By Basil Fernando

(July 01, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) About a hundred criminals have been shot dead either in gun battles with the police or in mysterious circumstances like trying to attack police officers, even when handcuffed. This was revealed in an article published in the Sunday Lakbimanews, written by Gayan Kumara Weerasinghe. The article goes on to enumerate many criminal gangs operating around Colombo. These are the Farji gang, the Anamalu Imtiaz gang, the Diga Faizer gang, the Baiyya gang and the Potta Naufer gang. There is also the Olcott gang, the Kimbula Ela Gune gang, the Kudu Lal gang, the Blumendhal Danushka gang, the Karate Dhammika gang and the Feroze gang.

The report also goes on to describe the participation of army deserters and suspended police officers, including those who have participated in the Special Task Force (STF).

The report, in fact, does not reveal anything that is not known to the average Sri Lankan or much less to anyone who is in some way connected to public service and public life. The importance of the report lies in the fact that the article amounts to a public statement on this issue which, therefore calls for a public response from the government as well as from civil society.

From the point of view of civil society the question of widespread crime in the capital city itself and the overwhelming influence that criminal gangs have in the city, is a matter of great public interest. In fact, the prevention of crime receives the highest priority in any country on public interest matters. The very notion of public interest is slighted when in all matters of importance to society, the criminals and their gangs have a larger say than the civilian population. Such matters of public importance where the gangs play their role are matters relating to property and business transactions, matters relating to security on such issues as abductions and demands for ransom, the trade of drugs and illicit liquor and the issue of elections where criminal gangs play a dominant role in the organisation of political activities directed towards elections as well as determining the pattern of votes by way of intimidation.

The next question of public interests involved is the ineffectiveness of the country’s law enforcement system, which is the police. That the prospering of criminals and their gangs can take place only with direct and indirect patronage of the police is a position that is universally true. A study into any place where criminals dominate would demonstrate the extent to which the police and the criminal link play a role in such a situation. The assassination of Inspector Douglas Nimal and his wife in April 2006 was retaliation for an investigation in which this Inspector with a few other officers tried to conduct an investigation into some drug dealers protected by senior police officers. Initially the fabricated charges were filed against the Inspector and six other officers, and they were released by the Attorney General due to absence of evidence. On release, the Inspector and his wife were assassinated. Despite heavy pressure by the Association of Inspectors and others, no one was arrested or prosecuted regarding this murder. The internal information that the police officers themselves have about the criminal police link is kept secretly, as they fear reprisals of a similar sort.

A history of successes in establishing effective law enforcement agencies will also show very conscious attempts to break the criminal police nexus.

Arising from these two factors the major issue of concern is the fear psychosis and an atmosphere of intimidation that prevails within a locality where the criminals have their grip. The importance of this matter is that all aspects of life are crippled by such an all-pervading fear. In such a situation a social paralysis takes place. The details of that paralysis are far too great to be enumerated in a short article.

The mere fact that a hundred criminals have to be killed within a short period of time within a single city demonstrates the magnitude of the problem. On the other hand it also demonstrates the complete collapse of the criminal justice system. Criminals have to be killed only when the system of investigations, prosecutions and trial by the judiciary fails. When the police have to act as executioners the system is at its lowest ebb. Whatever pretext that is given, like a person was killed because he tried to attack the police or that a person took cyanide inside the police station, is just pretext and everybody knows it. The actual situation, as was admitted by a former IGP, was that in order to control crime action both within and outside the law has been permitted. By hook or by crook, he said, criminals have to be dealt with. If the law enforcement agency itself believes that dealing with the problem via the judicial system is counterproductive this indicates that there is a radical breakdown, not only of the system but in the confidence of the system within the government itself. Such absence of confidence in the administration of justice is potentially so dangerous that the very breeding ground of the criminals will be this abandonment of the administration of justice as a practically useless apparatus.

The only meaningful question to ask in the face of the massive increase of crime, the spread of criminal gangs and the associated police criminal link, is how to stop it. The only way to stop it is to make sufficient allocation of funds to the police, the Attorney General's Department and the judiciary so that they can become an effective system of the administration of justice.

Compared to the extent of the pumping of funds to the military, the amount of funds needed for the administration of justice would be peanuts. Thus, it is not the financial incapacity of the state that has relegated the administration of justice to insignificance and thereby made it counterproductive; it is the political unwillingness to have an efficient system of the administration of justice. Why is that so? A proper system of the administration of justice will eliminate not only common criminals but also it will go against those who abuse power for private reasons. The common criminals are only benefiting from a policy that protects more powerful social interests, which under a properly functioning legal system would be considered criminals. While some common criminals may be eliminated by way of mysterious assassinations, more powerful persons who abuse power to make profit are kept safe. Sri Lanka will remain a breeding ground for common criminals as long as the administration of justice system is crippled to benefit those in powerful positions.

One of the most surprising aspects on the discussion about peace in Sri Lanka is that it is regarded as a purely political question that has no bearing on the administration of justice. If even the administration of justice in the capital has reached such depths as demonstrated by the spread of criminal gangs and the increase of extrajudicial killings can it be expected that any better form of justice will exist in the north and the east. And if a better form of the administration of justice is not brought about, can there be peace? The utter lack of seriousness with which all questions in the country are addressed, including the peace issue, is well demonstrated by the absence of any discussion on the nature of the fallen system of the administration of justice.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Terry Lacey

(July 01, Jakarta,Sri Lanka Guardian) Indonesian and Asian renewable energy project developers are frustrated by lack of access to finance in a global crisis. Fossil fuel is subsidized in most Asian countries, while renewable energy is not. This was made clear at the Indonesia Clean Energy Investor Forum organized by the Private Financing Advisory Network (PFAN), backed by USAID in Jakarta last week.

Meanwhile Uncle Sam was showing in the House of Representatives in Washington that he is beginning to get his energy back on climate change. But how long will this take to positively impact on Asia?

Peter du Pont, who manages PFAN in Asia, led a round table in Jakarta, acknowledging to 130 project developers and bankers that a far more practical approach was needed. “We want to save the planet and make some money” he said.

Mitigating climate change, although desirable, and now supported by the Obama administration, was not yet perceived as the main driver for a new Asian energy mix.

“In Asia climate change is not a key driver for Asian governments. Energy security is a bigger driver,” he said.

ASEAN+ 3 (ASEAN with China, South Korea and Japan) is the part of the world most dependent on Middle East oil, with negative implications for security of supply and energy pricing, despite Asian perceptions that the US and Europe are more at risk.

So when du Pont, announced PFAN will focus project support and financial brokering on China, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia, these are precisely the countries most vulnerable to Middle East oil supply disruption, and major oil price hikes. The US and EU are protected, but Asia, without a new energy mix, is not.

For these Asian countries, with burgeoning electricity demand, and with China and Indonesia showing consistent economic growth despite the global crisis, security of supply is the biggest worry.

The likely rises in oil prices after the 2008 demand slump will lead to vastly more expenditure on Asian fossil fuel subsidies, and disruption of public expenditure budgets, starting in two or three years time. Solutions must be found soon. The present relief due to lower oil prices is surely temporary.

Indonesia is just concluding a 10,000 Megawatts (MW) crash program based on coal technology with the state-utility PLN to help solve the supply crisis, with a second 10,000 MW program based more on renewable energy, especially geothermal.

Du Pont challenged the Jakarta meeting to work out what was needed to build 4,000 MW of renewable energy projects in Indonesia in five years, requiring perhaps 120 new small and medium sized projects a year to be planned, financed and built using, for example, geothermal, mini-hydro, biomass and wind technologies.

Without progress on risk-sharing, improved Power Purchase Agreements, guarantees and faster-produced bankable proposals, and new attitudes by bankers, there is the risk the renewable energy part of this program could falter, or be seriously delayed.

Irwan M Habsjah, commissioner of PT Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional (BTPN) and Chairman of the Indonesia-Benelux Chamber of Commerce pointed out Indonesian and Asian power investment was still suffering loss of confidence from the 1998 Asian banking crisis.

