Ajit Randeniya

Most people of colour will not dare say or agree that Barack Obama’s presentation to the world as US President was a trick played on them by Uncle Sam. Unfortunately, every passing month of Obama presidency proves that this is the sad truth and disturbingly, Obama himself appears to have been an unsuspecting victim of this scam.

Cynics always held the view that Obama was not given to the world as a ‘promise of change’ of the corrupt, unjust and exploitative economic and political system in America. Those matters are governed by the ‘real government’ controlled by the military-industrial complex and the Zionist lobby that is part and parcel of that system.

The only reason why Obama was allowed to sail through the notoriously corrupt process of US presidential primary elections and caucuses was because those rulers needed him badly in 2008.  The lie-based, unilateral military adventures of Bush Jr and his neocon ‘friends’ that caused millions of civilian deaths had unveiled the truth about America to the world. The world has woken up to the deceptive American ideologies and tactics to such an extent that the entire wider membership of the UN General Assembly started to walk out when Bush appeared at the podium! Something radical had to be offered, and Obama was the answer.

People who are familiar with the system were always skeptical, and even cynical, about Obama’s chances of being allowed to change the world as we know it. A cursory look at Obama’s current agenda and the decisions he appears to have been forced to make over the last month or so proves the point.

To start with the most recent decision, his secretary of state Hillary Clinton announced on 1 November, during another of her pilgrimages to Jerusalem (she doesn’t seem to achieve much else) that the continuing Israeli settlement building issue should now be considered as part of peace negotiations with the Palestinians rather than a precondition.

This is a major shift in Obama’s policy, taking him back to the ‘old’ policy of all other presidents, at least since the 1950s. Obama had previously demanded that Israel halt all settlement building before negotiations could resume. The shift clearly marks another neocon-enforced Obama decision to placate the extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.

In May, Clinton had said Barack Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions”. This particular position was toned down to only a “restraint”, not a “freeze” on settlements, following the New York meeting with Netanyahu in September. Now it is a ‘goer’.

This change however is not surprising and is only conforming to the usual historical pattern of US administrations kneeling down before intransigent Israeli leaders. The lobby and the neocons have seen to it that Obama will obey the rules, by putting the ‘right’ people around him from day one of the campaign to every moment of his decision making time.  

But the worse is yet to come. Obama is yet to make a decision on sending up to 140 000 more soldiers to Afghanistan.

 Vietnam all over again! The parallels between the efforts of the Zionists during the Presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Nixon to intensify the Vietnam War by spreading it to neighbouring countries and the current neocon designs to intensify and spread the Afghan war to Pakistan are uncanny.

 Into the bargain, just as the Vietnam War put a stop to President Johnson’s the ‘Great Society’ program of reforms of 1964, scuttling Johnson’s hopes for a second presidential term, the current Afghanistan conspiracy may end up defining Obama’s presidency and his political future.

 Just like Obama in 2008, Johnson in 1964 had campaigned on a reasonably pacifist foreign policy platform. He argued that “we don’t want to get tied down in a land war in Asia, possibly fighting a nation with 700 million people [China].” As president, however, Johnson was ‘advised’ to do exactly that: he committed U.S. ground forces to Vietnam in 1965. By 1968, the war in Vietnam had led to widespread criticism of Johnson’s record by most reasonable Americans and the major drop in popularity forced him not to run for reelection. The Afghanistan War, if intensified by Obama, will drive a similar stake through the heart of his health care reform initiative.

 The neocons are busily laying a trap for Obama, as elaborate as ever, to achieve these aims.

 Early in to the Obama presidency, in March they appointed General Stanley A. McChrystal as the new commander of American and allied forces in Afghanistan. Just two months into his new posting, McChrystal produced a 66-page ‘battlefield assessment’ designed to ‘frighten’ the hell out of Obama. It warned that if the Taliban’s momentum is not halted in the next 12 months, defeating it may no longer be possible. All McChrystal needed to ‘save America’ was 40,000 to 100,000 more troops, in addition to the 68,000 already there.

 Obama is obviously aware of the dangers of such an escalation because it will destroy any remaining credibility of America in the eyes of the world, and it is against his campaign promise. Obama is buying time, and is mulling over the decision.

 McChrystal in the meantime is adding pressure by himself, and through various ‘experts’ from neocon ‘think tanks’. He is adamant that Taliban are a direct threat to the US and justifies the intensification on the bass of the need to build an effective Afghan government as an alternative to the Taliban. His neocons ‘mates’ are adding pressure on Obama ‘to give General McChrystal whatever he wants’.

 Among those weighing in is Bruce O. Riedel, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Riedel was a ‘hanger-on’ of Obama’s presidential campaign and he was appointed chair of a White House review to overhaul of U.S. policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama did not appear to take his March 2009 report seriously.

 Riedel is now going around peddling the ‘advice’ that “Mr. Obama needs to make a decision McChrystal’s request soon to calm nervous allies to make clear to the Taliban that the US cannot be driven out of Afghanistan”. Riedel’s recommendation is “to give McChrystal whatever he needs.”

 There is nothing new in any of these. That other Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger wrote in 1969, supporting the intensified destruction of Vietnam and spread of the war into neighbouring countries that the Tet Offensive marked the “watershed of the American effort. Henceforth, no matter how effective our actions, the prevalent [US] strategy could no longer achieve its objectives within a period or with force levels politically acceptable to the American people.”

 The ‘advice’ resulted in secret bombing of Cambodia by Nixon from 1969-1973, under an elaborate system of deception to hide it from the American public. During the first 14 months of the campaign, the US conducted more than 3,630 B-52 raids, dropping over 110,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia. When the bombing ended, the US had dropped a total of 257,465 tons of explosives on Cambodia. The statistics on deaths of Cambodians including the deformities of future generations are not highlighted by the US, the Human Rights guardian of the world.

 Obama will soon make a momentous decision on McChrystal’s request. If he agrees to this intensification of war, as is unavoidable, Pakistan is likely to be bombed ‘back to stone age’ and its nuclear arsenal taken over by the US. That is the real target!

Ajit Randeniya

Americans have colourful and usually crude ways of expressing themselves. A former colleague of this writer who is still employed at the US Department of State, and was involved in compiling the infamous Sri Lankan ‘war crimes’ report recently provided a classic example.

