'What’s wrong is that she tries to embarrass the present government by saying that it’s even worse than what went before. That just is not true for reasons I have adduced above, and also for it’s sleight of hand, because she is in cahoots with civil society organizations that are now transparently in the opposition’s pocket, such as the CPA.'
______________________
(A response to Basil Fernando.)
By Rajpal Abeynayake
(August 20, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Basil Fernando accuses me of taking a cheap shot at Kishali Pinto Jayawaradene. That’s rich, considering he ends his article with this jaw-dropping offering of wisdom:
“I used to read Rajpal Abeynayake's column whenever I saw one. I now have doubt as to whether I should continue that, when the level of reasoning that he has descended to has become so ugly. Well, sometimes one can write absurdities when one is drunk. Perhaps I should not yet reject the possibility that he may write better things when he is sober.’’
Cheap? This guy does cheap so well, he defines the word. I never attacked Pinto at a personal level, but said that there is reason to believe that the sort of organisation she works for, and the sort of entities she gets awards from, opens legitimate questions about her credibility.
I quoted chapter and verse to make that argument; for example, that in Venezuela they infiltrated civil society to stage a coup against Chavez, and I gave in appendix the list of American and other funders of CPA. (Now Pinto may not work for CPA, but she is so closely associated with CPA that it’s good as having done so; besides she works for LST, which, the last I knew, was heavily funded by US based organisations.)
And what’s Basil Fernando’s response to this legitimate airing of opinion?
“Perhaps I should not yet reject the possibility that he may write better things when he is sober.’’ Yeah right. We concede. This is the zenith of perspective, and high-minded sobriety. Way to go Basil. We are sure with this kind of high-mindedness and this kind of inability to stoop low, you might even qualify for the Nobel Prize one of these days, dynamite and everything.
Meanwhile, he is down there, you can almost see him, taking his shots in the sewers. “Well, sometimes one can write absurdities when one is drunk. Perhaps I should not yet reject the possibility that he may write better things …..’’
That’s Basil in action.
With this performance, Basil thinks people are supposed to surmise Basil is civil, that Bail is high-minded, that Basil is not cheap, and that Basil always defends what’s right. Pardon me, but I think I want to throw up.
Basil does indulge in some thinking when he is not stooping so low as to be down there with the earth-vermin. He says Pinto has written more about the 30,000 who disappeared during the JVP violence that I ever have??
Really? You want to bet? But it doesn’t matter - - what matters is what Pinto is writing now. The sleight of hand is that having written about these disappearances, and having known that there are upwards of 30,000 deaths during the pervious regimes, she still wants to make the case that this regime has done worse. Not one letter of what she wrote in the past will absolve her for the distortion she is making about the present. In fact the fact that she wrote in the past, makes it worse, because she is now writing as if the past didn’t exist, knowing very well it did.
What’s wrong is that she tries to embarrass the present government by saying that it’s even worse than what went before. That just is not true for reasons I have adduced above, and also for it’s sleight of hand, because she is in cahoots with civil society organizations that are now transparently in the opposition’s pocket (read Ranil’s and Chandrika’s pockets), such as the CPA.
That deception reeks.
My perspective is not that Rajapakse is committing no human rights violations, and that therefore he is better. Goodness, is Basil so sober that he can’t read? I wrote clearly “Make no mistake, the excesses of now such as are evident are not excused by this writer, but they have to be put in perspective.’’
My perspective is that is that Pinto lacks perspective when she says that when the Embilipitiya case was heard, nobody cried out “traitor lawyers.’’ No they did not say “traitor lawyers’’, they went behind the kind of lawyers who filed habeas corpus applications and killed them, just like that.
And what is Basil trying to say about that? That killing lawyers is somehow better than writing ‘traitor lawyer’ on a website?’’ Well he does say so. He says what matters is not how many death squads governments used to send those days, to kill lawyers, but what the government says now about lawyers in one paragraph on a website. I think I should rest my case. It is clear by now to any moron that the death squads on the prowl those days whether army paramilitaries or whatever, had express state sanction ---- unless such a moron insists on burying his head ostrich like in the sand.
He says getting awards from mass murders is fine with him. Be my guest, go a few months back in time and receive one from Prabhakaran. I suppose he’d think you richly deserved it, for all Basil’s and Basil’s near and dear Pinto’s insistence on running down the Sri Lankan state, for getting rid of such a dangerous terrorist such as himself.
