WESTERN SHYLOCKS want the kilogram of flesh
Posted on July 4th, 2014
Nalin de Silva
The West consists of the most vindictive of the states that have ruled the earth over several millennia. There are some educated, meaning of course Western educated who cannot get out of the system, in spite of some of them being Buddhists quoting Kalama Sutta ad nauseam, who would call me anti-western. I am not anti-western as such, but I am against the Western hegemony that controls our lives sometimes very aggressively and at other times in a subtle way.
These educated people would quote from Western authors to justify their views, throwing their Kalama Sutta out of the window, though these views themselves have been instilled into them through education, both formal and informal. However, these educated Buddhists adhere to the Kalama Sutta of Budunvahanse as they follow their Vinnus or knowledgeable persons in the West from Aristotle to Zeno.
It is clear that until the next Presidential elections the West is going to apply tremendous pressure on the government and would attempt to make their agent Ranil Wickremesinghe the President of the country. Of course there will be talk of Chandrika Kumaratunga and the elusive common candidate, but Ranil Wickremesinghe appears to be the choice of the West at present.
Ven. Sobhitha Thera, if at all would be thrown into the field not as the so called common candidate but as a splitter of the Sinhala Buddhist vote. Ven. Thera is supposed to be a single issue candidate but unfortunately even if he becomes the President he would not be able to abolish executive presidency on his own as the abolition of the executive presidency is not the job of the executive but of the legislative.
The single issue candidate without a party base cannot serve the masses on his pet issue as it is unlikely that he would have a Parliament with the required two thirds majority.
 Shylock from the Merchant of Venice |
Those who want the Thera to contest as the single issue common candidate know very well that he cannot deliver the goods, and he would be the person to split the Sinhala Buddhist vote so that Ranil Wickremesinghe could become the President of the country with the non Sinhala vote. However, Arithmetic is not as simple as the west thinks, and they would have to try other means as well to oust the President and then take him to the so called international courts.
Western diplomats
If the present government did not defeat the LTTE, there would not have been any issue over “ethnic” and religious violence in the country, and the Sinhalas, especially the Sinhala Buddhists would not have been called Barbarians by some Western diplomats residing in the country.
It is reported that three Western “experts” have called the Sri Lankan government to adopt measures to curb “the promotion of racial and faith-based hatred and bring perpetrators of religious and communal violence to justice, following just two weeks since the violence that erupted in Southern Sri Lanka.” Who are the perpetrators of religious and communal violence in the country?
It is clear that the West implies by these statements that the Sinhala Buddhists are responsible for religious and communal violence and by implication the government is behind the so called Sinhala Buddhist organisations.
However, except for the Jathika Hela Urumaya which is a registered political party and Bodu Bala Sena, which is not a political party, very little is heard of any other organisation carrying the names of Sinhala, Hela or Bodu engaged in what can be called political agitation. Organisations such as YMBA that has been established following YMCA, and Buddhist Congress do not come under this category, unless one is prepared to include YMCA, YMMA and even the Catholic Bishops as organisations involved in political agitation.
In this regard one cannot ignore the appeal by the Catholic Bishops to the Catholics at the recent Provincial Council Elections, to vote only for the Catholic candidates.
Did not the American, English and other Western diplomats residing in the country read this statement? Was that statement by the Catholic Bishops for religious harmony? Would the three experts tell us the Barbarians (I spell Barbarian with a capital B in English in order to emphasise that most Barbarians are English speaking of course not as a second or third language) whether we should request the Mahanayake Theras to issue similar statements for ethnic harmony?
What would happen if the Mahanayake Theras or even Bodu Bala Sena request the Buddhists to vote only for the Buddhist candidates at the next general elections, and the Buddhists abide by that?
Political parties
Poor Fowzie and many others would lose at the elections and the government will have to appoint them through the national list. Forget the Catholic Bishops, one finds many registered political parties carrying names to indicate that they represent the Muslims or Tamils in the country. Are these parties geared for so called national building? Would the experts and the diplomats tell us? The Minister Hakeem is on record speaking for his people meaning of course not the Sinhala Buddhists. Recently the honourable gentlemen Wigneshwaran the Chief Minister of the Northern Province had asked the Muslims and the Tamils to unite against the Sinhala to “achieve independence”, forgetting that Ponnambalam Ramanathan said that the Muslims were ethnically Tamils, and hence that the Muslims were not entitled for separate representation in the Legislative Assembly, that the Muslims were asked to get out of Jaffna within twenty four hours, and the Muslims ran for safety to the Sinhalas, that the Muslims were massacred inside a mosque in Kattankudy by the Tamil terrorists.
The Muslims have in “gratitude” to the Sinhalas have reacted against the Sinhala culture after the defeat of the LTTE by writing name boards in Arabic and planting date palms in Kattankudy to make Kattankudy a little Arab. Why not some experts suggest having at least a few name boards in England in Arabic for ethnic harmony in the “mother” country?
Communal and religious violence
In the West the Westerners are worried of Muslim aggression, but in Sri Lanka they promote such aggression against the Sinhala people, especially against the Sinhala Buddhists, and tries to blame the Sinhala Buddhists for all the communal and religious violence. The West also attempts to implicate the President and the Defence Secretary with so called Sinhala Buddhist extremists and tarnish their images. It is clear that more than anybody else the West is preparing for Presidential Elections and General Elections in Sri Lanka with the sole aim of making Ranil Wickremesinghe their agent as the next President and reverse all the gains against Tamil terrorism and Tamil racism that goes back to the Legislative council days in the early eighteenth century. It is the English who nurtured Tamil racism, after the Dutch initiated it.
Tremendous pressure is brought on the government by the West to act against the Sinhala Buddhists thus alienating them. The power base of the government is the Sinhala people, especially the Sinhala Buddhists and the government should not alienate them.
