C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B., Ph.D.

Eelam deal?

After reading Mr. P. K. Balachandran’s (PKB) essay, Roots of ethnic contestation in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province,” (Daily Mirror on October 10th, 2023), I tried to understand why he wrote it and what was his purpose. Did he find any new roots of his own helping people to understand it better?  Against a vast body of research on the topic of a mythical Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka, PKB takes the readers along his confused and delusional Eelam path. After his essay, the outbursts of the TNA boy Rasamanikkam in the parliament, culminating in a secret removal in the night of a Buddha statute at an old Sinhala village, Divulapathaana (Batticaloa), creates a suspicion that PKB was engaged in most probably, a contract job to please the Eelam lobby, local and foreign.

An ethnic group based on language or religion is supposed to have only one organic homeland and not two or three.  But PKB supplies 3 homelands for his Tamil masters: the real one in Tamilnad, another in Jaffna and a third in the Eastern Province (EP). He forgets that the EP is an artificial demarcation. When Tamils in the Fiji Islands tried to claim a homeland there, they were chased out. Same happened in Malaysia and in Singapore.

Three Britishers debunk Tamil homeland myth | Sunday Observer    (December 11, 2022)

A senior reporter like him ought to take a holistic approach in understanding phenomena we see around us, on land and sea. One must see the trees as well as the forest. Justice cannot be done to the geography of (and history is past geography) the issue of adding the Eastern Province to the Eelam Northern Province by words and sentences written in an arbitrary, biased, and unreasonable manner.  Whether PKB is a Hindu or a Christian, it is a sin to mislead his readership with falsehood and half-truths. As the then Sunday Leader newspaper editor Fredericka Janz, now exiled in the USA once said, a newspaper printing such delusional verbiage is good only for wrapping fish at the market.

Malaria mosquito and PKB

The best way to handle his confusing hidden agenda is to expose him to facts so that he cannot try to play a game of ‘taking fire under water.’ Decades ago, historian K. M.de Silva and geographer G. H. Peiris explained with data why Chelvanayagam’s artificial homeland theory and his complaint of Sinhalization of the dry zone with irrigation projects had no roots at all. Since the days of the Dutch rule, white masters tried to populate the Wanni region with Tamils from South India, but the malaria mosquito prevented it. On the other hand, reports of the English administrative officers confirm that Sinhala villagers lived in these regions continuously.  No Tamil was displaced by the peasant colonization schemes started in the 1940s. With the confiscation of their lands by the white rulers for tea plantations, Kandyan peasants became prisoners in their own ancestral lands, and after 1931 an attempt was made to give them land where land was available, in the dry zone.

*1.  The Tamil ethnic formula is not as simple as PKB thinks. There are Vellala Tamils, low caste Tamils and Batticaloa Tamils. At the beginning, Muslim leaders stood behind Prabakaran, until the Muslims in the North were chased out by him. There was no dominance issue between Tamils and Muslims.

The package deals of Mrs. CBK (and Neelan-GL) during 1995-2000 recognized a Muslim region in the Eastern Province, while allowing room for Neelan Thiruchevam’s dream for a mono Tamil region in NP+EP with provisions for a merger.

Nobody speaks about the Sinhala residents displaced by Prabakaran. There is also a story that the low caste Tamils happened to be the original Sinhala people subjugated by the Vellalas who came from Tamilnad during colonial times. Surnames of these Tamils and Tamilized village names support this thinking.

Until 1911, Ceylon had Malabar inhabitants, not Tamils. It was Ponnambalam Arunachalam who got the designation changed as Ceylon Tamils.

*2. PKB ignores the fact that the separatist politics by TNA, Wigneswaran and Ponnambalam etc. are facing a crisis with a rapidly diminishing voter base. Tamil people are not in support of a Tamil Eelam or a 13-A plus or minus. The low caste Tamils have realized that in an Eelam they will be suppressed by the Vellala ruling class. They found the Sinhala army as their friend while the Indian RAW is promoting Hindi language in Jaffna.

*3. PKB is silent about the Tamil Che Guvera, Arun Siddharth in Jaffna, who has developed political links with the southern Sinhala Buddhist leaders. Both Jaffna and Colombo-living Tamil separatist politicians consider Arun as a survival threat for them. They and the Indian government office in Jaffna hate Arun’s request for help in teaching Sinhala to low caste Tamils and Tamil to Sinhala officers etc. The former governor of the Eastern Province Anuradha Yahampath started programs to teach Tamil and Sinhala in schools and offices in that province.

*4. Another geographical factor that PKB hides is that there was no Hindu Tamil – Sinhala Buddhist clash in Sri Lanka. 15-20% of the sacred space of a Buddhist temple is devoted to Hindu gods and goddesses, and some Hindu Kovils are maintained by village temples.  In fact, protest marches against ancient Buddhist temples in Jaffna, Trinco or Mulathive are led by Christian Tamil pastors and not by the Hindu priests!  The new reality in Jaffna is that Non-Vellala Tamils are supporting the ancient Buddhist temples in Jaffna and the Eastern Province.

*5. The Eastern province is an arbitrary demarcation by the British. It was/is an organic, natural part of the Kandyan kingdom per Robert Knox’s book. Before that when the Portuguese began killing Muslims in the western coastal areas, the Sinhala king allowed them to migrate and settle down in the Eastern province (and the Muslim politicians demand an Oluvil country today thanks to this world’s first refugee settlement project!).  Catholic villages in the Kandyan regions today are also a relict of the second refugee project when the Dutch Reformist church started killing Catholics in coastal areas.

*6. PKB’s superficial and bias HISTORICITY

PKB does not demonstrate he has any deep or critical knowledge of Sri Lankan or the Eastern Province history. He relies on one Fr. Rajan Rohaan of the Church Commission for Peace and Justice and Nirmala Chandrahassan respectively, for his Eelam pilgrimage. Nirmala is the daughter of EMV Naganathan and daughter-in-law of SJV Chelvanayagam, the two Christians who were behind the establishment of the Federal STATE Party disguised as Federal Party.

Who in the world disputed the existence of Buddhist ruins in India or in South India? Do we need PKB to tell this to the world. The question is that there is not a single Buddhist temple with an unbroken history of existence in South India today. Piggybacking on Sunil Ariyaratna’s book on ‘Tamil Buddhists,’ Wigneswaran tried to fool people saying that Tamil Buddhists in Jaffna were converted to Buddhism by Sinhala occupants and later these Tamil Buddhists became Shiva Hindus! He thought by this theory he could pump oxygen to Chellanayagam’s Tamil homeland myth.

During the Babri Masjid controversy in Ayodhya, when the mosque site was subjected to new excavation as ordered by the Indian supreme court, under the Hindu shrine (Rama’s temple), they found the ruins of a Buddhist temple! Similarly, in Polonnaruwa underneath the two Shiva kovils built by the Chola rulers, they found the ruins of Buddhist temples! Based on Buddhist religious literature, some scholars speculate that the famous stone at Mecca (Makkama-Makulolaramaya) Saudi Arabia, was part of a Buddhist temple. A simple excavation could reveal whether this is true or false.

*8. PKB is crazy to think that ancient Buddhist ruins in the Eastern Province were discovered after 2019 with the appointment of a committee by the president Gotabhaya. For example, Kurundi vihara was identified first by the British officers, and Ven. Ellawala Medhananda spent more than 35 years recording information about such archaeological sites.

*9. PKB needs to list the names of temples newly opened at locations without people. It is people who invites a temple and a monk not the other way around. He must be confused about the situation when ancient temple ruins were discovered a monk deciding to reside there to protect it from the enemies of archaeology!

*10. PKB is silent about the two types of invasions Sinhala Buddhists and Hindu Tamils face: Unethical religious conversions by the Christian evangelical/fundamentalist world movement and the Sharia-Wahabi Islam expansion into the cities and town all over the island. It has a weapon called war of wombs, promoted by Yasar Arfat and Gaddafi, baby making factories with a dozen or so women and one or two men in Arab-funded buildings!

*11. With clear evidence that it is Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe (RW) as president of the country who is creating problems between religious and ethnic groups by his unnecessary comments etc., PKB is feeding RW & Co. with false data. The anti-Sinhala Buddhist agitations by the Christian boy Rasamaikkam gets an automatic boost when RW downgrades ancient coastal temples as light houses built for the benefit of ships sailing around Sinhala Deepa!

PKB is deaf and blind when RW orders officers to stop private donations to restore and repair ancient temples while mesmerizing some monks about establishing a new international Buddhist university at Mahavihara. The truth is already there is one such university (Nalanda) in the Gampaha area. Instead of a duplicate new university RW could help this Nalanda International Buddhist university.

PKB cannot be ignorant of the fact that Buddhism is different from other God-based (Abrahamic) religions. There were no wars against other religions or forced religious conversions. It invites people to come and examine, not come and believe.  Buddhism accommodates minor Hindu gods and goddesses, but Buddhists cannot accept the new western intrusion coming as the Interfaith Movement which promotes an idea that all religions preach the same message, because for Buddhists, each individual must find his/her salvation by his/her own actions, and no God can do this for him. This is what the likes of Rasamannikam cannot fathom. Both RW and PKB may be playing double games, but Rasamanikkam is determined to get what his grandfather and Chelvanayagam wanted in 1949, an Eelam of the Kosovo model.

Prof. Hudson McLean

The Pen Not the Gun!

Right at this moment the World has Reached a Critical

Crunch, mainly due to Human Greed & Fear!

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine is a Case-in-Point!

The Fear of Crimea falling into NATO hands drove Russia to move into forward gear to attack Ukraine.

It is said that USSR and now Russia, always Negotiated with Military Tanks!

The current recent events have shown that Ukraine for its size, is a serious challenge to Russian might and even prove that, the current David Might Beat Goliath!

Moving a few thousand kilometers to the East,  Hamas made a dramatic example of Cruelty combined with Savage efficiency of annihilating innocent  music lovers on Israeli soil.

In 1994 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands, under the auspices of President Bill Clinton.

https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/8528.htm

The Hamas move on the 7^th October 2023 can only be defined as a Total Destruction of Innocent Humanity!

Yes! Palestinian People deserve their Homeland.

And the Israeli People agreed on this principle.

Many of the Arab Nations, led by Egypt, Saudi Arabia were seeking Peace in the Middle East!

Whatever it is Said & Done, Israel & the Israeli Citizens do have a Right to Live in Peace like any other in this World!

With Russia, Win or Lose the Ukraine War, is on a Losing Streak, very much like Hamas!

However, point to note, the destruction of the Gaza Strip may not end and, will not end this  2000+ year old Israeli conundrum!

But it is a Necessary Must!

However the Hamas Press & Public  Relations Information Machine is Driving on High Gear generating Positive Opinion.

Confrontation or Compromise?

And Credible Communication!

Better to Agree that, It is the Pen but Not the Gun that Rules the World!

Express Your Opinion – Read What Others Say!
The Independent Interactive Voice of Sri Lanka on the Internet.

Please visit -: http://www.lankaweb.com/

අග්‍රාමාත්‍ය මාධ්‍ය අංශය

අග්‍රාමාත්‍ය දිනේෂ් ගුණවර්ධන මහතා සහ ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදලේ (IMF) විධායක අධ්‍යක්ෂ ආචාර්ය ක්‍රිෂ්ණමූර්ති සුබ්‍රමනියන් මහතා අතර හමුවක් අද (2023.10.23)  අරලියගහ මන්දිරයේදී පැවැත්විණි.

එකඟ වූ වැඩසටහනේ ප්‍රගතිය විස්තර කළ ආචාර්ය ක්‍රිෂ්ණමූර්ති සුබ්‍රමනියන් මහතා     ආර්ථික ප්‍රගතිය සඳහා රජයේ මධ්‍ය කාලීන මෙන්ම දිගු කාලීන සැලසුම් සඳහා අවශ්‍ය සහය පිළිබඳව අග්‍රාමාත්‍යවරයාගෙන් උපදෙස් ඉල්ලා සිටියේය.

 දැනට ගෙන ඇති ක්‍රියාමාර්ග පිළිබඳව අග්‍රාමාත්‍යවරයා ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදලේ විධායක අධ්‍යක්ෂවරයා දැනුවත් කළ අතර, සමාජයේ අඩු ආදායම්ලාභී ජන කොටස් සඳහා වන මූල්‍ය ආධාර සෘජුවම බැංකු ගිණුම් වෙත තැන්පත් කර ඇති සුබසාධන යෝජනා ක්‍රමයේ ප්‍රගතිය පැහැදිලි කළේය.

අග්‍රාමාත්‍ය ලේකම් අනුර දිසානායක සහ මහ බැංකුවේ ආර්ථික පර්යේෂණ අධ්‍යක්ෂ ආචාර්ය පී. කේ. ජී. හරිස්චන්ද්‍ර යන අය මෙම සාකච්ඡාවට සහභාගි වූහ.

Courtesy The Nation

In the recently held elections in Maldives, a pro-China candidate Mohamed Muizzu won the elections on the slogan India Out” of Maldives. The Indian Ocean islands have been a battleground between China and India. The area is 9000 square kilometres out of which 298 square kilometres is dry land. No island is larger than 8 Kilometres and only 200 Islands are inhabited.
Malé is the capital and a third of the population lives here. The President elect Muhammad Muizzu of the People Nation Congress got 54 percent of votes against the sitting president Ibrahim Solih. Muizzu was supported by former president Abdullah Yamin, from 2013 to 2018. The present president won the elections in 2018 and his government’s foreign policy was based on India’s first approach and declared India as a big brother. Solih sent Abdullah Yamin behind bars who was subsequently jailed for money laundering and was disqualified. The most important factor in Muizzu’s victory was his campaign against Indian Influence and the presence of the Indian military in Maldives. The Maldivians also showed their concern about the continued Indian influence, the presence of an Indian military contingent and secret deals with India. Banners and posters were displayed across the island country India Out” scribbled on it. It was former president and opposition leader Abdullah Yamin wore a T-shirt with the words India Out”.
He was the one who introduced the slogan India Out” from Maldives. In June 2022 Maldivians stormed the Indian Yoga Day celebrations organised by the Indian High Commission. When India Out” campaigns were at its peak before election the Ibrahim Solih Government, under Indian pressure, issued a decree that the India Out” campaign by the opposition was a threat to national security. The former president Abdullah Yamin curtailed Indian influence in the country and joined the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. The election victory of Muhammad Muizzu, pro-China has disturbed India. The Chinese presence in the Maldives for India is a threat and a matter of concern. India is bullying and pressurising small neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and exerting pressure on countries like Seychelles and Mauritius. In 2018 the Seychelles opposition parties forced India to abandon its plan to develop infrastructure in the country.
To pressurise Nepal against its constitutional amendments, imposed a blockade on Nepal. The blockade resulted in a shortage of fuel, medicine, and essential supplies. Another reason for the blockade was a visit to Nepal by a high-level Chinese delegation and a Nepali delegation visiting China. In 1988 India carried out Operation Cactus in Maldives when there was an attempted coup by landing its troops in Maldives. India undertook the action to demonstrate its power and flex its military muscles. India is propagating that the Chinese will trap Maldives in its debt trap to control small countries as they did in Sri Lanka. The Chinese got a 99-year lease of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port.
However, the actual reason is that they fear Chinese presence in their backyard and a real threat to India. Pakistan and Maldives enjoy excellent relations based on respect, common faith, and shared interest. Pakistan built the parliament building as a gift to Maldivians. Pakistan also provides training to Maldivian diplomats and offers seats in professional colleges and universities for Maldivian students.

Reuters

COLOMBO, Oct 23 (Reuters) – Sri Lanka’s consumer price inflation rate eased to 0.8% year-on-year in September from 2.1% in August, the statistics department said on Monday.

The National Consumer Price Index (LKNCPI=ECI) captures broader retail price inflation and is released with a lag of 21 days every month.

Food prices fell 5.2% in September after declining 5.4% in August, from a year earlier, the Department of Census and Statistics said in a statement.

Prices for non-food items, however, climbed 5.9% in September after rising 9% year-on-year in August.

Sri Lanka experienced record high inflation after its economy was pummelled by the worst financial crisis in decades.

But since June, its inflation has come down sharply, partly due to the statistical base effect, but also helped by a stronger rupee currency, and improved harvests.

Sri Lanka raised power prices for households by 18% last week but the increase is unlikely to significantly push up inflation, analysts said.

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“We expect inflation to end the year at about 5%. A small increase is expected as the base effect is coming to an end from September but the impact from price adjustments is not expected to be severe,” said Dimantha Mathew, head of research at First Capital Research.

Sri Lanka secured a staff level agreement on the first review of its $2.9-billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last Friday but it still needs approval from the global lender’s Executive Board.

The island needs to finalise debt restructuring talks with main bilateral lenders including Japan and India as well as bondholders to get past the first review and secure a second tranche of about $330 million.

The battered economy is still expected to contract by 2% in 2023 after shrinking 7.8% last year.

Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe in Colombo and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Robert Birsel

CNN

Oct 23 (CNN) – We don’t want any foreign military boots on Maldivian soil… I promised this to the people of the Maldives and I will live up to my promise from day one.”

Dr Mohamed Muizzu, who won the Maldives presidential election last month, is wasting no time in asking India to get its troops out of the country.

The president-elect, who is due to be sworn in later in November, told the BBC in an exclusive interview that he met the Indian ambassador a few days after his victory and told him very clearly that every single Indian military personnel here should be removed”.

The Maldives has long been under India’s sphere of influence and Mr Muizzu’s demand is likely to trigger diplomatic tensions between Malé and Delhi.

In fact, when Mr Muizzu won the Maldives presidential poll, that was seen as a setback for India – especially as his opponent, the incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih – had drawn his country closer to Delhi since taking over in 2018.

The alliance backing Mr Muizzu portrayed this relationship – strengthened by Mr Solih’s India-first policy – as a threat to the Maldives’ sovereignty and security.

Mr Muizzu’s alliance favours closer ties with China, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the Maldives in the form of loans and grants for infrastructure and development projects.

But India, which wants a foothold in the strategically located islands to monitor a key part of the Indian Ocean, has also provided about $2bn in development assistance to the country.

If its troops are forced to leave, it will be a blow for Delhi.

But a furore over gifts” that Delhi gave the Maldives – two helicopters received in 2010 and 2013 and a small aircraft in 2020 – has given the India out” campaign a huge boost.

Delhi said the craft were to be used for search and rescue missions and medical evacuations.

But in 2021, the Maldivian defence force said about 75 Indian military personnel were based in the country to operate and maintain the Indian aircrafts. This fuelled suspicion and anger as many felt the reconnaissance aircraft were being used as an excuse to put Indian boots on the ground.

Mr Muizzu also says that the presence of these troops could put the Maldives at risk – especially as tensions between India and China escalate along their Himalayan border.

Maldives is too small to get entangled with this global power struggle. We will not get entangled into this,” he said.

Speaking to the BBC before the presidential poll, the outgoing president Mr Solih said fears about the presence of Indian troops were exaggerated.

