Vote for anyone except Rajapaksa – JVP

November 24, 2014 

Revealing their stance on the forthcoming Presidential Election, Sri Lanka’s Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) today stated that it has no conditions with any of the candidates, however urged the public to vote for any candidate of their choice, except President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

“Our stance is very clear. It won’t be an issue for the people either,” JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake said, replying to a question from journalists regarding who they will be backing at the polls.

He stated that there aim is to go beyond defeating the “dictatorial madness” and also to stand up for democracy. “We are working towards achieving this objective.”

However, Dissnayake stated that his party is clearly of the view that public should not vote for Mahinda Rajapaksa and that it is not a hidden fact. “Defeat the dictatorial madness means don’t vote for Rajapaksa,” he added.

“To put it simply, what we’re saying is vote for anyone you choose except Rajapaksa,” the MP said.

“But don’t stop there,” he stressed, adding, that lining up to win democracy is equally vital.  

Crossover crosscurrents!

By Dharisha Bastians- November 24, 2014 

• No more defections from SLFP, vows Pavithra
• Vidura Wickremanayake, Nimal Siripala vow to remain with SLFP
• Opposition promises more defections during Budget vote today
• UPFA says Opposition alliance is Ranil-CBK-foreign powers-LTTE nexus
• Maithripala is a pawn to make electorally unsuccessful Ranil PM, says Govt.
• Maithripala says no foreign conspiracy behind decision to challenge President

Maithripala Sirisena (C) stands near UNP Leadership Council Chairman Karu Jayasuriya (L) and Ven. Maduluwawe Sobitha Thero as he arrives for a meeting at Kotte Naga Viharaya Buddhist temple yesterday – Reuters/Dinuka Liyanawatte

Crossover Crosscurrents! by Thavam

Who is Maithripala Sirisena?

23 November 2014
Last week the former secretary general of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and minister of health, Maithripala Sirisena, was announced as the common opposition candidate for the upcoming presidential elections.  

Sirisena and Rajapaksa embrace during Sri Lankan government celebrations on May 19 2009 Photo: lkwebnews.com

The former minister has been one of the more vocal SLFP politicians over the past few years.

Endorsement of action against pro-opposition SLFP politicians
Sirisena, in 2007, endorsed the sacking of government ministers in the SLFP who were seemingly supportive of the opposition United National Party (UNP) in Sri Lanka.

Support for ending 6 year ceasefire with LTTE
In 2008, the minister, rejected calls to uphold a ceasefire with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that had been in place for 6 years.

“The government will not go for a ceasefire with the LTTE. We will not have any form of discussion with the LTTE,” said Sirisena, after the 6 year ceasefire was broken in 2008.

Alleges that TNA and opposition candidate working for 'terrorist' demands
In 2010, Sirisena alleged that the Tamil National Alliance and the, then opposition candidate, General Fonseka, had betrayed Sri Lanka to ‘terrorist’ demands by pledging to withdraw armed forces from the North, dismantle the High Security Zone, re-merge the North East, release LTTE suspects and give autonomy to the province.

Commends India's protection of Sri Lankan sovereignty at UNHRC
Commenting on the 2012 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution, Sirisena commended India  for making amendments to the resolution that safeguarded Sri Lanka from “the interferences of UN bodies,” adding that no intrusions should be imposed without consent of the Sri Lankan government.

Accuses NGOs of working against Sri Lanka at UNHRC
Sirisena went on to allege that a Catholic NGO, Caritas SEDEC, was instigating protests and working against Sir Lanka at the UNHRC.

Accuses TNA and UNP of working to re-establish LTTE
Later that year, the SLFP general secretary went on to accuse the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the opposition UNP of assisting “LTTE activists” to help re-establish the LTTE.

Repeatedly rejects UNHRC resolution for investigation into Sri Lankan crimes

 In 2014, Sirisena repeatedly rejected the UNHRC resolution mandating an international investigation into Sri Lankan war crimes and crimes against humanity, stating that the SLFP “rejects the resolution against Sri Lanka moved at the UN Human Rights council.”

“The SLFP said that these invasive forces who ruled Sri Lanka from 1505 to 1948 are conspiring against the country based on the misleading information provided by the LTTE rump overseas, when Sri Lanka is in the process of rebuilding the country through national reconciliation process with the end of terrorism,” he added in March 2014.
Rejection of any UN-led investigation into mass atrocities
Reaffirming this rejection, Sirisena said in July 2014,
“The ghosts of the LTTE are behind all these ‘strategies’ implemented against Sri Lanka. We have already agreed to the conventions of the UN. Therefore, no matter who visits this country or who probes us, they should remember that Sri Lanka is a member of the UN. We have no faith in this team, or that panel, we have no faith in those who give evidence.”
“They say they will never reveal the names of the persons who give evidence for another 20 years. They say they will seek evidence from countries such as Canada, Netherlands, Norway etc. This shows how biased the probe is. We do not have faith in this one sided biased probe”.
“Their objective is very clear. They have a totally different agenda. Their real but hidden agenda is changing the democratically elected government and the leadership of Sri Lanka.”

