Oppression of ideas militarily will always fail, just need to look at history and it will be self evident.

All those with misguided ideas regarding wealth of the country owing to military security should look at the proportionate military budget against the GDP. when ever this proportion is too high in favour of the military industrial complex, there has been a break down in its economy. Look at soviet union, north korea, america today, and all other small nations with similar disproportionate military spend. Those examples of success storied such as south korea do not have a high military proportionate budget, it is supported by foreign powers.

Seems majority of commentators here are from southern cities.

the article promotes integration not oppression and I am for that.

It rqeuires reform, restoration of standards and rationality.

Forget ethics and morality. It will require many more successful denials of war crimes, such as you yourself accomplished in Geneva. S. Lanka must continue selling prime real estate to China, so that they keep pesky Hillary and Miliband on the sidelines. As long as the IMF loans keep coming, and Ahmadinejad, Gaddafi, and the rest of the dictators offer charity from their bloody booty, the welfare state will have enough sustenance to ensure many more generations of Rajapakse royalty.

The real challnge is to join the asian economic upsurge. That requires a huge change in public policy and a clean up of institutions and processes. It rqeuires reform, restoration of standards and rationality. That’s a tall order! However, what is not really an imperative is demilitarization: China, India and the Asian Tiger economies are hardly de-militarised! We need a strong, modern navy.

Successive Tamil politicians icluding Ponnambalam Brothers, SJV, GG et al pandered to the elite they called Tamil Vellalas, a question very much in dispute.

Here in the UK i have yet to hear any Tamil proclaiming he is not a Vellala unlike the Sinhalese including Gananath Obeysekera and Late Colvin R. de Silva who are proud to proclaim they belong to Salagama caste; which is not exactly Kandyan elite.

A journalist of my acquaintance who is now deceased used to tell me that salagamas when they landed on Serendeib isle demanded they set foot on rice sacks instead odf sand sincethey were more elite than the Sinhal Goviyas.

Everything is relative.
And we all know Colvin and his ilk have had far better education and enlightenment than the backward Kandyans.

The orthodox Christians among whom is the narrator of this peice Rohini Hensman while escheewing Hinduism still clung onto their superior positon amng Tamils in that they pandered to the American and UK missionaries to better themselves in education and high posts wthin the Ceylonese administration.

I still remember the family friends I stayed with in Colombo who invited those Tamils of a lesser caste to their prayer meetings in 1986 prayed to God they should not co-hort with lower castes and marry them.

The hippocracy of all hippocracies.

Let us take a phrase from the Bible: Look at lilies; they neither reap nor sow. But God gave them splendid hues while they whiter by night. How much more would the Good Lord have loved those human beings he created in his own image.

Here we are harping on ethnicity and caste.

Jesus did not differentiate among castes. And yet the followers of Christ cannot let go of thier entrenched belief that their Vellala dominance should give them a ticket to heaven not to mention the reserved positions at Vellore Medical College which is the prerogative of the Niles, Bartletts, Rockwoods, Hitchcock, Hensman et al.

jz think about salary of soldiers. increase in military spending in term of salaries and local purchasing would alone increase aggregate demand of the country. economy would have a inflationary boom.
on the other hand, military productions (eg: fast attacking craft of SLN) would be desirable for country`s manufacturing sector in long run.
so military expenditure is not a “deduction of countrys wealth”