you made a mature comment re- Channel4 Callum Macrae:
“The vast majority of people who protested MaCrae when he came to Sri Lanka hadn’t watched his programme. Yet they behaved as if they had”

For the record, if ANYONE still hasn’t watched the award winning documentary, here is the link:
http://nofirezone.org/watch

BTW, there is a Sinhala version of it now, FREE to watch online.

For the reader’s viewing pleasure, I’m including an info-graphic of the ‘Empire’ from 2014:

Thanks!

Dear Sharanga,

Their are many people with different opinions on Groundviews. Some rely on factual argument and others rely on anything but fact. Some try intimidation and others try sarcasm hoping to embarrass the opposition. Yet some others even attempt to redefine well known concepts of Justice and say that the Bully is Right.

A reread of your two articles and responses to challenges will show where your arguments have gone.

You, like Burning Issue, cannot accept a proven event when that event goes counter to your preconceived position. You are not after the Truth. Burning Issue tried to prove that a Buddha Statue erected in Trinco town had the protection of the Constitution. Which of course was proven wrong. Then he tried to establish that the former CJ Sarath Silva who was the judge in the case became a Buddhist Monk. That is the History behind BI though there are many more things that he tried to establish when the evidence said otherwise. Your performance is similar or perhaps worse than BI as when confronted with evidence that upsets your position you go looking for Moon Landings instead of making a logical argument. You wrote two articles trying to establish a spurious civilian death toll in an environment where Terrorists were fighting in civilian clothes in large numbers. It was foolish to use clothing as an identifier in such an environment. Yet you went on and on without providing a logical and foolproof methodology of identification. That was a Cardinal Mistake.

In your last article you tried to establish 40,000 Civilian deaths but you had no answer to the question how the Soldiers could differentiate from a Terrorist in Civilian Clothes and a genuine Civilian.

LTTE used child soldiers hence age could not be used as an identifier.
LTTE used women hence sex could not be used as an identifier.
LTTE fought in civilian clothes hence clothes could not be used as an identifier.
Your only answer was to call me a fanatic though that was countered.

Your first article referred to the UN’s Darusman report but attempted to block any discussion on it. Your current article even brings out the Channel 4 Videos that have been extensively discussed on GV and have been shown to include gross fabrications.

You ask “First, if you are writing a book review about a 500 page long book, you don’t write a 600 page long review, do you?”

Trust you to make irrelevant arguments. Your language confusion is resurfacing. A Review and a Debate are unrelated and entirely different things. Just look it up in a standard dictionary.

Those who comment are not reviewing your articles they are either challenging or agreeing with what you have written. Those who challenge what you write bring new material to the debate. That material might be even lengthier than your article. As long as that material is relevant to the debate an honest debater would respond. This is an adult discussion and childish complaints should have no place in it. But than that’s up to the debater.

You say “Second, as for whether I said whether I meant it was used as justification for attacking LTTE, or whether I meant attacking civilians……….I honestly don’t know where to begin…There’s such a thing as context and the context in this case is clear even if individual words and sentences may not be clear.”

It is the CONTEXT that is the problem. It should have been clear to you when the TOOL used by the Terrorist was replaced by an inanimate tool. Do not blame others for your language confusion.

You say “I thought, foolishly I might add, that it was clear the meaning of that passage was may be the government isn’t justified in attacking when so many civilians lives were at risk”

Please slow down you are getting garbled. We cannot read your mind. We can only read what you write. And what you wrote is already in print and it certainly is not what you are writing now.

You say “As for the UN report and human shield issue, I am extremely sorry for not realizing that you meant Rule 97,”

The language confusion to the fore again. I only quoted the relevant section of the UN’s Darusman report. So whatever is written is authored by Darusman who used Rule 97 or rather corrupted it to exonerate the LTTE.

You say “This was due to the fact that I thought when you said human shields, you meant it the same way I meant it – the way a non-lawyer might mean it. I thought that since the article wasn’t a technical document about international laws regarding human shields, it was clear that I had a common sense definition, not a technical definition”

We are discussing the UN report which is Technical not your article. You are trying to confuse the reader. You have forgotten that you have already QUOTED from the UN’s Darusman report. To quote you had to read and when you read it you knew that the report used Legal Language. What is clear is that you are floundering like a fish out of water.

Please refer back to your article where you wrote “But the vast majority of people haven’t actually read the UN report, haven’t actually watched Callum MaCrae’s documentaries ….. The vast majority of people who protested MaCrae when he came to Sri Lanka hadn’t watched his programme. Yet they behaved as if they had”

You behave as if you have read the UN report and watched the CH4 videos. You even quoted from the UN report to justify your view. Hence you knew that the UN report was written in Legal Language.