Condemns NPC calls on Sri Lanka to allow UN officials to North-East
Sirisena, also expressed concern over a Northern Provincial Council resolution that called for Sri Lanka to allow access to UN investigators.

“All provincial councils including the Northern Provincial Council have pledged to act within the constitution of Sri Lanka. They cannot violate it,” warned Sirisena in Sepetember 2014.

TNA to decide on common opposition candidate endorsement (23 November 2014)

SLFP general secretary to be common opposition candidate (21 Nov 2014)

Common candidate must pledge end to militarisation and land grabs in Tamil areas - TNA(13 Nov 2014)

MR’s move to remove Bandaranaike name from SLFP revealed 

Nov 24, 2014

Former general secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), Maithripala Sirisena says that President Mahinda Rajapaksa, after taking over the leadership of the SLFP, had ordered the removal of the names of the party’s founders SWRD Bandaranaike and Sirima Bandaranaike from all party related work. 

Sirisena revealed during a political discussion on a private television station that the names of SWRD Bandaranaike and Sirima Bandaranaike were removed from all agendas of SLFP programmes.

“It was the party’s tradition to observe one minute’s silence in memory of the dead party members and the founding leaders SWRD Bandaranaike and Sirima Bandaranaike. However, soon after the change in the party leadership, orders were sent out asking the Bandaranaike names to be removed from the agenda and when the one minute’s silence was announced. That is how much the SLFP policies were changed,” Sirisena said, adding that the current party leadership has completely violated the SLFP policies and principles. 

The Tamil Elephant in the Green (Blue?) Room

by Niran Anketell 

- on 11/24/2014

Kalana Senaratne’s characteristically perceptive article on the implications of Maithripala Sirisena’s common candidacy for the upcoming Presidential election flags the Tamil question: what role do Tamils and issues of concern to them play in the politics of the election? Kalana deems the Tamils the ‘forgotten other’ of the upcoming campaign, noting that the contest is one between two versions of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism.

Kalana is partially right. While the two main candidates will most certainly not attempt to provide reasonable solutions to the issues of militarization, devolution or the assault on Tamil community life and on civil liberties in the North and East; the Tamil question will not be forgotten. Instead, it will feature grotesquely in the propaganda of the incumbent, which, notwithstanding Mr. Sirisena’s background and studious avoidance of the ethnic issue, will seek to cast the challenger as a pawn in a global conspiracy to divide the country, deliver its leaders to war crimes tribunals, and carve out a diaspora run Tamil state in the North and East. The challenge for Tamil civil society and political formations is how best to respond to these dynamics.

In making this choice, the lived realities of Tamils within the island and the political principles animating their long struggle provide invaluable guidance.

First, while it is not difficult to divine in which direction the Tamil vote will go, we must ask why it will go where it will go. While many will remember the sweeping majority polled by General Sarath Fonseka in the North and East, the structural reasons behind the vote for Fonseka predate his candidacy; indeed they even predate the war. With the catastrophic exception of the LTTE enforced boycott in 2005, Tamil voters in the North and East have participated robustly in Presidential elections, mostly voting for one of the two primary Sinhala oriented ‘national’ candidacies contesting the election. Low levels of support for G. G. Ponnambalam and Sivajilingam’s candidacies in 1982 and 2010 respectively—the only two Tamil candidates to contest Presidential elections—demonstrate that the Tamil voter approaches Presidential elections differently to the way in which she approaches general, local or provincial elections. Thus, while Tamil parties have dominated the vote in the latter, they have had a general aversion to contesting at Presidential elections. Instead, Tamil voting at Presidential elections has been based, to borrow Krishna Kalaichelvan’swords, on “a clear identification of a lowest parameter that is compatible with a dignified Tamil life in the island”, and an identification of the candidate most conducive to the pursuit of that life. Mahinda Rajapaksa is not that candidate. It is for this reason that any initiative by fringe diaspora formations to inspire a Tamil boycott of the 2015 Presidential election or to induce a ‘Tamil’ candidacy will fail and fail spectacularly. It is also the reason why, from a Tamil voter’s perspective, the critical nature of the support for the common candidacy that Kalana talks about is a given. Some commentators are already arguing that the Tamil people should not be misled again into voting for a candidate who does not intend to deliver on Tamil demands. The suggestion is, frankly, insulting. Tamil voters will not naively expect Mr. Sirisena to deliver peace, justice and fairness to the Tamil population on assuming office; they never have when voting consistently for Sinhala candidates since 1982. Instead, what the Tamil voter appears to have understood is that voting prudently at a Presidential election and eschewing extremist recklessness is a necessary but insufficient condition for achieving a political solution.