There are no militarily active overseas personnel stationed in the Maldives. Indian personnel currently present in the country are under the operational command of the Maldives National Defence Force,” he said.

But it’s not just the aircrafts. Mr Muizzu said he wanted to review all the agreements the Maldives has signed with India in recent years.

We don’t know what’s in there. Even in Parliament, some of the MPs during the debates said that they didn’t know what’s in there. I am sure we will find it out,” he said.

Soon after his victory, observers noted that the Chinese ambassador in Malé was quick to congratulate Mr Muizzu.

Chinese President Xi Jinping also weighed in, saying he attached great importance to the development of bilateral relations and stands ready to work with President-elect Muizzu to carry forward the traditional friendship, deepen practical cooperation”.

Mr Muizzu has also spoken highly of Chinese infrastructure projects in the Maldives, saying the investments had transformed Malé city and brought benefits to its residents.

However, he has denied being a pro-China” candidate as opposed to the pro-India” Mr Solih.

I am a pro-Maldives person. For me, Maldives comes first, our independence comes first” he said. I am not pro or against any country.”

Despite this, however, his opposition alliance includes the party of former president Abdulla Yameen who was instrumental in moving the Maldives closer to China.

When India and Western lenders were not willing to offer loans to Yameen’s administration due to allegations of human rights violations, Yameen – who is currently serving a 11-year prison sentence for corruption – turned to Beijing who offered him the money without any conditions.

He then joined President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative – which aims to build road, rail and sea links between China and the rest of the world.

Mr Muizzu was seen as a proxy of Yameen – who was barred from contesting the election.

Soon after he won the election Mr Muizzu asked the current administration to move Yameen from a high-security prison to house arrest in the capital Male.

But given Yameen’s uneasy and tense relationship with Delhi, it could well be a struggle for Mr Muizzu’s new alliance to balance ties with India.

Mr Muizzu sounds keen to emerge out of the shadows of Yameen and is all set to charter a new path both domestically and in the country’s foreign affairs.

Given his decisive victory he may not face much resistance internally, at least in the initial stages.

He sounds determined to take the Maldives out of India’s orbit but convincing Delhi to withdraw its troops may be his first big challenge.

By P.K.Balachandran/Counterpoint

American Jews protest in Washington DC against Israel

Colombo, October 23: It comes as no surprise that liberals, leftists and Muslims in America have been demonstrating against Israel’s bid to de-populate Gaza under the guise of hunting down Hamas. But what has come as a  surprise is that a large section of the US Jewish community is coming out against Israel’s brutal response.

American Jewish protesters demand that President Joe Biden play the peace-maker rather than arm Israel to the teeth to help it carry out a war of annihilation thereby precipitating a regional and even a global catastrophe.   

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In New York, which is a stronghold of American Jews being home to two million of them, a Jewish group calling itself Not in Our Name” has protested against the ‘dehumanisation’ of Palestinians.

A France 24 report from New York gives the case of protestor Jessica Murphy, a 27 year-old medical student who, though losing her father in the 9/11 attack, felt bad for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

She was concerned that a false dichotomy was being created, whereby one either supported terrorism or supported the brutal State of Israel.

I was obviously a child when 9/11 happened, and it’s only many years after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the torture and detention of many innocent people at Guantanamo Bay, that I learned about those horrors the US committed, ostensibly in the name of 9/11 victims like my dad,” she recalled.

Murphy condemned retaliatory violence and insisted that the US stick to strict standards of morality and the Rule of Law.

I feel that Israel is making a similar mistake that the United States did,” she adds, stressing that war crimes, however horrific, do not entitle countries to commit crimes of their own.

Obviously, the attacks by Hamas were a war crime. But that does not justify war crimes by the United States in Iraq or by Israel in Gaza,” Murphy said.

She was part of a group of about 1,000 protesters who gathered outside US Senator Chuck Schumer’s house on October 13, to make  him and other politicians stop funding the Israeli military.

Jewish peace activist Tal Frieden was among those arrested for blocking entry to the street where Senator Schumer resides, chanting Not in Our Name” throughout the protest.

Frieden’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors from Hungary. He told France 24 that his family had taught him that never again” for the Jews should also be never again for anyone”.

Frieden, who is part of the anti-Zionist Voice for Peace” movement,  viewed the Israeli bombing of Gaza as genocide”.

UN legal experts have said that Israeli actions in Gaza could amount to ethnic cleansing”. According to Palestinian officials more than 4,000 people were killed in Gaza since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people.

Frieden thought that the number of Jewish Americans joining the anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist movement was increasing.

The tides are changing, and we’re seeing more and more support for Palestinian liberation,” he said.

Laurie Rohrich, a Jewish entrepreneur eating Palestinian mezze at the Palestinian eatery Ayat told France 24: Hamas is a terrorist group but these people (civilians in Gaza) are just trying to live in 140 square miles. They have families, and they want the same things as the rest of us all want – just peace and safety, food, shelter.”

On October 19, Times of Israel reported that over 300 were arrested at a Washington rally demanding that Israel stop the war in Gaza.

The rally was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow, two Jewish groups that criticise Israel and accuse it of genocide and other human rights violations.

The rally, that drew 10,000 people both inside and outside Capitol, took place on the day President Biden visited Israel in a show of support to it, even as he was negotiating humanitarian aid for Gaza civilians.  

We shut down Congress to draw mass attention to the U.S. complicity in Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians,” JVP posted on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Just as we demand an end to genocide in Gaza, we must put the same effort into dismantling the systems of Zionism, apartheid, and colonialism that brought us to this moment,” JVP said.

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,” shouted participants at a rally organized by IfNotNow, which was founded in 2014. Protesters wore prayer shawls and at least one brought a shofar (a ram’s-horn trumpet formerly used by Jews as an ancient battle signal and now used in Jewish religious ceremonies).

One speaker, leading a call-and-response with the crowd, recited a traditional Jewish message to mourners, using the Arabic term Al-Quds,” for Jerusalem rather than the Hebrew or English term.

American Jewish Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman argued in an article in New York Times on October 19, that escalation of the war through an invasion of Gaza would hurt all, Israel, the Palestinians and the US.  

He quoted Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea as saying that the extremely radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad had achieved more by mistakenly bombing the Gaza hospital than it achieved in all of its successful missile launches.”

Friedman explains: After that rocket failed and fell on the Palestinian hospital in Gaza, killing scores of people, Hamas and Islamic Jihad rushed out and claimed — with no evidence — that Israel had deliberately bombed the hospital, setting streets ablaze across the Arab world.”

When Israel and the United States offered compelling evidence a few hours later that Islamic Jihad accidentally hit the Gaza hospital with its own rocket, it was already too late. The Arab street was on fire, and a meeting of Arab leaders with Biden was cancelled.”

Friedman then said: If people cannot talk openly and honestly about a misfired rocket, imagine what will happen when the first major Israeli invasion of Gaza begins in our wired world, linked by social networks!”

That is why I believe that Israel would be much better off framing any Gaza operation as ‘Operation Save Our Hostages’ — rather than ‘Operation End Hamas Once and for All’ — and carrying it out, if possible, with repeated surgical strikes and special forces operations that can still get the Hamas leadership, but also draw the brightest possible line between Gazan civilians and the Hamas dictatorship.”

But if Israel feels it must reoccupy Gaza to destroy Hamas and restore its deterrence and security — I repeat — it must pair that military operation with a new commitment to pursue a two-state solution with those Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza ready to make peace with Israel.”

But it may be too late, Friedman worries.

I have never written a column this urgent before because I have never been more worried about how this situation could spin out of control in ways that could damage Israel irreparably, damage U.S. interests irreparably, damage Palestinians irreparably, threaten Jews everywhere and destabilize the whole world.”

He concluded saying: I beg Biden to tell Israelis this immediately — for their sake, for America’s sake, for the sake of Palestinians, for the sake of the world.”

Even though there is an improvement in the situation with Hamas releasing two Israeli-American hostages, Israel is carrying out aggressive operations on the Lebanese border and also in the West Bank. It has not given up its preparation for a ground assault on Gaza.

Courtesy Adaderana

A Cabinet reshuffle took place this morning (23 Oct.), during which the ministerial portfolios of several ministers including Mahinda Amaraweera and Keheliya Rambukwella were changed.

Accordingly, Minister Amaraweera, was sworn in as the Minister of Agriculture and Plantation Industries, while former Health Minister Rambukwella was sworn in as the new Minister of Environment.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ramesh Pathirana has been appointed as the Minister of Health, in addition to his current portfolio as Minister of Industries, while State Minister of Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya was appointed as the Non-Cabinet Minister of Plantation Enterprises, in addition to his current post.

The new ministers were sworn in before the President at the Presidential Secretariat a short while ago, the President’s Media Division (PMD) reported.

By Citizen Perera

Who says Sri Lanka is our Motherland, the country of our forefathers, the country of our birth, the country where we married, the country where our children were born and grew up, the country where our parents died and are buried, the country whose soil would one day lie comfortably over us, the country we lovingly call home?

We are proudly able to declare that we are Sri Lankans, because our records and archives – dutifully and painstakingly maintained in our Registries – tell us so and our rich history recorded in documents, books, and manuscripts, tell us so. 

But what happens if we are ordered to destroy all physical documents of identification and retain only a cryptic dog-tag identification number that corresponds to some data-entry in a master-computer? 

What happens if all lands in the country are mapped-out in outer-space by a satellite, and these lands are identified by cryptic grid-reference numbers which have corresponding entries in the master computer?

What happens if ownership to these lands -with cryptic grid-reference numbers provided by satellite – is identifiable only by cryptic dog-tag numbers?   

If, ‘paper-documents’ pertaining to ownership of land and pedigree charts are destroyed, if access to the master computer is restricted, and if entries in the master-computer are unfathomable without possession of the keys to satellite grid reference-numbers and dog-tag numbers, we, the people of Sri Lanka, would be reduced to a position where the owners of the technology (viz the owners of the computer hardware, software, and the information therein) would be in total control of all lands in Sri Lanka.

In this scenario, we, the people of Sri Lanka, would not be privy to, any news about the sale and purchase of lands in the country (16% privately owned and 84% government owned), the identities and Nationalities of persons buying and selling our lands and, the values and terms of the land transactions.

And another question arises; who owns and controls the satellites which provide, in this ‘paperless’ environment, the only information that would be available on the satellite-mapped land of ours?

Satellites do not belong to us; satellites can be destroyed; satellite information systems can crash, be hacked, be manipulated and satellite information can be deliberately withheld from us by those who own or control the satellites.

Having documented information, previously held in public-accessible registries, solely in a ‘cloud’ based digital register, is suicidal for the country.

If we destroy our physical records and archives in the registries and do not retain our deeds of ownership, we would not be able to prove ownership to our lands if the information in the master-computer is lost, transmuted, or denied by, system and satellite insecurity, fraud, accident, or by deliberate enemy activity.

If therefore ‘someone’ were to order us to deliberately destroy our physical documents of land ownership and, to discard our practice of using Earth-based compass bearings to plot maps, we need to assess the motives of that ‘someone’ issuing such orders.

Could that someone be paving the way to rob us of our land and dispossess us of our country with the aid of renegades who invariably would be making a few corrupt millions with the sale of our lands? 

In a document-less environment, a Nation leaves itself open for, money-laundering, fraud, and land-grabbing, especially by international players; in this environment the country could be sold-off to anyone – be he from Mars, the Moon, or the US – without the knowledge of the citizens.

In such a situation, Sri Lanka would soon cease to be the land of the Sri Lankans; Sri Lanka would be a country belonging to some aliens.

This situation poses a threat not only to our lands, it threatens the very life of our people if physical documents pertaining to identity are destroyed,

If every individual is reduced to a mere number in a computer, what would happen if, deliberately or otherwise, our dog-tag numbers are deleted from the computer?

We would cease to exist as human beings according to the computer; we would then not be able to access, food, medicines, education, housing, employment, property or any other service, the preserved right of a human being.

Selected segments of society, if deleted from the master-computer, would be compelled to literally live as slaves, begging for food and necessities, simply to live; their lives would be at the complete mercy of those who control the master-computer.

Our lives would be controlled by QR codes, a system that was successfully applied in Sri Lanka during the fuel crisis; it was a system that effectively restricted our movements. This QR code-system of control can be effectively applied to any area of human activity.

What happens if this master-computer is in the control of proclaimed eugenicists like Bill Gates who, like his father before him, believes that this world is overpopulated and needs to be reduced by about a billion?

Interestingly, during the recent Covid crisis, Gates as the largest donor to the WHO – in the absence of the US which had withdrawn its funding at that time – ran the WHO like a workshop in his backyard, taking very controversial steps. Millions died during this crisis. 

If therefore we destroy our manual records, we are signing our death-warrants.

South Africa confronted with a similar situation, refused to destroy historical archives and other ‘paper-documents’ pertaining to land ownership; they opted to retain their Deed system (or document-based system) of land registration without relying solely on the digital register.  Consequently, the public were able to retain access to the registries, know the identities, and nationalities of those purchasing and selling land and, the public were able to retain their right to challenge dubious land transactions in a court of law.  

It is diabolic that the US, which desperately attempted and failed previously to destroy our archives and documents pertaining to land ownership – first through the Bim-Saviya and then through the deceptive MCC ploy – now attempts to force such a scheme via the IMF, while they themselves do not practice this ‘paperless’ scheme in their country.  

It is understandable because the ‘paperless’ system of land ownership is an integral element of US strategy to take possession of the land of other countries in its declared aspiration to colonise the world.

Without ‘paper’ records, not only would the US be able to dispossess other nations of their lands, but they would also succeed in wiping out the history of those lands and their inhabitants. 

Five centuries hence there would be no records available to prove that Sri Lankans owned this land; it would resonate what the Europeans did to the native Americans in the US and Canada, the Aboriginals in Australia, and the Maoris in New Zealand in the bygone centuries.

In 2022, Sri Lanka became one of the first countries to fall prey to the American trap laid at Bretton Woods in 1944, to colonise the entire world, disarmingly described as ‘one-world-one-government’.

At Bretton Woods, the yanks designed two money-lending institutions – the IMF, and the World Bank – which would serve as America’s primary weapons of offence in their long and ambitious assault on the world; they began firing those weapons almost immediately thereafter by hoisting Keynesian economics on the world (a country spending more money than it had) as the panacea to the world’s economic misfortunes.

The IMF and the World Bank were in business with all countries virtually compelled to borrow from them. By 1970, most countries, if not all, were heavily in debt to the US; the US with majority ‘shares’ control both these lending institutions.

In Sri Lanka, the realisation has yet to seep-in that we have been colonised by the US via the IMF.

The colonial government in Washington is ordering Sri Lanka to change over 140 policy stances, through their lackeys placed in the political saddle in the aftermath of the Yankee-sponsored coup, described as the Aragalaya.

Interestingly, there was an Aragalaya in the US too; those who participated, encouraged, or got involved in any way in the American Aragalaya are being prosecuted and sentenced to jail for seditious conspiracy.

Sri Lankans perforce shall liberate their country from Yankee rule. When a legitimate government re-takes control of the country, it would not honour any of the illegal acts committed by the Yankees or those acting on their behalf; their acts would be considered illegal and therefore null and void.

In the meantime, Sri Lankans are advised to not destroy their paper documents. Retain them. If the colonial government of the US destroy our registries, Sri Lankans at the village level, are urged to maintain documented records pertaining to land, births deaths etc. This is our country. We shall overcome.

e-Con e-News

‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 15-21 October 2023

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Sri Lanka, Palestine & South Africa feature among the world’s

foremost struggles for majority rule in a unitary state…

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The USA is telling us to watch them engulf West Asia in blood in ‘real-time’. Again. They wish to tell the world: you can do nothing about it. Try if you must. (And if you fail, and you live, you can get a post-colonial PhD in Indiana!)

     They wish more rope. Shall we give it to them, or sell it?

‘We’re the United States of America, for god’s sake!

The most powerful nation in the history of the world.’

– Joe Biden, CBS 60 Minutes, 15 October 2023

The USA is threatening naval blockades of both West Asia, starting with Palestine, and of East Asia, centring on the South China Sea, escalating their fuel, fertilizer and food wars. This must surely shake the confidence of our most unbending advocates of export-oriented industrialization.

     The English, fearing an Imperial Japanese invasion from Singapore hooking up with Nazi Germany at the Suez via Sri Lanka in 1942, was forced by the Communist Party of Sri Lanka, to make concessions to cultivators and workers, and industry (see ee 15 February 2020, Indian Rhapsody). Would Sri Lanka’s present rulers, even dare?

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It was only the other day the SL President in New York took ‘centre stage’ (so said his family’s Financial Times of Colombo) at a US Carnegie Foundation Forum on ‘Ocean Nations’. (US Steel monopolist Andrew Carnegie, by the way, whose profits funded this Carnegie Foundation, was a Vice-President & funder of the US Anti-Imperialist League formed in 1898, during the US war on Spain’s colonies. The League was a battle waged by an older thief against a younger thief, who wanted to keep invading the world. The older thief is coy: we shouldn’t push it, we might go over the edge. Carnegie wished to protect his steel monopoly).

     Over a century later, the SL President at that Carnegie no doubt heard Manhattan’s robot-dentures clacking for a ‘Free & Open Indo-Pacific’ and a ‘Rules-based Order.’ The President, at least in his previous avatara, has been a fervent advocate of such ‘Western liberal’ nostrums. And why not? Free. Open. Rules. Order. Whoa!

*

‘You’ve just said ‘rule-based order’. Have you ever seen those rules?

No, you haven’t, because no one has agreed on them with anyone.

So how can one talk about order based on rules that no one has ever seen?

In terms of common sense, it’s nonsense. But it is beneficial to those who

promote this approach. Because if no one has seen the rules, it only means that

those who talk about them are making them up themselves

from time to time to their own advantage. That is the colonial approach…’

– V Putin, 16 October 2023

*

• This week as the US & petit-poodle England’s warships blockade, and their caged pitbull Israel froths and gouges deep into the flesh of remnant Palestine, we hear that that the US Carnegie Foundation, which recently sponsored the President’s speech in New York, advocates ditching this US ‘rule of law’ policy business.

     It’s an ‘abundant’ time. Palestine makes it abundantly clear, yet once more, white countries know nothing about real rule of law. Whiteness is lawlessness. The smell of blood thrills & flares their nostrils & nostrums – perfume to a lynch mob. Nothing like mass murder to unite them. Ah! The Concert of Europe: Malcolm X said, English may hate Irish, Protestant hate Catholic, Gentiles may hate Jews, but when they hear ‘Nigger’, they all run in the same direction.’ This week it’s the Palestinian – subset of that ‘ethnic’ category tagged in US penitentiaries as ‘Sand Niggers’.

     So no surprise how all their media & economists have to suddenly fall quiet on this ‘rule of law’ business. Such military precision. Not a word about such matters anymore from US embassy lipstick like EconomyNext or Advocata. Rule of Law. Not a squeak. It can’t be from embarrassment. They lack that lajja. And the media is not allowed memory!

