සිවිල් ආරක්‍ෂක බලකායේ සාමාජිකයන්ට රජයෙන් අත්වැලක්

August 17th, 2024

Ministry of Defence  – Media Centre

ආරක්‍ෂක අමාත්‍යංශය යටතේ ක්‍රියාත්මක වන සිවිල් ආරක්‍ෂක බලකාය පසුගිය තිස් වසරක කුරිරු යුද්ධය අවසන් කිරීමට සුවිශේෂී දායකත්වයක් දැක්වූ වර්තමානයේ මෙරට ක්‍රියාත්මක කෙරෙන සංවර්ධන ව්‍යාපෘති සහ සමාජයේ යහ පැවැත්ම උදෙසා අතිශය වැදගත් කාර්‍යභාරයක් සිදු කරනු ලබයි.

ඒ පිළිබඳ සැලකිල්ලට ගනිමින් සිවිල් ආරක්‍ෂක බලකායට අයත් සාමාජිකයන්ගේ සුභසාධනය වෙනුවෙන් රජය විසින් ක්‍රියාත්මක කෙරෙන වැඩසටහන් මාලාවේ තවත් සුවිසල් ඉදිරි පියවරක් සනිටුහන් කරමින් නිවසක් නොමැති සාමාජිකයන් හට නිවසක් ඉදිකර ගැනිමටත්, පවතින නිවාසවල අලුත්වැඩියා කටයුතු සිදුකර ගැනීමටත්, අවශ්‍ය කරන ශ්‍රම දායකත්වය සිවිල් ආරක්‍ෂක බලකාය වෙතින් ලබා දීමට රජය තීන්දු කොට ඇත. මෙහිදී පලමු අධියර යටතේ සාමාජිකයන් 100 දෙනෙකු සඳහා මෙම වැඩපිලිවෙල යටතේ සහන සැලසෙනු ඇති බව ආරක්‍ෂක රාජ්‍ය අමාත්‍යවරයා ප්‍රකාශ කලේය.

තවද, වසර ගණනාවක සිට සිවිල් ආරක්‍ෂක බලකා සාමාජිකයන් විසින් සිදු කල ඉල්ලීමකට ප්‍රතිචාර වශයෙන් ඔවුන් සදහා දැනට රු. 350ක් ලෙස ලැබෙන දෛනික සලාක දිමනාව රු. 500ක් දක්වා ඉහල නැංවීමට රජය තීන්දු කොට ඇත. රටේ පවතින ආර්ථික තත්වය හමුවේ ඔවුනට ලැබෙන දෛනික සලාක දීමනාව ප්‍රමාණවත් නොමැති බව සලකා බැලීමෙන් අනතුරුව මෙම සලාක දීමනා අගය වැඩිකිරීමට රජය තිරණය කර ඇති අතර, එමගින් යම් මට්ටමකට ඔවුන්ගේ ජිවන තත්වය ස්ථායි කර ගැනිමට පිටුවහලක් වනු ඇති බවද රාජ්‍ය අමාත්‍ය තෙන්නකෝන් මෙහිදී තවදුරටත් ප්‍රකාශ කලේය.

NASA cannot ensure the safe return of astronauts from the ISS

August 17th, 2024

Lyubov Stepushova Courtesy Pravda

Russia can return stranded astronauts from the ISS, but a political solution is needed

NASA has postponed until the end of August a decision on when and how to return home two astronauts who are stuck on the ISS. The only safe option is on the Soyuz.Russia can return stranded astronauts from the ISS, but a political solution is needed

Photo: flickr.com by NASA Robert Markowitz is licensed under In the public domain in the United States

Boeing’s shame – Starliner engines failed to dock with the ISS

The problem arose with the Boeing Starliner carrier spacecraft, on which astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suny Williams launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in early June. Their expedition was supposed to be completed in a week, but has been going on for more than two months.

According to NBC news. com, this was the first flight of the Starliner, and if it had been successful, then the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would have been able to certify Boeing to perform regular flights to the ISS.

But five Starliner engines failed during docking. There was also a helium leak from the propulsion system during the flight – a problem that NASA was aware of, but Boeing did not finalize.

On top of that, a moratorium was imposed on astronauts on spacewalks – their spacesuits failed. According to reports, they live in conditions that are far from ideal: they lack places to sleep, they experience increasing psychological stress and health risks.

NASA is considering two options for rescuing astronauts

Two options for returning are considered:

  1. Solve problems with Starliner. NASA said that together with Boeing engineers, they disassembled and are testing the ship’s engine, similar to those in orbit. They are also trying to deal with the helium leak. For this, the laboratory also dismantled the service module. However, there is a risk – faulty Starliner engines can lead to a loss of control of the spacecraft immediately after undocking from the ISS, which can end in an accident.
  2. Use the Dragon spacecraft of rival Boeing company SpaceX, which is supposed to deliver new astronauts to the orbital station in September as part of the Crew-9 project. NASA said it could send two astronauts instead of the planned four, and land Wilmore and Williams on the empty two seats on the way back at the end of the Crew-9 expedition in February.

According to NASA, in this case, the Starliner will return to Earth without a crew. The main problem in this case is to ensure the life process of the astronauts and the equipment of the spacecraft.

The launch of the Dragon carrier to the ISS is scheduled for August 18, but there is no certainty that the launch will take place, since there are also technical problems.

The third option for saving the astronauts is to ask Russia

There is also a third option – to ask Russia to pick up the astronauts on the Soyuz. The head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, during a speech at the Terra Scientia forum, said that space should be out of politics, so the Russian side is careful about maintaining interaction within the framework of the international ISS project.

“Today, American colleagues have problems with the Starliner, they do not know how to lower the crew. We are in constant dialogue with them,” Borisov said.

However, a political solution is needed in Washington. The National Space Council is headed by Vice President and now US presidential candidate Kamala Harris. She fears negative press coverage of the space disaster, so the decision will be postponed until after the election in November.

“The return of Williams and Wilmore aboard the malfunctioning Starliner would be too risky for her presidential prospects,” the New York Post believes.

In 2014, Boeing and SpaceX were awarded multibillion-dollar contracts to provide the U.S. space agency with flights to the ISS after the end of the space shuttle program in 2011. But so far they have not created a reliable carrier ship. The problems, as we can see, are with the engines. As a result, the United States had to rely on Russian Soyuz rockets for a long time to deliver crews. Now Dragon flies with a high degree of risk.

Related story: NASA Explained SpaceX’s Choice to Drop the ISS into the Ocean

NASA wants to abandon the use of Russian Progress transport spacecraft for cargo delivery

A decision was made on the controlled descent of the ISS from its orbit to Earth
Читайте больше на https://www.pravda.ru/science/2083974-nasa-starliner/

Capitalism, Mass Anger, and the 2024 Elections

August 15th, 2024

by Richard D. Wolff Courtesy counterpunch

In the wake of his huge defeat on June 30, 2024, when 80 percent of voters rejected French centrist” President Emmanuel Macron, he said he understood the French people’s anger. In the UK, Conservative loser Rishi Sunak said the same about the British people’s anger, as Labor leader Starmer now says as the anger explodes. Of course, such phrases from such politicians usually mean little or nothing and accomplish less. Such leaders and their parties just keep calculating how best to regain power when they lose it. In that, they are like the U.S. Democrats after Biden’s performance in his debate with Trump and like the U.S. Republicans after Trump’s loss in 2020. In both parties, a small group of top leaders and top donors made all the key decisions and then organized the political theater to ratify those decisions. Even surprises like Harris replacing Biden are temporary departures from resuming politics as usual.

However, unlike Trump, the others missed opportunities to identify with an already organized mass base of angry people. Trump stumbled into that identification by saying loudly and crudely what traditional politicians treated as publicly unspeakable about immigrants, women, NATO, and traditional political taboos. That set the tone for Trump then doubling down by insisting he had won the 2020 election but had been cheated out of it. The mass anger of populations feeling victimized in their workaday lives found a spokesperson loudly claiming parallel victimizations. Trump and base grasped that together they might victimize their victimizers.

Whether or not they can politically exploit voters’ anger, no mainstream leader in the collective West, including Trump, seems actually to understand” it. They mostly see only as far as what they can plausibly blame on their opponents in the next election. Biden blamed Trump for a bad” economy in 2020, while Trump reversed the same blame over the last year and will shortly adjust to blaming Harris. Presidential opponents blame the other for the immigration crisis,” for inadequately protecting U.S. industry from Chinese competition, government budget deficits, and job exports.

No mainstream leader understands” (or dares to hint or suggest) that mass anger these days might be something more and different from any collection of specific complaints and demands (about guns, abortion, taxes, and wars). Even the demagogues who like to speak about culture wars” dare not ask why such wars” are hot now. Angry Make America Great Again” (MAGA) folks are notably vague and poorly informed as their critics enjoy exposing. Rarely do those critics offer persuasive alternative explanations for MAGA anger (explanations that are neither vague nor poorly informed).

In particular, we ask, might the anger that the MAGA movement enrolls express a genuine mass suffering that has not yet understood its cause? Might that cause be nothing less than the decline of Western capitalism and all it represents? If ideological taboos and blinders preclude admitting it, might that decline’s results—anxiety, despair, and anger—focus instead on suitable scapegoats? Are Trump and Biden, Macron and Sunak, and so many others competitively choosing scapegoats to mobilize an anger they misunderstand and dare not explore?

After all, Western capitalism is no longer the world’s colonial master. The American empire that succeeded the European empires has now followed them into decline. The next empire will be Chinese or else the era of empires will give way to genuine global multipolarity. Western capitalism is likewise no longer the world’s dynamic growth center as that has moved eastward. Western capitalism is clearly losing its former position as the self-confident, unified, ultimate power behind the World Bank, United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. dollar as world currency.

In terms of global economic footprints as measured by national GDPs, the United States and its major allies (G7) comprise a total, aggregated GDP now that is already significantly less than the comparable aggregated GDPs of China and its major allies (BRICS). The footprints of the two global economic power blocs were roughly equal in 2020. The difference between the two footprints has been widening ever since and continues to do so. China and its BRICS allies are increasingly the world economy’s richest bloc. Nothing prepared the populations of Western capitalism for this changed reality or its effects. Especially the sections of those populations already forced to absorb the costly burdens of Western capitalism’s decline feel betrayed, abandoned, and angry. Elections are merely one way for some of them to express those feelings.

Western capitalism’s rich, powerful, and small minority practices a combination of denial and adjustment to its decline. Prevailing politicians, mainstream media, and academics continue to orate, write, and act as if the collective West were still globally dominant. For them and their ways of thinking, their global dominance in the second half of the last century never ended. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza testify to that denial and exemplify the costly strategic mistakes it produces.

When not denying the new reality, significant portions of Western capitalism’s corporate rich and powerful are adjusting their preferred economic policies away from neoliberalism toward economic nationalism. The chief rationale for that adjustment is that it serves national security” because it may at least slow China’s aggressiveness.” Domestically, the rich and powerful in each country use their positions and resources to shift the costs of Western capitalism’s decline onto the mass of their middle-income and poorer fellow citizens. They worsen income and wealth inequalities, cut governmental social services, and harden police behaviors and prison conditions.

Denial facilitates the continued decline of Western capitalism. Too little is done too late against problems not yet admitted. Deteriorating social conditions flowing from that decline, especially for the middle income and the poor, provide opportunities for the usual right-wing demagogues. They proceed to blame the decline on immigrants, foreigners, excessive state power, the Democrats, China, secularism, abortion, and culture war enemies, hoping thereby to assemble a winning electoral constituency. Sadly, left-wing commentary focuses on refuting the right’s claims about its chosen scapegoats. While its refutations are often well-documented and effective in media combat against right-wing Republicans, the left too rarely invokes explicit, sustained arguments about mass anger’s links to declining capitalism. The left fails sufficiently to stress that government regulators, however well-intentioned, have been captured by and subordinated to specifically private capitalist profiteers.

The mass of people therefore became deeply skeptical about relying on the government to correct or offset the failings of private capitalism. People grasp, often just intuitively, that today’s problem is the merger of capitalists and government. Left and right increasingly feel betrayed by all the promises of center-left and center-right politicians. More or less government intervention has changed too little in the trajectory of modern capitalism. To growing numbers, politicians of the center-left and center-right seem equally docile servants of the capitalist-government merger that constitutes modern capitalism with all its failures and flaws. Thus today’s right succeeds if, when, and where it can portray itself as not centrist, its candidates explicitly anti-centrist. The left is weaker because too many of its programs seem still linked to the idea that government interventions will correct or offset capitalism’s shortcomings.

In short, mass anger is disconnected from declining capitalism in part because left, right and center deny, avoid, or neglect their link. Mass anger does not translate into or yet move to explicit anti-capitalist politics in part because too few organized political movements lead in that way.

Thus, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain’s new Labour Party government—its top financial officer—blithely announces, There is not a lot of money there.” She prepares the public—and preemptively excuses the new government—for how little the new government will even try to do. She goes further and defines her key goal as unlocking private investment.” Even the words she chooses mirror what the old Conservatives want to hear and would themselves say. In declining capitalisms, electoral changes can and often do serve to avoid or at least postpone real change.

Chancellor Reeves’s words assure major corporations and the 1 percent they enrich that Starmer’s Labour Party will not heavily tax them. This matters since it is precisely in major corporations and the rich that a lot of money” is located. The wealth of the top 1 percent could easily fund a genuinely democratic rebuilding of a seriously depleted post-2008 UK economy. In stark contrast, the typical Conservative programs prioritizing private investment are what got the UK to its present sad state. They were the problem; they are not the solution.

The Labour Party was once socialist. Socialism once meant a thoroughgoing critique of the capitalist system and advocacy of something totally different. Socialists sought electoral victories to win government power and use it to transition society to a post-capitalist order. But today’s Labour Party has thrown that history away. It wants to administer contemporary British capitalism just a bit less harshly than Conservatives do. It works to persuade the British working class that less harsh” is the best they can hope and vote for. And British Conservatives can indeed smile and condescendingly approve such a Labour Party or else quibble with it over how much harshness today’s capitalism needs.”

Macron, also once a socialist, plays a similar role in France.  Indeed, so do Biden and Trump in the United States, Justin Trudeau in Canada, and Olaf Scholz in Germany. All offer administrations of their contemporary capitalisms. None have programs aimed at solving modern capitalisms’ basic, accumulated, and persistently unsolved problems. Solutions would require first admitting what those problems are: cyclically recurring instability, increasingly unequal distributions of income and wealth, monied corruption of politics, mass media, and culture, and increasingly oppressive foreign policies that fail to offset a declining Western capitalism. Insistent denial across the collective West precludes admitting those problems, let alone fashioning solutions to them woven into programs for real change. Alternative governments administer; they dare not lead. Would a Kamala Harris-Tim Walz regime break with this pattern?

