Nathan,
You have won. Can I cross over?

Dayan,
The firewall has been hacked.

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka,

Did you read TNS Global’s survey report? Or are you basing your article solely on what was written on LMD?

Acceptance of majority need not be automatic. It is subject the certain conditions. There are certain principles, which can not be compromised. In such a scenario minority has the right to oppose it.

Bo Peep,

I contacted LMD for the ethnic breakdown. Their response was as follows:

We do not have a break up of ‘ethnicities’, because as a rule

we prefer not to dilute the concept of the ‘Sri Lankan identity’

If a vote had been taken from Germans in Nazi Germany whether Hitler was corrrect in persecuting Jews, planning to invade neighbouring countries, promoting the ideology of white supremacism and all the rest of the stuff the majority would have voted yes.

If a vote had been taken from Jews in Israel todya whether their treatment of Palestinians is correct they would overwhelmingly say yes.

The majority is not always right.

The propaganda they here from morning to night, day in and day out from the pro-government media and from people like DJ does not let them a space to think for themselves.

It is a well known fact that people are part of the problem can not see the truth clearly. Their perceptions are always biased, self-centred and partial. Only a outsider can see the truth.

Patriotism today is used in a distorted sense. A person can be a patriot without being a nationalist. Loving one’s country is not saying yes to all the bad things done by the government and its people.

A person, who opposes MR and his government, advocates granting rights to minorities, belongs to the DJ’s 3% can very well be a patriot and love his country.

It is not DJ who decides who is a patriot or a traitor.

If you want to support something you can find a hundred and one excuses to do so. ‘Kanna Unahama Kabaragoyath Thalagoya Wenawa’.

sabbe,

I know that GoSL is bad. Really bad – have been at the recieving end of things, so I would know. But it still is not half as bad as the US. Believe me, all the ‘excesses’ that SLA committed in Vanni did indeed affect my subjective senses as a Tamil. But an objective analysis shows that the blueprint of the CI strategy that led to Mullivaikaal was not laid in Colombo but in the US-UK axis.

So dont pull this ‘hey look at what the US is doing before you criticize our government’s crimes’ on me. You can use this against Tamil compradors who think that Obama will get them some settlement. In my view, both the US and GoSL are on the same side.

You say :”But I think you are broadly mapping the West as one entity. Apart from a few who would make noise on ‘human rights’ blah blah, the US-UK axis is only going to press for speedy implementation of LLRC and some (token) prosecutions of guys in the army – a process which I think the honorable Lt.Gen. Jayasuriya has already initiated, which would culminate maybe – just maybe – in some petty punishments doled out to poor low rank soldiers to pacify the West.”

How do you know? Maybe Sri Lanka too will punish the perpetrators “as severe as” America punished these people who killed civilians in Iraq!
Please Read:

(Reuters) – A U.S. Marine sergeant accused of leading a 2005 massacre of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, was spared jail time on Tuesday for his role the killings that brought international condemnation of American troops.

Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, 31, was sentenced instead to a demotion to the rank of private, the lowest rank in the service, a day after he pleaded guilty to a single count of dereliction of duty.

Wuterich, who could have faced a maximum penalty of three months in confinement, showed no emotion as a military judge pronounced his sentence.

More serious charges of involuntary manslaughter and aggravated assault had already been dismissed as part of a plea deal, which cut short Wuterich’s court-martial and was decried by a victim’s relative as “an insult to all Iraqis.”

As part of his guilty plea, Wuterich accepted responsibility for providing negligent verbal instructions to the Marines under his command when he told them to “shoot first and ask questions later,” which resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians.

This is the second time in less than 12 months that a protestor was killed.

There have also been a spate of disappearances of late, not to mention the growing toll of deaths in custody.