It is clear that the West is also attempting a Buddhist Spring against the government using disgruntled Sinhala Buddhists. The fact that there are Muslim enclaves in Sri Lanka is something that even the Western ambassadors roaming the country would have observed and in these enclaves it is a known fact that the Muslims take law into their hands. Aluthgama incidents are not isolated and stem from the existence of Muslim enclaves in the country. The government that was forced not to allow the background to the incidents to come to the forefront, thus giving the advantage to Hakeem is now being pushed further by the Western governments, diplomats and the experts.
The Shylocks want their pound of flesh or the kilogram of flesh of Rajapaksas, in the metric world of the French not known to Shakespeare, and the government should be firm in its dealings with the Western countries as in the days of humanitarian operations.
July 4th, 2014 at 9:26 am
When the European Colonial Empires controlled the world they it changed the geopolitics of the entire globe to a Euro Centric world The British Empire alone controlled a quarter of it. Add to that the holdings of the colonial empires of France, Portugal, Spain and Holland and most of the world rapidly changed from regional powers to a centralized power in the West. When these Empires collapsed they then had the power of writing their own history and by that the history of the colonized nations. To this day what has been written by those historians still formulate the foreign policies of these Western powers. They also created the Common Wealth, the United Nations, the World bank, the Geneva Conference, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and by that maintained their preeminence throughout the 20th and the early 21st centuries.
The US foreign policy is best stated by the Presidential Doctrines that defined the role of the US upon the world. I now copy and past them from the Wikipedia. I Googled “US Presidential Doctrines Wikipedia”.
The Monroe Doctrine was a US foreign policy regarding Latin American countries in the early 19th century. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, requiring U.S. intervention.
The Truman Doctrine was a US policy to stop Soviet expansion during the Cold War.[1] United States President Harry S. Truman pledged to contain communism in Europe and elsewhere and impelled the US to support any nation with both military and economic aid if its stability was threatened by communism or the Soviet Union. The Truman Doctrine became the foundation of the president’s foreign policy and placed the U.S. in the role of global policeman
The Kennedy Doctrine refers to foreign policy initiatives of the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, towards Latin America during his term in office between 1961 and 1963. Kennedy voiced support for the containment of Communism and the reversal of Communist progress in the Western Hemisphere
The Nixon Doctrine (also known as the Guam Doctrine) was put forth during a press conference in Guam on July 25, 1969 by U.S. President Richard Nixon[1] and later formalized in his speech on “Vietnamization,” in November 3 of 1969.[2]According to Gregg Brazinsky, [3] Nixon stated that “the United States would assist in the defense and developments of allies and friends,” but would not “undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world.” This doctrine meant that each ally nation was in charge of its own security in general, but the United States would act as a nuclear umbrella when requested.
The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United StatesJimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf.
The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to oppose the global influence of the Soviet Union during the final years of the Cold War. While the doctrine lasted less than a decade, it was the centerpiece of United States foreign policy from the early 1980s until the end of the Cold War in 1991
The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. The phrase was first used by Charles Krauthammer in June 2001 to describe the Bush Administration’s “unilaterally withdrawing from theABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol.”[1] After 9/11 the phrase described the policy that the United States had the right to secure itself against countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups, which was used to justify the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.[1][2] Different pundits would attribute different meanings to “the Bush Doctrine”, as it came to describe other elements, including the policy ofpreventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a potential threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate; a policy of spreading democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating terrorism; and a willingness to unilaterally pursue U.S. military interests.[3][4][5] Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002
It is still too early to state exactly what the Obama Doctrine is as he is still a sitting President. But let me quote an article in the Asia Times titled “How Washington Protects itself” (7/3/14). Since it is a long article I will submit it in a second comment.
July 4th, 2014 at 9:31 am
“How Washington Protects Itself” (7/3/14) Asia Times:
Page 1 of 2
How Washington protects itself
By Noam Chomsky
The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs. In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons. First, the US is unmatched in its global significance and impact. Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it. Finally, it is plainly the most important case for Americans, who are able to influence policy choices in the US – and indeed for others, insofar as their actions can influence such
choices. The general principles, however, extend to the other major powers, and well beyond.
There is a “received standard version”, common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements, and public discourse. It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the US and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat.
There are a number of ways to evaluate the doctrine. One obvious question to ask is: What happened when the Russian threat disappeared in 1989? Answer: everything continued much as before.
The US immediately invaded Panama, killing probably thousands of people and installing a client regime. This was routine practice in US-dominated domains – but in this case not quite as routine. For first time, a major foreign policy act was not justified by an alleged Russian threat.
Instead, a series of fraudulent pretexts for the invasion were concocted that collapse instantly on examination. The media chimed in enthusiastically, lauding the magnificent achievement of defeating Panama, unconcerned that the pretexts were ludicrous, that the act itself was a radical violation of international law, and that it was bitterly condemned elsewhere, most harshly in Latin America. Also ignored was the US veto of a unanimous Security Council resolution condemning crimes by US troops during the invasion, with Britain alone abstaining.
All routine. And all forgotten (which is also routine).
From El Salvador to the Russian border
The administration of George H W Bush issued a new national security policy and defense budget in reaction to the collapse of the global enemy. It was pretty much the same as before, although with new pretexts. It was, it turned out, necessary to maintain a military establishment almost as great as the rest of the world combined and far more advanced in technological sophistication – but not for defense against the now-nonexistent Soviet Union. Rather, the excuse now was the growing “technological sophistication” of Third World powers. Disciplined intellectuals understood that it would have been improper to collapse in ridicule, so they maintained a proper silence.
The US, the new programs insisted, must maintain its “defense industrial base”. The phrase is a euphemism, referring to high-tech industry generally, which relies heavily on extensive state intervention for research and development, often under Pentagon cover, in what economists continue to call the US “free-market economy”.
