T. Sivagnanam CCS, An Exemplar Among Public Servants

By S. Sivathasan -December 20, 2014

S. Sivathasan

The Ceylon Civil Service was much coveted. Young men of promise sought entry because of its prestige. The syllabus and the question papers were forbidding. Marks were weighed more meticulously than by an electronic balance. High caliber of non-selectees itself added to the mystique of the Service and an aura to those selected. The exam assessed intellectual capacity and versatility. The interview tested mental flexibility and language fluency. The very system of objective choosing through competition brought the cream to the centre of administration and into limelight. No less to responsibly share power and to join in governance. Among the better ones, thoughts of power and prestige faded against the opportunities that were offered. To those yet higher, achievements of the best ones were more alluring to emulate.

The first Ceylonese to enter through open competition was Ponnambalam Arunachalam. About 72 years later,T. Sivagnanam entered its portals around 1950. Born in far off Tellipalai in the North, he made St. John’s College proud with his performance. My Father was elated then, having taught him Tamil and Latin. Twenty years later a benign destiny brought me to his Ministry of Land Irrigation and Power. The time was February 1970. CP de Silva was Minister and M. Srikantha was Permanent Secretary. T. Sivagnanam was Senior Assistant Secretary, on whom much responsibility devolved. Yet it sat very lightly on him.

                                 Read More

May 1986 – The Death Of The Tamil Struggle And A New Rationale For Massacres

By Rajan Hoole -

Dr. Rajan Hoole

Border Aggression and Civilian Massacres – Part 12

In early May 1986, the LTTE used the tactics of surprise and ruthlessness to wipe out the fraternal militant group TELO. Young boys from the Eastern Province who did not know where to run in Jaffna were brutally attacked, and the dead and dying were burnt at street junctions by LTTE militants who looked on remorselessly as if under the influence of drugs. There was that opportunistic segment, particularly from the intellectual elite, looking for ways to court the LTTE as they had earlier the TELO leader who was thought to be India’s favourite. But ordinary decent people were dumbfounded and distressed. Thoughts like ‘we have produced out own Hitlers’ and ‘Anuradhapura has come home’ escaped their lips. There was also a sense of hopelessness about the Tamil struggle. The LTTE found itself having to make public announcements by loudspeaker that no one must discuss or examine what had taken place.

This was one step. In time, the LTTE would tell them that they had no rights over their chil- dren barely in their teens. Indeed, they may be spirited away from the streets to augment the ranks of the Tamil struggle depleted by fratricide. The people had no rights.

The suppression of the TELO was followed by an aborted Sri Lankan Army offensive in Jaffna. From the 19th of May to the 24th of July 1986, the LTTE carried out a series of 8 massacres and 4 bomb or mine blasts on passenger vehicles, leaving 143 mainly Sinhalese civilians killed. Most of these attacks were in the Trincomalee District, where a large number of the TELO militants killed by the LTTE came from. In June 1986 alone 468 Tamils were killed according to the Saturday Review.

Read More

Muslim Congress to support Maithri, Hakeem to leave govt!

 

Sunday, 21 December 2014 

At its meeting last night (20), the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress high command decided to support common opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena at the presidential election, say party sources.

The SLMC is to announce its decision before postal voting takes place, tomorrow. With that, the party is to leave the UPFA government and join the opposition. Minister Bashir Segudawood did not attend the meeting, and party sources say he will personally support president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Meanwhile, All Ceylon Makkal Congress leader, minister Risath Badurdeen, has given a deadline to the government to sign a MoU between the two, failing which, it too, will support the common opposition candidate.

Police spying on dormant MPs!

 Sunday, 21 December 2014

The president has given a special order to senior DIG Anura Senanayake to furnish a report immediately into MPs and ministers who do not get involved in the election campaign in their electorates after obtaining money from the government.

The SIS has already given details of 46 such electoral organizers.

The president has ordered the defence secretary to appoint retired senior army and retired police officer each to electorates of such ‘backstabber’ MPs and ministers.

The president has personally told the CID and other relevant institutions to keep files ready with regard to such politicians in order to strongly deal with them once re-elected.

Jordan hangs 11 men after eight-year halt to death penalty

Human rights groups condemn execution of men, all Jordanians who were convicted on murder charges in 2005 and 2006

Jordan’s last previous executions were in June 2006 and 122 people have since been sentenced to death. Photograph: Alamy

Agence France-Presse in Amman-Sunday 21 December 2014 

Jordan has come under criticism from human rights groups after the country ended an eight-year moratorium on the death penalty, with the hangings of 11 men convicted of murder.

The men were executed at dawn on Sunday in a prison about 45 miles from the capital, Amman, interior ministry spokesman Ziyad Zoobi was quoted as saying, by the official Petra news agency.