Their administrations will experiment with and perhaps oscillate between free-trade and protectionist policies—as past capitalist governments often did. In the United States, recent GOP and Democrat steps toward economic nationalism remain vote-seeking exceptions to still widespread commitments to neoliberal globalization. Western megacorporations, including many based in the United States, welcome China’s new role as the global champion of free trade (even as it retaliates moderately against tariffs and trade wars initiated by the collective West). Support remains strong for negotiations to shape generally acceptable global divisions of trade and investment flows. The latter are seen as profitable as well as a means to avoid dangerous wars. Elections will continue to include clashes between capitalism’s free-trade and protectionist tendencies.

But the more fundamental issue of 2024 elections is mass anger in the collective West aroused by its historic decline and the effects of that decline on the mass of average citizens. How will that anger shape the elections?

The more extreme right wing recognizes and rides the deeper anger without, of course, grasping its relationship to capitalism. Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, and Trump are all examples. They all mock and deride the center-left and center-right governments that merely administer what they depict as a sinking ship that needs new, different leadership. But their donor base (capitalist) and long-standing ideology (pro-capitalist) block them from going beyond extreme scapegoating (of immigrants, ethnic minorities, heterodox sexualities, and foreign demons).

The mainstream media likewise cannot grasp the relationship of mass anger to capitalism. Thus they dismiss the anger as irrational or caused by inadequate messaging” from mainstream influencers. For many months, mainstream economic pundits have bemoaned the strange” coexistence of a great economy” and polls showing mass disappointment at the bad” economy. By strange” they mean stupid” or ignorant” or politically-motivated/dishonest”: sets of words often condensed into populist.”

The left is jealous of the extreme right’s significant mass base now in working-class areas. In most countries, the left has spent the last many decades trying to hold on to its working-class base as the mainstream’s center-left movement pulled it away. That meant a greater or lesser shift from communist and anarchist to ever more moderate” socialist and democratic affiliations. That shift included downplaying the goal of a comprehensively different post-capitalism in favor of the immediate goal of a state-fostered softer, humane capitalism where wages and benefits were greater, taxes more progressive, cycles more regulated, and minorities less oppressed. For that left, what mass anger it could recognize flowed from failures to achieve such a state-fostered softer capitalism, not from Western capitalism’s decline.

As capitalism’s dynamic center moved to Asia and elsewhere in the global South, decline set in among its old, more-or-less abandoned centers. Old center capitalists participated in and profited greatly as the system relocated its dynamic center. Capitalists, both state and private, in the new centers profited even more. In the old centers, the rich and powerful shifted the burdens of decline onto the masses. In the new centers, the rich and powerful gathered the new capitalist wealth there mostly into their hands but with enough trickling down to satisfy large portions of their working classes. That’s how capitalism works and always has. For the mass of employees, however, the ride upwards when capitalism’s dynamic center is where they work and live is far more pleasant and hopeful than when decline sets in. The ride down provokes depression and traumas. When they fester without admission or discussion, they often morph into anger.

Richard Wolff is the author of Capitalism Hits the Fan and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens. He is founder of Democracy at Work.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/14/capitalism-mass-anger-and-the-2024-elections/

Sri Lanka is Not Bangladesh: Why Bangladesh Aragalaya is Nine (9) Times More Violent Than Sri Lanka?

August 15th, 2024

Dilrook Kannangara

Comparing Bangladesh and Sri Lanka is wrong. The level of violence and ethnic composition are totally different in the two nations. Sri Lanka was economically bankrupt, had given up repaying loans and had 2 years and 1 quarter of negative economic growth when Aragalaya commenced. On the other hand, the Bangladeshi economy was doing far better when its people rose. However, there is one key similarity between violent sections of both countries during their struggles.

A disproportionately large number of violent people in Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya belonged to a certain creed and they are the ones causing all violence in Bangladesh too. The brutal decapitation and killing of a MP while chanting extremist religious chants, burning buses and beating rival people in Slave Island, burning some houses and businesses belonging to certain politicians and assaulting state television employees were carried out by this group of people. Among the arrested for violence in 2022 there is a disproportionately large group of people belonging to this particular creed. Over 90% of Bangladesh is made up of them too. That’s the main reason for Bangladesh’s extreme violence.

Sri Lanka gained Independence without bloodshed and violence where Bangladeshi Independence was marked by extreme violence by all sides. Since Independence a number of leaders were killed and the military took over power in Bangladesh further expanding its violent past.

What is most concerning is the violent future of Bangladesh. Extremist groups have already targeted ethnic Hindus and they have made it clear they will contest planned elections. If free and fair elections are held, extremists will make a grand entry into Bangladeshi parliament. The difference in the scale of violence in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh is of a factor of 10% to 90% for this reason. That is nine (9) times. Fortunately, Sri Lanka is not that unfortunate as Bangladesh which led to a peaceful transition of power once the three main slogans of Aragalaya people were met

COVID 19 POLICY – THE BREACH OF SOCIAL CONTRACT BETWEEN MAN AND STATE 

August 15th, 2024

Manuka Wijesinghe.

Quo vadis domine? ‘Where are you going, Lord?’, Peter asks the risen Christ whom he meets along the Appian way. ‘Romam eo iterum crucifigi’, Christ replies. ‘I am going to Rome in order to be crucified again.

While Christ sacrificed his life for the love of man, we live for the love of man. We live for the fulfillment of executing the simple rites and duties of the human family to which we belong. We are glad when life offers us the opportunity of caring for parents, children, spouses, siblings and community. The pinnacle of our Asian human experience is the fulfillment of duty according to the values embedded in our tradition. We are able to identify and differentiate between the roles of kinship. We are not free-floating individuals soaring on the wings of self-centred hedonism, rather, are born to live a specified life. We are deeply interconnecting to the unit of the family which is fortified and sustained from the happiness we give others and get from others. The units of family, community are not based on written constitutions; but founded on generations of trust. And, it is that trust we extend to our elected governments and public institutions. We humans do not need government or institutions to exist, but institutions and government need us.

It is this trust which was abused when the Covid narrative unfolded.   

It is because of misplaced trust that most citizens, (even the rural Sinhalese and all Tamil, despite a post independent history of being deceived, tortured, killed and disappeared by the hands of state authorities) believed the narrative told by the same authorities and collectively, without least objection, obeyed the inhuman and perverse commands of social distancing, masking, testing and finally, having obeyed the ludicrous, unscientific and irrational commands of political and institutional authority, flocked to parks, temples and schools to get themselves injected with a substance, whose efficacy was uncertain but worse still, whose toxicity was unknown.

Trust is the Achilles heel of the human animal.

It was trust that made these people believe that the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test method was the gold standard for disease. The word wide web had sufficient material indicating otherwise, where even the inventor of the PCR test, Kerry Mullis says, ‘The PCR test doesn’t tell you are sick. These tests cannot detect free infection viruses at all’.  Nonetheless, the majority did not inquire. They assumed that public authorities were of the same human family.

One cannot expect a populace with no medical knowledge to inform themselves on the questionable safety of this new technology using lipid nano particles containing synthetic RNA, for the purpose of herd immunity, for an uncomplicated viral infection, projected as an apocalypse, by an unelected non-governmental international organization; the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO, since its inception has succeeded, not in bettering human health, but transforming the healable acute into a progressive chronic. Thus, while making man more diseased it has escalated the profits of pharmaceutical giants whose objective is the generation of profit through new diseases whose management requires new drugs which, in eventuality, will destroy vital organs and the mind.

When death does come, one is long dead, in body, mind and spirit, through drug poisoning.

For whom do our health institutions work? For the public or for drug cartels? Well, the last years have proven that it has not been for the public. Instead, like good pied pipers; politicians, public institutions and health officials have parroted the number theories and mortality conjectures materialized by the WHO and its collaborators.

Yet, is this something new?

A recent film by Martin Scorsese, (coincidentally or intentionally, it was released immediately post covid vaccine rollout) ‘Killers of the flower moon’, is about the cruel fate of the native American Osage community of Oklahoma in the Americas.  Having had their native lands seized by white settlers, they were driven into a rocky reservation around Oklahoma with the assurance that they could reap the profit of this assumed wasteland. But this wasteland proved to have oil. Soon, the plan for the acquisition of Osage terrain was hatched. First, they began poisoning them with a diet that was toxic to the Osage, causing the tribe’s youth to develop diabetes. Then, the same white settlers who caused the disease, gave them the medicine that killed them. It was a master plan to acquire the land and its oil. Coincidentally, it is the same people who are now trying to acquire the earth from all of us. With wars, regime changes, coups, sanctions and poisons marketed as drugs and preventives.

For example, why is it, that in the Kandy hospital, there has been a sudden surge of extremely malignant, rapidly proliferating turbo cancers* amongst its doctors? 

Could its cause be the fact that Kandy hospital’s doctors and medical students were given the Moderna vaccine?  Moderna was the most lethal of vaccines in the Covid market, its lipid nano particle content more than treble than that of Pfizer and has been categorized as the most lethal of all vaccines.

Why do the young and healthy suddenly fall down dead with cardiac arrest? Why is there a surge in blindness, deafness, sepsis, myocarditis, turbo cancers, thrombosis, strokes etcetera? Is the vaccine not the only common denominator of the last four years? Why is there a hush instead questions? Where are the voices of those lock down and vaccine advocates, doctors, virologist and pharmaceutical ombudsmen now, in the light of the immense proliferation of strange and inexplicable disease without known aetiology? Why are they silent? Should they not, instead, be holding a public inquiry regarding all the Covid 19 policies, both preventive (social distancing, testing and masks) and curative (vaccines)?

Are they answerable to us, or to international drug cartels?

What is Long Covid? Have those who seem reaffirmed pronouncing their sufferance through ‘Long Covid’ ever inquired if such a disease does exist? There is no scientific paper written by any serious scientist proving the existence of ‘Long Covid’ caused by a natural virus. ‘Long Covid’ is a placating name given to a collection of symptoms caused by vaccine side effect. It is only the vaccinated who can claim it.

Due to the sudden appearance of heart ailments in children, today, in the nation’s schools, children are instructed to take an ECG test prior to sports events.  Indeed, it is good to take precautions, but how often does a child not run outside of sports events? Would he not run to catch a bus, a ball, run between wickets in a neighborhood cricket match? Is he expected to do an ECG prior to play? Or, has the current smart digitalized parenthood which permitted politicians to mask and imprison their children think play is no longer a child’s prerogative?

I recollect the sinister prophecy of Somalatha Subasinghe’s famous play ‘Vikurti’. The drama of a talented young girl whose passion was dance and drama. Her mother forbade her from doing what she loved for the want of having a daughter who would make her proud by becoming a doctor. For that, she wanted her to study, not sing, dance and act. ‘Vikurti’ ends with the girl’s mental derangement.

Is play not a child’s nature? Is it our preferred choice that they go mad?

Would it not be far more advisable to create a medical task force to understand the impact of the damage caused by vaccines and find a synthesis with our traditional medical systems to ameliorate the dangers to the nation’s youth? Are they not our future?

Alas, that is not of interest to the person prescribing the ECG. The ECG is far more profitable to the minister recommending it, the agent selling it and perhaps the school bureaucracy recommending it. For it is this institution; the school, which has been most evil in the last years. We had no vaccine mandate, yet schools refused entry to unvaccinated children. That is inexcusable and an unpardonable crime and every one of those principles who forced it must be held accountable. They have committed a crime against our children.

Children did not die of Covid. It was never a threat to them. But, they were injected with the genetic manipulating Pfizer vaccine.  Studies have to be done over generations to understand what mutations genetic engineering may cause and how fertility may be affected. While parents received the comparatively non-dangerous Chinese and Russian vaccine, all our children were given the most dangerous western product; Pfizer. Not once, but twice; in adult doses.

Our children were forcibly inoculated by the orders of principals, teachers and the teacher’s unions for the fear that children could infect them. Had our grandmothers been afraid when a child came home with infectious diseases? No. It was they who looked after children while mothers went to work. When in human history has man sacrificed children to save himself? Today, children suffer, not only from heart diseases, but also from cancers, neurological disorders and infertility. The list of young girls whose menstruation has stopped is countless. And not to mention inflammation of testicles. Have our children been rendered sterile?

Naomi Woolf, in her book ‘Facing he Beast’, written after studying the Pfizer documents writes, ‘Reproduction itself is targeted by the mRNA vaccines, and babies and foetuses are harmed at a scale which everyone at Pfizer and the FDA (Food and Drug administration), who read these documents knew’.

That the vaccine was ‘safe and effective’ for the pregnant was pronounced after a study of forty four French rats.  The scientist who ran the study were shareholders and employees of BioNTech Pfizer.   

Will our children ever have the simple human joys, like we did, in having children? Most unlikely.

Was this vaccine another euphemism for birth control? An African leader is attributed to saying, ‘They (meaning the white colonial settlers) came to our lands, put the bible into our hands and taught us to close our eyes and pray. When we opened our eyes, we had the bible, they had the land’

Is this not happening again, or, has it ever stopped happening?

If not, which sublime idiot (WHO) orders medical intervention on children with products whose toxicity has not been tested, especially for the ridiculous ideal of preventing an airborne virus which is easily conquered by the essential genius of the human immune system.  In the zeal of obliging colonial masters (who compromise the WHO) we have injected our children with irreversible damage and instead of holding an inquiry or conferring liability upon those who enforced these new technologies we move from one crisis to another, distracting ourselves from the foundational ingredient of human life; Health, and the highest of human virtue; Truth .

Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese poet wrote in his poem titled ‘On Children’,

‘Your children are not your children; they are the sons and daughters of life longing for itself.  You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls will dwell in the house of tomorrow’

We have taken from our children their tomorrow. Do we have no more ethical or moral demeanor? Do we truly not care? Children have been entrusted to a society for care.  Is it not our joint responsibility to ensure their safety, both physically and mentally?

Instead of doing so we have merely followed imperial orders. We shut their schools and muzzled them with carcinogenous masks. Do not believe that we are free from colonial yoke. We are as enslaved as we have always been. Our minds captured by their myths for their economic empowerment is founded upon the enslaved native. Despite grand education and the triumph of Independence, we are still that native.

This killer virus narrative has been tried for several years, with AIDS, Mad cow, Swine Flu, Bird Flu, Ebola, Zika and many more, but it was only by 2019, with Covid that all the actors and collaborators, like building blocks, were in the right places and the integrity of every public institution and media station had been forsaken.

The false narratives were boosted by the media. Sick bodies in crowded wards, throats slit to fix ventilators, military trucks transporting bodies to crematoriums. Like a still life painting limited to the boundaries of its frame, reality was compressed into newspaper headlines and television announcements.  Truth, existing out of the picture frame was excluded. It did not say that those hanging on ventilators were the aged with multiple drug related co morbidities and suffering terminal cancers, emphysemas, pneumonias and other chronic pathologies. Nor did it convey the verity of the military trucks. Nor did it say that medical doctors had been given new Covid treatment guide lines that were contra indicated to viral infection treatment and drugs and remedies that were known to ameliorate viral pathologies had been delisted and forbidden.