Dr. Ir. Verina J Wargadalam, Coordinator of the Renewable Energy Research Group in the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources said progress could not be made without a big effort on capacity building. “State officials were used to intensive dialogue with each other and not with investors or stakeholders,” she said.

Walter North, Deputy Head Mission, US Embassy, said the US, will now back climate change and renewable energy in Indonesia and Asia, and is working on improving co-operation between stakeholders to involve USAID, Exim Bank, the Department of Energy and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).

Renewable energy developers were pleased with the US policy changes and promise for energy cooperation with Asia. It´s also understood it will take a bit of time to turn the US ship of state around. But Asian renewable energy power developers have been disappointed before and what they want to see is results.

Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world, investment and trade relations with the EU and Islamic banking.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Julian Vigo

(July 01,Montreal , Sri Lanka Guardian) During middle school, I used to stand at the bus stop in New Orleans with my brother, Mark, and inevitably another schoolmate would amble along with a boom box, all of us waiting together. In went Michael Jackson's Off the Wall cassette to which we danced. It became this tradition both at the bus stop and then in the bus as we rode to school. That year and the next Michael Jackson was my escort to school and back home. And it was in returning home each afternoon that I literally feared going home, seeing my mother. My brother would often get into trouble at school on purpose to avoid coming home until almost dinner time while I usually would go home alone listening, dreaming I was anywhere but on my way to the place I least liked...all the while listening to Michael sing: "Keep On With The Force Don't Stop...Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough ".

I was quite shocked this past Thursday, then the days following, to find myself extremely sad over Michael Jackson's death. I am not the type of person who follows stars or even feels emotion for them. But in discussing Michael Jackson's passing with two friends, it was in one of these discussions wherein my friend expressed "suspicion" of this man which made me feel even sadder. I am not naïve to our justice system, but I do tend to think that in general it works. Still, why all the naysayers? Why the obsession with pedophilia in Western culture this past decade? And that obsession directed specifically at Jackson? And why would rational humans (whom I consider my friends to be) jump to any conclusion about a man who was acquitted of charges because the claims were not only baseless and proven to be so, they were made by individuals who clearly took advantage of this man-boy, Jackson?

So these past days I have become that person I never thought I would be: I started inhaling everything Michael Jackson--watching interviews with him, reading court and journalistic reports, and reviewing most of his videos. And the answers to the darker questions about Michael Jackson started to emerge all on their own beginning with his quite abusive childhood, or even absence thereof. As such, I quickly came to sympathize with a man to whose music I had danced because as I was to discover because of the parallels in our childhoods. Like Michael Jackson, I too was denied my childhood as my parents chose to forego their responsibilities of parenthood and push them onto their 8 and 9 year old children. So from the age of 9, I knew no familial love, only work, obligations to the family and essentially having to keep a household running while raising two children (my younger siblings) and nursing my parent's prescriptions drug and alcohol practices with my brother, Mark. Like Michael, I would often wish to be like other children and have friends, have time for fun, for play. So it didn't take much for me to see how Michael Jackson, having few options after being Joe's and Katherine's work horse, as an adult created a world of childhood around him--specifically focusing upon his own role in fatherhood these last 12 years--as his only means of having any semblance of a private subjectivity that had been long denied him thanks to his predatory parents and later the equally ruthless media and legal structures. Certainly his Neverland ranch is a place of utmost opulence and excess. For what seemed so surreal to the rest of us only reflected the absolute paucity of personal intimacy that Jackson had always been denied, far away from the reality of his father’s insults and beatings, distanced from the nickname his father used for him, “Big Nose”. So Neverland is a precise, negative dialectic of his father’s image as Michael set out to be everything his father was not by eviscerating any physical trace of his father through plastic surgery, performances which paled his childhood Jackson Five dances and which set the world of race and gender on its head.

I cannot view any of Michael Jackson’s decisions as “weird” or “eccentric”, no more than the fact that most of his life he had to take sharp measures to protect his privacy, to provide a semblance of a normal life for his family, and even to physically free himself of constant mobbings. Indeed, I would dare say that normal went out the window for Michael Jackson after 1982’s success of Thriller and from then on when he found himself amongst throngs of fans unable to escape “normally”. As Donald Trump details in this week’s Time:

We were at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. There were thousands of people literally crushing us. We had 20 bodyguards, but it was really dangerous. He dropped to his knees and started crawling to the exit. He did it so routinely, I thought he fell. And I said, "Michael, is it always like this?" He goes, "Yeah, this is nothing. Japan is much worse."

Certainly for Michael Jackson to live within our concepts of “normal” was simply impossible since it has become clear to me in my research of this person, that nothing to which Michael Jackson was exposed was even a distant cousin of “normal”. He simply adapted to his surroundings, like moving through these crowds on hands and knees, as his normal.

We have lost a beautiful human being in Michael Jackson, a person whose only freedom from the incredible forces he faced much of his life was paradoxically his onstage persona, far from the insults and abuses of his father. And in this last period of his life his freedom was captured by literally shrouding himself from the media and public who, with reason, he grew to distrust, in creating his new brand of family. Of course, even then, this was still labelled as "weird", or branded as what he most disliked to be called: "whacko" simply because that is how we were taught to think of an adult who identifies more with children and animals than the many adults for whom it seemed he often justifiably distrusted. So when I reflect upon what Michael Jackson has done as an artist and as a humanitarian attempting to raise public awareness about hunger, famine, war and racial inequality through his economic generosity and artistic brilliance, I find it shocking that even now, just days after his death, speculation remains rife about his character despite evidence which is shockingly demonstrative of Michael Jackson having been a victim of two rather exploitative families. Still the "public opinion" somehow goes against all logic and all documentation on this subject.

Which brings me to two lovely pieces about Michael Jackson. Ishmael Reed’s article, “The Persecution of Michael Jackson”, published on CounterPunch confirms that we cannot simply hold up our politicians and media as the arbiters of right and wrong for the danger that is common today is that an "all white electronic jury has placed itself above the law", whereby media and public opinion has the last say. And then there is the recent piece in the Atlantic by Andrew Sullivan, “Thinking About Michael”, a piece which strongly argues that we have a role to play as well in this debacle which I stronly believe contributed to Michael Jackson's death. Sullivan writes:

"I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours' and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out."

In my recent foray in to all things Michael Jackson, I feel as if I have just lived through "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. This game of "who's going to entertain our bored minds today" is a ploy that the media uses to “entertain”, a ploy which we as well engage consciously or not. Sadly, we choose to focus upon the negative fictions of this beautiful man rather than examine the beauty and generosity of a person who was so damaged by his family and extreme fame, that we no longer see ourselves implicated in his demise. Such manichean reductiveness, all for the evening's entertainment and we are left with blogs which are quick to denounce a person they have all but created. I, for one, am happy not to own a television set and this is just another event to confirm that I will never own one.

I can only hope that Michael Jackson's death offers us all a moment of sobriety to reflect on how, what and why we believe the things we do as individuals and why our culture so often feeds off the fictions of negativity and violence produced by our media, rather than gravitate towards the dreams, the creativity and love that Jackson's music, dance, words and actions have given us all.

Because of Michael Jackson, I still dance on the bus.

Julian Vigo teaches at the University of Montreal.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

Michael Jackson as Tramp

By Farzana Versey

(July 01, Mumbai, Sri Lanka Guardian) There may never be a Graceland for Michael Jackson. He was the wrong kind of Bad. He could not be the rake you would love to hate. He did not have the charisma that made women go weak in their knees. If he ever took out his shirt to throw at the audience, they would see his skeleton covered with skin.

He died long ago. And was born many times. It was the rebirth of a wilful retard. Oscar Wilde wrote, “For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die."

Some might say he does not even deserve a tribute because he was accused of several crimes. Social morality is as pat as it is divisive. The American media made late-night jokes of his exploitation which proved just how exploitative they were.