*

• Ranil Feels for the East Wind – The SL President, who is mostly airborne, next went to Beijing this week for the 10^th Anniversary of the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). Sri Lanka’s links with China are ancient, and new promises were agreed upon. The President could have asked about the role of industrial strategy midst siege. China is an expert. He should have. Maybe the President is just flirting to attract more white largesse. We are not privy to that privy.

     And lo! After dragging their feet for months, the IMF suddenly announces on Friday that they have reached a ‘conditional’ ‘first staff-level agreement’ with Sri Lanka for ‘next review!’ First! Conditional! Talk about bureaucracy! Suddenly? The US wars in West and East Asia are about to reorient all the IMF forecasts! And we all know who decides. Here’s what was tugging at Morocco:

‘Failure to strike a deal would imperil the status of the central institution

of the global monetary system… Today, the US quota share is 17.43%,

and its voting share is 16.50%. Consequently, the US must agree

to all the IMF’s major decisions, including any changes in quotas.

In other words, whether we like it or not, any deal must satisfy the US Treasury.’

– Edwin Truman, advisor to Official Monetary & Financial Institutions Forum,

former director of US Federal Reserve’s International Finance Division

– ee Economists, Another stalemate on IMF quotas is not acceptable

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And the US Treasury is thirsty too it seems:

‘Sri Lanka is the only country in the world that will have drinking water

even if there is going to be a shortage of drinking water in the whole world.’

(see ee Agriculture, SL at the Pinnacle of the World in its Water Supplies)

*

With Sri Lanka’s drought/flood media ever at the ready to sensationalize disaster, another flood involved an overflow of stories diverting from the upcoming privatization of water. We hear from all the ‘concerned’ voices like the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), & World Food Program (WFP), who apparently need to remind us ‘Building water resilience… requires collective commitment’! Tell that to the Vel Vidane of yore!

     Then there’s Asian Development Bank (ADB) & Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA), generously funding the digitalization of the Water Board in anticipation of the privatization (ee Random Notes, The Water Act).

*

• US Advocata’s Digital Catatonic Tonics – Just as ee sonar detected not a hik squeak Gaza-wise from US thinktank Advocata, all of sudden there is an icy North Atlantic swoosh of their policy demands on Sri Lanka’s government. The most infamous Advocata-tonic this week ordered the President to ‘only use’ a ‘digital signature’ after 31 December 2023.

     Apparently, the President’s pen is not his own, with many hands groping to hold his pen (perhaps forging his good name), and the IMF (with Julie Chung offering the helping hand) wishes to make sure Washington holds his pen. And tight.

‘The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.’

– Omar Khayyám

• The IMF seeks to ensure that no matter how much the blood & many tears shed, and no matter the curses & votes cast on the road to Jayawardenapura or Galle Face Green (without pausing at Kollupitiya Junction), the Executive President’s writ holds as long as the irrigation of his fountain pen is regulated by the US Treasury (aka ‘Freest Marketeer’). The rest of the country’s bodily fluids could all ooze into the Diyavanna and India’s oceanic cesspit for all they care.

     Hence the IMF (& pipsqueak Advocata) demands Sri Lanka digitalize everything (IDs, Fuel, Health info, etc.), so a fund manager & their algorithm (off-Manhattan, for tax purposes) could determine the path of investment in Sri Lanka. All part of a ‘National Digital Strategy’, which the World Bank applauds for its focus on decentralizing SMEs! Now what does this mean, not just for national security, let alone industrial policy?

*

• Carving up Sri Lanka’s national assets for the USA will be discussed at next month’s Sri Lanka Economic Summit with the Ceylon Tobacco Company and State-Owned Enterprises Restructuring Unit Director General Suresh Shah, World Bank IFC Country Manager Alejandro Alvarez de la Campa, (Unilever-front) Sunshine Holdings Group Managing Director Vish Govindasamy, Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera, and Advisor to the Minister of Labour and Foreign Employment Shan Yahampath, with US Advocata CEO Dhananath Fernando moderating… (see ee Economists, Imperative for SOE reforms in focus at Sri Lanka Economic Summit

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‘Is the IMF setting Sri Lanka up for a 2^nd car crash?’

– Theo Maret, Financial Times of London

A rather provocative headline indeed, especially for those who think the USA’s IMF is a god, benevolent & concerned. Moneychanger Maret believes the IMF’s ‘unambitious targets’ are setting Sri Lanka up for another default. Someone should tell Maret, the applied mathematician, that he doth under-invoice: This is the IMF’s 17^th impending car crash!

     Maret (Market without the ‘k’!) spoke at a recent ‘Civil Society’ chat-up on Sri Lanka in perfumed Marrakech. Maret works for Global Sovereign Advisory (GSA), an ‘independent’ advisor of ‘governments & other sovereign entities on all their strategic, economic & financial issues.’

     Ghana hired GSA as debt advisors in Dec 2022, along with Lazard, and Hogan Lovells. Holders of Ghana’s bonds tapped Rothschild & Co and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe as advisers. Sri Lanka hired Lazard and Clifford Chance in May 2022 to serve as ‘advisors on debt restructuring’ to appease the IMF.

     ee has noted before the kuchi-kuchi between actors on both sides of this debt game, like the Rothschilds. June 2023 ee reported that 3 of France’s wealthiest dynasties were helping take ‘French bank’ Rothschild & Co private, or should we say, ‘more private.’ While protected by the biggest guns in the world, real ‘finance’ is the actual very small island, usually offshore, NFA (no fixed address), and OTB (off the books). Maret recalls, eg, that IMF targets ‘leaked into the market’ in Nov 2022, and ‘rallied’ Sri Lanka’s Eurobonds to double their value.

     GSA’s Maret was a part of a closed-door ‘Civil Society’ chat-up, with Verite, a US-funded ‘SL thinktank’, and the US-World-Bank-linked Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL). Guess who these ‘doors’ were ‘closed to? This ‘Civil Society’ (‘a rich dialogue among various stakeholders, including professionals & high-ranking members of the Sri Lankan delegation’) provided ‘civil’ fog for the IMF & World Bank annual meeting in Morocco.

     This ‘Civil Society’ chat drew attention to Sri Lanka’s allocation ‘of over 70% of its revenue to interest payments – the highest in the world!’ Which make any real ‘repayment’ not possible at all, especially when this ‘civil society’ of capitalists prevent Sri Lanka’s modern industrialization. This is the real corruption!

     Verite’s de Mel’s & TISL’s Perera’s ringing denunciations of the ‘corruption’ of the Sri Lankan government surely echoed louder across the icing western Mediterranean and into the Iberian Peninsula. The groaning to rearm moral fervor may have recalled young 16^th century Jesuits demanding the Pope send in the cannons to avenge some Sri Lankan King’s misdemeanor.

     Global Sovereign Advisory’s ‘civil’ intervention was more precise: the issue is the IMF’s criteria, especially for ‘market access’ – in other words, to grab national resources. And as the recent EU-Mercosur Treaty reveals, the EU’s Green/WhiteWash aims to grab critical raw minerals, while dumping fossil fuel-based car models, combustion engines, and agricultural pesticides.’ Maret also demands US control over SL’s foreign reserves & exchange rates (see ee Random Notes). EU meanwhile warns that Sri Lanka needs major investment to cut down charging time for EV cars! Forget production? (see ee Industry)

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• Sri Lanka, Palestine & South Africa count among the world’s foremost struggles for majority rule in a unitary state. And Sri Lanka’s Mannar Basin, the eastern Mediterranean’s Gaza Marine & south Atlantic Guyana’s Stabroek Basin have much in common.

     In 1948, the year the English were imposing Soulbury independence on Sri Lanka (with guarantees for ‘minorities’, including white & other merchants), the Zionists (many who’d collaborated with Nazi Germany) expelled half the population of Palestine in 9 months. Demolishing 500 out of 1,000 villages, Zionists depopulated 11 towns to create the state of Israel. The English had conveniently withdrawn their ‘mandate’ from Palestine just before – Nakba!

     In 1948, a white South-African government, imposed English-style apartheid, setting up Bantustans, framed on the ‘reservations’ of Canada’s Indian Act. They divided peoples into races (Whites, Blacks, Indians & Coloureds).

     The backdrop: In 1945, the US occupied Japan, and divided Korea & Germany. In 1947, the English divided India. In 1949, the US, after defeat in China, set up a quisling state in China’s province of Taiwan.

     Just before the most recent upheaval, Palestine had agreed to work with both Egypt & Israel to develop the vast Gaza Marine Gas Field, 30km off the Gaza Strip. Palestine, like Lanka etc, has been made dependent on fuel imports.

      Certain parallels are indicated by the seemingly surface activities of the agents of imperialism:

     It’s not just the Australians so generously protecting the indigenous donkeys of Mannar, while mining ilmenite in Puttalam. Or that the pearls that once were bubbled to the shores, long a source of international dispute, have come & gone. Or that there are other do-gooding-doing-good NGOs doing godly work as it were in them northwest parts bordering this ‘frontier failed rift basin’ just off Sri Lanka.

     In Sept 2021 ee noted , USAID & other funds were targeting ‘sensitive’ coastal communities (eg, Puttalam, Mannar, Trincomalee, Batticaloa) in Sri Lanka (& Myanmar) under various guises, to aid ‘peace-building’, ‘reconciliation’, ‘pluralism’, ‘women’s empowerment’, ‘religious diversity’, ‘conflict sensitivity’. One of the 1st acts of RW as the born-again PM in 2022 June was to hand out deeds to legally grant ‘ownership’ in coastal Puttalam, etc.

     There is a ruddy school of thought that believes the wars of the last decades in Sri Lanka are also umbilically linked to the grab for the Mannar Basin, flush with other bubblies, oils, gases & other energies.

     Some point to the grab of Guyana’s recently uncovered offshore gas fields by Exxon. Guyana was Cuba before Cuba, and the US & England set up ‘race wars’ to prevent it from becoming ‘another Cuba’. Guyana is expected to become Exxon’s top global oil producer. And even more, ‘Where the company ends and the government begins is increasingly unclear’ (see ee Random Notes)

*

Palestine, like Sri Lanka, is heavily reliant on imports for energy. Yet the Gaza Marine Gas Field holds more than a trillion cubic feet of gas.

     In September 2022, Palestinians rallied at Gaza City Seaport to demand their right to receive gas from eastern Mediterranean gas fields, and the lifting of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

     In June 2023, Israel gave ‘preliminary approval’ to exploit the Gaza Marine field.

     In September 2023, just before the recent slaughter, the Palestinian Authority again said it would sign an agreement to develop the offshore Gaza Marine natural gas field with Egypt and Israel.

     (On 9 Oct, US Chevron said it shut down a natural gas field off the Israel coast at official behest. The Tamar field, 15 miles off Israel’s south coast, meets 70% of Israel’s energy needs for power generation. Jordan & Egypt import 7% & 4% of their total gas supply from the platform. ‘Goldman Sachs analysts think the Tamar shutdown has ‘contributed’ to the rally in European gas prices.’ Others claim: the price rise was due to ‘a temporary shutdown of a leaky gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, and a planned strike by liquefied natural gas workers in Australia.’

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• Just as any bordello could set up a tent at the country fair as long as it increased the overall interests of the top merchant (who had first pickings among the fresh aubergines), the meaning of ‘civil society’ was furthered constricted or revealed by the ‘Sri Lankan Civil Society Initiative on Anti-Corruption Reform for Economic Recovery’, which set up ‘a closed-door event’ to whitewash the IMF Annual Meetings in Morocco.

     Trying to figure why ‘closed-door’? Perhaps it is not just oxygen (which the World bank’s Transparency International otherwise preaches) they were excluding, but China against whom they are putting up a greater wall? It turns out this year’s annual IMF/World Bank meetings in Morocco has been ‘the most explicitly confrontational yet by US/NATO diplomacy toward China’.

‘At issue is not only what countries will be the major beneficiaries of future IMF & World Bank loan operations, but whether the world will back US unipolar dominance or start to move explicitly toward a multipolar philosophy of mutual support to increase living standards & prosperity instead of imposing anti-labor austerity in an attempt to maintain a trade & investment system that is now widely seen to be dysfunctional & financially predatory US demands to use these 2 organizations as arms of its New Cold War policy.’ (see ee Focus, Hudson)

*

Instead of wailing about this good old colonial system, Transparency & Verite thundered about corruption! Their words could have surely pressed against the locked doors. Threatening to bust them up. But T&V are a salariat.

     Civil Society? EconomyNext and The Wickremesinghe family’s Financial Times and has become an open toilet paper of the US thinktank Advocata et al. But they have all gone rather quiet about ‘rule of law’, which has gone bunker-deep in US-occupied Palestine.

     Note a whiny tweet from Presidential Economic Advisor & Advocata chair Murtaza Jafferjee (this flush thintank is a complex corpocracy, with a CEO, & many many directors & fellows, many being women, beyond the requisite minority quotas, much like the ruling merchantry. Jafferjee is eagerly waiting for EC President Ursula Von Der Leyen to also condemn Israel’s denial of food, water & fuel to the Palestinians, as she did in the Ukraine. He laments such double standards are why the ‘Global South’ does not believe in their liberal platitudes. But other than that, all rather quiet in these openly lawless times. So what could it be?

     It turns out the US is about to ditch this rule-of-law biz. ‘Carnegie Council explains how the global rift necessitates a change in western policies. It especially sees a need to ditch the so called ‘value-’ or ‘rules-based-order’ policies.’

     Recall the President’s recent New York jaunt, included a roundtable on ‘Economic Opportunities in Sri Lanka’ was organized by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace & Sasakawa Foundation. Did they intimate to the SL Prez the new rules we must dance by? As articulate as anyone can be in English, is this why he put on that act of exasperation for viewers of Germany’s state TV’s English channel? Germans may not have watched.

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• ee continues to serialize Idirimagen Idiriyata, the Communist Party of Sri Lanka ‘s ‘Alternative Program’. This issue examines ‘the conceptual underpinnings, philosophy & ideologies of the alternative program’, where wealth would be equitably distributed, and national unity is the main condition for further development as a country.

     The program calls for ‘production of real goods’ to comprise ‘the mainstay of the economy’, hence the need for a high level of industrialization & technological transformation, even in agriculture. This needs a National Planning Council, with public ownership over natural monopolies such as energy, transport and communications. The program reminds that SoEs are a mainstay of not just Communist societies but also industrial capitalist ones.

     These CPSL proposals recognize the shift of economic power to Asia and the rise of a multipolar world order, calling for Sri Lanka’s own economic strategy, including trade & industrial policies, to be in tune with these geopolitical & geo-economic dynamics. (see ee Focus)

Civil Society’s Funders & Fundamentalists

Dilrook Kannangara

Indian pitches are designed for cheap commercial ventures like IPL. These are unsuitable for international tournaments. CWC 2023 has broken batting records for the sole reason that cricket pitches are for slog-cricket and not for professional cricket. Bowlers can’t get any real support from these slog pitches. Good cricketing pitches balance between support for both bowlers and batsmen.

Changing the team to suit slog pitches is unwise. Instead, Sri Lanka must stick to its long-term plan to develop a strong cricket team. More importantly, Sri Lankan cricket pitches must not be converted to slog-cricket which is a cheap and gloomy version of the game.

CWC 2023 will be won not by the best fifty over cricket team but the best slog team. A tournament in poor taste and a disappointment.

එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය

UNP  කියන්නේ පවුලේ පක්ෂයක් නෙමෙයි.

අපි නියමිත වෙලාවට මැතිවරණ පවත්වනවා.

2024 ජනාධිපතිවරණයේ නිර්පාක්ෂික අපේක්ෂකයා රනිල්. 

නිහැඬියාව බිඳිමින් රවී විශේෂ සම්මේලනය අමතමිනි කියයි.

එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය හැර ගොස් සිටින සියලුම දෙනාට යළි මහ ගෙදරට පැමිණෙන ලෙසත් UNP කියන්නේ පවුලේ පක්ෂයක් නොවන බවත් කොළඹ දිස්ත්‍රික් නායක හිටපු මුදල් අමාත්‍ය රවි කරුණානායක මහතා පවසනවා.

ඒ මහතා මෙම අදහස් පළ කළේ එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය සංවිධානය කර තිබූ හැත්තෑ හත් වෙනි විශේෂ සම්මේලනය අමතමිනි.

සුගතදාස ගෘහස්ථ ක්‍රීඩාංගනය පැවති මෙම සම්මේලනයේ පිළිගැනීමේ කතාව සිදු කරමින් හිටපු අමාත්‍යවරයා මෙලෙස අදහස් පළ කර සිටියා.

අද දවස කියන්නේ ඓතිහාසික දවසක් අපි මේ පවත්වන්නේ 77 වෙනි සම්මේලන පමණක් නොවේ මේ විශේෂ සම්මේලනයේ පක්ෂය අලුත් ව්‍යවස්ථාවක් හඳුන්වාදෙනවා. ඇත්ත වශයෙන්ම අපි යූඑන්පී කියන්නේ පවුලේ පක්ෂයක් නෙමෙයි මේකේ වටිනාකම කියන්නේ අපේ පක්ෂය පවුලක් ලෙස කටයුතු කිරීමයි. ඒ නිසයි අපි එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය කියලා කියන්නේ. පක්ෂය ගැන කිවුවහම අපට එකමුතුභාවය,දර්ශනයක් වැඩපිළිවෙළක්, බලය ගැනීම සඳහා පක්ෂ යාන්ත්‍රණයක් පාක්ෂිකයන් අත්‍යවශ්‍ය වෙනවා. ඒ අනුව රටේ බලගතුම පක්ෂය ඇති කිරීම සඳහා මම විශේෂ ආරාධනයක් කරනවා. ඒ තමයි කුමන හෝ හේතුවක් මත එක්සත් පක්ෂය හැරදමා ගොස් සිටින සියලු දෙනාට යළි මහ ගෙදරට පැමිණෙන ලෙසයි.

අපේ එකමුතුභාවය සමගියට අත්‍යවශ්‍ය වෙනවා   හැර ගිය පවුලේ සාමාජිකයන්ට පමණක් නොවේ මේ රටේ අනාගතය බාරගන්නා ඉන්න තරුණ තරුණියන්ට සහ වැඩිහිටියන් සියලු දෙනාට විවෘත ආරාධනාවක් කරනවා. 

රටේ ආර්ථිකය වගේම ජනතාවගේ ආර්ථිකයත් පහත වැටුණු හැම අවස්ථාවකම යළිත් නඟා සිටුවීමේ කාර්යභාරය හැම අවස්ථාවකම සිදු කරන ලද්දේ එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂයයි. 

යූඇම්පී කියන්නේ හැමදාමත් ඇත්ත කියපු පක්ෂයක්. දුරදිග දැකපු පක්ෂයක්. නිවැරදි දේ හරි ආකාරව කියපු පක්ෂයක්. අමිහිරි වුවත් ජනප්‍රිය දේශපාලනයෙන් බැහැර වූ පක්ෂයක්.

