more racist reporting by western media's sri lankan corespondents

one more example of racist reporting by westerns media can be seen below. the headline reads “Tamils kill seven civilians" (this time the culprits are 'afp correspondents'). this equating of tamils with terrorists is inexcusable. being journalists should not excuse anyone. they are free to be racists and slander sri lankans if they want, but we should expose their racism and unprofessional conduct.

this equating of tamils with terrorists is exactly what ltte terrorist pussies promote. their propaganda is always full of that. anyone who parrot that is doing terrorists' work for them.

we should continue to name and shame such terrorist parrots and racists whenever we can. i have already pointed out the examples of habitual racism by simon gardner the reuters correspondent here and bbc's sri lankan section. that they change the headline later does not take away the enormity of the crime or the damage caused by the slander (see the number of australian sunday newspapers this was published in).


in fact that they write this kind of headline in a hurry (though this was certainly not in a hurry) indicate how their minds perceive the tamils. as the sinhala saying goes, tongue doesn't lie even if mouth does.

hypocrisy of fmm and peaceniks
sri lanka's so called free media movement of sunanda deshapriya has always been quick to defend such racists and terrorist biased journalists. they call exposing of some journalist's terrorist parroting and racism, a threat to freedom of expression. in fact such exposure is part of freedom of expression. by trying to stop such exposure it is the fmm that is trying to curtail freedom of expression. in other words they find nothing wrong with tamils being equated to terrorists, but condemn anyone who point out (with evidence) that some journalists are repeating ltte propaganda.

sri lankan peaceniks, who also regularly parrot terrorist propaganda, believe this sort of racist stuff over usually more balanced local mainstream media, which says a lot about their level of intelligence, bias, and attitude. people like sanjana hattotuwa of groundviews swear by this kind of reporting; if it is foreign, it is god given truth to them. they will censor (and have censored) anyone who points this error in their writing or their sources. as i have said what else can you expect from people who think peace is worth any cost (including the cost of human rights, justice, freedom, and democracy). only immoral racists can hold such a postion. how many of those people who went into hysterical exaggerations about the 'eviction' incident will condemn this kind of blatant examples of real racism?

that is why we must continue to expose the hypocrisy of all those people in whatever small way we can.

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a test match and a spanish woman

finally a test match! yes it is only bangladesh, but so what?
after 2 weeks of almost non stop work i decided to take a (temporary) break and watch the match last afternoon. then went to sleep. just got up.
btw any comments about russel arnold's commentary?

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there is a lot i want to blog about, but cannot be bothered at the moment. so i will quote a passage that struck me before going to sleep yesterday. it’s from that strange book "on love" (de l'amour) by stendhal (his the red and the black, and the charterhouse of parma are two of my all time favorites) with its 'interesting' theories on love and assorted thoughts and anecdotes (real and invented)

The prettiest woman in Narbonne is a young Spanish girl, barely twenty, who lives in seclusion with her husband, an officer on half pay. Some time ago the latter was obliged to slap the face of a certain coxcomb; the following day the coxcomb saw the young Spanish woman arrive at the place appointed for the duel; he burst out with a new torrent of affectation: 'But really, this is scandalous! How could you have admitted to your wife ... I suppose Madame has come to prevent us fighting?' 'I have come to bury you,' replied the young Spanish woman.

part of fragment 98, "various fragments", book two
translation by gilbert and suzanne sale

of course the book is full of 'more' quotable quotes (for instance, the fragment 1 says “Everything can be acquired in solicitude, except character.") but above struck me.

anyway that is all for now.

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tamilnet ban, bad show - how to bypass

tamilnet is not accessible from inside sri lanka at the moment. tamilnet is without doubt a ltte terrorist propaganda website. however banning accessibility to it is unacceptable. it is also stupid. it amounts to what i consider censorship and should be resisted.

for quick and easy methods to bypass the ban see below.

the ban is not limited to slt but affects other isps as well.

this is reminiscent of the indian government's blocking of several websites in july, 2006. as i said then, "we in sri lanka may learn a thing or two from their experience if same thing happens here in the future"

btw one has has to admit that unlike indian government which as a result initially blocked whole domains (all blogspot /blogger blogs for instance were blocked) sri lankan one was more specific.

a voice in colombo is right, we have peaceniks like sanjana hattotuwa's groundviews who unquestioningly parrot what terrorists pussies say ( and arbitrarily censors opposing views and questions. ironically some of my comments they censored concerned the free media movement's fake claims about a internet blocking in jaffna in january this year. that is yetanother example of peaceniks inability to distinguish fake from real).

