Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

Prof Shantha Hennayake`s six-part article on `Dry Zone colonization and myth of demographic displacement of Tamils` is like the proverbial curate`s egg. Mr. Gaston Perera, a good English scholar turned historian of the early Kandyan Period, has busted the myths about the eastern province in the Portuguese Period. The point at which Prof. Hennayake had started his thesis is the Census of 1871 according to which all the Districts in the Northern and Eastern Provinces had a Tamil majority.

In the section, entitled `Establishment of permanent Tamil settlements`, he has formed a mental construct that they had `originated in the early Christian era.` His averment that `there is no disagreement` on this, is however, a very subjective statement. The distinguished archaeologist and historian, Prof. Senarat Paranavitana, has positively disagreed with such a theory, for he had found absolutely no evidence of permanent Tamil settlements on this island before the 11th century.

So many bubbles have risen and blown in the recent past. All of them resulted in complete or partial economic destruction. However, I`m eyeing another bubble, which would eventually cause social and cultural catastrophe, if not economic. I call this a Media Bubble. I will briefly describe in this note how this may happen within a few years.

How do bubbles collapse? We can go back to the collapse of IT bubble. The fundamental reason for the collapse of that bubble is the influx of low quality workforce due to remarkably high salary benefits. This was a consequence of unbearably rapid expansion of the sector and hence the shortage of qualified labour. A similar thing happened in the recent housing bubble, which collapsed due to unqualified lending of mortgages. Not surprisingly this again was due a shortage, the shortage of suitable borrowers.

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Thank god or Pakistani Police that our cricketers are safe without any serious injuries. The writing on the wall is there will be no Cricket not only in Pakistan, but also in the entire so called sub continent. The people who envied the IPL is now seem to be breathing easy as this incident would cause the organizers, players and spectators to rethink about attending IPL. The subcontinent is branded. It is not a safe place to do anything anymore. This was the expectation of many who were extremely uneasy about the uprising of the South Asia.

I read in the weekend paper that a gastric disease is fast spreading in Sydney, mainly through public swimming pools. I immediately looked at the map where the locations of the reported cases is shown. It was not only in the western areas where subordinate professional migrants live, some of the eastern leisure centres are shown. A bit of relief, current affairs heroes have no material in this incident. There are some recommendations including `super chlorination`, which apparently is the main remedy for stopping the virus spreading. Good for the authorities, they have some solution before things get worse.

At present some people are working hard to fabricate an accurate picture to the West regarding Sri Lankan situation. They work tirelessly by extracting statements, photographs, history (poetry) books, figures and international slogans to manufacture a appalling picture of the Sri Lankan situation. The aim of this letter is relieving these people of this difficult task once and for all and give them a quick reference for addressing foreign diplomats, parliamentarians, HR organizations, aid agencies etc.

It is just over, the Bangkok airport is slowly reopening. While it has caused enough trouble to travelers, the name of the group behind the siege is interesting. They are backed by coup expert military and call themselves Peoples Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Their mission was to over turn an elected government, an act defying all the fundamentals of a functioning democracy. Yet they have the word democracy in their name.

Similarly LTTE, or LTTP as we call it now, is restricting the movement of thousands of people in Vanni district and had not ever demonstrated any faith in liberalism. Yet they have LIBERATION right at the front of their name plate.

I have been a Facebook (FB) user for last few months and it had renewed my contacts with former school friends, after 20 years in some cases. It was surprising to find that friends from primary have ended up at the same geographical location, and I didn`t know it until the FB. In the mean time, I had a very uncomfortable experience of reading a private conversation between a friend and his partner over the FB, which definitely has made it to the public eye unwittingly.

Many of my peer FB users have portrayed their family and travel experiences overseas. Snowy backgrounds are pretty popular among many as ultimate proof of visiting a foreign soil. Some have partially photographed their apartments, which look modern and posh through the lens, but perhaps not very roomy and comfortable in any sense. Even more frequently the new born babies fill albums. I`m glad that I get the opportunity to see proud fathers and mothers across continents.