UNP කියන්නේ රට හදන පක්ෂයක්. අපට මහවැලි වෙන්න පුළුවන්, විශ්වවිද්‍යාල වෙන්න පුළුවන්,වරායවල්, මහපොළ,ගෙවල්,වෙළඳ කලාප,කර්මාන්තපුර, නව තාක්ෂණය ආදී විශේෂ දේවල් රටට හඳුන්වා දී තිබෙන්නේ එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂයයි.

එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂයේ වැදගත්ම සංධිස්ථානය ලෙස හැරී බලනකොට 1948 අපි නිදහස ලබා ගත්තට පසු  1977 දිවංගත ජනාධිපති ජේ ආර් ජයවර්ධන මහතා විසින් විවෘත ආර්ථිකය හඳුන්වා දෙමින් අපේ රට ලෝකයට එක්සත් කිරීමට කටයුතු කරනු ලැබුවා. ඒ වගේම 2015 රට වැටී තිබුණු ආර්ථිකය යළි ගොඩනැගීම සඳහා එවක අගමැති ලෙස කටයුතු කළ රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා ශක්තිමත් ආර්ථික වැඩපිළිවෙලක් ක්‍රියාත්මක කළා. ඒ වගේම 2022 රට බංකොලොත් වුන අවස්ථාවේ යලි රට ඔසවා තැබීමේ භාරදූර කාර්යභාරය පැවරුණේ එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂ නායකයාටයි.

එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය කියන්නේ හැමදෙනාම එකතු කරන්න පුළුවන් පක්ෂයක්. වර්තමානයේ විපක්ෂය සුරංගනා කතා කියන්න පුළුවන් විවිධ බිල්ලො මවන්න පුළුවන්,අන්තවාදය වපුරන්න පුළුවන්,මෙවැනි නොමඟ යවන ක්‍රියා සිදු කළත් හැමදාමත් එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය වට්ටන්න පුළුවන් වුණේ නෑ.

මේ රටේ වැටුණු ආර්ථිකය නඟා සිටුවන්න පුළුවන් එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂයට බව අපි 2015 වර්ෂයේදී ක්‍රියාවෙන් ඔප්පු කර පෙන්නලා දුන්නා. එවක මුදල් ඇමැතිවරයා වශයෙන් මම ආර්ථිකය ශක්තිමත් කිරීම සඳහා විශේෂ වැඩපිළිවෙළක් සිදු කරනු ලැබුවා. 

රාජ්‍ය සේවකයාගේ අවම වැටුප රුපියල් 10000 කින් වැඩිකිරීමටත්, ගෑස් ඉන්ධන සහ ජනතාවගේ අත්‍යවශ්‍ය ජීවන වියදම පහත හෙලීමට අපට හැකි වුණා.

ඒ වගේම තමයි අපි නව තාක්ෂණය රටට හඳුන්වලා රට පුරා ක්‍රියාත්මක කිරීමට කටයුතු කළේ 2015 වර්ෂයේ දී. නමුත් ඇතැම් අයගේ බාධා නිසා එය කඩාකප්පල් වුණා.යහපාලන ආණ්ඩුව අමාරුවෙන් හදපු රටේ ආර්ථිකය යළි 2022දී බංකොලොත් භාවයට පත් කළා. ගෑස් නැතුව, තෙල් නැතුව,විදුලිය නැතුව, ආහාර නැතිව, පොහොර නැතුව,ඩොලර් නැතුව, තිබුණු අවස්ථාවක තමයි  රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා ජනාධිපති ධූරයට පත්වෙලා  ජනතාව මුහුණ දී සිටි ආර්ථික අර්බුදයෙන් ගොඩ ඒමට ක්‍රියා කළේ.

මාස දෙකක් වැනි කෙටි කාලයකදී පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේ සහෝදර පක්ෂ සමඟ එකට හිඳිමින් මේ තනි අලියට හැකි වුණා.අද හැමතැනින්ම කතාවට ලක් වන්නේ එතුමා කළ විශිෂ්ට ක්‍රියාව පිළිබඳවයි.

අද හන්දි ගානේ කයිවාරු ගහන සියලු දෙනාමත් නිහඩව පිලිගන්නවා ඉදිරි දැක්මක් ඇතිව වැඩ කරන්න පුළුවන් එකම නායකයා රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා බව.

එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය හැමදාම කළේ වැටුණු ආර්ථිකය හදන වැඩේ නමුත් ඒ හැම අවස්ථාවකම අපිට බලය අහිමි වුණා. ඒක එහෙම වුණේ අපි හැමදාමත් රට ගැන හිතුවට අපි පාක්ෂිකයා ගැන යම් ප්‍රමාණයකට අමතක කරලා තිබුණ නිසයි.තිත්ත වුණත් ඇත්ත ඒකයි. අන්න ඒ නිසා තමයි අපිට පසුගිය මැතිවරණයේදී ලක්ෂ තිහකට ආසන්න පාක්ෂිකයන් පිරිසක් ඡන්දපොළට එන්නැතුව බලාගෙන සිටියේ. අන්න ඒ නිසා තමයි අපි අලුත් ගමනක් සඳහා පක්ෂයේ නව ව්‍යවස්ථාවක් ඇති කරමින් සියලු දෙනාටම එකට එකතු වෙන්න පුළුවන් පුළුල් සන්ධානයක් නිර්මාණය කරන්න යන්නේ. අපි ඒ තුළින් බලාපොරොත්තු වන්නේ 2024 වර්ෂයේදී ජයග්‍රහණයේ මාවතකට ගෙන ගොස් එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය ප්‍රමුඛ කරගත් ආණ්ඩුවක් බිහි කිරීමටයි.

අපේ අඩුපාඩු තිබෙන්න පුළුවන් හැබැයි දැන් වෙලාව එම අඩුපාඩු හදාගෙන නිහඬව සිටීම පාක්ෂිකයන් අවදි කරගෙන රට සංවර්ධනය කරන්න පුළුවන් මාවත කරා ගෙන යෑමේ වැඩපිළිවෙලට සහාය දෙන ලෙස මම සියලු දෙනාගෙන්ම ඉල්ලීමක් කරනවා. අපි රට හදන වැඩේ සිදු කරන ගමන් එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂ පාක්ෂිකයා ශක්තිමත් කරන යාන්ත්‍රණයක් සිදුකල යුතුයි. මෙම ඓතිහාසික සම්මේලනය සිට මම සියලු පාක්ෂිකයන්ට පොරොන්දුවක් දෙනවා අපේ ආණ්ඩුවක් බිහි වුණු දාට සියලුම පාක්ෂිකයාට ප්‍රමුඛතාවය ලබා දී කටයුතු කරන බවට. එක්සත් ජාතික පාක්ෂිකයා හැමදාමත් දර දිය අදින තැන තියන් නැතුව පෙරහරේ යන මාවත කරා රැගෙන යාමටයි අපි කටයුතු කරන්නේ.

අපි මේ වන විට සියලු සියළු පක්ෂ සමඟ සාකච්ඡා කර පුළුල්ම සන්ධානය නිර්මාණය කිරීමේ කටයුතු සිදුකරමින් පවතින මොහොතක් මේ සඳහා සියලුම ජනතාව ඒකරාශී කරන වැඩපිළිවෙළක් අපි මේ වන විට ක්‍රියාත්මක කරමින් පවතිනවා සමහරු අපෙන් අහනවා කෝ ඡන්දෙ කියලා අපි නියම වෙලාවට ඡන්දය තියන්න ලෑස්තියි.

2024 පැවැත්වීමට නියමිත ජනාධිපතිවරණයේ නිර්පාක්ෂික අපේක්ෂකයා ලෙස අපේ නායක රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා ඉදිරිපත් කරන බවත් ඒ තුළින් ලබාගන්නා ජයග්‍රහණයක් එක්ක රට සීඝ්‍ර සංවර්ධනයක් කරා රැගෙන යාමට අපි කටයුතු කරනවා.

පටු දේශපාලන අරමුණු වෙනුවෙන් එක් එක්කෙනා තැන් තැන්වල භේද භින්න ඇතිකරගත යුතු වෙලාවක් නෙමෙයි මේ, හැමදෙනාම එකාමෙන් එකට එකතු වී රට වැටී තිබෙන අර්බුද වලින් ගොඩ ගැනීමට සමගියෙන් සහ සංහිඳියාවෙන් කටයුතු කරන්න මේ විශේෂ සමුළුවේදී අදිටන් කරගමු.

Manusha Media

ස්මාර්ට් රටක් වෙනුවෙන් සිස්ටම් චේන්ජ්” කරමින් 2048 වන විට ආර්ථික නිදහස් රටක් හදන වැඩපිළිවෙල මගෙන් පටන් ගමු” වැඩසටහන සුගතදාස ගෘහස්ත ක්‍රීඩාංගනයේදී පැවති එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂ විශේෂ සම්මේලනයේදී ආරම්භ විය.

ස්මාර්ට් රටක් නිර්මාණය කිරීමේ වැඩසටහන මගේ පටන් ගමු” යැයි ජනාධිපති රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා විශේෂ සමුළුවේදී සදහන් කළ අතර කම්කරු හා විදේශ රැකියා අමාත්‍ය මනුෂ නානායක්කාර මහතා මගෙන් පටන් ගමු” බැජ් එකක් ජනාධිපතිවරයාට පළදවනු ලැබුවේය.

ඩිජිට්කරණයට ලක්වූ වැඩසටහන් සමගින් මගෙන් පටන් ගමු වැඩසටහන ඉදිරියට ක්‍රියාත්මක වන අතර පක්ෂ සම්මේලනයට පැමිණි සාමාජිකයින් එම වැඩසටහනට ඇතුළත් කරගැනීමද මෙහිදී සිදුවිය. 

By Sanjeewa Jayaweera Courtesy The Island

The English cricketer Moeen Ali, who incidentally is also the vice-captain of the team, posted on his Instagram page a thought-provoking quote: If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing”. The quote is attributed to the American Muslim human rights activist Malcolm X.

The post obviously refers to media (TV and newspapers) reporting the ongoing conflagration between Israel and Hamas. Moeen initially posted the quote along with a Palestinian flag in an apparent show of support for Palestine. He later deleted the Palestinian flag and replaced it with a photo of Malcolm X.

Whether one agrees with Moeen or not, he needs to be lauded for having the courage to say publicly what he believed despite the negative response it would evoke in a non-Muslim country and particularly given his status as the vice-captain of the English team. It would be interesting to know whether the rest or a majority of his teammates who are not Muslim think along the same lines.

The BBC Refusing to refer to Hamas as Terrorists

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has also been heavily criticized for not describing Hamas militants as terrorists” in coverage of the recent attacks in Israel. The UK Defence Secretary said the BBC policy is verging on disgraceful”. The Defence Secretary said, They are not freedom fighters, they are not militants, they are pure and simple terrorists, and it’s remarkable to go to the BBC website and still see them talking about gunmen and militants and not calling them terrorists.” Several other current and former UK politicians endorsed the views expressed by the Dence Secretary.

The BBC responded, We always take our use of language very seriously.” The veteran BBC reporter John Simpson said, ” Calling someone a terrorist means you are taking sides and ceasing to treat the situation with due impartiality. He also said, British politicians know perfectly well why the BBC avoids the word ‘terrorist’, and plenty of them have privately agreed with it over the years.

Many Sinhalese living in Sri Lanka as well as overseas have been very critical of the BBC and other overseas media channels for how they reported the civil conflict in Sri Lanka that spanned over 25 years. Most felt that their reporting was biased against the Sinhalese and the government. As to how many Sinhalese who now support Palestine would welcome the stance of the BBC would be interesting! The perception that the foreign media is biased was well illustrated recently when President Ranil Wickramasinghe lost his composure during an interview on Deutsche Welle, a German channel. He accused Western governments and media of hypocrisy in demanding an international investigation into the Easter Sunday bombings. He questioned whether they have investigated with foreign judges in their own countries.

Terrorists versus Freedom Fighters

The best all-encompassing definition of Terrorism I came across is The calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population, thereby bringing about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies, intelligence services, and police.” (Brittanic).

A Freedom Fighter has been defined as ” a person who uses violent methods to try to remove a government from power. It is often said that one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist.” (Cambridge Dictionary). This is precisely what happened in Sri Lanka when, during the conflict, for nearly all Sinhalese, the LTTE were terrorists, and for most Tamils, they were freedom fighters.

Downside of taking sides based on media reports

As in the rest of the world, in Sri Lanka, too, particularly among many English-speaking Colombo folk with no previous interest or knowledge of the Middle East, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas has caused strong opinions to be formed and expressed.

Most have done so based on videos and news reports aired over local and foreign TV channels. Certainly, atrocities that result in the murder of innocent civilians need to be deplored. Visuals and newspaper reports of young children and older adults being killed are repulsive and deserve our condemnation. There is no place for such atrocities in a civilized world.

However, the problem lies when those at the forefront of such condemnation do it selectively. It is certainly not the first time children and elders have been killed by indiscriminate bombing and shootings during raids in the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Ukraine or elsewhere by all parties involved in the conflict.

Based on media reports that are not balanced, it is quite natural and convenient to conclude who is right and wrong. This is precisely what Moeen was saying in his post. Whilst condemnation of atrocities against civilians is in order, there is a need to study and understand why there is an ongoing conflict, why it arose, and the reasons for the non-resolution.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has been ongoing for several decades. This is where the media needs to play an important role in ensuring balanced reporting and highlighting the hypocrisy that prevails, particularly regarding civilian casualties during conflicts.

UN-mandated sanctions on Iraq and consequences on children

Famously, in an interview in 1996, Madeleine Albright, who was an American diplomat who also served as the US Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001, said when asked by Lesley Stahl, the interviewer, We have heard that half a million children have died in Iraq due to the UN-mandated sanctions”. Her reply was, a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it”. It was a shocking admission by a senior government official of the callous attitude towards the lives of young children.

Albright later criticized Stahl’s segment as amounting to Iraqi propaganda”, saying that hers was a loaded question. She wrote, I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean”, and that she regretted coming across as cold-blooded and cruel”. She apologized for her remarks in a 2020 interview with The New York Times, calling them totally stupid”.

The figure of 500,000 has been subsequently challenged and disputed. Incidentally, Lesley Stahl’s interviewing skills have resulted in two other high-profile Presidents, Nicolas Sarkozy (French) and Donald Trump, walking out of the interviews, unable to withstand her probing questions.

Political ideologies clouding the issue

At times, political ideologies get in the way. For example, in my teens and early 20s, as a committed socialist and a student union activist, I was pro-Palestinian despite not having studied and understood the root cause of the conflict. It was natural for socialists to dominate trade unions, and the underdog was expected to be supported! Four decades later, I am no longer a socialist nor a supporter of trade unions and am somewhat ambivalent about the Palestinian issue.

Undoubtedly, the civil conflict that prevailed in Sri Lanka for nearly 25 years has taught me that these are complex issues and that determining who is right or wrong is a difficult task. During the conflict, many of us (Sinhalese and Tamils), while unhappy with civilian casualties, still believed they were a sad consequence of fighting a war.

Media Responsibility

The conflagration between Israel and Hamas has once again reinforced that media reporting goes a long way in forming public opinion. Most viewers and readers accept what is reported as the truth and form an opinion. In light of that, it is essential for the media, considered the fourth estate in a democracy, to be independent, impartial and balanced in reporting.

Responsible reporting refers to the ethical practice of gathering, compiling, and presenting information to the public in an honest, accurate, and fair manner. It’s an approach to journalism and content creation that prioritizes truth, accountability, and the potential impact of content on the audience and society at large.”

In my view, in Sri Lanka, the reporting by most television channels that have the broadest reach is biased and certainly not conducive to religious and ethnic harmony in the country. None of the television channels can claim to be politically independent. There is no attempt made to give a balanced view on any controversial topic despite the tagline ” We Report You Decide”.

I fail to understand why television channels feel that they should broadcast speeches or voice cuts of politicians and religious persons that undoubtedly create racial and religious disharmony in our country. Are they unaware they provide these people a platform to propagate disharmony and that these are counterproductive to our nation?

It is also sad and depressing that those responsible for the country’s economic mismanagement are still given air time and are allowed to go unchallenged on our television channels.

As to why TV news should include visuals of politicians visiting places of religious worship is perplexing. As these visits should be considered strictly private, what is the purpose of allocating resources and airtime to broadcast them?

There is also a lack of investigative journalism in our newspapers and television. It is observed that whilst certain acts of corruption are highlighted, they are quickly forgotten, with the media and the public moving on to the next headline.

One of the roles of the media is to act as a watchdog or gatekeeper of the public. For instance, in countries marred by corruption, nepotism and other vices from the government in power, the media holds the government accountable for its actions. The media will hence highlight and even investigate political issues that are of public interest and bring them into the public limelight.” (mediacentre.org)

by Vijaya Chandrasoma Courtesy The Island

War does not determine who is right. Only who is left. Bertrand Russel

Saturday, October 7, 2023 was yet another Day that will live in Infamy, like December 7, 1941, when US President Roosevelt coined the phrase after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which paved the way for America’s involvement in World War II.

Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, in a telephone call with President Biden before his proposed visit, said that the Hamas attack represented savagery I can say we have not seen since the Holocaust”. Rightly so. That one day, when 2,000 Hamas terrorists butchered 700 innocent Israeli civilians and wounded hundreds more, was indeed eerily reminiscent of the atrocities committed by the Nazis against innocent Jews, men, women and children during the Holocaust.

The difference is that the Holocaust against Jews continued for least a decade, or more than 3,650 consecutive days, day after day of incredible cruelty, of torture and death. Atrocities by Nazis, not for any crime committed by Jews, but out of historic, inherent racial and religious hatred.

The Jews never forcibly tried to take possession of any land that was the homeland of Germans or any other Europeans. They simply wanted to live in peace and integrate with the Germans, and with the citizens of nations of Russia and Europe. This in spite of the regular eruption of pogroms (ethnic massacres) they endured for centuries.

During the mid-1930s, there was a significant anti-Semitic movement in the USA, which overtly endorsed Hitler’s atrocities. In fact, American national hero, Charles Lindbergh, once considered by the right wing of the Republican Party as a potential Presidential candidate in 1940, had a close relationship with Hitler and actively worked for the anti-interventionist cause. At that time, more than 80% of the American public shared his views, opposing any involvement in the European conflict. The question of going to the aid of the Jews was never on the American table.

This was until the end of the war, when the atrocities committed by the Germans, with the massacre of six million Jews and five million Europeans of impure blood”, gassed and baked in ovens and gas chambers, were exposed to a horrified, disgusted world. Until Europeans, Americans, even some Germans felt the extreme shame of not going to the aid of these innocent victims, even though they well knew exactly what was happening in these Nazi concentration camps.

The Nazi’s Jewish Problem” then became, out of guilt, the British and Americans’ Jewish Problem”. They took the easy way out. They stole the land of the Palestinians by Divine Order, after which it became the Palestinians’ Jewish Problem”.