His description of the lack of clarity of objectives of the report, translated to more civil language, meant that his experience was similar to having been instructed to engage in a rather long sexual escapade without being given the opportunity to see its natural climax!

A cursory read of the subject report reveals that his allegory was particularly apt. The report does not go anywhere beyond making references to some ’alleged’ atrocities by the Army and the LTTE. The ‘hearsay’ presented there, none of it presented in 70 pages of it, will certainly hold water in a court of law.

To begin with, the report only covers the period from January –May 2009 of a war that has been ongoing for nearly 30 years. As far as the ‘war crimes’ cited, the only one attributed to Gen. Fonseka relates to “A report by a media outlet that at a celebrity event in Ambalangoda he stated that the military had to overlook the traditional rules of war.” What a crime! In relation to LTTE crimes the report cites “allegations” that they took boys and girls to join their guerrilla force. You might ask, when did they find that out?

My friend has obviously missed the point. The report was ‘meant to be’ wishy-washy, and not present any concrete evidence or solid recommendations. Congress and the State Department wouldn’t want to test the world reaction to bringing charges against anyone holding a US Green Card (their powers are limited to that!). The world has seen how they treated the criminality of US soldiers (who are full US citizens) who raped women and murdered innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

All the neocons were after was an instrument to put ‘pressure’ on the Sri Lankan government. By appearing to be ‘even-handed’ by including the LTTE in the report they made sure of it. After all, Prabhakaran, Pottu Amman and other murderers are not going to appear on day-release from hell to defend themselves against any charges, are they? Without the Tigers they will not be under (bogus) moral obligation to pursue the Sri Lankan government and its officials.

The report was put to one of its intended uses this week in the aftermath of General Fonseka’s rather premature announcement of his ‘possible’ entry in to politics. The sequence of events reveals a ‘classic’ case of a planned US diplomatic ‘operation’.

Fonseka was initially invited for the farewell ceremony to Admiral Timothy J. Keating. The invitation was later withdrawn, apparently ‘in the light of the release of’ the State Department report! So we are asked to believe that the US Navy or whatever other part of the US system who invited General Fonseka was unaware of the release of the report? And then poor Robert Blake catches the flu! Finally Fonseka’s US trip becomes fully private and he is ‘invited’ for a friendly grilling!

What really happened was that upon Fonseka’s arrival in the US, Blake was monitoring effects carefully as usual, and was informed of his announcement at the temple (Washington DC is a rather small town), and its reception back home. Blake decided to fall sick and create the ‘war crimes’ charade to give the appearance of distancing themselves from the controversy Fonseka had created. So they are throwing punches at him with the ‘velvet glove’.

In another blunder, Fonseka has gone to Fred Fielding of ‘Deep Throat’ fame for legal advice! Fielding is one of the hardest Republicans (Conservatives) in the US and has been deeply involved in the Watergate scandal (though he was not the Deep Throat as initially suspected). He was close to the mass murderer Dick Cheney until they fell out on the issue of a full pardon for Cheney’s office manager Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby who was instrumental in fabricating the so-called evidence of WMDs in Iraq.

Ranil Wickremesinghe is on record saying that by refusing membership of the International Criminal Court (ICC) he ensured that Sri Lankan soldiers will never be taken before any international tribunal. Sri Lankans will be monitoring as to how he helps his intended ‘saviour’.

Ajit Randeniya

There are signs that the Sri Lankan history is repeating itself. In 1815, the Kandyan chieftains handed over King Rajasinghe and the Kandyan kingdom to the British, barely a decade after the crushing defeat of the colonists attempt to invade Kandy.  Now there are signs that General Sarath Fonseka has swallowed or about to walk in to a trap laid by the former US ambassador Robert Blake in connivance with that jelly-back, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

 Blake is probably the second worst enemy of Sri Lanka after Eric Solheim. Blake lost face in Sri Lanka during the end phase of the war, despite the dedicated service of his agent Kumar Rupesinghe and he hasn’t forgotten.  He resents President Rajapakse intensely.

 The American  neocon conspirators  are aware of Mr Rajapakse’s long association with the Palestinian cause, a very good basis for hating him. During his tenure in Colombo Blake also got to know first hand that the President has a fiercely independent mind, a forthrightness rarely seen amongst developing country leaders.  They also dislike President Rajapakse’s close friendships with countries such as Iran, Turkey, Libya and Vietnam who are facing persecution by the US. Such independent mindedness and foreign policy finesse of small country leaders are things they are not used to. They would dearly love to see the back of President Rajapakse, by hook or by crook.

 Blake knew well that the perennial looser in Sri Lankan Politics, Ranil Wickremesinghe had as much chance of winning an election in Sri Lanka as a snow ball maintaining its integrity in hell. He had to find someone else. Rumours that General Fonseka would enter politics were designed as a campaign of destabilisation as well as to plant the seed of this crazy and dangerous idea in Fonseka’s head.

 The long overdue recent revelation that General Fonseka ‘probably’ intends to enter politics, while putting a ‘sort of’ an end to speculation, also reveals a degree of naivety in Fonseka that was always beneath the surface. Especially so when you consider that he chose Washington as the venue to declare his intentions to enter politics in Sri Lanka. Perhaps Blake couldn’t wait!  

 There is no doubt that Sarath Fonseka played a major role as Army Commander in putting an end to the Tiger menace. While he was personally motivated due to the dastardly LTTE attack on his person, it needs to be acknowledged that he planned and managed the operations well.  But none of these services or achievements make him a suitable candidate for Presidency. The possibility now is that he faces self-destruction (of his reputation) by going to bed with Ranil and Mangala. His approach so far suggests so.

 Firstly, during his speech in the temple he exhibited a degree of pettiness in trying to claim all the glory of the victory for the Army, ‘the troops on the ground’, belittling the role of his counterparts at the Navy and Air Force. Then he said that more Prabhakarans might appear in the future unless proper measures were taken to ‘secure the hard won victory’. But this is the same person who caused international embarrassment to Sri Lanka during the war by claiming the whole of Sri Lanka for the Sinhalese, denying the Tamils’ right to live in Sri Lanka. The surviving Tigers like Mano Ganeshan who harbour a unhealthy level of personal hatred towards him haven’t forgotten. He threatened to withdraw from the coalition.