NGOs, especially those associated with UN, are frequently accused of abusing their power and special provisions to help LTTE. The government`s stand against such activities are viewed as unnecessary and foolish by some elements, who thinks anything foreign is pure, or even more sinister. After all, UN is one of the largest organizations in the world and has allegations of corruption behind them that suits their size.

Here is an article how UN has used its powers to suppress attempts to reveal such corruption by JOURNALISTS. Is UN a match to our government? Can government win against the war against NGOs?

Recent hike in oil prices demands for all new type of energy source. The type means, it need to be cleaner than nuclear power and renewable. However, there is no trade off between the nature and extensive continuous generation of energy from any source. In other words, our one and only power source is the sun. In between sun and us there exists the vegetation. Trees and plants have mastered the technology of harnessing power from the sun light. Cycle of fossil fuels includes trees and then it takes millions of years to form crude oil. As humans we interfere with the cycle in the middle to extract oil and generate power. On the other hand our technology in direct conversion of sun light to into electricity is totally immature and has very little relevance to the mechanism adopted by trees. Historical developments have never shown the signs of us being able to mimic trees (nature) in any way to generate power. Our concern is to generate power in the most economical and efficient way. This is very important to enhance the good relationship between us and the nature with regards to power generation. To achieve that conversion from solar energy to electricity or the mechanical power must happen with least possible number of steps. Trees do that, while our methods are thousand times inferior to them.

Here is a book to be read by all pro-liberal members if the society and our forum. Is it really fair to think that problems on our soils and the likes are mere creation of our own stupidity? How do we response to covert operations functioning undetected? Most of all how do we identify real friends.

In the 1970`s Susan George wrote two books titled, A Fate Worse Than Death and How The Other Half Dies. Before that were two books titled Hidden Persuaders and Waste Makers referring to big MNCs, Susan George`s books were a severe criticism of how the World Bank and the IMF functioned. How their policies have made smaller underdeveloped nations debt ridden and how the poor were dying because of it. This was followed in recent years by Dr. Joseph Stiglitz who in two books criticized the World Bank and IMF for their policies. It was a damning account for he had been the Chairman of The Economic Council of the President of the U. S. He was also the Senior Deputy President of World Bank and its Chief Economist. Further he was a Nobel Laureate in economics.

An attachment found in article by Rajiv Wijesinghe in defense.lk. Have a look at these so called visionary individuals are asking for money before everything else. See how cunningly written this letter is. God help those foreigners who swallow their Guli. After all what are those humanities PhDs are going to do in Sri Lanka without some extra cash.



Mani`s e-mail to Evans about affiliating to the Global Protection Centre
(Dr Mani has claimed that `there has been a decision by GCR2P to suspend or terminate its relationship with ICES

Is this the Indian model as a political solution suggested for us? I don`t think Mr. Prabakaran will be able to swallow it. The longstanding Brahmin tradition will never free the man pulling the rickshaw for another 50 years to come. That`s not something reflected in the booming Indian stock market.
How many of our hip-hop style, modernist Thangachchi`s would love to get a ride like this?

Here is the joke of the year. If you remember the joke that once JR realized he was flying above Sri Lanka by just putting his hand down through the window of a helicopter, and realising his watch is missing, this is even more funny, since it is real. Visit to Albania is one rare occasion the US president received a warm welcome in a foreign country. He must be pretty happy after this warm welcome, but it must be short lived when he realized that all these men were after his wristwatch.

Caste, Class and Prabhakaran`s struggle
by Ravana
Vellupillai Prabhakaran has been called many names. They include, megalomaniac, freedom fighter, ruthless terrorist, barbaric murderer and a humane person. Volumes have been written on the LTTE, but strangely not on Prabhakaran. Mao Tse-Tung, the world`s authority on guerrilla warfare quoted Sun Wu Tzu, the great military scientist of ancient China who wrote `know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat.` A biographical study of the enigmatic Prabhakaran may therefore be useful since the motivating forces driving Prabhakaran could be discerned.