{"id":89187,"date":"2019-05-21T15:40:33","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T22:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=89187"},"modified":"2019-05-21T16:08:57","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T23:08:57","slug":"are-we-going-collectively-insane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/05\/21\/are-we-going-collectively-insane\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we going collectively insane?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By Somaweera Sirisinghe of Auckland New Zealand<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Sri Lankan\nnational leaders, both layman and the clergy of all denominations are engaged\nin a praiseworthy effort to heal the wounded psyche of a nation. Yet we find\nsome unscrupulous people working towards their own agendas mainly using easily\naccessible media like the email and YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday I\nreceived an email from an easily gullible Sri Lankan living in New Zealand\nrequesting us to participate in street protests against imminent\u201d American\noccupation of our beloved motherland, mentioning that some Sri Lankans in other\ncountries are already protesting! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another\nperson sent me a link to listen to a retired senior ranker of the Sri Lankan\nforces revealing a horrifying covert action to hand over all land north of a\nline connecting Trincomalee to Colombo for the use of the American forces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a person\nwho had a long professional association with Sri Lanka\u2019s Ministry of Lands, I\nknew that there is a statutory procedure for acquisition of lands for public\npurposes enshrined in the Land Acquisition Act. It is a long winding process\nwhich requires consultations with the land owners,&nbsp; gazette notifications\nat various stages as well as procedures for claims that could even go up to the\nSupreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A\nquick-fire land acquisition can only be done under the suspension of civil laws\nin a war situation (once the war is over and the operation of normal law\nresumes, land has to be returned to its legal owners) or when a person like\nUganda\u2019s Idi Amin has appropriated dictatorial powers! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since there\nis no evidence that either of these currently happening in Sri Lanka, I cannot\nunderstand why even the Sri Lanka\u2019s so-called intelligentsia is swallowing\nthese stories hook, line and sinker!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Somaweera Sirisinghe of Auckland New Zealand Sri Lankan national leaders, both layman and the clergy of all denominations are engaged in a praiseworthy effort to heal the wounded psyche of a nation. Yet we find some unscrupulous people working towards their own agendas mainly using easily accessible media like the email and YouTube. Yesterday [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89187","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=89187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}