One of the most interesting provisions of the new plans had to do with the Middle East. There, it was declared, Washington must maintain intervention forces targeting a crucial region where the major problems “could not have been laid at the Kremlin’s door”. Contrary to 50 years of deceit, it was quietly conceded that the main concern was not the Russians, but rather what is called “radical nationalism”, meaning independent nationalism not under US control.
All of this has evident bearing on the standard version, but it passed unnoticed – or perhaps, therefore it passed unnoticed.
Other important events took place immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, ending the Cold War. One was in El Salvador, the leading recipient of US military aid – apart from Israel-Egypt, a separate category – and with one of the worst human rights records anywhere. That is a familiar and very close correlation.
The Salvadoran high command ordered the Atlacatl Brigade to invade the Jesuit University and murder six leading Latin American intellectuals, all Jesuit priests, including the rector, Fr. Ignacio Ellacuria, and any witnesses, meaning their housekeeper and her daughter. The Brigade had just returned from advanced counterinsurgency training at the US Army John F Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and had already left a bloody trail of thousands of the usual victims in the course of the US-run state terror campaign in El Salvador, one part of a broader terror and torture campaign throughout the region. All routine. Ignored and virtually forgotten in the United States and by its allies, again routine. But it tells us a lot about the factors that drive policy, if we care to look at the real world.
Another important event took place in Europe. Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to allow the unification of Germany and its membership in NATO, a hostile military alliance. In the light of recent history, this was a most astonishing concession. There was a quid pro quo. President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker agreed that NATO would not expand “one inch to the East”, meaning into East Germany. Instantly, they expanded NATO to East Germany.
Gorbachev was naturally outraged, but when he complained, he was instructed by Washington that this had only been a verbal promise, a gentleman’s agreement, hence without force. If he was na?ve enough to accept the word of American leaders, it was his problem.
All of this, too, was routine, as was the silent acceptance and approval of the expansion of NATO in the US and the West generally. President Bill Clinton then expanded NATO further, right up to Russia’s borders. Today, the world faces a serious crisis that is in no small measure a result of these policies.
The appeal of plundering the poor
Another source of evidence is the declassified historical record. It contains revealing accounts of the actual motives of state policy. The story is rich and complex, but a few persistent themes play a dominant role. One was articulated clearly at a western hemispheric conference called by the US in Mexico in February 1945 where Washington imposed “An Economic Charter of the Americas” designed to eliminate economic nationalism “in all its forms”. There was one unspoken condition. Economic nationalism would be fine for the US whose economy relies heavily on massive state intervention.
The elimination of economic nationalism for others stood in sharp conflict with the Latin American stand of that moment, which State Department officials described as “the philosophy of the New Nationalism [that] embraces policies designed to bring about a broader distribution of wealth and to raise the standard of living of the masses”. As US policy analysts added, “Latin Americans are convinced that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country’s resources should be the people of that country”.
That, of course, will not do. Washington understands that the “first beneficiaries” should be US investors, while Latin America fulfills its service function. It should not, as both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations would make clear, undergo “excessive industrial development” that might infringe on US interests. Thus Brazil could produce low-quality steel that US corporations did not want to bother with, but it would be “excessive”, were it to compete with US firms.
Similar concerns resonate throughout the post-World War II period. The global system that was to be dominated by the US was threatened by what internal documents call “radical and nationalistic regimes” that respond to popular pressures for independent development. That was the concern that motivated the overthrow of the parliamentary governments of Iran and Guatemala in 1953 and 1954, as well as numerous others. In the case of Iran, a major concern was the potential impact of Iranian independence on Egypt, then in turmoil over British colonial practice. In Guatemala, apart from the crime of the new democracy in empowering the peasant majority and infringing on possessions of the United Fruit Company – already offensive enough – Washington’s concern was labor unrest and popular mobilization in neighboring US-backed dictatorships.
In both cases the consequences reach to the present. Literally not a day has passed since 1953 when the US has not been torturing the people of Iran. Guatemala remains one of the world’s worst horror chambers. To this day, Mayans are fleeing from the effects of near-genocidal government military campaigns in the highlands backed by President Ronald Reagan and his top officials. As the country director of Oxfam, a Guatemalan doctor, reported recently,
“There is a dramatic deterioration of the political, social, and economic context. Attacks against Human Rights defenders have increased 300% during the last year. There is a clear evidence of a very well organized strategy by the private sector and Army. Both have captured the government in order to keep the status quo and to impose the extraction economic model, pushing away dramatically indigenous peoples from their own land, due to the mining industry, African Palm and sugar cane plantations. In addition the social movement defending their land and rights has been criminalized, many leaders are in jail, and many others have been killed”.
Nothing is known about this in the United States and the very obvious cause of it remains suppressed.
In the 1950s, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles explained quite clearly the dilemma that the US faced. They complained that the Communists had an unfair advantage. They were able to “appeal directly to the masses” and “get control of mass movements, something we have no capacity to duplicate. The poor people are the ones they appeal to and they have always wanted to plunder the rich”.
That causes problems. The US somehow finds it difficult to appeal to the poor with its doctrine that the rich should plunder the poor.
The Cuban example
A clear illustration of the general pattern was Cuba, when it finally gained independence in 1959. Within months, military attacks on the island began. Shortly after, the Eisenhower administration made a secret decision to overthrow the government. John F Kennedy then became president. He intended to devote more attention to Latin America and so, on taking office, he created a study group to develop policies headed by the historian Arthur Schlesinger, who summarized its conclusions for the incoming president.
As Schlesinger explained, threatening in an independent Cuba was “the Castro idea of taking matters into one’s own hands”. It was an idea that unfortunately appealed to the mass of the population in Latin America where “the distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favors the propertied classes, and the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent living”. Again, Washington’s usual dilemma.
