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Veteran Sri Lankan cricketer Ranil Abenayaka passed away

2012-02-22T06:33:00.000+05:30

Renowned international cricket commentator of Sri Lanka Ranil Abeynaike passed away at 57 years age following a heart attack.

He was a first class cricketer in Sri Lanka in the time Sri Lanka was not a test playing country.
He was a right-handed batsman and a slow left orthodox bowler. He played for the Sinhala Sports Club and Bedfordshire during his first class career.

Abeynaike was also a curator and the General Manager of the SSC.

The funeral is to take place on 23 at Mount Lavinia cemetery.

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Sri Lanka police to import tear gas

2012-02-20T14:01:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka Police has decided to import a new stock of tear gas, a local radio reported.

However, the police spokesman Ajith Rohana said to the same radio that the imports were part of the routine procurement.

The radio reported that the police had to spend a large stock of tear gas in the mass agitations held in the past few days.

Police fired tear gas last Friday also at an agitation led by the major Opposition United national Party against petroleum price increase.

Local media reported yesterday that the intelligence wings had warned the government of a series of mass agitations country wide in the coming weeks. Share this article

Ceylon Electricity Board to lose Rs. 34 billion this year

2012-02-20T13:59:00.002+05:30

Sri Lanka Minister of Power and Energy Champika Ranawaka says that the loss to the country's power monopoly Ceylon Electricity Board is Rs. 34 billion.

The Minister said that the 23% hike of electricity tariff through fuel adjustment is insufficient to cover the loss.
The Minister pointed out that 85% of the electricity generation of the country depended on petroleum.

The loss to Ceylon Electricity Board this year had been calculated as Rs. 40 billion before the petroleum price hike. However, the fuel adjustment added to the electricity tariff has helped the board to minimize the loss.

Meanwhile the report of the committee appointed by Sri Lanka Minister of Power and Energy to look into the causes of frequent breakdowns of the Norochcholai Coal Power Plant is near completion now, Ministry of Power and Energy sources say.

The report is expected to be handed over to the Minister of Power and Energy by the end of this month.
The committee was assigned to probe whether the breakdowns are caused by technical problems, maintenance drawbacks or disruptive acts.

The power plant broke down on January 21 nearly a month ago. The plant was not in operation for weeks time a month ago to this breakdown. Share this article

Sri Lanka state to censor unsuitable tele drama and songs

2012-02-19T18:56:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka Ministry of Culture says that a new bill will be brought soon to censor broadcasting unsuitable tele drama and songs.

With implementation of the proposed act, the the tele drama producers will have to obtain the approval for the production from the Public Performances Control Board before telecasting it through TV channels.

The song writers will have to submit their lyrics to the Public Performances Control Board and the songs will be inspected by the board even after music is composed, the Ministry says.

A Ministry spokesman said that the the move is due to complaints from the public over the unsuitable content of the tele drama and songs.

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Joint trade union coalition protest next week in Colombo

2012-02-19T18:55:00.002+05:30

Joint Trade Union Coalition of Sri Lanka, a collective of 35 trade unions have decided to hold a massive protest in Colombo next week.

Saman Rathnapriya, a convener of the trade union coalition said that the protest would be held on February 23 at 3.30 at Lipton Circus, Colombo.

The trade union coalition says that 10,000 employees of the public and private sectors will be summoned to the protest.

The demands of the protest are reducing the price of fuel, electricity tariff and bus fare and increasing the salaries.Share this article

. Sri Lanka major opposition party protest tear gassed in Colombo

2012-02-17T20:39:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka police fired tear gas, attacked with water cannons and used baton charges to disperse an opposition protest held in Colombo today.

The protest against the increase of fuel prices led by United National Party (UNP) was held before the Colombo Fort railway station this evening. Left parties such as the Left Front and United Socialist Party joined the agitation with NGOs like Platform for Freedom.

A large crowd participated in the protest and the roads in the commercial center of the city was blocked for nearly two hours causing a severe traffic jam.

UNP MP Jayalath Jayawardhana was taken to Colombo national hospital and treated for tear gas effect and injuries, UNP sources said.

UNP leader Ranil Wickramasinghe addressing the masses at the Fort railway station demanded the government increase the salaries since the recent fuel price hike had effected drastic escalation of cost of living.Share this article

Sri Lanka adds 40% fuel surcharge to electricity bill

2012-02-15T19:40:00.002+05:30

Sri Lanka's electricity bills are to high up as the Public Utility Commission nodded today to add a fuel surcharge to the electricity tariff.

The majority of the electricity bills are to be increased by 40% since 40% fuel surcharge is added for electricity bills which exceed 60 units per month.

A fuel surcharge will be added to the electricity bills under three categories with effect from today.

Accordingly a 25% fuel surcharge will be added to electricity bills ranging between 0-30 units, while 35% fuel surcharge will be added to bills ranging from 31- 60 units and 40% fuel surcharge for electricity bills which exceeds 60 units.

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Private University Act name changed. Academics given a bone

2012-01-12T06:46:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka Ministry of Higher Education said in a statement that the circular in relation of rectifying the salary anomalies of the university academic and non-academic staff would be sent to the Vice Chancellors tomorrow.

The media spokesman of the Federation of University Teachers' Associations (FUTA) Dr. Mahim Mendis yesterday said that the token strike scheduled on January 17 would be held without change.

The FUTA says that the government should have discussed with the public before the proposed act in relation to higher education would be brought in parliament. Therefore, the the second reason for the strike of the university teachers remain despite the salary anomalies are rectified, as said by the Ministry.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Higher Education says that the proposed act is not the Private University Act as named by certain sections but an Act on Safeguarding Standards and Qualifications Framework.The Secretary to the Ministry Dr. Sunil Jayantha Navarathna states that since for more than 15 years Non Governmental Organisations have been involved in the process of issuing Degrees, Post Graduate Degrees, Diplomas and other Certificates, this Act is being brought in order to establish the legal framework and regulations that are necessary for this process.

Government is playing a trump. A bone is thrown to the academics. Will they be busy licking it as the government will proceed with the name changed Private University Act?

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Capital begins to flow to Mannar of Sri Lanka's war ravaged north

2012-01-10T05:04:00.000+05:30

Timex and Fergasam Group which supplies to top labels such as Marks & Spencer, Victoria’s Secret, House of Frazer, Diesel, H&M and SUZI Chin is to set up a new apparel factory complex in Mannar, Sri Lanka.

US $ 5 million Board of Investment (BOI) approved project is considered a grand opening of the former war ravaged Tamil dominated area of the northwestern coast of Sri Lanka to investments.

The construction of the factory complex is now underway and the factory is to start production by mid-October 2012.

The apparel factory complex has the scope for 7000 jobs, 2000 direct and another 5000 indirect, for the people in the war ravaged, poverty stricken, unemployment spread district.

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Sri Lanka government to limit sound emanation by vehicle horns

2012-01-09T14:06:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka Central Environmental Authority has taken steps to bring in new laws to control the over use of vehicle horns.

Chairman of the Central Environmental Authority Charitha Herath said that the bill in this regard now being compiled would be submitted to the cabinet and then tabled in parliament soon by the Minister of Environment.

According to the regulations that is to be introduced, the maximum sound output of a vehicle horn would be limited to 195 decibels.

The environmental authorities have noticed that certain vehicles especially the private buses have horns that emanate excessive sound. In some instances the buses have been fixed with modified silencers as well to emanate too much sound. They use these tactics for commercial purposes and sometimes due to ignorance.

Some people like the noisiness, I don't know why.

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Culling times ahead of Sri Lanka's stray dogs

2012-01-08T10:00:00.000+05:30

Dogs challenge Namal's Colombo Street motor races

In Sri Lanka dogs are luckier than humans. There are influential persons from social elite to appear for canine rights.

Most of these people will not open their mouths if government decides to kill the rebel youth of the JVP rebel Movement for People's Struggles (MPS). Two MPS activists have disappeared and nobody seems interested although the MPS attempts to turn the streets upside down over the matter.

Who cares? The two disappeared are Tamils. Just another two Tamil youths to be added to a long, long list of such people.

Forget them, let us talk about dogs. Dogs challenged the Colombo Street Motor Races in December and in our Sinhala blog we predicted the animals would see a bad time. Anyway, there are only dogs nor to challenge the Rajapaksa regime.

Sri Lanka's stray dogs sterilization programmes conducted by several NGOs have proven a failure. Dog population has risen from two million earlier media reports to three million present media reports. God knows what count the basis is.

Minister of Health Maithripala Sirisena seems well scented the regime's need of arresting the dog issue in its efforts to economically survive with the tourism industry. Sinhala daily Lankadeepa in a gossip column said that a wife of a Western diplomat had told that she wondered how island would become a tourist paradise due to this dog issue.

Minister Sirisena raised the matter at Kaluthara and Polonnaruwa hospitals during inspection tours. The officials pointed out that the stray dogs have become a nuisance to patients and staff in government hospitals.An official pointed out that there were 30,000 stray dogs in Polonnaruwa district alone.Deputy Minister of Ports Rohith Abegunawardhana said at Kaluthara hospital that there were around 4000 stray dogs in Colombo Port.

The Minister of Health said that the government spent one billion rupees per annum for sterilization programmes and half of the amount to treat dog bites.Around 2000 dog bites are reported from Sri Lanka each day.

Signs indicate that the dogs will have to go. Animal love will go where 'Mathata Thitha' or the No Liquor policy went.

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Why Sri Lanka Marxist JVP's Premakumar Gunarathnam hiding?

2012-01-03T05:47:00.003+05:30

Sources close to Sri Lanka Marxist People's Liberation Front (JVP) dissidents say that the wife and children of JVP dissident faction leader Premakumar Gunarathnam was detained and lengthily questioned at Katunayaka airport.

Police media spokesman Ajith Rohana also said that an Australian citizen woman and two children were detained at airport for questioning.

Premakumar's wife, Champa Somarathna, is a doctor by profession and she is a Sinhala national migrant to Australia. Along with the two children, she was leaving Sri Lanka, where they spent their year-end vacation, when they were detained. They were to take a flight to Australia via Singapore.

Gunarathnam is suspected of violating immigration and emigration regulations through the use of forged passports.

He is suspected for the use of forged identity even to migrate to Australia.

Elusive Gunarathnam leads the JVP dissident faction that has organized themselves as Movement for People's Struggles.

JVP did not involve in violence openly after the post-1989 re-organizing. Gunarathnam was a second tier leader of 1989 insurrection and he was arrested and later released by military.

He was able to legalize his existence easily when he was in JVP's de facto politburo as one of the senior most leaders during the period the party was in alliance with government. He could be simply appointed to the parliament through the national list when JVP had around 40 parliamentary seats most of which were represented by incapable persons.

However, he opted to remain away from public sphere although he was known by almost all of the party organizing body. Being an ethnic Tamil who is not fluent in his mother tongue, he used the name Gemunu one time, a selection of a name of a king of the island's history who is considered a symbol of the anti-Tamil arch Sinhala nationalism.

The way the JVP explains the reasons for his being underground is that the party will need such activists in time of a suppression. Yet, the presence of Premakumar was not a secret to the intelligence services of the government. JVP ushered this secret behaviour to keep up the morale of the lower level cadres who had sacrificed their lives for a dream of socialism. Premakumar's secret existence was a gullible guarantee to the hardcore cadres that the party would not give up the struggle for socialism although it was in coalitions with the capitalist governments which the party leaders explained as political strategies on the way to achieve socialism.

Gunarathnam led a middle class private life unlike many other JVP full timers. His wife is a medical officer by profession. Gunarathnam was an engineering student of Peradeniya university when he joined the armed struggle of JVP. He never completed the degree and remained as a full time activist of the JVP. His children learnt in elite schools. The family then opted to seek green pastures of developed west, a common dream of the Sri Lankan middle class. With support of the JVP sympathizers, he easily got the migration arranged and settled in Australia perhaps using a forged identity.

However, he maintained a cross party group from Down Under and pushed JVP to some extremist decisions like rejecting to join the government after working hard for the victory of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Party logic behind these two polar decisions is incomprehensible.

The group showed some sympathy towards the minority Tamils though they extended hearty support to the war against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) in which many thousands of similar youth of the Tamil community perished. It is yet unclear if the JVP dissidents led by him have changed their stance of vehemently opposing the power devolution.

He was asked to come to Sri Lanka by his group as the party hierarchy was in a leadership battle and on the verge of split. He has obliged to the request of the party cadres and now it is believed he is in Sri Lanka under cover. Police is after him but without much determination to arrest him. It appears his movements are under surveillance. He can be brought to books for violating immigration and emigration regulations. Police appears investigating any links of the JVP dissidents with the LTTE, which the writer thinks a none-entity.

It is suspected his present opponents who were his affectionate proponents earlier silently passed information regarding his forged identity to the intelligence wings. The guilt of betraying their own past comrade to the government was attempted to pass to the accounts of breakaway JVP politburo members like Wimal Weerawansa and Nandana Gunathilaka. However, it can be the mainstream JVP hierarchy itself who passed the information to the spies.

Final outcome is the scattering of an ambitious middle class family with close relationship. The two kids living in a different land lost the needy association a loving father. Police doubt, Champa Somarathna arrived in Sri Lanka for a brief family reunion. Their questioning of the wife of Premakumar at the airport proves partial inefficiency of the intelligence wings or perhaps the lack of coordination of state intelligence.They could have followed the woman and arrested Gunarathnam if she met him. Instead, they created a news.

The suspicion of the JVP dissidents that their leader's life is in danger will be further deep-root with this.

However, Premakumar Gunarathnam is not a man like Kumaran Pathmanathan a.k.a. KP. The latter was a terrorist leader who engaged in subversive activities like military procurement for the LTTE. There is no evidence that Premakumar Gunarathnam has engaged in any kind of subversive activities.

His secret existence is partly a JVP tactic marketed to the members to maintain their commitment to party and partly a move of Premakumar himself backed by a bizarre mentality that is known only to the persons that are in this kind of politics.

-Ajith Perakum Jayasinghe

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Sri Lanka's JVP to hold convention to sack dissidents

2011-12-31T08:00:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka Marxist People'e Liberation Front (JVP) will ho;d its general assembly as scheduled tomorrow at Debaraweva in the Hambanthora district.

Colombo district Judge Ranjith N. Warhupola yesterday rejected to issue an injunction against the convention requested by two JVP Central Committee members.

JVP MP Ajith Kumara and Politburo member G. Kularathna cited in their petitions that the JVP general assembly was illegal and aimed at causing injustice to them. They pointed out that the party secretary had submitted a list of members in September to the Election Commissioner comprising 226 members loyal to the leaders. This list is in addition to a list of 954 members earlier submitted.

JVP Somawansa Amarasinghe faction has planned to sack over 10 Central Committee members that belong to the dissident group and appoint a new Central Committee. The general assembly is expected to seal the party division and guarantee the legal ownership to the Somawansa Amarasinghe group.

The District Judge fixed the hearing of petition on January 06 and summoned 22 respondents to appear in court on that day.

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A Presidential Committee; a good tactic to paddle through the troubled waters of Advanced Level results crisis of Sri Lanka

2011-12-30T08:55:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa has decided to appoint a committee to probe the issues related to the G.C.E. Advanced Level examination results.

The committee will probe the irregularities of the result issuing process of the highly competitive examination and it is assigned to forward recommendations to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

Minister of Higher Education S.B. Disanayaka says that recommendations will be requested from the committee regarding amending the 1968 examination act that is effect now.

The high level committee comprises of three Vice Chancellors of universities and a Supreme Court judge, sources say.

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Close associate of ruling family kills a British tourist in Sri Lanka

2011-12-28T06:23:00.002+05:30

President with the assassin

A close associate of Rajapaksa family killed a British national tourist at a tourist hotel in the home town of Sri Lanka President himself and also injured the Russian national girlfriend of the deceased.

The incident was reported internationally and the tourism industry of the area if not the entire island is taking the brunt of it.

The culprit Sampath Chandra Pushpa Vidanapathirana is a young son of a close associate of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Father Chandra Pushpa was the Chairman of the Tangalle Pradeshiya Sabha. His son was well supported by Rajapaksa family at the last election.

Chandra Pushpa, Jr, has familial links with thuggery, gang activity and violence in addition to what is called by them as politics.

On the doomsday, drunk to the brim, he and his gang quarreled with foreign tourists in a hotel in the are under his influence, assaulted some of them, brutally assassinated one, caused severe injuries to the deceased's woman who involved to save his life, perhaps sexually molested her as reported by media and fired guns before fleeing the scene to hide for a few days following which he surrendered due to pressure perhaps from his bosses.

The deceased, Kuram Shaikah Zaman, from Manchester, UK, who was on leave from his job in the Gaza Strip, where he worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross as a physical rehabilitation programme manager, had been photographing the misdemeanor of the local gang.

Chandra Pushpa is a terrorist and a traitor. He terrorized the tourists in Tangalle and made them to flee. International news on his demeaning 'politics' will keep the decent tourists away from Sri Lanka.

This youngster gangster seems not a guy that can understand the depth of his crime that can affect to the economy of a country.

These gun wielding, brainless gang stars are the youth ushered by the next generation of Rajapaksa dynasty.

However, a little late, proud father of this brutality has ordered a partial investigation regarding the incident. Partial police investigation proves through the President's request rare otherwise

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Dugong the Sri Lankan Sea Pig

2011-12-21T21:10:00.000+05:30

Chairman of Sri Lanka National Aquatic Resources Authority (NARA)Hiran Jayawardhana says that at least 20 whales have been died due to accidents in the sea south of the island.

He says that the whales have died along the east-west sea route that crosses the island waters, some of them chopped by ship wheels.

A few blue whales and a threatened specie called dugong are among the killed mammals, the official says.

What is this dugong? It is interesting to study. Dugong is called Muhudu Ura meaning Sea Pig in Sinhala of which the flesh was sold in fish stalls until recent times.