 Whatever his past achievements have been, and future intentions are, Fonseka will not succeed as a genuine contender against President Rajapakse. Fonseka is well aware that why the war couldn’t be finished earlier was due to the inept leadership of people like Ranil and without the right political leadership he wouldn’t have been able to achieve what he achieved.

 Fonsekse simply hasn’t got the civilian administrative experience or political nouse necessary to run the country. A leader like him would be a threat to the Sri Lankan democracy because he is likely to reach for the gun(s) at times of desperation.

 If Fonseka chooses to enter politics he will surrender all the kudos he has won so far, and will become a joke in the minds of many Sri Lankans. That will be a tragedy.

 President Rajapakse hasn’t got much to worry about.

Ajit Randeniya

The international and local enemies of Sri Lanka who tried their ‘best’ and devious methods to divide the territory of Sri Lanka through the LTTE have not yet accepted that they failed. They are looking for new opportunities to achieve the same aim.

 There is nothing new of course, in the international meddlers applying ‘pressure’ through baseless and fabricated allegations of ‘human rights abuses’ and other horrible crimes and threats of trade sanctions. Hilary Clinton gave voice to a feed by the conspirators in the US State Department and the ‘colonisers club’ in Brussels, otherwise known as the European Union is threatening to lift their trade ‘concessions’ to Sri Lanka.

 There are other sub-plots underneath these grand strategies, including the desperate attempt to divide the government and its supporters, most notably to persuade General Sarath Fonseka to step in to the gutter with such desperados as Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mangala Samaraweera, the same people who ridiculed General Fonseka and the army during the war!

 Other plots involve the use of local elements to good measure and the continued use of destabilisation by international agents entering the country and working as ‘journalists’. As the leading local agent, the religious fundamentalist cult at ‘The Sunday Leader’ is reporting death threats by the truckload. The sensationalist headline ‘Now they are coming for us’ has become the masthead of the rag.

 If these reports of death threats are true, the prospective killers of the cult must be the stupidest killing squad in the world. Unlike the usual method of such outfits of ‘paying a visit’ to their targets at the dead of the night, these particular goons seem to keep on telegraphing their punches without any sign of intending to ever follow-up!

 Any intended effect of the threats, as well as their reporting has worn out a long time ago! Notwithstanding that people like to the extremely precious Editor of the Leader Frederica Jansz keeps on drivelling about the ‘courage’ they are displaying in the face of such ‘threats’.

 Then we have the foreign variety of the subterranean life who visit the country as ‘journalists’, but in reality they are there to cultivate contacts among the disaffected or the religiously and ethnically disparate groups. Then they sent home detailed ‘analyses’ of the social, political and economic background of the country, labelled as ‘news’.

 A report written just last weekend by Amanda Hodge, described as the South Asia correspondent for the Rupert Murdoch owned ‘The Australian’ newspaper and presumably carrying an Australian passport, provides a clear example of this phenomenon.

 The declared mission of Ms Hodge is, of course, to have a look at the current hot issue of the ‘boat people’ originating from Sri Lanka, a perfectly understandable interest in current affairs with a local angle for her newspaper published in Australia.

 But, is her report really news or news alone?

 Ms Hodge’s report basically passes on a message from one Justin Warnakulasuriya for aid from the government of Australia, and then provides the detail about the ethnic, religious and other complexities of the group she has made contact with.

 Justin, described as ‘dripping in gold’, eating fried fish and drinking Johnnie Walker Black Label and wearing a traditional lungi (sarong?) is apparently the secretary of a Fisheries Society. He has already met Australian officials who have sought his help in cracking down on the thriving people-smuggling trade in return for life jackets, fishing nets and at least 200 chairs. The Australian government is also preparing to offer micro loans and community grants for job creation programmes.

 Probably naïve about the traps the international influence peddlers set up, Justin seems to have set himself up as the ideal ’partner’ of the type the international meddlers are seeking. He has announced that “There is a very good relationship between us and the (Australian) officials and promised, probably beyond what he could truly deliver, “a guarantee not a single person will try to reach your country by boat from Negombo.”

 Ms Hodge follows up this valuable contact with our Justin with the real job she has at hand: providing an evaluation of the opportunity he is able to provide. This is where she goes to party!

 Ms Hodge writes: “Populated mostly by Catholic Sinhalese fishermen and their families, the west coast has a ‘rich’ history of Portuguese and Dutch settlement. A good proportion of the adult population speaks Tamil with greater fluency than Sinhalese, a product of their education in Tamil and Catholic schools. Although it is Sri Lanka’s Tamil population that has suffered the greatest discrimination at the hands of ‘chauvinist Sinhalese-dominated governments’ in recent decades, most Sinhalese Christians who attempt the boat trip to Australia also claim political persecution” (emphasis added) .

 Then she quotes a failed asylum seeker, another Warnakulasuriya, described as a Sinhalese Christian. He has complained that: “The Australian government thinks only Tamils have problems in this country, but we are not an original Sinhalese community,” he says. “We are discriminated against by other Sinhalese because we don’t speak a proper Sinhala language. We’re very fluent in Tamil so they think we’re also Tamil and that we helped the Tamil Tigers smuggle arms and cadres through Negombo.”

 Is this news? Not when you look at it from inside! Ms Hodge’s ‘news report’ represents a classic case of a modern intelligence brief based on ‘open source intelligence’. The days of James Bond, agents wearing sunglasses and overcoats, carrying poison tipped umbrellas are gone. The information needs for any operation are easily met simply by finding, and the right use of, information that is ‘out there’. The information gathered and disseminated by ‘journalists’ like Ms Hodge is harvested by analysts employed at the embassies who pour over all newspaper reports, political speeches and other public and personal information and catalogue them systematically for use by ‘the system’.

 Mr Warnakulasuriya, perhaps quite innocently has provided some useful information about a little ‘pocket of dissension’ that is present along the Negombo coast. The use of ethnic unhappiness is probably the method with strongest appeal to the meddlers and is likely to be increasingly employed by them in the coming months. We can only hope that the ‘cargo’ does not start arriving soon.

 The government needs to employ the security system wisely to ward off such threats, especially by not allowing open access by foreigners to known communities that are unique and different.