Second, contrary to the perception created within the Sinhala political class that Tamil politics is obsessed over ‘Tamil issues’ to the exclusion of ‘national issues’, the positions and conduct of moderate Tamil politicians over the years demonstrate that Tamil politics has consistently, and at significant cost, articulated the principles of good governance that now appear to animate the joint opposition campaign. In other words, good governance and rule of law issues are unmistakably Tamil issues. From the Federal Party’s sophisticated objections to the entrenchment of Buddhism in the 1972 Constitution, to the TNA’s passionate opposition to the 18th Amendment andimpeachment, articulate Tamil politicians have often led the most stirring defenses of democracy and good governance in the most trying of times. This should not be surprising. The breakdown of the rule of law and democracy has disproportionately impacted the Tamil community. The limited recourse the community may have had in the past to a system of rules and an inconsistent judiciary has been taken away: the non-implementation of even the meagre existing provisions on devolution – a problem compounded by the unavailability of any form of judicial redress. The institution of the President has had particularly odious effects on the Tamil people. It has concentrated power at the centre and thwarted devolution, limited judicial recourse through immunity provisions and the President’s control over judicial appointments, converted the governance structure of the country into a semi-monarchical Sinhala feudalism and weakened Parliament—thereby weakening the Tamil voice in Parliament. Thus, a campaign for abolishing the Executive Presidency—never mind how flawed the alternative—will be to the certain benefit of the Tamil people.

How then must the opposition campaign? How does a Sinhala dominated opposition allay the fears of the Sinhala community that the opposition campaign—a cause for which there will be critical but overwhelming Tamil support—will harm the Sinhalese? Equally, how must a responsible Tamil opposition express its positions to the Tamil people credibly, without undermining Mr. Sirisena’s ability to attract Sinhala votes? Honesty in these matters is often the best policy. The Sinhala and Tamil sides of the campaign must tell their respective constituencies that on some major issues, such as the Executive Presidency and broader good governance and rule of law concerns, there is no zero sum game between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, and that Tamil support for the ending of the executive presidency is based on the same reasons behind support for it from Sinhalese. If we are indeed to be united, then surely some causes must unite us. Honesty also requires that both Sinhala and Tamil leaders address the ethnic issue frontally, and tell their respective constituencies that while consensus is important, there is no consensus yet on issues of concern to the Tamil people, indeed there may even be fundamental disagreement, and that these issues will have to be negotiated in a new era. Perhaps in this case, honesty also makes for better electoral politics.

Is Lankan Corporate Responsibility, “Ebolitic”?

By Kusal Perera -November 24, 2014

Kusal Perera

Much is talked of in the media about economic growth in Sri Lanka during the past decade or so. Finance Ministry and Treasury Secretary Dr.Jayasundera whose been there from around 1990, first as Advisor to the Ministry of Finance is still hopeful of economic growth he had not achieved during the last 02 decades (In between he was for a short spell, Consultant and then Chairman PERC and absent for 02 years when Charitha Ratwatte held the position during RW’s government) of his powerful and dominating presence in the treasury.

Nivad Cabraal, the other kingpin in this regime who talks business was quoted saying, FDI would reach a high of 20 per cent of GDP by next year (hardly 02 months away in 2015). Explaining the indicators of an emerging economy, he had said, advertisements on restaurants, dining, tours and travels, vehicles, etc are growing exponentially. “When going through the weekend newspapers we can see this,” he was quoted, attributing this as one indicator of a growing economy which is growing by 7.5 per cent.(Good Time To Mull Consolidating The Insurance Sector – CB Governor / ST Business Times – 09 Nov.2014)

That may be their total understanding of budgeting and business. But for sure, those three hundred thousand plus who voted against this regime at the Uva PC elections last September, wouldn’t know or feel this economic growth through advertisements that Cabral is proud of. I have not been in such business to feel that growth either. Therefore, despite what the two big guns in this regime say, this is small thinking on what big corporate entities and individual business men and women should be doing in Sri Lanka, apart from making profits. Making profits is what businesses are meant for is not disputed though.Read More

Indraratna Chinthana on sustained development: Still valid and will be valid forever

 November 24, 2014  

The need for critically debating policy proposals
Colombo University’s Emeritus Professor and Sri Lanka Economic Association’s President A.D.V. de S .Indraratna has just released in book form an updated and revised version of the SLEA presidential addresses he has delivered over the last 10 years. Titled ‘Policy Issues for Sustained Development of Sri Lanka’, the book covers a wide range of issues which the country’s economic policy makers cannot ignore when carving out the path of its future development.