The dugong (Dugong dugon) known locally as muhudhu ura in Sinhala and kadal pandi in Tamil is the only representative of the order of mammals known as Sirenia (so named because these animals are thought to have given rise to the myth of the mermaids or sirens of the sea) found in the coastal waters of Sri Lanka. It is the only extant plant-eating mammal that spends all its life at sea, and has the ability to convert marine higher plants into meat palatable to man. It is also referred to as a sea cow, as it is a grazer. But unlike cows, the dugong can cultivate its crops! The dugong’s body, flippers and flukes are like those of a dolphin, but it has no dorsal fin. Being a bottom feeder, its

mouth is sub-ventral in position, and the snout is covered with bristles and small stiff hairs, which are supposed to be the best developed sensory hairs of any mammal. The flippers, which lack nails, are used for stabilizing the animal while swimming. There are two mammary glands, pectoral in position. As in elephants, the molar teeth are replaced by continuous growth from behind as the front ones are worn away. The dugong’s common ancestry with the elephant is evident from its teeth, prehensile upper lip, long digestive tract, herbivorous diet and location of the mammary glands. The incisors in males are larger than those in females and are referred to as tusks. Adults reach between 2.5 to 3-m in length and weigh on average between 250-420 kg.

Interested? Link to the source.

Colombo College of Politics, democracy and Shiral Lakthilaka's crazy demo

2011-12-20T15:21:00.000+05:30

Colombo has a political school which is called Colombo College of Politics.

The mastermind of this establishment is Shiral Lakthilaka, lawyer by profession and Westerm Provincial Councilor.

His office is there in Colombo College of Politics and it is quite like UNP Sajith Premadasa faction headquarters.

Shiral Lakthilaka is not only the de facto principal of Colombo College of Politics, he is also a promoter of social democracy.

Certain western donor organizations fund Shiral's ventures apparently to strengthen democracy in Sri Lanka.

Now the de facto principal of Colombo College of Politics is under arrest under suspicion for violence and carnage yesterday before Sri Lanka's major opposition United National Party (UNP) headquarters following the Working Committee election for party office bearers.

Ravi Jayawardhana, another civil society activist and one time Prisons Commissioner General, a lawyer by profession and UNP Horana organizer, an accomplice of Shiral has also been arrested.

They wanted Karu Jayasuriya as party leader but Karu entertained a humiliating defeat to incumbent leader Ranil Wickramasinghe.

A Buddhist monk has also been arrested on suspicion of causing damage at UNP headquarters.

Sri Lanka government MP Arundika Fernando and Puttlam donkeys

2011-12-20T06:54:00.001+05:30

Puttalam of Sri Lanka was one time famous for donkeys.

Following story is not about donkeys but about an MP that represents Puttalm district. He is a law maker of this country.

Sri Lanka government MP for Puttalam district Arundika Fernando stated to local newspaper The Divaina that he manhandled opposition MP Palitha Range Bandara because the latter criticized the President on wrong allegations.

MP Arundika Fernando publicly said that he slapped several times at the opposition MP's face since he had not heeded to the protest of the government MPs during MP Range Bandara's speech in the debate on the expenditure heading of the Ministry of Defense.

Journalists observed MP Arundika Fernando assaulted Range Bandara at the opposition lobby as he exited the House from there after winding up his speech.

Some other government and opposition MPs also involved in preventing a brawl.

MP Range Bandara says that he will complain about the assault today to the Speaker and the police.

Sri Lanka's Kelaniya University teachers unite against Dean of Science Faculty

2011-12-17T05:38:00.001+05:30

The teachers of the Kelaniya University of Sri Lanka have decided to walk away on December 21 in protest of the Dean of Science Faculty Prof. Nalin de Silva.

The Association of University teachers of Kelaniya University says that they will hold a meeting in the university premises and hold a protest march too.

The university teachers have been angered by the alleged public insults targeting academics by Prof. Silva. They say the authorities have not paid attention to their protests earlier and they hope to urge action through the protest.

Prof. Silva, an arch Sinhala Buddhist nationalist, rejects modern science although he is the Dean of Science Faculty of the university. He recently said he identified arsenic in rice grown in Sri Lanka through super natural means instead of scientific method which other university dons denied.

Too dear Lotus Pond Mahinda Rajapaksa Theater

2011-12-16T06:28:00.002+05:30

The charges of the Lotus Pond Mahinda Rajapaksa Theater is definitely too dear to Sri Lankan performing artistes like dramatists.

It may be OK for some light vein popular musical shows but not for classical musical presentations. Low quality laugh drama like Tennyson Cooray's too may go there.

How can a Sri Lankan dramatist afford Rs. 1,050,000 for two shows there in addition to the refundable deposit of Rs. 150,000?

Are there any fair sponsors for quality art in this country?

Definitely, performing here will be a dream for dramatists and viewing real art here will be a dream for viewers too.

What finally can happen is that the artistes of this country will bend their spine further begging for sponsorship and relief for privilege of performing in Lotus Pond Mahinda Rajapaksa Theater.

Luckily or unluckily we have so many boot-lickers to go.

Check for Lotus Pond Bookings

Dialog buys Suntel in Sri Lanka

2011-12-15T18:37:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka’s Dialog Broadband Network limited, a subsidiary of PLC,has entered into a Share Purchase Agreement with Suntel Limited.

Accordingly, Dialog will purchase Suntel for a sum of US$ 40 million.

Dialog says in a statement that when the transaction is completed, both networks will be merged to provide advanced fixed line and broadband infrastructure to best standards.

Suntel commandeers a premium position in Sri Lanka’s fixed telecommunications sector and is ranked second in the sector in terms of fixed telecommunications business and Revenue Market share.

Suntel commenced operations in 1996 and is currently a subsidiary of Swedish telecom operator Overseas Telecom AB. Other shareholders of Suntel include NDB (National Development Bank PLC), C-Tech Investments (Private) Ltd, Kelmarsh Investments Ltd, Townsend Limited and International Finance Corporation (IFC).

It is easier said than done to win back what Singapore took away from Sri Lanka

2011-12-15T04:19:00.001+05:30

Anand Dikshit of PWC India PricewaterhouseCoopers India told an investor forum in Colombo Sri Lanka's location and post-war growth opportunities make it well placed to emerge as a logistics hub for the region.

"Recently, we met the fourth largest conglomerate in India and they told us 'Give me a port in Sri Lanka and we'll buy it right now'," Dikshit said to the forum declining to identify the firm.

"Why? Because they know Singapore port only became successful because ports around Sri Lanka were not developed. It is such an important logistics place for the world."

The forum was organized by PWC, Sri Lanka Foundation and the government's Strategic Enterprise Management Agency.

Although Anand Dikshit might be paid to say so and the story of buying a harbor appears as gossip, what he says is true. However, i.

Leadership errors were behind our loss then and the same thing persists even now.

Vegetable Johnny of Sri Lanka rots vegi farmer and markets

2011-12-13T17:14:00.000+05:30

Many economic centers and agricultural areas of Sri Lanka were in chaos today while police used tear gas to disperse angry farmers in Dambulla.

The economic town turned into a battlefield as farmers also pelt stones at police, eyewitness reports say.
Following the lorries that transported vegetable in gunny bags were arrested by police and fined, the Manning Market vendors did not make orders for today paralyzing the fruit and vegetable market. A protest was held by them too.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Cooperatives and Internal Trade Johnston Fernando vowed that the decision to make use of plastic crates compulsory would not be revoked despite protests since the decision was taken following careful study to prevent post harvest wastage.

Protests against the use of plastic crates for the transportation of vegetables and fruits were held in Bandarawela, Ranna, Kandapola, Puttalam and Norochchola areas too.

Sri Lanka government's strict laws to stop waste of vegetables and fruits has affected vegetable market and it is causing more wastage, market sources say.

A large number of lorries carrying vegetable and fruit in gunny bags were stopped yesterday at the Peliyagoda new bridge by Army and Police and the vehicles were fined heavily.

Manning vegetable market of Colombo was short of supplies today due to this reason both yesterday and today, market sources said.

Farmers say they need extra money to buy crates and need vehicles to transport the crates back home due to this law. They say they cannot add these extra costs to the price of vegetables.

Meanwhile the vendors say they can transport less amount of vegetables in crates and the transport costs go up.

What the consumers say is that they need vegetables at lower price and they would not mind how they were transported.

Sri Lanka's narrated village and the real village

2011-12-12T07:19:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka's village today is the place where no facilities are available. Where there are some facilities are called towns.

Both villagers and townsmen are alike culturally. Are there citizens in Sri Lanka? The common man is not a citizen. 'He' basically is not a socially responsible man.

Take our leaders. They are generally recognized as a bunch of thieves and thugs. The masses that elect them and are led by them are no less.

A group of subaltern academics are engaged in a discourse making attempt regarding Sinhala village. They use popular TV programmes like Doramandalawa of Independant Television Network in this regard. The villagers of Sri Lanka too watch the wonderful narration of the village that is completely different from their real village life with amazement .

These days media is marketing a news about a triple suicide/murder of two adolescent girls and one Army deserter that took place in Epawala in the Anuradhapura district.

If you read the sentimental news reports and features in Sinhala newspapers with a peep into the village life that is described underneath, you may understand what I try to say.

Vimukthi Jayasundara's Cannes-honored film The Forsaken Land-Sulanga Enu Pinisa dealt with this theme, the real village of Sinhala people. Present cinematographer and MP, then Naval officer Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekara said that the film maker Vimukthi Jayasundara should be given death penalty probably for treachery i.e. revealing this truth.

Read: සූරිප්පෙරුමගේ ගම හා එප්පාවල කඩිගාව ගම

Sri Lankan officials following 'innovative' tactics to convert Hambanthota a harbour

2011-12-11T08:18:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka now has a new harbor though no ships go there even an year after its grand opening. Harbor mouth was blocked by a rock. A large sum of borrowed foreign currency was spent to break the rock. It could be removed at a lower cost before hurriedly filling in water.

After all, the port is ready now. However, 'innovative' thinking is needed to lure ships there.

Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) says now that it will permit car importers to unload their cargo only in the Hambantota Port from March 2012.

Sources say that this measure will be followed due to Colombo Port is highly congested, since it has less parking facilities after the ongoing expansion of roads and due to less port terminals.

There is no space for parking and the car carriers have to wait for nearly five to six days to clear their cargo before leaving the area, says Ports Authority Chairman.

However, if the dealers want their cars to be shipped to the Colombo Port they have to arrange for ‘direct delivery’ and have the preliminary inspection at their own yard and not at the port, according to the Chairman of the Ports Authority.

Sri Lanka's vehicle business is centered in Colombo, Kandy and Kurunegala. Therefore the imported vehicles will have to go a long way to reach the market. Perhaps the government wants to shift the market also to Hambanthota. It will affect Kurunegala. Who cares Kurunegala now? Now it is Hambanthota time.

The imported vehicles will also add into the traffic of the newly built Southern Expressway.

This is the 'development' the government is giving us. Who benefits from it? Definitely not the poor masses of whose name the massive loans are being obtained.

Sri Lanka Tamil party wants President to mediate to release list of names of former LTTE cadres and supporters who are detained or in custody

2011-12-10T12:24:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka government once announced that 12,000 Tamil Tiger cadres surrendered to the state security forces during the final stages of the war in which the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) were militarily defeated.

Two and half years after the war, the government is yet to release the lists of these surrendered cadres.

Sri Lanka's major Tamil constituency Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP Suresh Premachandran has urged the government to reveal the list of names of former LTTE cadres and supporters who are detained or in custody.

Premachandran says that there has not been any information received about the surrendered cadres by their families.

He has said the President needs to intervene and address this issue since the parents and relatives of former LTTE members want to know about their family members in custody. He says the government needs to tell, whether it is going to take legal action against these people or if they will be released.

The government should also take steps to document the fate of the disappeared persons, irrespective of their being LTTE fighters. After all they all are citizens of this country.

D.B.S. Jeyaraj's market promotion of Niromi de Soyza's Tamil Tigress

2011-12-10T09:38:00.001+05:30

D.B.S. Jeyaraj appears paid to step by step revelation of the true identity of the author of “Tamil Tigress - My story as a child soldier in Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war” written by a self-proclaimed former member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) under the pseudonym Niromi de Soyza.

The true identity of the woman who is gathering momentum to become a minor celebrity is well marketed by Jeyaraj in his article From Shenuka to Niromi: True tale of a ‘Tamil Tigress.’

He has written it giving out a puzzle like revelation on the identity of the writer.

Let me be a tad facetious here and play a word game supplying a few clues. She has three names in all. Her first name is of North Indian origin but widely used by Tamils.;the second is of Irish origin but widely used by the English, Scottish and Welsh people. The third or maiden name which is her father’s, is a Sanskritised Tamil name.I have coined a name that has the first letters of all three names – “Sharmila”.

A good marketing trick after all. The book's second edition is to be released soon and it is to go from Australia to international markets.

Sri Lanka Marxists that backed war against Tamils launch a movement aimed at addressing the issues faced by the people in the North

2011-12-10T09:34:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka Marxist People's Liberation Front (JVP) says it will launch a movement aimed at addressing the issues faced by the people in the North.

JVP backed government war against the Tamil rebellion before the Tamil Tiger rebels were defeated and they even opposed government stopping use of heavy armory against the displaced people in the no-war zone declared by state.

The movement is called the People’s Wall of Brotherhood and it is launched in Vavuniya today.

JVP Propaganda Secretary and parliamentarian Vijitha Herath says that MP Sunil Handunneththi and former MP Ramalingam Chandrasekar would be the co-conveners of the organization that will be formed to help find solutions to the immense hardships faced by the people in the North even after the end of the war.

During the war, JVP supported the government operations but now says the problems of the people of the Northern and Eastern Province have not been attended.

Efforts underway to guarantee release of Sri Lanka's former Army Commander

2011-12-10T09:28:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka's major opposition United National Party (UNP) will begin signing of a petition seeking release of former Army Commander and defeated Presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka.

The petition is to be handed over to the UN General Secretary.

The signing of the petition commences from the official residence of the Colombo Mayor today. Then it will be taken around the country to collect signatures.

UNP expects to collect one mission signatures to the petition.

The petition is organized by UNP MP Jayalath Jayawardhana.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Prison Reforms Chandrasiri Gajadheera said in parliament today that Fonseka is enjoying luxuries in prison. However he contradicted his own idea telling that all prisoners are treated alike in prison.

Unconfirmed sources say that an effort is underway led by Fonseka-led National Democratic Alliance MP Tiran Alles to guarantee a conditional release for Fonseka.

Meanwhile, international pressure is also indicated mounting on the government seeking his release.

Dr. Gangodawila Soma Thero's university dishonored

2011-12-08T06:00:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka's state owned The Dinamina newspaper report4ed that the International University of Fundamental Studies (IUFS) of St. Peters berg, Russia is not a recognized university.

According to the newspaper, the Russian Embassy of Colombo has stated that the the university is not recognized by the government of Russia.

However, the website of the university says a different story. It says,

The International University of Fundamental Studies (the IUFS) is a non-governmental and non-commercial university in St. Petersburg(Russia) and is one of the major civic universities, which works together with Russian State University to offer International Degree Qualifications. In 1998 the Ministry of Education - State Committee for Higher Education & Science in St. Petersburg(Russia) recognized the IUFS. In November, 12, 2007 the University was granted the Inter-governmental Accreditation by the International Parliament of Safety and Peace (Italy). Further, in 2007 Inter-governmental Higher Academic Council (IHAC) was opened. On the 11th Day of June IUFS was recognized by the California University FCE.

This is the university from which the late popular Buddhist preacher Gangodawila Soma Thero obtained a doctorate. He was suffering from a number of illnesses and died in St. Peters berg as he was there for the 'convocation.'Sri Lanka's present ruling alliance which was in the formation, media and a group of Buddhist monks and laymen highlighted the natural death as a murder. The charge was never proved but used for political mileage. Soma Thero whose death anniversary falls in December was completely forgotten by these political opportunists once they achieved their target.

The other comic fact is that the former Inspector General of Police 'Dr. Mahinda Balasuriya' who resigned from the post admitting the police responsibility of a murder of a worker of the Katunayaka Free Trade Zone is also a 'graduate' of this bogus university. Sri Lanka has, I think, more 'Dr.s' qualified from this university. If you want to buy a doctorate click here.

Heroes Day assault on Tamil political prisoners and reconciliation

2011-11-29T04:56:00.001+05:30

'We Sri Lankans' organization say that the Tamil political prisoners detained in Anuradhapura prison were brutally assaulted by a group of prison officials yesterday.

'We Sri Lankans' accuse that the prison officers were drunk and assaulted the prisoners asking if yesterday was their heroes' day. Later the prisoners were knelt in open in rain.

Five of the 60 Tamil political prisoners who were seriously injured are admitted in the Anuradhapura hospital.

The convener of the We Sri Lankans organization Udul Premarathna says he and a group of lawyers that went to Anuradhapura prison to visit the assaulted prisoners were prevented by prison officials.

Premarathna says that this type of actions will hinder the efforts of much needed reconcilation among ethnic communities of Sri Lanka.

This is how Tamil nationalist Tamilnet reported the 'We Sri Lankans' mediation. "At the complaint of some of the prisoners, ‘Naam Ilangkaiyar’ (We Sri Lankans) outfit of the Sinhala nationalist JVP, has brought out the attack incident to the public, criticising the Colombo government that it is dividing the peoples of the island.'

This type of incidents were quite common before the end of war. 1983 July massacre of Tamil prisoners at Welikada prison and 2000 October massacre at Bindunuweva Rehabilitation Camp in Bandarawela were two such events.

The raising of the ugly head of violence against the Tamil political prisoners shows that the country is further shifting towards Sinhala chauvinist violence against Tamils.

Effort of the 'We Sri Lankans' is a good initiative that lacks support of the Sinhala society. At least the JVP factions also do not take is seriously.

Sinhalese won the war. That is the only difference between then and now.

No one is worried about much needed reconciliation efforts. Reconciliation solely depend on a democratic state reform that seems non entity in the agendas of political groups of the political south.

Sinhala Sri Lanka is far from Lanka, a dream country of Lankans, Sinhala, Tamil Muslim, Vedi, Malay, Burger etc.

Are Competent Authorities appointed to run businesses taken over by Sri Lanka state competent for it?