If he was a joke, then it is more likely it was, as Bob Fosse said, in the Charlie Chaplin mould. He was the quintessential tragi-comic hero. Dangerous more to himself than anyone else.

The Child

Chaplin explained to Mark Sennett how he worked on the tramp character in these words: “You know this fellow is many-sided – a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. He would have you believe he is a scientist, a musician, a duke, a polo player…However, he is not above picking up cigarette butts or robbing a baby of its candy…”

Between a lost childhood and delayed adulthood, Jackson created an adolescent haven. Neverland was his utopia – a teenaged Shangri-La of fairytale rides and bubbles that never burst and chocolates that didn’t melt; it was a protection from a world that was not growing up but moving away. He could not grasp it. He was losing it. There was no boyish mop, no sideburns, no devilish rolling stone, no dervish rant. Imagine, no Imagine!

Jane Fonda got it right when she said, “His intelligence is instinctual and emotional, like a child's. If any artist loses that childlikeness, you lose a lot of creative juice. So Michael creates around himself a world that protects his creativity.”

He was comfortable with older women because they comforted the child in him, the thumb-sucker.

The Man

He was the wilful arbiter of his own life. Michael in the raw stood for something intangible. The emotional possession was cut short at some point. It was then that he made bold to insinuate that we liked him for his inadequacies, not ours. He made us feel good about ourselves.

How must it feel to be man, woman, child and product, all rolled into one, fashioned into a most exquisite piece of crystal, but always afraid of the mere nudge that could drop you to the floor into a thousand shards, each with a distinct identity and that terrible piercing feeling? Like a gymnast on a beam who wanted to perform a perfect 10, he was not unduly worried about falling down because there was a safety net.

He took umbrage in asexuality. Chaplin had chosen this path for a while and reasoned that like Balzac who believed that a night of sex meant the loss of a good page of his novel it took away precious time. It was only natural then for Michael who wanted to give a lot and take a lot to be lost to himself. He unabashedly created an androgynous persona and wanted to look and sing like Diana Ross at a high feminine pitch.

To make up for this sexuality-denying gesture, he performed the public shag. He was thrusting it in the faces of the spectators. According to an American critic, it was "to reassure himself the arguably Virgin King keeps publicly touching it".

It would appear that much like the low whisper which seemed to hold secrets he was rising above the body to become "someone who has connected with every soul in the world".

The Commentator

If Chaplin was inspired by the two world wars and the Depression, Michael had the Gulf War and the post-Woodstock yuppie punks to cater to. The gizmos he used onstage were those in-your-face things that appealed to the me-too generation of pretender beatniks.

There was orgiastic release through sex and scandal, but it had the veneer of ‘I smoked but did not inhale’ and the crustacean judicial impeachment that was rather soft within. Michael did not have too many social messages. He was the social message. However absurd may have been his attempts to become fair, straighten his hair, sharpen his nose, soften his lips, he was caricaturing himself. Is that why he rehearsed for hours in a room without mirrors? Was he avoiding his own image, the creation of a persona that he thought would be deemed acceptable? He was escaping Black and therefore rarely spoke up for it. He was the caustic commentary of our times.

He wasn’t trying to be the White man; he was only wearing a mask. He was telling them, “You're throwing stones to hide your hands”. He always wore gloves, diamond-studded gloves, and rhinestone jackets. He did not want to play the poor guy with Harlem knocking on his door wearing baggy trousers and a baseball cap, walking like he would in the streets looking for leftovers. He was the boy who had made it. He was not going to be apologetic about it.

He chose the moonwalk, a formless form, where the ground was never too close and yet not too far. “Who am I, to be blind? Pretending not to see…”

For him the baubles were discardables, a stinging statement on the state of entertainment itself, which is why he truly began to perform only when shorn of all those appendages, punishing his sinewy body to perform impossible feats because somewhere deep down he felt, "though you do not need me now, I will stay in your heart".

Unlike many pop icons, he broke the barriers of restrictive nationalism and race, and gender too. The oxygen mask he wore was perhaps not to protect him but to create an illusion of posterity. His own little tribute to the breath of life, a self-created obituary: "Just call my name and I'll be there."

Nothing can beat it.

Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based columnist and author of A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan, Harper Collins, India. She can be reached at kaaghaz.kalam@gmail.com

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(June 30, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) It’s pandemonium again to the fore in the Assembly today, as members of the Congress played along with their alliance partner, the ruling DMK, while the CPI, the CPI(M), the PMK and the MDMK ‘fought for the rights’ of the main opposition party AIADMK.

As soon as the question hour came to an end, AIADMK legislators (except Mylapore MLA S Ve Shekher) raised slogans for passage of a resolution on the Sri Lankan Tamils issue.

They demanded that the House adopt a resolution urging India to file a case against Sri Lanka in the International Court of Justice in view of allegations that many Tamils were killed during the military offensive against the LTTE.

As the Speaker rejected their demand and wanted to proceed with the listed business, AIADMK members stood up and raised slogans.

At this point, Chief Minister M Karunanidhi intervened and said raising slogans inside the House was ‘uncultured’, and requested the Speaker to evict them. Following this, the Speaker ordered the eviction of the MLAs belonging to the main opposition party of the State.

Within minutes, the MLAs of the MDMK, a ‘trusted ally’ of the AIADMK walked out of the House. Condemning the act of the AIADMK legislators, Congress floor leader D Sudarsanam said the business advisory committee should meet under the chairmanship of the Speaker to find a solution to the ruckus created on a daily basis by the members of the main opposition party.

‘This is a sacred place. 234 members elected by 6.5 crore people are working here for the welfare of the State. It is unacceptable that some are creating trouble daily here,’ he said.

Members of the CPI (Sivapuuniyam) and CPI(M) (Balabarathi) objected to this and said it was the right of a political party to raise an issue and to walkout of the Assembly.

State Minister K Ponmudy and Congress MLA Peter Alphonse, while objecting to the remarks made by Communist legislators, said that it was the Speaker who had to decide on the topics to be discussed in the Assembly.

Echoing their stand, Finance Minister K Anbazhagan said the Speaker had got every right on making decisions over Assembly proceedings. To this, PMK MLA G K Mani expressed his unhappiness that ‘opposition parties were not being given due representation in the Assembly’.
As the Speaker objected to this, the PMK members walked out of the House.

However, Velmurugan, a legislator of the party, came back to the House within minutes to speak on a call attention motion, evicting laughter among the members of the DMK and Congress.

Special permission

Even as AIADMK legislators were evicted en masse from the Assembly today, S Ve Shekher, the Mylapore MLA from the AIADMK, who is apparently not in the good books of his party leadership, was given special permission by the Speaker to speak on a special call attention motion.

Following this, the dramatist turned politico spoke on certain issues and also requested Chief Minister Karunanidhi to help an ailing karateka.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Ishmael Reed

(June 30, Washington, Sri Lanka Guardian) Last Thursday, while working on some writing deadlines, I was switching channels on cable. On CNN they were promoting “Black In America," an exercise meant to boost ratings by making whites feel good by making blacks look bad, the marketing strategy of the mass media since the 1830s, according to a useful book entitled “The Showman and the Slave,” by Benjamin Reiss. The early penny press sold a “whiteness” upgrade to newly arriving immigrants by depicting blacks in illicit situations. By doing so they were marketing an early version of a self esteem boosting product. One of the initial sensational stories was about the autopsy of a black woman named Joice Heth, who claimed to be George Washington’s nurse and over one hundred years old. It was the O. J. story of the time. Circus master, P. T. Barnum, charged admission to her autopsy, which attracted the perverted in droves.

And so, if the people broadcasting cable news appear to be inmates of a carnival, there is a connection since the early days of the mass media to that form of show business. According to Reiss, early newspapers were not only influenced by P. T. Barnum, but actually cooperated with him on some hoaxes and stunts.

