Are we prepared for war?

For a long time since the mistakes made like Black July, Sri Lankans as a whole have come to the realization of the hard truth that this Ethnic Conflict (which in my books is more a power struggle, the true ethnic conflict was over way before the 2nd or 3rd Ealam War started) cannot be won by war, but a negotiated peace settlement. Atleast that's what the majority believed, including my self.

However if you haven't noticed together with the media, there is a small hype being created for continued war. Specially with this nonsensical brandishing of the Thoppigala victory. Either I'm dumb or can anybody see where all this is heading? Isn't it what you call Politicalisation of the War, and those who sacrficed their lives for the war.

This is how I see it :

Mahinda made loads of promises ("Chinthanaya") that he hasn't been able to deliver. People are sick of the rising cost of every bloody consumable known to us, that there basically sick of this Govt. In order to shift our focus, this chap is putting this war in our faces, with the help of nearly all media stations and todays "Mini Independence" ceremony.

I mean what is he trying to say :

"That this war CAN be won, and to keep HIM in power come election time".

What does he really mean :

"You fools as long as I can get you to believe that this war can be won, this war can be justified. So can the spending on my Range Rovers, the cut I have from the MIG's and flying my wife and children in a Helicopter from Kandy to Colombo on a daily basis. After all there is a war going on! So my stupid mistakes in governance and policy making can be covered up."

The sad truth is :

Mahinda (if he has his way) is not going to end this war, like many chaps in the armed forces want to, but pro-long it for another 10 years by which time he would have completed his second term as Exec President and probably have one of the members of the Rajapakse clan running for President. Just to ensure the continuity of their power, and the down fall of Sri Lanka as what we know it.


And courtesy of those plans he presents to you "Nagenahira Navodaya"


3 Days of inconveniencing public with road blocks, waisting the time setting up security check points around the premises, where these chaps should be stationed in Thoppigala, guarding what we won (or is the agreement that we have to hand it over after the celebrations..), the millions of public funds waisted on a stupid show off that could be done with.

My opinion :

What ever celebrations should be done in Thoppigala. Not in Colombo. Not because it's going to inconvenience me, but it's the folks in Thoppigala who deserve the celebrations, after all they were the one's who lost their homes during the battle. It's the soldiers who gave there lives who deserve the Honour, not the president and his cronies. It's their families that should get the money, that is being spent, and the celebrations should be for those soldiers who fought extreme hardship to win the battle.


Ranil's boo boo :

Yup he does it again. While trying to give out the same message what does he go and do? Calls Thoppigala a "Jungle". While on the outset it is, calling it is only going to rub salt in the eyes of the Soldiers who fought for it, and he's basically putting his neck (I was thinking of something more graphic... but then again) out between the door, and giving the Govt the opportunity to slam the door on it! Just like the "Chewing Gum and Bracelet Story".

All I can say is that all this stupid crap is turning people. Specially those in the rural areas (who were initially brain washed by him in the first place.. then after the election realized that they them selves were the suckers...) who thought of a negotiated peace settlement are now telling them selves.. "Ok so if we won Thoppigala.. we might as well finish the rest!"


As for the reality of that happening will all have to wait and see... and this blog post will remain here.. as it doesn't have to it's breath.


Pic Courtesy of : Daily Mirror

63rd Bradby Shield Video - 2007

Royal College managed to regain the Bradby Shield and bring it to it's rightful resting place this year. I thought I'd post the links to the videos of both the legs. The delay in posting is coz, Rapidshare took ages to upload each file.

So hope this is worth for those who missed the match, specially those who are abroad, and for those of you who want to re-kindle the match again.








