Sri Lanka – the war,opinions

It is really sad that the bombing incidents in Sri Lanka are increasing once again. With the Christmas season just a day away it seems that Sri Lanka has accelerated its slide back back to the past with bombs and the works. I have been unable to make any comments over the past few days due to the hectic work load that I have. It looks like many in the Sri Lankan blogosphere is facing the same problem since Kottu seems to be rather quiet for some time.

Anyway interesting sentiments are being expressed in the newspapers, kottu and television and radio media. Some are clearly for the destruction of this country by calling for the abrogation of the ceasefire agreement at a time that the country is sliding back into a full scale conflict. The fact that the the government and the LTTE even though they are not respecting the ceasefire are still not officially pulling out of it for which I believe the reason is that one is waiting for the other to pull out, however the agreement is the only silver lining – a very thin one- in the dark cloud that is hovering over this country.

Some bloggers are now making use of these incidents to justify some racist decisions such as supporting the eviction of Tamils from Colombo. They are directly supporting the LTTE claim for a separate homeland by saying that Tamils should have been evicted and sent back to their homes. These types of people are nothing but traitors to this nation.

I do not believe that a war that has been fought for almost two decades without any side coming out on top can be ended militarily. Only a fool will believe this and the only solution to this war is to trap the LTTE politically and diplomatically. This may have happened in the peace process but before time our greedy politicos who wanted to achieve their own motives along with the war hungry LTTE leadership just did not allow it. Our foolish politicos just duped the people and played into the hands of the LTTE who in turn put the Tamil people whom they claim to fight for in a very bad situation.

It is still to be seen whether this generation which knows nothing but war will ever see a lasting peace which is being propogated by people who are well past their prime and by some who are so patriotic that they are holding on to citizenships of western nations in case the situation in Sri Lanka goes beyond them they will be able to abandon and flee to the security of the western nations they so boldly speak against.

Everyone who defends this war is a traitor and is not all concerned about the innocent people who are dying as a result of this. Unfortunately people only talk about the civilians who die and no concern is made for the soldiers and for LTTE combatants who die for a cause that has lost its cause and the only reason the war is being carried out is a matter of ego.

 

“Green Tax”: Just another sorry excuse to fund the war?

I was reading the newspapers a few days ago and I happened to notice that a new tax called “Green Tax” aka “Environment Tax” is to be introduced. It also says that anyone who owns a car, house and mobile phone will have to pay Rs 20/= per month. Another is that a tax will be imposed on electronic products, computers and mobile phones in order for them to be recycled. As far as I know there is no mass scale recycling in Sri Lanka of the mentioned products so why tax them for a non existing cause and why should we pay recycling charges for brand new products.

The environment seems to be used as an excuse for funding an aimless and fruitless war and also to increase politicos personal wealth. The war is causing severe pollution in the northern/eastern areas of this island and the so called “Green Tax” is actually going cause more harm than good.

The Minister who is charge of managing the environmental should be more actively involved in protecting it rather than implementing taxes that are not relevant to environmental protection.

 

Anti Gay protests at funerals is not called for

Just recently a church in Kansas called Westboro Baptist Church held protests (just one of the many that they have held) at the funeral of a soldier who is said to be gay and it was simply shocking the way the entire thing was carried out. They held placards like “Thank God for dead soldiers”, “You are going to hell” and one of the worst was “Pray for more dead kids”. If they were real God loving Christians they will never hold placards like that and will never even think of harassing a family that is already grieving. Now I know that most of you who visit this blog know that I do not accept homosexuality as normal but what this church did is totally unchristian.

My heart goes out to those families which this church has targeted, since no one should have to tolerate such a thing during a time of grief such as loosing a loved one.

Maybe they have different views on homosexuality but protesting and passing judgement at the funeral is overstepping the line. When I checked on the credibility of this church there happens to be nothing credible about it. Almost all of the 70 members of this church happen to be relatives of the head and and it is not affliated to any denomination.

I am happy that they were fined and God will judge them for what they are doing to those families. They may be thinking that they are doing the right thing but they are wrong and there more decent and better ways of getting their beliefs across.

I hope that the members of this church will start reading the bible and specially read Matthew 22:37-39 ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^[a] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself‘.

 

Gore & UN Panel win Nobel Peace Prize?

Huh? What did he do to deserve this? He just organized a 24 hour concert that did more harm than good (By the way, not many remember the tips given during the concert) and also made a movie “An Inconvenient Truth” that is now being scrutinized for some factual errors. He shares the Peace Prize plus half of the whopping $1.5 Million prize with the UN IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Even the IPCC which consists of more than 3000 leading scientists, economists, oceanographers and others, have not achieved much to get this, but then giving it to them only would have been more justifiable than sharing it with Al Gore.