Ajit Randeniya

Another election has been held in Sri Lanka, resulting in another outright defeat for the UNP and its leadership,. By granting the UPFA a thumping 67.8 percent of the vote, and 38 of the 55 seats in the council, the people of Southern Sri Lanka have once again sent a clear message that is hard to miss, even by Ranil Wickremesinghe: the UNP is not what the country needs at this juncture.

Ranil’s greed for continued presence in the Sri Lankan political scene in the face of such demoralising defeats, and some of the claims he made during campaigning points to a disturbingly delusional state of mind. His campaigning essentially involved preparing the ground for the impending loss.

He alleged, on the face of his troops deserting him and the UNP in droves, that the government was trying to destroy some political parties in its greed for power. He also accused the government of attempting to take the full credit for the military successes against LTTE terrorism, ignoring the ‘brave lads from villages’ who made great sacrifices. He also suggested that ‘senior LTTE leaders’ such as Daya and George ‘Masters’ were spared because they had threatened to reveal the truth about a secret meeting between the government and the LTTE in the Wanni. For a man who refuses to believe in foreign conspiracies against Sri Lanka, Ranil seems to be full of his own conspiracy theories!

He also attempted to claim a degree of credit for the victory over the LTTE, by asserting that the ‘negotiations’ he started with the terrorists that were instrumental in causing the rift between the eastern and northern arms of LTTE, and over 4,000 cadres leaving the terrorist outfit.

Doing justice to such extravagant claims require a detailed look at the man’s performance at various level of the UNP, especially as Prime Minister from 2001-2005.

It must first be pointed out that the introduction of Ranil to Sri Lankan politics was one of the most damaging acts perpetrated by his ‘Uncle Dick’, J.R. Jayawardena, in addition to the ideological and economic slavery he subjected the country to. In hindsight, it is clear that JR’s unmeritorious promotion of his fresh-faced nephew over the more senior, capable and charismatic UNPers has proven to be a calamity that fell upon the nation and the UNP. Ranil’s political career can only be summed up as ‘a minister with lackluster performance and a disaster as Prime Minister.

The main ‘crime’ Ranil Wickremesinghe committed against the nation involves the prolongation of the war with the LTTE through a serious of dim-witted operations and initiatives. He needs to take responsibility for the enormous loss of life and economic damage to Sri Lanka that resulted from the prolongation of the war.

The first of Ranil’s blunders, the ‘Athurugiriya safe-house affair’ that followed his only election win in 2001 caused strategic damage of unimaginable proportions to he conduct of the war. Perhaps more importantly from a management point of view, the act displayed a total lack of ‘judgment’ that is warranted in a national leader.

As is widely known, the raid on the Athurigiruya safe house operated by the Directorate of Military Intelligence negated the significant gains that had been made by the Army in eliminating some of the murderous leaders of the LTTE, causing paranoia in the minds of Pottu Amman and Prabhakaran.

Words cannot describe the imbecility involved in mistaking this operation and its resources for an Army conspiracy to assassinate the UNF leadership, disregarding the Army assurances that the operation was not an illegal activity and other desperate attempts by the Director of Military Intelligence to seek the intervention of the IGP. Needless to mention, the LTTE eliminated several key intelligence operators whose identities were revealed during this debacle.

Then his generous entry in to ‘negotiations’ with the treacherous LTTE who had previously in 1987, 1990 and 1994 returned to terrorism, rejuvenated, after exploiting the government’s gestures. Ranil’s decision to offer negotiations unilaterally, without preconditions to an outfit with a history such as that of the LTTE shows that the man should not be put in charge of a ‘chook raffle’, let alone a country facing ruination.

The absurdly unwise ‘confidence building measures’ such as removing army checkpoints, freezing military force recruitments and allowing the transportation of items with potential military uses to the LTTE held areas were gleefully exploited by Anton Balasingham to bolster the LTTE’s capacity.

The worse damage to Sri Lanka however, was caused through the effects on the military forces’ morale and the fighting capacity that weakened the battlefield capability as well as the negotiating position. Now he claims credit for the demise of the LTTE!

All the election results repeatedly show that the people of Sri Lanka have a full appreciation of the lack of ability in Ranil to lead the nation. Now he might serve as an envoy for the foreign meddlers he is servile to. But the UNP needs to put Ranil out of his misery and find a leader that is acceptable to the people of Sri Lanka.

The moral of Ranil’s story for post war Sri Lanka is that non-merit based selection and promotion of people, be it in political parties or within the national and public services, has the potential to precipitate disastrous results for countries. It is time to make a fresh commitment to the merit principle.

Ajit Randeniya

Bernard Kouchner has been one of the European politicians showing a keen interest in Sri Lankan affairs. His demand for a visit during the last stages of the war, and other remarks, were explained largely on the grounds of ‘Humanitarian Concerns’. It is reasonable to assume that through his intrusions in to trouble-spots of the world, Kouchner seeks to portray an image of a fearless campaigner for the rights of the poor and the oppressed.

But analysis of Kouchner’s background in the French political scene and on international affairs shows that he is really a leading member of the international neocon cabal that seeks to interfere in global affairs for their own advantage.

His background and activities first. Bernard Kouchner, 67, is a doctor by training, and he first worked for the Red Cross in Biafra in 1968 during Nigeria’s civil war. He later co-founded Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) in 1971. Kouchner once told an interviewer that MSF, “was establishing the moral right to interfere inside someone else’s country”. These were carefully chosen words because MSF is the cleverest battle-front intelligence gathering organisation in the world. As an NGO, MSF is widely known to, while providing some genuine medical assistance to casualties of war, gather battle ground intelligence and carry out independent assessments for its pay masters. It enjoys the same privileges as the Red Cross without being subjected to the same conditions due to its NGO character.

Kouchner however, fell-out with MSF in 1979 over a controversial project involving his plans to take a chartered cargo ship to the South China Sea with a group of doctors to ‘rescue’ Vietnamese boat people. So in 1980, he set up the rival organisation, Medecins du Monde, MDM or Doctors of the World, based in ten European countries and Japan. Significantly, Kouchner charged that the MSF was giving up its founding principle of “aid workers making the atrocities they observe known to the public”. He obviously didn’t want to spoil the operations of Gordon Weiss and Paul Castellano who got numbers from the battle front and exaggerated them for their own purposes!