however parrots are parrots however obedient, it is best that we have the original. and as a voice in colombo says "what benefit can the government expect by blocking TamilNet from here? Nothing at all."

in spite of all the claims of peaceniks this is the only example any censorship by government in sri lanka. as i always say go to the nearest newsstand to see all the political views amply reflected without censorship. that openness must continue.

bypassing the ban

one way to visit a blocked site is through another site, generally called a proxy site or proxy server. is that illegal? no. even if it is so, we should risk it.

separate comprehensive blog on how to bypass the ban will be created as soon as i have some more free time.

for present you can use these quick and easy web based proxies. (some may display ads) you type in the url "www.tamilnet.com" in the box on these pages, click the button, and blocked website will load. no need to edit proxy settings in your browser.

http://proxy.org/ (wide choice of proxies and instructions)
http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/
http://www.ninjaproxy.com/
http://anonymouse.org/anonwww.html
http://www.myinternetproxy.com/

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ps at 7.10 pm 06/20/07
i forgot to write this earlier, the first site to report on the ban was the defencenet blog, showing again its relative reliability in comparison to overt terrorist propaganda sites like tamilnet itself and trashy parrots like groundviews which cannot distinguish reality from fakes (and then censors anyone who points out the fakes) as i mentioned above.

moral standards and hypocrisy

many of the bloggers who indulged in hysterical exaggerations about the 'eviction' incident, when confronted with the fact of their near total silence during rights violations committed by ltte (they were so confronted in this post by voice in colombo and in other forums) are taking cover behind the argument that government should be judged by higher moral standards, in contrast to terrorists who operate outside the moral domain.

in other words they are saying, "you expect terrorists to kill innocents, you do not expect government even to harass the innocent. as such we were right to condemn the government while remaining silent about ltte atrocities"

i totally agree that government should be held to higher moral standards. however their use the this argument smacks of hypocrisy.

let us examine why. (btw nothing excuses exaggerations with claims of ethnic cleansing etc. they indulged in, parroting ltte propaganda, but let us put that aside for a minute)

simply put if you bring morality into discussion, there is only one way available with regard to sri lankan conflict; defeat of terrorist pussies. a moral person would not even consider allowing terrorists to rule a section of the country, letting them oppress millions of people. morality and peace at any cost (cost of human rights, justice, democracy, and freedom) are simply not compatible. there may be spurious 'pragmatic' arguments for buying peace at such a cost but there are no moral arguments. if you have one let me know.

that is why these bloggers stink of hypocrisy. if you check their blogs you see that their level of hysterical outrage at eviction incident is proportional to their level of support to peace with ltte. more peacenik the blogger, more 'outraged' they were and more hysterical and exaggerated were their claims. main peaceniks in the blogosphere like groundviews blog totally went overboard. of course sanjana hattotuwa is perennially given to believing in conspiracy theories and plucking imaginary things out of thin air instead of basing his claims on facts, but even without his antics this relationship seem to be true. (btw it seems sanjana fooled a reporter of sunday times recently, falsely claiming, yet again, that there are 500 'visitors' a day to groundviews. he probably thinks that imaginary 500 appearing in a newspaper will be more impressive than the reality of less than 50 to his donors)

if you support peace with ltte terrorists, when they are armed and unreformed, you are giving up your moral standards. you are buying security in colombo at the cost of other's oppression. you are making the very real ethnic cleansing of non tamils from north permanent. you are denying justice to those and other victims of ltte. you are justifying repulsive and totally unjustified terrorist claims to be representative of tamils. you are denying democracy and freedom to people of north and east provinces. by advocating peace with ltte, you are in fact doing a thing far worse than what government was accused of doing with regard to eviction incident.

if they are going to hold the democratic sri lankan government to higher moral standards they should urge the government to defeat the ltte (using legitimate violence if needs be). instead they are doing the exact opposite.

thankfully sri lanka is a democracy and hypocrites always get exposed.