2011-11-25T05:05:00.001+05:30

Sri Lankan Government appointed Competent Authorities, a Ministerial Sub Committee and an Officials Committee for 37 enterprises and assets that were recently took over from the private sector under Underperforming Enterprises and Underutilized Assets Act.

However, non of these Competent Authorities seem competent to run these enterprises. All of them are engaged in other sectors then business. Some of them are District Secretaries that are busy with administrating the ailing public service. They nay be trustworthy incompetent persons through whom the regime can interfere easily in the affairs of these businesses.

Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa has been appointed as the head of the Ministerial Committee.The other members are Ministers Reginald Cooray who was sacked from the post of Western Province Chief Minister due to incompetency, Lakshman Senevirathna that crossed over from United National Party, Dilan Perera who always laments for not giving him a responsibility that matches to his seniority and Geethanjana Gunawardhana who has been elected from a political party that is incompetent to win any seat in parliament without being a member of the coalition with Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

A three member “Compensation Tribunal” has also been appointed underthe chairmanship of Chief Government Valuer to pay compensation within 12 months from the receipt of a claim by the Tribunal.

District Secretary of Hambantota is the Competent Authority of Pelwatte Sugar Industries Limited.

District Secretary of Monaragala is the Competent Authority of Sevanagala Sugar Industries Limited.

District Secretary of Badulla is the Competent Authority of Colombo Commercial Company.
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Attorney-at-Law Kalinga Indatissa has been appointed as the Competent Authority of Lanka Tractors Limited, Charmers Granaries, Ceylinco Leisure Properties Limited and Intertrade Lanka (Private) Limited.

Attorney-at-Law Senaka Walgampaya will function as the Competent Authority to Hotel Developers Lanka PLC. Tuly Cooray has been appointed as the Competent Authority of the BOI Enterprises acquired by the Government.

Budget show of the ruling mob of Sri Lanka

2011-11-22T06:24:00.001+05:30

The President and the MPs of Sri Lanka behaved in a way to suit to the slogan of placards displayed by the opposition as the President in his capacity as the Minister of Finance delivered the budget speech.

The slogan was SHAME!

The government Ministers, Deputy Ministers and MPs assaulted the opposition United National Party MPs.

Notorious Mervin Silva, Mahindananda Aluthgamage, Rohitha Abegunawardhana etc. who were thugs before and after they were converted politicians were leading violence.

Lohan Rathwaththa, an acquitted accused of Udathalawiina ten persons killing was also there.

A relatively young MP Roshan Ranasinghe had no shame to assault his father-like politician John Amarathunga.

Deputy Minister of Education Vijith Wijayamuni Soyza threw a book at the opposition.

Their leader seemed content about the behavior of his gang as thrown water bottles fell right in front of him.

Sri Lanka is ruled by a violent mob. The rule in the country is the anarchy of a mob. This is what they displayed.

However, a normal mob disperses and the individuals in it later regret as law comes after them. This mob is not like that. No repentance. No law against them. They are the law. They are everything and nothing too.

After all it is the people of this country that elected them.

Sexual abuse charges against Sri Lanka Opposition Leader

2011-11-21T05:12:00.001+05:30

Sources close to opposition of Sri Lanka say that a group of male MPs of Sri Lanka opposition United National Party (UNP) have complained that the party leader Ranil Wickramasinghe attempted sexually molest them.

The sources said that the charges were handed over to the party secretary Thissa Aththanayaka and it would be forwarded to a party advisory committee to take a decision regarding it.

The group of MPs accuse that the party leader asked for homosexual favors from the MPs promising favouration in return.

Minister of Public Relations Mervin Silva recently leveled sexual abuse charges to the UNP leader in a public meeting stating that it led him to leave the party.

Following is the voice track of Mervin Silva describing his experience.

What a bad taste!

Timor-Leste's Veterans: An Unfinished Struggle? (A post struggle crisis)

2011-11-20T07:39:00.001+05:30

This report by International Crisis Group focuses attention to a post-struggle scenario in which a newly liberated state attempts to address the woes of the former nationalist freedom fighters.

It shows us how complex is the situation to deal with.

The socialist countries where the revolution won did not face similar situation. The so called proletarian authoritarianism that was established after the revolution did not pay at all to compensate financially to the heroes. Go on reading.

Dili/Jakarta/Brussels, 18 November 2011: Ten years after the demobilisation of its guerrilla liberation army, Timor-Leste must strike a balance between recognising veterans' role and promoting strong and independent institutions in order to ensure stability.

Timor-Leste's Veterans: An Unfinished Struggle?, the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines attempts by the young state to recognise and honour those who fought for its independence. While these efforts initially targeted on symbolic measures, the state's increasing wealth means that they have increasingly focused on cash benefits. The government has deferred difficult decisions on who will qualify for these payments. It has done so because of the complexity of Timor-Leste's 24-year resistance and fears that refusing benefits to claimants could create potential spoilers to the stability the country now enjoys.

“The question of who will qualify for veteran status remains both difficult and politically charged”, says Cillian Nolan, Crisis Group South East Asia Analyst. “While the promise of money eased discontent among dissident former fighters, it has also brought a flood of apparently false claims of service. A definitive list of veterans is an unreachable goal. Once the long-deferred decisions on who will qualify are made, they risk creating real discontent”.

Beyond cash benefits, there are two areas where the government will have to manage the demands of some veterans for greater influence. The first is plans for an advisory council that will manage decisions on veterans' affairs. It could be a useful forum for regulating these matters in general, and overseeing a carefully bounded set of benefits, including designing eligibility criteria for financial compensation. Some former fighters hope it will play a broader role in setting government policy and bring back the influence they enjoyed during the occupation; these expectations will need to be managed.

Second, the government will also have to decide on how to deal with pressure to give former fighters a formal security role as well as how to make clear the distinction between the state armed forces and their resistance-era predecessors. While it may make sense to give the former guerrilla army a ceremonial role to acknowledge the importance of its legacy, any decisions on a reserve force that could lead to rearming the former guerrillas in times of crisis may lead to the creation of a militia it may not be able to control.

Timorese politics and its security sector institutions remain held together by a small set of personalities rather than bound by legal rules. If veterans' demands for recognition are successfully managed it will smooth the way for a succession of power to a younger generation of political leaders to determine the country's future.

“The state continues to face a difficult challenge in balancing veterans' demands for recognition with efforts to promote strong and independent institutions”, says Jim Della-Giacoma, Crisis Group's South East Asia Project Director. “Only with the right balance will a shift in power be possible from the “Generation of '75” that brought the country to independence and still holds onto power”.

A tribute to a finest human being: 'Farewell my dear Father'

2011-11-19T21:28:00.001+05:30

An article written by a daughter of a leftist who was killed by People's Liberation Front (JVP) during the 1987-89 struggle.

It was the late eighties.

Sri Lanka was heading towards more and moreturbulent times dragging along the disillusioned and frustrated generationswith her to a bottomless abyss. Widespread social inequality, risingunemployment, brutal state repression and sharpening ethnic divide provided anideal platform for an unprecedented violent social explosion, not only in theTamil North, but even in the Sinhala dominated South of the island. The strikerswere sacked, ethnic minorities were brutalized and suppressed, dissident voiceswere silenced, opposition parties were banned, elections were rigged and everysingle obstacle was forcibly removed from the path leading to a constitutionalauthoritarianism.

The North was already in flames. The stage wasset for a violent social upheaval in the South too.

My father was one among the 40,000 state sectoremployees who were sacked within 24 hours for participating in an island-widestrike action that demanded a reasonable wage increase to match the rising costof living. The ruling United National Party government adamantly refused tonegotiate with the strikers, eventually deciding to throw thousands of workersout on to the streets. My father, despite carrying the burden of supporting afamily with two kids, refused to bow down and instead decided to leave thecapital city in order to start a farm in a remote area in the centralhighlands.

The life in the farm was unforgettable. Unawareof the true difficulties of the life, a childhood surrounded by picturesquebeauty of the mountainous region, became a wonderland that any kid would dreamof. My father's unending love spread over our world like a limitless sky. Thefriends who used to visit him frequently discussed politics and social issueswhile we were running around them. The conversations we overheard was full ofstories about social injustices and discrimination, though we never grasped thetrue sense of any of it until we became No one of us ever imagined thatour world filled with such a beauty and dreams was destined to shatterinto pieces.

Outside our small isolated world, the societywas engulfed in flames. The disillusioned less privileged youth in the Sinhaladominated South, followed their brethren in the Tamil North by rising up inarms against the state. Most of the frustrated social elements in the South ofthe Island were again absorbed into the rank and file of the Peoples'Liberation Front (JVP), who staged the first failed armed uprising the postindependent Sri Lanka in the '70s. JVP's ideology was mainly made upwith a mixture of distorted socialist slogans and militant Sinhalanationalism. Even though the uprising reflected the increasing despair andhopelessness that was dominant within the poverty stricken Sinhala rural youth, the mode of the struggle took more the shape of a rightwing nationalistupheaval than a progressive revolutionary resistance. The democratic thinkingleftwing activists in the South became the ultimate target of the JVP'sarmed actions on the basis that such people were acting against the collectiverights of the majority Sinhala Buddhists in the country.

My father, being a staunch enemy of majoritarianchauvinism, became increasingly critical towards the JVP's actions andideological positions without abandoning his criticism about the authoritarianregime. He was considered as an outspoken critique of the mislead youth andtherefore became an open target of his enemies.

It was the 8th of November, 1988. Both I and mysister were at the school boarding house, after spending our weekend with myfather as we used to do frequently. It never occurred to us that our lives wereabout take the most terrible blow soon after that fateful weekend. Beforeleaving the house hoping to go back to the school, we never dreamed that itwould be our final farewell to the man who taught us everything about life andlove.

On that fateful night, my father was brutallymurdered along with four other friends. An armed gang of the JVP, surroundedour house before dragging everyone out to be shot in cold blood. Their bodieswere brutally mutilated and the house we grew up was burnt to the ground.

We never heard him crying in pain. We never sawhim in a pool of blood. We never even saw his mutilated body lying in a coffin.Therefore I still remember him as he always wanted us to remember him: Afather with a heart filled with love for us and with unending passion forjustice - As a human being made out of love and courage.

Nothing less - nothing more!

Ruwandi Silva

08.11.2011

Sri Lanka's ex-Army Commander Sarath Fonseka's dock statement following conviction

2011-11-19T06:00:00.001+05:30

"If any authorized person ordered the killing of surrendering LTTE cadres, he should be brought before the law.

I am not content with the Court’s ruling and not at all surprised with the verdict. I, along with the masses, hoped that the trial would mete out justice.

Before publishing a string of lies, people should have been informed. Fredericka Jansz had recently given an interview to the Daily Mirror and the journalist from that paper is ready to testify in public.

On the basis of this, can a journalist be punished? The duty of the judiciary is to probe into the matter. Punishing the common candidate, at the last presidential election, due to a statement, cannot be admitted. My answer to a query posed by a female Journalist in an interview has been misinterpreted and published. In this back drop, punishing me is not the trait of a democratic nation. I say, according to my knowledge such modalities are in place only in nations where dictatorships reign and this I abhor.

I, with my subordinate officers, conducted the war in accordance with the international rules, observing human rights.

Twelve thousand surrendering LTTE cadres were safely accommodated.

In the event any one gave an order on the contrary, why should he be not brought before law? Comments were made in respect of such heinous crimes viz. the Embilipitiya student killings and the murder of Krishanthi Coomaraswamy. Those who commented were not subjected to prosecution. But those who were found guilty were punished. I don’t advocate inciting masses. Those who commit such crimes should be punished. If people speak about two laws, they would be liable to be jailed. Is that justice? Mistakes should be rectified someday by the judiciary or else they would continue. I hope there would be not a questionable black mark."

Southern Expressway – safety concerns that should not be ignored

2011-11-18T18:37:00.001+05:30

-Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Sri Lanka

We, as the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Sri Lanka, wish to congratulate the Road Development Authority on the completion of the Southern Expressway With its completion, Sri Lanka will experience the first ever expressway facility.

This super highway experience will be new to Sri Lanka, and we expect that it will benefit the country and its users in a number of ways. Firstly, it will permit faster speeds up to 100 km per hour enabling shorter travel. Secondly, the roadway in allowing only limited entry and exit at selected localities will enable undisturbed free-flow of traffic and potentially fewer accidents unlike on other surface roads in Sri Lanka. Next, the relatively well aligned trace, pot-hole free surface and smoother travel will save both time and fuel. A further benefit we note is that by nature of its design that the highway will be protected from encroachment and unplanned constructions which are not only an eye sore but a reason for accidents and congestion on other roads in the country.

It is also noted that the new highway will bring about development of that part of the country including eco tourism, agricultural based industries and manufacturing industries. It will also bring communities closer to each other. Therefore, the Southern Highway, the newest member of the highway network of Sri Lanka, can be considered to be an important initiative and its accelerated implementation, subsequent to decades of delays and hick-ups, is commendable, despite its heavy toll on the public coffers.

Culture of Safe Driving

A good road design which looks safe requires all drivers to be more careful as they can be made to feel secure when it is actually not. Even though a road looks safe, if the drivers are not disciplined and skillful, it will be equally unsafe and the consequences of unsafe driving much severe. Thus drivers must match the safety with which they drive to that of the road design. This is called a road safety culture. This must be established. The culture that prevails on the normal roads must not be allowed to enter the expressways. Accidents on expressways tend to involve multiple vehicles and heavy fatalities.

CILT Sri Lanka has noted the recent media publicity on the features of the highway and some safety concerns that have been raised in several quarters. We have brought these to the attention of the relevant officials in order to suggest how such risks may be minimised so that the expected goodwill and benefit from the highway will be enjoyed by the people of the country. As no noteworthy response has been forthcoming, we now wish to make the public aware of the dangers that face them and what could be done to avoid such.

Narrow Lanes and Budget Cuts

Due to budget overruns and changes to design, the lane width has been reduced to 3.5m. This is less than the International norm of 3.7m. The reduced lane width does not allow safe overtaking at higher speeds, especially when the flow is high and there are large vehicles.

Start with Lower Speed

Given that most drivers in Sri Lanka have not driven on expressways and that most vehicles have not been used in such facilities, controlling speed is the single most effective tool to ensure a smooth and safe start to the facility. Drivers must get used to a number of new driving attributes such as high speed lane changing, merging and diverging at interchanges, sudden braking, maintaining lane control, over-takings, handling stationary objects when moving at high speed, avoiding collisions among other vehicles, management of headways etc. Most of these tasks become increasingly risky with speed. The level of risk at 100 km per hour will be more than double that at 80 km per hour. Our recommendation is to open the highway at 80 km per hour and to undertake a safety study during this time before increasing it to 90 and then to 100 km per hour.

Phased entry of Heavy Vehicles

The benefits of the new highway should be enjoyed by all motorists. However, knowing the attraction that a highway of this nature will have on our people, it is likely that the highway will begin with sight seers and thrill seekers who may pose a major threat on safety management. These vehicles are usually vans and hired buses and an accident involving one of them could result in a high toll on human life. It is therefore our recommendation that the access to this highway be initially restricted to vehicles registered as cars and dual purpose vehicles which will carry only the allowed number of passengers as per registration. Moreover only vehicles having seat belts, good quality tires, lights and generally in good appearance of being road worthy should be allowed to enter. This will also make the numbers that should be given user awareness manageable. It could then be opened for buses and trucks.

Where to stop? Insufficient Width of Hard Shoulder

Media reports and pictures of the highway have raised concerns that the hard shoulder available for emergency stopping of vehicles is less than what should be allowed for an expressway that allows 100 km per hour vehicles. Parking of a car or van and opening a door would require at least 2 ½ metre width and a heavy vehicle more than that. We have been advised that this is only 1.75 metres and can only be termed a ‘budget- expressway’ as it does not allow full expressway features. A car developing a mechanical trouble may be able to just get out of the traffic lane. But its occupants cannot open a door. If indeed this width has not been provided it is a grave concern how such situations can be safely handled. It is interesting to ascertain if vital safety features have been compromised in design and cost cutting. If indeed the width is inadequate, some re-adjustment of lane widths and if that is not possible now, of speeds may have to be undertaken. CILT Sri Lanka wishes to emphasise that road safety should never be compromised for speed or cost.

Enforcement

Even though the Police have been given powerful vehicles to enforce speed limits, it will be of much interest to know how they would stop such a vehicle on the side. Would they have to follow such a vehicle out of the next exit? This would be most unsatisfactory. Moreover, the expressway does not seem to have any locations where Police could stay to detect speeding or other offences. When His Excellency has declared a decade of road safety, the first world class expressway the country boasts should not be found to be compromising in safety.

Adherence to rules and traffic regulations by the users should be strictly monitored by the enforcement agencies, including the Police, Department of Motor Traffic and the Road Development Authority. Unlike in many other areas where we have seen slackness in law enforcement, any lacuna in enforcement with regard to the usage of Expressway is sure to yield catastrophic consequences. The Southern Expressway bears an added responsibility in this regard as its experience stands to set precedence for all future expressway usage in Sri Lanka. Therefore, it is the earnest call of the CILTSL that the laws be strictly enforced with respect to the usage of Southern Expressway regardless of the status or creed of the errant.

User awareness

While the media publicity that is currently given is most valuable and commendable, potential drivers should also be given a suitable hands-on training at least in the form of a 10 minute instruction in the vehicle itself just before they get on the expressway. They could then be given a paper certificate then and there which they can show when they wish to use the facility again. This could be handled by training some police officers or engaging some driving instructors after they themselves are allowed to drive and learn on the highway. This will be a valuable exercise that will yield much more benefit than the cost and effort involved. This will mean that passengers in the vehicle also are made aware. Limiting initial vehicle categories will make this achievable.

Users should understand that at high speed, a lapse will result in terrible tragedies that could be very serious and involve many vehicles and lives. Drivers must slowly learn the fine art of smooth merging and diverging at ramps. The ramp entry and exit maneuvers are likely to be difficult for drivers who have not used these before. The vehicles on the expressway should give way to entering traffic. It is necessary to establish correct pattern for this before allowing large numbers to use these. If not, bad practices will become the norm and difficult to change not only in the Southern Expressway but also on the others in future. Drivers should also be made aware how to handle emergencies when travelling at high speeds, such as tire blow outs, bird strikes, engine and brake failures. The latter is particularly important for large vehicles.