As the CIA explained, “The extensive influence of ‘Castroism’ is not a function of Cuban power… Castro’s shadow looms large because social and economic conditions throughout Latin America invite opposition to ruling authority and encourage agitation for radical change”, for which his Cuba provides a model. Kennedy feared that Russian aid might make Cuba a “showcase” for development, giving the Soviets the upper hand throughout Latin America.
The State Department Policy Planning Council warned that “the primary danger we face in Castro is… in the impact the very existence of his regime has upon the leftist movement in many Latin American countries… The simple fact is that Castro represents a successful defiance of the US, a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half” – that is, since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, when the US declared its intention of dominating the hemisphere.
The immediate goal at the time was to conquer Cuba, but that could not be achieved because of the power of the British enemy. Still, that grand strategist John Quincy Adams, the intellectual father of the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny, informed his colleagues that over time Cuba would fall into our hands by “the laws of political gravitation”, as an apple falls from the tree. In brief, US power would increase and Britain’s would decline.
In 1898, Adams’s prognosis was realized. The US invaded Cuba in the guise of liberating it. In fact, it prevented the island’s liberation from Spain and turned it into a “virtual colony” to quote historians Ernest May and Philip Zelikow. Cuba remained so until January 1959, when it gained independence. Since that time it has been subjected to major US terrorist wars, primarily during the Kennedy years, and economic strangulation. Not because of the Russians.
The pretense all along was that we were defending ourselves from the Russian threat – an absurd explanation that generally went unchallenged. A simple test of the thesis is what happened when any conceivable Russian threat disappeared. US policy toward Cuba became even harsher, spearheaded by liberal Democrats, including Bill Clinton, who outflanked Bush from the right in the 1992 election. On the face of it, these events should have considerable bearing on the validity of the doctrinal framework for discussion of foreign policy and the factors that drive it. Once again, however, the impact was slight.
The virus of nationalism
To borrow Henry Kissinger’s terminology, independent nationalism is a “virus” that might “spread contagion”. Kissinger was referring to Salvador Allende’s Chile. The virus was the idea that there might be a parliamentary path towards some kind of socialist democracy. The way to deal with such a threat is to destroy the virus and to inoculate those who might be infected, typically by imposing murderous national security states. That was achieved in the case of Chile, but it is important to recognize that the thinking holds worldwide.
It was, for example, the reasoning behind the decision to oppose Vietnamese nationalism in the early 1950s and support France’s effort to reconquer its former colony. It was feared that independent Vietnamese nationalism might be a virus that would spread contagion to the surrounding regions, including resource-rich Indonesia. That might even have led Japan – called the “superdomino” by Asia scholar John Dower – to become the industrial and commercial center of an independent new order of the kind imperial Japan had so recently fought to establish. That, in turn, would have meant that the US had lost the Pacific war, not an option to be considered in 1950. The remedy was clear – and
largely achieved. Vietnam was virtually destroyed and ringed by military dictatorships that kept the “virus” from spreading contagion.
In retrospect, Kennedy-Johnson National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy reflected that Washington should have ended the Vietnam War in 1965, when the Suharto dictatorship was installed in Indonesia, with enormous massacres that the CIA compared to the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. These were, however, greeted with unconstrained euphoria in the US and the West generally because the “staggering bloodbath”, as the press cheerfully described it, ended any threat of contagion and opened Indonesia’s rich resources to western exploitation. After that, the war to destroy Vietnam was superfluous, as Bundy recognized in retrospect.
The same was true in Latin America in the same years: one virus after another was viciously attacked and either destroyed or weakened to the point of bare survival. From the early 1960s, a plague of repression was imposed on the continent that had no precedent in the violent history of the hemisphere, extending to Central America in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, a matter that there should be no need to review.
Much the same was true in the Middle East. The unique US relations with Israel were established in their current form in 1967, when Israel delivered a smashing blow to Egypt, the center of secular Arab nationalism. By doing so, it protected US ally Saudi Arabia, then engaged in military conflict with Egypt in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, of course, is the most extreme radical fundamentalist Islamic state, and also a missionary state, expending huge sums to establish its Wahhabi-Salafi doctrines beyond its borders. It is worth remembering that the US, like England before it, has tended to support radical fundamentalist Islam in opposition to secular nationalism, which has usually been perceived as posing more of a threat of independence and contagion.
The value of secrecy
There is much more to say, but the historical record demonstrates very clearly that the standard doctrine has little merit. Security in the normal sense is not a prominent factor in policy formation.
To repeat, in the normal sense. But in evaluating the standard doctrine we have to ask what is actually meant by “security”: security for whom?
One answer is: security for state power. There are many illustrations. Take a current one. In May, the US agreed to support a UN Security Council resolution calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes in Syria, but with a proviso: there could be no inquiry into possible war crimes by Israel. Or by Washington, though it was really unnecessary to add that last condition. The US is uniquely self-immunized from the international legal system. In fact, there is even congressional legislation authorizing the president to use armed force to “rescue” any American brought to the Hague for trial – the “Netherlands Invasion Act”, as it is sometimes called in Europe. That once again illustrates the importance of protecting the security of state power.
But protecting it from whom? There is, in fact, a strong case to be made that a prime concern of government is the security of state power from the population. As those who have spent time rummaging through archives should be aware, government secrecy is rarely motivated by a genuine need for security, but it definitely does serve to keep the population in the dark. And for good reasons, which were lucidly explained by the prominent liberal scholar and government adviser Samuel Huntington, the professor of the science of government at Harvard University. In his words: “The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate”.
He wrote that in 1981, when the Cold War was again heating up, and he explained further that “you may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what the United States has been doing ever since the Truman Doctrine”.
These simple truths are rarely acknowledged, but they provide insight into state power and policy, with reverberations to the present moment.
State power has to be protected from its domestic enemy; in sharp contrast, the population is not secure from state power. A striking current illustration is the radical attack on the Constitution by the Obama administration’s massive surveillance program. It is, of course, justified by “national security”. That is routine for virtually all actions of all states and so carries little information.