Indraratna Chinthana on Sustained Development Still Valid and Will Be Valid Forever by Thavam

Compromising the Future?

By Ranil Senanayake-November 23, 2014

What words can be used to describe people who sell and destroy the birthright and culture of their own people for personal or political gain? To answer this question it is critical to understand the scope of the words birthright and culture.

Compromising the Future by Thavam

A Married Jesus: Here's the Best Historical Evidence

Posted: 11/14/2014

If you ask most New Testament scholars whether Jesus was likely married the mantra is a firm and dogmatic "no" -- there is not a shred of historical evidence that he was ever married or had children. The very idea is baseless speculation at the best and cheap Holy Blood, Holy Grail/Davinci Code sensationalism at the worst.

There’s Something About Mary…Magdalene (Part 1)

TaborBlog

Posted on August 28, 2012

Paul indicates that “seeing the Lord” is an essential criterion for one claiming to be an apostle. According to the book of Acts the main criteria in deciding who would replace Judas Iscariot as the Twelfth apostle after he had betrayed Jesus and killed himself was that the one chosen had been with Jesus in his lifetime and was a “witness to his resurrection.” Not only did Mary Magdalene meet these criteria, she had the additional status of not only being a witness to Jesus’ resurrection but the first witness—even before Peter, James, or any of the Twelve apostles. 

A Married Jesus Here's the Best Historical Evidence by Thavam

Times may have changed for Iran – but US Republicans haven’t

Monday 24 Nov 2014

Past the eleventh hour, past midnight, it’s still a race against time. By delaying a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme until next year, negotiators risk missing a real rather than a self-imposed deadline.

In January the Republican majority Senate takes over in Washington. Republicans and some right-wing Democrats, influenced by Israel and to some extent Saudi Arabia, would rather impose more sanctions on Iran than compromise. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” they say.

It’s an ideological, not a pragmatic position, aimed at scuppering any potential foreign policy success by President Obama and harking back to the Bush administration which cast the Islamic Republic as part of the “axis of evil”. It was this kind of thinking in 2003 that made the Americans reject an Iranian offer which in retrospect looks rather good - Iran had considerably fewer centrifuges then compared to 19,000 now.

Times have changed, but the Republicans haven’t. Under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear programme, and US pressure will not force Iran to abandon it. The other parties negotiating alongside the Americans – the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China – will not argue for a deal that denies Iran that right under international law. The aim is to curtail the Islamic Republic’s capacity to build a bomb by minimising, not preventing, access to nuclear technology.

The Republicans have undeclared allies in Tehran in the form of the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), the hardline enforcers of the Islamic republic, who gained economic and political owner under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

As sanctions made it impossible to sell oil legally on the international market, the IRGC developed illegal networks and pocketed the profits. They don’t want to cede that money and influence to the reformist President Rouhani (pictured above), who hopes to consolidate his power by coming home with a deal that would ease the impact of sanctions on ordinary Iranians.

It’s a truism of diplomacy that the first 95 per cent of a negotiation is relatively simple compared to the final 5 per cent. But for the negotiators in Vienna, preparing to reconvene in Oman next month, convincing each other to compromise may be easier than winning over their political adversaries back home.

Follow @lindseyhilsum on Twitter

- See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/lindsey-hilsum-on-international-affairs/times-changed-iran-repubicans/4713#sthash.LoXTVqh6.dpuf

41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed: US drone strikes – the facts on the ground

‘Drone strikes have been sold to the American public on the claim that they’re ‘precise.’ But they are only as precise as the intelligence that feeds them.’ Photograph: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

Monday 24 November 2014

The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a villagein Pakistan called Damadola. Ten months later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida’s leader, this time in Bajaur.
41 Men Targeted but 1,147 People Killed US Drone Strikes – the Facts on the Ground by Thavam

Finland feeling vulnerable amid Russian provocations

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin leave after a news conference at the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Aug. 15, 2014. (IVAN SEKRETAREV/AFP/Getty Images)

By Griff Witte November 23 at 8:02 PM

HELSINKI — Wedged hard against Russia’s northwestern border, peaceable Finland has long gone out of its way to avoid prodding the nuclear-armed bear next door.
Finland Feeling Vulnerable Amid Russian Provocations by Thavam

U.S. seeks to step up India trade talks after WTO breakthrough

1 OF 2. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman speaks during a conference organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), in New Delhi November 24, 2014. 