Maintenance and Toll Payment

The maintenance of high speed roads should be a priority task. We do not see the current roads being maintained in this manner. There is no culture of giving priority for maintenance of roads. The usual practise is that once a road is constructed, funds are not prioritised for maintenance. Moreover, remedial action is often delayed making the road dangerous, slow and costlier to repair. In this respect we would welcome the payment of a toll that would at least provide for regular operation and maintenance of this highway without burdening the non-users. However it is important that it is computed on sound economic terms and on the basis of “user pay” principles so that motorists - know and pay for the cost of the infrastructure they use.

The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport in Sri Lanka, the leading professional institute for transport in Sri Lanka, wishes that the authorities will take necessary action to ensure safety on the Southern Highway before it is opened for traffic. It also wishes to remind the general public of their duty to call for rightful and prompt action of the authorities to ensure public safety.

. Sri Lanka Marxists say government sell off Embilipitiya Paper Mill

2011-11-17T05:40:00.001+05:30

"Mahinda Rajapaksa government, we believe, should be ashamed for handing over an invaluable national asset for such a low price," says Sri Lanka Marxist People's Liberation Front (JVP) issuing a statement on the alleged sell off of Embilipitiya Paper Mill.

The communique of the JVP, signed by MP Sunil Handunneththi says the sum of Rs.600 million for which the factory was leased to Perth Engineering Company in Australia for a 30 year-period is an undervalue.

"The government, by selling the company which is installed with a system of machinery that could produce high quality paper and a more than 250 acre land where it is constructed to a song indicates again the plundering economic policy Rajapaksa government is following," JVP says.

Those who now criticize party decisions supported them then, says Sri Lanka Marxist central committee member

2011-11-15T05:59:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka Marxist People's Liberation Front (JVP) central committee member and former MP Bimal Rathnayaka said that the persons now accusing them on certain party decisions were also supporting those decisions then.

Rathnayaka explained that the decisions to make alliances with the capitalist parties were supported by the rebels who now charge the JVP leadership for taking such decisions. The JVP rebels say that the party collapsed due to coalition politics with the capitalist parties.

Bimal Rathnayaka made these comments addressing a November hero commemoration held in Paris organized by the party committee in France, party sources said.

JVP central committee members Bimal Tathnayaka and Nalinda Jayatissa addressed the commemoration.

JVP factions are in a battle of showing strength through the November hero commemorations locally as well as internationally. Rallies of both factions were held in Colombo yesterday with the participation of massive crowds.

Parents of Sri Lankan housemaid who is in death row are to visit her today

2011-11-15T05:58:00.001+05:30

Chairman of the Bureau of Foreign Employment Kingsley Ranawaka and Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare Tissanga Wijeratne have left for Saudi Arabia now with the parents of Sri Lankan housemaid Rizana Nafeek who is in death row in Saudi Arabia.

The parents are to visit Nafeek in prison today.

Meanwhile Western Province Governor Alevi Mawlana, a Muslim leader of Sri Lanka, is also to leave for Saudi Arabia on November 16th.

The Sri Lankan housemaid who was given death sentence for killing a baby she was looking after there by a Saudi court.

She was an underage by the time the crime she is accused of had committed.However, all attempts so far have failed to seek a pardon for her.

Sri Lanka government wants websites to be registered

2011-11-08T06:53:00.001+05:30

Issuing a media release, the Ministry of Media and Information has asked the administrators of the websites to register the ministry.

The administrators can contact Ms. K.W.T.N. Amarathunga, the Additional Secretary (Development and Planning) of the Ministry via the telephone +94112513943 or the email secretary@media.gov.lk to obtain application forms and information, the Ministry says.

Information regarding registration is also available in www.media.gov.lk website, the Ministry says.

The Ministry has however not outlined what action will follow in case of websites not registering in the Ministry.

Ministry has warned the websites that disseminate news that target to tarnish images of certain persons and the government.

Sevanagala Sugar Factory of Sri Lanka under forcible peoplization

2011-11-05T03:55:00.000+05:30

A group of persons allegedly the supporters of Sri Lanka government MP Jagath Pushpakumara have reportedly taken over the Sevanagala Sugar Factory.

Daya Group of Companies that own this factory say that the managers of the factory have been removed from the premises and some employees have been assaulted.

Sevanagala Sugar Factory is an asset slated to be taken over under Revival of Underperforming Enterprises and Underutilised Assets Act which the government plans to table in the parliament next week.

The company says that the group that has taken over the factory have blocked access roads to the factory disrupting the functioning of the factory.

Daya Gamage, a legislator of the opposition United National Party (UNP) is the owner of Sevanagala Sugar Factory. It was purchased by him in 2002 for Rs. 550 million. The company says that it is profiting now.

Now armed forces of Sri Lanka to maintain cricket grounds

2011-11-04T04:10:00.000+05:30

Local media of Sri lanka reported that three key sports grounds of the country that were under the Ministry of sports had been taken over by the Ministry of Defense.

The grounds that have been taken over are Sooriyawewa Mahinda Rajapaksa Esplanade, R. Premadasa Stadium in Colombo and Pallekale Stadium in Kandy.

Media reported that the Ministry of Sports stated the sports grounds were handed over to the Ministry of Defense to minimize the massive expenditure that had to be incurred for the maintenance of the esplanades.

Money earning Sri Lanka Cricket is now near bankrupt. Ministry of Defense is Sri Lanka's biggest spender of public money. Yet it has workforce to do things. Soldiers have no work now thanks to peace. Therefore they will sweep and pick the leaves fell on these grounds. In addition, they will have perhaps a chance to play a game of soft ball cricket as well in a corner of one of these grounds that remain unused most of the time in the year.

Plans are underway to deploy the personnel of the three armed forces to maintain the grounds, sources say.

From this month the Air Force will be managing the RPS and the Navy has taken over the Pallekele Stadium while the Army will be maintaining the Hambantota Stadium.

It is good maintaining sports grounds. Most of the sports grounds of the common man are completely never maintained by the local government authorities that own them. Sometimes they become even burial grounds for local politicians and priests. In some other occasions, they are th venue for musical shows. Not bad yet, they can be accessed by public.

Some school playgrounds are now out of bound to the villagers. The principals have locked the gates. Notices are displayed stating children playing in village ground is trespassing.

What a sporty country this is!

Crony capitalist Rajapaksa regime, the biggest under performer aims to take over under performing businesses

2011-11-03T17:52:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka government has planned to go ahead with the Revival of Underperforming Enterprises and Underutilised Assets Act despite opposition from the United National Party (UNP), Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and a wide section of private sector businessmen.

Accordingly, the bill is to be tabled in Parliament on 9 November by the Government, but the Opposition had given an early warning that it would be opposed.

Takeover Bill on underperforming State enterprises and underutilised assets came under fire by the Opposition at the Party Leaders meeting held in Parliament.

UNP and TNA questioned why it was being introduced as an urgent bill and stating that the Government should have had practiced basic democracy and common courtesy by having discussed it at the Parliament Consultative Committees.

The objective of Revival of Underperforming Enterprises and Underutilised Assets Act is to takeover enterprises with state exposure and a host of assets such as land and building. Defunct BOI approved private ventures also include into the category. Compensation is to be paid. They can be revived with government mediation either via restructuring or entering into new management contracts.

Though the Bill comes with a schedule of specified entities, the UNP warned that the Government could add more enterprises or assets by bringing in amendments to Act in the future.

UNP MP and spokesman on economic affairs Dr. Harsha de Silva said that the government was the biggest underperformer

Another crucial fact pointed out by the UNP was that the bill would scare the foreign investors who want guarantee of safety for their investment.

UNP further says the act violates economic freedom, definitely not of the poor man but of the capitalist class.

Sri Lanka government under President Mahinda Rajapaksa attempts to act as a top level company manipulating its state powers. It is similar to the economic policy of the former socialist block of Eastern Europe in many aspects.

The move is clearly against the neo-liberal capitalist principles promoted by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization etc in the past period. They wanted the privater sector become the engine of the economy. What they meant by economic freedom was private sector been granted equality with the public enterprises. They prefer 'more equality' too.

Mahinda Rajapaksa government dreams to be a big privileged corporation with state powers. They are given tax money of people as investment and also tax exemptions etc. to compete with the private sector. Performances are irrespective. Losses are born by state and passed on to people. A new class of cronies of the government hold the management positions of these companies and at the same time or separately engage in contracts with these companies.

Some still call these moves peoplising attempts but this is sheer crony capitalism.

Sri Lanka Minister of Transport says state bus service incurs additional losses due to price hike of diesel

2011-11-03T05:38:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka Minister of Transport Kumar Welgama speculated a bus fare hike in state owned Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB).

He said that the loss making SLTB incurs an additional loss of Rs.2.2 million per day.

Speaking at a media conference held at the Ministry of Transport Minister Welgama said the increase of price of diesel by Rs. 8 per liter is adversely felt and trying to conceal the hardship is futile.

However, according to the the price formula that has been agreed by the bus companies and owners, to raise bus fares the price of diesel should go up by 4%. Government raised diesel price by 3.2% only.

. Lanka Indian Oil Corporation introduces Euro III grade petrol to Sri Lanka

2011-11-03T05:37:00.000+05:30

Euro III grade petrol, which is used globally to run premium vehicles will be introduced by Lanka Lanka Indian Oil Corporation (LIOC) to Sri Lanka market from mid November, the company announced.

EURO III will replace the company’s premium petrol brand “90 Octane”. It will be sold in in 120 LIOC outlets island wide.

However Octane 90 petrol will continue to be sold in LIOC fuel outlets, the company says.
Lanka IOC also sells Octane 95 Petrol.

LIOC has 159 outlets in Sri Lanka. It is the second player in fuel market that is competing with the Sri Lanka Petroleum Corporation.

Capitalism without rule of law is Krandeniya; violence in a town of Sri Lanka

2011-11-02T05:18:00.000+05:30

Karandeniya is an insignificant tiny town in Southern Province of Sri Lanka. However, Karandeniya hit headlines yesterday due to violence in a post-murder scenario.

A doctor businessman who owned a channeling center was brutally assassinated on September 29 and the mystery came to light almost a month after.

Read the incident here: Bloody competition for doctor channeling come to light in doctor murder in Sri Lanka

Here is the immediate aftermath of the arrest:

Police imposed curfew in Karandeniya police area in Galle district due to a tense situation there. The curfew is to prevail until further notice, police say.

Angry mobs set fire to a medical laboratory run by a suspect arrested for a murder. Several other buildings in the vicinity were also damaged. The suspect's house was also set fire reports from Karandenuya say.

The suspect allegedly killed a doctor in Karandeniya on September 29 with connivance of an Army captain and two soldiers. The last two persons who were brothers were the gunmen in the assassination plot.

The house of the Army captain and a business place of his father's was also set fire.

Another shop burnt belonged to a nurse that worked in the medical center of the suspect.

Police Special Task Force was also summoned to control the situation, but after the carnage was complete.

The killing of the doctor was due to rivalry created by competition in doctor channeling in this small town.The slain doctor is reported as a gentleman with a good heart. Not only that, he had been a very successful businessman. He was trying to monopolize in medical center business there through a fair competition. There is nothing wrong until he pays income tax according to books.

In advanced capitalist economies there is rule of law and the losers are prevented of taking personal revenge from the rivals like this.

What Sri Lanka lacks foremost today is rule of law.

A bigwig in the town, Minister of Resettlement Gunarathna Weerakoon was in the town celebrating the police success of arresting the culprits of the brutal murder of the doctor. The violence followed his visit, speech and lightening of firecrackers by his supporters.

There are reasonable suspicions that Minister ignited violence against the families of the suspects.

There may be more channel center owners who threw petrol to fire to see the opening of a new market for them through blood and fire.

capitalism is brutal since the primary force that drives it is craving for profit. Such capitalism without rule of law is Krandeniya.

Read in Sinhala

Bloody competition for doctor channeling come to light in doctor murder in Sri Lanka

2011-11-01T11:19:00.001+05:30

Criminal Investigation Department of Sri Lanka arrested an owner of a medical center for killing a doctor in a bloody competition in specialist channeling business.

The suspect confessed that he gave a contract to a friend of his, a captain of Sri Lanka Army to kill Doctor Priyanka Prasad Ranasinghe of Karandeniya in Galle district.

Ranasinghe who was the owner of a private medical center was assassinated by two gunmen before his business place named as Digasee, meaning long life..

This medical center was blooming in business and the suspect doctor was losing his business to it.

The gunmen were two soldiers that were under the suspected captain. They are siblings and they were to be paid for the killing.

The killing took place on September 29. Two suspects have been arrested. Two assassins are absconding and police is looking for them for taking them to custody.

Sri Lanka Marxist JVP announces student leader removed from post

2011-11-01T11:17:00.000+05:30

The student wing of the People's Liberation Front (JVP) Socialist Students' Union (SSU) yesterday announced that the former national organizer of the Chamera Koswatta had been removed from the post.

JVP central committee member Nalinda Jayathissa who was appointed the new national organizer said to media that Koswatta was assigned to another duty by party and he was not to reveal it. He further said that Chameera Koswatta is no more in the SSU.

Meanwhile, Koswatta, a leading member of the JVP rebel faction laughed off his alleged removal. He said he was elected to the post by a general assembly of the SSU in 2008 for five years and he cannot be removed even by the national committee of the SSU.

He further said that the majority of the SSU cadres were with him.

Convicted Kandy Mayor released under special Presidential pardon

2011-11-01T11:15:00.002+05:30

Former Mayor of Kandy city of Sri Lanka Kesara Senanayaka who was convicted for robbing public money was acquitted yesterday under a special presidential pardon.

Senanayaka was convicted for defrauding funds allocated for a training in Thaiwan and touring in Singapore with his wife with that money.

He was found guilty by Colombo Chief Magistrate for two counts. He was fined and given suspended jail terms as well.

The punishments were endorsed by the Court of Appeal as well following an appeal from the convict.

The convict was pardoned and released yesterday by Colombo Chief Magistrate Rashmi Singappuli on an official request from the President Mahinda Rajapaksa under section 34 (1)(A) of the constitution.

Sri Lanka's former Chief Justice says parliament has no powers to investigate a retired judge

2011-10-31T07:41:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka's former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva said to media today that the parliament had no powers to investigate a retired judge.

He made these comments speaking on the the request by 75 MPs submitted to the speaker to appoint a parliamentary select committee to probe his tenure.

Highlighting President Mahinda Rajapaksa himself had given him a letter highly praising his services, the former Chief Justice said that MPs’ request was conflicting with the president’s letter,

Reportedly, 70 government MPs have signed the petition to appoint a PSC to look into the happenings in the judiciary system during the period of Sarath N. Silva. The committee is expected to compensate those who were affected by the unfortunate decisions during his tenure.
Former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva who was a close associate of the former President Chandrika Kumaratunga became an ardent supporter of the opposition following his retirement.

Sri Lanka major opposition party appoints a diciplinaty committee to probe charges against two members

2011-10-28T18:55:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka's major opposition United National Party (UNP) says that a disciplinary committee has been appointed to probe the charges against UNP Mathara district MP Buddhika Pathirana and Western Provincial Councillor Shiral Lakthilaka.

The diciplianry committee was appointed at the UNP working committee meeting held yesterday.

The disciplinary committee is headed by Thilak Marapana, a former UNP MP and a former Attorney General.

The disciplinary committee is to meet next week, party sources say.

The decisions to be taken in the disciplinary committee is to be reported to the party leader and the Working Committee.

Pathirana and Lakthilaka are accused of violating the articles 7 and 9 of the UNP constitution.

Sri Lanka to increase price of fuel

2011-10-28T18:54:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka government sources say that focus is on increasing the price of fuel.

Sri Lanka Petroleum Corporation says that the loss from petrol is Rs. 2, the loss from diesel is Rs. 27 and the loss from kerosene is Rs. 39.

The loss to the Corporation is reportedly increasing and the government is under pressure for increasing the price, sources say.

Sources further say that the supply of fuel at highly subsidized rates to Sri Lanka Electricity Board is another reason for the losses of the Sri Lanka Petroleum Corporation.

A liter of petrol is Rs. 125, a liter of diesel is Rs. 76 and a liter of diesel is Rs. 61 at Sri Lanka Petroleum Corporation outlets.

Sri Lanka's Norochcholai coal power plant out of operation

2011-10-28T03:44:00.000+05:30

Trade union sources of Sri Lanka Electricity Board say that the newly built Lak Wijaya coal plant at Norachcholai remains out of operation owing to technical problems.

However, these technical problems also remain unspecified, according to trade unions.
A move by the CEB Board of Directors to hand over the management of the Lak Wijaya Power Plant at Norachcholai to a Chinese Company for six months, at a staggering fee of USD three million, was turned down last month by the Power and Energy Ministry.

The CEB which is incurring heavy losses due to purchasing of electricity at higher rates from private sector to cope with the demand has already asked for a tariff hike.

The coal power plant now defunct was built by China Machinery Engineering Corporation. It is operated by Sri Lanka Electricity Board since July. The plant was officially handed over to the Sri Lanka Electricity Board since September.

280 employees of Sri Lanka Electricity Board have been trained to manage the coal power plant. Of them, around 100 including 80 engineers were trained in China.

82 doctors idling in the Ministry of Health while 47 medical centers shut in Sri Lanka due to doctor shortage

2011-10-28T03:41:00.000+05:30

A spokesman of Sri Lanka Ministry of Health said to local Sinhala newspaper The Diavaina that 92 doctors were idling in government hospitals while 47 medical centers were shut island wide due to shortage of doctors.

These doctors are attached to the Ministry of Health without assigning them proper duty, the spokesman says pointing out that they are engaged in duties of the clerks in some instances.However, many of them report to duty only once or twice a week and sign for the whole week, the spokesman points out adding that they withdraw even overtime.

These doctors are attached to the Ministry of Health in the guise of bio-medical engineers and planners, the spokesman says. But the real motive of them is to avoid service in difficult area with the influence of the senior officials of the Ministry.