When the NSA’s surveillance program was exposed by Edward Snowden’s revelations, high officials claimed that it had prevented 54 terrorist acts. On inquiry, that was whittled down to a dozen. A high-level government panel then discovered that there was actually only one case: someone had sent $8,500 to Somalia. That was the total yield of the huge assault on the Constitution and, of course, on others throughout the world.
Britain’s attitude is interesting. In 2007, the British government called on Washington’s colossal spy agency “to analyze and retain any British citizens’ mobile phone and fax numbers, emails, and IP addresses swept up by its dragnet”, the Guardian reported. That is a useful indication of the relative significance, in government eyes, of the privacy of its own citizens and of Washington’s demands.
Another concern is security for private power. One current illustration is the huge trade agreements now being negotiated, the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic pacts. These are being negotiated in secret – but not completely in secret. They are not secret from the hundreds of corporate lawyers who are drawing up the detailed provisions. It is not hard to guess what the results will be, and the few leaks about them suggest that the expectations are accurate. Like NAFTA and other such pacts, these are not free trade agreements. In fact, they are not even trade agreements, but primarily investor rights agreements.
Again, secrecy is critically important to protect the primary domestic constituency of the governments involved, the corporate sector.
The final century of human civilization?
There are other examples too numerous to mention, facts that are well-established and would be taught in elementary schools in free societies.
There is, in other words, ample evidence that securing state power from the domestic population and securing concentrated private power are driving forces in policy formation. Of course, it is not quite that simple. There are interesting cases, some quite current, where these commitments conflict, but consider this a good first approximation and radically opposed to the received standard doctrine.
Let us turn to another question: What about the security of the population? It is easy to demonstrate that this is a marginal concern of policy planners. Take two prominent current examples, global warming and nuclear weapons. As any literate person is doubtless aware, these are dire threats to the security of the population. Turning to state policy, we find that it is committed to accelerating each of those threats – in the interests of the primary concerns, protection of state power and of the concentrated private power that largely determines state policy.
Consider global warming. There is now much exuberance in the United States about “100 years of energy independence” as we become “the Saudi Arabia of the next century” – perhaps the final century of human civilization if current policies persist.
That illustrates very clearly the nature of the concern for security, certainly not for the population. It also illustrates the moral calculus of contemporary Anglo-American state capitalism: the fate of our grandchildren counts as nothing when compared with the imperative of higher profits tomorrow.
These conclusions are fortified by a closer look at the propaganda system. There is a huge public relations campaign in the US, organized quite openly by Big Energy and the business world, to try to convince the public that global warming is either unreal or not a result of human activity. And it has had some impact. The US ranks lower than other countries in public concern about global warming and the results are stratified: among Republicans, the party more fully dedicated to the interests of wealth and corporate power, it ranks far lower than the global norm.
The current issue of the premier journal of media criticism, the Columbia Journalism Review, has an interesting article on this subject, attributing this outcome to the media doctrine of “fair and balanced”. In other words, if a journal publishes an opinion piece reflecting the conclusions of 97% of scientists, it must also run a counter-piece expressing the viewpoint of the energy corporations.
That indeed is what happens, but there certainly is no “fair and balanced” doctrine. Thus, if a journal runs an opinion piece denouncing Russian President Vladimir Putin for the criminal act of taking over the Crimea, it surely does not have to run a piece pointing out that, while the act is indeed criminal, Russia has a far stronger case today than the US did more than a century ago in taking over southeastern Cuba, including the country’s major port – and rejecting the Cuban demand since independence to have it returned. And the same is true of many other cases. The actual media doctrine is “fair and balanced” when the concerns of concentrated private power are involved, but surely not elsewhere.
On the issue of nuclear weapons, the record is similarly interesting – and frightening. It reveals very clearly that, from the earliest days, the security of the population was a non-issue, and remains so. There is no time here to run through the shocking record, but there is little doubt that it strongly supports the lament of General Lee Butler, the last commander of the Strategic Air Command, which was armed with nuclear weapons. In his words, we have so far survived the nuclear age “by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion”. And we can hardly count on continued divine intervention as policymakers play roulette with the fate of the species in pursuit of the driving factors in policy formation.
As we are all surely aware, we now face the most ominous decisions in human history. There are many problems that must be addressed, but two are overwhelming in their significance: environmental destruction and nuclear war. For the first time in history, we face the possibility of destroying the prospects for decent existence – and not in the distant future. For this reason alone, it is imperative to sweep away the ideological clouds and face honestly and realistically the question of how policy decisions are made, and what we can do to alter them before it is too late.
I KNOW IT IS A LENGTHY ARTICLE BUT IT HAD TO BE IN ORDER TO SHOW THE INTRICACIES THAT HAVE LED TO THE US ACTING OUT OF ITS JURISDICTION.
July 4th, 2014 at 9:46 am
As an American Sri Lankan I do find this particular sentence questionable: “Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it.”
Actually that is not factual. the US society seems open but it is not. It is determined by the powerful media who tailor cuts information according to government policy. Only the internet has freed me to explore other avenues of news. If not for the internet I would not have access to the Lankaweb and all its wonderful articles nor to Asia Times, the Drudge Report to India Times and the Sri Lankan newspapers. I would not be able to independently and quickly find news of my choosing..if I relied on the US media or Hollywood. They paint a picture so rosy and wonderful that it effectively numbs the minds of those Americans who choose not to look further than those outlets.
July 4th, 2014 at 12:28 pm
Bravo … Gotabhaya! You tel them how to DO UNTO as DONE UNTO!
INDEED it is “nothing but a ruse to turn people against the government!”
Sison wants a FREE HAND to undermine Sri Lanka under various pretexts with a Dollar here and a Dollar there channeled to NGOs bought lock, stock and barrel with American peanuts.
