Green visited her. In the end, the pelvis-shattering first date sparked a 66-year marriage.

In 1946, Green returned to London as a lecturer in international law and began his prolific writing career. Between 1946 and 1960, he published 60 academic articles, as well as his first authoritative textbook, International Law Through the Cases. In 1960, Green, his wife, and Anne, their only child, left London for the University of Singapore, where Green served as dean of the law faculty. But in 1965, the family moved to Edmonton, where Green was recruited to join the U of A’s department of political science.

“It was snowing in the middle of September when we got off the train from Vancouver,” Anne recalls.

But the family quickly adjusted to life in Canada.

In addition to his teaching and research at the U of A, Green drafted the Canadian Forces Manual on the Law of Armed Conflict and advised the government on everything from treaty negotiations to the Canada embassy’s sheltering of Americans during the Iran hostage crisis. He also served on the board of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and Beth Shalom synagogue, and on the board of Theatre 3, the company Anne co-founded in 1970.

Along the way, among many other honours, he won the Order of Canada, was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and earned the U of A’s highest awards for both research and teaching.

William Fenrick recently retired as a professor of international law at Dalhousie University. Before that, he spent 20 years as a military lawyer, and another 10 as senior legal adviser to the International Criminal Tribunal prosecuting war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. Green, he says, was his mentor.

Rather than trying to create acolytes to sit at his feet, says Fenrick, Green encouraged students to think for themselves.

“. “He was what I’d call an independent scholar. He was always true to his own opinions. He acted as mentor to a number of people, but he never wanted to create a school of Leslie C. Green.”

Green published nine books and more than 300 papers on everything from international terrorism to the legal status of West Berlin to the legal status of native treaties. He finished and published his last book at the age of 86. And his writing was unusually clear and lively for an academic, short on theory and jargon, long on compelling historical examples.

Anne Green says what linked her father’s academic interests was his unyielding passion for human rights.

“He was always fighting for the underdog. He believed in human rights in general, and the rights of the individual. He did everything he could for justice wherever possible.”

Officially, Green retired from the U of A in 1991, at the age of 71. But he scarcely slowed down. He was a visiting professor at the University of Denver, then held the prestigious Stockton chair in international law at the U.S. Naval War College.

Michael Schmitt says the contrast between the diminutive scholar and the college’s brawny naval officers was both striking and funny.

“He was big in his field, but he was a tiny little guy, kind of like a leprechaun, surrounded by these giant U.S. military officers. But he would keep audiences mesmerized when he spoke. The officers loved him because his work wasn’t theoretical or ideological, but full of practicality. He was very focused on what happens on the battlefield once you get there.”

Green’s public profile increased after the 9/11 attacks, when media from across Canada called him for his insights on everything from international terrorism to the legality of the war in Iraq to the torture and humiliation of prisoners at Abu-Ghraib.

He supported the war in Iraq, arguing that it was “a duty of states to act in the name of humanity and interfere on behalf of citizens being put upon by a tyrant.” But he deplored what he saw as instances of mistreatment of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners by both American and Canadian Forces.

“The trouble seems to be that we have become so close to Big Brother, we have forgotten what our obligations are toward prisoners of war,” he said.

His daughter says he was always “extremely opinionated, but it was impossible to place him in any kind of left-wing/right-wing box. He was way too broad a thinker to pigeonhole that way. He was a lawyer and he was really able to see all sides.”

Senior Addl AG Bhinder resigns

Chandigarh, December 2
Punjab’s Senior Additional Advocate-General Sukhdeep Singh Bhinder has resigned. Sources said Bhinder had submitted his resignation to the Advocate-General to be forwarded to the Home Department.

Bhinder, who hails from Bathinda, was appointed Additional Advocate-General by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal immediately after the formation of the SAD-BJP government in 2007. He had earlier resigned in 2009 to campaign for Harsimrat Kaur Badal for the Lok Sabha elections and was re-appointed as Senior Additional Advocate-General.

Bhinder, who remained in the Ludhiana jail with Badal in the early 1980s, is considered close to Manpreet Singh Badal, Sanjha Morcha chief.

Confirming the resignation, Bhinder said he had quit due to personal reasons.

Canada introduces new 'super visa' program to criticism for its processing time

A program that allows Canadians to apply for so-called super visas launches Thursday, but the NDP immigration critic is worried that the new 10-year visa for parents and grandparents may be hard to obtain.

The new visa is part of the Conservative government's plan to battle an enormous backlog of about 165,000 parents and grandparents who are trying to join family in Canada.

The so-called super visa will be good for 10 years, but will have to be renewed every two years.

People applying to sponsor a parent or grandparent will have to show they can support their visiting relatives. To be accepted, the visitors will be required to have private health insurance coverage during their stay in Canada.

NDP immigration critic Don Davies likes the new super visa for parents and grandparents, but he wants assurances that they will be easy to get, unlike a five-year visitor's visa that has been available for years.

"I have cases in my office in Vancouver where someone's sponsoring their parents, say from New Delhi, and their application is in the lineup for 10 years," Davies said.

"So they apply for a visitor visa to come and they're turned down because they have a permanent resident application in the queue and the officials think that they won't leave."

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says that won't be a problem — people who have applied for permanent residency will definitely be eligible for the visa.

"The department informs me that they're confident that the approval rate for these parent super visas will actually be very high," Kenney said last week at an appearance before a parliamentary committee.

Kenney said the new health insurance requirement may make it easier for visa officers to say "yes."

"One of the reasons we are requiring that people demonstrate they have health insurance when they come into Canada, is to add greater certainty for our visa officers that admitting people is not going to end up representing a net cost to Canadian taxpayers," he told the committee last week.

Debbie Douglas, the executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, said that overall, the new program is a "really good way forward" in terms of serving parents and grandparents.

She also said the new program would give the government a chance to create a more transparent system.

"It also gives us a chance to ensure that our visa posts are being consistent and fair and transparent in terms of who it is that they're granting visas to," Douglas said.

But she noted that there are still concerns about how visas will be allocated, as well as the health insurance requirement.

"We really do have to pay attention to the fact that the requirement for private health insurance is not disproportionately affecting who we let into Canada," Douglas said.

The new super visa program was announced in early November as part of a broader plan to try and clear the backlog.

VHP opposes proposed anti-violence Bill

Dehradun, November 30
General secretary (organisation) of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) Dinesh said today that the proposed Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill-2011 was anti-Hindu and aimed at appeasing the minority communities.

He said: “The Bill holds Hindus solely responsible for riots in the country.”

Dinesh further said the VHP would soon launch an awareness campaign across the country to make the public aware of the disastrous consequences of the Bill.

He further said: “The proposed Bill also gives right to the Centre to dismiss any state government without assigning any reason in the name of internal peace, which is in itself autocratic.”

Dinesh said the VHP would oppose the proposed Bill as those behind the preparation of its draft were biased.