Authorities said the men were all Jordanians convicted on murder charges, with no links to politics or extremism, in 2005 and 2006. A source in the prison system said the men were mostly in their 40s.

“Some of the prisoners asked to have their final words passed on their families, others asked only to smoke a cigarette,” the source said.

Jordan’s last executions were in June 2006 and 122 people have since been sentenced to death. The interior minister, Hussein Majali, suggested recently that the moratorium might end, saying there was a major debate in Jordan on the death penalty and that “the public believes that the rise in crime has been the result of the non-application” of capital punishment.

Experts said the government was responding to a rise in Jordan’s crime rate. “The authorities have been confronted in recent years with a wave of violence, criminality and murders and want to meet the challenge by opting for deterrence and the renewed application of the death penalty,” said Oraib Rantawi, head of Amman’s Al-Quds Centre for Political Studies.

But rights groups denounced the ending of the moratorium, saying it would make little difference to rising crime. “We are surprised by this decision, which is a step back for Jordan,” said Taghreed Jaber, the regional director for Penal Reform International.

The head of Jordan’s Adallah (justice) rights group, Assem Rababa, said the country’s authorities would be better off tackling the root causes of crime. “Political and economic problems are fostering crime,” he said. “The authorities should not make a headlong rush (into executions) while ignoring these problems.”

A number of countries in the Middle East continue to impose the death penalty for serious crimes, including Jordan’s neighbour Saudi Arabia, which has executed 83 people so far this year.

China by far carried out the most executions in 2013, numbering in the thousands, followed by Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the US, Amnesty International said in a report in March.

Gunman kills New York policemen in 'revenge attack'

SUNDAY 21 DECEMBER 2014
A man kills himself after shooting two New York City police officers, having tweeted 'anti-police' comments about the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

The gunman, named by police as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, ambushed two officers in their patrol car outside a housing project in Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon.

He fired through the passenger-side window of a marked patrol car, killing Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenjian Liu, 32, with shots to the head.

Brinsley then fled on foot pursued followed by other police officers, before taking his own life on a subway platform.

The shooting follows increased tensions in the US following the death of Eric Garner, who died after police officer Daniel Pantaleo used a chokehold to restrain Mr Garner while trying to arrest him on Statent Island.

Riot tensions

A grand jury decided not to charge Mr Pantaleo after Garner died, sparking US and international protests about the treatment of black suspects by police.

Shortly before the double shooting, a message on an Instagram account apparently belonging to Brinsley said: "They Take 1 Of Ours ... Let's Take 2 of Theirs."

The Instagram post was followed with hashtags referencing Garner and Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager shot and killed by a white officer in Ferguson, Missouri in August.

Protests over policing tactics have gripped New York since the Garner grand jury decision.

President Barack Obama condemned the killing of the two New York City officers, saying "two brave men won't be going home to their loved ones tonight".

Putin’s Groundhog Day: The Russian people keep paying the price for their leaders’ incompetence

By Matt O'Brien December 21 at 9:45 AM

In the bad old days, Russia's facsimile of an economy would crash every time the price of oil did. The government would go broke, the currency would collapse, and ordinary people would see their standard of living evaporate. Now if all this sounds familiar, that's because the bad old days never went away under Vladimir Putin. He just got lucky until now.

Putin’s Groundhog Day the Russian People Keep Paying the Price for Their Leaders’ Incompetence by Thavam Ratna

What Putin is not Telling Us: The Raid on the Ruble was supposed to be a Checkmate. It’s Not

December 20, 2014

Even facing what under any circumstances is a perfect storm; President Putin delivered an extremely measured performance at his annual press conference and Q&A marathon.

The perfect storm evolves in two fronts; an overt economic war – as in siege by sanctions – and a concerted, covert, shadow attack to the heart of the Russian economy. Washington’s endgame is clear: impoverish and defang the adversary and force him to meekly bow to the ‘Empire of Chaos’s’ whims. And bragging about it all the way to “victory.”

The problem is Moscow happens to have impeccably deciphered the game – even before Putin, at the Valdai Club in October, pinned down the Obama doctrine as “our Western partners” working as practitioners of the “theory of controlled chaos.”

So Putin neatly understood this week’s monster controlled chaos attack. The Empire has massive money power; a great deal of influence over the world’s GDP at $85 trillion, and the banking power behind that. So nothing easier than using that power through the private banking systems that actually controls central banks to create a run on the ruble. Think about the ‘Empire of Chaos’ dreaming of driving the ruble down by 99% or so – thus wrecking the Russian economy. What better way to impose imperial discipline on Russia?