As Pablo Casals, famed Puerto Rican cellist and conductor said, The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than those who actually commit it”.

There have been pro-Palestinian protests in cities around the world, including America, against the continuing Israeli attacks on Gaza in revenge for the Hamas atrocities on October 7. Students of prominent educational institutions in America, including Harvard, are joining worldwide protests against the injustice of land being stolen from the people of Palestine.

A historic and mostly forgotten irony has been erased from the minds of these students at Harvard University, and most Americans. They are protesting the stealing of Palestinian land by the Israelis, unaware that they are standing on land stolen by their ancestors from native Americans.

Harvard students are protesting the annexation of Palestinian land by the Israelis, so doing on land stolen from the original native American tribe of Massachusetts. A tribe that exists no longer, but endures in memory only in the name of the state.

But I digress. Going back to the gift that kept on giving, also known as the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British committed Palestine, a country where Arabic culture, traditions and language were dominant, to the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people”.

The Jewish people accepted the twice-promised land, gifted by both the British and the Bible (the most sacred of title deeds), and emigrated to Palestine in their thousands, fleeing centuries of European persecution.

The Divine Gift of the Promised Land proved to be fruitful. Today, 3.5 million Palestinians are confined to the narrow, 140 sq. miles of the Gaza Strip, and share the West Bank of the Jordan River in dots of settlements amongst hostile Jewish settlers. The rest of the land of Palestine, now Israel, is under the military control and occupation of the Chosen People.

The map at the top of the essay shows the progressive and illegal Israeli annexation of Palestinian land since 1947.

A Two-State solution, proposed earlier by the United Nations, seemed to be the only equitable way to end this conflict, with equitably divided sovereign states, possibly according to pre-1967 borders. Jews and Palestinians living in peace in lands neighboring each other may be an impossible dream.

The virtual genocide and displacement of the Palestinian people and the complete annexation of Palestinian land, with American assistance, is almost a fait accompli. Today, Jews, with a population of 9.7 million outnumbering 3.5 million Palestinians, occupy the major part of the Holy Land”. So where is the Israeli need for a Two-State solution? The Jewish State, as foretold in the Bible is a virtual reality.

President Biden visited Israel last Wednesday, in a display of American solidarity with Israel. He had three major missions for this historic visit: to make possible the release of 250 hostages, including about 20 Americans, held by Hamas in Gaza; to warn other actors in the region, like Hezbollah and Iran, not to escalate the conflict; and to ensure that Israel does not imperil the human rights of innocent Palestinians in their stated motive of exacting revenge for the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7.

The bombing of a hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians and patients, a war crime, changed the trajectory of Biden’s short visit even before his arrival in Tel Aviv.

The Israelis first said the hospital bombing was an airstrike targeting Hamas that went wrong; then they accused terrorists operating in Gaza, Islamic Jihad, of bombing their own hospital. The hospital bombing occurred during Israel’s intense and continuing airstrikes on North Gaza for 11 days after the Hamas attack on October 7.

As expected, Biden stands with Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. On meeting Bibi, Biden hugged him and said he believes the Israeli version of the Gaza hospital bombing, that it was done by the other team, not you”. The American propaganda machine is busily gathering questionable satellite evidence to absolve their allies of this dastardly attack. No Arab will accept such evidence, doctored or not.

The Israelis’ stated intention of targeting only Hamas in their strikes in Gaza is as ridiculous as it is perfidious. Hamas operatives live with Palestinian civilians, they do not wear a Scarlet Letter T on their foreheads to identify themselves as terrorists. Collective murder of innocent Palestinians in the Israeli quest for revenge is inevitable. The Israeli blockade of food, water and medical supplies in Gaza is aimed at all Palestinians, not just Hamas terrorists. The relentless bombing by the Israeli Defense Forces of the area refutes their claim that the Gaza hospital bombing was done by a stray Hamas rocket.

Finger pointing is to no avail. The damage is done. The protests of Arabs throughout the Middle-East resulting from this atrocity led to the cancellation of the scheduled summit in Jordan for President Biden with Arab leaders in the region.

Biden left Israel, with little to show for his courageous though risky visit to a war zone. He said the Americans have learnt from past mistakes; grave mistakes, when they failed to intervene as Hitler was carrying out genocide of the Jews in Germany in the 1930s; and when America overreacted after 9/11, embroiling America in an illegal war for 15 years against the wrong enemy, with enormous cost to life, property and credibility.

Biden had limited success when he persuaded Israel to temporarily open the Egyptian border and allow American humanitarian aid to reach the Palestinians in North Gaza, desperately in need of such aid of medical supplies, water and food. One million Palestinian civilians under siege to be supplied 20 trucks of emergency provisions, sufficient for maybe a few days. Whether more trucks will be allowed access is anyone’s guess.

But while Biden condemned the terrorism of Hamas, he did not demand any assurances from Netanyahu of the cessation of retaliation against innocent Palestinians in North Gaza. Nearly two weeks of airstrikes and bombings, blockage of essential supplies, which have already claimed the lives of over 4,000 innocent Palestinian men, women and children. The hostages have still not been released. He received no assurance from Netanyahu of the suspension of the imminent ground offensive in North Gaza which will endanger the lives of nearly a million Palestinian civilians. Their strategy seems to drop thousands of bombs on North Gaza, destroy everything, and follow though with a ground invasion. What is their endgame – genocide?

The Israeli offensive if allowed to take place, will escalate exponentially the risk of the conflict spreading to other regions.

In that sense, Biden’s visit was a complete failure. But a complete success for Netanyahu, who got everything for Israel and gave away almost nothing.

President Biden is making a speech to the American people from the Oval Office, as I am writing this. A moving speech, emphasizing American values, determination to support democracy wherever it is under threat. He reiterated his steadfast support of both Ukraine and Israel, valued and loyal allies. He made a request from Congress for a funding package of $100 billion to help these allies in their wars against, as he said, aggressors who threaten their very existence as sovereign nations. He is asking for funding to help them in providing weaponry for their self-defense. He has no plans of having American boots on the ground in either of these arenas.

At first and admittedly ill-considered analysis, it has to be agreed that Americans must aid their allies. However, these two allies, Ukraine and Israel, are fighting their wars in different roles. One, Ukraine, in defense of their sovereignty against the aggressor, Russia. The other, Israel, is the aggressor, putting the finishing touch on targeted genocide, completion of the annexation of the land of an erstwhile sovereign nation, Palestine. An annexation in which Americans have been complicit since the end of World War II.

One ally is the defender, the other the aggressor. But helping both, morality and justice notwithstanding, is in the best interests of the Americans. That has always been the prime American motive in all the numerous wars they have involved themselves in since World War II.

Does the fate that befell the native American tribes centuries ago, when their lands were violently stolen and they were systematically and brutally eliminated” by Europeans, await the Palestinians? History seems to favor that ultimate outcome, in the not too distant future.

Fifty years ago, Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir is reputed to have told then Senator Biden on a visit to that embattled region, You know, Senator. We have a secret weapon here, in Israel. We have no place else to go”.

The tables certainly have turned. Today, the Palestinians have been almost completely defeated in their almost century-long struggle to hold on to their land against impossible odds. They are facing imminent genocide, displacement and extinction. Neighboring Arab nations are not, as a rule, prepared to accept them as refugees. They have no secret weapon in Palestine. They have no place else to go.

Courtesy The Island

Peter Breuer

Sri Lanka should aim to get state revenues more than 12 percent of gross domestic product and avoid revenue shortfalls next year, International Monetary Fund Senior Mission Chief Peter Breuer said.

Sri Lanka projected revenues (including non-tax) of 3,408 billion rupee (11.3 -pct of GDP) and the IMF 3,286 billion rupees (about 10.9-pct).Up to July revenues were up 39 percent and tax revenues were up 43 percent, but IMF expects year end revenues to be 15 percent below target.

Clearly the objective is not to let it happen next year and make up for that shortfall,” Breuer told reporters after Sri Lanka and the IMF reached a staff level agreement incorporating the next set of targets and reforms.

So, one of the objectives is to get revenue that exceeds 12 percent of GDP and accordingly measures will have to be implemented to achieve that objective.”

Sri Lanka has met all quantitative targets, except for the June indicative revenue target, and most structural benchmarks required up to June have been completed, Breuer said. The new staff level agreement will set the targets and reforms for the next phase of the program.

In 2020 in the worst deployment of macro-economic policy by the country’s official economists and their advisors from the private sector, taxes were also cut on top of rates, eventually driving the country to external default. Revnues collapsed from 11.9 percent in 2019 to about 8.5 percent of GDP by 2021.

As forex shortages build up, Sri Lanka’s economic bureaucrats also ban vehicle and non-essential imports, hitting revenues and further worsening the fiscal picture, in an cascading policy error that repeats often, an economic observer said.

Car imports are still banned

Sri Lanka has now slammed high rates of progressive income tax which are hitting employed workers in the corporate sector, triggering a brain drain, particularly of professionals with young children who cannot make ends meet and keep paying housing loans. There are no exemptions for dependents.

A steep currency collapse has also hit alcohol consumption, with industry officials indicating a 40 percent drop from pre-crisis levels, though some firms are said to be avoiding paying collected taxes amid corrupt practices.

The IMF has recommended a series of reforms in a governance diagnostic report including for revenue authorities. Sri Lanka will have to implement compensating measures” and improve tax administration to get more revenues, the IMF team said.

In the first stabilization year after rate cuts trigger a currency crisis, revenues are difficult to raise due to the slowdown. This year the economy is contracting and revenues are driven partly by inflation, analysts note.

Courtesy The Island

President Ranil Wickremesinghe addresing the Special General Convention of the United National Party on Saturday (21)

Addressing the Special General Convention of the United National Party (UNP) held at the Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium in Colombo on Saturday (21)., President Ranil Wickremesinghe emphasized his commitment to bolstering the country’s economy by positioning Sri Lanka as a smart nation.

The President outlined the timeline for upcoming elections in line with the constitutional provisions, detailing that the presidential election is slated for the following year, followed by parliamentary elections. Furthermore, local government elections are expected to transpire in the first half of 2025.

The theme for this year’s UNP Anniversary convention was Smart Country – 2048.” The vision behind this concept is a vision of an intelligent and prosperous Sri Lanka, where every citizen recognizes their potential, upholds virtuous goals, and embraces diversity while harnessing modern technology and nature to cultivate a nation of adept and resourceful individuals. The Smart Country” concept envisions the creation of a prosperous nation.

Departing from conventional party politics vying for power, the main objective of this year’s UNP Special Convention was to adopt a nation-centric approach to reorganize the party for this purpose. Party leader President Ranil Wickremesinghe also presented an amended party constitution designed to facilitate this transformation.

A significant amendment allows the United National Party to establish an online presence and engage actively in social media platforms, thus facilitating the digital transformation of the party. The President emphasized the need for the UNP to evolve into a technologically adept and intelligent party, aligning itself with the broader vision of building both a smart nation and a smart party.

The President stressed the imperative need to eradicate corruption and emphasized the passage of long-awaited anti-corruption legislation, along with the introduction of multiple ordinances to combat corruption both within the government and political parties. He reiterated the United National Party’s strength in contributing to the nation’s economic development and emphasized the party’s role as a forward-looking entity that will serve the nation’s interests in the future.

Notable speakers at the conference included United National Party President and Member of Parliament Wajira Abeywardena, Deputy Leader of the Party Ruwan Wijewardena, National Organizer Sagala Rathnayaka, Deputy Leader Akila Viraj Kariyawasam, Labour and Foreign Employment Minister Manusha Nanayakkara, Minister of Lands and Tourism Haren Fernando, along with General Secretary Palitha Range Bandara and former Minister Ravi Karunanayake.

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

A new legislation will be introduced soon to ensure the proper standards of MPs, President Ranil Wickremesinghe announced today.

Many are questioning the standard of Parliament following the two incidents that took place during this week. Therefore, I would like to state that former Speaker Karu Jayasuriya is drafting legislation to ensure high standards of MPs,” the President said during the UNP convention.

He hinted that an authority will be appointed to monitor the behaviour of MPs as done in many countries.(Yohan Perera)

Courtesy India Today

In the past 24 hours, ten people have died of a heart attack in different areas of Gujarat while they were performing Garba at Navratri celebrations.

Garba organisers in Gujarat have taken steps to ensure the safety of people by stationing doctors and ambulances at the venues. (Illustration by Vani Gupta/India Today)

At least 10 people have died while performing Garba during Navratri celebrations in Gujarat in the past 24 hours. The victims ranged from teenagers to middle-aged people, with the youngest being a 13-year-old boy from Dabhoi, Baroda.

On Friday, a 24-year-old man from Ahmedabad suddenly collapsed while playing Garba and died. Similarly, a 17-year-old boy from Kapadwanj also died while playing Garba. A series of similar cases have been reported in the state in the past day.

In addition to this, over the first six days of Navratri, the 108 emergency ambulance services received 521 calls for heart-related issues and an additional 609 calls for breathlessness. These calls were recorded between 6 pm and 2 am, when Garba celebrations usually take place.

This alarming trend has prompted both the government and event organisers to take action.

The state government issued an alert to all government hospitals and community health centers (CHCs) near Garba venues, urging them to be on high alert.

Garba organisers have also been instructed to create corridors for ambulances to enter the events swiftly in case of emergencies.

Moreover, Garba organisers have taken steps to ensure the safety of participants by stationing doctors and ambulances at the venues. They have also been advised to provide CPR training to their staff and ensure ample availability of water for participants.

Before the Narvratri festivities this year, three people in Gujarat died due to a heart attack while practicing Garba.

(Inputs by Atul Tiwari)

Courtesy NewsIn.Asia

Colombo, October 21 (Counterpoint): Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickemesinghe’s visit to China from October 16 to 20, has resulted in Sri Lanka’s reiterating its commitment to participate in China’s global development project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). That is despite India’s warning on October 11 about the dangers inherent in accepting China’s developmental loans under the BRI.

The joint statement issued by China and Sri Lanka at the end of Wickremesinghe’s visit said: Sri Lanka reiterates that it will continue to actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China. The two sides agreed to sign the Memorandum of Understanding on jointly accelerating the formulation of the cooperation plan on the Belt and Road Initiative.”

This understanding was reached despite Indian External Affairs Minister S.Jaishankar’s warning to Sri Lanka and other Indian Ocean Rim Association countries about the dangers inherent in accepting Chinese largesse under BRI.

We should be clear where the dangers are, be it in hidden agendas, in unviable projects or in unsustainable debt. Exchange of experiences, sharing of best practices, greater awareness and deeper collaboration are part of the solution,” Jaishankar told a press meet   at the end of the IORA Council of Ministers meeting in Colombo on October 11.

Debt Repayment Issue

In return for Sri Lanka’s firm commitment to the BRI, China did not clarify the exact nature of its proposal to help Sri Lanka meet its debt repayment obligations. China is Sri Lanka’s single-largest bilateral creditor with a loan of US$ 7 billion.

On this issue the joint statement said that the two sides acknowledged that China provided a financing support document to Sri Lanka in a timely manner and helped Sri Lanka obtain loans from the International Monetary Fund in March 2023.”

In late September, as an official creditor, the Export-Import Bank of China reached a preliminary agreement with Sri Lanka on debt treatment. China said that it will continue to support its financial institutions to conduct friendly consultations with Sri Lanka to reach an early agreement on the treatment of debts related to China.”

The joint statement further said that the Chinese side is willing to work with relevant countries and international financial institutions to keep playing a positive role in helping Sri Lanka address its current difficulties; alleviate the debt burden and realize sustainable development.”

Sri Lanka, the statement added, commended China for its support to Sri Lanka to ease its financial difficulties.”

Be that as it may, Sri Lankans are still in the dark about China’s ideas on debt repayment. This is holding up decisions to be taken by other creditors such as the Paris Club members and India, who insist that any debt relief arrangements must be uniform and that no bilateral creditor should get special treatment. They apprehend that China might pressurise Sri Lanka to agree to a separate bilateral arrangement with it.

However, earlier this month the IMF said that Sri Lanka will have access to US$ 330 million from the IMF once a staff-level agreement  gets the nod from the IMF Management and Executive Board.

Wickremesinghe, who was in Beijing primarily to attend the Third international Belt and Road Forum held between October 16 and 20, met President Xi Jinping and Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang and agreed to enter into a number of economic MoUs with China.

Blank on Security Issues

Significantly, the joint statement did not mention any discussion on bilateral security issues such as the visit of Chinese research vessels which, in India’s view, are vessels sent to spy on India. A visit by Shi Yang 6 is still pending.

The only security issue mentioned in the communique was Taiwan on which China secured a commitment that Sri Lanka would stand by its One-China” policy.  

Log List of Economic Projects

The joint statement was basically a catalogue of MoUs to be signed on a variety of economic development cooperation projects.

Among others there will be MoUs on accelerating the formulation of a Cooperation Plan for the Belt and Road Initiative; on cooperation in Green and Low-Carbon Development; and on the Chinese-aided Subsidized Housing Project for the Low Income Category in Colombo.

Sri Lanka said that it would welcome Chinese enterprises and provide a favourable investment and business environment for them. On its part, China said that it will continue to encourage competent Chinese enterprises to invest in Sri Lanka.  

The two sides recognized that Colombo Port City and the Hambantota Port are signature projects of the Belt and Road Initiative.” Sri Lanka welcomed further investments from Chinese enterprises in the Colombo Port City and expressed readiness to create a conducive environment for investments in Port City including necessary legislative measures.

Port City development has suffered enormous delay mostly due to inertia on the Sri Lankan side.

The two sides agreed to conclude a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement as quickly as possible”. They agreed to cooperate in finance on the basis of market principles, autonomy and the Rule of Law” to further enhance financial services and economic and trade development.

The Chinese side said that it will continue to support competitive Sri Lankan industries to establish ties with relevant Chinese associations of importers and exporters; provide facilitation and support Sri Lankan exporters’ efforts to participate in Chinese exhibitions including the China International Import Expo, the China Import and Export Fair, the China-South Asia Exposition, the China International Supply Chain Expo.

China pledged to encourage Chinese and Sri Lankan enterprises to deepen cooperation on the basis of mutual benefit and bolster Sri Lankan exports to China.

The two sides agreed to quicken the signing of a Free Trade Agreement.

The two sides agreed to sign the Protocol of Phytosanitary Requirements for Export of Ceylon Cinnamon to China. The Protocol on Inspection, Quarantine and Veterinary Sanitary Requirements for Wild Fishing Aquatic Products to be exported from Sri Lanka to China will also be signed.

The two sides agreed to enhance exchanges and cooperation between their small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), encourage their SMEs, service providers, industrial associations, and scientific and research institutes to increase communication; establish cooperation platforms for industrial cooperation in scientific and technological research and development, electronic flight services and training, and create innovative cooperation models.

