Sorry for the inadvertent use of M.N.I.N. Perera in my post to Gamarala on this thread.

I used it to prove a point to those who denounce the use of Pseudonyms in a different thread. Unfortunately, the browser memory repeated it on this thread too.

http://groundviews.org/2012/02/17/live-ammunition-and-citizen-enemies/#comment-41915

I trust that the above post explains my reasons.

My apologies to Gamarala.

You wrote “Very well, so belonging to tribe X also makes you responsible for their accomplishments?”

No.
That is a foolish question.

You wrote “if we are to brandish our relationship to Puran Appu with unrestrained glee, surely then, we both bear responsibility for our ancestors ignominies too, with commensurate gravity?”

No again.
You are making the same foolish mistake.

Better reread your question as I advised.

You wrote “Like I said at the outset, my intention was to follow your train of thought to its ultimate conclusion. Unfortunately, you seem to have disembarked that train at the wrong stop.”

Your intention was to heckle.
You have got on the wrong train all alone, on your way to nowhere.

You wrote “Let me restate the question, if you’ve misunderstood: You said that our Sinhalese ancestors’ fought the British and therefore, we have a right to claim that glory, whereas the Tamils apparently do not.

You are a Liar.
If you think otherwise, please copy and paste from my posts, without adding any words of your own and prove that you are not a Liar.

So I simply asked you, if we have a right to bask in our ancestor’s glory, are we culpable for their crimes too?

Back again to the same foolish mistake.
You need to learn the meanings of the words you use so freely, in ignorance.

BTW, I am not angry with you, just sorry for your predicament.

As I said before, if you are not an empty headed heckler, take me up on my challenge to you and come and discuss the important issues such as the implementation of 13A, Land issues, Historical Tamil Homeland, equitable sharing of resources etc. So far, you could only heckle.

You have a backbone don’t you?

The vast majority who have been in a “Patriotic Slumber” for some time are starting to wake up from their slumber and are gradually starting to become “Indignant” with what the one family dictatorship has been doing to this country.

Only time will tell whether this majority will become “Indignant” enough to kick this one family government out of power like what happened in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

You ask a very pertinent question: whether it is “intelligent for the TNA to reject 13A and try to go beyond it, with no such allies in the South?” But this question makes me wonder whether implementation of 13A is based purely on TNA’s request and nothing else! If 13A-implementation is based on TNA’s request to do so, or had 13A been some sort of a new (and only) constitutional amendment agreed upon by all the major political parties and which is to be introduced shortly, then, one might be able to agree that by not accepting 13A, the TNA is being rather naïve or stupid. But this is the fact: 13A is already part of the Constitution, and a Government doesn’t need the approval of the TNA to implement it. To understand what I mean, let’s put it this way: let’s imagine that 13A is implemented in the North tomorrow (because 13A is anyway part of the Constitution). What would that make the TNA: stupid or intelligent? Or does TNA’s rejection make any difference anyway? ? I don’t think the TNA will lose much by not embracing 13A because it is part of the Constitution.

One final point about the word ‘rejection’ here: I think we might need to use it within inverts. It is not, I believe, that the TNA rejects the 13A as something that should NOT be implemented. Their ‘rejection’ of the 13A needs to be understood more as a ‘rejection’ of the 13A as an absolute, final, political, settlement.

Dear Dr. Narendran,

I very much agree with your comments and especially the point you make about this being the time to move on from rigidly held positions. It is this rigidity with regard to 13A that I, perhaps like many others, dislike. So much rigidity retards our ability to think beyond 13A, beyond a life after the implementation of 13A too (if it’s implemented).

She put her life on line when it comes to bring the truth out of such hostile places like Sri Lanka War, Syrian uprising, Iraq war, etc… . It is well known that she is not the type of war correspondent who embedded with, and taken cover of, the forces that, more often than not, party to the destruction and sufferings and reporting the stories that they want to propagate. Instead, Marie would go to the hot spot herself and stay the course with suffering people and sees herself what the war inflicts upon these people, this has been her style, which inevitably brought an abrupt end to her life. Hope her legacy will last for ever, and her next kith and kin can feel proud of her. Let me convey my heartiest condolence to those who survive her.

On the same token one might say that your analysis is not scientific too. Apart from few anecdotal references have you done any scientific research to prove your points? It is basically your interpretation of your observations. Anybody can interpret anything to suit their ideologies. I also accept that it applies to Dr. Dewasiri as well.

However, when you look at the working of the politico-military machinary of the government, which represents their thinking, you would see how their minds work. The war victory was projected as the Sinhala Buddhist victory over the Tamil rebels, who was hell bent on destroying the unitary state of Sri Lanka. Mahinda Rajapaksha was hailed as ‘Great King or Maha Mahinda’ emulating the Sinhala Buddhist kings who united the Island of Sri Lanka in the past. In their minds the Island of Sri Lanka had been ruled by Sinhalese Buddhists kings as a single entity most of the time and it is considered as the norm. The few interludes of invasions from South India with subsequent independent tamil kingdoms are considered as aberrations.

The actions of this machinary after the war, setting up of miliatry camps in every nook and corner of north and east with ubiquitous presence of Sinhala Buddhist soldiers, putting up Buddhist relegious edifices where ther are no buddhists, suppression of tamil political activity with killings, abductions and disappearnces, destruction of graves of war dead, etc amply shows the ideology behind them.

The myth of Sinhalese Buddhist unitary state, which is propagated by the ideologues supporting the government and accepted by the government shows that it is the pervading idelogy, which powers the thinking of ruling Politico-military machine. The same ideology prevents them from recognising the political aspirations of tamis who inhabits north and east. If it were not for the international community, in which India plays the biggest rule, the goverment would exclude the Tamils totally from the post war discourse without giving any space for them to air their greivances.