That was the fate of Ivermectin and Hydro chloroquine. The WHO orchestrated a narrative through a flawed scientific publication that indicated its lethality. The lethality was caused, not for the toxicity of the drug, but for WHO scientist giving a lethal dose of 3000 mg.  There were plenty of scientific papers, since decades, indicating success by treatment of a regular doses of 50 or 60 milligrams. But the WHO did not want an old drug, it wanted a new technologies to render populations impotent and diseased. In our country, our children were made its first victims.

Yet, all this is not new, it had been tried over and over again, since the birth of microbe theory, but its prologue was AIDS.

The death of emaciated homosexuals was a god given chance to the drug cartels of the United States of America; a settler colony like Israel, which creates nation through the decimation of indigenous population.

One of their scientist prophets, targeting the Nobel prize (a prize that is more sensational than of intrinsic value to the human race) came up with a fabricated theory that the virus HIV was the cause of AIDS. Furthermore, although there was no evidence of AIDS being transmitted sexually it was proclaimed to be a sexual disease, contracted through touch, kiss, exchange of semen or even use of toilet seats.   

But what was AIDS?

Did AIDS have a specific symptom that differentiated it from other diseases?

Had the modern microbe hunters (scientist) discovered a specific AIDS virus?

Negative. AIDS was not a particular disease but a name given to a series of symptoms that appeared simultaneously in the homosexual milieu.  The symptoms that corroborated to become AIDS was Kaposi’s sarcoma, pneumonia (caused by Pneumocystis Carinii), tuberculosis and shingles.

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS, as it became commonly known, was a range of symptoms that one would find in chemotherapy patients. It was only in the 1970’s, that these symptoms were seen in another population group; homosexual men without cancers. Though many commonalities existed between these men, like the consumption of recreational drugs, only sexual promiscuity was taken as a common denominator and a test was devised (like the PCR of today) to identify their microbes. HIV won the race.

Though HIV negatives had all had all symptoms of AIDS too, it was delisted. The sensation was greater with a ‘one disease, one virus’ marketing campaign. In this marketing campaign, HIV positives were given the death sentence. The campaign did not end with homosexuals, it was proclaimed that they would pass it to heterosexual lovers who would pass it onto their female lovers, wives and prostitutes. Eventually, all of humanity would be dead. In the meantime, the scramble for a drug that could be marketed as a dual pack (HIV positive equals AIDS) began.

Yet, that what was the world was not informed of was that these homosexuals were those who used the recreational drug known as ‘Poppers’, made from nitro glycerides that dilated the anal sphincter, thereby making sexual pleasure easier and longer. ‘Poppers’ was a recreational drug among the US homosexuals. The damage and degeneration caused to the capillaries by the uninhibited usage of ‘Poppers’ became evident in the appearance of Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions on their skin. This and the regular appearance of a strain of pneumonia which afflicted only on the severely immune compromised, (which happened with the use of Poppers) were summed together and called AIDS. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Immune deficiency was uncommon to the majority which lived within prescribed behavioral norms. That it was not anal sex but the use of sexual stimulators which caused AIDS was not divulged to the masses.  Instead, they were mentally tortured with the lie that HIV positive was the prerequisite for AIDS, emaciation, and gradual death after an incubation period of zero years to ten or more.

The Long incubation theory was good for drug profits.  A highly toxic drug, Azidothymidine (AZT) developed by the head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious disease (NIAID) Anthony Fauci (who was the prophet of the covid narrative too), at exorbitant cost, was administered to all HIV positives, even if they were perfectly healthy.  (like PCR positive and Corona)

AZT could not have cured AIDS for AIDS was not a disease. AIDS was caused by lifestyle choices, not by nature.  AZT should have landed in the dustbin of pharmaceutical discoveries, but it was hyped (like the Covid vaccines) and sold to thousands of healthy HIV positives.  Every one of them who was given AZT is now dead, killed by leukemia like morbidities caused by drug toxicity. Those who survived, such as Magic Johnson, discontinued the drug. Rock Hudson, who gave AIDS a face, was a heavy ‘Popper’ user. And, it was never made public that his longtime sexual partner had no AIDS. AIDS was never a sexually transmitted disease. It was a creation of recreational and pharmaceutical drugs.

Then, a WHO led public smear campaign, associating Africa with promiscuity, sexual savagery and excess hedonism, took AIDS to Africa. When the then Sunday Times medical correspondent flew to Africa to study AIDS, the answer he got from all, to nature of their disease was the one word, ‘AIDS’ But, when he studied the nature of African Aids, what he found was tuberculosis, chronic diarrhea, malaria, leprosy, malnutrition etc. He concluded the article saying, ‘all these diseases had been known in Africa for ages. But, in the new hype of pharmaceutical scramble preceded by fear mongering, every disease that had existed since the birth of human time was called ‘AIDS’

AIDS was not a new disease; it was merely rebranding of old disease. It was the same with Corona. A cough, a cold, the loss of taste was called Corona. And, the positive PCR established the lie. PCR’s efficacy in detecting infection was notoriously fallacious, even its founder, the Nobel laureate Kerry Mullis stated, ‘To get some big numbers for HIV positive cases in Africa before they realized that antibodies to malaria – which everyone in Africa has – show up as PCR positive tests’.

And, it is happening, in our country, again. Open the daily newspapers, ‘AIDS on the rise’, is a favourite front page headline. It is not AIDS that is one the rise, it is testing that is one the rise for obviously someone somewhere is trying to make a quick buck as long as virus mania is rampant. 

The harm caused by vaccines are unsurmountable and can no longer be misinterpreted. Yet, many still love to use the euphemism of ‘Long covid’ to rationalize side effects of post covid jab.  Why is man so reluctant to articulate the truth? I was recently was in the company of a couple, both Covid jabbed for the purpose of foreign travel where the husband, since the jabs suffers regular respiratory disease symptoms. Knowing their vaccination history, I pointed to the vaccination cause of this chronic malady and was about to suggest a path of amelioration when his wife attacked my hypothesis and manifested her own. ‘He gets these coughs because he doesn’t wear a mask when he takes the lift to his office’. 

This person is 64 years old. He has gone in many lifts. Until the age of Covid, the lift has not caused respiratory disease in him or any other.  

Few understand science as few understood God. God was created for the purpose of men becoming better through transcendental truth and science was created for men to near empirical truth. But, the supposed science of today is not truth, it is dogma. Scientific standards and jargon are used to deceive a public long disinterested in the pursuit of truth, but embroiled in the pursuit of digital sensationalism, identity politics and fake social justice theories that separate the ‘I’ from the world in which it lives.

Man is no longer a pilgrim upon a spiritual journey called life, but a puppet on a string in the Age of Disinformation.   

Have we ever bothered to inquire as to why mankind suffers from disease that were rarely a topic before the emergence of the free market economy in our country? Then, except for acutes, we barely had chronic disease. Today, we are animated textbooks of chronic disease. Be it diabetes, asthmas, allergies, autism, auto immune diseases and cancers. Doctors and health care pundits claim that these have been caused by life style changes, but is it not equally probable that they have been caused by drugs?

For many in our country, popping a Panadol for painless sleep is like a faithful saying a prayer at night. But, while prayer does not damage the liver, Panadol does. Why do so many women suffer fatty livers? We are not a nation female alcohol consumerism. Why are so many children on brain changing psychiatric drugs? What is this child’s prognosis in five, ten, fifteen years when his liver cannot cope with detoxification and his brain gets the sluggishness and senility of a liver cirrhotic? Have parents ever question the damages they cause to their children by giving them Ritalin?

A friend recently said to me that his grandfather had little wound on his ankle that always opened. When he asked him why he did nothing about it, the grandfather’s repones was, If I close it here it will come out somewhere else, here I can see it and manage it, if it goes elsewhere, it can be fatal’.

Had men of yesteryear greater wisdom than men to today, even without universal education and access to prestigious foreign universities? ‘They put the bible into our hands and taught us how to pray, when we opened our eyes, we had the bible, they had the land?’ Is that what has happened to us?

We have learned their methods and lost our insight and common sense? Do we know what medicines we get when are treated for cancer? Do we know what drugs are sold to our free national health care system? Do we know what commissions are gifted to authorities for passing drugs which have never been approved? Have we ever asked if nature or allopathic drugs cause the need for kidney dialysis? Have we ever asked young mothers, what vaccine caused the personality change of their children, which was gladly diagnosed as Autism?

As Ivan IIlich writes in his book, the ‘Medical Nemesis’, ‘Before, he who got sick could still find in the eyes of the doctor a reflection of his own anguish and some recognition for the uniqueness of his suffering. Now, what he meets is the gaze of a biological accountant engaged in the input/output calculations.’

Quo vadis Domine?

Kanthi returned to be crucified the second time. With the first vaccine she got a turbo cancer. Its medical cure caused epileptic seizure. They killed her. Jesus fortunately left no children; he had the freedom to return to Rome to be crucified the second time. Kanthi could not. She had two young sons. A poor widow of 45 years from Obeysekera town in Colombo. Her mother wailed as the cortege was carried for cremation.  Kanthi was her only daughter.

A human life is not born from artificial intelligence, it is born into the unit of the family; the hearth of trust, loyalty, reverence and duty. Kanthi was unable to fulfill her duty, either to her children or to her mother. She died crying, not for the sorrow of death, but the sorrow of unfulfilled duty. Her husband met an equal fate. He died from a sepsis that was left untreated until PCR test clearance. It was negative. By then, his organs had packed up and he died.

‘Death caused outside hospital waiting for PCR result’, which journalist dared to write such an article? Which newspaper cared to publish such an article?  And why not?   

It is not silence we need; it is a public inquiry and policy that makes every public official accountable to the crimes he commits against the human race. The WHO is in the wings, preparing for its ‘One Health’ plan; a power grab in the form of a ‘Pandemic Preparedness Treaty’. To abort that, we must be prepared, vociferous and brave. For should our representatives ratify it, the WHO would transition us from dictatorship to totalitarianism; the Ideology made up of Lies.

Manuka Wijesinghe.

August 13th 2024

*turbo cancers is a word created to describe the rapid proliferation of malignant cells, seen after Covid’s mRNA vaccines.

PAKISTAN: Tehreek-er-Lebbaik (TLP) Extremists Openly Threaten Ahmadis.

August 15th, 2024

by A. Abdul Aziz

Reports reaching us indicate, the London based International Human Rights Commission (IHRC) is again calling the attention of International Community to intensifying threats against the Ahmadi citizens in Pakistan. Enjoying virtual immunity from official sanction, and magnified by viral social media posts, hatred for Ahmadis has become a form of mass hysteria.

An example of illegal; incitement to violence may be found in the following speech now widely circulated in a video.

Whoever feels sympathy for Qadianis should take them to their home. If Chief Justice feels sympathy for them, he should take them to their home. If anyone from the administration has sympathy, he should take them to his home. You talk of preaching, By the God of Holy Kaba, we will make life hell for them in District Okaraa.

Why are you feeling so sympathetic towards Qadianis?

Preaching aside, we are compiling their data wherever the Qadianis are living and soon we will tell them how we allow them to preach.!

They will be forced to leave their, let aside do preaching.

We are Ahl e Sunnat, we made Pakistan.

We made the English run to England.

We held the flag of moon and star.”

The IHRC is receiving many heartbreaking appeals for assistance from Ahmadis in Pakistan who fear for their safety and lives and have concluded that the police and other state officials are either in different to their vulnerability, or complicit in their persecution.

The IHRC thus again appeals to governments and international organizations to insist that Pakistani authorities take immediate steps to punish any who threaten or harm others on the basis of their religion or ethnic background, and thius reduce the specter of massacres at the hands of extremist forces that now haunts the country.

The incitement to violence in the viral social media posts and videos are inconsistent with international norms and values concerning freedom of religion and belief, as enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), on the freedom of religion, and Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which was ratified by Pakistan in 2008. Three other UN Human Rights treaties as well as numerous General Assembly Resolutions and Human Rights Committee comments, prohibit religious  discrimination. This viral social media posts and videos also violate Pakistan’s own National Action Plan as well as the recently enacted cybercrime laws because it fuels hatred, discrimination and persecution against members of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan.

Nonetheless the Pakistani Government authorities who continue to bring frivolous cases against Ahmadi Muslims under anti-Ahmadiyya, blasphemy, cybercrime laws, turn a blind eye towards systematic and country-wide efforts by Islamic extremists to fan hatred and ignite violence against Ahmadi Muslims. Instead of prosecuting the makers of these social media posts and videos under cybercrime laws and the Natiional Action Plan, the government authorities continue to protect and support extremists and target innocent Ahmaadis.

This comes just weeks after a group of top UN  Human Rights experts including UN Special Rapporteurs urge an immediate end to discrimination and violation against Ahmadis in Pakistan, citing documented evidence of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detentions, attacks on places of worships and curtainmentof free expression, peaceful assembly and association”. Apparently their pleas  fell on deaf ears.

We call upon the Pakistani Authorities to honor their International human rights commitments to protect religious freedom and promote religious tolerance towards the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

We respectfully request all members of the international community to urge the government of Pakistan to take urgent steps to bring its laws and practices in conformity with international standards as ordained by UDHR and ICCPR.

Chennai District Ahmadiyya Elders’Association (Majlis Ansarullah) – Annual Gathering.

August 15th, 2024

by A. Abdul Aziz reporting from Chennai.

The Second Khalifa of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at (Community) in Islam H Hazrat Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmood Ahmad, may Allah be pleased with him, formed Auxiliary Organizations in the J   ama’at to serve the needs of both genders according to different age groups:

In 1922: Majlis Lajna Ima’illah for women.

In 1928: Majlis Nasirat-ul-Ahmadiyya for girls ages 7 – 15.

In 1938:  Majlis Khuddam-ul-Ahmadiyya for men ages 15 – 40.

In 1940: Majlis Ansarullah for men age 40 and above.

On Sunday the 4th  August 2024, at Masjid Hadi, St. Thomas Mount, Chennai, District (Zilla) Ahmadiyya Elders Association Annual Gathering (Ijtima) was held. Previous day,the Sports Event taken place. 

It is worthy to mention here that this Mosque Masjid Hadi was inaugurated by His Holiness Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the Fifth Khalifa and the Supreme Head of the World-wide Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat in Islam, during his visit in the year 2008.

In this event, members from Chennai, St. Thomas Mount, Pondichery, Cuddalore, Panrutti and Thittacheri participated.

The main event started at 9.30 am with Flag Hoisting followed by silent prayer by Mr. A. M. Zahir Hussain (Amir – Present, Coimbatore, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community). He was the Representative of President, Ahmadiyya Elders Association, India. Program further continued with Holy Qur’an recitation by S. Ramzan Ali followed by translations.  