No way, Jose’! Michelle, my belle … you are not dealing with Native Americans! No land here to be bought with blankets and beads!
Apita epa eka angalakwath,
Anunungey dey mey maha polowey!
Nodemu api eka angalakwath
Anununta mey apey mau polowey!
……………………………
Gota, Sison cross swords: Controversial US funded voter education project
by Shamindra Ferdinando
Island.lk
July 4, 2014, 7:08 am
Defence and Urban Development Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has directed that senior military officers as well as heads of those institutions coming under him meet US ambassador Michele J. Sison or her representatives only in his presence.
The decision was taken consequent to Ambassador Sison refusing to allow the head of the USAID in Colombo to meet Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa unless she, too, was invited to the same meeting.
The US embassy has told the Defence Ministry that as the USAID is under the purview of the Colombo mission and its head can meet Mr. Rajapaksa only in the presence of the ambassador.
Defence Secretary Rajapaksa told The Island last night that he wanted to discuss with USAID head an alleged move to influence the local electorate through a voter education project called ‘Election Support through Voter Education (ESVE) programme. It was nothing but a ruse to turn people against the government, he said. Calling the US project ‘Operation Regime Change’, the Defence Secretary said that political parties should take up this issue.
The government would like to know whether the USAID was still going ahead with the project which would further undermine bilateral relations, the Defence Secretary said.
The US made its move ahead of President Mahinda Rajapaksa seeking the views of members of his party as well as constituents whether they would prefer presidential or parliamentary polls first. Members were asked to fill up a questionnaire at a workshop at Beruwela attended by President Rajapaksa himself.
Responding to a query, an irate Defence Secretary said that he had sought a meeting with the USAID head as it had called for applications from NGOs to carry out the project. Had the embassy called for applications for the same purpose, he would have definitely discussed the issue with ambassador Sison, Defence Secretary Rajapaksa said.
Perhaps, Ambassador Sison had realized that it was a mistake to authorize what he called a political exercise aimed at undermining the government of the host country, the Defence and Urban Development Ministry Secretary said. The government had a right to know the basis on which the US had decided to launch a political project and the amount of funds made available to NGOs, he said. All those receiving funds for the implementation of that particular project would be investigated, he stressed.
Asked whether the US had funded or intended to fund NGO projects meant to educate voters in other countries and consulted the Ministry of External Affairs before the launch of the project, a US embassy spokesperson told The Island: “The embassy has no comment.”
Defence Secretary Rajapaksa said that the US embassy had access to the Northern and Eastern Provinces as well as terrorist detention facilities in accordance with overall government policy. The government also welcomed visits by diplomatic representatives of other countries as well and military commanders briefed them the Defence Secretary said. But from now on there would be restrictions on meetings, he said, adding that he intended to request other ministries to do as the US envoy had done.
July 4th, 2014 at 12:31 pm
It looks Mahinda Rajapakse is the only suitable candidate for the president post. The reason is so much pressure from the western govts as well as from special interest groups. All targeted on Sinhala – buddhists.
I think what US embassy trying to do is a good lesson. Interested groups in Sri Lanka with the help of the govt should educate voters about the problems and onslaught the sinhala -buddhist society facing and what sinhala people facing areetc.,
Even some muslim sects, some tamils as well christians lived in peace with Sinhala buddhists. Those things should be explained to voters. Evangelical church is said to be a cult and it is equal to a certain faction of Islam.
What ever it is, finally if the sinhala buddhist vote is 65%, still that is alone is enough to form a govt.
buddhist – Sangha should continue reaching to people of other religions and try to be generous with them. always remember what buddha did in Hindu – Mahabharatha.
On the other hand, govt should make the NGO work very difficult for them. Scrutinize them as much as the govt can.
July 4th, 2014 at 12:44 pm
EXTRADITE these terrorists to Sri Lanka and put them to work breaking rocks for infrastructure development in prison … for the rest of their miserable lives!
Make them wear Black & White striped suits as prison convicts; not Tiger Stripes I am afraid … but, it is the best we can do!
……………………..
Malaysia arrest four LTTE operatives suspected of terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
July 04, Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Police have arrested four suspected Tamil Tigers alleged of trying to revive Sri Lanka’s defeated terrorist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam using Malaysia as a base.
The four suspects are believed to be of senior leaders in the terrorist organization now defunct in Sri Lanka but active overseas and trying to make a comeback.
The men, arrested by the Malaysian Police yesterday in a series of anti-terrorism operations in Klang Valley, are suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka, Reuters reported.
One of the suspects was wanted for his involvement in the assassination attempt on the then Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga 1999, the Malaysian police said.
The four are being detained by the Special Branch’s Counter-Terrorism Division (SB-CTD).
Police Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar told Reuters that the suspects “were planning to reactivate the group by making Malaysia as their base of operations”. Some activists, he said, had exploited their status as refugees to pursue illegal activities.
According to the Malaysian police one of the suspects was an explosives expert, and another is alleged of facilitating planned attacks on Sri Lankan consulates in India. The fourth man is accused of gathering intelligence for the group.
The police confiscated counterfeit passports of multiple nations, counterfeit rubber stamps of the Immigration Department and foreign embassies and other documents, Khalid said.
“Police believed that one of three other suspects, who holds a United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) identity card, is a LTTE bomb expert,” Khalid was quoted as saying.
“Another suspect was identified as an accomplice to another suspect, whom SB-CTD arrested on May 14 for involvement in a plan to attack foreign consulates in Chennai and Bangalore,” he said in a statement.
“The man was also involved in forging travel documents and student passes, and in human trafficking activities,” Khalid said.
The arrest comes after Malaysia’s Counter Terrorism Division of the police’s Special Branch on May 15 arrested three suspected LTTE operatives and deported them to Sri Lanka.
Following the arrest in May the Bukit Aman Special Branch Counter Terrorism Division of Malaysian police hunted down more suspected members of LTTE who are believed to be hiding in the country.