The fact the Sinhala Buddhist majority voted for the government continuously supporting the activities of its politico-military machine should reflect its thinking. Therefore, the statement that the majority of Sinhala Buddhists think that ‘its a place to be conqured and occupied’ and the rest has to be considered as correct.

1. Since I knew Sivaram BEFORE he joined even the PLOTE, I know — and Qadri Ismail can attest– that his POV changed drastically. The objective evidence is the collection of Taraki columns written for The Island, and published as a booklet in France, contrasted with the Taraki columns written for the Daily Mirror in the later years.

2. ‘The POV of Sivaram’ which I think you are talking about — the same POV that got his coffin draped in an LTTE flag–was put to the ultimate (Thucydidean-Clausewitzean) test and dismally, utterly failed.

3. The hardest line militarists in the SL Establishment completely agree with you, and assume that ‘Tamil subjectivity’ automatically translates into ‘the POV of Sivaram’! This is why they are acting as they are, and preparing to prevent/pre-empt it ‘by any means necessary’, including ‘changing facts on the ground’.

I do not agree with them or you.

Arab Springs and other springs will take a long time to reach the shores of an island before teargas, watercannons, family rule, paid ”graduates” and ”riot” squads enfeeble the people.

I am not quite sure I am with you on that, you old fruity.

Go tell Kumar Sangakkara who epitomizes your Sri Lankan identity. Your chap was falling over himself at the Cowdrey Lecture to please the British with honorifics. One wisecrack even quipped that he bent himself so much that he was within kissing distance of his you-know-what.

For those who don’t have access to Harris’s book here are some pertinent sections regarding Colvin and here visit to Sri Lanka:

“She was what is known in the media business as a ‘parachutist’; a media star dropped into a story she neither knew intimately nor understood particularly well.”

In Sri Lanka she failed to turn up for an opportunity to interview Lakshman Kadirgamar because her Tamil Tiger contacts tempted her with an opportunity to meet two Tiger leaders, Tamilchelvan and Prabakharan:
“In Sri Lanka, having crossed over without permission into LTTE territory, she attempted to re-cross at night across heavily defended frontlines. As she did so, and somehow her LTTE ‘bodyguard’ melted away into the black of the night, she came under Sri Lankan army mortar fire. Her body was pierced by four pieces of shrapnel: she received wounds to her eye, shoulder and thigh and sustained a bruised leg.”

“She was clearly impressed with the Tigers, judging from her article which appeared in the ‘The Sunday Times’. It advises, ‘The LTTE emerged in 1983, when Sinhala mobs turned on the Tamils, slaughtering hundreds with machetes.’ I’m afraid her explanation of the genesis of the conflict was quite at variance with the historical record: the slaughter she refers to did take place but it was a reaction to a massacre by the LTTE leadet Velupillai Prabakharan of an army unit in northern Sri Lanka.”

On the subject of the circumstances in which she received wounds and lost her left eye in Sri Lanka, Harris has this to say:

“The fact that she was abandoned by her ‘hosts’ [the LTTE] as soon as they came under fire would suggest to those experienced in the ways of the war in Sri Lanka that she had actually been ‘set up’; her death at the hands of the government troops would have attracted seriously bad publicity to the Sri Lankan government.”

Later he notes:

“Of course we applaud this [risking her life to report dangerous events]. But things are not always as they appear…that derring-do can be singularly misplaced.”

Food for thought.

Sorry, I didn’t complete one sentence:
The South should stop relegating their duty to concrete Buddha statues.

Dear Dr Jayatilleka
You’re paid to see that the youth in the South don’t see the light. You are supplementing the damage done through our education system.

We need solution for what each and every Sri Lankan government has been doing from independence till today.
We need solution for the destruction of physio-psycho-socio-economic-environmental destruction of the ethnic minorities in the last 64 years in Sri Lanka.

Bring in Good Governance – that is an action/cause.
Don’t bring in patriotism – that is a reaction/consequence.

Bring in Human Security – that is the bottomline.
Don’t bring in ”sovereignty” – that is a structure that needs a bottom to sit on.

Bring in simple language to enlighten the society to move forwards.
Don’t bring in obfuscating language to disorient the society.

Make clear connections between the present mess in Sri Lanka and where they ALL can find peace and prosperity.

The 64-yr political, economic, social, cultural and environmental oppression by the State has not been challenged by the international community enough because of Sri Lanka’s geographical location of geopolitical significance. For anything to be different and for geopolitics to be meaningless in the conflict, the South should stop relegating

Dear Dr Narendran
We’re talking about the critical mass of the South who dictate what the President should do:
”President Rajapakse handed them a flat ‘Nyet’ and for once in a lifetime he spoke the truth. “If I make any devolutionary concessions to the Tamils, 13A Plus, Minus, Divided or Subtracted, it will be curtains for me” – Sri Lanka: Indian Delegates go Home Empty Handed, Kumar David, 15 June 2011 – http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers46/paper4558.html

Did you read TNS Global’s survey report? Or are you basing your article solely on what was written on LMD?

You are absolutely correct on this.

However, my denouncement goes a step further than merely finding them at fault for silliness. Their ruse is substantially more sinister. They think they have found an easy way to help out in the badly needed censorship of opposition views.

It is not that Dayan in particular does not know about the legitimacy of using pseudonym – but he merely fakes outrage for theatrics. He plays these theatrics all the time. Frankly, I am pretty certain that some of the Dayan-complimentary blogs that appear are indeed his own creations that he himself blogs under pseudonyms!

That is not merely silly, but outright contemptible.

I thought it would be best to play along, and thereby expose them for their vile, and have them creep back in to their crevices where they rightly belong. I guess that has happened.