Jobs had Google phones in crosshairs: biographer - LANKA BUSINESS REPORT

2011-10-23T20:32:00.000+05:30

Jobs had Google phones in crosshairs: biographer - LANKA BUSINESS REPORT

What Gadaffi said before he was killed

2011-10-23T07:58:00.000+05:30

Gaddafi's Last Words as Rebels Dragged Him Through Street

"Do you know what's right or wrong?"

He is heard to say: "What you're doing is wrong, guys. What you're doing is wrong.

"Do you know what is right or wrong?"

As they continued to drag the 69-year-old through the street he whispered: "What are you doing? It's haraam [forbidden].

"It's not allowed in Islamic law. Haraam.

"What you are doing is forbidden in Islam!"

A rebel drowns him out by screaming: "God is great! God is great!"

Another shouts: "Shut up you dog."

Read the full article

A denunciation of the 'Rat Man' (A review on The Meaning of Sarkozy by Alain Badiou)

2011-10-12T06:58:00.000+05:30

Wangees Sumanasekara has translated this book into Sinhala. The launch is organized and addressed by former X Group members and their current mentors. We adopted this review because of it.

Nicolas Sarkozy once spoke admiringly of Tony Blair and of Britain's economy. Lethargic France, Sarkozy suggested during his campaign to become the country's president, could learn a thing or two from zesty, entrepreneurial Albion. That was spring 2007, which feels now like a different political era. Sarkozy won. Blair retired. And then the British economy, and the global financial system that sustained it, broke down.

So what does Sarkozy stand for now? What, for that matter, does Gordon Brown stand for? Or David Cameron? Their strategies, their movements, their rhetoric, were all variations on a theme of liberal, free-market capitalism. Suddenly the music stopped and, like children in a party game, they were caught striking meaningless poses.

That is what western politics has always looked like to Alain Badiou. The eminent French philosopher is not tuned into the music of liberal democracy. He refuses to accept any of the premises of what he calls "parliamentary cretinism", preferring to judge politicians by their proximity to the absolute moral truth contained in "the communist hypothesis". On those terms, it isn't surprising that he finds the current French president deficient. In The Meaning of Sarkozy, the first English translation of Badiou's angry meditations after the election, the author can hardly bear to write his subject's name, referring to him mostly as "the Rat Man".
In Britain, this brand of ultra-leftism rarely leaves the university campus. But in some quartiers of Paris, Badiou is practically a celebrity. Salons erupted with feverish chatter when The Meaning of Sarkozy was first published. So when he quotes Mao approvingly and equivocates over the rights and wrongs of the Cultural Revolution, it is hard not to feel a certain pride in workaday Anglo-Saxon empiricism, which inoculates us against the tyranny of pure political abstraction. Badiou erects a huge theoretical edifice, heaping abstract nouns on top of each other, unhindered by any apparent obligation to cite data in support of his views. He thinks, therefore it is.

Yet the book is strangely compelling. Badiou is a serious philosopher, literary critic and dramatist. While the destination of his intellectual march is borderline Bolshevik, he makes some sensible observations about conservatism along the way. And since Britain's next prime minister is probably going to be a conservative, it is bracing to see that ideology assailed with such passion. After all, no one in the Labour party is doing the job.

So what is the meaning of Sarkozy? In Badiou's analysis, the conservative proposition in the election was basically fear. Sarkozy conjured a spectre of social breakdown and moral decline, playing on public concerns about crime and immigration. He had already cultivated a reputation as a hard man as interior minister under President Jacques Chirac and famously responded to race riots in Paris suburbs in 2005 with a promise to "hose the scum" off the streets.

That message was refined, in the presidential campaign, into a more nuanced promise of purgative change: a return to traditional social values and a "rupture" from social malaise, for which, Sarkozy implied, the left, with its fetish for all things anti-establishment, was to blame.

And how did the left respond? Demoralised and infiltrated by free market ideas, the Socialists, lead by Ségolène Royale, could only muster an appeal to fear of a different kind: that the right would tear away what few protections the state still offered against the ravages of a sink-or-swim capitalist economy. Badiou scorns this proposition as a vacuous derivation of Sarkozy's fear-mongering. He calls it fear of fear.

In such circumstances, the act of voting, he says, is senseless complicity in corruption. The lesser of two evils is still evil. He is particularly disgusted by the idea that popular consultation is supposed to bestow moral legitimacy on the winner. He deconstructs, with languid, sarcastic ferocity, the notion that "France chose Sarkozy". Which France? On whose terms did it choose?

Badiou's proposition is that rather than vote, the individual should reject all conventional political parameters and anchor himself to a transcendent "truth proposition". By that, he means an idea - artistic, social, political - that does not depend on the surrounding commercial or cultural climate to give it meaning, and that expresses in some way the collective will of humanity to advance towards its ultimate emancipation. (If that sounds abstract, consider a fragment of the prose Badiou uses to develop the thesis: "In this way, we construct, in the temporality of opinion, a different duration, distinct from that which we have been driven into by the symbolisation of the state.") In other words, any belief that reinforces the capitalist status quo is morally suspect.

Badiou strives to distinguish his notion of communism from the one that rather conspicuously failed in the 20th century. But it is hard to escape the impression of an ageing class warrior - Badiou is 72 - railing against the waning of his own strength. He is the quintessential soixante-huitard - a veteran of the revolution manque in Paris in May 1968 - who, after climbing down from the barricade, forged a comfortable career teaching successive generations about the moral bankruptcy of the bourgeois state from inside bourgeois, state-funded universities.

No wonder he despises Sarkozy. The "bling bling" president with the pop star wife, who has actively positioned himself as a scourge of all that May 1968 represents in France, is Badiou's existential enemy. He sees Sarkozy as the embodiment of a strain of moral cowardice in French politics, in which the defining moment was the installation of Marshal Pétain as head of the pro-Nazi collaborationist government. For Badiou, Sarkozy is a symbol of "transcendent Pétainism".

This is a very French piece of political venom and many of Badiou's arguments don't apply in Britain. Still, there are motifs that resonate sharply on this side of the Channel. His account of the intellectual flaccidity of the French Socialist party - its fear-of-fear agenda - feels like a summary of Labour's next manifesto, while his attack on Sarkozy's promise of social renewal also applies to the "broken society" theme on which David Cameron campaigns.

Cameron has gone out of his way to avoid sounding authoritarian on social issues (remember the hug-a-hoodie phase?), but he shares with Sarkozy a kind of conservative moralism disguised as social radicalism. The underlying argument, familiar from any number of Daily Mail editorials, goes as follows: politically, the left is obsessed with state power; culturally, it indulges moral permissiveness. As state intervention increases, it creates welfare dependency, corroding individuals' self-reliance and allowing social bonds, such as the traditional family, to atrophy. Meanwhile, absolute moral authority is replaced by cultural relativism and, in the British version, "political correctness".

This argument, suggests Badiou, is a device to woo bourgeois voters, whose two greatest fears are crime and loss of wealth. It would not do for a politician to point out to those voters a connection between crime and inequality, since that would imply that they should surrender some of their wealth to the common good. Instead a new explanation for crime is devised - it is a moral failing among poor people. Better still, it is a moral failing engendered by the left! So not only has the left failed to emancipate the poor, it has actually corrupted them. The middle classes need no longer feel guilty at the sight of poverty. In fact, they can bask in the righteous glow of victimhood, believing themselves besieged by a degenerate, aggressive lower class.

In other words, the whole "broken society" line is an elaborate way of blaming poor people for their own problems and so, conveniently, justifying a refusal to change an iniquitous economic hierarchy. In the context of David Cameron's Tory party, it hardly makes sense to describe this as "transcendent Pétainism". So what, for the sake of argument, would our national equivalent be? Of what political thread might Cameron be the sublime manifestation?

It would be economically liberal - a variant of Thatcherism - but dressed in vague aspirations to achieve social justice. It would eschew any radical assault on the free market, diverting public anger instead against the vice of "antisocial behaviour". And it would embody the politics of winning and wielding power as a glorified public relations exercise. The word for that, of course, is Blairism.

- Rafael Behr

The Observer, Sunday 1 March 200

Media under attack in Sri Lanka fights back

2011-10-07T06:57:00.000+05:30

Lasantha Ruhunage, the Secretary of Sri Lanka Working Journalists' Association has complained to the Election Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya against the alleged election malpractices of Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.

Ruhunage a journalist of Ravaya newspaper says “Defence Secretary requested the people to assure the victory of Milinda Moragoda and later he addressed a campaign rally that supports UPFA candidates."

He argues that senior public officers do not have political rights. He further argues that the Defense Secretary's move is against the establishment code and amount to misuse of public assets.

Meanwhile, five media organizations of Sri Lanka vehemently condemned an action what they call as high handed by Moratuwa [p;ice of Sri Lanka.

The police is alleged of erasing a footage of a journalist of Sirasa TV Indika Sri Aravinda.
Issuing a joint communique, the five media organizations urged the Inspector General of Police to conduct a fair investigation on the police action.

The five media organizations, namely the Sri Lanka Working Journalists' Association, The Federation of Media Employees Trade Union, The Sri Lanka Muslim Media Forum, The Sri Lanka Tamil Journalists Alliance, The Sri Lanka Chapter of the South Asian Free Media Association and the Free Media Movement say this action is violation of people's tight to be

True story of recovering oil from Sri Lanka's Mannar Basin

2011-10-03T05:25:00.000+05:30

By Reuters

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Sunday said natural gas has been found off the Indian Ocean island nation in the Mannar Basin, in a well Cairn India Ltd. said required more exploration to see if it is commercially viable.

Cairn, a subsidiary of London-listed Cairn Energy Plc , said the find was Sri Lanka's first confirmed hydrocarbon discovery.

"Explorers have informed me that they have found a gas deposit in the seabed," presidential spokesman Wijayananda Herath quoted Rajapaksa as saying to an audience in the hill city of Kandy.

Cairn Lanka, a subsidiary of Cairn India, has one of eight blocks in the Mannar Basin and began drilling in August.

It struck a 25-metre hydrocarbon column showing primarily gas with "other liquid hydrocarbon potential" in the CLPL-Dorado-91H/1z wildcat well, drilled at a water depth of 1,354 metres (4,442 feet).

"Further drilling will be required to establish the commerciality of the discovery," Cairn said in a statement.

In 2007, the government gave one Mannar block each to India and China, but neither has drilled. The remaining five blocks are to be awarded by tender.

"We are optimistic that this will be commercially successful," Petroleum Industries Minister Susil Premajayantha told Reuters. "Now with this discovery, we can get good competition and offers for the remaining five blocks when we go for tendering."

Interest in the blocks has grown, but most operators have been happy to let Cairn try its luck before making any commitments while the government smooths an erratic oil and gas regulatory regime, diplomats following the exploration in Sri Lanka have told Reuters.

It is unclear whether the find will affect terms of a deal by London-listed miner Vedanta Resources to take a majority stake in Cairn India.

Sri Lanka's government has said seismic data shows the potential for more than 1 billion barrels of oil under the sea in a 30,000 sq km area of the Mannar Basin, off the island's north western coast.

Sri Lanka produces no oil and is dependent on imports, which cost it $3 billion in 2009. Since the end of a 25-year war with Tamil separatists two years ago, the government has tried to reinvigorate oil and gas exploration.

American and Russian companies from the mid-1960s to 1984 explored the Cauvery Basin off the northern shore, but only traces were found and no commercial oil was produced.

Violence onshore from Sri Lanka's civil war with the Tamil Tigers ended offshore exploration there.

There are nearly 30 operating wells on the Indian side of the Cauvery Basin, and Calgary-based Bengal Energy Ltd. has exploration rights for 1,362 sq km there. Sri Lanka is hopeful that success will be reflected on its side of the field.

There is also speculation that Sri Lanka's eastern coastal shelf has major oil and gas potential, but there is no seismic data yet to back it up. (Additional reporting by Devidutta Tripathy in New Delhi; Writing by Bryson Hull. Editing by Jane Merriman)

How Raj Rajarathnam was trapped by FBI

2011-10-02T07:32:00.000+05:30

By David Rose (Vanity Fair)
Earlier this year, Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, was convicted of conspiracy and securities fraud in one of the biggest insider-trading cases in the history of Wall Street. But there was another reason the Federal Government was interested in Rajaratnam – his alleged financial support for Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka, whose cause is spearheaded by the ferocious Tamil Tiger terrorists. Vanity Fair’s David Rose gets the untold story from a Tamil Tiger turned FBI informant.

In November 2002, the Doubletree hotel in Somerset, New Jersey, hosted a daylong gala: lunch, speeches, dinner, more speeches and finally dancing. There were more than 400 guests, and they were all there to mark the 25th anniversary of the Ilankai Tamil Sangam, ostensibly a cultural and social organization. Many of its members supported the demand by Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority for an independent state, and although the Sangam was not avowedly militant, the flags and videos of the movement’s military wing, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), were on display throughout the hall. The Tamil Tigers, as the group is known, were then in the 19th year of a civil war against the Sri Lankan government. Designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 1997, the Tamil Tigers invented the suicide-bombing belt, a technology it exported to Hamas and Al-Qaeda. The Tigers were responsible for hundreds of suicide attacks on buses, temples, and shopping malls and for village massacres in which children were killed in front of their parents. In May 1991, the Tigers assassinated the former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Two years later, they assassinated the Sri Lankan president, Ranasinghe Premadasa.

One of the distinguishing features of the Tamil Tigers is that the group was mostly financed from abroad by the large Tamil Diaspora. Many of its donors were eminently respectable, and worked in America, Canada, Australia, and Europe in professions such as medicine and law. At about seven p.m., it fell to a hospital anesthesiologist to introduce the Doubletree event’s star speaker, Raj Rajaratnam, a corpulent Tamil whose Galleon Group hedge fund had already made him the world’s richest Sri Lankan. His net worth would eventually reach a reported $1.8 billion.

Unbeknownst to Rajaratnam, his audience that night included an FBI informant equipped with a concealed recording device. The informant, whom I will call by one of his nicknames, Rudra, would eventually make thousands of hours of clandestine recordings in the course of his 11-year undercover career, and the Department of Justice has used them as the basis of 20 successful criminal prosecutions. Rudra says his memory of what Rajaratnam said at the gala is clear and it is supported by his former FBI handlers, who heard the recordings when they were made. “He got up and flanked by LTTE flags, he said, ‘Everyone must support the Tigers’ cause,’” Rudra recalls. “He mentioned the fact that his wife was an Indian Sikh [a minority group from which some had also mounted a terrorist campaign aimed at creating a separate state].

Rajaratnam said: ‘They’re terrorists. We’re terrorists. We are all freedom fighters.’ Everyone laughed. Then he added: ‘They’re our terrorists, and you all must support this struggle.’”

Rudra says that Rajaratnam sounded all the more persuasive because his own generosity was well established. For example, a few were aware within the Tamil community that Rajaratnam apparently had given the Tamil cause at least $1 million in recognition of the Tamil victory in 2000 over the Sri Lankan army at the strategic Elephant Pass, which controls access to Sri Lanka’s northern peninsula, where ethnic Tamils are concentrated. (John M. Dowd, a partner at the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which represents Raj Rajaratnam, said that Rajaratnam has never directly supported LTTE terrorism. He declined to answer specific questions from Vanity Fair, saying that he had nothing to add to the position already set out on behalf of his client in court filings.)

In May 2011, Raj Rajaratnam was convicted in New York on 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud in one of the biggest hedge-fund insider-trading cases in the history of Wall Street. The trial revealed how Rajaratnam developed a web of corrupt relationships and paid millions of dollars for insider tips that enabled him to beat the market time and again. But throughout the two-month hearing, prosecutors said nothing about one of the uses to which Rajaratnam allegedly put his criminally acquired fortune—funding Tamil terrorism.
Jay Kanetkar, who was Rudra’s main FBI handler from 1999 until he left the Bureau in June 2006, says that Rajaratnam’s alleged involvement with terrorism was a significant factor in why the FBI and the Department of Justice went to such extraordinary lengths to nail him. “It was a conscious decision,” Kanetkar says, “to treat Raj the terrorist the way they treated Al Capone when they got him for tax evasion.”

The money trail that leads to Rajaratnam begins in a federal prison in Buffalo, New York, early in 1999. Jay Kanetkar and an FBI colleague, both with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Newark, New Jersey, happened to be looking for a new case to work when they got a call from an agent in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) named Kevin Ryan. He said that Rudra was coming to the end of a five-year prison term imposed for storing two kilograms of heroin in a suitcase at his home on Staten Island as part of a drug-smuggling operation organized by the Tamil Tigers to raise money. A Sri Lankan citizen, now he was due to be deported. That fact, Ryan suggested, might give the FBI some leverage to persuade Rudra to become an informant. Rudra, whose mild, slightly bumbling exterior conceals an evident sangfroid, was then in his mid-thirties and he readily agreed. Although he had been drawn into the Tamil Tiger orbit while studying in India and had even met its murderous leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, he says now that his commitment to their cause had only been lukewarm. He was also angered by the group’s failure to check on his family while he was in prison. Rudra says, “So I decided: I’m going to bring them down.”

Soon after being recruited by the FBI, Rudra met one of the Tigers’ leading international fund-raisers, Vijayshanthar Patpanathan, also known as Chandru, who told him that Rajaratnam was a “high-level business guy” who played a critical role in funding the terrorist group. (Chandru was later convicted and jailed by a New York Federal Court for conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, as a result of information supplied by Rudra.) “Three years before that 2002 fund-raiser, Rajaratnam was identified by Rudra as a major source,” says Kanetkar. Rudra also told the FBI that Raj’s father, Jesuthasan Rajaratnam, a wealthy financial manager in his own right, was another generous donor. Father and son had set up the Rajaratnam Family Foundation, to support charitable causes in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. But it was also a clandestine financial channel for the Tamil Tigers, recent court filings allege. (John M. Dowd, who represents Jesuthasan Rajaratnam as well as his son, Raj, had no comment on specific questions regarding the allegations, but he did say that neither man had ever directly supported the LTTE).