The Chinese side will be ready to carry out technological exchanges and training cooperation in bio-technologies for tropical crops, plant breeding, aquaculture, agricultural processing, market development and agriculture modernization, thus helping Sri Lanka enhance its comprehensive agricultural production capacity.

The Chinese side said that it would welcome more imports of quality agricultural products from Sri Lanka.

The two sides fully recognized the importance of educational exchanges and expressed readiness to further enhance exchanges of teachers, students, and researchers.

They also agreed to continue to strengthen cooperation in science and encourage educational institutions to carry out cooperative research and joint programs. The two sides agreed to support the development of the China-Sri Lanka Joint Centre of Science and Education.”

The two sides agreed to sign the Letter of Exchange of Feasibility Study on China-Aid Project of Digital Transformation of General Education in Sri Lanka.

Both sides agreed to encourage better air connectivity between the two countries.

The two sides will take the China (Chongqing)-Sri Lanka Roundtable on Poverty Reduction and Development Cooperation as a starting point to enhance experience sharing on poverty reduction by establishing platforms, organizing training and promoting think tank exchanges.

The two sides are ready to carry out closer cooperation in climate change adaptation and sustainable development, emphasizing that joint implementation of green measures are effective ways to mitigate climate change.

The two sides are ready to strengthen coordination and deepen exchanges and cooperation in fields including disaster prevention and mitigation, maritime rescue, relief and research, maritime personnel training and capacity building and further explore cooperation on the blue economy.

The two sides agreed to sign the Tri-Partite Agreement among Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Water Supply & Estate Infrastructure Development of Sri Lanka and the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka.

The two sides reiterated their firm commitment to upholding true multilateralism, promoting greater democracy in international relations, and making global governance more just and equitable.

The two sides agreed to strengthen cooperation within the United Nations and other multilateral mechanisms to uphold the common interests of developing countries. The two sides expressed their support for the multilateral trading system, opposition to protectionism and readiness to make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all and to build a community with a shared future for mankind.

The two sides reiterated mutual support on issues regarding each other’s core interests and major concerns. China firmly pledged to support Sri Lanka in upholding its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and respect and support Sri Lanka’s independent development path that suits its national conditions.

Sri Lanka said that it firmly supports and actively participates in the China’s projects like the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security initiative (GSI), and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI). China said that it is ready to conduct in-depth discussions with Sri Lanka on specific measures to implement the above-mentioned initiatives, and work together for global and regional peace, security, development and prosperity.

Wickremesinghe had earlier told the Chinese media that he expects Sri Lanka to join the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECP). But there is no mention of it in the joint statement.

තිස්ස ගුණතිලක

තරමක් දීර්ඝ ලිපියක් බැවින් ඉවසීමෙන් කියවීමට කරුනාවෙන් ආරාධණා කරමි. ඔබට නිවන් දැකීමට අවශ්‍ය සියළුම ප්‍රතිපදාව මෙම ලිපියේ අන්තර්ගතව ඇතැයි සිතමි.

බුද්ධ දර්ශණය හා නිවන් මග යනු අතහැරීමයි නැතහොත් අතහැරීමෙන් ප්‍රකටවන අල්පේච්ඡතාවයයි. ඔබ සියල්ලම අතහැරීමට සූදානම්නම් නිවන් දැකිය හැකිය. අතහැරීමට නොහැකිනම් නිවන ඔබවෙත ලඟා නොවෙයි.

නිවන් දකින මඟ යනු අතහැරීම සම්පූර්ණ කරන ප්‍රතිපදාවයි.

අතහැරීම පියවර දෙකකින් කල යුතුවන අතර එම පියවර දෙකෙහි අනුපිලිවෙලක් නැත. එනම් පලමුව චෛතසිකවද හා දෙවනුව භෞතිකවද, පලමුව භෞතිකවද දෙවනුව චෛතසිකවද අතහැරහැරීම සිඳුකල හැකිය. සසුන්ගතවන්නන් පලමුව භෞතික අතහැරීම නිවන් මාර්ගය ලෙස තෝරාගත් අයයි. ඹවුන් චෛතසික අතහැරීම සම්පූර්ණ කරන්නේ මහණ පිලිවෙත තුලයි. 

සෑම අරමුණක් තුලම භාහිරය ආත්මීයව අල්ලාගන්නා ‘උදය ප්‍රසාද සංඥා ධාරාවත්’ (සමුදය-උදය), බුදුන්වහන්සේ භාහිය දාරුචීරට සිහියට හසුකරගන්නා ලෙස අවවාදකල ‘වය ප්‍රසාද සංඥා ධාරාවත්’ (ප්‍රභාශ්වරය – බුද්ධ ස්වභාවය) අඩංගුය. සෑම කෙනෙක්‍ තුලම බුද්ධ ස්වභාවය නැතහොත් ‘බුදුන් වැඩසිටී’ යයි පවසන්නේ මේ නිසයි. උපන්දා සිට මේ මොහොත දක්වා පැමිනි සංසාර ගමනේදී ඇතිවූ සෑම සිතුවිල්ලක්ම (අරමුණක්ම) විඤ්ඤාණ මායාවට හසුවී භාහිරය ආත්මීය ලෙස ගැනීමෙන් අප සියළු දෙනාම ‘සමුදය (උදය)’ ප්‍රසාද ධාරාව තුල සිරකරුවන් වී සිටිමු (we were locked in the cycle of re-becoming (භව චක්‍රය) hence subject to suffering).

මේ සිරගෙයින් (උදය ප්‍රසාද ධාරාවෙන්) මිදී තමා තුල නිරතුරුවම පවතින බුද්ධ ස්වභාවය (වය ප්‍රසාද ධාරාව) දැකිම/අවබෝධය/මතුකරගැනීම බුද්ධ දර්ශණයයි. මෙය කලහැකිවන්නේ ‘අතහැරීම’ තුලින් පමනමයි.

සුඤ්ඤතාවය තුලින් ප්‍රකටවන අතහැරීම හා විපස්සනාව

බුදුන්වහන්සේ සුඤ්ඤතාවය එනම් භාහිරයේ පවතින කිසිවක ‘දෙයක් යමක් කෙනෙක්’ නැතිබවත් ඒ නිසාම තන්හාවක්/ඇල්මක් හටගැනීමට හේතුවක් නැතිබවත් දේශනාකලේ භාහිරය යනු චෛතසිකවත් භෞතිකවත් අතහැරිය හැකි, අතහැරිය යුතු ස්වභාවයක පවතින්නක් බව අපට අවබෝධකිරීම පහසු කරවනු පිනිසය. 

අප ‘ලෝකය’/අනාත්මීය භාහිරය/ස්වභාවධර්මය/යතාර්ථය දකින්නේ විඳින්නේ සංඥාවක් ලෙසය. ස්වභාවධර්මය (යතාර්ථය) ස්තර (layers) පහකින් සෑදී ඇතිබව ‘චූලසුඤ්ඤත සූත්‍ර’ දේශනාවේ බුදුන්වහන්සේ පෙන්වාදෙයි. ග්‍රාම, අරණ්‍ය, පෘතුවි, අකාස සහ විඤ්ඤාණය යන ස්තර පහේ එකතුව ස්වභාවධර්මය/අනාත්මීය  භාහිරය/යතාර්ථය ලෙස සද්ධර්මය තුල හැදින්වෙයි. පලමුවන ස්තර සතර ‘ලෝක සංඥාව’ ලෙසද පස්වන විඤ්ඤාණ ස්තරය (විඤ්ඤාණඤ්චායතනය) ‘මම’ හෙවත් ආත්මය හෝ ආත්ම දෘශ්ඨිය අන්තර්ගතවන ස්වභාවධර්මයේ ස්තරයයි (layer).

ලෝක සංඥාවේ සුඤ්ඤතාවය දකින විපස්සනාව ප්‍රායෝගිකව

භාහිරය අපවෙත ලඟාවන්නේ ලෝක සංඥාවක් (ග්‍රාම, ආරණ්‍ය, පෘතුවි හා ආකාශ) ලෙස අරමුණ හරහාය.  එන එන අරමුණේ එනම් එන එන ලෝක සංඥාවේ සුඤ්ඤතාවය (දෙයක් යමක් කෙනෙක් නැතිබව) දැකීම/අවබෝධය විපස්සනාවයි.

ලෝක සංඥාවේ සුඤ්ඤතාවය  දැකීම/අවබෝධවීම යනු චෛතසික අතහැරීම නොහොත් ‘සක්කාය දෘශ්ඨිය’  ප්‍රහාණයයි.

note: දැකීම = අවබෝධය එනම් තිපරිවට්ටයේ එන කෘත්‍ය ඤාණය බව වටහා ගන්න.

විපස්සනාව මගින් සුඤ්ඤතාවය අවබෝධකිරීම ආකාර කීපයකට සිඳුවිය හැකියි. 

1. එන එන සංඥාවේ/අරමුණේ සුඤ්ඤතාව දැකීම, උදා; බිත්තිය, ගස, පුටුව, උපාලි ආදි ලෙස එන එන  සංඥාව වෙනවෙනම සුඤ්ඤකල හැකිය.
2. භාහිරය කුලක (sets) ලෙස ගෙන සුඤ්ඤතාව දැකීම. උදා: දැව වලින් සෑදූ සියළුම භාණ්ඩ, සියළුම තරුණ කාන්තාවන්/පිරිමින්, සියළුම පලතුරු ආදිය.
3. භාහිරය ප්‍රදේශයක්, ස්තරයක් (layer) ලෙස සුඤ්ඤතාව දැකීම. ග්‍රාමය තුල පවතින සියළුම සංඥා, කැලය තුල (ආරණ්‍ය) පවතින සියළුම සංඥා, පෘතුවිය මත/තුල පවතින සියළුම සංඥා, ආකාශය තුල පවතින සියළුම සංඥා, (චූල සුඤ්ඤත සූත්‍රය),
4. මුළු ලෝකයම (ලෝක සංඥාවම) එකට ගෙන සුඤ්ඤ කල හැකිය.

උදාහරනයක් ලෙස දූරියන් පලතුරේ සුඤ්ඤතාවය විපස්සනාව තුලින් දකින්නේ මෙසේය:

එක ලඟ සිටින දෙදෙනෙකුගෙන් එක් අයෙකුට ලඟ ඇති දූරියන් ගෙඩියක් ප්‍රියජනක වන අතර තවත් අයෙකුට එම දූරියන් ගෙඩියම අප්‍රියජනක විය හැකිය. මේ දර්ශණය (scenario) සිහියට නඟාගන්න. ප්‍රියජනක බවත් අප්‍රියජනක බවත් දෙකම එකම දූරියන් ගෙඩියක තිබිය නොහැකිබව ඔබගේ සිහියට හසුවෙයි. එසේනම් ප්‍රියජනක බවත් අප්‍රියජනක බවත් සංකාර වන්නේ එකිනෙකාගේ විඤ්ඤාණ මායාව තුලබවත් දූරියන් ගෙඩියතුල එවැනි ස්වභාවයන් නැති බවත් දැන් ඔබගේ සිහියට හසුවෙයි. දූරියන් යනු කිසිම රසක් හෝ සුවඳක් නැති ප්‍රියජනක හෝ අප්‍රියජනක නොවන ‘මෙලෝ රසක්’ නැතිව භාහිරයේ පවත්නා හැඩතලයක් පමනක් බව දැන් ඔබගේ සිහියට හසුවන්නේ නම් ඔබ දූරියන් ගෙඩියේ සුඤ්ඤතාවය විපස්සනාවෙන් අවබෝධකලා වෙයි. මෙය සුඤ්ඤතාවය දකින පලමු විපස්සනා ක්‍රමයයි. 

දුරියන් ගෙඩිය විපස්සනා කල ක්‍රමවේදය දැන් සියළුම පලතුරු සදහා ආදේශ (apply) කරන්න. එවිට ඔබට පලතුරු සියල්ලේම සුඤ්ඤතාවය කුලකයක් (as a set) ලෙස දැකිය හැකිය.

මෙම විපස්සනාව ඔබ අසල සිටින ‘රූපා හෝ උපාලි’ කෙරෙහි වඩන්න. ඒ සඳහා රූපාගේ හෝ උපාලිගේ රුව ආශ්වාද කරන කෙනෙකුත් එම රූපයේ ආශ්වාදයක් නොදකින (ගැටෙන) කෙනෙකුත්  සොයාගෙන එක ලඟ තැබුවේ යයි  සිතන්න. මේ දෙදෙනා එක ලඟ සිටින දර්ශණය (scenario)  සිහියට හසුකර ගන්න. එක් අයකුට ආශ්වාදයකුත් හා තවකෙකුට ගැටීමකුත් ගෙනදෙන ස්වභාවයක් එකම පුද්ගලයෙකු (රූපා හෝ උපාලි) තුල පැවතිය හැකිදැයි සිතන්න. එසේ නොවිය හැකිබව සිහියට හසුකරගන්න.  ආශ්වාදය හෝ ගැටීම පවතින්නේ රූපා තුල හෝ උපාලි තුල නොව ඔවුන් දකිනා දෙදෙනාගේ විඤ්ඤාන මායාව තුල බව දැන්‍ ඔබගේ සිහියට හසුවනු ඇත. එනම් රූපා හෝ උපාලි යනු ‘මෙලෝ රසක් නැති කිසි වටිනාකමක් නැති’ රූප හැඩතල පමනක් බව දැන් ඔබගේ සිහියට හසුවන අතර එම හැඩතලවල සුඤ්ඤතාවය ඔබගේ සිහියට හසුවෙයි. 

එක්තරා ගායකයෙකුගේ සිංදුවක් රේඩියෝවෙන් අසනා ඔබ එම සිංදුවට කැමැත්තක් දක්වයි. ඔබ අසල සිටිනා තවකෙක් එම සිංදුව හා ගැටෙන්නේ යයි සිතමු. සිංදුව කණ වෙත එන්නේ අංශු කම්පනයක් හරහා ධ්වණියක් ලෙසිනි. එකම ශබ්දයක/ධ්වණියක ඇලීමක් හෝ ගැටීමක් යන ගුණ දෙකම තිබිය නොහැකිය. ඇලීම (කැමැත්ත) හෝ ගැටීම (අකමැත්ත) ඇතිවන්නේ අසන්නාගේ විඤ්ඤාණ මායාව නිසා ඔහුගේ සිත තුල ජනිතවන සංඥාව තුලය, ශබ්දය (ශබ්ද රූපය) තුල නොවේ. මෙම සංසිද්ධිය සිහියට හසුකර ගැනීමෙන් ශබ්ද රූපයේ ඇත්තේ ‘මෙලෝ රසක් හෝ මිහිරක් හෝ නැති’ ශබ්දයක්ම පමනක්ම බව අවබෝධ කිරීමෙන්‍ එහි ඇති සුඤ්ඤතාවය දැකිය හැකිය.

පොදුවේ ඕනෑම භාහිර රූප හැඩතලයකට (වර්ණ රූප, ශබ්ද රූප, රස රූප, ඝාණ රූප, පොට්ඨබ්බ රූප) මෙම විප්සනාව වැඩීමෙන් එම රූපයේ හෝ රූපය අයත් කුලකයේ (set) හෝ තලයේ (layer) හෝ සුඤ්ඤතාවය එනම් දෙයක් යමක් කෙනෙක් නැතිබව දැකීම නැතහොත් ‘සක්කාය දෘශ්ඨි ප්‍රහාණය’ (චෛතසික අතහැරීම සම්පූර්ණ) කල හැකිය.

මෙම සංසිද්ධිය දුටු ධම්මචක්කපවත්තන සූත්‍ර දේශනාවට සවන් දෙන කොණ්ඩඤ්ඤ තවුසා මුළු ලෝක සංඥාවම එක මිටට ගෙන සුඤ්ඤ කර, සක්කාය දෘශ්ඨිය දුරුකර, චෛතසික අතහැරීම සම්පූර්ණකර සෝවාන් තත්වය සාක්ශාත් කරගත් සේක. සාදු! සාදු! සාදු!.

චෛතසික අතහැරීම සම්පූර්ණ කරනා ඔබටද සෝවාන් තත්වයට පැමිනිය හැකිය.

විඤ්ඤාණඤ්චායතනයේ සුංඤ්ඤතාවය දැකීම නොහොත් ආත්ම දෘශ්ඨි  ප්‍රහාණය

ධම්මචක්කපවත්වන සූත්‍ර දේශනාව අසා කොණ්ඩඤ්ඤ තවුසා ලෝක සංඥාව සුඤ්ඤකර (ලෝක සංඥාව සිත තුල සම්භූත කරන භාහිර රෑපයේ අනාත්මීය ස්වභාවය දැකීම) සෝවාන් තත්වයට පත්විය. නමුත් අනෙකුත් තවුසන් සතර දෙනාට (වප්ප, භද්දිය, අස්සජි, මහානාම) සෝවාන් වීමට තෙමසක් පමන ගතවූබවත්, මේ තෙමස තුල ඔවුන් දිගින් දිගටම විපස්සනාව ප්‍රගුණකර සෝවාන් තත්වයට පත්වූ බවත් කියවෙයි.

සෝවාන් තත්වයට පත්වූ පස්‍වග මහණුන් ලෝක සංඥාව සුඤ්ඤකර (ලෝක සංඥාව නිසා සම්භුතවන භාහිරයේ දෙයක් යමක් කෙනෙක් නැතිබව දැකීම) චෛතසික අතහැරීම සම්පූර්ණ කලත් ඔවුන් තුල ‘භව නිරෝධය’ සිඳුවී නැත. ඒ ඔවුන් තමාතුල ඇති/සිටිනා ‘මම’ නොහොත් විඤ්ඤාණඤ්චායතනය සුඤ්ඤකර නැති බැවිනි.

‘මම‘ සුඤ්ඤකරන (ආත්මයක් ‘මමෙක්‘ නැතිබව දකින) විපස්සනාව

ඔබ අසනීපවූවිට ‘කය’ ලෙඩ වෙයි. ඔබ වයසට යන විට ‘කය’ දිරායයි, අවලක්ෂණ වෙයි. අවසානයේදී සම්මත මරණයට පත්වෙයි. මේ සියල්ල සිඳුවන විට ඔබතුල ‘මම’ සිටියේ නම් ඉහත සදහන් සංසිද්ධීන් නැවැත්වීමට හෝ පාලනයක් කිරීමට හෝ ඔබට හැකිවිය යුතුය. මෙම තත්වය සිහියට හසුකර ගැනීම, විපස්සනා කිරීමෙන් ඔබ තුල ‘මමෙක්’ හෝ ආත්මයක් නැතිබව අවබෝධ කල හැකිය. මෙම අවබෝධය ආත්ම දෘශ්ඨි ප්‍රහාණයි.

ස්කන්ධය යනු සද්ධර්මය තුල සත්වයාගේ නිර්වචනයයි. 