Mr. A. M. Zahir Hussain read out the Pledge of Association and the audience repeated. An Urdu poem composed by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Promised Messiah and Imam Mahdi was recited followed by Welcome Address by Mr. Sultan Ahmad, Officer-in-Charge, Ahmadiyya Elders Association, Chennai District.

Annual Reports was read out by Mr. M.S. Waseem Ahmad.

In his inaugural Address, Chair Person Mr. Zahir Hussain emphasized the importance of strong bandage with Khilafat and its blessings.

The event included academic competitions such as Holy Qur’an recitation, Urdu Poem, short speech etc. and the prize distribution was also part of the event. 

Acting Amir (President) Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Chennai Mr. Zafarullah Ahmad and President, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community St. Thomas Mount, Chennai Mr. H. Shafik Ahmad also addressed the event.

Vote of Thanks by Mr. M. S. Waseem Ahmad, Chairman, Ijtima Committee and the daylong event concluded with closing address by the Chair Person of the event followed by silent prayer. 

Message from Ahmadiyya Khalifa was read out. The gist of the message reads: 

 I am pleased to know about this event. May Allah bless this event and May He brings good effects.  You have accepted  the Promised Messiah, peace be on him. It is a fortunate and a great blessing as well. You have to be gratitude to Allah, it is your duty indeed. The best way to show gratitude would be, after you have accepted Ahmadiyyat, there should be pious changes in you. You must prove the best examples in action to others. 

 What are the expectations from us, by the Promised Messiah, peace be on him, you know that: He says: ‘Wake up during the night and duplicate before Allah. Close the door and pray.you will be shown Mercy’. 

 Promised Messiah, peace be on him, continues: it is essential to do efforts to fulfill the real purpose of Baiat (oath of allegiance). Recite the Holy Qur’an attentively. Ponder over that, then act accordingly’. 

 As Promised Messiah, peace be on him, said, do supplication, observe daily prayers and seeking His blessings. Ahmadiyya Khalifa added that, another important advice is, you should have strong bondage with Khilafat. You should also keep on advising this to your children as well.”

Economic Update: How Deficits and Debts Rip Us Off

August 15th, 2024

On this week’s Economic Update, Professor Wolff devotes the entire program to explaining clearly and accessibly what government deficits are, why they occur, and who benefits from them. We show how deficits and debts reward corporations and the rich at the expense of the mass of employees. This show will equip our audience to see through the misuse of deficits and debts in the 2024 election campaigns. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our channel, follow us on social media and of course be sure to sign up on our website: www.democracyatwork.info As always, we thank you for your attention, support, and solidarity.

සතර සතිපට්ඨානය හෙවත් සතර විපස්සනාව

August 15th, 2024

තිස්ස ගුණතිලක

පසුගිය ධර්ම සාකච්ඡාවලදී සාකච්ඡාවට භාජනයවූ කරුනු සද්ධර්මය තුල හමුවන ආර්ය ප්‍රතිපදාවට අනුකූලව සකස්කරගන්න, ගලපාගන්න බලමු. ප්‍රතිපදාව යනු නිවන් මාර්ගයට අනුගතවන ප්‍රතිපදාවයි.

  1. නිවන පවතින්නේ ස්වභාවධර්මය හෙවත් reality එක තුල එනම් අසංඛතය තුල බව දැන් අපි දනිමු.
  2. අසංඛතය, ස්වභාවධර්මය තුල පවතින නිවන අවබෝධවීමට, නිවනට කිට්ටු වීමට ස්වභාවධර්මය තේරුම්ගත යුතු බවත් අපි දනිමු.
  3. ස්වභාවධර්මය යනු ආශ්වාදයක් හෝ වෛරයක් නැති, රාගයක් හෝ ද්වේශයක් නැති, කාමචන්දයක් හෝ ව්‍යාපාදයක් නොපවතින – විනෙය්‍ය ලොකෙ අභිජ්ඣාදොමනස්සං, නන්දියක් නැති, ගින්නක් නැති, අගයක් නැති ස්වභාවයේ පවතින්නකි.
  4. ස්වභාවධර්මයේ පවතින ඉහත සඳහන්  ස්වභාවය ශුන්‍යත, අනිමිත්ත ස්වභාවයක් ලෙස හඳුන්වමු.
  5. ස්වභාවධර්මගත වීමට නැතහොත් නිවන් දැකීමට මෙම ශුන්‍යත අනිමිත්ත ස්වභාවය දැකිය යුතුය, අවබෝධ කරගත යුතුය. එම ශුන්‍යත අනිමිත්ත ස්වභාවය හා බද්ධ විය යුතුය. එම ස්වභාවය අවබෝධ කිරීමට ඇති එකම මාර්ගය සතරසතිපට්ඨානයයි.
  6. සතර සතිපට්ඨානය අවශ්‍යවන්නේ: ‘ආතාපී සම්පජානො සතිමා විනෙය්‍ය ලොකෙ අභිජ්ඣාදොමනස්සං – භාහිර ලෝකයේ, ස්වභාවධර්මය තුල (in reality) ආශ්වාදයක් (අභිජ්ඣා-කාමචන්ද) හෝ වෛරයක් (දොමනස්සං-ව්‍යාපාද) නැතිබව සිහියට හසුකරගන්නා (යෝනිසෝමනසිකාරය) වීර්ය’ ඇතිකරගැනීමටයි. 
  7. කුමක්ද මේ සතර ආකාරයට (චත්තාරෝ) සිහියට හසුකරගැනීම (සතිපට්ඨානා)?
  8. කායෙ කායානුපස්සී විහරති, වෙදනාසු වෙදනානුපස්සී විහරති, චිත්තෙ චිත්තානුපස්සී විහරති, ධම්මෙසු ධම්මානුපස්සී විහරති.

සෑම සිතුවිල්ලක් හරහාම භාහිර ලෝකය අපට ග්‍රහනය වන්නේ අපගේ පංචේන්ද්‍රිය හා සයවන ඉංද්‍රියවන මනේන්ද්‍රිය හරහාය.

  1. චක්ඛු, සෝත, ජිව්හා සහ ඝාණ ඉංද්‍රිය සතර හරහා භාහිර ලෝකයේ පවතින වර්ණ රූප, ශබ්ද රූප, රස රූප හා ඝණ්ධ රූප අපට ග්‍රහනය වී ස්කන්ධ-පට්ච්චසමුප්පාද ක්‍රියාවලිය ඇතිකරයි. භාහිරයෙන් එන වර්ණ, ශබ්ධ, රස හා ඝණ්ධ රූප ආශ්වාදයක් හෝ වෛරයක් ඇති සේ process වී භවය සකස්කරයි. එහි කෙලවර සත්වයා (ආත්මය, ආත්ම දෘශ්ඨිය, ඉත්ථභාවය – ego, සක්කාය) ඇතිකරයි. එනම් අප ජීවත්ව සිටිනා බවක් දැනෙයි.
  2. පොට්ඨබ්බ ඉංද්‍රිය හරහා අපට සීතල, උනුසුම, තදගතිය හා ගලනා ගතිය (flowing effect) ආදී වේදනා ග්‍රහනයවී ස්කන්ධ-පට්ච්චසමුප්පාද ක්‍රියාවලිය ඇතිකරයි. භාහිරයෙන් එන පොට්ඨබ්බ රූප ආශ්වාදයක් හෝ වෛරයක් ඇති සේ process වී භවය සකස්කරයි. එහි කෙලවර සත්වයා (ආත්මය, ආත්ම දෘශ්ඨිය, ඉත්ථභාවය – ego, සක්කාය) ඇතිකරයි. එනම් අප ජීවත්ව සිටිනා බවක් දැනෙයි.
  3. මන ඉංද්‍රිය හරහා නොයෙකුත් මනෝමය සංකල්පනා සකස් කරගෙන ඒවා ග්‍රහනය වී ස්කන්ධ-පට්ච්චසමුප්පාද ක්‍රියාවලිය ඇතිකරයි. භාහිරයෙන් එන මන රූප ආශ්වාදයක් හෝ වෛරයක් ඇති සේ process වී භවය සකස්කරයි. එහි කෙලවර සත්වයා (ආත්මය, ආත්ම දෘශ්ඨිය, ඉත්ථභාවය – ego, සක්කාය) ඇතිකරයි. එනම් අප ජීවත්ව සිටිනා බවක් දැනෙයි.

බුදුන්වහන්සේ සත්වයා අර්ථ දැක්වූයේ ඉහත ක්‍රියාවලින්ට අදාල ‘ස්කන්ධයට’ අනුකූලවයි. සත්වයා ඇතිවීම යනු ‘සමුදය-උදය’ හෙවත් දුක ඇතිවීමයි. ස්කන්ධ ක්‍රියාවලියට විෂයවූ භාහිරයේ (ස්වභාවධර්මයේ, in reality) පවතින රූපය පවතින්නේ ආශ්වාදයක් නැති ‘වය’ ස්වභාවයෙනි.

මෙසේ සංඛතයේ සකස්කරන උදය හා අසංඛතයේ පවතින වය ස්වභාවයන් දැකීම සතර සතිපට්ඨාන ප්‍රතිපදාවේ මූලිකම සංසිද්ධියයි.

සතිපට්ඨාන ප්‍රතිපදාවන් සතර (කාය, වේදනා, චිත්ත හා ධම්ම) apply වන්නේ ඉහත සඳහන් සත්වයා ඇතිකරන ස්කන්ධ-පටිච්චසමුප්පාද ක්‍රියාවලින්ට අනුකූලව different විවිධ අයුරිනි.

එනම්;

1.කායානුපස්සනාව හරහා උදය-වය දැකීමෙන් නිරුද්ධ (ශුන්‍යත, අනිමිත්ත) කලහැකි වන්නේ චක්ඛු, සෝත, ජිව්හා සහ ඝාණ ඉංද්‍රියන් හරහා ස්පර්ශවී සකස්වන භවය හා අදාල සත්වයයි.

2.වේදානුපස්සනාව හරහා උදය-වය දැකීමෙන් නිරුද්ධ (ශුන්‍යත, අනිමිත්ත) කලහැකි වන්නේ පොට්ඨබ්බ ඉංද්‍රිය හරහා ස්පර්ශවී සකස්වන භවය හා අදාල සත්වයයි.

3. චිත්තානුපස්සනාව හරහා උදය-වය දැකීමෙන් නිරුද්ධ (ශුන්‍යත, අනිමිත්ත) කලහැකි වන්නේ මන ඉංද්‍රිය හරහා ස්පර්ශවී සකස්වන භවය හා අදාල සත්වයයි.

4. ධම්මානුපස්සනාව හරහා උදය-වය දැකීමෙන් නිරුද්ධ (ශුන්‍යත, අනිමිත්ත) කලහැකි වන්නේ ඉහත සඳහන් සය ඉංද්‍රියන්ට හසු නොවන භාහිරය තුල පවතින අනෙකුත් සංසිද්ධීන් නිසා සකස්වන භවය හා අදාල සත්වයයි.

පංච නීවරණ හා එහි ස්වභාවය

ඉහත සඳහන් 1-3 දක්වා ඇති කාය, වේදනා, චිත්ත ක්‍රියාවලින් ඔබට පහසුවෙන් තේරූම්ගත හැකියයි සිතමි. නමුත් කුමක්ද මේ ධම්මානුපස්සනාවට පමනක් හසුවන එහෙත් ඉහත සඳහන්‍ මුළු සයේන්ද්‍රියටම හසුනොවන සංසිද්ධීන්? මුළු සද්ධර්මයේම අවසන් ඵලය එනම් ශරීරයට බලපාන ක්‍රියාවලිය ඇතිවන්නේ මෙම අවස්ථාව තුලයි.

කායානුපස්සනාව, වේදානුපස්සනාව හා චිත්තානුපස්සනාව යන විපස්සනා වඩා ලෝක සංඥාව (ග්‍රාම සංඥාව, ආරණ්‍ය සංඥාව සහ පෘතුවි සංඥාව තුල පවතින සියළුම දේ වල ශුන්‍යත අනිමිත්ත ස්වභාවය පසක්කරනා ඔබට දැන් ඉතිරිවන්නේ අවකාශය තුල පවතින එහෙත් සයේන්ද්‍රියන්ටම පටිච්ච නොවනා (හසු නොවනා) ධර්මතාවයන් පමනයි. මෙම ධර්මතාවයන් කිරණ හා ශක්තීන් ලෙස අවකාශය තුල පවතියි. අවකාශය තුල පවත්නා කිරණ හා ශක්තීන් වල සිදුවන විපර්යාශ නිසාශරීරය තුල ඇති ලේ ධාතුව ඇතුළු සියළුම ධාතුවල (රසායනික ධාතුව) සිදුවන වෙනස්කම් වලට අනුරූපව සත්වයා තුල ඇතිවන ‘සත්ව ස්වභාවය’ එනම් ‘ස්කන්ධය’ වෙනස් වීමකට භාජනය වෙයි. ශරීරය තුල සිදුවන මෙම රසායනික වෙනස්වීමට අනුකූලව වරෙක සත්වයා (ඔබ) තුල ‘ආශ්වාදත්මක’ ස්වභාවයක්ද (කාමචන්දය-අභිජ්ඣා), වරෙක ‘වෛරී’ ස්වභාවයක්ද (ව්‍යාපාදය-දොමනස්ස), වරෙක ‘ශක්තිය මද ස්වභාවයක්ද lethargic (ථීනමිද්ධ), වරෙක ව්‍යාකුල ස්වභාවයක්ද (උද්ධච්ච – කුක්කුච්ච), වරෙක අතරමංවූ වැනි ස්වභාවයක්ද (විචිකිච්ඡා) ඇතිවෙයි. මේ ස්කන්ධ- පටිච්චසමුප්පාද ක්‍රියාවලියට භාජනයවූ අවකාශයේ පවතින ‘කිරණ හා ශක්තීන්‍’ වල වෙනස්වීම ඔබගේ ශරීරයට බලපාන ආකාරයයි.

බුදුන්වහන්සේ ඉහතසඳහන් රසායනික ක්‍රියාවලින් හැදින්වූයේ ‘නිවන වසනා පංචනීවරණ ධර්මතා’ ලෙසයි. ඔබ අවසානයේදී ප්‍රහානය කිරීමට නැතහොත් ශුන්‍යතාවය හෝ අනිමිත්ත බව දැකිය යුතුවන්නේ මෙම පංචනීවරණ ධර්මතාවලට මූලිකවන අවකාශයේ පවතින කිරණ හා ශක්තීන්වලයි. ධම්මානුපස්සනාව නැමති සතරවන විපස්සනාවෙන් මෙය සිඳුකල හැකිබව සතර සතිපට්ඨානයේ ‘පංචනීවරණ පබ්බයේ’ සඳහන් කරුනයි.