For Rudra, meeting Tiger operatives was not difficult: they were often on hand at social functions, such as those organized by the Sangam. The challenge for him and the FBI was to build his credibility. The ruse his handlers devised was for Rudra to intimate that he had had contact with top Mafia figures in prison, and that through them he had access to corrupt US officials. These, he suggested, could get things done for the Tamil Tigers – such as smuggle Tamils who lacked proper visas into the United States. Beginning in the fall of 2001, Chandru paid Rudra $6,000 a head in order to arrange safe passage at Newark International Airport for at least nine such individuals, whose entry was co-ordinated by the FBI and the INS. Rudra used his supposed “contacts” again in April 2004, when Chandru told him that Father Gaspar Raj, a Catholic priest who was also a key Tamil Tiger member, had been detained by Federal Agents at Newark and was about to be deported. Rudra says: “I called Jay Kanetkar and said he should get him out, and he did.”

Prabhakaran ran the Tamil Tigers abroad on classic, cellular lines, with each group operating independently and unaware of the others’ activities. But Rudra’s standing rose so high that he became an exception, the trusted go-to guy for every Tiger cell in America. “I’ve seen the e-mails,” he says. “They thought I could do anything.” Eventually, he was working with four separate cells, which were variously attempting not only to raise money but to arrange supplies of weapons, including surface-to-air missiles. (The would-be arms smugglers were also arrested and convicted on the basis of Rudra’s testimony.) Meanwhile, says Kanetkar, “he had four concealed video cameras in his living room, plus two in the kitchen. We had every angle covered.” Every time Rudra spoke on the phone or met a contact, the conversation was recorded.
Occasionally there were hiccups, such as the time a recording device fell out of Rudra’s pocket in front of Chandru – “I told him it was a pager,” Rudra says. His reassurance must have worked, for in August 2003 he accompanied Chandru to Sri Lanka. There had been a cease-fire, and they were able to travel from the capital, Colombo to the Vanni, the fortress housing 300,000 people that the Tamil Tigers had built from scratch in the island’s northern jungles. The Vanni had underground bunkers for advanced computers and communications equipment as well as two fully equipped subterranean hospitals. There, Rudra met most of the Tamil Tigers’ senior leadership, wearing a concealed FBI wire all the while.

By 2005, Rudra’s penetration of the Tigers’ network was so deep that the FBI had acquired a comprehensive picture of the group’s fund-raising capability. Raj Rajaratnam’s name came up frequently. “On the recordings, he was spoken of in a reverential way, with all the kudos he got as a financial whizz,” says Kanetkar. “At the same time, he wasn’t a commoner, which is why it was hard for Rudra to get close to him. He was reserved for the big stuff.” For example, in September 2005, two Tamil Tiger members were duped by the FBI. In an attempt to have the Tigers removed from the government terrorism list, they agreed to pay $1 million to two “corrupt State Department officials” (in reality, FBI agents) whom Rudra had introduced them to. The Tamils went straight from that meeting to Rajaratnam’s house, apparently to arrange to get the money, according to Rudra and Kanetkar.

“Rudra told us that the LTTE had given Raj a very large sum of money for him to invest in the Galleon fund,” says Kanetkar. “It was clear that the Tigers did have that kind of money. They were raising $1 million every time they held a function, and also going door to door – extorting people to pay thousands of dollars for the next wave of operations.” Kanetkar and his counterterrorist colleagues had been aware of evidence that Rajaratnam was using illegal insider information since 2001, when wiretaps caught an executive from the Intel Corporation offering him insider tips. The FBI saw the two endeavors – terrorism and insider trading – as connected, says Kanetkar: “Money from insider trading was going into his pocket, and money from his pocket was going to the LTTE.”

For the Tamil Tigers, possibly the most damaging consequence of Rudra’s work undercover was the eventual closure by the authorities of the group’s main fund-raising “front” charities, not only in America but elsewhere, including Britain, where Rudra, accompanied by Kanetkar, shared his knowledge with the British Security Service, MI5. “This had a measurable impact on the course of the war,” says a former Department of Justice official. “It significantly weakened their capacity to fight.” The Tigers’ last stand came in April 2009, when the Sri Lankan army finally overran the Vanni, killing not only Prabhakaran but, allegedly, thousands of noncombatants.

Of the Tamil front groups, the biggest was the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO), which was active in 17 countries. Its assets were frozen by the US Treasury in November 2007. Rudra’s secret recordings included detailed accounts by Tiger leaders of how money was transferred from the TRO to the terrorist group itself, and in this case there is a copious documentary record of the role played by Rajaratnam. An affidavit filed in April 2007 by the FBI’s special agent Louis Forella states that the banking records of “individual B” – Rajaratnam, according to court filings show that “[he] wrote three checks totalling $1,000,000 between July and September 2000” that eventually made their way to a TRO account in London, from which much of the money was later withdrawn in cash. The affidavit also cites letters from a later-convicted Tamil Tiger fund-raiser named Karunakaran Kandasamy about the need to fulfill Rajaratnam’s “long lasting desire” to meet Prabhakaran, describing the Galleon Group founder as “among the people who provide financial support for our struggle for freedom. . . [He] has been working actively on the forefront.”
Court filings in a pending civil action against Rajaratnam, being brought by Tamil Tiger victims, more than 30 of their families cite a State Department cable dated October 2006 from James R. Moore, the Deputy Chief of the mission of the US Embassy in Colombo, which was copied to the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI. Moore described his dealings with Sri Lankan officials on Tamil Tiger financing, and quoted reports from the local central bank’s financial intelligence unit and the ministry of foreign affairs on the TRO and its influx of funds from America (more than from any other country). “Of these remittances from the U.S., the [Rajaratnam] family is the largest private donor,” the cable said. In the period January 2003 to March 2006, according to one of the reports cited by Moore, the TRO in Sri Lanka received nearly $10 million from its affiliate in America, a trend that was continuing, with $566,000 sent in the single month of August 2006. Overall, the Rajaratnam Foundation was contributing more than 35 percent.

The cable added: “These funds have been received from the TRO office registered in Cumberland . . . Maryland, which is the entity that is presently being investigated by the US authorities”—the investigation spearheaded by Rudra—“with regard to arms purchases for LTTE.” When it finally shut the TRO down, the US Treasury stated that the organization had “facilitated LTTE procurement operations” including “the purchase of munitions, equipment, communication devices, and other technology.”

Tax and bank records confirm the scale of Rajaratnam’s support. In the course of 2003, he gave $5.05 million to his family foundation, which in turn passed on $5 million to the TRO. In June 2004, the court filings state, he gave another $1 million directly to the TRO.

At the end of that year, the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated coastal Sri Lanka. Rajaratnam responded by setting up another charity, Tsunami Relief, Inc., which made appeals to the public and was administered by two of his staff at the Galleon Group headquarters, in New York. In all it raised more than $7 million. While money did go to the Sri Lankan government, nearly half of it was given to the TRO in the US and in Sri Lanka.

Rajaratnam gave few interviews before his arrest, in September 2009. But just a month before, he told a Sri Lankan business magazine that he was proud of his “humanitarian work in Sri Lanka,” saying that in the future, he would like to do more. “I’m a firm believer that with success comes responsibility and the incredible power of possibility,” he said, “a responsibility to help those less fortunate and the possibility of actually succeeding in making a difference.” Rajaratnam’s criminal lawyers have told reporters he should receive a lenient sentence for his insider-trading crimes because of his charitable generosity. He is due to be sentenced on October 13.
Could Rajaratnam have genuinely confused charitable works with financial support for terrorism? The evidence suggests he knew exactly what he was doing. In 2001, on the Web site of the Tamil Sangam, the organization Rajaratnam addressed at the Doubletree, Rajaratnam’s father provided the research for statements that set out the association’s credo: “The LTTE is a freedom movement. Historically, freedom movements have been labelled as terrorist organizations by the oppressors. From George Washington to Mahatma Gandhi to Nelson Mandela, all freedom fighters have been called terrorists . . . LTTE has not engaged in any killing that is not justifiable in the context of war.”

Understandably, that’s not how Mike Elsner, the attorney from Charleston, South Carolina, whose law firm, Motley Rice, has filed a claim against Rajaratnam, his father, and the TRO, on behalf of LTTE victims, sees the matter. Insider trading is not exactly a victimless crime, but to work out who is doing the suffering involves calculations that verge on the hypothetical. Elsner’s clients, in contrast, suffered concretely and very directly. In his office he showed me a video compiled from interviews he had conducted in Sri Lanka. They are heartbreaking. Parents – some of them, in Sri Lanka’s multicultural society, Tamil themselves – talk about losing their children in horrifying circumstances, such as the destruction of a high-school baseball team caught in a blast at a Colombo railway station, or a young couple blown up two months before their wedding, and who were buried in the clothes they never got to wear at the ceremony. “This is what Rajaratnam was paying for,” Elsner says. In the response filed to the victims’ lawsuit, Rajaratnam’s lawyers state that there is “no connection” between Rajaratnam’s donations to the TRO and the harm suffered by the claimants, adding that there is no evidence he ever sponsored acts of violence.

Under US law, you do not have to prove that money a person gave to an entity that funded terrorism was actually spent on bombs and bullets: it is enough to show that the recipient body did in fact use some of its funds for terrorist purposes.

The suit, which was filed in Federal Court in New Jersey, has already cleared its initial legal hurdles, with the court accepting jurisdiction and upholding it as a claim for crimes against humanity.
The suit is asking for damages of an unspecified amount. Rajaratnam will almost certainly go to prison as a result of his conviction in the Galleon case. If he ever gets out of jail, he may not still be so rich.
Courtesy: Vanity Fair

A not significant Chief Minister conference of Sri Lanka

2011-09-24T10:29:00.000+05:30

The writer sent the following news story to a pro-government English website he is writing freelance. It was rejected and the editors comment is not a significant event.

Yes, of course. But this is public money.

The 29th Chief Minister conference of Sri Lanka is held today and tomorrow at Centuria Tourist Resort, Embilipitiya.

The Chief Ministers of eight Provincial Councils, the Chief Secretaries of Provinces, Representatives of Treasury and Finance Commission are to participate in the conference, says the Chairman of the Chief Ministers' Conference Sabaragamuwa Provincial Council Chief Minister Maheepala Herath.

The chairmanship of the Chief Ministers' Conference is to be handed over to the Uva Provincial Council Chief Minister Shashindra Rajapaksa who is to host the 30th Chief Ministers' Conference.

Who transports C-4 to Jaffna?

2011-09-21T05:33:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka police recovered a stock of C-4 explosives planned to be transported to Jaffna in the Northern Province from Monarala in the Uva Province.

Monaragala police says that the stock of C-4 explosives were found last night hidden in the dashboard of a passenger transport bus. The bus is a regular service from Monaragala to Jaffna.

The weight of the stock of explosives is 615 grams, police say.

The driver and the conductor of the bus has been arrested and the interrogation is under way, police say.

Thorough investigation is expected to be conducted by the authorities to identify the elements that are behind the action that appears as an attempt of restarting terrorist activities.

Later reports say Sri Lanka police has sought the support of the military to arrest an Army official who is suspected of attempting to smuggle the stock of C-4 explosives.

The arrested driver and the conductor of the bus have stated that the parcel was given to them by an Army official from Bibile area that worked in Kilinochchi promising to collect it from Monaragala.

A special police team has been deployed under the instructions of Police Superintendent of Monaragala Wasantha Kandewaththa to carry on the further investigations.

Repeated railway accidents in Sri Lanka; six killed, scores injured

2011-09-19T03:42:00.002+05:30

Another train of Sri Lanka Railway met with an accident this morning as a Vavuniya bound train collided with a goods lorry.

The accident occurred on a railway crossing in Anuradhapura and police is investigating if the driver of the lorry drove it ignoring the signals.

The driver of the lorry was killed as the cleaner was admitted into Anuradhapura hospital with injuries.
Yesterday, five persons including an engine driver, an assistant driver, another Sri Lanka Railway employee were killed as an intercity train bound Kandy collided with another passenger train at Alawwa railway station along the main line.

A Thai national Buddhist monk is also among the deceased. At least 30 passengers were injured in the fatal accident.

65 unauthorized children's homes identified from Sri Lanka

2011-09-16T17:02:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka Probationary and Child Protection Services Department says that 65 children's homes have been identified as unauthorized places.

Probationary and Child Protection Services Commissioner Sarath Abhayagunawardhana said that he had instructed the Probationary Commissioners island wide to register them or to close these children's homes.

The department says that some of these places lack the minimum requirements for registration as a children's home.

The children's authorities island wide are awaken on the children's homes after a child was burnt to death at an unauthorized children's home in Gampaha district last week.

800 illegal abortions each day in Sri Lanka

2011-09-16T17:00:00.000+05:30

Kapila Jayarathna, the Community Health Specialist of the Family Health Bureau of Sri Lanka reveals that recent survey has pointed out that around 800 illegal abortions take place in the island each day.

He also said that 80% of the abortions are for the women above the age of 35 years.

The official said that the number of abortions in Sri Lanka per annum had been estimated as around 290,000.

Every year Sri Lankan women giver birth to around 390,000 children.

Abortion is illegal in Sri Lanka although a large number of illegal abortion centers operate country wide.

දොස්තරලා සටනේ! ඔන්න මහින්ද මහත්තයෝ පුළුවන් නම් පෙන්නන්නකෝ වැඩ! / Sri Lanka doctors rise against government economic policy

2011-09-06T06:34:00.000+05:30

මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ ආණ්ඩුව කොටි සංවිධානයට මුහුණ දී ජය ගත්තේ ය.

එයින් පසු අද දක්වා එයට සැලකිය යුතු අභියෝගයක් එල්ල වූයේ නැත.

එහෙත්, ඔන්න දැන් බඩු ඇවිල්ලා ය. සිද්ධිය මෙසේ ය. උපුටා ගැනීම දිවයිනෙනි.

මාලබේ පිහිටි පෞද්ගලික වෛද්‍ය විද්‍යාලයට නීත්‍යනුකූලභාවය ලබාදීම සඳහා මුද්‍රණය කර ඇති ගැසට්‌ නිවේදනය අහෝසි කරන ලෙස ඉල්ලමින් රජයේ වෛද්‍යවරු හෙට (7 වැනිදා) උදෑසන 8 සිට දවල් 12.00 දක්‌වා කාලය තුළ දීපව්‍යාප්ත සංකේත වැඩ වර්ජනයක නිරත වන බව රජයේ වෛද්‍ය නිලධාරින්ගේ සංගමය පවසයි.

මාලබේ පිහිටි පෞද්ගලික වෛද්‍ය විද්‍යාලයට නීත්‍යනුකූලභාවය ලබාදීම හා එම වෛද්‍ය විද්‍යාලය හරහා රජයේ වෛද්‍ය විද්‍යාලවලින් පිරිනමන එම්. බී. බී. එස්‌. වෛද්‍ය උපාධිය ලබාදීමට තීරණය වී තිබීම සම්බන්ධයෙන් තම සංගමය දැඩි විරෝධය පළ කරන බව රජයේ වෛද්‍ය නිලධාරීන්ගේ සංගමයේ උපලේකම් වෛද්‍ය සංකල්ප මාරසිංහ මහතා "දිවයින"ට පැවැසීය.

ඉදිරි සති දෙක ඇතුළතදී අදාළ ගැසට්‌ නිවේදනය අහෝසි කිරීමට බලධාරීන් පියවර නොගන්නේ නම් අඛණ්‌ඩව මීට වඩා දැඩි වෘත්තීය සමිති ක්‍රියාමාර්ගයකට යැමට ඊයේ (05 දා) රැස්‌වූ වෛද්‍ය නිලධාරීන්ගේ සංගමයේ විධායක කමිටුව තීරණය කළ බවද වෛද්‍ය මාරසිංහ තවදුරටත් "දිවයින"ට පැවසීය.

අපි මෙම සටන ගැන අපේ අදහස් පළ කිරීමෙන් වළකිමු. තමන්ගේ මට්ටං තම්මැට්ටං ය. ආණ්ඩුවේ සැබෑ අයිතිකාරයන් වන මෙම ඉහළ මධ්‍යම පංතික තීරුව තුළ ඇති වන මෙම ගැඹුරු ගැටුමේදී අපි හුදෙක් නිරීක්ෂකයන් පමණක් වන්නට කැමැත්තෙමු.

මේ වනාහි ආණ්ඩුවේ ආරථික ප්‍රතිපත්තිවලට එරෙහිව එම ප්‍රතිපත්තිවලින් ඵල නෙළා ගන්නා පංතියක් විසින් ම දියත් කරන අමුතු ම සටනකි.

සටනේ දෙපාර්ශ්වයේ ම ඉන්නේ එක වගේ චණ්ඩි ය. ඒ අතරින් දැනට වීරයා මහින්ද මහත්තයා ය. ඒ නිසා අපි මෙසේ කියමු.

ඔන්න මහින්ද මහත්තයෝ පුළුවන් නම් පෙන්නන්නකෝ වැඩ!

A wave of strikes in Sri Lanka

2011-09-06T06:19:00.002+05:30

Sri Lanka is being taken by a wave of strikes in public sector.

The doctors are up in arms against the government's policy of establishing private medical colleges. Although the doctors are highly aligned towards privatization of their service, they appear as if in fear of losing their present prosperous status due to influx of more and more doctors to this ailing society thanks to Minister S.B. Disanayaka's dream of opening more medical colleges. God knows the motive of opening so much of medical colleges. Is lack of them the only problem in higher education of this country?

The management of the Ceylon Electricity Board granted a written pledge to the employees to pay the arrears of 10 months of pay hike granted in 2009 as per installments since January 2012, luckily to prevent a strike today.

The nurses of Anuradhapura hospital struck work for 24 hours since yesterday until this morning to express resentment to workload on them due to shortage in nursing cadre.

The non-academic staff of the universities stage a picketing during the lunch hour today ahead of the decision to report sick on 12th if solutions will not be granted immediately to their problem of salary anomalies.

Field officers of the Forest Department are working to rule since September 02.

Teachers say they will resort to stern trade union action since the Minister has not granted the pledges to resolve the long standing issue of salary anomalies and other problems.