සත්වයා නැතහොත් ස්කන්ධය තුල මම හෙවත් ආත්මය පිහිටියේ නම් ඉහත සඳහන් ආබාධ වලින් සත්වයා මුදවා ගැනීමට ‘මට’, ආත්මයට හැකිවිය යුතුය. මා (රෑපය) නැමැති සත්වයා ආබාධ වලින් මුදවා ගැනීමට මට (ආත්මයට) නොහැකි වන්නේ මම නැමති රූපය තුල මම අර්ථවත් කරන (define) ආත්ම සංඥාවක් නොමැති බැවිනි. සිහියට හසුකරගත යුතු වන්නේ මෙම සත්‍යයයි.

බුදුන්වහන්සේගේ දේශනාකල ‘අනත්තලක්ඛණ සූත්‍ර’ දේශනාවේ අන්තර්ගතය මෙයයි.

කලින් ලෝක සංඥාවේ සුඤ්ඤතාවය සිහියට හසුකරගත් ඔබ දැන් මෙසේ ස්වභාවධර්මයේ පස්වන ස්තරයේද සුඤ්ඤතාවය අවබෝධ කරගෙන මුළු ස්වභාවධර්මයම පූර්ණ සුඤ්ඤතාවයකින් දකී. මේ සම්පූර්ණ සුඤ්ඤතාවය (total emptiness) සද්ධර්මය තුල දැක්වෙන්නේ ආකිඤ්චඤ්ඤායතනය – nothingness ලෙසය.

භෞතික අතහැරීම පලමුවෙන් සම්පූර්ණකර තවුස්දම් වඩන පස්වග තවුසන් ලෝක සංඥාව සුඤ්ඤකිරීම තුලින් චෛතසික අතහැරීමද, විඤ්ඤාණය තුල මම නැතිබව විපස්සනාවෙන් දකිනා ඔවුන් ආත්ම දෘශ්ඨියද ඒ පිටුපස ඇති ආත්ම සංඥාවද (විඤ්ඤාණඤ්චායතනය) සුඤ්ඤකර ‘භවය නිරෝධ‘ කරයි, භාහිය දාරුචීර මෙන් ‘වය ප්‍රසාද සංඥව – ප්‍රභාශ්වරය’ දකියි. එනම් තමාතුල නිරතුරුවම පවතින බුද්ධ ස්වභාවය හසුකර ගනියි.

ඔබට මෙම ලිපිවල ඇති කරුණු වඩාත් පැහැදිලි කරගැනීමට අවශ්‍ය නම් කරුනාකර

tgunite@tpg.com.au ට විද්‍යත් සන්නිවේදනයක් යොමුකරන්න.

තෙරුවන් සරණයි.

තිස්ස ගුණතිලක

2023 ඔක්තොබර් 22 වනදා

TASS

According to the interlocutor of the American journalist, Israeli forces can use American guided bombs during a ground operation, which can penetrate to a depth of 30-50 m before exploding, which will make it possible to destroy the underground weapons production facilities of the radical Hamas movement

NEW YORK, October 18. /TASS/. Israel is determined to turn Gaza City into Hiroshima, but without using nuclear weapons, US Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in his Substack blog, citing sources.

[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s attitude, as assessed by the intelligence analysts, I was told, amounts to a determination ‘to wipe out Hamas.’ One knowledgeable official told me that ‘Gaza City is in the process of being turned into Hiroshima with no nuclear weapons used’,” Hersh wrote.

The official explained that the Israeli military may use US-made bombs in the ground operation, including those known as bunker busters,” that are capable of penetrating 30-40 meters underground before detonating, which can help destroy the underground systems where the Hamas radical movement manufactured its weapons.

Citing the official, Hersh said that Israel has no plan for a massive ground invasion”, as Israeli troops would be needed for hunting down those Hamas members underground who choose to surrender.”

The orders, the official said, would be ‘shoot on sight.’ Surrender would not be an option,” the journalist added. However, the fate of hostages was left unsaid, he specified.

Netanyahu’s plan, the official told me, called for the Israeli Army to kill all members of Hamas they can find,” he said. Israeli soldiers would be assigned to go block by block in the destroyed city to look for stragglers. Care would be taken to ensure that no Hamas stragglers escaped,” the American journalist wrote.

Read also:

Israeli Military Chief Says Main Focus Is Preparations to Strike Iran

Tensions flared up in the Middle East after Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip attacked Israeli territory. Hamas views its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ steps against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank. More than 3,400 Palestinians have been killed and over 12,000 others injured. In Israel, at least 1,500 people have lost their lives and almost 4,500 have been wounded.

Israeli Military Chief Says Main Focus Is Preparations to Strike Iran

by Dave DeCamp Courtesy Antiwar.com

Biden Pitches Americans on Funding Wars in Gaza and Ukraine

The president is expected to ask Congress for $100 billion for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and border funding

Tags President Biden on Thursday night delivered a speech from the Oval Office making his case for the US continuing to fund the proxy war in Ukraine and Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.

Biden said he will ask Congress on Friday to authorize more spending for the Ukraine war and unprecedented” military aid for Israel. Media reports say the request will be for about $100 billion and will also include aid for Taiwan, which China will view as highly provocative, and funding for border security.

About $60 billion is expected to be for Ukraine as the White House wants to pass a spending package on the war that will last through the 2024 election. Israel is set to receive about $10 billion in military aid, and the rest will go toward the border, Taiwan, and potentially other areas in the Asia Pacific.

In his speech, President Biden attempted to draw comparisons between Hamas and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: they both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy, completely annihilate it,” he said.

The president claimed it was America’s duty to get involved in these foreign wars and that it would keep Americans safe even though the proxy war in Ukraine makes nuclear war much more likely, and US support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is stirring up anti-American sentiment around the world.

 American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us in America safe. American values are what make us a partner nation you want to work with. To put all that at risk – we walk away from Ukraine, we turn our backs on Israel – it’s just not worth it. That’s why tomorrow I’m going to send to Congress an urgent budget request to fund America’s national security needs – needs to support our critical partners, including Israel and Ukraine,” Biden said.

wudu1982

Do the jewels, bones and ashes found in an Indian tomb in 1898 mark the final resting place of the Buddha himself, or was it all an elaborate hoax? When Colonial estate manager, William Peppe, set his workers digging at a mysterious hill in Northern India in 1898, he had no idea what they’d find. Over twenty feet down, they made an amazing discovery: a huge stone coffer, containing some reliquary urns, over 1000 separate jewels and some ash and bone. One of the jars had an inscription that seemed to say that these were the remains of the Buddha himself. This seemed to be a most extraordinary find in Indian archaeology. But doubt and scandal have hung over this amazing find for over 100 years. For some, the whole thing is an elaborate hoax. For others, it is no less than the final resting place of the messiah of one of the world’s great religions. For the doubters, suspicion focuse…

Shenali D Waduge

Some points highlighting the dangers to Sri Lanka’s national sovereignty is highlighted by Dr. Wasantha Bandara. The sinhala version of his article is attached.  

Dr. Wasantha claims 26 countries have been divided to fulfil strategic objectives of Western imperialists with the intervention of UN making the necessary demarcations in territory that have even divided rivers & mountains.  How sovereign are sovereign countries especially the weaker ones like Sri Lanka?

https://www.shenaliwaduge.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/නව-ව්_යවස්ථා-කෙටුම්පත-මගින්-පවතින-13-ඉක්මවා-යන-බලය-පළාත්-සභාවලට-ලැබෙනවාද.pdf

His warning is that Sri Lanka cannot underestimate or overestimate the international geopolitical influence & interventions in governing Sri Lanka. The international agreements that ended up legally demarcating territory, drawing boundaries elsewhere are not necessarily advantageous to any party in Sri Lanka. The signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord under virtual duress and the 13^th amendment that followed turning a unitary state into a quasi-federal one is a good example of external forces deciding how Sri Lanka should be administered. Dr. Wasantha Bandara also takes us back to 2002 with the India-Norway approved ceasefire agreement that also set out boundaries giving LTTE terrorists territory which was an initial attempt to carve out a virtual separate state. The nationalist forces rose to the occasion to defeat this move. The failure of Kosovo and South Sudan are examples for Sri Lanka to realize that external solutions are not solutions for us but for their strategic advantage. The newly created nations are fighting to survive. Sri Lanka should not end up one of them.

As Dr. Bandara points out no policy makers or drafting committees can ignore ground geopolitical realities in formulating national policy or draft constitutions. India’s strategic objectives on Sri Lanka has been drawn out since 1932 by Panikkar and promoted via Indian intelligence agencies to weaken Sri Lanka so as to subtly control Sri Lanka eventually. Part of that ploy was to use of the Tamil” card after encouraging Tamil militancy against the Sri Lankan state. It was following this that the infamous Indo-Lanka Accord was signed creating provincial council system & even merging 2 provinces. Dr. Bandara points out that even President Jayawardena had protested against power devolution. That the unitary state was turned into a quasi-federal one was not with the wishes of the Sri Lankan public nor even the elected politicians at the time. This is the basis on which anti-13A sentiment continues to hold sway. Therefore, it is preposterous that a new draft should not only maintain the PC system but bolster it with additional powers.

Separation is happening incrementally & by a flurry of forces not necessarily working together but making use of the opportunities.

First armed militancy was created – then came the peace talks in Thimpu that set out 3 key demands (accepting Tamils as a nation, recognizing Tamil homeland in north & East & recognizing right to self-determination) The self-determination & separate state remains alive with the 1976 Vaddukoddai Resolution, its main party ITAK formed in 1949 by a person who was not even a citizen of Sri Lanka & couldn’t write a word of Tamil. The Indo-Lanka Accord made Tamil an official language and included the bogus Tamil homeland” theory while temporarily merging North-East after creating the provincial council system. Where was the international community voicing concern over a unitary state being turned into a quasi-federal one under duress? It was left to the astute President Jayawardena to take stock of the situation & insert the legal barriers to prevent the forcibly created quasi-federal system going beyond what was forced. The drafters of the new constitution appear to have ignored these ground realities & dangers that continue to lurk.

India’s stooge Varatharaja Perumal was even trained to lead a new army after orders were given to eliminate Prabakaran. This eventually led to Perumal’s unilateral declaration of independence that led to the annulment of the merged province in 1990 by President Premadasa. Elections to the Eastern Provincial Council was held only in 2008 while elections to the Northern Provincial Council was held in 2013.

The barriers that President Jayawardena & H W Jayawardena included to the 13^thamendment are noteworthy as they did so to prevent Sri Lanka being made into a federal state which was a stepping stone to being separated. This questions why, drafters have decided to do just that!

The barriers incorporated to the 13^th amendment:

1. Creation of 3 lists – Concurrent / Provincial / Reserved (India was against a Concurrent list) – the new draft constitution has removed all 3 lists & included only one Provincial Council list that places all subjects under the provincial councils – 67 subjects. The powers over subjects held by the Central Govt has been removed by the new draft constitution. Under the existing 13^th amendment the approval of the Governor is required to pass a statute. The draft constitution allows PCs to pass & gazette statutes even special instances for passing statutes have been given. Imagine the current TNA ruling Northern Provincial Council under the new draft system! The existing constitution lays out a specific method to pass statutes related to the Concurrent List & this makes it difficult to circumvent constitutional provisions when a statute is passed. Such does not exist in the new draft. The Central Govt cannot prevent the province from passing statutes. The President may have powers to order a statute to be corrected if it is against existing law or contrary to national policy but the President’s order can be challenged in the Courts thereby undermining & weakening the Executive Powers of the President. This is a fertile ground for plenty of future troubles. While the existing system prevents to a great extent separatist tendencies & kept the separatists in check, under the proposed new draft giving powers beyond what is now being enjoyed is going to aggravate the situation & lead to greater calamities.
2. Position of the Governor as the Presidents representative
3. Powers to make National Policy given to only the Central Government
4. Preventing full-financial power to the provinces
5. Power to alienate land held with the President though he could lease land.

If these were/are the obstacles that prevented Sri Lanka becoming a federal state, removing such naturally raises dangers especially when we cannot fool ourselves to thinking the eelamists have given up their goals for a separate state after end of Prabakaran. That goal for a separate Eelam state is very much alive and no Govt, official or drafting committee can ignore these ground realities when formulating anything as important as a new constitution that aspires to overturn the 1978 constitution.

Even under the 13^th amendment whatever barriers, there are unexpected situations. When C V Wigneswaran became Chief Minister, who would have thought he would attempt to strenghten the financial power & if not for an astute Governor (C A Chandrasiri) he may well have achieved his goal. However the new draft gives greater financial powers to the Province.

Dr Bandara claims that the new draft has also given room to run private schools, universities as investments. With the road/rail/ferry/airline links with India, have the drafting committee considered the scale of influence that Sri Lanka will be facing even when currently, the government finds difficulty handling diplomatic onslaughts!

Though the position of Governor was introduced to protect the Centres’ interest in the province, what if a Chief Minister aligned to separatism is appointed by a President who is also sympathetic to the separatists? This together with the scale of foreign influence, the dangers of attempting to produce a pragmatic constitution to please all & sundry against the lurking dangers is committing hara kiri and unfair by the future generations who will have to bear the burdens of shortsighted decisions & drafts.

We have to connect the dots. A bogus conflict was created. From that a set of bogus demands emerged. This led to the demand for territory & ethno-religious self-rule, thus the claim that North & East are Tamil-speaking peoples”, Sinhalese are being subtly chased out of North & East, they are denied to work, discriminated and not given proper school facilitates. Now the archaeological sites are targets & theros are not even allowed to enter Buddhist temples. Historical Buddhist sites are being destroyed, vandalized or taken over.

Notice how they are building up the narrative to claim self-rule for one ethnic group in the North & East & when a new draft constitution removes concurrent list and even allows the Provinces to challenge in courts decisions by the Centre, is this not helping the separatists to carve out an independent federal state after Sinhalese are chased out of NorthEast completely?

Dr. Bandara also provides more clues. International conventions are kept ready. All that is required is a certain territory to be given right to self-governance with additional legislative powers devolved to the province. It is silly to fool the masses that police & land powers are not given in the new draft when ample legislative powers are given that meets the criteria for the future call for self-governance. With additional powers devolved to the province, if a separatist province goes on a collision course with the centre – all they need to do is to go crying to the international community who are anyway backing them & claim the right to self-governance. They will happily help because the deal is to use that as their base after carving out a separate state.

Land rights 

Notice the manner USAID and other international agencies are unusually involved in agriculture / SMEs and Women especially in the North & East of Sri Lanka.

The draft constitution does not give land rights but it is giving investors the ability to be granted land to implement agriculture projects! Now connect the dots!

Police Powers

Blackwater played a key role in Iraq, Afghanistan & US-intervened Africa. We know the role of Wagner Group in Russia. Though police powers are not given, the new draft enables creation of such large-scale private security to ‘protect provincial govt institutions, ministers & MPs’. Dr. Bandara says that the Chief Minister can directly bring police under his authority by a mere proposal.

When the separatists have been demanding land & police powers & continue to do so, when India has been demanding full implementation of 13a – can anyone be naïve to think that India or the separatists can be fooled by a draft, unless the new is including elements more advantageous to them!

The new draft is formulated by a team of majority lawyers, so naturally their focus is on the role of the legal fraternity & explains why every matter is directed to the Courts as the final decision body. The Supreme Court under the existing system is given to only determine the constitutionality of any issue. With the sponsored foreign travel itinerary of the 3^rd pillar under scrutiny, it begs anyone to wonder the outcome.

No separate Provincial Council elections

Though there is no separate provincial council elections, the local governments are brought under the purview of the provincial councils under the new draft. The separatists will be very much in agreement to the establishment of a new provincial council system (though the argument that it is not the existing 13a is an eyewash as the powers given over new sugar-coated provisions are more dangerous than the existing set up)

As Dr. Bandara argues, whatever side the coin falls, the advantage is to the separatists but the new draft provides it greater means to advance the federal to separatist agenda.

JR Jayawardena inspite of the odds against him managed to instill barriers. Indo Lanka Accord, 13A or LTTE has not been able to form a separate state or pass land or police powers in 36 years. But they have laid their eggs and these eggs can be hatched if an entity like the new draft is accepted and passed. There is no reason to harp on the good & ignore the bad. It is the bad eggs that will end up a bigger headache to Sri Lanka. The good has to be ignored over the bad & it is the bad that has to be weighed against the existing 13A. No new draft should foresee more dangers than what we have weathered for 36 years relating to PC while giving 100% independence to the AG’s department is inviting trouble for a Govt & nation & also questions why a trade union like the BASL should be included into a new draft constitution.

While there are a handful of good features in the new draft, why can’t these be incorporated into the existing constitution with amendments?

Shenali D Waduge

by A. Abdul Aziz Press Secretary, Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, Sri Lanka.

During his Friday sermon in earlier today’s (20^th October 2023) delivered at ‘Masjid Mubarak’, Islamabad, Tilford, United Kingdom, Supreme Head (Khalifa) of the world wide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad drew attention to the seriousness of the ongoing conflict in the Holy Land and said: 

 At this juncture, I wish to speak again about the current global situation and reiterate the importance of prayer. 

Nowadays, writers from the West, even some from the United States, have written in their newspapers that there should be a limit to retaliation. They opine that America and other Western countries should play their part in the conflict between Hamas and Israel, making efforts for peace and ceasefires.

However, the same writers also lament that it seems these nations, instead of working to stop the conflict, appear to be fanning its flames.

Similarly, there was a report from the United States where a senior official of the US Department of State resigned, stating that the oppression of innocent Palestinians has reached its limits and that the world powers should be mindful of this.

Still, there are decent and noble individuals among them. Occasionally, it is reported in the media that some Jewish rabbis have also spoken out in favour of justice and against oppression.

Russia’s Foreign Minister has warned that if these countries continue their current stance, this war could spread throughout the region. 

However, I believe it may spread globally, so these nations should exercise utmost prudence. Similarly, as I’ve previously mentioned, Muslim countries should speak in unity and with one voice. If the world’s Muslim-majority nations, often cited as 53 or 54 in number, were to speak as one, it would indeed be a powerful force and would make a significant impact. Isolated voices, however, lack influence. This is the only way to establish peace in the world and end this war. Muslim nations must make earnest efforts to prevent global destruction. May Allah grant them the ability to do so.

Nonetheless, we must persistently pray. May Allah bring an end to this war and protect the innocent, oppressed Palestinians. Further, may no more atrocities befall them, and may Allah eradicate oppression from the world, wherever it exists. May Allah grant us the ability to pray earnestly.” [Amin.]

Source: Al Hakam, London.

Prof. Hudson McLean

For over 2000 years Jews have been suffering for the Death Curse of Jesus Christ, cast by the Jews themselves.

The Roman Pontius Pilate washed his hands, demonstrated daily by the Catholic priest, daily at each Holy Mass.

Why did the Western World stand by Israel when Palestinians were left out in the cold, without a home?

Today the Israelis are kept looking over the shoulder, whilst the West & USA are being hampered by Arab terror.

The only solution is not an Iron Dome over Israel but to give the Palestinians a HOMELAND!

The old saying, “People Who Live in Glass Houses, Do Not Throw Stones”!

Hamas & Hezbollah will be history if & when the Palestinians have their Homeland!