Go ahead be my guest, receive an award from Kumaran Pathmanathan, he is there somewhere in a state cell --- and while you are at it, why not travel back in time and get one from Hitler too?
And why not say KP’s arrest was illegal?
Of course I’m not saying it tongue in cheek too - - because if Prabhakaran gave this guy Basil an award for defending human rights, Basil would have taken it too, because his and Pinto’s level of slick -- sick --- appeasement and appeasement by omission (ie: castigating the government all the while though hardly ever saying anything about the atrocities of the LTTE…) is hard to beat.
He says Rajpal does not say Pinto doesn’t deserve the award, but only that Pinto should have declined the award because of the double standards of those who gave it. Thanks for reminding me. Pinto didn’t deserve the award, even if it was given by the Christ or the Buddha himself, because Pinto’s humbug human rights exposes were intended in the main, as is well exposed in her latest article, to ignore the strong and the well-funded (read LTTE) at the expense of the wretched people of this country, such as the poor Tamils and Sinhalese who were at the receiving end of the terrorism of the terrorist the LTTE.
Basil says Pinto wrote more about the 30000 JVP period deaths than Rajpal ever did. Well he can suit himself, but I challenge Basil to show what she had written about LTTE atrocities, because when I wrote about those, day in and day out, Pinto almost never did.
That kind of selective treatment of human rights issues, is for the bought, the kept and the suspect busybodies who seriously lack perspective because of their dubious NGO connections. Anybody who gives an award to such a person can not only be a serious human rights violator such as Condoleezza Rice is, but definitely is also a prize idiot.
So Basil says he might not want to read any of my columns again? Don’t you dig that folks?
His sober majesty doesn’t want to read my columns again, because he says once I had perspective and now I don’t. Even if it was true, (which it isn’t) it’s better than lacking perspective all the time, but that condition of perpetual subjectivity belongs to Pinto and Basil.
But if Basil doesn’t read my column, I’d be proud. It shows that he certainly doesn’t agree with me, and I certainly don’t agree with him.
Good.
I would have been so embarrassed had I had views as similar and sanctimonious as Basil’s, that I would have either committed suicide, or at least never written again. Thanks, I’ll sleep well tonight.
But also folks, don’t you dig that one? “…I now have doubts as to whether I should continue to read Rajpal’’. It about sums it all up about people such as Basil. .
They are deluded into believing that they are the centre of the universe, that people hang onto their every word, because they are the self-appointed protectors of the human rights of those who their funders want to “protect’’ at a given time, at the expense of who their funders want to go after at a given time. Yes of course I get paid for my articles, so does Pinto. But I get paid only because I do a job and don’t get paid or palavered by a dozen others, for doing their job in the newspaper while also getting paid by the newspaper.
“I used to read Rajpal Abeynayake's column whenever I saw one. I now have doubts as to whether I should continue that.’’. I’m sure the many thousands who read me always, would be happy and comforted that they are in much better company with this sober humbug Basil being out of their club.
END NOTE: How silly and childish it is to entertain the notion that Rajapaksa is “my-guy.’’ I have said that all have committed violations, and my exposes of the Rajapaksa regime in the newspaper I edit are legion. I challenge anybody to say otherwise. Trust Basil to adduce argument ad hominem, without considering the simple issue I raised: Pinto is deceiving the reading public by inferring in a recent article, no matter what she wrote before, that this government is committing the worst human rights violations committed in this country ever, when that’s patently not the case.
END NOTE 2: “Thus, the issue of 30,000 disappearances is a matter that is still relevant, and will Rajpal Abeynayake write on this issue and ask the present regime to carry out its past promises on these prosecutions? If Rajpal Abeynayake wants a list of those against whom the inquiring commission said they had enough evidence to prosecute, this can easily be found,’’ Basil writes fairly agog, as if he chanced upon the holy grail.
Of course I will write and ask the government to prosecute those responsible for that violence, and in fact I’m dong so right now. President Rajapaksa, I demand that you investigate the disappearances in the 1980s. You were the most vocal those days on those disappearances going to Geneva at the drop of a hat - - so resume investigations into those disappearances NOW.
See?
I told you --- the Basils of this world think everybody is a reflection of themselves --- lame sniveling humbugs.
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