And there are many more burning issues in public sector. The government has somehow broken the backbone of the trade unions. That is the only safeguard for them.

Two years passed the war is over. Small man is not getting any dividend of the so called peace. They are frustrated. Frustration will lead to many problems. Government needs to listen to them.

First implement the law, then call off it due to protest and finally discuss with the stakeholders

2011-09-06T05:40:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka government has decided to postpone the implementation of making the use of plastic crates compulsory in transporting vegetable by two weeks.

Earlier, the government stated that the persons transporting vegetables in ad-hoc wasteful ways would be brought to books since September 05.

However, the farmers protested the move and conducted a strike of bringing vegetable to Dambulla Economic Center as well.

Minister of Cooperatives and Internal Trade Johnston Fernando said that the Ministry would discuss with the stakeholders about the problem to identify the problems.

The farmers accuse that they were not consulted before taking this decision.

It seems the Sri Lanka government's methodology is first implement the law, then call off it due to protest and finally discuss with the stakeholders. Wonder of Asia!

Vegetable laws of Sri Lanka government

2011-09-03T10:42:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka government made the use of plastic crates compulsory in delivery of vegetables since September 01 to save the said 30% waste during transport.

However, the farmers alleged that it was an attempt to sell plastic crates and they were never consulted before imposing this law. Their suspicion about under hand commissions to politicians from plastic crate manufacturers is reasonable.

Farmers also say that suitable crates to deliver some kind of vegetable are unavailable. Farmers also point out that they have to hire vehicles to take the plastic crates back home after delivering vegetables to Economic Center bearing additional cost.

Two days after the vegetable market was affected by this law, the government has slacked it for some vegetables.

One of the readers of our Sinhala blog commented that he had observed that the farmers and traders stamp to press and pack cabbage to gunny sacks. It is true that the delivery methods cause massive waste. Everyone may have seen sometimes valuble fruits like mango are thrown to

But the new methods ask for more trips of lorries to transport vegetables. It also wastes fuel, a totally imported resource. Transport charges may increase and the vegetable prices may further go up.

The government should assist farmers to overcome the problem of wastage. Mere enforcing of laws and fines may affect all stakeholders in the vegetable sector.

What poisonous drink was Gunny Peiris to produce?

2011-08-30T06:31:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) says that the most wanted person in relation to an alleged attempt of producing a poisonous drink using Vinyl Chloride imported by a toy factory in Kosgama in Colombo district has been arrested at Chennai airport on a warrant issued by Interpol.

The suspect is Canute Siripalan Peiris aka Gunny Peiris left the country as the investigation was commenced, says CID adding that discussions are underway to bring him to Sri Lanks for investigations.

We searched for what this chemical substance as it was mentioned in many media and found that it was not the D but V and the Vinyl Chloride is a carcinogenic substance. used in PVC production.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Vinyl chloride is a chemical intermediate, not a final product. Due to the hazardous nature of vinyl chloride to human health there are no end products that use vinyl chloride in its monomer form. Polyvinyl chloride is very stable, storable, and nowhere near as acutely hazardous than the monomer.
Vinyl chloride liquid is fed to polymerization reactors where it is converted from a monomer to a polymer PVC. The final product of the polymerization process is PVC in either a flake or pellet form. From its flake or pellet form PVC is sold to companies that heat and mold the PVC into end products such as PVC pipe and bottles. Tens of billions of pounds of PVC are sold on the global market each year.
Until 1974, vinyl chloride was used in aerosol spray propellant. Prior to the removal of vinyl chloride from hair spray the accumulation of vinyl chloride vapor in hair salons may have exceeded the NOAEL (No Observable Adverse Effect Level) exposure guidelines.
Vinyl chloride was briefly used as an inhalational anaesthetic, in a similar vein to ethyl chloride, though its toxicity forced this practice to be abandoned.

Here is a part of chemical fact sheet of the substance.

HOW ARE PEOPLE EXPOSED TO VINYL CHLORIDE?Breathing: Most exposure to vinyl chloride occurs when people breathe contaminated air. If a water supply is contaminated, vinyl chloride can enter household air when the water is used for showering, cooking or laundry.
Drinking/Eating: People can be exposed to vinyl chloride if they drink or cook with contaminated water.
Touching: Vinyl chloride can be absorbed through the skin. This can occur when people handle vinyl products, contaminated soil, or bathe in contaminated water. However, skin absorption is probably a minor route of exposure.
DO STANDARDS EXIST FOR REGULATING VINYL CHLORIDE?Water: The state drinking water standard for vinyl chloride is 0.2 parts per billion (ppb). We suggest you stop drinking water containing more than 0.2 ppb. If levels of vinyl chloride are above 2 ppb, avoid washing or bathing with it. You may still use the water to flush toilets. Contact your local public health agency for more information specific to your situation.
Air: No standards exist for the amount of vinyl chloride allowed in the air of homes. Most people can’t smell vinyl chloride until the level is greater than 10 ppm. If you can smell the chemical, the level is too high to be safe.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources regulates the amount of vinyl chloride that can be released by industries.
WILL EXPOSURE TO VINYL CHLORIDE RESULT IN HARMFUL HEALTH EFFECTS?Vinyl chloride is very toxic. People should avoid contact with this chemical. The following health effects can occur after several years of exposure to vinyl chloride:
Damage to the nervous system

Changes in the immune system

Cancer: Exposure to vinyl chloride may increase a person's risk of developing cancer. Human and animal studies show higher rates of liver, lung and several other types of cancer.
Reproductive Effects: People exposed to levels of 1,000 ppm or more in air may have an increased risk of miscarriage and birth defects. Damage to male sperm-producing organs has occurred in laboratory animals.
Organ Systems: Being exposed to vinyl chloride can affect a person’s liver, kidney, lung, spleen, nervous system and blood.
Bone: Long-term exposure to high levels of vinyl chloride can result in a decrease in bone strength in fingers, arms, and joints.

The political party business

2011-08-25T07:58:00.000+05:30

Election Secretariat of Sri Lanka has sert last warnings to the secretaries of registered political parties giving time until September 01 to file all necessary documents to continue their registration.

Under the 2009, 58 revised act of elections, the political parties need to submit documents including annual audited budget to continue recognition.

Sri Lanka presently has 67 registered political parties and the Election Commissioner's Department say that some of them have not so far compiled some of the essential documents pertaining to extention of registration.

Certain political parties in Sri Lanka have become movable property or business of some unscrupulous elements. A large number of them are not actual organizations but what exist in files of some crooked individuals.

They trade political parties whenever their is market. Major politicians and sometimes political parties hire these lesser known name board parties for misdemeanor that goes in the name of democracy. A balm Mudalali ran for a major election sometimes back under a party he bought in the market like this. It is comparatively easy for present or former MPs to register a political party since they have been proved engaged in politics. In this way, political parties own many other names of political parties. What a funny freedom of organization!

There are some political parties that are established by apparent lunatics. One such filed nominations to Kurunegala Urban Council with the names of former President Chandrika Bandaranaike's son and daughter mentioning their address as Independent Square, Colombo. It is yet to be revealed if the so-called secretary of this political party forged signatures of these persons.

Yes, there is rock at the mouth of Sri Lanka's new harbor

2011-08-24T19:36:00.000+05:30

After so many denials locally, Sri Lanka government has internationally assumed that a massive rock is blocking the entrance of the newly built Hambanthota harbor.

After spending 1.4 billion borrowed US dollars to build the harbor and an year after all ceremonies to declare open the harbor, the government has now sought another loan of US dollars 40 million from China to blast the rock.

Here is the Reuters report:

Sri Lanka seeks $40m. Chinese loan for port rock removal
Wednesday , 24 August 2011

Sri Lanka’s Port Authority on Tuesday said it has asked China for $40 million loan to demolish a massive seabed rock obstructing the entrance of its new $1.4 billion Hambantota port, due to start commercial operations this year.

The island nation launched the port in August 2010 with an initial target of handling 2,500 ships annually, as a cornerstone of a $6 billion drive to rebuild infrastructure that was neglected during a 25-year civil war.

But large ships are yet to call on the port and the country’s main opposition United National Party (UNP) has pointed to the rock as a sign of government mismanagement.

Although the port is in President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s home district in southern Sri Lanka, along the ancient "Silk Route" trading path, the rival UNP first proposed it.

"This rock was identified before we started the port construction," Sri Lanka Ports Authority Chairman Priyath Wickrama told Reuters. "We need just below $40 million to blast it. We have requested the amount from China."

Sri Lanka is banking on the port to help fuel growth targets of 8-9 percent in its $50 billion economy.

It has increasingly been relying on China, Russia, India and to a lesser degree, Brazil, for the financing and expertise required for its post-war rebuilding plans.

Beijing on commercial terms loaned a combined $1.24 billion to build the port and a 4 million metric tonne fuel bunkering facility, all of it built by Chinese engineers -- much to the chagrin of neighbouring India.

Hambantota is about 2 km from one of the world’s biggest east-west shipping lanes, and is bidding to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games. The government is building Sri Lanka’’s second international airport there, and a master-planned city.

"Normally ships don’’t call at once. They need time to study business opportunities," Wickrama said. "We have to develop secondary facilities at the port and once we have them along with bunkering facilities, we can get ships to Hambantota."

In June, Wickrama said the ports authority had secured around $1 billion in investment into port facilities, including warehousing.

The fuel bunkering terminal is expected to start operations next month, four months behind schedule.

-Reuters-

Policeman, epilepsy patient beaten to death thanks to Grease Devils; are we crazy?

2011-08-22T07:48:00.000+05:30

A police officer was beaten to death and five civilians were shot and injured in Sri Lankan yesterday in an incident related to the fear psychosis known as Grease Devil.

The incident took place in Managunduwa in Puttalam area as some people caught a suspicious person. As they were taking him to be handed over to the Village Officer, they were shot by an unidentified group injuring five persons including a woman.

A tense situation erupted there and Navy and Army officials were deployed to defuse the tension. However, police say hundreds of e people pelted stones at the security forces. Meanwhile. a police officer was caught by the mob and his body was later found beaten to death, police say.

This incident took place before 24 hours passed the residents of a village in Vavuniya in the Northern Province brutally beat two police officers suspecting they were the so called Grease Devils.

Grease Devils still haunt in the minds of the people despite whatever the government and the security forces say in media. Yesterday, the body of a epilepsy patient who was escaping from Gileemale hospital in Kahawatta area where the Grease Devil myth originated was found 50 meters away from the hospital beaten to death.

A chronic epilepsy patient can be psychiatric too, medical sources say. Once police beat to death a mental patient publicly near Bambalapitiya beach. Now, people do it in Kahawatta.

The victim is a 37 year old father of two.

Wonder is that this killing of epilepsy patient did not hit headlines. A man, not a normal man but an epilepsy patient beaten to death and media does not care it!

Human rights organizations and the civil society also remain mostly dumbfound before the spate of violent incidents related to this mythical Grease Devil.

Don't cry for Nil Manel Mal; we have NaMal

2011-08-21T14:10:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka's national flower is not Na flower, although the President's son or the son of the nation is Namal.

But, now it seems that we can replace the national flower with Na Mala (Mesua ferrea) since the original national flower Nil Manel is endangered.

Sri Lanka's national flower Nil Manel or blue water lily (Nymphaea stellata) has been identified hybridizing with a foreign water lilly in natural environment, says Prof. Deepthi Yakandawala of Botanical Department of Peradeniya University.

In February 1986 blue water lily was chosen as the National flower. It is found all the parts of Sri Lanka and grows in the shallow water. Its pPetals are arranged like a star and the flat round waterproof leaves are bright green.

Considered a symbol of purity and truth, it has a sweet fragrance and used for offering at Buddhist Temples and rituals for god Vishnu.

Sigiriya frescoes of women holds these flowers in their hands.

I remember that Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) in its prime time of state building named Niyangala Mala (Gloriosa Superba) the national flower of Ealam.

No Niyangala and no Nil Manel too now. Yet we have our Na Mala.

Sri Lanka Central Cultural Fund performs miracles with five rupees

2011-08-21T09:25:00.001+05:30

A news item in state-owned Sunday newspaper The Silumina said that Sri Lanka government has commenced a special project to conserve the ola leaf ancient manuscripts that are found in the temples island wide.

The same story said that there are estimated around one million ola leaf ancient manuscripts in temple libraries.

Do you know the fund allocated to this 'special' project. Rs. five million, no less.

Five rupees per manuscript, if all are conserved. Fifty rupees per manuscript, if 10% of the manuscripts are conserved.

The control board of the Central Cultural Fund has taken this decision under the guidance of the Prime Minister D.M. Jayarathna.

Wonder of Asia doing miracles with five rupees!

We hope the authorities will set aside more money for this as same as what they do for things like purchasing vehicles.

Garlic tax of Sri Lanka government

2011-08-20T10:26:00.000+05:30

garlic flowers

The Cooperatives and Internal Trade Ministry has increased import taxes on big onions, potatoes and garlic. Taxes on a kilo of big onions have been increased by Rs. 10, potatoes by Rs. 5 and garlic by Rs. 15.

Normally, the government says that the taxes are imposed to save the local farmers from price slash. OK. But what about garlic?

As far as we know, garlic is not grown in Sri Lanka.

The price of garlic rose very high last month and now it is low.

What government doing is robbing the poor consumers Rs. 15 per kilo of garlic.

Confession of an outspoken ‘A brother out of control’

2011-08-19T07:38:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, addressing a symposium on post-war challenges at the BMICH, to coincide with the launch of www.outofwar.com, yesterday expressed concern over Indian newspaper The Hindu targeting him on the basis of a recent interview he did with Indian TV channel, Headlines Today, in Colombo.

Here is the said interview

This is the text of the editorial appeared in “The Hindu”of August 16th 2011 under the heading “A Brother Out Of Control”

Two years after defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and eliminating it as a military entity, Sri Lanka is still struggling to emerge from the woods on some important fronts.
Two issues are predominant. One is the nature of the peace, and the efforts by the Sri Lankan government towards a political reconciliation between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority.
The military victory over the LTTE, and President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s strength in parliament, gave the government an unprecedented opportunity to put in place a progressive political framework to heal the wounds of a 30-year war, and address Tamil grievances that predate the war. That it has taken only nominal steps in this direction is a matter of concern even to friends of Sri Lanka, such as India, which stood by its military efforts against the LTTE.
The second issue, which has found strong voice in a recent documentary by a British television station, Channel 4, and in a United Nations report, has to do with the nature of the military operations in the final stages of the war in 2009. Both make allegations of war crimes against the Sri Lankan Army, accusing it of knowingly aiming fire at civilians such that thousands lost their lives, of killing captives in cold blood, and of possible sexual assault.
It is shocking that instead of addressing these issues in the right spirit, a high-ranking official of the Sri Lankan government, Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a brother of the Sri Lankan President, has chosen to vitiate the atmosphere even more with his intemperate remarks against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, and by attributing motives to the adoption of resolutions on Sri Lanka by the State Assembly.
Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s comments, made in the course of an interview to Headlines Today television, reveal a troubling contempt for the Tamil minority. He has trashed “the political solution talk,” asserting, among other things, that it was “simply irrelevant” because “we have ended this terrorism in Sri Lanka,” making the egregious assertion that when the 13th Amendment was being drafted, “the government of Sri Lanka was not involved,” and proposing that with the LTTE “gone,” there was no further need to amend the Constitution. President Rajapaksa would be well advised to distance himself swiftly from his brother’s stream-of-consciousness on sensitive issues that are not his business.
This includes an outrageous comment that because a Tamil woman, an “LTTE cadre” who was a British national, interviewed in the Channel 4 documentary was “so attractive” but had been neither raped nor killed by Sri Lankan soldiers, the allegation of sexual assault by soldiers could not be true. For this statement alone, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa must be taken to task.

Rajapaksa says that he was surprised that the editor of The Hindu N. Ram, in spite of knowing him personally, had lashed out at him over the interview conducted on the sidelines of the recent launch of ‘Humanitarian Operation-Factual Analysis’ and a video at the Hilton Colombo in response to war crimes allegations.

"I didn’t want to be interviewed by the correspondent for Headlines Today television, though I agreed reluctantly. See where it had landed me. The Hindu now wanted my brother to get away from me," Rajapaksa said. "In fact, the Indian journalist assured me of ‘a good coverage’ and promised to build my image. At the end of the day, Headlines Today television did a lot of damage," he said.

Sources: The Island, The Hindu, Trans Currents

Now they sell identity also

2011-08-19T04:18:00.000+05:30

Now the government of Sri Lanka is going to sell the citizens the identity card also.

The cabinet spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said that they would give the digital ID card free of charge only to those who already possess it.

That means the school students writing Ordinary Level examination will have to buy it. The parents that are in fear of the future of the children throughout the life will pay for it due to further fear of being their kids considered lower standard citizens.

They sell jobs also to the young people. The less affluent stampede to collect a job application. Over 62,500 Advanced Level passed students applied for 3300 positions of teacher trainee in National Colleges of Education to enter ill paid teaching profession, the last resort of the educated youngsters.

Do we have anything to express digitally in this country through the identity card.

Indian anti corruption activist assassinated

2011-08-18T07:45:00.000+05:30

In a broad day light murder, an RTI activist and a strong supporter of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, Shehla Masood was shot dead around 11.30 am on Tuesday.

Unidentified assailant shot her dead from point blank range while she was leaving in her car to attend a demonstration in support of Anna Hazare.

About 35 years old, Shehla was still sitting in the driver’s seat when she was attacked , however, no one heard any gun shot. When the car didn’t move for a while, the family members came out only to find that she had collapsed on one side with blood oozing out from her chest.

She was shot in her chest. The murder took place just in front of her house in Koh-e-Fiza locality of Bhopal. However, more details are still awaited as a post- mortem is still on.

The seriousness of the crime could be ascertained from the fact that the director general of police SK Rout and Additional director general Intelligence Rishi Kumar Shukla also inspected the crime scene along with the IG and SSP of Bhopal.

Shehla was an RTI and a wild life activist and had annoyed many people while seeking information and raising issues.

