{"id":72810,"date":"2017-12-16T00:48:17","date_gmt":"2017-12-16T06:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=72810"},"modified":"2017-12-15T16:57:29","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T23:57:29","slug":"dr-kumar-david-defends-the-indefensible-about-singing-hosannas-to-the-ltte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/12\/16\/dr-kumar-david-defends-the-indefensible-about-singing-hosannas-to-the-ltte\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Kumar David defends the indefensible about singing hosannas to the LTTE."},"content":{"rendered":"

Bodhi Dhanapala, Canada.<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

In response to my lament (Island, 30-11-17) that Why are the likes of Dr. Kumar David, who waxed eloquent of the technical prowess of the LTTE in making little war planes, etc., contributed to the Tamil Net, worked to elect Yahapalanaya, and is ever ready to comment on the barbarism of the Sinhala Buddhists, being silent on all this?”, Prof. Kumar David replies (11-12-27)\u00a0 where he attempts to defend the indefensible. He continues his\u00a0 silence on post-LTTE provocations and the celebration of dead terrorists as heroes by Tamil racists.<\/p>\n

Dr KD\u00a0 lists his views in point form and we\u00a0 use that\u00a0 format,, noting several overlapping\u00a0 points.<\/p>\n

a) Prof. David says,
\n The LTTE did show technical prowess in developing a fledgling air-force…etc.\u201d If you read what he wrote at the time, you see glowing admiration and not repugnance.<\/p>\n

Kumar David\u00a0 has been a Professor of electrical engineering in Sri Lanka and Hong Kong,\u00a0 while I teach in a mere technical college in Quebec.\u00a0 Some\u00a0\u00a0 aero-engineering student enthusiasts here\u00a0 use their summer holidays\u00a0 to buy\u00a0 kits and assemble planes. Here is a link to Kitplane Magazine\u201d\u00a0 from the period when the LTTE began to build planes. Dr. KD may realize by perusing it that the planes built by the LTTE are\u00a0 hardly a basis\u00a0 to sing about\u00a0\u00a0 technical prowess\u201d.
\nSee-http:\/\/www.kitplanes.com\/homebuilders-portal\/firsttimebuilders.html.
\nAt the time, a\u00a0 two-seater CGS Aviation Hawk II Arrow kit cost about $10,000 and could be built with
\nabout 200 hours of work. So a group of engineering students could\u00a0 buy\u00a0 and build it during the summer.\u00a0 It would be nothing for the LTTE with its financial and human resources.<\/p>\n

The LTTE was\u00a0 a terror\u00a0 organization possessing ships, deploying ground-to-air missiles against government attack planes, having rockets and advance ground weapons. It had funds to buy what\u00a0 it needed, and diaspora engineers as advisers.\u00a0 The LTTE\u00a0 builds this simple\u00a0 kit airplane\u201d\u00a0 and modifies it in the most amateurish way to carry a bomb\u201d. It was built simply\u00a0 to impress and earn the accolades of its uncritical admirers. Fellow travelers of the LTTE, e.g.,\u00a0 the TNA and some NGOs would have been impressed.\u00a0 My surprise was that Dr. KD turned out to be one!<\/p>\n

The LTTE showed much ingenuity in designing the suicide jackets they pioneered in the 1980s, and\u00a0 exported to the Middle-East via their alleged links to PLO training camps. I do not know if\u00a0 Dr. KD has written about the jacket design. Will KD defend the indefensible even here and sing hosannas to the technical prowess of the devil?<\/p>\n

b)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dr.\u00a0 KD says:
\nI have opposed LTTE terrorism as much as I opposed the state sponsored terrorism of the Sri Lankan military. The later in fact helped to breed the former. Without the carnage of 1983 the LTTE would have remained no more than a marginal force among Tamils\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Sri Lankan military cannot be accused of the 1983 carnage.
\nI have absolutely no doubt that Dr. KD opposes\u00a0 terrorism, but I\u00a0 am surprised by his cock-eyed\u201d\u00a0 judgment. Of course, Dr. KD is a\u00a0 member of an organization that holds that the end justified the means\u201d, and hence any lie or immoral means can be employed to achieve the objective of a revolutionary capture of power by the proletariat\u201d.\u00a0 He does not regard that as\u00a0 terrorism even if heads are to be rolled in the process. Dr. KD’s objectives have changed as he ages although his moral concerns remain where they were \u2013 violence and any means what ever are justified to achieve the objective?\u00a0 So today he uses the same ethic (or lack of it) and even supported General Fonseka and his neo-con US imperialist backers who work with the UNP and the\u00a0 TNA. The latter is a\u00a0 political front of the land-owning upper-caste right-wing racist Tamils. That General Fonseka most likely would have become a UN-linked Pinochet of Sri Lanka was of no concern to Dr. KD.<\/p>\n