අනිමිත්ත චේතොවිමුක්තිය

දැන් ඔබ ලෝක සංඥාවද ආකාශ හෙවත් අවකාශ සංඥාවද අනිමිත්ත කොට විපස්සනාවතුල දෙවන ධ්‍යානය වන ‘ආකාසානඤ්චායතන’ ස්කන්ධ ස්වභාවයට පත්වී හමාරය. දැන් ඔබට මේ විශ්වය තුල පවතින එකම නිමිත්ත ඔබගේම ‘විඤ්ඤාණය’ පමනි. එයද සතර සතිපට්ඨානය තුල ඇති ‘ස්කන්ධ හා ආයතන’ පබ්බ වල දැක්වෙන ආකාරයට ධම්මානුපස්සනාව වැඩීමෙන් ශුන්‍යත, අනිමිත්ත කල තැන ‘විඤ්ඤාණඤ්චායතන’ නැමති ස්කන්ධ ස්වභාවය අත්කර ගනියි. ලෝක ධාතුව තුල පවත්නා සියල්ලම අනිමිත්ත කල තැන අත්විදින්නේ ‘අනිමිත්ත චේතොවිමුක්තිය’ හෙවත් අභිසංඛතය වන නිවනයි.

මෙම ලිපියේ අඩංගු කරුනු හා එම කරුනුවල දිගුවකට ඔබට ‘විපස්සනාව, සතර සතිපට්ඨානය හා සෝතාපන්නය’නැමති  YouTube ධර්ම සාකච්ඡාව තුලින් සවන්දිය හැකිය. එයට පිවිසීමට පහත සඳහන් link එක භාවිතා කරන්න.

ඔබට තෙරුවන් සරණයි

තිස්ස ගුණතිලක

tgunite@tpg.com.au

2024 අගෝස්තු මස 16 වනදා

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Neuroscience of Chanting — Dr. Sweta Adatia

August 15th, 2024

Chinfo Channel

Dr. Sweta Adatia, renowned neurologist, author, and TED-X speaker, in this captivating session recorded on April 9, 2024, at Sandeepany Sadhanalaya, Powai, Mumbai. Dr Adatia delves into the fascinating realm of neuroscience, exploring the profound impact of chanting on brain functions. Dr. Adatia specialises in treating strokes and migraine and has conducted extensive research on neuroscience-based exploration of career options. In this session, she expounds on how chanting influences various aspects of brain functions such as attention, memory, executive function and emotional stability. Listeners will understand the influence of chanting OM and other specific Vedic Mantras on the brain.

හොදට සල්ලි තියෙන අමාත්‍යංශයක් බදියුදීන්ට පොරොන්දු වෙලා..

August 15th, 2024

උපුටා ගැන්ම ලංකා සී නිව්ස්

යහමින් මුදල් හම්බ කරගත හැකි අමාත්‍යංශයක් ලබාදීම සඳහා රිෂාඩ් බදියුදීන් මහතා සජිත් ප්‍රේමදාස මහතාට කොන්දේසි දමා ඇතැයි පාර්ලිමේන්තු මන්ත්‍රී ඉෂාක් රහුමාන් මහතා සඳහන් කරයි.

රිෂාඩ් බදියුදීන් මහතගේ නායකත්වයෙන් යුතු සමස්ත ලංකා මහජන කොංග්‍රසයේ මන්ත්‍රීවරයෙකු වන ඔහු කියා සිටියේ බදියුදීන් මහතා සජිත් ප්‍රේමදාස මහතා සමග එක්ව සිටින්නේ ඊළඟ පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේදී කැබිනට් අමාත්‍ය ධූර, හා නියෝජ්‍ය ඇමති ධුර සම්බන්ධයෙන් කොන්දේසි රැසක් ඉදිරිපත් කරමින් බවයි.

අදාළ අමාත්‍යංශය සඳහා ලබාදෙන ආයතන සඳහා කොන්දේසි පනවා ඇතැයිද කී ඔහු එම අමාත්‍යංශ හොඳින් මුදල් හම්බකර හැකි වන ඒවා විය යුතු බව දන්වා ඇතැයි කියා සිටියේය.

එම පක්‍ෂයේ මන්ත‍්‍රිවරුන් තිදෙනෙක් ජනාධිපති රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතාට සහාය දීම සඳහා කොළඹ පවත්වන ලද මාධ්‍ය හමුවකදී එම මන්ත්‍රීවරුම මේ බව කියා සිටියේය.

Rishad’s ACMC inks agreement to support Sajith

August 15th, 2024

Courtesy Adaderana

The All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC), led by MP Rishad Bathiudeen, has signed an agreement with the ‘Samagi Jana Sandhanaya’ to support Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa in the upcoming Presidential Election.

The agreement was signed by Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) leader and presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa and ACMC leader, former Minister Rishad Bathiudeen, at the Cinnamon Lake Hotel in Colombo.

SJB General Secretary Ranjith Madduma Bandara, National Organiser Tissa Attanayake and other party members were also present at the occasion. 

Sri Lankan diplomat ordered to pay over $500,000 in unpaid wages to domestic worker

August 15th, 2024

Courtesy Adaderana

An Australian Federal Court judge has slammed the Home Affairs Department for failing to properly scrutinise a Sri Lankan diplomat who confiscated a staffer’s passport and gave her just two days leave in three years, Australian media reported today.

Sri Lanka’s former deputy high commissioner to Australia has been ordered to pay $543,000 in unpaid wages and interest to a domestic worker and now faces a large fine for breaches of employment laws.

Himalee Arunatilaka, who served in Canberra from 2015 to 2018, denied her employee, Priyanka Danaratna, minimum pay and conditions during time in Australia, the court found.

Justice Elizabeth Raper found Ms Danaratna worked from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week and was only allowed two days off in that time after she burnt her hand with cooking oil.

Over the period, she was paid just $11,200 – around 75¢ an hour – which was sent to Sri Lanka. Ms Danaratna also was denied permission to leave the Canberra residence alone, and had her passport confiscated.

In addition to handing down a damning judgment for Ms Arunatilaka, Justice Raper suggested that if the Home Affairs Department had taken a closer look, Ms Danaratna’s employment may have been very different”.

It is not without concern that it would have been clear to [Home Affairs], by reason of the materials provided … that Ms Danaratna was not going to [be] paid nor enjoy the protections under the Award or the FW Act,” she wrote.

There was no apparent attempt to conceal the arrangement by Ms Arunatilaka. It is perplexing that the department, in the circumstances, did nothing and granted the visa in the circumstances.”

Himalee Arunatilaka currently serves as Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) in Geneva. 

The case is one of several recent examples where diplomats from countries with poor employment practices have been caught failing to comply with employment laws and have been hit with big penalties in Australia.

The Australian Federal Court last year ordered India’s high commissioner between 2015 and 2016 Navdeep Suri Singh to pay $189,000 in unpaid wages and interest to Seema Shergill, who was found to be working in slave-like” conditions in the chief diplomat’s residence.

Justice Raper also ordered Mr Suri to pay a $97,200 fine for wage theft, the maximum amount allowed.

Mr Suri brought Seema Shergill to Australia when he started in 2015. When they arrived in Australia, he confiscated Ms Shergill’s passport and confined her to the family’s Canberra residence.

Neither Ms Arunatilaka nor Mr Suri defended the legal actions against them, and it is not clear whether the claimants in either case will ever see a cent of the amounts awarded.

The cases were only possible because the Federal Court recognised that the residual immunity granted former diplomats does not extend to employees in their direct employment, who are covered by Australian fair work laws.

Clayton Utz pro bono Partner David Hillard, who led both matters along with Canberra barrister Prue Bindon, said these were not isolated cases.

It is the second Federal Court matter in less than a year involving domestic workers at diplomatic residences in Canberra,” Mr Hillard said. Domestic workers in foreign diplomatic residences are among the most vulnerable and isolated workers in Australia.

It is hard to conceive of someone in 21st century Australia literally being trapped in a job for three years and earning 75 cents an hour.

This decision … confirms clearly that these workers have rights in Australia, and that senior diplomats cannot hide behind diplomatic immunity when it comes to keeping their servants under slave-like arrangements.”

Ms Arunatilaka was in 2023 appointed Sri Lanka’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva.

Source: Australian Financial Review 

EC accepts nominations of all 39 presidential candidates

August 15th, 2024

Courtesy Ada Derana

The Election Commission of Sri Lanka says it has accepted the nominations of all 39 presidential candidates who submitted their nominations today (15) for the 2024 Presidential Election.

The Election Commission Chairman R.M.A.L. Rathnayake announced that the three objections presented following the nomination submission, were rejected.

Addressing the candidates, signatories and others present at the Election Secretariat, he said that 39 candidates had submitted nominations during the allocated period from 9.00 a.m. to 11.00 a.m. today. This includes 22 candidates from recognized political parties, 1 from other parties and 16 independent candidates.

He added that three objections had been submitted during the period allocated for the presenting of objections which ended at 11.30 a.m. 

He stated that the members of the Election Commission decided to reject all three objections which had been submitted concerning the candidates Janaka Priyantha Kumara Ratnayake, Ven. Battaramulle Seelarathana Thero and Oshala Lakmal Anil Herath.

Accordingly, the nominations of all 39 presidential candidates who submitted nominations have been accepted, the Election Commission Chairman declared.

The allocation of symbols to independent candidates is expected to follow shortly. 

 Following is the full list of the nominations accepted;

1. Dilith Jayaweera

2. Sarath Manamendra

3. Abubakar Mohamed Infaz

4. A.S.P. Liyanage

5. Pani Wijesiriwardena

6. Priyantha Pushpakumara Wickremesinghe

7. Ajantha de Soyza

8. Ven. Battaramulle Seelarathana Thero

9. Sarath Fonseka

10. Nuwan Sanjeewa Bopage

11. Oshala Herath

12. Janaka Ratnayake

13. K.K. Piyadasa

14. Mailawanagam Thilakaraja

15. Siripala Amarasinghe

16. Pakkiya Selvam Ariyanethiran

17. Sarath Keerthirathne

18. K. Ananda Kularatne

19. Namal Rajapakshe

20. Akmeemana Dayarathana Thero

21. K.R. Kishan

22. Chaminda Anuruddha

23. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe

24. Anura Sidney Jayarathne

25. Sirithunga Jayasuriya

26. Mahinda Dewage

27. Mohamed Ilyaz

28. Lakshman Namal Rajapakse

29. Antony Victor Perera

30. Keerthi Wickremeratne

31. Sajith Premadasa

32. Ranil Wickremesinghe

33. Marakkalamanage Premasiri

34. Lalith de Silva

35. P.W.S.K. Bandaranaike

36. D.M. Bandaranaike

37. Anura Kumara Dissanayake

38. Agampodi Prasanga Suranjeewa Anoj de Silva

39. Roshan Ranasinghe

එක් එක් අපේක්ෂකයා නාමයෝජනා භාරදුන් හැටි

August 15th, 2024

Bangladesh’s new Prime Minister seeks Lankan President’s assistance

August 14th, 2024

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Colombo, August (Daily Mirror) – The new Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, has sought Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremeisnghe’s assistance to stabilise his country, sources close to President Wickremesinghe said today.

Prime Minister Yunus had informed that he needed Wickremesinghe’s assistance to stabilise Bangladesh when the latter telephoned him to congratulate him.

President Wickremeisnghe has told Premier Yunus that Sri Lanka will do its best to support Bangladesh.

He has also told Prime Minister Yunus that he had informed the Sri Lankan businessmen who had invested in Bangladesh to remain there and continue their businesses.

South Asia’s deepening political turmoil

August 14th, 2024

By Brahma Chellaney Courtesy Taipei Times

Violent student-led, Islamist-backed protests in Bangladesh have toppled Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government, and mob attacks targeting those viewed as supporters of her secular Awami League party — in particular, the country’s dwindling Hindu minority — are proliferating. At a time when neighboring Myanmar is engulfed in violence and the Pakistan-Afghanistan belt remains fertile ground for cross-border terrorism, political upheaval in Bangladesh, two years after the overthrow of Sri Lanka’s government, is the last thing India, the regional power, needs.

Achieving lasting political stability in South Asia would require entrenching democracy. However, this is no easy feat. India notwithstanding, the region remains in thrall to longstanding autocratic traditions and centralization of power. For example, Hasina had become autocratic during her more than 15 years in office. In this context, popular demands for democracy are far more likely to lead to violence and political chaos than to smooth political transitions.

As Hasina has shown, autocratic leaders do not necessarily survive popular challenges to their rule. Consider the chaos that engulfed Sri Lanka in 2022, when a severe economic crisis triggered mass protests against the Rajapaksa brothers’ dynastic, undemocratic regime. Though former Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, like Hasina, initially unleashed a violent crackdown, his opponents proved too powerful. Like Hasina, he gave up and fled the country, without even formally resigning. Sri Lankan protesters then occupied the presidential palace, much as Bangladeshi mobs have ransacked Hasina’s sprawling official residence.

However, when an autocrat is toppled, it is often the military — not a democratic government — that takes over, even if behind a civilian facade. Bangladesh is no exception. The military has attempted at least two dozen coups since the country’s violent birth in 1971, and ruled for a number of extended periods since its 1975 assassination of Bangladesh founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Hasina, Rahman’s daughter, stood out for her success at keeping the military (and Islamists) in check, at least until last week, when the Bangladeshi army chief refused to continue supporting her crackdown on rampaging protesters. The military then facilitated her escape to India and established an interim government of civilian advisers” who have little experience with national issues.

To be sure, some South Asian countries have made some progress toward democracy. In particular, Bhutan’s democratic transition is proceeding apace, thanks to a benevolent king who has supported the transition from a traditional monarchy to a parliamentary system. Earlier this year, the country’s fourth national election brought an opposition party to power.

However, elections alone — even if competitive — do not guarantee popular empowerment or adherence to constitutional rules, especially when the military holds decisive power. Consider Pakistan, which held elections earlier this year. The military’s preferred candidate, Shehbaz Sharif, returned as prime minister, but his government would survive only at the pleasure of the country’s effective ruler, the army chief. Until the rule of law is firmly entrenched and those wielding extra-constitutional power are unequivocally reined in, democratic progress would remain limited and reversible.

Myanmar learned this the hard way. Though the military had called the shots in the country since independence in 1948, it began ceding power to a nascent civilian government in 2015, filling the country with hope for a democratic future. However, in February 2021 — barely six years later — it staged a coup. However, this time resistance has proved intense, and heavily armed insurgent groups — some receiving non-lethal aid” from the US — are managing to expand their territorial control. In response, the military junta has stepped up punitive air strikes and artillery barrages.

The violence and deepening humanitarian crisis are fueling instability beyond Myanmar’s borders. Already, more than 32,000 ethnic Chin have sought refuge in India’s Mizoram State, and thousands more have fled to Manipur, where their arrival has stoked violent ethnic conflict. It is not just the Chin: India is also home to millions of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, whose ranks are set to grow as desperate Hindus flee Islamist attacks against them.