The West, EU, USA might think a bit further than their noses!

May Long Live Israel & Palestine as Good Humans!

Manusha Media

Labour and Foreign Employment Minister Manusha Nanayakkara has revealed that around a thousand new job opportunities have opened up in Israel’s agricultural sector and emphasized that the government will carefully assess the current security situation in the country before taking necessary steps to employ Sri Lankans in these job opportunities.

Minister Nanayakkara shared these insights today (20) while speaking in Parliament during an adjournment debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

During his address, the Minister underscored that the government has already taken all the required measures to facilitate the employment of migrant workers in Israel and noted that arrangements can be made for those who wish to return to Sri Lanka.

He also pointed out that individuals who are trained and willing to work in Israel as migrant workers will be dispatched in the coming weeks. Minister Nanayakkara highlighted that over the years, Israel has offered numerous job opportunities to Sri Lanka, significantly contributing to the improvement of the Sri Lankan economy.

Moreover, he emphasized the enduring friendship between Sri Lanka and Israel, underscoring the government’s commitment to promoting a peaceful world order.

Minister Nanayakkara stated, “If this conflict persists, it will have a profound impact on the world economy and, consequently, the Sri Lankan economy.”

He further emphasized the importance of Israeli and Middle Eastern countries, which make immense contributions to the Sri Lankan economy, citing the substantial role played by Sri Lankan workers in these regions.

The Minister highlighted the unique situation where both the Israeli government and opposition came together during the conflict, underscoring the significance of this unity as a valuable lesson for Sri Lanka. He also lamented that during the recent economic crisis, Sri Lankan political parties failed to collaborate for a collective solution.

By Peter Koenig Global Research, October 11, 2023

Most people, including journalists on both sides of the aisle – mainstream and non-mainstream — seem to believe that this a one-off war, a surprise attack by Hamas, the defenders” of Palestine.

It is not. Connecting a few dots over the past 70 years may help better understand what is going on in the Middle East, Israel-Palestine – and around the world. How the bloody Israel-Palestine conflict fits into the Big Picture.

What if Hamas has been created either by Israel directly, or rather by the US-UK-Israel Secret Services for the benefit” of Israel, for precisely the reason they (Hamas) are used today: to justify Israel’s all-out war for wiping out Palestine, for extending her territory, absorbing over time about as much as a third or half of the current Middle East – into Greater Israel? 

For the wellbeing of the Chosen People”?

Hamas has no chance in heaven to win this war. It is David against Goliath. Except in this case, David is Hamas and Goliath is Israel. Both Hamas and Israel know it.

What if Hezbollah was also created by the same villains for the same reasons, to create chaos and eventually war in the Middle East? They are the official protectors” of Lebanon (similar to Hamas for Palestine) but, with their possible aggression on Israel, or their involvement in the current war, they will make sure that Lebanon will be one of the countries absorbed by Israel. Israel’s massively US-military-supported IDF (Israel Defense Forces) may just crush Hezbollah and take over Lebanon.

This plan is not known by most people. Netanyahu becoming prime minister again in December 2022, despite his narrowly losing the election, is a well-planned scam, supported by the well-known secret services and the Kazarian Zionists, supporting Israel’s expansion throughout the Middle East.

Let us not forget, Israel is the power broker for the western world. They control worldwide banking and corporate finance, communication, Hollywood, art, education systems – and more.

Already in 1815, Nathan Rothschild, British financier and member of the Rothschild banking family, made his famous statement:

I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls the British money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.”

The same Nathan Rothschild also infamously said, the time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.” See this and this.

This is precisely a reflection on what we are living today – a limitless quest for superiority, no matter what it costs, in money and blood.

Back to Hezbollah: Lebanon has also lots of natural resources, off-shore oil and a deep off-shore sweet water aquifer. Current Israeli territories have almost no fresh water, one of the reasons (among many others) Israel wants to take over the so-called West Bank, where about 80% of all the fresh water sources of greater Palestine (before 1948) is located and which Israel now is virtually stealing from Palestine.

Palestine also has natural gas. The Gaza Marine is a natural gas field less than 40 km off the coast of the Gaza Strip. The deposits of the Gaza Marine natural gas field are estimated at 35 BCM, larger than those of Israel’s Yam Tethys maritime gas field. See this.

The Role of Al Qaeda

In the same spirit of Hamas and Hezbollah, Al Qaeda was created in the early 1980s. Al Qaeda is a Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization; an international terrorist” organization which was to generate unrest around the world, as needed, to justify military interventions – mostly by the US and UK – and destabilization of otherwise stable (and mostly resources-rich) Middle East and African countries. Al Qaeda has also been operating in Asia — for example in Pakistan, where it supposedly was founded; also in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and elsewhere.

U.S. Weapons for Hamas 

It is no coincidence that weapons used by Hamas in this assault” on Israel are of US origin, earlier shipped to Kiev to fight Russia. By now it is no secret that about 70% of US- and EU-supplied weapons never made it to the Ukrainian front fighting Russia, but rather to the black market, from where tracing them was thought to be next to impossible. See this.

Washington and Brussels – the EU puppets of the wannabe empire – knew from the beginning about the deviation of a large proportion of weaponry to the black market. But they did nothing against it. Did they know this was a covert way of arming Hamas and possibly Hezbollah for a soon to come, well-planned hot” war with Israel?

Amazingly, since Benjamin Netanyahu had been made PM again, he had been advancing a judicial reform which was considered as damaging to Israel’s democracy and devastating to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Many potential recruits have refused to serve. Analysts warned that this might crack the IDF and its ability to defend the state. See this.

Would Netanyahu not have known about the risks to the IDF of his judicial reform?

Connecting the Dots: The Washington Consensus 

In parallel with these terrorist” organizations — the creations of US-UK-Israel secret services – the financial behemoths also worked their program out. They convened the so-called Washington Consensus, created in 1989, by the three key US-controlled Financial Organizations: Federal Reserve, IMF and World Bank.

The covert purpose of the Washington Consensus was to indebt the so-called developing world, beginning with Latin America (the US backyard,” a Washington-coined term), to make them (fully) dependent on the US.

Loans were no longer development project-based but rather blank checks”, according to a list of goodies” that were to be purchased or built, and conditions for tranches of disbursements within a given timeframe but hardly any supervision by the lenders on whether the items on the list and conditions were fulfilled.

With corruption rampant on both sides of the aisle – lenders and recipients – money often disappeared but accumulated as debt in the countries’ treasuries.

Washington Consensus policies were applied throughout the world, with the same purpose. Through these policies and the largely dollarized economies of the purported Third World” countries, economic crises could be created at will, and as needed, provoked, or accompanied by terrorist-caused chaos and upheavals to shuffle more of the resources, natural and otherwise, from these countries to the top, the US and European world elite.

With this economic domination” and the terror created to cause unrest when needed, the control of much of the Global South could be guaranteed.

Intelligence Ops. and Climate Change”

At about the same time from the 1950’s to the 90s, Operation Gladio was launched by the CIA and other western secret services, especially in Italy, France and Germany, to wipe out or convert the then-strong socialist and left movements. They were literally disabled in Europe.

In the 1980s, overlapping with the annihilation of the left, the Green Movement took hold in Europe and later in the US. Leaders were Greenpeace, the World Wild Life Fund, Friends of the Earth – among many – gradually converting the minds of the left into defending nature, fighting so-called Ozone holes, Climate Change” and more.

With the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro attended by 172 nations, the cornerstone for what has since become the climate change” movement with the ensuing so far about 27 COPs, had been set.

COP stands for Conference of the Parties,” meaning those countries who joined are party to,” and belong to the international treaty called the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change  (UNFCCC). See this.

Climate Change” — the all-infiltrating climate change agenda has since become a religion. The social and mind manipulation necessary to make it a religion is largely the achievement of the Tavistock Institute for Social Engineering based in the UK, in close collaboration with DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a military-security and intelligence thinktank linked to the Pentagon.

The conversion from socialist thinking to green thinking is also mostly the work of Tavistock and DARPA.

Since the 1940s, Tavistock and DARPA – and possibly others – have gained scientific knowledge on how humans’ psyche and social behavior tick to bend and influence” them, according to the needs of the elite and wannabe One World Order (OWO) gurus.

The Cold War and Its Aftermath

One of the main precursors to this sequence of events was the Club of Rome, a first informal meeting took place in Rome in 1956. It was then overshadowed by the Cold War, which was supposed to squash the already WWII-weakened Soviet Union.

The US funded Hitler’s war to fight the USSR, the main purpose of WWII.

It failed miserably. The funding came directly from the US Fed via the Basel-based Bank for International Settlement (BIS – Rothschild controlled), located just a few kilometres  from the German border, making for easy transfer to the German Reichsbank, at that time in suitcases full of cash.

The first President of the BIS was a former Deputy Chairman of the Fed.

Since this approach to conquer Russia (USSR) failed, the Cold War was introduced under totally false pretenses. It eventually succeeded, temporarily (from 1991 to 1999) to break the Soviet Union, with the collaboration of the corrupted Yeltsin Government, compliments of Washington. Then Vladimir Putin arrived on the scene to salvage his country. He has done so astonishingly well.

The West is in steep decline and will not be able to conquer Russia nor China. They have different profiles of ethics, morale, and humanity.

The Club of Rome

The formal creation of the Club of Rome (COR), a Rockefeller idea (not European), took place in 1968 in Rome. The COR is since headquartered in Winterthur, Switzerland, along with many other dubious organizations protected by generous Swiss legislation.

From the beginning, the COR was pushing for a United Europe but never a sovereign European Federation à la US of A, with their own Constitution, lest Washington would not be able to control her (the European Union).

The EU must have a common currency, the little sister of the US dollar (same principle, made of thin air), which, of course, the founders knew would not work. A single currency for the 19 of the 27 countries, with different legislation, economies, cultures, languages, and no common Constitution, i.e., monetary policy and legislation, is bound to fail.

The break-up of the EU is just a matter of time. It will blend in with the rest of the chaos which is ever rising, with accelerating speed, and causing millions of deaths.

An estimated 25 to 30 million people perished since WWII caused by US-initiated conflicts and wars around the globe. The Israel-Palestine confrontation is just the latest of such killing machine.

Many analysts warn about a nuclear WWIII. They did so with Ukraine, and now again with this deadly Israel-Palestine conflict.

We are already in WWIII, just not nuclear. Nuclear is no longer necessary, as it might destroy most of modern infrastructure, life on earth – all the things the wannabe reigning elite covets. And who knows, they may risk their own lives with a potential nuclear confrontation.

Today’s bio-warfare, Directed Energy Weapons (DEW – see Maui, Hawaii, and California) and not least, geoengineering the climate – to destroy in a targeted way food crops, infrastructure, and housing around the world, with extreme heat waves, flooding, hurricanes and even earthquakes, can do at least as much damage in terms of famine, misery and death, as a nuclear war.

Plus, with a Tavistock-engineered mind, the damage is easily being ascribed to climate change.”

In 1972, the COR issued the infamous Limits to Growth” report, which as of this day is the blueprint for the WEF’s Great Reset and the UN Agenda 2030 with one of the key objectives: reducing massively the world population, also called useless eaters”, by Israeli professor Yuval Noah Hariri, Klaus Schwab’s close advisor. Gigantic population reduction is one of the main goals of the WEF’s Great Reset and the interlinked UN Agenda 2030.

The UN-WEF Pact of Cooperation

In 2019, WEF Chairman, Klaus Schwab, and UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, signed a Pact of Cooperation that is illegal, immoral, and a huge conflict of interest.

Image left, Klaus Schwab and UNSG Antonio Guterres 

The UN is no longer a trustworthy 193-member international organization, created in 1945 to foster world peace.

Nowadays, illegality as we knew it, does not count anymore. The world is now guided” by the elite’s rules-based order” — a set of non-legal rules that can be adapted according to the needs of the wannabe rulers.”

Interestingly, nobody protested this unholy partnership between the UN and the World Economic Forum. So, UN Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset / 4^th Industrial Revolution are identical per se, pursuing the same objectives and goals.

As a face-saving stint of cosmetics over the stained UN image, a special UN commission may launch an inquiry into war crimes committed during the Israel-Palestine war. The outcome will likely be what most people guess it will be – Israel is absolved. See this.

An author of Limits to Growth, Dennis Meadows, recently said in a video the world is overpopulated and its inhabitants must be massively (about 86%) reduced for good equilibrium. Although, he did not volunteer as one of those having to be reduced”. See this.

Concluding Remarks

The current Israel-Palestine war will not be short, predicted and announced by PM Benjamin Netanyahu on the first day of the war on Saturday 7 October 2023. How does he know?

It looks like this conflict may go into the direction of the never-ending, like Afghanistan, Ukraine, Somalia, Sudan and of course, still troubled Iraq, and many more. All of which are contributing to this Death Cult – genocide for population reduction, chaos, wherever you look – and fear, fear, and more fear, weapon of choice to cause submission and destruction of economies and eventually transfer of resources from the bottom to the top.

The new war also contributes to the pursuit of the un-pursuable — a One World Government — and as an agenda within the agenda — to the achievement of Greater Israel for the Chosen People.”

It will not happen.

But the human suffering until the collapse of this diabolical nightmare may be horrendous.

We, the People, must plan creating another society based on independent and sovereign communities, with own money and own local banking, trading with each other, maybe in the future linking up communities. And foremost, away from all-controlling digitization.

Dynamics – no dictate – of this new society”, hopefully one day new civilization”, must be the primary guiding light.

*

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image: Palestinian residents of Huwara walk among their burned homes, cars, and businesses the morning after Israeli settlers rampaged through their town in the West Bank, Feb. 27, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

The original source of this article is Global Research

අග්‍රාමාත්‍ය මාධ්‍ය අංශය 

අග්‍රාමාත්‍යවරයා මේ බව සඳහන් කළේ  අද (2023.10.20) BMICH හිදී පැවති Techno 2023, කාර්මික හා තාක්ෂණ ප්‍රදර්ශනය විවෘත කිරීමේ අවස්ථාවට එක්වෙමිනි.

එහිදී අදහස් දැක් වූ අග්‍රාමාත්‍යවරයා –

ආර්ථික අර්බුදයෙන් මිදීමේ අරමුණ සාක්ෂාත් කර ගැනීම සඳහා ‘ආර්ථිකය ප්‍රකෘතිමත් කිරීමට ඉංජිනේරුකරණය‘ යන තේමාව යටතේ techno2023 සංවිධානය කිරීම පිළිබඳව ශ්‍රී ලංකා ඉංජිනේරු ආයතනය (IESL) වෙත ප්‍රශංසාව හිමිවෙනවා. ව්‍යවසායකත්වය ප්‍රවර්ධනය කිරීම, නව ව්‍යාපාර  දිරිගැන්වීම, රැකියා අවස්ථා නිර්මාණය කිරීම සහ ආර්ථික වර්ධනය ඉහළ නැංවීම ප්‍රශංසනීයයි.  ඉංජිනේරුවන් සහ තාක්ෂණවේදීන් තම අධ්‍යයන විෂය මාලාවේ න්‍යායන්ට පමණක් සීමා නොවී රට මුහුණ දෙන ආර්ථික අභියෝග රාශියකට නිර්මාණාත්මක විසඳුම් ඉදිරිපත් කළ යුතුයි.  

1985 වසරේ තරුණ මන්ත්‍රීවරයෙකු ලෙස IESL පනත් කෙටුම්පතට පාර්ලිමේන්තු අනුමැතිය ලබා ගැනීමට එවකට අමාත්‍ය පී. දයාරත්න මහතාට සහය දුන් අයුරු මට සිහිපත් වෙනවා. අපේ රට තාක්‍ෂණික විශිෂ්ටත්වය කරා ගෙනයාමට සහ  ජනතාවගේ ජීවන තත්ත්වය නඟා සිටුවීමට සහාය වීම සඳහා ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ බහුවිධ ඉංජිනේරු කුසලතා එළිදැක්වීමට  ඉංජිනේරු සහ තාක්‍ෂණ පිළිබඳ ප්‍රමුඛ වෘත්තීය ආයතනයක් ලෙස IESL හි කාර්යභාරය අගය කරනවා.  

කොවිඩ් 19 වසංගතය සහ ඉන් අනතුරුව ඇති වූ ගෝලීය ආර්ථික පසුබෑම නිසා ආර්ථික  අවපාතයකට, ඉහළ විරැකියාවකට, උද්ධමනයකට සහ පුළුල් වන වෙළඳ හිඟයකට මුහුණ දෙන්න සිදු වුණා. ආර්ථික අර්බුදය විසඳීමට ඉංජිනේරුවන්ට තීරණාත්මක කාර්යභාරයක් ඉටු කළ හැකියි.  ඉංජිනේරුමය විසඳුම් ආර්ථිකය මුහුණ දෙන ඇතැම් අභියෝග විසඳීමට උපකාරී වෙනවා. නිදසුනක් වශයෙන්, යටිතල පහසුකම් සංවර්ධනය මගින් ප්‍රවාහන පද්ධතිය, බලශක්ති උත්පාදනය සහ විදුලි සංදේශය වැඩිදියුණු කළ හැකි අතරම එමඟින් වෙළඳාම සහ වාණිජ කටයුතු සඳහා පහසුකම් සැලසීමට, විදේශ ආයෝජන ආකර්ෂණය කර ගැනීමට සහ රැකියා අවස්ථා නිර්මාණය කළ හැකියි.  

එහිදී අදහස් දැක් වූ වැඩ බලන තාක්ෂණ අමාත්‍ය කනක හේරත් මහතා –

වත්මන් අභියෝගවලට මුහුණ දීම සඳහා ඩිජිටල් විසඳුම් ලබා දෙන ලෙස  ඉංජිනේරු සහ තාක්ෂණ විශේෂඥයින්ගෙන් ඉල්ලා සිටිනවා. එමඟින් දළ දේශීය නිෂ්පාදනයට ඩිජිටල් ආර්ථික  දායකත්වය රුපියල් බිලියන 3.8 සිට බිලියන 5 දක්වා වැඩි කළ හැකියි.  විදේශ ආයෝජන ආකර්ශනය කර ගත හැකි, දේශීය හා විදේශීය රැකියා අවස්ථා උත්පාදනය කළ හැකි, නවෝත්පාදන ප්‍රවර්ධනය කළ හැකි දක්ෂ ශ්‍රම බලකායක් නිර්මාණය කිරීම සඳහා අධ්‍යාපනය සහ කුසලතා වර්ධනය කිරීමට ඉංජිනේරු විසඳුම්වලට හැකියාව තිබෙනවා.

ශ්‍රී ලංකා ඉංජිනේරු ආයතනයේ සභාපති මහාචාර්ය රංජිත් දිසානායක, ඉංජිනේරු. Techno2023   නියෝජ්‍ය විධායක ලේකම් අර්. බී. එම්. ගුණවර්ධන, IESL හි හිටපු සභාපතිවරුන් සහ සාමාජිකයින් මෙම අවස්ථාවට සහභාගී විය.