Out of all the other Nobel Prizes, the selection of the winner of the Peace Prize is always questionable. Aren’t there any other reasons to give a “Peace Prize” like for someone who did something worthwhile amidst a conflict situation.

I wonder whether Al Gore would have done all this Climate Change campaigning if he had won the US Presidential Election in 2000. I guess winning an Oscar justified the content of the movie, but the Peace Prize is just overdoing it. So Gore is now a Nobel Peace Prize winner, wonder whom they will pick next year.

 

“Tsunami Warnings”, close to boy cries wolf!

Looks like we are feeling the effects of not having a Tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. The recent earthquakes in Indonesia resulted in two Tsunami alerts within a span of about 12 hours and resulted in people being evacuated from the coastal areas.

If we had a proper warning system then we would have been able to confirm whether a Tsunami is headed our way before evacuating the people. What I sense will happen is that after a few warnings like this, people will stop taking them seriously and it might turn into another disaster. It might become a case of the “boy cries wolf”.

It is a pity that this region in which a majority of the countries are ruled by corrupt politicians who put themselves over the law are not taking any interest in coordinating with the other nations to build up a warning system. Hopefully another Tsunami is not what is required for us to get a warning system.

Wonder what SAARC is doing about it? At the recent SAARC conference there were discussions about Tsunami Warning Systems but it looks like nothing has been done just as the other things that were discussed without any action being taken. May be the discussion will be continued at the next SAARC meeting.

At the moment we are at the mercy of the power of nature and any major quake in the Indonesian region will spark evacuations and we are forced to rely on the prognosis of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre which does not have any monitoring equipment in this region which makes their prognosis very unreliable.

A Tsunami Warning System is a must for this region and I won’t be surprised if any of our political parties include it in their election manifestos just to get more votes.

 

UniFlow Patriotism

Not many of us are members of the fortunate clan that owns vehicles or the even more fortunate clan that has the ability to have the roads closed and cleared up for in order for them to reach their destination comfortably. So for those of us who bus it everyday from areas like Colpetty to Pettah as of late, it has become a strenuous exercise. Every minute that you get late to leave office increases the time to travel to Pettah by a larger margin.

Previously when we the ordinary law abiding citizens of this country were not considered a security threat and were allowed to travel to Pettah on the Galle Road, the journey would take approximately 10 minutes. Now of course it is no less than 30 minutes and the later you get, the larger the time required to travel. If the “one who should not be named” decides to take to the roads then only a magic wand can help us and as of now the wands are out of stock.

So at the moment the citizens of this country have no option but to travel in severe traffic for over 30 minutes when the journey should actually take only about 10 minutes and this is just from Colpetty to Pettah, I wonder how it for those who travel on other roads. It is said that time is money so this further adds to the amount of money that is being wasted in this country due to this senseless war. A new high speed train was developed (cannot remember where) to reduce the time taken by commuters to travel by 20 minutes. So instead of taking measures to improve the transport system and time taken to travel, we are successfully implementing measures that will result in more time being wasted. I am sure all of this is adding more pressure to our already unstable economy.

However our local pus patriots only shout against things that will bring some good to this country such as ending the conflict and proclaim that the country is headed down the wrong path. Sri Lanka is a country that has no true patriots in powerful positions and the powerful people who think of themselves as patriots do not know the meaning of patriotism and do not practice it.

 

Is this the one

For the past few days I have hearing news of earthquakes close to Sri Lanka , tremors in Tissamaharama and the recent earthquake in the Indian Ocean has been felt by some of my colleagues have felt it too. I have never felt anything yet though. Anyway today as soon as bought the Daily Mirror (July 27th 2007) my eyes caught the bottom of the froont page giving a picture of the seismic forces on the plates on which Sri Lanka is situated.

So according to it and other articles that have appeared in the newspapers, it seems that Sri Lanka may be in for the “Big One“.

This is not at all good since our country is ill prepared for a natural disaster such as an earthquake (all right we are ill prepared for all types of natural disasters). I wonder whether when the engineers who designed bridges, high rise buildings, etc would have taken an earthquake into consideration because if they did not then I am sure any one of us would not like to be close to these when an earthquake strikes.

Coming to think of it I wonder whether this has anything to do with the prophesy that I posted sometime back(links are given below). It is not clear what type of disaster this prophesy predicted, at a glance it looks like a volcano (which I think is highly unlikely) but most of what it says is symbolic. Maybe the prophesy predicted an earthquake or maybe not, but what is important is that a natural disaster was predicted.