Bradby Shield 1st Leg (Kandy) - 9th June 2007

  1. bradby-1stleg-2007-01
  2. bradby-1stleg-2007-02
  3. bradby-1stleg-2007-03
  4. bradby-1stleg-2007-04
  5. bradby-1stleg-2007-05
  6. bradby-1stleg-2007-06
  7. bradby-1stleg-2007-07
  8. bradby-1stleg-2007-08
  9. bradby-1stleg-2007-09


Bradby Shield 2nd Leg (Colombo) - 23rd June 2007

  1. bradby-1stleg-2007-01
  2. bradby-1stleg-2007-02-part1
  3. bradby-1stleg-2007-02-part2
  4. bradby-1stleg-2007-03-part1
  5. bradby-1stleg-2007-03-part2
  6. bradby-1stleg-2007-04
  7. bradby-1stleg-2007-05-part1
  8. bradby-1stleg-2007-05-part2
  9. bradby-1stleg-2007-06-part1
  10. bradby-1stleg-2007-06-part2

PS - The part files are rar's broken into two parts. You'll need to download both to unrar(extract) the file.

Happy Downloading!


Photo Courtesy of : Vishkid

Thoppigala.. Jungle or LTTE Strong Hold


Yesterday saw the fall of Thoppigala or Barron's Cap. Firstly our hats out to those who fought bravely and also a moment to mourn those who fell, for their motherland.

Now we have to deal with the comments after the big win.

  1. Is Thoppigala just a Forrest like Opposition Leader Ranil W. says?
  2. Are we going to spend more defending Thoppigala?
  3. Was this all a put on show by Mahinda and Prabhakaran?
To start with the last question first, my political knowledge is not enough to comprehend the buy-outs and sell-outs between the two parties. However LankaWhistleBlower has the details of the Mahinda-Prabhakaran deal.

With regard to the Second Question, only time would tell, how many of our soldiers will fall keeping those FDL's.

Now to the first and most important question in my opinion. What is Thoppigala to us? And what is it's worth?

The Govt. implies it's one of the security fortresses of the LTTE, and all their equipping of Suicide-Bomb Trucks are carried out there. There was also some indication that the cannabis that the LTTE use to trade for their weapons are grown in those jungles, thereby cutting some of there cash flow.

For the people living around Thoppigala, you'd have to ask them who'd they prefer as a Neighbour.

As a firm believer of "This War Cannot be Won", I believe this is going to play a bigger role in pushing/pressurizing the LTTE into Peace Talks. Which in turn is the right track to settling this conflict.



UPDATE : A detailed account on the mission to free the east, and the Thoppigala victory can be found here.

"Charrmax" on LakbimaNews courtesy of Rajpal

Well the newest heat on the Blogsphere is courtesy of Rajpal. So I don't need to get into the minor details, if your an avid reader of the Kottu community, you'd know. If not here are some places you could start.

  1. Rhythmic Diaspora
  2. Cerno
  3. Pissu-Perera
  4. Sanjana
So hoping you didn't get lost in the blogs above, I've been silent all along coz, the article they ripped from me didn't make it to their website - www.lakbimanews.lk, but was copied word for word, picture to picture.

You can be the judge of it.... The Original Post - "What to Shout at Rugger Matches"













Not only have they copied everything but they have copied my "Bonus"... which any Editor in their right mind would have a problem stating in their news papers. Wonder what Mr. Brian Thomas has to say abt it.

So now that you know how unprofessional these folks (Mr. Rajpal specially) are, here are my issues to a certain reply he (assuming it's him/them) have posted on another blog.

Anonymous said... Hi Mr Rhythmic etc., (others)
Greetings!
First thing, we tried to contact you, but it’s not possible in most of the blogs. We did contact some of the others though, who left contact e mails.
You bloggers know that you are anonymous.
We'd like to publish the stuff you write, of course, more of it! Profuse apologies, but the reason was that we here were unable to contact you guys was your anonymity.
Maybe a post would have helped; but didn't think about the exact efficacy of that. because we did post at some sites, with our contactsw, and nobody bothered to reply!
But then, it would have been difficult to give our contacts to you that way..
Anyway we like the comment that this is a tribute to Sri Lankan bloggers. If your stuff is good we’d like to publish -- it’s in the public domain too. So I think you should have a positive take on it.
It’s not as if any stuff was published without credits.
Anyway, we’d like to publish more of your stuff; and as you may have noticed, 90 per cent of our still is NOT from blogsites, so its just that we'd like to use SOME good stuff that comes from blogs that are of relevance to Sri Lanka..
We'd also like to pay you -- for anything published in the future, as well as what was published. We don't pay enormously, but we pay reasonable rates.
So please write to us at sumathienglish@gmail.com, and we would like to get the payment across to you, if you furnish an address.
In the meanwhile, we'd like to use some more of the blogs -- and we hope you can send some of your other material on the e mail so that we can publish it..
Many of the boggers we published -- including some such as Mr Fazli Sameer have got on board, and we hope you do that too. They write EXCELLENT stuff, and were not so harried. We don’t expect the same reaction from everyone, but then we are trying to set the record straight here.
We would have liked to get you on board at the very outset, except that your contacts were not available. At least, they were not available at our scrutiny; maybe they were available somewhere.

