January 25, 2015 · 1:13 am

Homilies for Lanka’s Immediate Future — Friday Forum

In the Sunday Island, 25 January 2015. with title as ““Friday Forum on Independence Day and other urgent concerns

The Presidential election of January 8, 2015 saw a resurgence of the democratic process in Sri Lanka, driven by an electorate which, in unprecedented numbers, exercised its franchise to choose not merely a President, but the future it wanted for the country, the Friday Forum said in a statement issued last week.

“The election showed us that Sri Lankans in all parts of the country, irrespective of ethnic or religious differences, united in their resolve to restore good governance and the rule of law and to resist authoritarianism. This provides a foundation on which the newly elected administration must build a new framework of democratic governance that promotes inclusivity, diversity and pluralism. While many issues need attention we concentrate for the moment on the following,” it said.

SAVITHRI Professor Savithri Goonesekere, nee Ellepola

Independence Day: “We urge that the celebrations be kept simple and dignified without major military and military hardware demonstrating parades, floats, and the use of school children.  The occasion should promote new standards of simple and disciplined lifestyles. Most important is to use the opportunity to remember the victims of the civil conflicts which Sri Lanka has endured since independence, to pledge our collective commitment to peace and reconciliation, and to resolve that there should never be such violence in our country again.  We call upon the government, as a sign of our commitment to national unity, to ensure that the national anthem is sung in both Sinhala and Tamil, and that this practice be continued. Continue reading →

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January 24, 2015 · 1:52 pm

Evaluating the Prospects of Terrorism in Australia in 2015

Clive Williams, courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald, 2 January 2015

The good news is that in 2015 Australia will probably be a less dangerous place, with areduced likelihood of us being killed in an act of mass terrorism – but the bad news is that the world outside is a more dangerous place, with a greater likelihood of Australians becoming terrorism victims overseas.

Clive_Williams_Bashar_al_

In the recent past, under the medium-level threat, the worst-case concerns in Australia had been multiple-bombings of the kind favoured by al-Qaeda (AQ), or an active shooter attack like the ones conducted in Mumbai in 2008 and by Anders Bering Breivik in Norway in 2011. Continue reading →

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January 24, 2015 · 1:41 am

Reflections on the Outcomes of the Presidential Election

Izeth Hussain, in The Island, 24 January 2015, where the title is “Making Sense of the Presidential Election”

After the Presidential elections which are widely regarded as having been “stunning”, most Sri Lankans are now engaged in trying to appraise their significance. We have to begin by trying to establish why exactly Mahinda Rajapakse lost. In my article “After the elections”, published on January 10 but sent to the Editor well before the election results were announced, I wrote, “If Maithripala Sirisena squeaks through, or wins with a substantial majority as I have been confidently expecting, the prospects will be much brighter for a restoration of a fully functioning democracy”. The underlying reason for my confident expectation was something that has been well-known since people began living under the State, by which I mean among other things a centralized body holding exclusive coercive power. It has been established beyond dispute that power tends to go to the head, an excess of power tends to go excessively to the head, from which follows folly and hubris, the pride that goes before nemesis, the fall. It seemed to me that MR particularly by his participation in the creation of an utterly egregious Muslim ethnic problem showed folly and hubris of an order that had to lead to his nemesis. Continue reading →

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January 23, 2015 · 3:17 am

The Deep Fractures in Sri Lanka’s Polity remain — warns Dayan J

Dayan Jayatilleka in the Island, 18 January 2015 where the title is “Beyond 50/50″

The jury is in on the Presidential election. Here’s how it went down, according to an interesting source which can hardly be described as anti-Tamil, or Sinhala racist. Listen to Mr. Erik Solheim: “…The election victory was possible due to massive support from all Sri Lankan minorities. Mr. Rajapaksa won 90 out of 160 electoral districts and came out on top in nearly all Sinhala-dominated provinces. Mr. Rajapaksa roughly won the Sinhalese vote by 55 per cent. This was compensated for by Mr. Sirisena winning around 80 per cent of the Tamil vote and an even bigger share of Muslim votes. For this was payback time…” (‘Can The Unknown Angel Deliver?’ Erik Solheim, the Hindu, Jan 15th, 2015)

So Mahinda Rajapaksa indubitably won the majority of the majority of the island’s citizens: 55% of 70%. He lost. The winner failed to win a majority of the majority. He won. To a great many, this structural asymmetry makes the mandate look and feel like a doughnut.

Mr. MA Sumanthiran a liberal and a moderate Tamil nationalist, spells it out still more clearly in the Sunday Leader: “This election has shown that Maithripala Sirisena’s victory was assured by those people who are numerically in the minority and therefore the weight of their votes equal to the weight of the vote from the majority community.” Continue reading →

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January 23, 2015 · 2:55 am

EPW reviews Lanka’s Economic Situation

Economic and Political Weekly as presented in Daily News, 23 January 2015

While the election victory for President Maithripala Sirisena was due to a unique political moment that united minorities and many in the Sinhala electorate to vote out an authoritarian regime, expectations of major change in economic policy need to be tempered. The momentum gained from overthrowing an authoritarian regime should now be channelled into a radical democratic agenda for social justice through mobilisation and struggle in which the leftist forces in Sri Lanka have to play an important role.