The crime scene suggested that the murder was executed by some professional killer with a firm arm fitted with a silencer. However, the SSP Bhopal Adarsh katiyar told the Media “there are many theories coming up but it is too early to say anything about the murder as the post mortem is still on.”

Shehla Masood was very active on social networking sites such as twitter and facebook. Her last status update on facebook said, “Gandhi: “the purpose of civil resistance is provocation.” Anna has succeeded in provoking the government and the opposition. Hope he wins us freedom from corruption. Meet at 2 pm Boat Club Bhopal.”

Masood didn’t reach the venue.

(Courtesy: TOI)

Government assisted United National Party leader unshaken by massive protest of rebel group

2011-08-18T05:42:00.001+05:30

More than 10,000 activists of Sri Lanka's major opposition United National Party (UNP) held a demonstration against the party leader ranil Wickramasinghe near the Viharamahadevi Park.

Later they marched towards the office of the Opposition Leader and continued protest there. Some were seen attacking the gate of the office.

A group of traditional devil dancers performed a devil dance in front of the gate playing drums acting as chasing the devils in the party.

MP Dayasiri Jayasekara addressing the gathering said that they were not urging the Opposition Leader to resign but to hand over the party leadership to Karu Jayasuriya.

The agitation was earlier planned by Sajith Premadasa Group near the party headquarters Sirikotha but had to be changed due to a court ruling.

The government supported Wickramasinghe by closing the road in front of Sirikotha for carpeting. Wickramasinghe enjoyed protection from protests covering to the rollers of corrupt Maga Neguma.

However, the UNP sources say no significant decision was taken at the party working committee held yesterday regarding the leadership.

Karu Jayasuriya, Sajith Premadasa, Dayasiri Jayasekara and Ranjith Madduma Bandara of the rebel group also participated in the working committee meeting but reportedly remained silent mostly. No one asked Wickramasinghe to step down and hand over the reins to Co-Deputy Leader Karu Jayasuriya. Not only that, Sajith Premadasa reportedly agreed to work on the basis of the agreements reached on March 23, 2011 while airing his personal grievances in the party.

They even consented disciplinary action against some leading figures of their group if they repeat violating party constitution despite being the mentors for them, sources say.

A window to a different view on recent riots in Sri Lanka

2011-08-17T12:17:00.000+05:30

One of our colleagues have sent us this link with a different view regarding what we wrote about the riots in Kinniya and elsewhere in Sri Lanka.

"Please also read this article, and try to read in another angle of your very recent writings about riots. I have disagreements about your conclusions about riots," he says.

Thanks Machan. OK, I will read and comment.

Riots in UK could Forshadow Riots in US

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org
The British government has charged that the riots are being caused by an increase in “criminality”. This is patently ridiculous. What is the difference in London or Manchester now than last year? If these riots are presumed to be the act of “criminals”, then what triggered these “criminals” to riot? If “criminality” is the reason why people are on the streets destroying neighborhoods and looting shops, why is it happening all over the country? Did the “criminals” all get together and decide to stage a riot in different cities so that they could hone their “criminal” skills? There must be some underlying reason why people feel that they need to go out on the streets and break things and to steal from shopkeepers, or was this week just a moment where all the “criminals” decided to act out all at once? This is the supposition that the British Prime Minister, David Cameron is making. This is a situation that shows just how preposterous politicians can be.

When you analyze the situation, what you see is people filing the streets and displaying very anti-social behavior. What the British government is asking the people of Britain and also the rest of the world to do is to assume that there are very many “criminals” in England. While I can agree that the people on the streets are committing criminal acts, I don’t believe that all of them decided to be “criminals”, and moreover, all on the same day. There must be an underlying reason why this happened in England. There is also a reason why the British government is using such a ridiculous assumption as to the cause of the riots.
I would like to point out a few things and also ask a few questions of the British Prime Minister;
1. Why is there such a disparity between the rich and the poor? Why has income risen for the upper classes while the lower classes have seen a reduction in theirs?

2. Why is Great Britain waging wars in Afghanistan, Libya and other countries under the guise of delivering “democracy” while they are part of a culture that worships class structure?

3. Why is it that “people of color” are living in neighborhoods that are substandard while the richest neighborhoods have very few minorities especially when you consider that the practice of slavery ended so long ago in Britain? Are the minorities just racially inferior to the white people?

4. Why is it that people of every race are rioting in the streets? If you take PM Cameron at his word, it’s probably so that they can steal a wide-screen TV.

5. Could it possibly be that corporations are purchasing influence from members of Parliament at the expense of the common people in England?

6. Could it be the possibility that their former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who is now facing extradition to The Hague for war crimes stemming out of the Iraq War, make citizens feel deceived about the war?http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/57361,news-comment,news-politics,war-crime-case-against-tony-blair-is-now-rock-solid
7. Are people rioting because the standard of living gotten has plummeted? The recession has pushed living standards in Britain to below the 2005 general election level.http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/dec/31/economic-growth-recession-uk

8. Are people more than just a little bit angry when they are informed that the U.K. faces the sharpest spending cuts since WWII while cutting over half a million jobs?http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39754325/ns/world_news-europe/t/uk-faces-sharpest-spending-cuts-wwii/#.TkbxUYJvCZY

9. Are the people angry because many colleges and universities are being forced to close due to British spending cuts while at the same time London is spending millions on foreign wars?

10. Are the lower classes angry because the budget for new social housing would be cut by 60% over four years?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11579979
These are just a few reasons why people in the U.K. might be more than just a little bit angry. I sincerely doubt that people in
London, Manchester and other cities in Britain have all decided to become “criminals”.
The riots on the other side of the pond should be a wake-up call to the United States. Of the 10 reasons I remarked on, most of them apply equally to the United States. I can already picture Barack Obama and other politicians blaming future riots on our streets as being perpetrated by “criminals”. Our politicians will probably use the term “economic terrorists”.

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By Timothy V. Gatto timgatto@hotmail.com Read Tim's Book "Complicity to Contempt" and his Novel"Kimchee Days or Stoned Cold Warriors From Oliver Arts and Open Press and available on Amazonand all other online bookstores.

They are real Maharajas

2011-08-17T05:23:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka Opposition Leader and the leader of the United National Party (UNP) Ranil Wickramasinghe who is at risk of party grip accused yesteroday publicly that the media company Maharaja was slinging mud at him since he denied granting one of their demands.

The UNP leader said that the media company had asked for two national list slots for their representatives at the general election held last year.

Two Maharaja journalists contested the election under UNP ticket. Susil Kindelpitiya lost in Colombo while Sri Ranga elected from Nuwaraeliya quickly to change sides and join the government.

The leader of the UNP said that he denied granting the request since UNP was a people's party. He emphasized that no one could buy it. Who knows what happens in closed doors?

They are real Maharajas. They say 'We Report; You Decide' while they decide what to report. Not only that, they are in an attempt to decide the happenings as well.

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
~Ben Hecht

Maldivian and Sri Lankan Presidents chat with people over a broken fence

2011-08-17T05:03:00.000+05:30

President of the Republic of Maldives Mohamed Nasheed arrived in Sri Lanka today for an official visit.

He arrived in the island yesterday morning around 11.15 with a six member delegation.

He was welcomed by the Minister of External Affairs Professor G.L. Peiris at the Katunayake International Airport.

The Maldivian President who worked once in Sri Lanka as a journalist as well while being a fugitive from Gayum's dictatorial regime met the President of Sri Lanka today at Hambanthota.

Sri Lanka President who hails from this remote district is in a dream of turning it into a commercial hub. Rarely, a local leader shared a moment with a foreign counterpart in this way in a remote area.

They watched the the Sri Lanka- Australia third One Day International at Sooriyawewa International Cricket Stadium and had a friendly chat with the local residents over a broken fence, a common scene a step away from development hoopla.

What a springboard is UNP now!

2011-08-17T04:48:00.000+05:30

The ex-Mayor of Anuradhapura Municipal Council of Sri Lanka Kithsiri Lanka Caldera has decided to cross over to the opposition, political sources say.

He is to contest the upcoming election for the Anuradhapura Municipal Council under the opposition United National Party (UNP), the politician said to media.

He expressed plans to extend his political career to national level via UNP.

Caldera is a medical officer by profession.

Nowadays a politician crossing to ruling party is not a significant news. Is it same vice versa too? May be he is doing this since he has no opportunity through the ruling alliance to touch the national level.

He can touch the national level from UNP and later join the ruling alliance again with a new strength. What a springboard is UNP now!

Mobs pelt stones at military camps in Sri Lanka. Are they heroes?

2011-08-16T12:43:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka Navy spokesman Commander Kosala Warnasuriya said to media that the protests that took place in Eastern Province Kinniya town occurred following the raids against racketeers that were operating in the coastal area.

Pointing out that they wanted the Navy camp would be withdrawn from the village, stressed that it would remain there.

On the night of August 14, more than 3,000 people attacked the Navy camp and set fire on a police vehicle also in Kinniya town alleging the camp was harbouring three unknown persons, whom they alleged were ‘grease devils.’

Four Navy and police personnel each and five civilians were injured in the incident. Police arrested at least 24 trouble makers and more of their kind agitated yesterday even taking the Army Eastern Commander hostage to urge the authorities to release the arrested persons.

Mobs held Sri Lanka Army Eastern Commander Boniface Perera, the Commander of the 22nd Division Brig. Hettiarachchi, Trincomalee District Secretary P.T.R. de Silva and some Members of Provincial and Divisional Councils of Kinniya area today for several hours.

The mobs supported by villagers protested the arrest of fellow villagers. Later, the arrested villagers were released on orders of the Ministry of Defense, sources say.

Ministers A.H.M. Fowzy, Rizak Badurdeen and SRauf Hakeem, ri Lanka Muslim Congress leader, rushed to Kinniya to settle the dispute.

Following is the way a media linked to Marxist People's Liberation Front (JVP) reported the incident in a heroic tone. Do Sri Lankan Marxists still identify mobs as heroes?

Villagers in Kinniya win their struggle – All arrested released

(Lanka Truth) It is reported that authorities have taken measures to release 25 villagers in Kinniya who had been arrested by the police after a clash the villagers had with personnel of SL Navy yesterday. The villagers of Kinniya detained 22 people including the Eastern Commander and District Secretary for Trincomalee demanding the release of the arrested villagers.

The villagers later released theEastern Commander Boniface Perera, the Commander of the 22^nd Division Brig. Hettiarachchi, the District Secretary P.T.R. de Silva, Members of Provincial and Divisional Councils in the area who had been detained by them.

The government had taken urgent measures to send from Colombo Ministers A.H.M. Fowzy, Rizak Badurdeen and Raum Hakeem to mediate in the issue. However, the police on special orders from the Defense Secretary had to release the villagers as the agitators were not willing to agree with the ministers.

After the villagers were released they were taken away from the Divisional Office in armed cars which were also attacked by villagers with stones and other missiles say reports.

United National Party rebel Sajith in a do or die battle for the leadership

2011-08-16T12:27:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka's major opposition United National Party (UNP) sources say that the rebel group led by Deputy Leader Sajith Premadasa is planning to hold a massive protest in front of Sirikotha, the party headquarters on August 17th when a crucial working committee meeting is scheduled.

The aim of the agitators is to topple the leader of the party Ranil Wickramasinghe in a revolutionary way against the party constitution.

Media reports said that the group was organizing to rally around 10,000 people and to surround the party headquarters to urge the party leader to resign.

Party sources say that by now all the efforts of the UNP seniors to resolve the crisis of the party amicably among the leaders have been unsuccessful.

Internal sources of the UNP say that the rebel group led by party Deputy Leader Sajith Premadasa is not giving up the fight to topple the leader since UNP has great prospects of winning several crucial local government bodies like Colombo Municipal Council in the election scheduled for October.

"A person that leads the election can boast about the victory and Sajith's group is in a do or die battle to topple the leader before the local government election," a UNP senior said.

However, the situation developing in the UNP appears to be advantageous to the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA). Minister Basil Rajapaksa seems leading the election campaign for Colombo Municipal Council.

He is to declare open a shopping center for the Colombo minor traders in Gunasinghepura of Colombo Pettah bazar today.

It comprises of 468 stalls. The shops have been distributed among the pavement hawkers, of whom the majority is lumpen elements previously supportive to the UNP, that were evicted for public convenience and city beautification.

Activists from Colombo now in Jaffna to express solidarity to colleagues there

2011-08-15T22:06:00.000+05:30

Free Media Movement (FMM), some other NGOs and activists of South Sri Lanka are now in Jaffna to hold a protest campaign tomorrow in Jaffna city to express solidarity to the bereaved journalists there.

A group of 40 journalists from Colombo left for Jaffna this morning to express their solidarity with embattled journalist community in Jaffna, said FMM secretary Sunil Jayasekara to media.

The Free Media Movement led group includes a number of media organisations as well as few human rights activists.

They expect to hold a peaceful demonstration in Jaffna city tomorrow noon together with journalists form Jaffna.

They are also to visit news editor Gnanasundaram Kuganathanhas of Uthayan daily in Jaffna hospital, who is recovering from a fatal assault on him by an unidentified gang on 29th July.

Pro-opposition Sri Lanka Mirror website reported that this is a historic occasion in strengthening solidarity and enhancing mutual understanding between journalists working in Jaffna and Colombo. The website added in a pleading tone they they would expect their right to protest and association will be respected by the state security forces in Jaffna.

Are they telling "Don't beat us! We're Sinhalese!"??? They never made such statements before they held protests in Colombo.

Forget Jaffna. It is in fact a good move to have such activities for activists of Colombo too, first to get rid of the fear psychosis they are engulfed in now.

From Grease Devils of Sri Lanka to Daniel Kahneman

2011-08-15T06:34:00.003+05:30

I'm a lot worried of the fate of the Greece Devils of Sri Lanka in the hands of the angry mobs.

Have you ever experienced the wrath of a mob against you in your life? I experienced it many times. Once, perhaps in 2003, I was selling a leftist newspaper near a political meeting of a JVP coalition. I stress near because I was not in the meeting venue they had booked for the rally. But they were an upcoming power then and not like today's 'downgoing' gentlemen.

One person I met in an outside corner of the venue was a student of mine who appeared or pretended fond of me until that moment. He was in a programme in which I taught English as a volunteer and he had not lost money even if my teaching was bad.

The newspaper I was selling supported negotiated settlement through power devolution for the ethnic problem. But there was not theoretical stuff at all in that newspaper. It was just a radical tabloid. It was selling well at this particular meeting. After a short while, a group led by a man wearing a suit usually worn by MP security staff came and asked me what our stand was about self determination. I said it was a theoretical issue and could not be discussed on the road. They said we were supporting self determination and asked to leave the place or face circumstances.

I quit as an angry mob was gathering around me from everywhere and that student of mine was also there with eyes burning with wrath. I can imagine the helplessness of a so called Greese Yaka in the hands of a more violent mob.

Now as Sri Lankan people beat Greece Devils to death and the government is trying to channel the wrath of the mobs on the JVP activists in villages to make political mileage from this unexpected development, I recalled a past study on behavioral economy and Daniel Kahneman. Here are some excerpts from outward resources worth reading and further study:

I think prospect theory opens a path to trace the origins of the present fear psychosis of which I have written in Sinhala language elsewhere. Read it.

Daniel Kahneman (Hebrew: דניאל כהנמן‎) (born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-Americanpsychologist and Nobel laureate, notable for his work on the psychology of judgment anddecision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology.
With Amos Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristics and biases.

Behavioral economics and its related area of study, behavioral finance, use social, cognitive and emotional factors in understanding theeconomic decisions of individuals and institutions performing economic functions, including consumers, borrowers and investors, and their effects on market prices, returns and the resource allocation. The fields are primarily concerned with the bounds of rationality of economic agents. Behavioral models typically integrate insights from psychology with neo-classical economic theory.
Behavioral analysts are not only concerned with the effects of market decisions but also with public choice, which describes another source of economic decisions with related biases towards promoting self-interest.

Prospect theory is a theory that describes decisions between alternatives that involve risk (i.e., alternatives with uncertain outcomes) where the probabilities are known. The model is descriptive: it tries to model real-life choices, rather than optimal decisions.
The theory was developed by Daniel Kahneman, professor at Princeton University's Department of Psychology, and Amos Tversky in 1979 as a psychologically realistic alternative to expected utility theory. It allows one to describe how people make choices in situations where they have to decide between alternatives that involve risk (e.g., in financial decisions). Starting from empirical evidence, the theory describes how individuals evaluate potential losses and gains. In the original formulation the term prospect referred to a lottery.
The theory describes such decision processes as consisting of two stages, editing and evaluation. In the first, possible outcomes of the decision are ordered following some heuristic. In particular, people decide which outcomes they see as basically identical and they set a reference point and consider lower outcomes as losses and larger as gains. In the following evaluation phase, people behave as if they would compute a value (utility), based on the potential outcomes and their respective probabilities, and then choose the alternative having a higher utility.

The first text that roused my enthusiasm about Kahneman was in Vimasuma.com website and it was written by Mr. W.A. Wijewardhana, a senior official of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. The article is in Sinhala language. Read it.

A meaningful legal move against wheat flour terrorism of Sri Lanka, only if implementable

2011-08-14T05:44:00.000+05:30

Another law against the hyped wheat flout terrorism of this country! This time Sri Lanka Ministry of Health has decided to bring new laws to prevent the removal of bran when processing wheat flour, a good move to save the health of the wheat flour food lovers who are facing health risks due to consumption of too much starch.

So far, the wheat flour processors could remove bran up to 74%.The wheat flour in the market contained only 26% bran that contains the most of the nutrients of the flour.

The Ministry has decided to permit only the removal of 20% of bran from wheat flour.

Sri Lanka has too many laws but less understanding among public and the low enforcers too regarding them., Recall, the same Minister Maithripala de Silva banned use of polythene less than 20 microns of weight when he was in charge of environment.

War widow problem of Sri Lanka

2011-08-13T18:43:00.000+05:30

Sri Lanka's Child Development and Women's Affairs Ministry sources say that the government has identified around 60,000 war widows in the Northern and Eastern Provinces following the end of the war.

According to the Ministry there are 42,565 war widows in the East and 16,936 in the North.

The majority of them are Tamil women.