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By Nalin De Silva.

Many pundits claiming to be full-bright scholars preach from their pulpits that Sri Lanka should be a secular country. Some of these pundits claim that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist theocracy, without of course understanding that in Buddhism there is no theology or any God in whose name a government can be established. In fact even the word Buddhism is a misnomer and only an anglicised corrupted version of the term Budusasuna. Western Christians who could not understand the term Budusasuna coined the term Buddhism.

Dear readers,

The following is an edited version of an article written by Nalin De Silva to the Midweek Review of 12/11/2008.

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Obama vs Obama and parallels

by Nalin de Silva

There are many people who would claim that Barack Obama is the first African American to become the President of the United States of America. In Sri Lanka there are people who would remind the `Sinhala Buddhist Chauvinists` that a Tamil Hindu would not be allowed to become the President or the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka drawing so called parallels and also mentioning that an Italian Catholic by the name of Sonia Gandhi has become the leader of the Congress Party of India and Manmohan Singh, a Sikh has become the Prime Minister of India.

Dear READERS,

Following is an article published on the Midweek Review (16/04/2008), written by Michael Roberts. There is not doubt that Muchalinda does not share the views of the authour (and reading the first few paragraphs alone would make that sufficiently clear). It is also not the intention of Muchalinda to register different points of view since he is not a great believer of facts that exist independent of theories/opinions.

However, Muchalinda opt to publish this article becuase of a different reason. That is to show some members of this forum how to criticize Nalin De Silva. NOT THAT THIS CRITICISM IS ACCURATE, but it is worth noting that criticizing Nalin is not all about name calling out of hatred. In fact, it is matter of time to expose some of the flaws in Michael Roberts` arguments, but Mucha would rather leave it to expert(s).

By Nalin De Silva.

Liam Fox is back again but he may not succeed as he did last time when he was able to obtain the signatures of both Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe for a memorandum of understanding. It is said that Fox is on an invitation by the minister of foreign affairs but we do not know whether he got himself invited. In politics, especially in so called international relations what is stated is very often different from what has actually taken place in this age of the common man who is supposed to be the person who exercises sovereignty and what not through his agents such as the cabinet ministers. However, it is often the common man whether in Europe or other regions who is kept in the dark, and this is about two centuries after the so called enlightenment in Europe.

By Nalin De Silva.

The thesis on right to protect is in the final analysis based on the concept of so called human rights. As we have said there are no human rights as such but individual rights as against the state and may be as against other individuals. The concept began to evolve with the renaissance or the modernity in the fifteenth century in Europe. It is not quite clear as to the origin of the concept of modernity but it is obvious that the name given modernity stems from the arrogance of the western mind. Those who formulated the concept probably thought that the world ended with modernity and what the west had achieved is the end result of social evolution. They probably thought that there would not be any evolution after the modernity phase and there was no harm in naming the process that began in the fifteenth century so as to give the impression that it is the climax of social evolution. They would not have thought that some of their successors would be in difficulty in trying to name a process that began in the mid twentieth century according to the latter. These successors had to name this so called new process or the next stage of evolution as post modernism as the predecessors had resorted to a nomenclature that ended up with modernism. We do not think that modernism has ended, though as any other stage it would die and give rise to another stage unless of course the human society is doomed to vanish with modernism, which is not a remote possibility.

By Nalin De Silva.

The so-called national question cannot be solved unless the problem is formulated consistently taking into consideration the historical facts, which are however not independent of theory contrary to the opinion of some who think that facts are sacrosanct. What is required is a consistent whole comprising the question, concepts, theories and other facts. Without formulating the problem in a consistent manner as described above neither a solution nor national integration is possible.

Following is an article published on The Island (27/02/2008) aseessing the influence of Kosovo`s independence on Eelam struggle. Mucha opt to publish this for it contains some good points about the history of Kosovo`s struggle for seperation and the role played by the so called International Community behind closed doors. Note that Muchalinda does not hold views similar to the writer of this essay, Kath Noble, and Muchalinda certainly does not agree with the conclusion that *Sri Lanka simply need not worry about it*.

By S.L. Gunasekara.

There is only one document to which the Ceasefire Agreement could be likened, and that is a document certifying a marriage between two `gays` ? for there, there would be a marriage certificate but no marriage so also with the Ceasefire Agreement there was an Agreement but no ceasefire.

The manner in which the LTTE took advantage of the Government adhering to the letter of the CFA and ceasing all operations whether offensive or defensive against the LTTE to murder dozens of unarmed and helpless Tamils who were opposed to the LTTE and were disarmed in terms of the CFA: to murder many brave and patriotic Tamil informants to attack the Police Stations at Point Pedro and Valachchenai and the STF Base at Kanchanankudah soon after the execution of the CFA, and thereafter `graduated` to sinking merchant vessels, smuggling about six shiploads of arms etc. into the Country, murdering the Statesman Lakshman Kadirigamar, attempting to murder Minister Douglas Devananda, the Army Commander and the Defence Secretary, murdering busloads of unarmed soldiers and sailors going on and returning from leave by detonating claymore mines, expanding the territory over which they exercised usurped power by occupying Manirasakulam and fortifying Sampur and seeking to condemn thousands of civilians living down stream of the Mavil Aru Anicut to a slow and painful death by depriving them of water are still fresh in our memories.

Argentina`s first lady and President-elect Senator Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner walks past a honor guard at the government palace `La Moneda` in Santiago November 8, 2007. Kirchner is in Santiago to attend the XVII Ibero-American Summit. (REUTERS)

Look at the soldiers at the far end, whom she has already walked pass.

Following is an appreciation written by Malinda Seneviratne about the Mr. Vijitha Weerasinghe, fmr Deputy Principal of Royal College. I was not fortunate enough to have taught by this humble human being. But that should not prevent me from appreciating the immeasurable service he did to us at Royal as an administrator.

-Mucha

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(By Malinda Seneviratne)

Several years ago, when I was at the Sunday Island, the editor, Manik De Silva, an old Royalist himself, assigned me to do a profile of Viji Weerasinghe, the inimitable former Deputy Principal of Royal College. This was as a part of a series on people of his generation, i.e. those over 70 years of age who were icons in their chosen field. I went to see Viji at the Royal College Union office where he had been headquartered by the school and the old boys after he retired. I was seeing him after more than a decade, but Viji remembered me just as he probably remembered all students who had the privilege of associating him at Royal. Time had passed but Viji didn`t look any different from what I remembered of him while at school. Perhaps people really don`t change much after 60. I told him what I came for and he smiled the smile that was his operative signature throughout his life. He refused to comply.

Dear READERS,

This is the relevant section of the article written by A.M. Karunarathan to Divayina on 06/12/2006.

Please refer to http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2007/2/12149_space.html for further information.

This is an image of Gold Plate Inscription found at Vallipuram in Peninsular Jaffna.

Valli in Sinhala means Earth in general (and *sand* in particular). Pura = a township.

This Gold Plate Inscription was discovered in 1936 and found buried under the foundation of the Vishnu Kovil at the township.

Once the discovery was brought to the notice of Ven. Walpola Rahula who was a teacher in Jaffna at that time he showed it to Prof. S. Paranavitana who was the Commissioner of Archaeology. He deciphered the writing on it and contributed a learned article to Epigraphia Zeylanica, Vol. IV.