The 1983 carnage was engineered by the UNP\u00a0 with Ranil Wickermasinghe in the cabinet, and not by the SL army.\u00a0\u00a0 Dr. KD had no hesitation in backing the UNP candidate Fonseka\u00a0 for the presidency. He justifies this in his item\u00a0 (d) as a means of saving\u201d Sri Lankan\u00a0 democracy. Surely, his judgment failed when he supported Fonseka, or Sirisena in neo-con colour uprisings\u201d\u00a0 funded by the CIA.<\/p>\n

Dr. KD’s seeming support for the LTTE goes way back. His comments on the\u00a0 channel-4 videos (see 18th Dec. 2011 Sunday Island) are as naive as his views on the LTTE airplanes, perhaps because of his admiration for the LTTE.\u00a0 We should expect Dr. KD to take a balanced approach to fake news. As an electrical engineer he knows how easy it is to fake any news, and doctor videos. Did he\u00a0 know that the main parts of the channel-4 video had\u00a0 been shown in Boston, USA an year ago? The original showed\u00a0 assassins who\u00a0 talked Tamil, and\u00a0 more identifiable as LTTE\u00a0 executing its prisoners.<\/p>\n

Thus Dr. KD wrote:
\n Macrae (director of Killing Fields, )confirmed that the video had been thoroughly analysed technically and examined by forensic pathologists; it had been played before parliaments and heads of governments who in turn would have had officials report on authenticity. It had been assessed independently by the UN and confirmed as authentic\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dr. KD could read the\u00a0 report in the Sri Lanka Guardian\u00a0 (http:\/\/www.srilankaguardian.org\/2011\/12\/kumar-david-and-channel-4-tv-feature.html<\/a>).
\nThe author of the Sri Lanka Guardian article, reporting from Maryland USA, states that
\nKumar David\u00a0 \u2026\u00a0 an electrical engineer … could\u00a0 have run the movie with the audio and video channels hooked to an oscilloscope and\u00a0 verified \u2026\u00a0 problems of synchronization at the crucial points, e.g., before the assassination scene, \u2026, well documented by its critics. The claim that the material is a fake is well founded. As many observers have pointed out, the assassin is wearing rubber slippers, as is usual for Tamil-Tiger soldiers, where are Sri Lankan Army soldiers always wear Government-issue boots\u201d.<\/p>\n

A more critical approach to the channel-4 movies was taken by others, e.g.,\u00a0 Dr. Michael Roberts,\u00a0 the Marga Institute crowd, or the Hooles, no friends of the Sinhala-Buddhist politicians. The Colombo ‘liberals’\u00a0 with little\u00a0 grounding in the culture of the land, wishing\u00a0 to be identified with the Gramaci-quoting unintellectuals,\u00a0\u00a0 position themselves in the LTTE camp and comment only on the short-comings of the\u00a0 state. They\u00a0 go further to equate state terror\u201d\u00a0 to Sinhala-Buddhist terror\u201d.\u00a0 As a Sinhala Buddhist, I consider this to be not just an error of judgment, but also\u00a0 a slander and a total falsification of the truth.<\/p>\n

c) Dr. Kumar David says:
\nI will contribute to Tamil-Net even now if they will entertain me. I wish to reach out to Tamils with whom I disagree about secession.<\/p>\n

Will KD write to the AmaQ News (vocie of the terror group ISIS) to reach out to violent Muslims? Is the principle\u00a0 End justifies the means\u201d only for Marxist revolutionaries?\u00a0 Tamil nationalism\u00a0 wedded to vowing ethnic polarization began in 1948 demanding secession and a Tamil Arasu\u201d, long before 1956 or\u00a0 the 1983 pogroms caused by\u00a0 the Sri Lankan UNP capitalists who supported JRJ. Today Dr. KD is at one with the same Sri Lankan capitalist regime buttressed by the US neo-cons. May be, the End always justifies the Means\u201d for Dr. KD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bodhi Dhanapala, Canada. In response to my lament (Island, 30-11-17) that Why are the likes of Dr. Kumar David, who waxed eloquent of the technical prowess of the LTTE in making little war planes, etc., contributed to the Tamil Net, worked to elect Yahapalanaya, and is ever ready to comment on the barbarism of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bodhi-dhanapala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}