In parralel with these NGO activities, Kouchner had also penetrated the French Socialist Party. While claiming to be a socialist, he carried out an independent agenda, similar to Joe Lieberman in the US who pretended to be a Democrat for over two decades.

Kouchner differed with the party and always took a more pro-American line than many French socialists and often called for renewal and reform on the left. This was similar to the Third Way movement in the UK that destroyed the Labour Party there from within by installing Tony Blair as leader.

In1992 Kouchner became health minister in the socialist government of the late President Francois Mitterrand. He later served as UN ‘special representative’ to Kosovo from 1999-2001, laying the foundation for the separation of that particular enclave to suit neocon designs.

Kouchner knows how to use the media to best effect to make his point or back a cause. His marriage to Christine Ockrent, a French TV presenter and political journalist is a massive part of such designs. In a much ridiculed media event, in 1992 he waded ashore alone in Somalia during the famine, carrying a sack of rice on his back!

In 2003, Kuchner was one of the very few French politicians to come out in support of the US invasion of Iraq. In fact, the French President Jacques Chirac and his ‘suave’ Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin were some of the fiercest and most vociferous opponents of the Iraqi invasion. But the ‘socialist’ Kouchner supported the US invasion supposedly “due to the merit of over-throwing an evil dictator” and “the need for putting an end to the suffering of the Kurdish population”.

Weighed against this background, the ‘socialist’ Kouchner’s inclusion in the cabinet of the right-wing government of Nicholas Sarkozy did not surprise many. The true socialist colleagues had long seen him as a traitor.

Together with Sarkozy, Kouchner undertook the massive job of repairing relations with the US after the 2003 chill, and addressing the problem of age-old mutual repulsion with the UK. Accordingly, French government has become much more Washington-friendly despite the revulsion among the French public about anything Anglo-Saxon remains as virulent as ever.

The most recent revelation of Kouchner’s true personality and priorities came during the arrest of the famous film director Roman Polanski by the Swiss authorities under an international alert issued by the US in 2005. Polanski had plea bargained, and then fled the US in 1978 before sentencing for raping and sodomising a 13-year-old girl after giving her champagne and part of a capsule of the recreational drug Methaqualone, that was known in the seventies as Quaalude.

Kouchner is a man who takes no prisoners when it comes to the preservation of his own kind. He forgot all loyalties to the US and called Polanski’s arrest “sinister” and wrote, together with his Polish counterpart, to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the issue. This reaction completely ignored the fact that Polanski fled the US to escape sentencing, adding a further crime to his horrible original crime.

The other major problem was that Kouchner’s position, despite its portrayal by his friends in the media as such, was not the French government position. There was a strong public reaction against this unethical defence of a paedophile, forcing the French government spokesman Luc Chatel to announce that “we have a judicial procedure under way for a serious affair – the rape of a minor – on which the American and Swiss legal systems are doing their job”. Chatel added that Polanski is “neither above nor beneath the law, and must face justice like everyone else”.

The French Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit also said he was “ill at ease” with the rush to absolve Polanski of raping a minor and Kouchner should have been more cautious in his comments. But Kouchner, as usual, couldn’t and didn’t accept the US arrest of his ‘friend’ or the criticism of his unprincipled defence of a convicted criminal.

In the middle of the furore he hurriedly left for Russia, to sell a French ‘Mistral-class’ assault ship worth around 300 million euros. The timing as well as the publicly announced purpose of the trip was clearly designed to irk the Americans. The sale is likely to be greeted with unease by both Georgia and the US on commercial, as well as strategic grounds due to the ship providing Russia with unprecedented rapid response capability in the Black Sea.

Kouchner fired several barbs at the US from Russia during an interview with Russia’s Ekho Moskvy radio, following reluctantly conceding that “no one is above the law”.

He condemned “war as mean for setting borders in Europe”, clearly referring to the US fuelled aggression of its erstwhile friend Georgia on South Ossetia last year. He also used the criticism of Georgia contained in the report of the independent commission on the war. Kouchner said he did not see the Georgian bombing of the Ossetian capital Tskhinvali but learnt a lot about it afterwards. He also announced a new, more conciliatory position on Iran, contrary to that of the US, by saying that “In Geneva we are not yet talking about sanctions.”

What all this is revealing is that Kouchner shows no commitment to the French national motto “liberté, égalité, fraternité” or any other worthwhile principle other than championing the ‘liberty’ of the brotherhood of neocon Zionists. It appears that he expects the liberty to break the law and skip town, just as he expected the Sri Lankan government to release Prabhakaran ‘to a third party’.

His next request to pay us a visit should be politely declined.

Ajit Randeniya

There are some strange limits and inexplicable exceptions to the so-called ‘Freedom of Expression’ and Media Freedom concepts globally promoted by the US and the rest of the Western world. One notable prohibition relates to the use of the word ‘conspiracy’, defined as ‘an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act’. The use of this particular word is virtually censored, and anyone who dares to suggest even the mere possibility of the existence of any such phenomenon is ridiculed, and is subjected to various forms of harassment. Some in the developing world including the fighters for these ‘freedoms’ also appear to adopt this same attitude and practices.

 The reaction of the foreign agents in Sri Lanka and their mouthpieces like ‘The Sunday Leader’ appear to be aghast that the patriot assume, and are talking about the existence of such a conspiracy. They seem to be unable or unwilling to see the evidence. It is now known that throughout history, most common people in the West have been oblivious to various conspiracies perpetrated upon them by the merchant and political classes. Only those who have gained access to the inner workings of the so-called democracies, usually at the highest level, have been able to witness and understand such conspiracies.

 There are several clear examples. Benjamin Disraeli, the first Prime Minister of England wrote in the novel Coningsby, published in 1844, that “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”

 Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States wrote in The New Freedom (1913), “Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”

 John F. Kennedy, during a speech at Columbia University just 10 days before his assassination declared that “The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the Americans’ freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight.”

 Former President Bill Clinton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” interview as recently as Sept 27, 2009 that “The vast right-wing conspiracy” that attacked him during his presidency continues to operate against President Obama.

 The glaring inconsistencies in the cunningly constructed Western propaganda on their avowedly ‘superior’ moral and humane value system they are attempting to impose on the world also point to the existence of conspiracies.

 Incomprehensibly, the Western love for ‘freedom of expression’ ends when issues such as the duplicitous financing of the world wars, or the numbers (claimed to have been) killed in concentration camps, or the German civilians killed by Churchill in Dresden, after the war ended, are brought to surface.