I would classify CNN’s “Black in America” as a stunt. In preparing for a sequel to the first "Black In America," which boosted the networks ratings (the O. J. trial saved CNN!), CNN rolled out the usual stereotypes about black Americans. Unmarried black mothers were exhibited, without mentioning that births to unmarried black women have plunged since 1976 more than that of any other ethnic group. Then we got some footage that implied that blacks as a group were homophobes even though Charles Blow, a statistician for The New York Times, recently published a chart showing that gays have the least to fear from blacks. Recently, the media perpetrated a hoax that blacks were responsible for the passage of Proposition 8, the California proposition that banned gay marriage. An academic study refuted this claim, but that didn’t deter The New York Times from hiring Benjamin Schwarz to explain black homophobia. Schwarz is the writer who wrote in The Los Angeles Times that blacks who were victims of lynchings in the south were probably guilty.

In the last “Black in America," Soledad O’Brien, CNN’s designated tough love agent against the brothers and sisters, scolded a black man for not attending his daughter’s birthday party. The aim of this scene was meant to humiliate black men as neglectful fathers. Ms. O’Brien won’t be permitted by her employees to mention that 75% of white children will live at one time or another in a single parent household and that the Gov. of South Carolina’s not showing up for Father’s Day isn’t just a lone aberration in “White America.”

How would CNN promote a “White in America?” The thousands of meth addicts who have abandoned their children? The California rural and suburban white women who do more dope than Latino and black youth? The suburban Dallas white teenagers who are overdosing on “cheese” heroin? Why not? Can’t get State Farm, Ford and MacDonald’s to sponsor such a program? All of these companies are sponsoring “Black in America,” the aim of which is to cast collective blame on blacks for the country’s social problems. For ratings.

During CNN’s carnival act disguised as news, the scene of Zimbabwe’s Prime Minster being urinated upon by a monkey while sitting in his garden drew snickers in the newsroom. This is what passes for coverage of the African continent by CNN.

When the bulletin that Michael Jackson had died flashed across the screen, I was prepared for TV at it’s worst and I wasn’t disappointed. The man wasn’t cold before the familiar adjectives were rolled out. “Weird, bizarre, eccentric,” the traditional language used to disparage artists by the bourgeoisie. Dan Abrams, who made his reputation by convicting O. J. Simpson before the opening arguments of his criminal trial, made a snarky comment about Jackson’s weirdness. Mr. Abrams, a higher up at MSNBC, employs a Hitler admirer named Pat Buchanan. Given Abram’s background, why isn’t that considered weird?

Former Calfornia poet laureate Al Young called to inform me that CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, another O. J. alumni, and a man who said that blacks shouldn’t be “patted on the head” or “patronized” for believing in O. J. Simpson’s innocence, had made some ugly comments about Jackson. (A star who has had at least a dozen facelifts called into the “Larry King Show” to comment about MJ’s altering his appearance).

Also weird was MSBC’s Savanah Guthries’ air-headed depiction of the trial. (For a list of Ms. Guthries’ false reportings see MediaMatters.com). She said that the evidence against Jackson in the trial was “devastating." So devastating that some legal experts said that Jackson should never have been brought to trial and that the aim of the trial was to seek a pound of flesh from Jackson for being uppity and for putting the name of Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., a vindictive District Attorney, into a song. In my opinion it was the prosecution of Jackson by this District Attorney, who, among other things, violated Jackson’s fourth amendment rights, and made disparaging remarks about the star during a press conference, and the side-show pro prosecution media coverage that killed Jackson.

In my lengthy examination of the trial printed in my book, “Mixing It Up, Taking on The Media Bullies,” I concluded that though millions of Jackson’s fans celebrated his acquittal, the District Attorney, who was allowed to squander the California taxpayers’ money so that he might humiliate a rich black man, whom he felt had sassed him, was the victor. At the beginning of the trial, Jackson was dancing on top of a van. During the trial he had to be hospitalized. At the end, he was a frail emaciated wreck.

Because of the malicious prosecution of Jackson by Sneddon and Sneddon’s claque in the media, Jackson will always be regarded as a pedophile. (When the trial opened, a USA Today / CNN / Gallup Poll found that 72% of whites and 51% of Blacks believed that the charges against Jackson were “Definitely” or “Probably” true.) Wherever “Mad Dog” Sneddon, this hateful man might be in his retirement, he can gloat over the death of the man against whom he waged a vendetta with all of the power of the state at his disposal. Sneddon even tried to introduce photos of Jackson’s genitals during the 2005 trial, which proved too much even for the pro prosecution judge.

Of course, none of Sneddon’s abuse or the abuse of Jackson by his accusers was mentioned by an old corporate media, out of touch and on life supports. For infotainers like Katie Couric, Jackson’s father Joe was MJ’s sole abuser. In the eyes of yesterday’s media, black fathers are the principal actors in domestic violence.

Guthrie also said that the prosecution “had conducted mini trials within the trial,” which brought up “a whole history of prior bad acts of molestation.” She was referring to 1994 case in which Jackson was accused of pedophilia by a youngster who, according to writer Mary Fisher, a serious journalist, was used by his father to wrest some cash from Jackson. In"Mixing It Up,” I summarized Mary Fisher’s serious and thorough investigation that was originally published in GQ, October, 1994, under the title “Was Michael Jackson Framed?” Jackson settled out of court because Johnnie Cochran didn’t want him to face one of those all white suburban juries that O. J. faced.

Fisher wrote: “It’s a story of greed, ambition, misconceptions of part of police and prosecutors, a lazy and sensation-seeking media and the use of a powerful, hypnotic drug. It may also be a story about how a case was simply invented.”

Fisher claimed that the first case arose from the ambitions of the thirteen-year-old accuser’s stepfather, Evan Chandler, who exploited Jackson’s friendship with his son. At one point, he asked Jackson to build him a house. Fisher said that the child denied being abused by Jackson until he was administered the drug sodium amytal, which is known to induce false memory. Chandler refused to be interviewed for the article and refused to appear on the Today Show, where Fisher repeated her charges before a nationwide audience. She said that the whole scheme was concocted by the child’s stepfather to destroy the superstar.

None of the media descriptions of Jackson’s career, including a superficial pop-driven survey of the star’s career by Anderson Cooper, referred to the 2005 plaintiff’s lies and his mother’s shabby history of conning individuals and institutions including J. C. Penney’s, which she accused of sexual abuse. She claimed that she had been “fondled inappropriately” by store personnel. Documents also hinted that “…the mom rehearsed her children to corroborate her story.”

During the 2005 trial, Jackson’s Attorney, Tom Mesereau Jr. got the teenage boy to admit that he lied under oath during the J. C. Penny case. USA Today reported on March 1, 2005, that the mother used the boy as a prop to get money from Mike Tyson, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Jay Leno and others, “even though insurance was paying his bills." Linda Deutsch, one of the last of hard-nosed shoe leather journalists, reporting for the Associated Press on March of 2005. said that Mesereau got the 15 year old to admit that he’d told Jeffrey Alpert, a school official that “nothing happened" between Jackson and him.

Connie Keenan, editor of Mid Valley News, wrote of a hoax that the boy’s mother perpetrated on that newspaper. She made a pitch that her son needed medical care and that she had no financial means to provide it. During the first week of the newspaper’s appeal, the mother received $965 in donations. It turned out that the boy was being treated at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles with no cost to the family. Connie Keenan concluded that “My gut level, she’s a shark. She was after money. My readers were used. My staff was used. It’s sickening."

While referring to Jackson as “bizarre” none of the cable reporting about Jackson’s death cited the bizarre courtroom testimony of the plaintiff’s mother, Janet Arvizo. At one point during her testimony, she said that feared her children would disappear from Neverland, Jackson’s ranch, in a hot air balloon.

On Apr 18, 2005, Agence France-Presse reported “The mother of Michael Jackson's young molestation accuser claimed that she feared her children would be spirited away from the star's Neverland Ranch in a hot air balloon. In some of the most bizarre testimony of Jackson's frequently surreal trial, the woman revealed that she told police she feared her three kids would vanish from Neverland into California's blue skies.