The “Nuclear” Option

Russia sells oil in US dollars to the West. Lukoil, for instance, would have a deposit in US dollars in an American bank for the oil they sell. If Lukoil has to pay wages in rubles in Russia, then they will have to sell the US dollar deposits and buy in Russia a ruble deposit for their bank account. This in effect supports the ruble. The question is whether Lukoil, Rosneft and Gazprom are hoarding US dollars overseas – and holding back. The answer is no. And the same applies to other Russian businesses.

Russia is not “losing their savings”, as Western corporate media gloats. Russia can always require foreign companies to relocate to Russia. Apple, for instance, may open a manufacturing plant in Russia. The recent Russia-China deals include the Chinese building factories in Russia. With a depreciated ruble, Russia is able to force manufacturing that might have been located in the EU to be located in Russia; otherwise these companies lose the market. Putin somewhat admitted that Russia should have been demanding this much earlier. The – positive – process is now inevitable.

And then there’s a “nuclear” option – which Putin didn’t even have to mention. If Russia decides to impose capital controls and/or imposes a “holiday” on repayment of larger debt tranches coming due in early 2015, the European financial system will be bombed – Shock and Awe-style; after all, much of the Russian bank and corporate funding was underwritten in Europe.

Exposure to Russia per se is not the issue; what matters is the linkage to European banks. As an American investment banker told me, Lehman Brothers, for instance, brought down Europe just as much as New York City – based on inter-linkages. And yet Lehman was based in New York. It’s the domino effect that counts.

Were Russia to deploy this “nuclear” financial option, the Western financial system would not be able to absorb a shock of default. And that would demonstrate – once and for all – that Wall Street speculators have built a ‘House of Cards’ so fragile and corrupt that the first real storm turns it to dust.

It’s Just a Shot Away

And what if Russia defaults – creating a holy mess out of the country’s $600 billion debt? This scenario reads as the Masters of the Universe telling Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi to create credits in the banking systems to prevent “undue damage” - as in 2008.

But then Russia decides to cut off natural gas and oil from the West (while keeping the flow to the East). Russian intel may wreak non-stop havoc in pumping stations from the Maghreb to the Middle East. Russia may block all the oil and natural gas pumped in the Central Asian ‘stans’. The result: the greatest financial collapse in history. And the end of the ‘Empire of Chaos’s’ exceptionalist panacea.

Of course this is a doomsday scenario. But don’t provoke the bear, because the bear could pull that off in a flash.

Putin was so cool, calm, collected – and eager to delve into details – at his press conference because he knows Moscow is able to move in total autonomy. This is – of course – an asymmetrical war – against a crumbling, dangerous empire. What those intellectual midgets swarming the lame duck Obama administration are thinking? That they can sell American – and world – public opinion the notion Washington (European poodles, actually) will brave nuclear war, in the European theater, in the name of failed state Ukraine?

This is a chess game. The raid on the ruble was supposed to be a checkmate. It’s not. Not when deployed by amateur scrabble players. And don’t forget the Russia-China strategic partnership. The storm may be abating, but the match continues.

When All Else Fails, Hack Hollywood

Kim Jong Un isn’t afraid of Seth Rogen and James Franco. He’s afraid of the world focusing its attention on his regime’s true crimes.

• BY BLAINE HARDEN-DECEMBER 19, 2014

There’s a special sauce that nourishes dictatorship in North Korea, one that mixes unrelenting cruelty at home with endless provocation beyond its borders. For more than half a century, the Kim family dynasty has starved, tortured, and worked to death hundreds of thousands of its citizens in political labor camps. You can see the camps on the phone in your pocket.

When All Else Fails, Hack Hollywood by Thavam Ratna

Ending The Cold War On Cuba? From The Freezer To The Chiller

| by Finian Cunningham

( December 19, 2014, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) As US President Barack Obama announced his surprise «historic» bid to normalise relations with Cuba this week, the New York Times swooned with glowing news. ‘US to Restore Full Relations With Cuba, Erasing a Last Trace of Cold War Hostility’ was how its top headline put it. Welcoming the development, the American «newspaper of record» said Obama vowed to «cut loose the shackles of the past» and to «sweep aside one of the last vestiges of the Cold War».

Ending the Cold War on Cuba From the Freezer to the Chiller by Thavam Ratna

Ebola response in rural Sierra Leone not yet rapid enough

A health worker walks past a woman holding a baby at the maternity ward in the government hospital in Koidu, Kono district in eastern Sierra Leone, December 20, 2014.