 People such as the British historian David Irwin and the Australian holocaust denier Fredrik Toben were jailed in Germany for questioning such issues. Just last year, the perfectly decent and honest British parliamentarian George Galloway was denied a visa to enter Canada due to his views. But the same people ‘cry rivers’ for the Sri Lankan Tissenayagam who was jailed following a full and complete due process.

 This is the context in which the present international campaign (aided and abetted by local agents) against Sri Lanka and its much- beloved President and the defence leadership needs to be looked at. The pattern clearly points, at least to those who are familiar with the intricacies of Western machinations, that there clearly is a conspiracy being perpetrated by a number of international and local groups with vested interests.

 Just six months after the demise of the murderous LTTE and Prabhakaran, they are furiously cranking up a venomous anti-Sri Lankan campaign. Part of the motivation comes from the Zionist controlled global media coterie’s search for ‘trouble spots’ away from Palestine to divert attention from the continuing illegal settlement process in the occupied territories, despite President Obama’s ‘pleas’. Another key imperative of the same forces is to buy time for plotting an attack on Iran.

 The international conspirators are being led and financed by Eric Sol’heim’ and others of his clique in Europe and the US. Apparently Kouchner and Milliband want to visit us, without wearing the ‘yarmulke’ of course! That Human Rights expert at the UN, the highly paid-do nothing Aussie ‘as flash as a rat with a gold tooth’, Philip Alstone has not stopped whinging either. Then we have Jeremy ‘Airport’ Page of The Times UK carrying on from somewhere in India about the Sri Lankan army shooting ‘fleeing’ refugees. He is obviously still smarting!

 The US clique of conspirators also prostituted their illegitimate domestic organ known as the ‘Office of War Crimes Issues’ to ‘study’ and report to Hillary Clinton, who relied on Tiger financing for her failed presidential campaign, on Sri Lanka. Ironically, the worst punishment they can mete out is to “prohibit certain forms of financial support to Sri Lanka”. Most people would think that they rely on international aid for survival as much as any other country in the world and we could get China to stop aid to the US!

Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton’s foreign policy is all over the place! This week she criticised African leaders who continued to support the Sudanese President Bashir instead of helping the US to bring him to justice on account of “his behaviour outside the accepted bounds”. At the same time she is crawling to Burma ostensibly because Burma is important for their policy of ‘encirclement’ of China!

The US group undertook the Sri Lankan project among their more important domestic business of running a parallel administration to that of President Obama’s. They began undermining him since his speech in Egypt in June, due to its conciliatory nature towards Muslims, and his attempts to show some sense to that arrogant Lithuanian extremist Benjamin Netanyahu. Now they are trying to block Obama’s honourable efforts to revamp the US health system that represents a disgraceful Human Rights violation of the Afro-Americans and poor Whites in America.

The ‘white noise’ is being echoed by local collaborators ranging from desperados like Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mangala Samaraweera, and US dollar-craving NGO wallahs such as Kumar Rupesinghe, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu and Jehan Perera. The JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe also seems to be tagging along, just for the ride!

 Ranil Wickremesinghe who is merely a political carcass without any prospects of winning a democratically held election, is probably hoping for an arrangement like the one the US orchestrated in the Honduras. He has recently complained about lack of economic development in the country, despite the end of the war. This foreign puppet who has plagued the UNP and Sri Lankan politics in senior leadership positions for over 30 years, symbolising incompetence and achieving nothing for his party or the country, expects the present government to turn around the economy in just six months from the end of the war!

 This gutless wonder has found a ‘partner’ in another desperado, Mangala Samaraweera who, has recently invoked 1984 and George Orwell to describe the civil rights situation and media freedom in Sri Lanka! This brain-washed nonentity is clearly unable to see that it is the conspiracies of the type his Western masters are hatching the world over is what Orwell was referring to.

 The government needs to maintain the current path it is pursuing, of securing the country to provide a stable environment for economic development. The resettlement of IDPs remains an issue, but the foreigners should not be allowed to set the pace of the process. Their motive of letting out LTTE operatives should be frustrated at all costs.

 The President and the government has the love and support of the Sri Lankan people. That is what matters.

Ajit Randeniya

 The 28 August presentations by Jehan Perera and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu at the so-called US Institute of Peace (USIP) revealed many things about these two individuals.

 Perera, following a ‘gutless’ analysis about the situation in Sri Lanka, pleaded for the ‘support’ of the international community. He was careful not to mention money though.

 Paikiasothy’s motive was obviously similar but was expressed more deceptively, and venomously. With the use of meaningless and hackneyed clichés such as the need to ‘move from post-war to post-conflict situation (a journey of thousand miles it seems!) and ‘empirical reference points’, whatever they could be, Paikiasothy was searching desperately for academic or intellectual veneer to his demented rant! An excellent rebuttal presented with dignity by the Sri Lankan ambassador blunted any effect these two bogus intellectuals would have had.

 The futility of this ‘dance of the two monkeys’ to the neocon tunes cannot be fully illustrated without understanding the background of their host, the USIP. The detail shows that the association between these agents and their friends at the USIP is based on dishonesty of similar scale of the two parties.

 The USIP is a congressionally funded ‘think tank’ created in 1984 during the Ronal Reagan regime, staffed by neocons who plotted the seizure of Iraq’s oil fields. Similar to the front specifically created for undermining Cuba, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USIP is another product of neocon success in the Reagan and Bush era, aided by Congress, in getting public funding to implement their agenda against progressives internationally. Outrageously, at its creation USIP was mandated with full access to classified information of intelligence agencies.

 Under the guise of promoting peace, the USIP facilitates war and occupation. The naming of the Institute as one of ‘Peace’, and describing themselves as ‘pursuing nonviolent alternatives to war’ are part of the grand scheme of deception. They are a group of war mongers representing the global oil industry interests of long nosed neocons.

 The USIP board of directors, a who’s who of the neocon army, gives the lie to any it being nonpartisan and nonideological peace group as the propaganda suggests. The president since 1993 is Richard H. Solomon, a former National Security Council staff member originating from the RAND Corporation, the think tank that designed the Vietnam War. Vice president Charles E. Nelson is also from RAND and the National War College.