"Did you tell the sheriff that you thought your children might disappear in a hot air balloon from Neverland?" Jackson's lead lawyer Thomas Mesereau asked the woman under cross-examination.

"I made them aware," she said.

Finally, in November of 2006, according to TMZ, Janet Arvizo pled no contest to a welfare fraud charge in Los Angeles. She was ordered to 150 hours of community service and to pay $8, 600 in restitution. During Jackson's trial, Arvizo invoked the Fifth regarding welfare fraud. Seems that she applied for welfare even though she’d received a $150, 000 settlement from J. C. Penny’s. Even with the mother’s behavior and the boys lies, Nancy Grace, commenting on the death of Jackson, said that she was surprised by the not guilty verdict in the Jackson trial. No wonder Ms. Grace has been called” a cheerleader for the prosecution.”

Yet, these journalists insist that their news product is superior
to that of bloggers. (Journalistic bottom feeder, Diane Dimond, a Sneddon fan and Jackson stalker was invited by MSNBC to weigh in during which she was allowed to engage in doofus speculation much of it ugly about Jackson’s life and death)

G. Q. s Mary Fisher accused her colleagues of lazy journalism of the sort that defamed Jackson in life and in death. Maureen Orth from Vanity Fair didn’t read Mary Fisher’s findings. She was on the Chris Matthews Show accusing Jackson of “serious felonies” involving pedophilia. Another reporter who seemed to nullify the 2005 Jackson jurie's decision was “Morning Joe’s” adjunct bimbo, Courtney Hazlett. She said that there would be no pilgrimage to Neverland and as there was to Graceland, because “bad things happened at Never Land." We are led to believe that Presley and his entourage spent their days at Graceland drinking milk and reading each other passages from the scriptures.

All of these opinions seem to indicate that Cable’s talking heads have taken it upon themselves to nullify the judgment of juries whenever they please. This all white electronic jury has placed itself above the law.

But at least Jackson didn’t suffer from the kind of hi tech lynching accorded the tragic Patsy Ramsey. For years cable, which now not only calls elections but acts as judge and jury, accused her of murdering her child. Only after her death was it found that she was innocent.

If the reporting on Jackson’s death by the media wasn’t salacious and ignorant enough, it didn’t get any better the next day, June 26.

Ignoring Jackson’s philanthropic pursuits and contributions to forty charities, on the “Today Show,“ it was all about what happened to all of the nigger’s money and whether he died from too many drugs and what’s to become of his children, questions meant to attract the prurient. Again, Diane Dimod was invited on to spread scurrilous unconfirmed rumors about the dead star. Some of the modern day carnival barkers like Chris Matthews expressed surprise that Jackson’s death resulted in such an outpouring of worldwide mourning. This is what happens to people like Matthews who dwell in an insulated white supremacist bubble (that includes the Anglo wannabe and Churchill admiring Irish among them) which holds that a narrow cultural strip between New York and Washington represents the world.

I would like to have seen more independent African-American journalists comment on the passing of Michael Jackson, but, according to Richard Prince, who runs a media blog for the Maynard journalism Institute, hundreds have lost their jobs over the last two years, including Pulitzer Prize winners like Les Payne.

With the absence of black and Latinos from journalism, the media have become a spare all white jury always ready to take down a black celebrity for the entertainment of the types who used to attend those acts created by P. T. Barnum.

(Ishmael Reed is the publisher of Konch. His new book, "Mixing It Up, Taking On The Media Bullies" was published by De Capo.)

Lyrics: by Michael Jackson

They wanna get my a**, dead or alive.
You know he really tried to take me down by surprise.
I bet he missioned with the CIA.
He don't do half what he say.

Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

He out shock in every single way.
He stop at nothing just to get his political say.
He think he hot cause he's BSDA.

I bet he never had a social life anyway.
You think he bother with the KKK?
I bet his mother never taught him right anyway.
He want your vote just to remain TA.
He don't do half what he say.

Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

Dom S. Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) With the government giving high priority to the welfare of children in the IDP welfare villages, special teams have been deployed to carry out urgent activities for the protection and care of displaced children.

More than 10,000 children have been screened so far and reports concerning their current status are being obtained to make necessary arrangements, said National Child Protection Authority Chairman, Jagath Wellawatta.

The special teams which include pediatricians look into IDP childrens’ health conditions and whether they have been subjected to improper use by persons, causing threats to their physical and mental health.

The mental health conditions of children are also observed by the psychiatric unit attached to the teams, he added.

The Child Protection Authority is paying special attention to the safety of orphans and children separated from their parents, to ensure that they do not go into the hands of persons unable or unsuitable to provide them proper care.

The progress of the program commenced on 01st June, is supervised by a 20 member panel from universities, National Child Protection Authority and the Department of Probation and Child Care Department.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) President Mahinda Rajapaksa has decided to appoint an All Party Committee for work related to all aspects of Development and Reconciliation in the country.

This committee will be expected to discuss in depth current issues and priorities on development and emerging political trends, especially in the context of the new development needs following the defeat of the LTTE, and the need for national reconciliation in the new era of peace.

It will meet once a month chaired by President Rajapaksa to study current issues related to development and national reconciliation.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sri lanka and India are to sign an MoU to study the feasibility of laying an undersea cable to connect the power networks of two countries.

Interlink between India and Sri Lanka will firm up the idea of establishing a South Asian energy grid being discussed by SAARC.

It will allow both countries to manage peak demand or at times when hydrel capacities in their respective areas run low just as it is doing now in India, official sources said.

It will also help Sri Lanka reduce use of expensive fuels and import cheaper power from India's surplus. The power supply scenario will allow the two countries to exchange about 500 mw of electricity in the short term.

The undersea link will be laid on the seabed just as telecom and Internet cables run across ocean beds around the world.

The project will be looking at laying a cable in the Gulf of Mannar between Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu and Talaimannar on the left flank of the Mannar islands in Sri Lanka. The underwater cable will be linked to Sri Lanka’s network at Anuradhapura through an overhead line.

The Times of India reported, that an initial report prepared by the state-owned transmission utility PowerGrid, which will be the implementing agency from India for the sub-sea link, has pegged the cost at Rs 2,292 crore and said it could be completed within 42 months of getting investment approvals.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is a pity that people are increasingly beginning to realize that the end of the war after all is not reaping for them the benefits they expected and deserved despite the monumental sacrifices they made and sufferings they faced when the Government during the war went on ruthlessly imposing hardships on them by taxation , price hikes, tariff hikes and soaring cost of living burdens while taking refuge under the war expenditure.

The people patiently bore all these hardships despite raging corruption in the Ministries and the Govt. sector ; media suppression and burgeoning lawlessness on the hope that the Govt. will provide relief to them after the war ends and honor its promises. Alas !, what has happened now ? Talatha Atukorale asked . After several months have elapsed since the war ended , the Govt . is still continuing to increase the people’s burdens, looking for ways and means to destroy media freedom rights by introducing Draconian Press Council laws , fattening itself and its over bloated Cabinet by increasing further the portfolios. Self glorification and celebrations are the order of the day , when truly it is the people who suffered while the Forces made the sacrifices on the field , she added.