When it comes to security risks, immigration is just the beginning. Political turbulence in the Maldives — which began in 2012, when Islamist radicals forced the country’s democratically elected president to resign at gunpoint — has enabled China to gain a foothold in India’s maritime backyard. This year, China signed a military pact with the Maldives and docked a giant marine research ship in a Maldivian port. Meanwhile, Muslim radicals are expanding their grassroots base, establishing Islamic State and al-Qaeda cells on the archipelago.

Mounting economic pressures compound the security risks. Pakistan has repeatedly sought IMF bailouts in recent years. Hasina’s overthrow could usher in hard times for the once-booming Bangladeshi economy, as the country’s foreign reserves dwindle rapidly. None of this is conducive to regional prosperity. As long as South Asian countries remain plagued by political instability, strong and sustainable economic growth would remain elusive.

The difficulty of maintaining political stability and advancing democratization can also be seen in Nepal — a country with which India has close cultural and historical ties. Last month, the country swore in its 14th government in just 16 years, led by four-time Nepalese Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist). Oli, who spent years in jail in the 1970s and 1980s for waging war against the state, is Nepal’s fifth head of government in five years, having replaced another former communist guerrilla, Pushpa Kamal Dahal.

All of this puts India, the world’s largest democracy and South Asia’s geographical hub, in a difficult situation. It must minimize the spillover effects of political and economic instability in its neighborhood, even as it continues to seek economic and strategic partnerships far beyond its troubled region.

Brahma Chellaney, professor emeritus of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.

Adani Group Hit With New Corruption Allegations

August 14th, 2024

By Arif Rafiq Courtesy GlobelyNews

The Adani Group is hit with fresh corruption allegations as newly revealed documents link India’s market regulator chairperson to Adani offshore companies.

India’s second-richest man Gautam Adani is at the center of a new corruption scandal, with the accusations coming from a familiar source.

On Monday, investment firm Hindenburg Research released excerpts of what it described as whistleblower documents proving that the head of India’s market regulator had undisclosed investments in offshore funds used by Adani Group associates for fraudulent purposes.

https://globelynews.com/south-asia/adani-group-hit-with-new-corruption-allegations/

40 candidates place deposits for 2024 Presidential Election as deadline ends

August 14th, 2024

Courtesy Adaderana

The deadline for the placing of deposits for the candidates contesting the 2024 Presidential Election has concluded at 12 noon today (14).

Four candidates have placed deposits within today, the final day for the placing of bonds, including MP Namal Rajapaksa from the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), Janaka Ratnayake from the ‘United Lanka Podujana Party’, Lalith De Silva of the ‘United National Freedom Party’ and independent candidate Sarath Kumara Gunarathne.

The Election Commission has stated that in total 40 individuals have placed deposits to contest the upcoming presidential election.

This includes 22 candidates from recognized political parties, 01 from other political parties and 17 independent candidates nominated by a voter.

The placing of deposits related to the presidential election commenced on July 26 and concluded at 12 noon today.

The acceptance of nominations for the upcoming presidential election is scheduled to begin tomorrow (15) from 9.00 a.m. to 11.00 a.m.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission of Sri Lanka says that a total of 42 complaints have been received within the last 24 hours, pertaining to the 2024 Presidential Election.

Accordingly, 37 complaints related to election law violations and 03 other complaints were reported.

Among them, 20 complaints were filed with the National Election Complaint Management Centre, and 22 were reported to the District Election Complaint Management Centre.

40 candidates place deposits for 2024 Presidential Election as deadline ends by Adaderana Online on Scribd

President phones Dr. Yunus, pledges Sri Lanka’s support to Bangladesh’s recovery

August 14th, 2024

Courtesy Adaderana

In a telephone conversation, President Ranil Wickremesinghe has offered his warm congratulations to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus, who was recently sworn in as the head of Bangladesh’s interim government.

The President has also reportedly stated that he is confident that Dr. Yunus will be able to maintain law and order in Bangladesh.

President Wickremesinghe has informed the new Chief Adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh that he will request the Sri Lankan investors in Bangladesh to continue to stay there and carry on with investment activities. 

The President has also pledged that Sri Lanka will provide assistance in every possible way for Bangladesh to develop economically.

Chief Adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government, who has expressed his gratitude for the Sri Lankan President’s greetings, has requested President Wickremesinghe to visit Bangladesh at the earliest opportunity and to provide the necessary guidance for the recovery of the country.

Muhammad Yunus, 84, is heading an interim government following the ousting of Bangladesh’s former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who resigned earlier this month and fled the country, and the dissolution of parliament.

Yunus is a social entrepreneur and banker who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering microfinance work that helped alleviate poverty in Bangladesh and was widely adopted around the world.

The Wonder that is Lakegala in Sri Lanka (Lanka Pabbata)

August 13th, 2024

Dr Sudath Gunasekaa

Wrapped in history and legend, on the northern end of the village called Meemure in , in Sri Lanka, rising adobe the surroundings like a colossal giant rock is the world famous Lakegala perhaps the highest bare rock outcrop in the world. NAmed by different names in history Lanka pabbata, Lankagiri, Lakgala, (meaning resplendent rock), Thrikuta pabbata,Samudra Malaya, is also known as the legendary abode of Ravaana the Great’

At first sight, no one will believe that this is a natural phenomenon. It is so breathtaking and so unbelievable that   it portrays more a painting by a maestro artist than a mere creation of nature,-an epic poem Mother nature has created for men ,all over he world to adore, as long as the sun and the moon shall last. It’s mesmerizing that beauty is unmatched anywhere in the world.It towers majestically over the secluded ancient village of meemure situated in the eastern border of the Kandy district. It is also the only rock in the whole world which has been named after the country. It is also the most elegant rock one can see anywhere in the world. Where else do you get a country  named after a mountain and a mountain named after a country. One has to see it with his own eyes to believe this wonder, for him to believe this miraculous panorama created by mother nature to admire and get imbibed with its beauty for all those who are blessed with eyes.

I recommend for all interested to read Under the Shadow of Lakegala for further details.

මේ ගතවන්නේ පක්ෂ දේශපාලනයේ අවසාන සමය ද?

August 13th, 2024

මතුගම සෙනෙවිරුවන්

         ජනපතිවරණ සමය එළඹී ඇත.රටේ නායකයා තේරීම ට ජනතා රැළි ගොඩනන්වමින් තිබේ.ඉන් විශාලතම ව ඉහළට එසැවුණු රැල්ලෙන් නව ජනපතිවරයා පත් විය හැකිය.මේ රැළි බිහි කරනුයේ මුදල් යහමින් විසි කරමීනි.රැළි වලට එකතු වන ජනතාවට නිශ්චිත අරමුණක් ඇතැයි සිතිය හැකි නොවේ.රැළි බීහි කරන්නේ පක්ෂ විසින් බැවින් ඇතැම් විට පක්ෂයේ අරමුණ ජනතාවට ඇතැයි සිතිය හැකිය.නමුත් දැන් එයද වෙනස් වෙමින් පවතී.පොහොට්ටු පක්ෂ මානසිකත්වයේ සිටි බොහෝ පිරිසක් රනිල් ගේ බෝට්ටුවට එකතු වී සිටිති.පක්ෂයක් ගොඩ නැගෙනුයේ ප්‍රතිපත්ති සහ අරමුණු අනුව වුවද මෙතනදී ප්‍රතිපත්ති පසෙකින් තබා බලය පැවැත්ම සහ මුදල් වෙනුවෙන් එක පිළකට ‌ෙගානු වී සිටිති.

    1917 දී ලංකා ජාතික සංගමය පිහිටුවා ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණවාදී දේශපාලනයට නැඹුරු වූවද ලංකාවේ ප්‍රථම පක්ෂය වශයෙන් පිළිගනු ලබනුයේ 1935 දී බිහිවූ ලංකා සම සමාජ පක්ෂයයි.එවකට ඉන්දියාවේ බිහිවූ ස්වාධීනතා සහයෝගිතා ව්‍යාපරයෙන් ද රුසියාවේ ට්‍රොස්කි ප්‍රමුඛ සතරවන ජාත්‍යන්තරයේ ආශ්වාදයෙන් මෙරටට පැමිණි පිලිප් ගුණවර්ධන සහ කොල්වින් ආර්.ද සිල්වා වැනි විදෙස් ආයතන වල ඉගෙනුම ලැබූ විද්වතුන්ගේ නායකත්වයෙන්ද මේ පක්ෂය බිහි විය.1934 දී වැල්ලවත්ත රෙදිමෝල තුළ සිදු වූ වැඩ වර්ජනයට මූලිකත්වය දෙමින් වාත්තීය සමිති නායකයෙකු වූ ඒ.ඊ.ගුණසිංහ මහතාට අභීයෝගයක් එල්ල කිරීමට සමසමාජ නායකයන්ට හැකි විය.

    ලංකාවේ පක්ෂ දේශපලනයේ ආරම්භයේම ඇත්තේ විදෙස් අභාෂයෙන් ලැබූ ප්‍රතිපත්ති සහ අරමුණු බව මෙයින් පැහැදිලි වනු ඇත.1947 දී මුල්ම මැතිවරණයට ඉදිරිපත් වූ එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය ට අයත් වූවෝ නම් මිනිරන් අරක්කු රේන්ද සහ රජයේ ඨානාන්තර සහ ඉඩම් හිමියන්ගෙන් සමන්විත ජන බල‌ෙව්ගයකි.ඒ පක්ෂය මෙහයවීමට  මුල් තැන් ගත් ඩී.එස්. මිනිරන් වෙළෙදාමෙන් ඉදිරියෙට පැමිණ අමද්‍යප ජාතික සටන මෙහය වූ එෆ්.ආර්. ‌ෙග් අනුප්‍රාප්තියා විය.විදෙස් අධ්‍යාපනය නිසාවෙන්ද බ්‍රිතාන්‍යයන් සමග කළ ගනුදෙනු නිසාවෙන් ද ඔවුන්ගේ පක්ෂ ප්‍රතිපත්ති සහ අරමුණු ද පෙළ ගැසුනේ ජාත්‍යන්තතර ප්‍රතිපත්තීන්ට අනුකූලවයි.අනතතුරුව බිහිවූ වාමාංශික පක්ෂ ද එ.ජා.ප. ය වනුවට ඉදිරියට පැමිණි ශ්‍රී ලංකා නිදහස් පක්ෂය ද මෙහයවූවන් බොහෝ පිරිසක් වි‌‌ෙදස් අධ්‍යාපනයෙන් පෝෂණය වී ඒ මත අදහන්නන් වූහ.

      1815 වසරේ ලංකාව ගිවිසුමකින් බ්‍රිතාන්‍යයන්ට රට පවා දුන් පසු 1818 දී සිදුවූ පරාජය නිසා ද 1848 අසාර්ථක කෑල්ල නිසාවෙන්ද ලංකාවට යටත් විජිතයක් බවට පත් වන්නට සිදු විය. මෙයට එරෙහිව පැන නැගුණු පානදුරාවාදය සහ අමද්‍යප ව්‍යාපාරය නියෝජනය කරන ලද්දේ මෙරට ග්‍රාමීය ප්‍රභූ පන්තියයි. අනගාරික ධර්මපාලයන් විසින් කුළු ගන්වනු ලැබූ මේ පිරිස ඔහුගේ අභාවයෙන් පසුව ක්‍රමානුකූලව යට කී පක්ෂ තුන මත ‌ෙගානු විය.මේ පක්ෂ විසින් වරින් වර රාජ්‍ය බලය ලබා ගනිමින් සිය පාක්ෂිකයන් සැනසීමට උත්සාහ දරා ඇත. අනගාරික ධර්මපාල තුමා අනුදත් මතවාදී ප්‍රවේශය ‌‌හෝ වසර දෙදහස් පන්සීයයක ඉතිහාසයෙන් ලැබුණු පන්නරය මේ පක්ෂ වලට ඇතුළත් කර ගන්නා ලද්දේ යම් කිසි පමණකින් හෝ සිරිමා බණ්ඩාරනායක යුගයේ දී පමණකි.‌නූතන යුගයේ තාක්ෂණික දියුණුව සංනිවේදන මාර්ග වල දියුණුව නිසා ඇති වූ ගෝලීය ප්‍රවණතා මීට හේතු වන්නට ඇති නමුත් දේශපාලන ප්‍රගමනයට හෝ සමාජ ප්‍රගමනයට මේ පක්ෂ කිසිසේත්ම උපයෝගී නොවීය.මූලික පක්ෂ තුන බිහි වීමෙන් පසු සෑම මැතිවරණ අවස්ථාවකදීම නව පක්ෂ බිහි වීම නිසා පුද්ගලවාදී කල්ලි කණ්ඩායම් වල ග්‍රහණයට දේශපාලනය නතු විය.නූතන ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී ධාරාව තුල මෙම පක්ෂ ක්‍රමය නිසිලෙස හැඩ ගස්වා ගැනීමටවත් සංවාදයක් ඇති නොවීම ඛෙදවාචකයකි.ඒ වෙනුවට විධායක ජනපති ක්‍රමයේ අඩුපාඩු පිළිබඳව සිදුවන නිරන්තර සාකච්ඡා වල ප්‍රතිඵලය වූයේ සියලු ප්‍රශ්ණ වලට මුල එම ක්‍රමයේ ආඥාදායකත්වයයි මතයක් සමාජය තුළ පැතිර වීමයි.