Sri Lanka militarily defeated the LTTE terrorist organization responsible for killing thousands of civilians in May 2009 but the overseas network of the LTTE remained active.
Sri Lanka recently started to crack down on the former LTTE cadres attempting to revive the LTTE in the island.
July 4th, 2014 at 1:08 pm
Great! Diversify our markets NOW to cope with even TOUGHER TIMES AHEAD.
When Billary Clinton, who bungled US Foreign Policy with her “Arab Spring” fiasco leaving US interests in tatters everywhere, is elected by the ever adoring Democrats to the US Presidency, we will need those new markets!
Let me echo that immortal refrain … again
Apita epa eka angalakwath,
Anunungey dey mey maha polowey!
Nodemu api eka angalakwath,
Anununta mey apey mau polowey!
……………………
SL’s foreign policy being geared to ensure maximum benefit for country – GL
DailyNews.lk
July 4, 2014
Sri Lanka’s foreign policy is being geared to ensure maximum benefits for the country by building relationships with extensive areas of the globe which have been neglected, and economic diplomacy is fast emerging as the major component of the nation’s foreign relations, External Affairs Minister Professor G.L. Peiris said in Colombo yesterday.
He was delivering the keynote address, as Chief Guest, at the inauguration of the international conference on “Sri Lanka in World Affairs” organised by the Department of International Relations of the University of Colombo at the University’s Senate Hall.
The Chairperson of the University Grants Commission, the Vice – Chancellor of the University of Colombo, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and the Head of the Department of International Relations made presentations at the inauguration ceremony.
Minister Peiris said that foreign policy has to be seen as an instrument for advancing the country’s core national interests.
He referred to President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s initiative in strengthening South-South co-operation, especially in his role as Chair-in-Office of the Commonwealth, and the new focus on Sri Lanka’s relations with the African continent.
He said that action has been taken already to establish diplomatic relations with more than 20 African countries, and that resident Missions have been set up in Nigeria and Uganda, as focal points of activity in West and East Africa, respectively. Increased airline connectivity has resulted in a significant expansion of tourism as well as business activity, he pointed out. The value of Sri Lanka’s exports have reached their highest threshold today, the minister said.
Prof. Peiris said that President Rajapaksa’s participation in the Group of 77 + China Summit held two weeks ago in Bolivia, had provided a unique opportunity for Sri Lanka to cultivate closer relations with Latin American countries.
“Our major markets for spices, especially cinnamon, are in the Latin American region,” he said.
Sri Lanka played a major role in the meeting of Foreign Ministers of countries in the Non-Aligned Movement, held in Algiers, during the week preceding the Bolivia Summit, he continued.
The minister make reference to Sri Lanka’s role with regard to such matters as the Post – 2015 Sustainable Development Goals and the economy of Island States – issues which will be taken up during the sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in September.
Among the themes discussed at the conference were Sri Lanka – India relations, regional integration, the Indian Ocean, politics of the Sri Lankan diaspora and post-war reconciliation. Leading scholars from Sri Lanka and overseas, including academics from Japan, Sweden and the United States participated.
July 4th, 2014 at 2:39 pm
Ban USAID or place restrictions.
This USAID curse ONLY helps Tamils. Why ALL US ambassadors to SL for the past 10 years have been bloody bastards?
If they play dirty, govt. should also play dirty. Get some group to carry out bomb attacks in Jaffna polling stations EARLY on the election day saying Tamils should NOT vote for Chingalam politicians. Then NO ONE in the north will vote. We can see how the Americunts weeping.
Give them their own medicine and watch how they howl.
July 4th, 2014 at 4:03 pm
“The Shylocks want their pound of flesh or the kilogram of flesh of Rajapaksas, in the metric world of the French not known to Shakespeare, and the government should be firm in its dealings with the Western countries as in the days of humanitarian operations.”
This summarises all. The west want MR’s head by any means.
Remove MR and give them one worse than MR with a stronger backbone !
July 5th, 2014 at 5:07 am
Al Assad is a DAMN FOOL.
He shipped out all chemical weapons like a total fool trusting USA and Russia.
Now Sunni terrorists (the MOST barbaric version) have captured many Syrian towns and ALL the oil fields!!
This is EXACTLY what happened to foolish Kadafi.
This is what happens to PUssy-fooTINg too. Now Ukraine army has DEFEATED the Russians in their MAIN city!! Shame on Russia for letting them down.
The same will happened to MR and SL for pulling the army out of the north.
This would belongs to those who dare to be bold. Not to cowards. EVERYONE scrws a coward.
July 5th, 2014 at 6:03 am
A little while ago BBC world service showing the transfer of “Sri Lankan Tamils” from their boats to other boats in mid sea. In the background is a big ship. The people being transferred do not look like Tamils at all; they look like Pakistanis or Iranians. On the basis of that picture a lawyer somewhere in Australia was castigating both Aus Gov. and GOSL. Is this going to be like Chanel 4 story where SL army shooting ‘white’ Tamils?.
July 5th, 2014 at 8:54 am
Nalin is right. Muslim fundamentalism is clearly taking root in Sri Lanka. It is clear that since the end of the war, Thowheed fundamentalists have been using the space made available by the ongoing peace and political stability in the country to extend their foothold. What more proof than The Sunday Times report on August 16, 2009 says a number of Muslim home guards had deserted their unit with weapons to join Tawheed for a “Jihad” against traditional Muslims.
And the extent that Muslim fundamentalism has spread to Beruwala Aluthgama area can be accessed from the taped sermon that Wahhabi Thowheed had delivered the day after the annual kandhoori (feast) at 150 year old Buhkary Thakiyya of traditional Quadri Sufis on 23rd 2009. The loud-speaker amplified taped sermon by the Thowheed had compared traditional Buhari Thakiyya to a Buddhist Temple, the Kandhoori to a Dansal and the arches erected at the entrance to the mosque to a Vesak Pandal for everyone in the village of Mahagoda to hear. Clearly, Wahhabi Thowheeds had degraded both Sufis and Buddhists equally. Ideological arguments followed between Thowheeds and Sufis after the sermon had ended up killing two and maiming forty.