UNP M.P. Talatha Atukorale expressed these views when addressing a media briefing at the UNP media unit today (30 Jun ). While 190000 workers have lost their jobs and thousands of Industries and Business establishments are closed down and closing down , the Govt. is not concerned about the sufferings of the masses or solving their problems , instead it is only making insidious attempts to hide the true picture from the people by stifling the media and Opposition exposing the Govt. misdeeds , inefficiency and corruption, she regretted. This country’s hard fought and won freedom of speech is being eroded . The Govt. instead of seriously coming to grips with the people’s problems is dissipating the entire time on wreaking revenge and pleasing its sycophants and serfs waiting to grab portfolios to serve their selfish ambitions. Recently a poor astrologer was imprisoned for his making a prediction which sounded not in favor of the Govt. When a Govt. which stoops to this lowliest level is in power , can people expect the country to advance or progress ?she asked.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Addressing a media conference at the UNP media unit yesterday (29 Jun) , UNP M .P. Vajira Abeywardena , said, it is the duty of a leader to stand by the people for which he is elected , for Late D.S. Senanayake the first Prime Minsiter of SL is revered and held in high esteem even today , and described as the father of the nation fondly because he won the independence for the country in 1948 and wished the people to benefit from it . He did not indulge in self glorification nor did he try subtle methods to induce others to call himself a King. After accomplishing the task he gave the benefits of the independence to be enjoyed by the people for whom it was won instead of seeking monarchy and creating anarchy in the country.

It is easy for a leader of a country to become a self styled and self proclaimed King . But more important than that is to realize that the war victory does not belong to any particular person , party or Govt., rather it is the victory of the people , by the people and for the people who bore every hardship endlessly imposed on them by the Govt. while the Forces made their sacrifices in the field.

It is only now people are beginning to realize that the beginning of the final disastrous end of Prabhakaran and the LTTE was set in motion by Ranil Wickremesinghe . The Ceasefire agreement (CFA) signed by him with the LTTE in 2001 was the first salvo fired against the LTTE which triggered the slow but sure disintegration and devastation of the LTTE . The present EP Chief Minister Pillayan and Karuna broke away with LTTE because of this agreement . Karuna openly stated this. The backbone of the LTTE too was broken due to the Arms suppliers abroad to the LTTE getting arrested and are even now facing life imprisonment . The LTTE missile power was crippled as a result. This was a devastating blow to the LTTE from which it could not recover till the end – as when the subsequent Govt. used missile and aerial attacks on the LTTE , it could not counter them because of their missile incapacity .

It is therefore no wonder that Prabhakaran called UNP leader as a ‘cunning fox’ , because Prabhakaran realized too late that it is the CFA which throttled him and his Organization ,and which marked the beginning of his inevitable end .

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sri Lanka welcomed the initiatives taken to promote trade and investment among member states within the framework of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC) during its Council of Ministers’ Meeting in Sana’a, Yemen on Thursday 25 June. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Hussain Bhaila who led the Sri Lanka delegation to the Conference urged that IOR-ARC ‘may proceed on the basis that a Preferential Trade Arrangement is an instrument to foster and enhance the promotion of trade flows in the region by removing impediments’. He however cautioned that ‘mutually beneficial trade’ must be promoted, taking into account ‘the economic asymmetries among member states’.

The Deputy Minister, in this context, welcomed the deliberations of the PTA Sub-Committee under the IOR Working Group on Trade and Investment, in mapping the work envisaged with regard to the implementation of a Preferential Trade Agreement for IOR-ARC member states. He also welcomed the initiatives taken by IOR-ARC to promote investment, including the work done towards the implementation of an Agreement on the Promotion and Protection of Investment in the region. He commended the moves underway to share information among member states on trade, finance, investment regimes, intellectual property, procurement procedures, customs regulations and quarantine requirements to reach harmonisation of standards, as ‘welcome first steps in intra-regional trade facilitation’.

Deputy Foreign Minister Bhaila reiterated Sri Lanka’s deep commitment towards the principles espoused by IOR-ARC, having actively contributed to the Organisation in various capacities over the years. He reiterated the sentiments echoed by member countries of the need to ‘collectively map a strategy that can unlock the tremendous potential of IOR-ARC’ by the institutional strengthening of the Organisation.

Sri Lanka welcomed, among other initiatives, the setting up of the Centre for Science and Technology Transfer in Iran to facilitate the transfer and development of technology among member states’; the further development of the IORNET website to encourage private sector interaction; and the agreement reached in principle to combat maritime piracy in the region. It also commended initiatives by member countries to cooperate on areas of common interest binding the Indian Ocean Rim countries such as disaster management and information sharing, shipping, coastal infrastructure development and tourism.

The Deputy Foreign Minister thanked the Yemeni Foreign Minister and Chair of IOR-ARC Dr. Abubaker Al-Qirbi, as well as member states for the unqualified support and condolences extended to the Sri Lanka delegation on the sudden passing away of M.A.M. Marleen, Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, under tragic circumstances in Sana’a. Ambassador Marleen was to lead the Sri Lanka delegation at the Senior Officials’ Meeting.

The Council of Ministers Meeting was preceded by the three Working Group Meetings of the IOR Academic Forum, Business Forum and Trade and Investment, as well as the Senior Officials’ Meeting held from 20 to 24 June in Sana’a. Senior officials of the Foreign Ministry and the Department of Commerce were associated with the Meetings. IOR-ARC is a grouping of Indian Ocean Rim countries launched in 1997 to promote economic cooperation. It has a membership of 18 countries including Sri Lanka.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) A minor flood situation has been reported from the Ratnapura area following heavy rains in the area, the Disaster Management Centre reported today.

People living around the Kaluganga have been told to be alert about the rising water levels while the relevant officials have been put on alert.

Heavy rains also have affected the Kalutara district.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

"The end of the civil strife should be seen as the beginning of a new era, in which Colombo’s emphasis should be on winning the trust of the beleaguered local Tamils who have suffered the most in the war."
_______________

By Bharti Chhibber

(June 30, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Now that the Sri Lankan army has claimed victory in the war against the LTTE, it’s time to rebuild the Sri Lankan economy and reconstruct infrastructure. And the most important and basic to a permanent solution to the Tamil issue is to address it by a political resolution.

It calls for concrete steps beginning with measures to resettle the vast number of internally displaced people, especially in the wake of the war to regain Tamils’ confidence.

Already the government has asked the Tamil refugees in India to come back. Here India can play a very important role, something similar to what it is doing in Afghanistan—rebuild Sri Lankan infrastructure. This will go a long way in cementing ties between the two neighbours, who already are cooperating economically in a number of areas.

India has always been on the forefront of humanitarian assistance whenever it is required by our neighbouring state. Even before the end of the bitter civil war in Lanka, India announced an assistance of $ 19.86 million and sent 40,000 ‘family packets’ each containing food and medicines needed by a family of five for three weeks.

India is also on the way to increasing its medical missions in Lanka from 62. The Tamil Nadu government also announced an aid package worth Rs 250 million for the welfare of the internally displaced people in Sri Lanka apart from despatching relief material to the war-torn state.

We were wary of direct intervention earlier in the ongoing conflict between the Sri Lankan army and the LTTE. But now with the end of the war, India should do what it does the best—help Sri Lanka rebuild its economy. It’s going to take a lot to rebuild the economy in Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged northeast.

Displaced people require all the infrastructural and financial assistance they can get to return to their homes and get back their means of livelihood. Sri Lanka’s agriculture and fishing industries will also take time to recover.

India has always been keen to avert civilian deaths in the battle zone and a supply crisis in the Jaffna peninsula. The Sri Lankan government also reportedly made a request to New Delhi to ship relief to the population in Jaffna, which was denied supplies due to the closure of their lifeline A9 Highway. The package comprised rice, dal, sugar and milk powder to provide relief to the beleaguered population. India has already provided material for 5,000 shelters to house about 25,000 people, a team of doctors and relief worth Rs 100 crore in addition to other measures.

In the long drawn-out civil war thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, and lakhs of people rendered homeless. As the UN points out, the cost in civilian suffering has been enormous with massive civilian casualties and 300,000 displacements.

The end of the civil strife should be seen as the beginning of a new era, in which Colombo’s emphasis should be on winning the trust of the beleaguered local Tamils who have suffered the most in the war.

The Rajapaksa government has been arguing that a political solution to the ethnic conflict is possible only after the military defeat of the LTTE. Now that it has been accomplished, it’s time that the Tamils get their due. The foremost task before the Rajapaksa government is to help thousands of Tamils living without food and medicines in makeshift camps. The Sri Lankan government has outlined a 180-day plan to resettle the refugees to their original places of habitation.