Thanks then, and so here is to the blogosphre -- and here is to the mainstream!! We'd publish more, I hope you can write to us at our e mail and we'll use more of yours, and pay you as well.
Thanks and no offence,

‘Mr Lakbima’
alias
those at Lakbimanews.
My reply :

Well Dear Mr. Lakbima,

This is with regard to the word-for-word copy and picture-to-picture copy of my post “What to shout at Rugger Matches” which was published on your paper under “Local Rugby Lingo” page 28 - July 8th 2007.

http://chaarmax.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-to-shout-at-rugger-matches.html

I would like to bring your attention to a few points, you mentioned that contradict certainly in my case.

1. ///First thing, we tried to contact you, but it’s not possible in most of the blogs. We did contact some of the others though, who left contact e mails.
You bloggers know that you are anonymous.///

Well all you had to do was leave a comment. Just like the one you left here.

2. ///If your stuff is good we’d like to publish — it’s in the public domain too.///

Just because it’s in the Public Domain it doesn’t give you the right to publish, without proper citation and stating the sources. Just mentioning the Blog Author’s name in the “by XXX” is not enough. That would give the impression that the Blog Author is writing for your paper, and indeed getting paid for it as well.

What you need to do is, state the source, as “Source - www.abc.com” or “Courtesy of www.abc.com“.

As in my case, I wish to bring your attention to the Creative Commons License that I have, I certainly hope you are aware of it, and that your are committing an illegal act. Also you had incorrectly spelt my name as “Charrmax”.

3. Are you going to take responsibility for the statement “Brian Homa”, as for I did not write it, with the idea of my publishing’s to get into the mainstream print media. I certainly hope you guys do a better job as editors, than blindly copy content without going through them properly, checking for what might cause an offense to others.

Lastly, it’s not that we (atleast myself) aren’t glad to get our writings published but, with proper attribution to Us and our Blog web sites.

I certainly hope you would be more careful, since this is not the first time that this has happened.

Yours,

Chaar~Max
Contact Email - chaarmax-at-gmail-dot-com



I got one of my friends Confab to call the newspapers and this is what happened :

Over the last 24 hours I've been acknowledged, abused by and apologised to by Rajpal. The reason for this post? Just to make sure the blog sphere (and the ever intrusive and secretive Lakbima Reporter) is kept abreast of what went down. (more)
What I, and I am sure most of the other Bloggers will want is :

1. An apology to be published in the papers.

2. Proper Attribution (Proper spelling of the Bloggers name/pseudonym and Link to the Bloggers site)

3. Approval from Blogger before publishing his/her post.

This may seem to be blown out of proportion, but it was aggregated by Rajpal and Co. them selves. If they responded in an appropriate manner when contacted and owned upto their actions and apologized I would have let it go.

They may buy some of the Bloggers with their notes and "get on board" crap, but not me. I didn't start my blog to make money. If I want I'll set up google ads.

Mind you it's not like I'm NOT flattered that my rants and ramblings our worthy enough to be published in the main-stream media, it's just the case of not wanting to be a part of an Institution that does NOT honour the rights of others.

After all it's not the first time. I believe Sach will agree with me.

So Rajpal try and ignore the CC license a second time and see what happens. Interestingly enough I wonder how many Bloggers have been featured on this weeks Lakbima. All those who got left out, are bound to get included this week. I think the "Mag" should be called "Local Blogsphere".