 The chairman of the USIP board of directors is J. Robinson West, a Washington lobbyist specialising in representing the major oil companies. Other members of the board include Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who headed the CIA under G. H. W. Bush and Charles Horner, from the ultra militarist Hudson Institute.

 A new building complex to house the USIP, nearing completion, will be named after George P. Schultz, the creator of the Bush-Cheney doctrine of preventative (first strike) nuclear warfare, a major military contractor these days.

 The activities of USIP show its true nature. It spends tens of millions of tax dollars researching symptomatic problems such as motivations for terrorism, but never the root causes of it such as America’s arming of the Israeli Weltanschauung, or the habit of brutally invading Third World countries to snatch their natural resources.

 USIP takes a special interest in countries with oil reserves. It has several Iraq ‘specialists’ including Rend Francke, a Jewish Iraqi expatriate who, along with the infamous Ahmed Chalabi, abetted Bush-Cheney-Powell- Rumsfeld axis of evil into invading Iraq in 2003.

 USIP staffers organised the Iraq Study Group, a collection of neocons who finally figured out that their war on Iraq is unwinnable. The Study Group was headed by James Baker and was composed of executives from RAND, Bechtel and Citigroup as well as the Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute. To lead the study, USIP partnered with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a similar group run by executives from the Carlyle Group, the Coca-Cola Company, Merrill Lynch & Co., Exxon Mobile Corp, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Time Inc. and alleged war criminal Henry Alfred Kissinger.

 In October 2008, USIP produced a report by a ‘Pakistan Policy Working Group’ as part of an avalanche of ‘bipartisan’ reports that were being churned out by Washington-based neocon think tanks aiming to influence the policies of the in-coming administration. Group members included former senior officials who served in the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the National Security Council, and representatives from the the Brookings Institution and RAND Corporation. The report was endorsed by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage from the Republican side and the former cochairman of the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group, Lee Hamilton from the Democrat side. The report was cosponsored by Armitage’s consulting firm, Armitage International, the right-wing Heritage Foundation; and DynCorp International, major contractor with the State Department and the USAID.

 The USIP report created the South Asian agenda for the Obama administration, branding Pakistan the ‘greatest single challenge’, and recommending aid cuts unless it commits itself to the counterinsurgency struggle against the Taliban and al Qaeda. The report also asserted that Washington is justified in carrying out unilateral cross-border attacks into Pakistan against terrorist targets until Islamabad shows ‘that it is ready and willing to act aggressively’ against them on its own. All this from the Institute of ‘Peace’!

 Paikiasothy is aiding and abetting these rogues by attempting to underplay the security aspect of the IDP management and by trying to make human rights the central issue. While any one human would want to give the IDPs a better life, it must also be remembered that there are several million others in Sri Lanka whose accommodation, nutrition and education issues are as grave as those of the IDPs.

 Fraudsters like Paikiasothy should be asked the question, ‘What about their Human Rights? How can their concern be so selective?

 Paikiasothy’s attempt to communicate rubbish is made more difficult by his ridiculous, nondescript accent. It is suggestive of an attempt to ape his masters gone tragically wrong! He spoke of ‘sh’allenges and recon’sh’illiation, prompting a Sri lankan member in the audience to retort that it was all ‘ch’it.

Ajit Randeniya

 The Western propaganda machine, the BBC, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and all the ‘wire services’ Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP) in particular, have gone wild with anticipation following the announcement of Lynn Pascoe’s visit to Sri Lanka. As usual, they lied to the world by suggesting that the purpose of the visit was ‘to press the government to release Tamil refugees detained at camps since May’, deliberately withholding the fact that he was invited by President Rajapakse.

 Gordon ‘the Gutter Mouth’ Weiss, posing as ‘the UN spokesman for Sri Lanka’, told Al Jazeera: “We hope that it will add to the assurances given to the UN secretary-general by the president of Sri Lanka when he was here in May. The he spoke for the secretary-general, whom he said “believes that progress in getting people out of the camps and back home and on political reconciliation is going too slow”. The ‘gutter mouth’ also reminded that “Sri Lanka has human rights obligations … and is ‘expected’ to uphold those obligations”.

 These rants are after just ‘six months’ since the war ended!

 Global victims of Western (US) atrocities, the Afghan refugees who have lived in hell for the last eight years in camps in Pakistan, millions of Iraqis displaced by indiscriminate US bombing of their dwellings since 2003, and the survivors of the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp who were held without trial for seven years must feel that their Human Rights are inferior to those of some others!

 How is this low-life Weiss still managing to hold a Sri Lankan visa?

 Back to the latest, elaborate, two-stage conspiracy this visit constitutes. The first step was to pressurise Ban Ki-Moon ‘to do something’ about the ‘recalcitrant’ Sri Lankans. This process started a while ago, through deliberately ‘leaked’ reports by Norwegian diplomats criticising Ban.

 Next, an obviously concerned Ban was ‘invited’ to Norway to meet with the incurable conspirator Solheim (he is borne that way!). Ban also had to meet with the Foreign Minister, and the King for reinforcement of the message. In orchestrating this latest plot, the Norwegians acted on behalf of the ‘pack’ of self-described ‘International Community’ of pale-skinned, long nosed meddlers from Scandinavia, UK and North America. An attempt was made later to camouflage Ban’s hurriedly organised trip to Norway as ‘a trip to Antarctica to see climate change damage to the polar ice cap’!

 The second step of the conspiracy was to get Ban Ki-Moon to send Lynn Pascoe, one of their agents, to Sri Lanka under UN cover, with the added bonus of assumed UN authority.

 This is the reason why the background of our guest Lynn Pascoe is extremely relevant to the accurate reading of this particular conspiracy.

 Pascoe is one of many Bush appointees to top UN positions as part of a neocon strategy to ‘invade’ the UN system as a means of repairing the diplomatic fall out from the Iraqi invasion. Bush the idiot implemented it. Under this strategy the US took over UNICEF, the UNDP and UNHCR by themselves or through proxies. Pascoe was appointed to his current, second rung UN position in 2007, not long before the end of the regime of the Bush junta.

 Pascoe’s particular career background, an open book to those who are familiar with the US global domination apparatus and operators, makes his appointment truly outrageous.