The Collective for Economic Democratisation (ahilan.kadirgamar@gmail.com) is an organisation in Sri Lanka that focuses on historically grounded analysis of political and economic issues.The people of Sri Lanka have stood their ground for democracy, defeating a well-entrenched regime and a seemingly invincible leader. One of the strongest messages emerging from Mahinda Rajapaksa’s defeat in the elections is that change is possible – change that is sparked by the common citizenry through democratic means.

Continue reading →

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January 21, 2015 · 4:59 am

Migrant Selvi Parameswaran feels profoundly Australian

Selvi Parameswaran in Letter to Editor, AUSTRALIAN, 21 January 2015, which carried the title “Generous welcome makes me feel Australian”

EVERY time there is a crisis at a refugee detention centre I am reminded of the experience I had coming to Australia as a refugee in 1986. After my father and grandfather were killed in Sri Lanka, my mother brought us to Australia and stayed in the Graylands migrant centre in Perth for six months. I was seven and my sister was two, and we had such a wonderful time there, visiting the nurse so we could get biscuits and eating strange new food like fish and chips and crumbed chicken. Continue reading →

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January 21, 2015 · 4:47 am

Muslims can make the pen mightier than the sword

ACL Ameer Ali, courtesy of the Australian, 21 January 2015. See http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/muslims-can-make-the-pen-mightier-than-the-sword/story-e6frg6zo-1227191285228 where there are numerous blog comments

THE attack on Charlie Hebdo and similar attacks on journalists, artists and authors carry the signature of a puritan, authoritarian Islam that has no room for tolerance of diversity, differences and doubt. This is the Islam of the gun. To the followers of this brand of Islam, history has virtually been frozen since the murder of the fourth caliph, Ali, in AD661. These Islamists want political power at any cost to bring back their so-called golden age of Islam, which covers about 50 years from the time of prophet Mohammed to the death of Ali.

This brand of Islam is not only authoritarian but legalistic, exclusivist and misogynist. Although puritan Islam has a long past, its current wave began in the wake of the oily affluence of the Middle East in the 1980s. Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabi puritanism and the guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, with its new financial clout automatically became the unchallenged leader of the puritan wave in the Sunni world. Continue reading →

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January 21, 2015 · 4:24 am

From Expeditionary Terror to Leaderless Remote Control Terror

David kilcullenDavid Kilcullen, in the Weekend Australian, 17-18 January 2015, where the title is ” Remote Control Terror” … See ttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/terror/new-terror-paradigm-after-charlie-hebdo-raids/story-fnpdbcmu-1227187609376 for web version where there are lively blog exchanges

LAST week Islamist terrorists killed 17 people in a horrifying raid on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and in a siege at a Paris kosher market. The attacks were a direct assault on free speech in one of the world’s oldest democracies, exacerbated fears of Muslim anti-Semitic violence in Europe and prompted a global response. The attacks particularly resonated in Australia, of course, after December’s deadly Martin Place siege.

CHARLIE HEBDO I KILL --AFP Charlie Hebdo attackers kill policeman–AFP

Fears of follow-on attacks have roiled Europe and America. Police evacuated Belgian newspaper Le Soir after a bomb threat, the French Army increased patrols at public sites and in Germany competing pro- and anti-immigration marchers rallied under heavy security. Continue reading →

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January 21, 2015 · 12:25 am

Conjectures on Early Human Migration to Australia

National Goegraphic ….. https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/migration-to-australia/ … where the title is “Human Journey”

HUMAN JOURNEY

About 50,000 years ago, a small band of humans landed in northern Australia, arriving on a primitive boat or raft. It is likely that the journey was planned because enough men and women arrived to found a new population there. Perhaps guided by rivers, the group ventured deeper inland, where they found giant mammals, birds, and reptiles ripe for hunting, and no other humans to challenge them. This intrepid group had stumbled upon a new continent, and they had it all to themselves. Continue reading →

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January 20, 2015 · 3:12 pm

Islamists driven by a Rage against the Historical Downturn in Islamic Political Supremacy

clive kessler Clive Kessler, courtesy of  New Mandala, 12 January 2015, where the title runs as follows: “A Rage against History” … while the version in The Weekend Australian has the title “”Islam cannot disown jihadists driven by rage against history“

The Ottawa parliament, Café Lindt, Charlie Hebdo and so many others too: these are all separate incidents.  But they are all part of the same global phenomenon. They are all expressions of a rage against history that lurks within modern Islam and animates Muslim militants worldwide today. It is a rage that has its source within the wounded soul of contemporary Islamic civilisation, of the modern Muslim world generally.

The Islamic religion and its social world are an intensely political tradition. It has always been so, going back to Muhammad’s dual role as both prophet and political leader in the original Islamic community in Madinah from 622 to 632 CE. More, within a century of Muhammad’s death his small desert oasis polity had become a vast transcontinental empire. And, in a succession of different forms or political frameworks (“caliphates”), the community of Muhammad’s faithful continued to live in the world on its own founding assumptions. Continue reading →

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