As for the assets Heshan, that is what they declare or report. You don’t know what they’re hiding overseas secret accounts. SL politicians chose to publish their assets too and I have seen one page ads in papers with their figures too during election campaigns but most people are skeptical. These guys aren’t stupid, when these guys leave office, the people they helped while in office will fill their coffers. Or they already have filled accounts with keys ready when they leave office. By then they don’t have to publicly list them. How naive are you? c’mon buddy, crooks are not that silly.

Not to pick on a good party as I my self enjoy a smashing party sometimes but Clinton’s daughter’s wedding party. Quite extravagant and lavish for a president to afford don’t you think? Several millions at least by conservative estimates. Say Clinton has similar wealth to Bush and say he got 8 mil in his bank (but we all know that is really laughable right?). Say Clinton spent 2 mil on Chelsea’s party. 25% of his retirement fund on one daughter’s party? So by the time he throws the party for the 2nd daughter his retirement fund is half gone. Do you realise that assets listed dont make any sense and it’s really laughable?

http://www.nationalledger.com/ledgerpop/article_272633444.shtml?ref=ixml

Let’s just hope the groom’s side picked up the tab 😉

*Using your own logic,*

My logic is concerned exclusively with S. Lanka; therefore the rest of your argument fails miserably.

Funny you should mention this possible script heshan. You know I once read a very similar script, except it was played out for real. It goes a little something like this.

Your “script” is quite familiar – the usual one that says, if it happens in S. Lanka, it has happened everywhere else, so what’s the big deal about S. Lanka! But actually, I can find lots of *holes* with your script. See the following:

Bush’s assets listed at $8.8M, Cheney’s top $19M
WASHINGTON (AP) — At the end of his latest financial disclosure form, following a dozen pages of itemized assets totaling at least $8.8 million, President Bush listed presidential gifts he just had to keep: a $5,728 boat, complete with dock, a cowboy hat and Rolling Stones concert tickets.

In all, Bush kept $14,254 in gifts, according to financial disclosure forms released by the White House on Thursday.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-05-16-financial-disclosures_x.htm

See, the Americans know where every dollar in Bush’s bank account came from, while he was President. What about Mahinda Rajapakse? Man, I don’t even know where to start…. let’s just say, it will have to snow in S. Lanka before he publicly declares his assets.

Bush got two terms in office, and then someone entirely new came into the picture. That’s how democracy – not to prevent people like Bush from occupying high positions of power, but to allow pathways for change. Again, in S. Lanka, what do we see? It will be a dark day before a Tamil ever becomes President. Enough said.

Heshan, you have to understand the nature of the enemy. You talk as if the LTTE was a friendly, diplomatic compromising bunch. It was their way or the high way. Bottom line is they (top hierarchy) wanted eelam and nothing less. We know the tiger never changes its stripes yet, successive governments tried peace talks for the LTTE to just walk away like a spoilt child.

That’s an interesting analysis. But it ignores one important point: Sinhala-Buddhist fundamentalism/chauvinism precedes Tamil nationalism by at least 60 years. There were race riots in Kandy in 1915… even before this, we have the wonderful poetry of patriots like Dharmapala and his ilk. What is interesting is that the same anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Tamil bias is still there, 95 years later. Obviously, then, it was not the Tamils but the Sinhalese who set the stage for the war. The LTTE was the inevitable by-product of this nationalism. The word “inevitable” is rather important. Before the Tamils took up arms, they resorted to parliamentary democracy to try and reach their goals – but this never materialized due to the anti-Tamil sentiment in the South. The funny thing is that even without armed struggle, it is unlikely the Ceylon Tamils will still realize their objectives. So I could throw your argument right back at you, and say that the Tamils cannot expect a fair and just political solution, in which case armed struggle is fully justified. A Tiger never changes his stripes – true, but neither does the Southern nationalist, it seems.

“Don’t you find it rather unfortunate that the so-called home of “Theravada Buddhism” – supposedly the “truest” form of Buddhism – could not settle a simple dispute over land in a rational, non-violent way”

*Using your own logic,* we could not settle this dispute nonviolently because we were dealing with non-Buddhists like yourself who weren’t very rational and nonviolent. Actually Christian fundamentalism had produced the most bloodshed out of all world religions. Are you proud of that?

http://viceunversa.blogspot.com/2010/03/wonderfully-sri-lankan.html

http://viceunversa.blogspot.com/2010/03/young-prince-we-bow-before-your.html

http://viceunversa.blogspot.com/2010/01/true-lion-of-sri-lanka-lion-king.html

http://paradisians.blogspot.com/2010/05/waking-to-paradise.html

Funny you should mention this possible script heshan. You know I once read a very similar script, except it was played out for real. It goes a little something like this.

There was once a Bush Senior who waged a war in the name of freedom in the Gulf. Lot of young, innocent Americans died for their brethren’s freedom! Bush family and their higher society buddies who ran oil companies, arms manufacturing companies made wind falls profits in lucrative oil/weapons contracts. Then the democrats came to the office and business was slow. Ah but lucky for them, they had their son groomed and ready for action. Then this son of his became the president and started another 2 wars! By golly if the trend keeps up we can only assume Bush’s kids will start 4 wars. Lucky he doesn’t have boys. haha – no offense to ladies, it’s just from what I have read I don’t think the Bush daughters have great political ambitions.

What I was saying was that political dynasties are a common scenario in world politics. Ghandis, Kennedies, Clintons, Rajapaksas may join this club too. Who knows. You may think they already are a dynasty.

If the people are happy with their dad’s performance and want to give his genetics a chance, why not? If he does a poor job the people will boot him out no? Then again Bush got 2 terms.. lol I’m not sure democracy can pick out idiots and boot them out of office…

Heshan, you have to understand the nature of the enemy. You talk as if the LTTE was a friendly, diplomatic compromising bunch. It was their way or the high way. Bottom line is they (top hierarchy) wanted eelam and nothing less. We know the tiger never changes its stripes yet, successive governments tried peace talks for the LTTE to just walk away like a spoilt child. Only to use that time to become stronger and hit back with more punch. Sorry buddy, this was the only way left to end it. Hard core war. It came to a point that it was just plain ridiculous.

And why do you keep mixing Buddhism with the state’s actions? Yes majority of population subscribe to Buddhism but that doesn’t mean we’re going to govern the country or draw national security policy based on Buddhism or any other religion for that matter! Do Christian nations govern or mediate conflicts by the Bible? Absolutely not.

Therawada Buddhism does remain in Sri Lanka – inside Temples in puskola books. This is the literature side of Buddhism we’re talking about now. My guess is only the high ranking Panditha Theras who probably understands all the literature and true meaning. It’s really academic. That aside, unfortunately we do get few low ranking Buddhist monks who are not good monks or just don’t understand what they signed up for and agitate the political arena. You use this minority to bash the religion. Most know it’s not like that.

Last I checked Buddhism is not even a religion, just a way of life.