 Pascoe is one of the ‘dyed in the wool’ operators who posed overseas as a US ‘career diplomat’, carrying out tactical destabilisation activities. He has the right diplomatic, military and spy training. More importantly, he has served in all the ‘hot spots’ of strategic importance to the US, including Moscow, Hong Kong, Beijing, Taipei, Malaysia and Indonesia. He speaks Mandarin.

 His specialist areas of operation have been Russia following the break up of the Soviet Union, concentrating on further pulverising the Russian sphere of influence by buying out the central Asian states, and China. He was based in Beijing during the Hong Kong hand over, and then in Taiwan as the director of the American Institute there.

 Pascoe has specialised in community or ‘grass roots’ level engagement in the societies he has operated. The American Institute in Taiwan was the vehicle for carrying out cultural, commercial and other relations ‘between the people of the US and the people of Taiwan’. But his charter was to fuel the divisions between China and Taiwan. In Indonesia, he oversaw the USAID ‘reconstruction’ operations following the 2004 tsunami, and the process of ‘modernising’ the education process there through USAID. He has immaculate credentials in ‘social engineering’.

 Pascoe is also experienced at managing separatist movements in a manner that serves US interests. He was the US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that was seeking to ‘resolve’ the dispute between Armenia and Aserbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

 On 30 August 2002, this writer listened to a talk by Pascoe at the neocon think tank The Heritage Foundation where he outlined the ‘U.S. Policy in Central Asia and the War on Terrorism’. He stated, “Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US moved to establish embassies and to engage the strategically placed states of Central Asia. We believed it important to shore up their independence. Key elements in this strategy included multiple pipelines to help the countries of the region benefit from their energy wealth”.

 On 15 June 2004, testifying before the Subcommittee on Central Asia House International Relations Committee, he said, “The strategic goal of the US in Central Asia is to see the development of independent, democratic and stable states, committed to the kind of political and economic reform essential to modern societies”.

 It is this Lynn Pascoe who is in the island currently. He has had a background in destabilising Russia and China, and a vested interest in all the controversial separatist movements of the world.

 Pascoe is no representative of Ban Ki-Moon. He represents his country’s interests and those of the international mafia of long noses.

 His declared mission is “for three days of talks with government officials and political and civil society leaders, focusing on “the resettlement of internally displaced persons, political reconciliation and the establishment of a mechanism of accountability for alleged human rights violations in the context of the conflict”.

 Still, the hospitality inherent in our civilisation dictates that we should serve him ‘a cup or two’ of good Sri Lankan tea, and asked him to leave, if he doesn’t mind!

Ajit Randeniya

In the middle of the hullabaloo regarding the expulsion of the chaos agent James Elder, and the reprisal of the lame British hyenas by denying a visa to Dr Palitha Kohona, something far more interesting was happening in the provincial town of Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 Two Norwegian passport carriers traveling under the names Joshua French, 27, and Tjostolv Moland, 28, were sentenced to death after being convicted of espionage, arms smuggling and murder. They had been held after their Congolese driver was found shot dead in May in the north-east of the country. Their defence? The driver was shot and killed when the car was attacked by bandits, but they did not report to the police or military because of corruption!

 There was reportedly applause from the packed court room when the sentence was handed down by a military tribunal.

 The case got ‘curiouser’ when it came out that the two men are members of a Norwegian armed forces ‘elite’ unit known as the ‘Telemark Battalion’ and interestingly, French also carried a British passport and has been a British ArmyParatrooper also.

 It is reasonable to conclude that the two men were ‘up to no good’ in this God forsaken area of the universe and they were carrying out espionage for Norway. They got more than they bargained for.

 What is interesting about this case is that, it is an instance where a highly unethical and illegal surreptitious attempt by the agents of the so-called ‘international community’ clique to infiltrate and undermine a strife known developing country coming unstuck. Norway of course is a leader of this gang, ‘punching above their weight’ if you assign international roles to countries on the basis of their population numbers. These conspirators are carrying out their activities with impunity in troubled countries, with the help of local collaborators in the case of Sri Lanka.

 The other interesting feature about this group is that, like these two spies demonstrate through their images and backgrounds, (Joshua French, for heaven’s sake!), that they are of the ‘you know who type’ in the same manner that the pope is catholic! Unfortunately, our reluctance to refer to these people by their more easily identifiable descriptions, due to the risk of branding innocent members of the group as conspirators, is being cunningly exploited by the Zionist faction among them.

 But after 65 years since the end of the last war, the world is entitled to ask as to why the members of this particular group of people are taking so much interest in the domestic affairs of all the remote corners of the world, from the Congo to Kyrgyzstan to Sri Lanka?

 If it is due to their concern for the poor and the oppressed, there are millions living in abject poverty in the slums of Manila, for example, that they could help to their hearts content. But they do not seem to be interested in helping the desperate in relatively peaceful places like Jakarta, Manila or Bangkok. The IDPs in Sri Lanka who live under relatively better conditions seem to have more appeal. They are only interested in the ethnic minorities in countries with civil strife, entering to such places with the ‘Human Rights Bible’ ostensibly to gain control over these troubled societies and their wars.

 The world needs an answer as to how a disproportionately high number of members of this particular group of people (from Kouchner to Milliband to Mendhelson) are dominating the internal politics of the UK, US, Canada, France, Australia and most of the Eastern Europe.

 As to be expected, in this particular case, the Norwegian Foreign Minister ‘Jonas’ Gahr Stoere was fully engaged in an elaborate cover up, denying wrong doing and throwing ridiculous counter-charges at the Congolese government. He denied any knowledge of why the two men were in the DR Congo and introduced the ‘Human Rights card’ by claiming that the men did not get a fair trial. Jonas also laid down the law, “I will emphasise that legal safeguards must be maintained, and that we hold the Congolese authorities responsible for the safety of the two Norwegians. I will also request that Norway’s views are communicated to the appropriate authorities in Kisangani”. He declared that Norway is against the death penalty on principle, and was going to contact the Congolese Foreign Minister to make their position clear. It is ironical that the Congolese had to remind him of this humane concern!

 The deception continued with Jonas claiming that ‘he’ had agreed to meet with his Congolese counterpart on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly sessions in New York. He also issued a meaningless coward’s threat that ‘Congolese authorities were responsible for the safety of the two men’.

 Jonas’ nose was getting longer and longer through the duration of the press conference!