The next step in the economic rebuilding of the state after the settlement of displaced people will be to work on infrastructure development. Reconstructing tourism industry will be crucial to uplift the Sri Lankan economy.

In fact, India and Sri Lanka already have a broad spectrum of mechanisms and institutions for bilateral cooperation. They have a free trade arrangement already in place. Further, both the states undertook a feasibility study for a 20 billion undersea power transmission link between India and Sri Lanka.

The 200-km long submarine cable will enable India to export electricity to Sri Lanka and is likely to be set up with a capacity to wheel around 1,000 MW of electricity. The link is likely to connect Madurai in Tamil Nadu and Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka’s north central province.

In South Asia there is tremendous potential for developing regional and sub-regional energy resources in an integrated manner. However, usually domestic politics take its toll on such efforts. Perhaps, it is high time now that the two states to come together to offset the impact of global recession.n

The writer teaches political science in the University of Delhi.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

"Nobody should force this on them as they have realised it and what is needed is to provide facilities with no compulsion at the cost of their future."
_________

By Sarath Wijesinghe

The vehicle to impart knowledge is the language.

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) English has become the main E-Com, Commercial and link language of many Nations due to availability, simplicity, clarity and sheer necessity due to colonisation as a result of Navel Power of the west and resulting exploration of the Globe. A Sinhala trader in Pettah is compelled to have a working knowledge of Tamil for his survival. Though originated in an Island the ownership is shared by the entire world today. English should be used as a servant vehicle for survival, propriety and education and business and not as a master or a social symbol and status.

English teachers

Presidential Secretariat has continued initiative on the program English as a lifeline, by taking steps to train 219,864 English Teachers in 9472 schools with the help of Indian academics and the Department of Education led by Mr Sunimal Fernando Advisor to the President and Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha who has planned the English education with his Oxford academic brilliance and practical experience in Sri Lanka on the subject are pioneers of the project.

It is an ambitious program to train English teachers in 18 months and provide English education equally to the entire country. The barriers and obstructions were discussed openly and critically headed by the President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who gave clear and decisive directions to the officers present and involved in the program.

By Somapala Gunadheera

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) ‘Captain Ali’ which was supposed to bring supplies to the displaced in Vanni but was turned away by the Government is to off-load its cargo at last, at the instance of India. The ship was coming for a long time starting from the time that the LTTE was fighting its last battle. The information about the ship was hazy and scrappy at that time. Who were the shippers? What was her cargo? Where would she unload?

‘Captain Ali’ was to come from England initially but it transpired later that due to objections by the British Government she took off from France. There was apprehension at the time whether she was coming in peace or in war. The Sri Lankan Navy declared its readiness to deal with the ghost ship, if it tried to enter our territorial waters.

The impression was that the ship was chartered by the Tamil Diaspora. While the Government claimed that permission had not been obtained for the voyage, there were counter claims that permission had been sought. The good Samaritans who were chartering the ship appeared to prefer anonymity for themselves and non-description for the cargo.

By the time ‘Captain Ali’ arrived, Prabhakaran was no more and the fighting was over. The Navy boarded the ship and did a thorough survey of her cargo. They declared that the entire consignment consisted of food, clothing and medicine but the Government resolutely shut out the cargo. Next we heard that ‘Amir Ali’ was anchored off Chennai to obtain water for her crew that had fallen ill. A couple of days later, the papers reported that after a high level discussion in Delhi, Sri Lanka had relented and agreed to receive the cargo. The latest news is that the cargo is getting routed through the Indian Red Cross. That however is a clever face-saving move.

Lessons for the Diaspora

This incident raises several issues of relevance to both the Diaspora and the Government. Why did the Diaspora fight shy of declaring the cargo and its consignees to begin with? May be they were still hopeful of landing at Mulathievu. There was apprehension that the ship was coming to rescue the trapped Prabhakaran and his army. Now in retrospect it appears to be clear that the unarmed ship could not possibly have harboured such violent ambitions.

Perhaps the consignors were themselves not sure of the ships destination when she started as things were in the melting pot here at the time. But why did they elect to remain incognito even after the end of the war? The simplest thing to do was to have made a public declaration of the cargo, claiming that it was meant for the refugees in Vavuniya. Such transparency might have put an end to the matter without allowing it to snowball to a confrontation.

The ‘stage-fright’ of the Diaspora has already cost them much. Even at the peak of the war they failed to come into open negotiations with the Government. They preferred to act by proxy through Moon, Brown, Milliband and Clinton and it was too late in the day when they discovered how ineffective those cat’s paws were.

Imaginably the bulk of the LTTE investment on the war came from the Diaspora but they did nothing to manage that investment, preferring to remain back-stage. The result has sent billions down the drain. The Diaspora had all the rights and stakes to come forward and negotiate with the Government on behalf of their people when the battle was on. Such direct intervention would have provided a plausible mediator who had a legitimate role to play in the escalating conflict, unlike third parties who were ineffectively praying for peace in chorus.

Perhaps the conflict might have had a happier ending with direct mediation and saved thousands of lives on both sides. This reminds me of the following observation I made in an article published in the ‘Groundviews’ of February 18. 2009;" A prompt hands-on, pragmatic approach by the Diaspora should be more meaningful and fruitful to the Tamils than all the efforts to get Clinton, Brown, Obama and Moon to help by remote control".It is hoped that at least at this late stage the Diaspora would manifest itself to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for their less fortunate brethren at home, by filling their leadership vacuum. They have all the brains and resources to play that role better than any other imaginable substitute. ‘Government in transition’ may look fashionable but even for that the foundation has to be laid at home. The immediate problem is to grant relief to the refugees who are suffering ‘untold hardship’ according to them and obtain the best possible berth for their kind at the ongoing negotiations by putting together the infighting leaders on their side. Unfortunately the Diaspora itself appears to be divided

Lessons for the Government

As for the Government, ‘Captain Ali’ contains two lessons, one strategic and the other diplomatic. If the Government was determined not to allow the ship to offload the cargo, they ought to have given her marching orders, without inspection. That would have gone down with the rest of the world due to the suspicion on what the vessel contained. Instead officers boarded the ship, rummaged it thoroughly and declared to the whole world that it only contained relief supplies for the refugees. Turning the ship away thereafter would naturally appear to be an act of meanness. That was a diplomatic faux pas.

The Government has all the reason to be proud of ending the war but none to be arrogant. Arrogance is oblivious to reality, propriety, reason and consequences. Turning away the ship in the first instance betrays oblivion to all these aspects. Having debarred the ship however the decision had to be kept inviolate for the sake of national prestige. That could not be due to the intervention of the ‘Big Brother’. He could not be ignored not only because of his power but also for reasons of gratitude arising from his favours during the war.

This time the Diaspora chose an effective arm-twister. That was the neighbouring Tamilnadu. And the chances are that the same agent would be employed again and again in the future. That will be irksome and embarrassing to the Government. The remedy is to be circumspect and diligent before such decisions are taken hereafter. Circumspection and diligence require the absence of prejudice. As the Dhammapada says, "What is said or done with a prejudiced mind, necessarily produces negative results, as surely as the cart wheel follows the footsteps of the drawer".

The Dhammapada saying would apply even to the reported threat to prosecute Prabakaran’s aged and decrepit parents. Besides, the move, if any, appears to be a reversal of the fable in which a lion that wanted to devour an innocent lamb, did so by alleging that his father had muddied the stream above.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Kamal Chandra Bose

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The announcement of a symposium to be held in Sri Lanka on the 1818 British genocide on Sri Lanka's Wellasa is welcome news. The 1818 rebellion by Sinhalese against the British was crushed with absolute ruthlessness, killing large numbers of people, burning villages and doing every kind of atrocity with impunity. During the 20th century, several historians have documented the history of this crushing of rebellions with such ruthlessness as to silence everyone in the future. However, there was a further rebellion in 1848 which too was crushed ruthlessly. A third historically recorded ruthless suppression happened in 1915. Many similar rebellions were crushed in India, and in fact in all parts of colonies of the British as well as of others.

