Michael Roberts
Stephen Long is clearly an adventurous American who has travelled widely and ventured into the paths of Buddhist meditation as a central facet within this journey – so much so that he adopted a brahmacharya philosophy of life leading to his ordination in Los Angeles.[1] He does not seem to be a mere dabbler in the Buddhist dispensation: he has published a book entitled Karmic Ties: A Novel of Modern Asia (1999). He also got to know Gotabaya Rajapaksa. In my conjecture this could have been in Los Angeles;[2] but he also refers to a meeting with Gotabaya when the latter was effectively overseeing Defence (with his brother President Mahinda as formal Minister).
His recent article “Sri Lanka: A Tragic Lesson in Revenge Politics” betrays a distinct bias: it overblows the weight of Gotabaya’s hand in Sri Lanka’s victory in Eelam War IV just a tad.[3] However, when Long asserts that Gotabaya Rajapaksa “literally had the country ‘wired’ for real-time information-collecting and feedback to authorities,” he pinpoints a vital pillar in the war campaign. As we know from a wide variety of sources and as Long claims, this security pillar was systematically dismantled by the Yahapālana government, thereby opening the door for the Zahran Hashim network to implement its carnage on Easter Sunday despite intel-reports from abroad with concrete data on their intent (see below). Continue reading