Coming back to the earthquake since there is no way of exactly predicting when one will strike added to that Sri Lanka lacks seismic monitors in the areas where the tremors are being felt, we are sitting duck until one hits us and probably the US or Indian Geological Centers would have to give us the magnitude of the earthquake that we were hit with.

The Pictures in the Daily Mirror (July 27th 2007) are given below. Please click on the images for a clearer view.

Given below are the links to posts quoted above 

Prophecy regarding Sri Lanka : The Actual Transcript

Prophecy regarding Sri Lanka

 

East Liberated, South under oppression?

Well that’s what it looked like this morning. Roads are closed (so that the politicians can travel safely for a liberation festival) and there were temporary checkpoints all over the Negombo Road and other roads, they stopped as many vehicles as they can. Looks like we are celebrating the liberation of the East while oppressing the people in the south. Oh by the way the celebration of the liberation of the East takes place in the south and not in the liberated areas. So much for liberation.

This makes me wonder whether the liberation has actually taken place or have we been given a different picture. Thankfully I went to office early enough to miss all this traffic. But the others in office have had a time making it into office and some are still on the way

Many people except a select few (who love this war for some reason and think of themselves as patriots) are of the view that this celebration is not at all necessary. Most house/offices did not have the national flag hoisted as requested by the government. The only national flags I saw were the ones on government buildings and the ones that the local government authorities had got hoisted on poles along the payments.

Speeches made by the politicians gave lip service to the soldiers who died for this cause. They made sure they took centre stage for this entire event. A development drive was also launched to rebuild the east, it looks like it will end up being like all the other development drives started earlier and will be limited to a speech, a piece of paper in parliament and some cash in some politicians pocket.

 

What are we supposed to celebrate?

We are supposed to celebrate the recapture of Thoppigala and the Eastern province from the LTTE. Celebrate for what? It’s not like the war is over and all of Sri Lanka’s problems are solved. Instead of celebrating we should organize a ceremony to pay tribute to the armed forces, specially the ones who laid down their life for this cause. Instead the politicians decide to hold a celebration so that they and their relatives can take center stage and may sure that they use this to achieve their petty political objectives.

We can celebrate when peace dawns upon this country. If anyone thinks that by continuing the war, peace can be achieved, then that person is totally insane. Of course I have read blog posts and articles by people who agree with the government regardless of the present worsening situation. They make themselves the pets of the government.

For certain with this narrow minded war based mindset Sri Lanka will never achieve peace in the near future. It is best to stop all this non sense and come to a peace settlement with the LTTE without aggravating things further.

There is no need to celebrate this victory in the East since greater challenges lay ahead for the Sri Lankan nation and the way we fare in those will decide the fate of this country.

 

Oh Rizana Nafeek where art thy brethren

Specially the people who were on the roads protesting the execution of Saddam Hussien. Ok, I am in no way implying that she is innocent but I have serious questions on how this entire scenario was handled.

First, how did she manage to travel to work in Saudi when she was 17? Second, was she given a fair trial?

The answer for the first could be that a false birth certificate could have been forged and bribes could have offered to authorities, etc in order to get her to travel abroad. The second could only be answered by an observer of the trial since recently several Sri Lankans were beheaded and one who was offered a life sentence was also beheaded along with them.

According to a statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission, Rizana had been tortured to make a confession but like I wrote before, I am not going to argue whether she is innocent or not. Whether she is given the death penalty would depend on the law of the land, after the completion of a fair trial which should include evidence that would proves beyond a reasonable doubt that she committed the murder.

I am surprised at the attitude of the Sri Lankan Muslims since they were out their in the hundreds with the backing of a political party protesting against the execution of Saddam by the Americans but this indifferent attitude for a Sri Lankan who is possibly facing an unfair execution in an Islamic country. Is Rizana worse than Saddam, one could come to that conclusion based on the attitudes of our local Islamic community. The same attitude was adopted by the locals on the execution of the person who had been given a life sentence.

I am not implying that the local muslim community should rise up to defend her since no one can be sure whether she is innocent or not and I am sure that this is one of their major concerns but instead of keeping quiet they should do everything in their ability to make sure that she is given a fair trial and then given the appropriate sentence. Why is there such a silence among the Muslim community and its leaders, is it because this happened in an Islamic country? What if this incident took place in a non Islamic country would their reaction to any different? What if the entire episode was an accident, a death sentence is a absolute waste of a young life and wouldn’t a lesser sentence be applicable?

Hopefully the Sri Lankan Muslim community and its leaders will help the Sri Lankan government to put pressure on the Saudi government and make sure that everything is done in a fair manner.

It should be said that Sri Lankans put their motherland to shame by getting involved in incidents such as these in foreign countries.