Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

By Meena Kandasamy

04 March, 2009

Siritunga Jayasuriya, a trade unionist and leader of the United Socialist Party is best-known for being a high-profile Sinhala dissenter against the war on the Tamils in Sri Lanka. A fierce critic of the current regime and an ex-Presidential candidate, Jayasuriya has survived several attempts on his life. His unwavering voice of dissent cannot be silenced wherever he is. During a recent visit to India, he spoke to Meena Kandasamy about the situation in the war-torn island and bravely answered questions on India`s role in the war.

This is the policy of the Sri Lankan State: Send Sinhala rural unemployed youth to kill Tamil unemployed youth Send rural unemployed women to be slaves in the Middle East Spend Billions on Weapons of War Spend Hundreds of Millions on maintaining a huge cabinet of the rulers Send thugs to beat and kill those like journalists who would seek to provide this truth to the people.

This is not a patriotic state, it is a utterly corrupt state that crushes the poor and is fueled by war and racism.

by Prabhat Patnaik

Neo-liberalism specialised in selling an illusion, namely that the unfettered functioning of markets, both commodity markets and financial markets, constituted the best economic arrangement for a society. This illusion had been buried in the 1930s, by the experience of the Great Depression, and by the theoretical endeavours of John Maynard Keynes, a British Liberal and Michael Kalecki, a Polish Marxist. But it was resurrected to serve a specific purpose. This resurrection had nothing to do with any theoretical demonstration of the invalidity of the Keynes-Kalecki propositions. True, the Keynesian prescription for the rescuing of capitalism had turned out to have been problematical, as indeed one would expect with any Liberal panacea for capitalism but this is not the same as saying that the Keynesian analysis of the ills of capitalism had been proved wrong. The resurrection therefore was a theoretical sleight-of-hand.

Pakistan has never seen so many people protesting in the streets as over the last two days. They were all united in condemnation of Benazir Bhutto`s brutal murder. The news was heard with a great shock immediate mass anger erupted. 28th December was the first day of general strike called by many organizations, ranging from political parties to various professional groups.

The first targets were most of Pakistan Muslim League`s election posters, banners, flags and billboards. The PMLQ is a major split from Pakistan Muslim League, which is headed by Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister. The PMLQ?comprised of the most corrupt feudalists, capitalists, former army generals and black marketers?has been in a power-sharing arrangement with General Musharraf since 2002.