The demand for compensation for colonial destruction became a familiar theme, particularly during the last quarter of the 20th century. There are global movements, particularly from Africa and Latin America, making this demand. And there is a solid global lobby on this issue, supported also by people of the former colonial powers themselves, like the way Mahatma Ghandi was supported a large section of the British empire, forcing the Britain to abandon the empire. Though Churchill said that he will not be the prime minister under whom the empire will be dissolved, nonetheless later the British were forced by forces of resistance, from outside and within, to abandon the empire.

The issue of compensation for colonialism came up in the 1993 International Gathering on Human Rights, known as the Vienna Conference, which laid down several important principles relating to human rights. The same issue came up in the United Nations conference on racial discrimination, held in 2003. This was one of the issues on which there was serious divergence of opinion.

Strangely, one of the most vociferous movements demanding compensation for colonial destruction came from liberation theologians who rose after the Vatican Council, which was called by John the XXIII. Perhaps Marxist influence on some liberal theologians, particularly in the Latin American countries, may have contributed to this development. However, there were movements that were not necessarily leftist which supported this position.

In South Asia, one of the persons who initiated the movement relating to this matter was Father Tissa Balasuriya of Sri Lanka. Some twenty or more years back, he was a very active Catholic theologian participating in many global movements and also having particular links with Asian countries. He often visited Indian theological groups and wrote extensively on this issue. He clearly deserved to be recognized as a pioneer of this movement when no-one in South Asia, including Sri Lanka, was vocal on this matter.

The theme is of great significance, as the symposium organizers have announced that they will also look into 21st century international legal doctrines to present a case for compensation to the British government. Perhaps this will be the first symposium at which these international legal doctrines of liability for by any government, colonial or otherwise, on commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity will be discussed. Thus the importance is not only on the past issues but also on contemporary issues, where questions of liability of the states themselves will be discussed.

The rebellion at Wellasa is not a mere past event. The British laid the foundation for the Sri Lankan military and the police. The habit inculcated for ruthlessness in 1818, 1848 and 1915 has been repeated by the Sri Lankan armed forces in 1971, 1987-1991 in crushing southern rebellions, and from the early '80s up to 2009 for crushing of the northern rebellions. The habits acquired under the colonial times have been continued without interruption.

During the 1987-1991 period there was the case of Ambilipitiya children. These children were abducted and killed inside a military camp. Despite the attempts to find records about people who were kept in that camp, there was no trace of the killings of these children in any of the records. The keeping of records and inquiries by the military themselves through military police into atrocities has not been part of the tradition imparted by the colonial officers.

Thus, discussion on the 1818 rebellion and the liabilities involved will open up great opportunities for learning to deal with problems of liability arising from the 21st century legal doctrines, within the context of Sri Lanka in particular, and on South Asia in general.

The symposium could also be an occasion for public discussion on these issues.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Andare

(June 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) A Provincial Council Minister has explained the reason for wanting to abolish all elections for the presidency and to have one person in the job for the rest of his life. The reason is to save the money that would be spent on elections. The desire for such a cut in expenditure makes him a great patriot and the country should have only patriots and non patriots. Now there are a few more ways where money can be saved and the happiness of the patriots can be improved. There is that institution called the Inland Revenue Department. If you close that down a lot of money will be saved for the patriots. There is also the Central Bank which also consumes a lot of money and closing that down will also increase the happiness of many persons who will thrive in its absence. Now it is also possible to close down the Auditor General’s Department because keeping accounts and monitoring and the like does not contribute to the happiness of many persons. If there is to be further expenditure cuts they can be from the health service and educational service; after all saving money is more important that any of these things.

These are of course very general comments by a comedian like me for the purpose of assisting the enthusiastic money saver, the Provincial Council Minister and others who may equally support him to save money by not having elections.

Of course, if the desire is greater there are other things that can also be thought of like cutting down the money spent on eating and drinking and transport. Perhaps this Provincial Council Minister should be appointed to a higher post for national planning for cutting down expenditure.

One question of course will be what to do with all this money that will be saved. Maybe the minister knows how to deal with that problem.

There are however, some others who are achieving the Yawageewa status rapidly. The dengue mosquito is one of them. In this impermanent world this mosquito has established its immortality and is likely to survive beyond many of the citizens. Perhaps it is from this mosquito we should try to learn the art of defeating the law of impermanence.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Terry Lacey

(June 30, Jakarta, Sri Lanka Guardian) Walter North, Deputy Head Mission, US Embassy to Indonesia, says the US, will back climate change and renewable energy in Indonesia and Asia.

North was speaking to the first Indonesia Clean Energy Investors Forum organized with the Private Finance Advisory Network (PFAN), showcasing its services to over 130 project developers and associates in its first public event, Thursday, in Jakarta.

Peter du Pont, PFAN team leader, announced it would focus increasing project support and financial brokering on China, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia.

Participants welcomed that Indonesia was now a top priority for new US support for renewable energy and climate change projects in Asia.

North had said earlier this month to the Indonesian Renewable Energy Society (METI) that the US was “back in the game” on climate change for a planet in peril.

The US House of Representatives narrowly passed the climate change bill. Obama said he was very “frank and blunt” with Mrs Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, recently in Washington, that it would take a while to turn the US into a world leader on climate change.

The House of Representatives subsequently passed the bill by only 219 votes in favor to 212 against it, with eight Republicans for and 44 Democrats against. A hard-fought but important victory for President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

North confirmed the Obama administration expects to re-jig the role of US international agencies including USAID, the Import-Export (Exim) Bank, the supporting role of the US Department of Energy (DOE), and private sector support mechanisms, to help Indonesian and Asian renewable energy developers to develop their projects.

The US hopes soon to upgrade the remit of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) to work better in Indonesia. It already works well in India. North said this meeting of the PFAN network in Jakarta was an important first step.

Du Pont, based in Bangkok, but planning to do more work from Jakarta, explained that the gap between project developers and project finance was technical, presentational and conceptual. PFAN targeted projects mostly needing investments from US$1 million to $50 millions.

The job of PFAN “Was to identify the fruit, wash it, polish it and present it on a platter to the investors”, so PFAN gave technical help to project developers on how to put their case and access funds. This was part of the Climate Technology Initiative (CTI) in cooperation with the UNFCCC Expert Group on Technology Transfer.



Eight Indonesian project developers presented their case for investment during the meeting to a board of judges, and others plan to do so in future.



The judges awarded first prize for the best bid to Selo Kencana Energi with a 7.5 MW mini-hydro plant. PT Gikoko came second with a proposal to expand their landfill methane gas technology to more sites. PT Tiara Energi came third with a proposal for a 10 megawatts (MW) rice husk fueled power station in Makassar, in Sulawesi. PFAN will help these firms complete bankable proposals and mobilize funds.



The competition was judged by Dr Indra Darmawan, director of planning for agribusiness and natural resources at the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM); Niki R Joenoes, vice president and head of investment banking of PT BNI Securities; Dr Ir Arnold Soetrisnanto, head of nuclear project development at PT MedCo Power Indonesia and Dr Ir Verana J Wargadalam, coordinator of the renewable energy group at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.

A panel of speakers discussed the barriers facing renewable energy projects in Indonesia and Asia, including the need for better adaptation of regulatory frameworks, the needs for improved power purchase agreements taking more account of appropriate risk sharing for renewable energy technologies, more incentives for green energy, and removal of subsidies on fossil fuel which hold back development of renewable energy.

Du Pont said PFAN would pursue further cooperation with the National Development Planning Agency (BAPPENAS), the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM), the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, the state electricity utility (PLN) and other agencies, banks and private sector stakeholders, backed by a regional networking capacity, to support Indonesian renewable energy project developers.

Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world, investment and trade relations with the EU and Islamic banking.

-Sri Lanka Guardian