BY EMMA FARGE-Sun Dec 21, 2014

(Reuters) - The rapid response team has arrived and the chaos is easing, but medics in a remote Sierra Leonean district are struggling to control a local Ebola outbreak when it's too late to nip it in the bud.
Ebola Response in Rural Sierra Leone Not Yet Rapid Enough by Thavam Ratna

My drugged life: I’ve been on antidepressants since 10

My physician dad didn't want me to struggle like he did. Now I wonder: Can I ever live without these pills?

(Credit: 4Max, Smileus via Shutterstock/Salon)

SATURDAY, DEC 6, 2014 

It’s a Monday morning. I’ve just locked the door to leave for work. Then I think, is the coffeemaker turned off? I unlock the door, go back and check. And as I head out the door again, I stop. I remember seeing that the little red light on the coffeemaker was dark. That means it’s off. But I don’t trust the evidence of my own senses. Or perhaps I don’t trust my own memory. And I go back and look at the coffeemaker again. It’s futile, really, because if I didn’t trust my sight and memory 30 seconds ago, why should I trust them now?
My Drugged Life I’Ve Been on Antidepressants Since 10 by Thavam Ratna

Why Should The Tamil Speaking Minorities Vote For Maithripala?

 December 20, 2014 by Karu 

The Progressive Forum in Colombo has highlighted the importance of Tamil speaking minorities recognizing the crucial nature of the upcoming Presidential elections and on why they should vote for the common Opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena.

• Why Should the Tamil Speaking Minorities Vote for Maithripala by Thavam Ratna

Withdraw Support For Maithri If Manifesto Isn’t Amended: Prof. Kumar David

December 20, 2014 

The originator and a figure who consistently lobbied for the Single Issue (abolition of the Executive Presidency ) Common Candidate concept – Professor Kumar David has called upon the National Movement for Social Justice (NMSJ) and all others backing Common candidate Maithripala Sirisena to withdraw their support unless he amends the manifesto immediately to include the abolition of Executive Presidency.

Prof. Kumar David

In an email, Professor David has condemned the absence of the promise to abolish Executive presidency in Sirisena’s election manifesto, which he has requested to be read at the NMSJ national conference that is due to be held on Tuesday (23).

“The people cannot and should not forget the treachery that they have been subjected to four times previously. I call upon the NMSJ and all others to withdraw support for Mr. Sirisena unless he amends the manifesto immediately. I strongly urge the public to accept no excuses for this betrayal,” he has written.

Meanwhile, Colombo Telegraph also learns that clashes and disagreements have erupted among those involved in the common Opposition movement over the wordings in Sirisena’s manifesto regarding the abolition of the Executive Presidency.

In the page 13 of the Maithripala’s manifesto says;

“It is the President who should provide the leadership to get the Constitutional Amendment approved by Parliament. I decided to contest the Presidential election as the common candidate of the people to complete that task.

We were unable to constitutionally change the Executive Presidential system that is in force since 1978 though we promised the people and the country to do so from 1994 up to date. Our inability to achieve that objective was a great failure on our part. It cannot be delayed any longer.

• Abolishing the Executive Presidential System with Unlimited Powers

The President needs the assistance of the Parliament to change the post of Executive President. That is because it is the Parliament which has the power to amend the Constitution. yet the Parliament was unable to effect this change for the last twenty years. It is the President who is the leader of the main party that should provide the leadership to pass the Constitutional Amendment with a two-thirds majority. For that the President should take the initiative to reach an accord among main political parties. It is to fulfil this task that I decided to come forward as the common candidate of all the people at this Presidential election.

I can obtain the support of the Members of Parliament of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party that has the majority in Parliament. Also the United National Party has signed an agreement with me to effect this amendment.

The Janatha Vimukti Peramuna has agreed with our Party to do so since 1994. The Jatika Hela Urumaya has signed an agreement with me to support this measure. Therefore I will discuss with other parties and pass this amendment without fail within hundred days.

In order to change the Executive Presidential System I am taking as background material agreements for abolishing the Executive Presidential system reached by the Movement for a Just Society headed by Venerable Maduluwave Sobhitha Thera as well as the proposals contained in the Draft 19th Amendment compiled by the Pivituru Hetak Jatika sabhava headed by Ven Atureliye Ratana Thera which proposed a Constitutional alliance of the President and the Prime Minister. I will also consider the changes proposed to these proposals by the United National Party.

The new Constitutional structure would be essentially an Executive allied with the Parliament through the Cabinet instead of the present autocratic Executive Presidential System. Under it the President would be equal with all other citizen before the law. I guarantee that in the proposed Constitutional Amendment I will not touch any Constitutional Article that could be changed only with the approval at a Referendum. I also ensure that I will not undertake any amendment that is detrimental to the stability, security and sovereignty of the country. My amendments will be only those that facilitate the stability, security and sovereignty of the country.”

Read the full manifesto here