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note
i was busy (in fact still is) during most of last week; so did not reply to some comments here (and elsewhere); will do so as soon as i get some time.

supreme court interim order proves the falseness of exaggerated claims of peaceniks

police as a security measure evicted 376 people from colombo on thursday (7th). today supreme court issued an interim order preventing evictions from colombo because they do not have identification or a reason for their stay after a fundamental right petition was filed. a hearing on petition will be held on a later date. all this happened as they should, when everyone has the best intentions.

meanwhile all sorts of exaggerated claims were made by peaceniks (as usual parroting ltte propaganda) and even some racist journalists. this extended to completely unwarranted claims of ethnic cleansing.

in the end sri lanka proved itself a country ruled by law proving the falseness of all those claims. in such a country if anyone has a grievance correct way to go is to seek redress through law, or if law is unsatisfactory lobby to change the law democratically , as i have repeatedly said. similar instances happened in u.s. with regard to some security measures of bush administration. only difference was that there people are knowledgeable enough not to make exaggerated claims as peaceniks and others did here.

we should extend to rule of law to all sri lanka.
in any case this illustrates why we should extend that rule of law to all areas of the country, through legitimate violence if needs be. a peace that gives up that ability to seek justice is not a sustainable peace, that is why i have repeatedly made the case that 'peace at any cost' is morally wrong. a 'peace' without justice, democracy, human rights, and freedom, is not a peace.
all the more reason to regret that paikiasothy saravanamuttu, who filed the fundamental rights petition, advocates a peace obtained through appeasement of terrorists. he does not want justice to the people who were ethnically cleansed for real(no exaggerations there) by ltte terrorists from northern province. he wants a peace that will cut off similar access to justice completely from millions of sri lankans of in north and east provinces. shame!

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racist reuters reporter simon gardner equates tamils with terrorists yet again

as if in a hurry to fill the shoes of racist dumeetha luthra (btw i like the fact one of my posts detailing her racist reporting comes on top in google search for her name. serves a racist like her right, don't you think?) reuters correspondent in sri lanka simon gardner has posted a racist report equating tamils with ltte terrorists this is not the first time he has let slip his disgusting racist prejudices.

his headline originally read "Sri Lanka fights and evicts Tamils from capital". in other words sri lanka fights tamils not terrorists, according to this so called journalist. (original report with that title was withdrawn after about two hours though most of the content remained the same. see below for the original report). even the modified titles retains a version of inaccurate ethnic cleansing sounding "tamils evicted from colombo ".

may be reuters will soon report that americans and british are fighting against 'muslims'.

this racist also quotes an (as in one) unnamed(!) analyst saying that eviction of 376 tamils without identification and without any reason to be in colombo, is equivalent to ethnic cleansing. nowhere does he mention the fact that hundreds of thousands of tamils live in colombo. and that only real case of ethnic cleansing in sri lanka was carried out by ltte terrorists in north where presently almost 100% of the population is tamil.

he ignores the fact that most tamils do not support ltte and its terrorism.

he also ignores that most of the tamils in sri lanka live under areas under government control. the largest group of tamils the upcountry tamils are democratically represented in sri lankan government and the areas they live in are not affected by war. he also forgets to mention the fact that most of the northeast tamils (who are numerically smaller than upcountry tamils) also live in area under government control.

my opinion
i do not approve this move by police, precisely because it gives an opportunity for racists like simon gardner to make exaggerated claims about ethnic cleansing, though such claims can be easily refuted.

peacenik parroting expected
no doubt sl peaceniks (who also never mention the ltte's ethnic cleansing of northern province) will also claim that this eviction of 376 tamils is equivalent to ethnic cleansing. after all they always parrot absurd theories and exaggerations dreamed up by terrorist propaganda office as a matter of course.

remember how they claimed that there is a plan to ethnically cleanse trinco after the small riot there in april 2006. peacenik ngo, centre of policy alternatives, allegedly sent a fact finding mission led by sunila abeysekera to investigate and then issued a statement purporting to be its results. only it turned out that the statement was a word for word plagiarism from a post by pro ltte writer dbs jeyaraj who was not mentioned. most of the claims made in that statement including allegation of ethnic cleansing have proved false. one can verify that by going to trinco (and i regularly do) and observing how ethnically mixed a city it is, and how wrong cpa and other peacenisk were.

as always leading the peacenik pack in parroting terrorists, is the free media movement (yes the same group that protested against arrest of ltte related sinhala terrorists who were plotting to blow up buses in colombo). it seems that sunanda deshapriya of fmm wants nothing better than to see bombed civilian buses in colombo.

holding racists to account
best way to fight racists (especially racists like simon gardner who pretend to be journalists) is to expose and point out their racist attitudes to the public scrutiny.

it is up to sri lankan public to hold people who make such claims about ethnic cleaning to account. we must record their statements during the next few days and ask them in a week, a month, or a year later, to explain themselves when it becomes evident that there was no such ethnic cleansing and hundreds of thousands of tamils continue to live in colombo.

i will personally keep tabs on sri lankan bloggers who fall for this and parrot exaggerations about ethnic cleansing and i will remind them of their statements in the future.

original report

Sri Lanka fights and evicts Tamils from capital

By Simon Gardner

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka evicted hundreds of ethnic Tamils from the capital on Thursday citing security concerns, as troops battled Tamil Tiger rebels in jungles in the island's restive east.

Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said the army killed five insurgents overnight in a jungle area called Thoppigala in the eastern district of Batticaloa, and that fighting continued on Thursday as Japan's special peace envoy visited camps for war-displaced families in the area.

"We are continuing with our operation in Thoppigala and neutralising their positions," Samarasinghe said. He said four soldiers were injured during Wednesday's clash, the latest in a series of land and sea battles amid renewed civil war.

Back in Colombo, police packed 376 minority Tamils deemed without valid reasons to be in the capital into buses, most of them headed towards the northern district of Vavuniya - which is now the front line of the renewed civil war.

Rohan Abeywardene, Inspector General of Police for Colombo, said the ethnic Tamils were being sent back to their own villages for their own safety amid a rash of abductions blamed on state security services and Tamil Tiger rebels, and to avoid insurgents infiltrating the capital.

"Some people who had no valid reasons to be in Colombo and are just hanging around, they have been requested to leave and told they had better get back to their own villages," he said. "It is for their own good. You all have been complaining about people being abducted and arrested and detained."

"There is also a possibility that LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) cadres are among them also," he added.

Officials said most of those evicted would cross over into Tamil Tiger-held territory to return to their villages and that the Tigers had agreed to let them cross defence lines. The Tigers were not immediately available for comment.

ETHNIC CLEANSING?

Analysts decried the eviction as a shocking violation of human rights, with one likening it to a form of ethnic cleansing.

The move comes after a series of suspected Tamil Tiger bomb attacks in the capital in recent months as a conflict that has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983 deepens.

Japanese envoy Yasushi Akashi, who is on a 5-day visit to try and find ways to salvage a battered peace process visited an elite police commando base and camps housing internally displaced in Batticaloa on Thursday, an aide said.

The camps are located far away from the jungles where the fighting is taking place.

Akashi was also due to visit the former rebel stronghold of Vakarai further north, which troops captured in January along with a vast swathe of eastern territory the rebels controlled under the terms of a tattered 2002 truce.

Japan has played down expectations of any breakthrough from the visit, but says the envoy will try to push forward an initiative to create a devolution proposal to end the conflict.

Reuters (IDS)

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missing the concrete for the garbage

this is a screenshot (click to enlarge) of google news for term 'sri lanka' sorted for 'relevance' at around 1 am june 5 sri lankan time. anyone really interested in news about sri lanka will notice straight away what is missing here; heavy fighting north of vauniya. imo that is the most newsworthy event taking place in sri lanka. however one has to search hard to find a news story about that in any major international news source.

it is missing in spite of the fact that stories about the fighting were in sri lankan news sites (sri lankan sites are in google news but for other stories) of all persuasions.

this is not the fault of google news; it merely reflects and grades news as reported in the web. (btw i am not complaining about the normal neglect of sri lanka in international media. that sort of bias is to be expected given their market audience, as i have said before. i am pointing out what is missing in what they do report about sri lanka)

all this is typical of international coverage of sri lanka in general and sri lankan conflict in particular. they miss the concrete forest for the garbage. by garbage i mean the completely false manufactured stories like 'expelling' (peaceniks going far as to say 'ethnic cleansing') of tamils from colombo.

cocoons
but some cocooned people in colombo (especially those with peacenik sympathies) swear by international news sources. (a recent post in peacenik sanjana hattotuwa's groudviews blog erroneously comparing news about darfur and sri lanka is a good example of this warped mentality. as usual the loser censored my comments pointing out the errors in the post. i will write a more detailed post on that later as soon as i have some free time).

same sort of people believe local sri lankan news to be censored even though they can easily realize their error by visiting the nearest newspaper stand ( if they are even in sri lanka, most of them aren't for most of the time) . if they do they will be able to read all points of view (even terrorist pussy point of view not to mention peacenik parrots of terrorists) uncensored (which is as it should be, this being a democracy).

typical peacenik response when their errors are pointed out is to ask us to mind our own business and not read them (see this thread). in other words, they want us to lock ourselves into a news and opinion cocoon as they have done. fat chance!

let them live in their self generated cocoons if they want, while we remain open to all news sources. let us also point out and expose their errors and their cocoons.

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note
did not write for a while bc i was busy (with business, traveling, esp to east, and attending sick relative etc.). thanks for the emails.