2 OF 2. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman speaks during a conference organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), in New Delhi November 24, 2014. 

NEW DELHI Mon Nov 24, 2014

(Reuters) - The United States wants to step up its trade dialogue with India, Trade Representative Michael Froman said on Monday, after the resolution of a global trade dispute paved the way for President Barack Obama to visit India.

Direct contacts between Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi this month helped to end a deadlock that had prevented the World Trade Organization from implementing a $1 trillion package of reforms to global customs rules.

"The breakthrough at the WTO could not have been possible without the direct and personal engagement of Prime Minister Modi and President Obama," Froman told businessmen in New Delhi in a speech.

He expressed hope that the General Council of the 160-member WTO would approve a U.S.-Indian agreement on food stockpiling and the broader Trade Facilitation Agreement, simultaneously, in the next few days.

In India for the first round of high-level trade talks since the breakthrough, Froman urged progress on key areas of U.S. concern, such as intellectual property rights on pharmaceuticals and Hollywood movies.

"This pace of engagement is impressive, but shouldn't be surprising for what President Obama declared the 'defining partnership of the 21st century'," Froman said.

"Our task is to build on our mutual interests, with mutual respect, and deliver on the promise of that partnership."

Obama, who hosted Modi in Washington in September, will in January become the first U.S. president to visit India twice, completing a remarkable warming in the relationship between the leaders of the world's two largest democracies.

The former chief minister of the western state of Gujarat was denied a U.S. visa from 2005 until his May election victory, over allegations that he failed to stop sectarian rioting in 2002 that killed at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. He denies wrongdoing.

Froman was due to meet Indian Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitaraman on Tuesday for the first round of a bilateral U.S.-India trade policy forum in four years.

The talks will include discussions on a high-level working group on intellectual property rights set up by Obama and Modi.

(Reporting by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Nick Macfie and Clarence Fernandez)

From cartels to police: violence is endemic in Mexico

SUNDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2014

Throughout the last decade Guillermo Galdos has covered all sides of Mexico's drug war. From cartel bosses to desperate families looking for their loved ones.
From Cartels to Police Violence is Endemic in Mexico by Thavam

Chile colonels jailed for torturing President Bachelet's father

President Bachelet was arrested and forced into exile after the death of her father

21 November 2014

Two retired Chilean colonels have been jailed for repeatedly torturing the father of President Michelle Bachelet in 1973.

General Alberto Bachelet was arrested and tortured for opposing the military coup led by Gen Augusto Pinochet.

He died in 1974 of a heart attack caused by the torture inflicted on him.

The former air force colonels - Ramon Caceres Jorquera and Edgar Ceballos Jones - were given three and two years in prison respectively.

They "repeatedly committed the crime of applying torture" to their former superior, judge Mario Carroza said in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

Chilean government spokesman Alvaro Elizalde said the ruling was "one more step" to address the truth and justice that the country needed.

But a man who was tortured by Ceballos, Sergio Santos, told the AP news agency that the sentences were too lenient.

"I think it seems a bit ridiculous, that after all the years of repression, torture against hundreds of people from different organisations, they get three years," he said.

More than 3,000 people were killed and up to 40,000 tortured during General Pinochet's 17-year rule.

'Solitary confinement'

The two retired colonels had been charged in July 2012, after the conclusion of a forensic report into the death in prison of Gen Bachelet.

President Salvador Allende died inside the Palace of La Moneda on 11 September 1973

Investigators said that Gen Bachelet had died of heart problems aggravated by torture sessions after his arrest.

He had remained loyal to socialist President Salvador Allende, who was deposed in a military coup in 1973.

Gen Bachelet was held in a military academy for six months and tortured by members of the same air force he had led before the coup.

"I was detained in solitary confinement for 26 days," he later wrote to his family. "I was subjected to torture for 30 hours. They broke me inside."

Gen Bachelet died on 12 March 1974, aged 50, after a night of interrogation. He was serving a sentence for treason in the capital, Santiago.

His wife, Angela Jeria, and his daughter Michelle were also held and tortured before fleeing to Australia and East Germany.

Ms Bachelet became Chile's first woman president in 2006.

As the Chilean constitution bans re-election, she stood down at the end of her term in 2010. She was then elected head of the UN women's agency before returning to Chilean politics.

Last year, Ms Bachelet ran for president again and was elected to a new four-year term.

She and her family have been seeking justice for her father's death for some time, said the BBC's Gideon Long in Santiago.