   මෙරට අතීත සමාජය කුල වශයෙන් බොදී සිටියහ.ගම්වසම් යටතේ ශිල්ප ශ්‍රේණි වලට සිය සේවා රාජකාරි ඉටු කිරීමට සිදු විය.ඒ සමාජ බෙඳීම රාජ්‍ය ඒකීයත්වයට සහ සමාජ ඒකාග්‍රතාවයට බාධාවක් නොවීය.සමාජයේ ජීවත් වූ කොයි තරාතිරමකම කණ්ඩායමක් හෝ අනෙක් ජන කොටස් සමග සමගියෙන් වීසීමට අවශ්‍ය සහිඳියාව බිහි කරන ලද්දේ බුදු දහම විසිනි. ‌බුදුදහමේ ඉගැන්වීම් පදනම් කරගෙන රජු විසින් නීති පනවන ලදහ. සතරවන මිහිඳු රජු කළ අනුරාධපුර ශිලා ‌ෙල්ඛනය මගින් ගම්වාසීන් බෙදා හදාගෙන ජීවත් විය යුතු යැයි ආඥා පනවා තිබුණි.වර්තමාන පක්ෂ දේශපාලනය තුල පෙර පැවතී කුල ක්‍රමය පදනම්ව සහ විවිධ ජන කොටස් පදනම්ව බෙදීම් වර්ධනය විය. පක්ෂයේ අනුගාමිකයන් විශ්වාස කරන ප්‍රතිපත්ති  වෙනත් කණ්ඩායමක් අනුගමනය නොකරන්නේ නම් එතැන ගැටීමක් වර්ධනය විය.වාමාංශික පක්ෂ වල පවතින මාක්ස්වාදී මූල ධර්මයන් තුළ හැඩ ගැ‌සෙන්නවුන් ඇතැම් විට සමාජ වෛරකක්කාරයන් බවට පත් විය. ඔවුහු ධනවාදයට එරෙහි වුවද යම් කිසි අවස්ථාවක දී තමන් වෙත ධනය එක් රැස් වූ විගස ධනවාදියෙකු බවට පත් විය.ඉඩම් හිමි ධනවතුන් සහ විවිධ ව්‍යාපාර පන්තීන් අනුගමනය කරන පක්ෂ තුල වර්නය වූයේ වංචනික බලාපොරොත්තු පුද්ගල කේන්ද්‍රීය බල ආධිපත්‍ය සහ තක්කඩි කමයි.මෙවැනි තත්වයක් යටතේ පක්ෂ සාමාජිකත්වය දරන මතය ද එයම විය. කොමිස් දේශපාලනය අල්ලස් ගැනීම් වෙළෙඳ පළ ක්‍රමයේ අයථා ගනුදෙනුතුල ඇති වූ තරඟය නිසා රටේ සාමයට විශාල බාධාක් ජනිත වී ඇත. ජාතියක් වශයෙන් රට දියුණට ගෙන යෑමට තිබුණ ප්‍රධාන බාධාව වශයෙන් මේ පක්ෂ දේහපාලනය හඳුනාගන්නට හැකි වනුයේ ඒ නිසාය.

     වසර අනූවකට ආසන්න කාලයක් තුල පක්ෂ විසින් රටේ බිහි කළ චින්තන දරිද්‍රතාවය සුළු පටු නොවේ.මේ වන විට ප්‍රධාන පක්ෂ සියල්ල යැ‌පෙනුයේ විදෙස් මුදල් වලිනි. මහා පරිමාණ රැස්වීම් පැවැත්වීමට එවැනි මුදල් ගලා යෑමක් නැතිව කළ නොහැකිය.පක්ෂ වල අනුගාමිකයන් ගේ රැළි බිහිවන්නේ මේ මුදල් පොම්ප කිරීමේ සීඝ්‍රතාවය අනුවයි.රටේ මුදල් වංචනික ලෙසට අත්පත් කර ගැනීම මුදල් විශුද්ධ කරණය පාතාල සමාජිකයන් විසින් ඩුබායි වැනි ආර්ථික කලාප වල පවත්වාගෙන යන මාෆියා ව්‍යාපාර ආදී බෝහෝ දේ වලින් රට ආපස්සට ගොස් තිබේ.එහි අවසාන ප්‍රතිඵලය නම් ස්වදේශීය දේශපාලකයන්ට රට කරවීමට හැකියාවක් නැතැයි යන ආකල්ප වර්ධන වීමයි.ඉන්දීය දේශපාලනය සහ ඇමරිකන් යටත් විජිත දේශපාලනය රටේ අරක්ගෙන තිබෙන්නේ මේ නිසාය.මෙවර ජනපතිවරණයේ දී වෙනසක් ඇති කරන්නේයැයි පාරම්බාන සියලුම පක්ෂ මේ ඛේදවාචකයට ගොදුරුවී අවසන්ය.ජනතාවට පක්ෂ ක්‍රමය තිත්ත වී ඇත.රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා ඒ අවිනිශ්චිත මානසික තත්වය සිය බල ‌දේශපාලනයට යොදා ගනිමින් සිටී.ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදයේ සියළුම යහපාලන මූල ධර්මයන් උල්ලංඝණය කරමින් ඔහු යෙදී සිටින රංගනය කුමන විපතකින් ‌ෙකළවර වන්‌ෙන් දැයි කිසිවෙකුත් නොදනිති.වසර දෙදහස් පන්සීයක ඉතිහාසයක් ති‌බෙන ‌ෙප්‍රෟඩ ජාතියකට ‌ෙමවැනි අභාග්‍ය සම්පන්න කාල පරිඡේදයකට මුහුණ දීමට සිදු වීම සමකළ  හැක්කේ සීතාවක යුගයේ සිදුවූ සිදුවීම් වලට පමණකි.නමුත් මේ අවසානය නොවේ. බුදුදහ‌ෙම් චිර පැවැත්ම උදෙසා රට වෙනස් විය යුතුය. පක්ෂ දේශපාලනයද ඒ නිසාම අවසන් විය යුතුය.පක්ෂ වල අනුගාමිකයන් නොවී මේ පිළිබඳව සබුද්ධිකව කල්පනා කරන පිරිසක් රට තුළ බිහි විය යුතුය.

මතුගම සෙනෙවිරුවන්

MMBL-Pathfinder Group Joint-Venture Foreign Exchange Earnings to Top US$ 425 Million This Year

August 13th, 2024

MMBL-Pathfinder Group joint-venture

The MMBL-Pathfinder Group joint-venture portfolio of investments is expected to yield nearly US$ 425 million in foreign exchange to Sri Lanka in 2024, a significant increase from the US$ 250 million it earned in 2023.

The MMBL-Pathfinder Group’s joint-venture investment portfolio consists of partnerships and strategic alliances with a wide network of globally reputed companies. These operate in niche markets dealing in financial and remittance services, export logistics, petroleum support services, pioneering ventures in tourism and leisure, and technology and innovation-related activities. Sri Lanka will face new and unforeseen challenges as the international economic environment becomes increasingly complicated and global supply chains fall under continuous stress, especially with emerging geopolitical tensions, multiple wars, and social conflicts. Against this backdrop, MMBL-Pathfinder is committed to a proactive investment strategy that will focus on identifying new sectors that will bring in the maximum possible foreign exchange to the country. MMBL-Pathfinder will continue to support the Pathfinder Foundation, which has emerged as a highly regarded regional strategic studies centre

The Maha Sathyakriya

August 12th, 2024

Prime Minister’s Media Division

With the blessing of the Maha Sangha, the Satyakriya and Adhistana Pooja, organized annually for the purpose if protecting the unity, territorial integrity, and sovereignty of the motherland, was held for the thirtieth time on 10.08.2024 at the historic Kataragama Kiri Vehera Temple under the patronage of Mahajana Eksath Peramuna(MEP) leader Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena.

Ven. Kobawaka Dhamminda Thera, Chief Incumbent of Kiri Vehera Rajamaha Viharaya, Chief Sangha Nayaka of Ruhunu Magampattu, speaking at this event stated that –

“Today, on this evening, a valuable historical religious activity is being performed at the historic Kiri Vehera Temple.
During the time of our late Ven. Dr. Aluthwewa Soratha Thera, this noble act with the aim of blessing all the people of the country was started under the patronage of Hon. Dinesh Gunawardena.
Our Nayaka Thera provided guidance for conducting this religious activity for two decades. We were also able contribute to it.

We all know that our Prime Minister, who is loved by the people of this country, has done a yeomen service to our Sambuddha Sasana.

This activity that started thirty years ago has become a great religious activity that is being performed at the Kiri Vehera Temple for a long time…”


MEP leader Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena speaking at the event stated that –

 “This religious activity has been performed consecutively for 30 years for the protection of the Sambuddha Sasana in our country and unity of the motherland. We remember with respect all those who contributed in giving the blessings of the Maha Sangha to the public and the nation through this event. We remember with great respect the late Ven. Aluthwala Soratha Nayaka Thera.

The Kiri Vehera sacred land has illuminated our nation with the strength of determination for centuries amidst the continuous faith and devotions of all the hundred thousands of people who worship Kataragama.

Therefore, we were able to continue this devotion for thirty years.

To continue this series of devotions through sad and easy moments, the blessings shown by the Maha Sangha, with the various national organizations of the country, is for committing to the intention of achieving victory, creating new confidence, and for building a country.

In spite of all the troubles and obstacles, we performed this great devotion consecutively for thirty years. We will never forget the efforts made by the country’s former leaders to protect the motherland during the difficult times of our country.

The series of devotions held around this sacred land happened in the same way from village to village all over the country.

Even today, we remember the noble war heroes who sacrificed their lives to create unity in the motherland.

Even today, the country is united because of the achievements of great sacrifices.

The public is obliged to protect the situation created by all our Presidents, especially the former Presidents who faced a difficult period.

We resolve to transform the future of farmers, working people, and youths, students and women of our country into a more reliable one as per the pledge given today.

May this great meritorious act give us the strength and courage to succeed in the unity and efforts to transform a collapsed country in such a way…”

Maha Sangha including Ven. Muruththettuwe Ananda Thera, Chancellor of the University of Colombo, Chief Sangha Nayaka of Western Province, Ven. Kapugama Saranathissa Thera, Chief Incumbent of Kataragama Abhinavaramaya, Chief Judicial Sanghanayaka of Ruhunu Magampattu, Ven. Aththudave Dhammarama Thera, Chief Incumbent of Sankhapala Rajamaha Viharaya, Ven. Elkaduwe Nagitha Thera, Chief Incumbent of Kirulapana Pushparamaya, Ven. Kotahene Narada Thera, Viharadhikari of Kotte Naga Vihara, and former Speaker, Member of Parliament, Chamal Rajapaksa who every year participated in this event, General Secretary of the MEP Tissa Yapa Jayawardena, State Ministers Sisira Jayakodi, Jagath Pushpa Kumara, Ashoka Priyantha, Deputy Secretary of MEP, Member of Parliament, Yadamini Gunawardena, Basnayaka Nilame of Ruhunu Kataragama Maha Devalaya Dishan Gunasekara, trade union representatives, national organizations, intellectual organizations, who participate annually in this meritorious act, and many devotees participated in this event.

BIG FOCUS | බංග්ලාදේශ අරගලය හා ලෝක දේශපාලන ප්‍රවණතා

August 12th, 2024

Why Is Namal Rajapaksa Contesting the Sri Lankan Presidential Election When He’s Likely to Lose?

August 12th, 2024

By Rathindra Kuruwita Courtesy The Diplomat

The SLPP is hoping its strategy of fielding Namal will save the party from decimation in the parliamentary election that is due to follow.

Why Is Namal Rajapaksa Contesting the Sri Lankan Presidential Election When He’s Likely to Lose?

Namal Rajapaksa of the Sri Lanka Podujana Party greets his supporters while campaigning in the upcoming presidential election at Rathgama, Sri Lanka, Aug. 4, 2024.Credit: X/Namal Rajapaksa

Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the party of the Rajapaksas, has nominated Namal Rajapaksa as its candidate for the September 21 presidential election. Namal is the son of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The SLPP nominated Namal on August 7 after businessman Dhammika Perera, who was expected to be the party’s presidential candidate, informed the SLPP General Secretary that he didn’t want to run due to personal reasons.

Few in Sri Lanka believe that Perera withdrew entirely of his own accord.

It is unlikely that Perera would have expressed his desire to contest in the first place had he not received a green light from the Rajapaksas, who control the SLPP with an iron fist. The SLPP is a political party by the Rajapaksas for the Rajapaksas.

There are four main candidates in the fray for the upcoming presidential election. They are Anura Kumara Dissanayake representing the National People’s Power (NPP), President Ranil Wickremesinghe contesting as an independent candidate, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Sandanaya (SJS), and Namal of the SLPP. Opinion polls indicate that Dissanayake and Premadasa are the frontrunners, followed by Wickremesinghe and then Rajapaksa as a distant fourth.

Most Sri Lankans believe that the Rajapaksas are the cause of their current economic ills, and hence Namal’s electoral prospects are weak. He has taken a substantial gamble with his political future by throwing his hat in the ring.

Namal, who is 38, probably has a long career ahead of him as a politician. Being the face of a disastrous presidential election would deal a severe blow to his credentials.

Consequently, many Sri Lankans believed the SLPP would field Perera for the presidential election, let him be the fall guy, and slowly rebuild under the leadership of Namal.

So, why did the Rajapaksas change their mind at the eleventh hour? Why are they risking the political career of Namal Rajapaksa?

Probably the decision to field Namal was taken after over 90 SLPP parliamentarians abandoned ship and joined Wickremesinghe. These MPs were SLPP district leaders, and they took along with them most of the remaining grassroots-level activists. At best, the party now has a few MPs and grassroots organizers, and these numbers will further dwindle as more people cross over to Wickremesinghe or Premadasa.

The NPP has insisted it will not entertain horse-trading. Thus, the SLPP no longer has an established network on the ground to carry out an effective political campaign. There are only five weeks before the presidential election.

Perera has little political experience. He is not a charismatic leader. He doesn’t have name recognition and he has plenty of skeletons in his closet. The remaining Rajapaksa voters, having no loyalty or bond to him, might explore other possibilities. Without an established political network on the ground to do the heavy lifting, Perera would have been decimated at the September presidential election.

Although 38, Namal Rajapaksa has been a parliamentarian since 2010, making this his third stint in Parliament. This makes him one of the most experienced politicians left in the SLPP. A third-generation politician, he knows the intricacies of Sri Lankan politics. He has name recognition and is probably the only man, apart from his ailing father, who can gather the votes of Rajapaksa loyalists.

Whoever wins the presidential election would dissolve Parliament immediately and, to capitalize on the political momentum, will call a snap parliamentary election. Therefore, the parties also need to think about securing as many seats as possible in the coming parliamentary election, which in turn depends on their performance in the presidential election.

In the 2020 general election, the SLPP secured 145 seats in the 225-member Parliament. However, within four years, it faces the threat of a whitewash akin to the disastrous showing by its parent party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in 1977. A young Mahinda Rajapaksa witnessed the decimation of the party and a subsequent 17-year stint in the opposition.

As SLPP leader, he would want to avoid the fate that befell the SLFP and ensure his party maintains a foothold in Parliament. In a highly competitive, fragmented Parliament, 10-12 seats can give the SLPP significant power as a tiebreaker.

After considering everything at stake and all the options available, the Rajapaksa family has decided to stake Namal’s reputation for a final throw of political dice.

We will know in the next few weeks whether this gambit works, or whether Namal along with the SLPP will be relegated to the political wilderness for the foreseeable future.

Wimal files case against two immigration officers seeking Rs. 1 billion in damages

August 12th, 2024

Courtesy Adaderana

MP Wimal Weerawansa has filed a case against two officers of the Immigration and Emigration Department before the Colombo District Court seeking Rs. 1,000 million as compensation for alleged defamation.

The former minister says he was arrested under the Immigration and Emigration Act for no reason during the previous ‘Yahapalana’ (good governance) government and a case was filed before the Negombo Magistrate’s Court, and that this had harmed his reputation.

In this case which was filed today (12), the authorized officer of the Immigration and Emigration Department Eranga Rambukwella, senior authorized officer Sujeewa Rathnayake and the Attorney General have been named as respondents.