On a separate incident, secretary to Sri Lanka Thowheed Jamath, Abdul Razik had deliberately made an unprovoked derogatory remarks on Buddha on 13th April 2013. He said Buddha had eaten human flesh and ‘triple gem’ means just stones at a meeting in Maligawatta. Razik didn’t care the fact that over 70% of this country are Buddhists and the constitution compel the government to protect and foster Buddhism. Yet Razik got away with a mere apology at court. If such a statement was made by a Buddhist or a Christian in Pakistan, against Muhammad, he would have lost his head.
The president of a traditional Muslim organisation ACTM, Mr. MCA Hameed says, “we do not believe in propagating Islam with a sword or a gun. That’s against Islam and we have been a peaceful community of Muslims” but “we are now helpless in the wake of the Thawheed-backed Jihadi groups.” This is the crux of the matter.
Two weeks before Aluthgama riots, it is said that a decapitated head and the 4 hooves of an Ox was left in front of Pathirajagoda temple. A complaint had been made to Aluthgama Police. They removed the trash but hadn’t apprehend the offenders. It is in this context that Ven. Gnanasaras speech at Aluthgama has been made. Muslims can accuse it as a hate speech but for Buddhists it inspired or confidence.
Sri Lanka Muslims must learn Sri Lanka history, embrace traditional Islam and shun Thawheed style. They must reject Wahhabi, Salafi, Deobandi, and Mawdudist confrontational instructions. Otherwise, Muslims will have to face the wrath of the majority. Inevitably, that’ll lead majority to boycott their businesses. I have noticed, ‘No Limit’ already has less business than usual in Maharagama.
July 5th, 2014 at 11:32 am
THE BEST ANSWER TO THE WEST IS TO SHOW THEM THAT MAHINDA IS BACKED BY ATLEAST 65% SINHALA BUDDHISTS. HE SHOULD BE ANOTHER”” modi”” BUT NOT”’ MODA”’ SO PLEASE MAHINDA EXPLAIN ALL THIS TO SINHALA BUDDHISTS AND TRUST THEM AND ASK THEM TO VOTE FOR U TO SAVE SINHALE . THERE SHOULD BE A MASSIVE CAMPAIGN. ALL MAHANAYAKAS SHOULD COME FORWARD . OTHERWISE NEVER COME TO US ONLY FOR DANA. SOMEBODY SHOULD TRY HARD TO SAVE VEN. MADULUVAWE SOBHITHA FROM RAVI K AND OTHER NON BUDDHISTS. THIS MONK IS TRYING TO BETRAY THE COUNTRY FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASONS … BRIBES OR SOME THING….. CHARACTOR VISE…… WHO KNOWS……. IT IS CLEAR THAT SOMETHHING IS GOING ON AND SOMEBODY IS USING HIM.
SAME THING MIGHT HAPPEN TO OTHER MONKS TOO….. IF THERE IS SOMETHING WHICH BOTHERS THIS THERO
GOTABHAYA CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM ..NOT THAT THERO IS A BIG THREAT TO MAHINDA BUT HE SHOULD BE WITH US
THANKS NALIN U ALWAYS WRITE CLEARLY AND CORRECTLY. – AFTER 1818 AND1848 THIS YEAR THERE WILL BE ANOTHER “””VIMUKTHI SATANA””””” AGAINST BRITISH. IF WE LOSE THAT WILL BE VERY VERY DANGEROUS.
LONG LIVE SINHALE
July 8th, 2014 at 4:26 pm
Here is an article that appeared in the Times of India (7/8/14)
BRITISH PARLIAMENT HIT BY MASSIVE SEX SCANDAL
LONDON: In what could be the biggest sexual scandal to hit Westminster, 20 “establishment figures” which includes at least 10 “famous” current and former politicians may soon face investigations over allegations of historic child abuse.
The prominent public figures are believed to have been part of an elite pedophile ring as they have been identified “again and again” by callers to child abuse helplines.
Dr Jon Bird of the National Association for People Abused In Childhood (Napac) admitted on Wednesday that “it looks looked like the 10 politicians will at last face up to the accusations. The names of people in very high places, politicians, senior police officers and even some judges, have been going around as alleged abusers for a very long time”.
Peter McKelvie who successfully convicted paedophile Peter Righton said there was a “powerful elite of paedophiles who carried out the worst form of abuse”.
Britain’s home minister Theresa May meanwhile has announced an independent inquiry to look into how the state and other institutions have handled accusations of abuse over the past four decades.
May told the parliament “that in the 1980s the Home Office failed to act on allegations of child sex abuse. Public bodies and other important institutions have also failed to take seriously their duty of care towards children. We will do everything we can to allow the full investigation of child abuse and the prosecution of its perpetrators and we will do nothing to jeopardise those aims. We will make sure that wherever individuals and institutions have failed to protect children from harm, we will expose these failures and learn the lessons”.
May admitted that in recent times, Britain has seen appalling cases of organised and persistent child sex abuse. This includes abuse by celebrities like Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris, as well as the systematic abuse of vulnerable girls in Derby, Rochdale and Oxford.
May added “Some of these cases have exposed a failure by public bodies to take their duty of care seriously and some have shown that the organisations responsible for protecting children from abuse – including the police, social services and schools – have failed to work together properly”.
May on Tuesday appointed Peter Wanless – the chief executive of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to lead a review about how the police and prosecutors handled any related information that was handed to them.
May also told the House that “the government will establish an independent inquiry panel of experts in the law and child protection to consider whether public bodies – and other non-state institutions – have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse”.