In 2015, Weerawansa was accused of using an expired passport to fly abroad while the MP was preparing to travel to Europe for a series of lectures, following an invitation from Sri Lankan expatriates in Dubai and Italy.

However, the MP had claimed that upon arriving at the airport he realized that the passport in his possession was one that he had lost and later found after obtaining a new passport.

Weerawansa claims he was arrested by the officers of the Criminal Investigation Department without any reasonable cause and was released on bail after being produced before the Negombo Magistrate’s Court. 

In relation to that, the MP pointed out that the court acquitted him of all charges after nearly 09 years of hearing the case filed against him under the Immigration and Emigration Act.

Accordingly, he has filed this case demanding a compensation of Rs. 1, 000 million from the respondents for the defamation caused by maliciously arresting him and prosecuting him without conducting a fair investigation.

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: How Russia and NATO Are REWRITING the World’s Future – Israel is Losing Big

August 11th, 2024

Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Since 2008, Mr. Doctorow has been regularly publishing analytical articles about international affairs on the portal of the Belgian daily La Libre Belgique. From this material he produced four collections of essays, the most recent of which appeared in October 2017: “Does the United States Have a Future?” Mr. Doctorow’s next project will be a memoir of his corporate service in Moscow in the wild 1990s. Mr. Doctorow is an American citizen and a long-time resident of Brussels, Belgium.

What do the Rich Think Rich Means? Or, Undermining Industrialization in Sri Lanka

August 11th, 2024

e-Con e-News

blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com

Before you study the economics, study the economists!

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e-Con e-News 04-10 August 2024

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5 Ways to Make a Billionaire: 1) Exploit a monopoly.

2) Exploit inside information. 3) Buy off politicians.

4) Defraud investors. 5) Get money from rich relatives.

– Robert Reich, former US Labor Secretary (see ee Economists)

Reich has forgotten his name (Reich is German for empire!), and his old portfolio! – Labor. Billionaires have to in utero ensure the exploitation of workers. He also forgets workers are truly indispensable to robbing the world. He would also like us to forget that it’s workers who ultimately can wield the tools to ‘make’ a truly better world!

     Anyway, aren’t billionaires a dime-a-dozen these days? Aren’t trillionaires & zillionaires where it’s at? Or are they mere celebrity-fied mirages of the real powers that be, the actual anonymous, who rarely appear on TV?

     ‘What do the Rich Think Rich Means?’ – was one of SBD de Silva’s pithiest aphorisms. ‘How long can this go on?’, he’d add, grimly laughing at the raucous reveling of Colombo’s wannabe classes in hotels & casinos & clubs, malls & luxury cars (the German envoy in Colombo is a used-Mercedes salesman! The Japanese envoy a used-Toyota shill!) with an ostentatious yen for bodacious bling. Indeed, some people consider an impoverished beggar carrying constantly devalued money, as rich. Some even measure the wealth of nations too, by money. Au contraire, Sri Lanka with its fertile soil (including the ocean floor!) & latent talents, has been declared ‘bankrupt’, even as the government admits it has not taken an inventory of the country’s ‘assets’ (see ee Random Notes).

     Our economists blame our mentality, ‘race’ (‘The Sinhala are a lazy people’), climate, religion, culture, society, geography, and politics. They cite polls, surveys & indices (GDP, Rule of Law, Happiness) that confirm our pathology as if these measures fall from the skies, and not off a desk in Washington or London.

     This ee looks at how truly advanced countries measure the wealth of nations: modern industry.

And the most important modern industry is the machine-making industry, ie, the machine tool industry. Economists published in the media in Sri Lanka never mention such mundane words: machine tools. They can’t afford to. Then again, they have absolutely no idea what ‘machine tools’ even are, and their indispensable role in a modern economy. They also refuse to admit that the imperialist countries have no interest in our such advance, and that only socialist solidarity can rebuild our world that keeps being shattered to prolong capitalism (see ee Quotes, Industry & Socialism).

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• The USA is escalating war in Myanmar & Bangladesh to further fracture Asia and thwart links between India & China & Africa, even as they escalate genocide in West Asia & East Africa. Meanwhile like heroin addicts demanding their fix, the merchants, their media & their economists in Sri Lanka keep demanding ‘exports’ even as they lament, ‘Exports under threat as tensions mount in West Asia.’

     And look how all the virtuous democrats of yesteryear (lavishly funded by cutting-edge genocidaires) warn that elections (if held, & the ‘wrong’ parties & leaders win) must not change the IMF’s 17th panacea (see ee Economy, IMF benchmarks cannot be changed – President). Or else? The IMF seeks to reinforce imperialism’s usual strategy: to prevent modern industrialization. Hobbling any attempt at modern industrialization is the true history of non-settler colonialism.

     Meanwhile, we have to appear dazzled by the various ‘visions’ – short-sighted economic policy documents (like Ranil Wickremesinghe’s Regaining Sri Lanka in 2004 & Vision 2020 in 2017, and the Chamber of Commerce’s Vision 2030), that have been drafted and handed down by the US Treasury’s Sri Lanka Division: their gunpowder gospel, which has no use for so-called Sri Lankan experts, economists and thinktanks, who are only supposed to twitter and parrot their talking points.

     Last ee examined the USA’s ‘Tonya Harding’ (cripple your competitor) school of sabotage to block the emergence of any such industrialization in our countries. This ee Focus looks at the success of China’s industrialization and the disastrous (some may say crippling) record of industrialization in Africa. ee also looks at the emergence of this stage of capitalism – Imperialism, 1899-1900ee does not subscribe to ‘neoliberalism’ – a confusing trope, which bribed scholars promote, which wishes us to say goodbye to overthrowing imperialism by strengthening the historic role of the working class, while offering Keynesian fixes (which, in truth, means war!) to prolong capitalism

     ee’s muse SBD de Silva noted how our University Economics Departments and the Ministry of Education studiously ignore the examples of industrialization from Japan to China. They have to, or they will lose funding and scholarships to white havens. In this ee Focus, Zambia’s Grieve Chelwa duly notes therefore, ‘the paucity of comparative scholarly work that seeks to draw out China’s lessons for Africa’s industrialization.’ He notes, ‘rather than place the blame at the feet of Africans, as many, especially Western scholars, are wont to do, [China] sees this history of lacklustre industrial performance as largely the result of the ‘failure of Western development prescriptions’. He also notes the ‘total dominance of Western intellectuals & experts in the policy process in Africa.’ Chelwa looks at China’s ‘alternative, state-led development model as opposed to the private sector-led, market-centric approach that is the staple of the World Bank & International Monetary Fund.’ He stresses the failure (again, thwarting?) of ‘integrating various [production] elements into a system’.

     Indeed, ee constantly points to the media’s incessant faking in Sri Lanka about what true industrialization means. Industrialized countries hide their true nature. Many of our ‘educated’ do not even know that colonized Singapore is far more industrialized than most Asian countries. The colonial media therefore loves to romanticize handicraft and the fake ‘apparel industry, confuse assembly & manufacture, and claim tourism & plantations as industries. This ee therefore pinpoints very specifically at the ‘machine tool industry’, which we are denied. These ‘mother machines’ enable ‘the production of other machines & equipment’ and ‘are at the very core of the manufacturing engine’. Countries’ ‘manufacturing development trajectories’ have been ‘driven mainly by their machine tools industry, which have ‘introduced and spread technical change’!

     ee profoundly disagrees however with Chelwa’s analysis of China’s modern industrialization. Capitalist media & their economists love to (have to!) whiteout the real basis of China’s rise. Not only do they ignore what happened right after 1949, they totally malign what actually happened 1964-76, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). The current leader of China, Xi Jinping, during the GPCR was a student sent to the countryside, and his account of his experiences there have become a bestseller in China[ (& recently translated into English). Here is what China had to do to survive the second and third decade of its independence:

     ‘…the high cost of fighting the ‘paper tigers’ of imperialism. During those years when both superpowers were China’s enemies, China gave the Vietnamese US$20billion to fight the US invasion and they supported liberation movements elsewhere, especially in Africa (Tanzam railway, etc) to the tune of several billion. In addition, the relocation of industry to the interior of China for defence purposes took up half the national capital construction funds for the decade after 1964…

      ‘No estimates or published statistics exist for the billions of labor days invested in basic farmland capital construction from one end of the country to the other during the Cultural Revolution. If such calculations are ever made, it is safe to say they will dwarf the Pyramids, the Great Wall or any other previous human construction in scale and social purpose many times over. The policy decision of Mao and his Central Committee put a heavy burden on the peasants, did not raise their immediate disposable income, but did create the debt-free infrastructure (irrigation works, roads, railways, mines, oil wells, hydropower etc) that have become the basis for China’s later advances and her ability to turn to consumer production. In addition it must not be forgotten that the People’s Communes supported social income policies that provided healthcare, educational & other services at a level never before reached in the countryside.’ (Stephen Endicott, Socialist Development in Rural China, Reflections on the Experience of the People’s Commune, 1989)

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• Indeed, another world war (did the last one ever end?), despite its attendant horrors, will only force the birth of new socialist countries:

Industry & Socialism – ‘The imperialist framework & the capitalist form of appropriation strangle the productive forces, prevent them from developing. The only way out is to organize world economy on the basis of economic co-operation between the advanced (industrial) and backward (fuel & raw material supplying) countries (and not on the basis of the plunder of the latter by the former). It is precisely for this purpose that the international proletarian revolution is needed. Without this revolution it is useless thinking of the organization and normal development of world economy…

     But in order to be able to start (at least to start) organizing world economy on proper lines, the proletariat must triumph at least in several advanced countries. So long as that is not the case, our Party must seek roundabout ways of co-operation with capitalist groups in the economic field…

     That is why the Party, which has overthrown the bourgeoisie in our country and has raised the banner of the proletarian revolution, nevertheless considers it expedient to ‘untie’ small production and small industry in our country, to permit the partial revival of capitalism, although making it dependent upon the state authority, to attract leaseholders and shareholders, etc, etc, until the Party’s policy of doing the utmost possible in one country for the development, support and awakening of the revolution in all countries” produces real results.’ – JV Stalin, The Party Before & After Taking Power (see ee Economists)

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Contents:

Ranil Only Has Very Short-Term Plans Targeting Elections Causing Long Term Doom: CFA, Regain Sri Lanka, 100 Day Program, $12.5 Billion ISB Loans, Hambantota Port, IMF Program

August 11th, 2024

Dilrook Kannangara

Since he entered active politics almost 50 years ago, Ranil only had very short-term plans targeting elections. These plans subsequently turned sour and caused long term destruction. He simply bolted when their disastrous long-term consequences emerged. Catastrophic austerity measures have been agreed to with the IMF that will decimate the economies of the poor, middle class and even sections of the investing upper class people if Ranil wins the election. These have been cunningly delayed until 2025 March to be implemented knowing very well there are important elections before that. If Ranil becomes president, it will be too late for the people of Sri Lanka and for the nation itself.

Ranil’s Short-Term Plans – An Early Sign of Disaster

The UN declared 1985 as the year of the youth and JR used it to promote his nephew Ranil; appointed him as the youth services minister and generously dished out money for his short-term popularity gimmicks. These gimmicks were popular in the short term during the year 1985 and propelled Ranil to stardom at the same level of Premadasa, Lalith and Gamini, however, these short-term measures did not target youth unemployment, unrest and other real problems which boiled over just 2 years later by 1987! Other countries used the international year of the youth in 1985 to invest in their youth, diffuse youth unrest and empowerment. Not in Sri Lanka. That’s why the youth of Sri Lanka turned against the regime just two years later. This rebellion lasted until 1989 where violence was used against unarmed civilians to quell it. Ranil who promoted the youth in 1985 was supervising their killing in 1987, 1988 and 1989 just two years later in Biyagama, Batalanda and Sapugaskanda. This is a case in point for anyone to understand Ranil’s plans – they are based on short-term fun, disastrous in the long term.

Other Plans are Just as Bad

Ranil’s other plans are as bad. In 1993 he became Prime Minister and had a number of short-term programs to appease voters with the intention of winning the 1994 election. His money-wasting programs fizzled out and his UNP crashed to massive election defeats.

In 2002 he signed a sham ceasefire agreement (CFA) with the LTTE when the whole world declared war against terrorism! A totally unwise decision targeting upcoming elections. That too caused immense destruction to the nation, killed scores of top intelligence offices and the iconic foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar. It made subsequent national security measures very difficult as terrorists had infiltrated into every nook and corner during the sham ceasefire agreement.

His other short-term popular programs including Regain Sri Lanka, 100-day program and other hilarious initiatives were just as bad that left the nation in ruin without any long-term benefit.

His most disastrous economic plan led to borrowing $12.5 billion from expensive International Sovereign Bonds markets from 2015 to 2019. But the nation didn’t benefit at all. Most of it went into loan repayment, appeasement of various political groups (a very large number of political groups helped him win the election in 2015) and recover astronomical loss of the 2015 Bond Scams (2 of them). Nothing was invested.  This foolish move landed Sri Lanka in economic bankruptcy in 2022 and negative GDP growth from 2020 when those bonds started maturing. They were 5-year bonds.

His other short-term plans include leasing out the Hambantota Port for 99 years to China instead of investing in it to turn it to the next Colombo port which has reached full capacity. By the time he sold off the Hambantota port, it was making a modest profit. After he sold it to China, mainly Chinese vessels patronize it and Sri Lanka lost its potential and even bunkering profits. The Treasury is yet to receive the full amount of funds of its sale!

What Sri Lanka is going through currently is a period of clam before the storm. The IMF program is set to destroy Sri Lanka’s local industries by opening up local labor, professional and manufacturing markets to global competition. It also exposes Sri Lanka’s resources, profitable corporations and the finance sector to international auctions. Their assets will be stripped and sold by their buyers as they have no plans to run them. Part of the proceeds will go to repay loans including the $3 billion new IMF loan. But Sri Lanka’s economy will crash due to lack of local industries that employ locals, pay taxes to the government and contribute to the GDP.

Those who followed Ranil in his short-term fun projects also suffered. In 2010 Ranil used Fonseka to do his bidding and Fonseka essentially ended his political career as a result. In 2015 Ranil used Sirisena who also ended his and his clan’s political future as a result. The JVP also joined these Ranil tricks and paid a very heavy price crashing from 39 seats in Parliament in 2010 to just a handful by today. Ranil’s closest politicians including Range Bandana, Ravi K, Dianna, Harin and Manusha crashed out of parliament. The fate of Ranil’s former elections organizers is nothing short of tragic. His appointees to the Central Bank and state institutions including the Bribery and Corruption Commission also proved poor choices to say the very least. They too crashed out, untimely.

For these reasons, Ranil must be defeated at the election. However, the next leader will have to be smart enough to untangle and fix the mess created by Ranil for short-term election-oriented fun and diffuse multiple economic time-bombs Ranil has already left behind.


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