Now when confronted with irrefutable evidence of attempts to absolve the LTTE of a serious war crime, you do a complete about turn and try to feign ignorance and unashamedly claim that you had a “common sense definition of a human shield”. It makes one wonder about that common sense, when you make such a foolish blunder, after quoting from the TECHNICAL report, which you could not have done without reading it.

Your intellectual honesty is also now in question.

You say “As for the Callum McCrae video, I’ll only talk about this when I know for certain that the moon landing wasn’t hoax”

Too late in the day to do that, because you have already written about it without waiting for the moon landing proof!

Are you pretending to have watched Callum Macrae and reading the UN report to create an aura of a well read man? Or having watched the CH4 Video and having read the UN report are you Feigning ignorance though you are well read? Because if you had watched you would have already seen that the LTTE controlled Puthukkudiyiruppu Hospital visuals embedded in Macrae’s CH4 Video did not have a SINGLE LTTE Casualty or Dead. Perhaps you should wait until a man lands on Mars!

I can understand the squirming as you have no way to introduce LTTE cadres into the video and no way to change the ignominious content in the UN’s Darusman report.

Best Regards

First, if you are writing a book review about a 500 page long book, you don’t write a 600 page long review, do you? Articles and comments usually have a similar kind of relationship, won’t you agree? Anyway, that used to be my opinion.

Second, as for whether I said whether I meant it was used as justification for attacking LTTE, or whether I meant attacking civilians……….I honestly don’t know where to begin…There’s such a thing as context and the context in this case is clear even if individual words and sentences may not be clear. I thought, foolishly I might add, that it was clear the meaning of that passage was may be the government isn’t justified in attacking when so many civilians lives were at risk. I thought by replacing Tamil civilians with Sinhalese civilians, I was making this point. But how foolish am I to think that when I say attacking civilians people would not think that I mean intentionally attacking civilians with them being the target (I mean I thought it was clear that I didn’t mean the government was going for a genocide), but rather that I meant the government may not be justified in taking the huge risk of getting so many civilians attacked anyway. In my utter foolishness I thought this was obvious, and the comments except yours reinforced that wrong belief. Not anymore. From your comments it is clear that though it might have been obvious to some people, it’s not obvious to everyone. I apologize for that.

As for the UN report and human shield issue, I am extremely sorry for not realizing that you meant Rule 97, which sets up a pretty high standard. This was due to the fact that I thought when you said human shields, you meant it the same way I meant it – the way a non-lawyer might mean it. I thought that since the article wasn’t a technical document about international laws regarding human shields, it was clear that I had a common sense definition, not a technical definition. From here on I shall be careful to write every article as if it was a UN Report. I will specifically mention that the UN found there were credible allegations that the LTTE broke Rule 23 and 24, but not 97.

As for the Callum McCrae video, I’ll only talk about this when I know for certain that the moon landing wasn’t hoax.

Thank You!

Your comment is excruciatingly long. Nevertheless, I’ll address the main points you make.

1. The Civilian Shield was not used as a justification for attacking the LTTE.

This was not what I said. What I said was that the civilian shield was used as a justification for attacking the civilians. Sorry if the language was ambiguous.

2. But their are people who have read that UN report that says the LTTE did not commit the War Crime of using a Human Shield. This calls in to question the integrity of the writers of that report and the value of the report itself.

This is a strange statement. Whether the report was credible or not does not depend on what people who read it say about the subject matter. It depends only on what the reports actually says and to what extent it corresponds to reality. Assuming that war crimes indeed were committed by both sides, it doesn’t matter if some people who read the report say that only one side committed war crimes. What matters is whether the report itself recognizes that both sides committed war crimes. This the report does.

“In stark contrast, the Panel found credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed both by the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

3. Their are also people who have watched Callum Macrae’s so called documentaries and have wondered about the…

I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’ve debated before with people who think the moon landing was a hoax. This discussion isn’t going anywhere so I’m not going to try.

4. BBC does not have the word terrorists in its vocabulary when reporting on Lanka…

I don’t have to defend any particular media organisation, but in fairness to the BBC, they didn’t use the word “terrorist” to describe the Kenyan mall attack, and instead used terms such as “Islamic militants.” The BBC as well as many other media outlets are left of centre organisations obsessed with being politically correct. As Harviland himself says, they don’t use the word “terrorist” [without attribution] in their international outlets (perhaps due to all that nonsense about one man’s terrorist being another’s hero). This of course doesn’t make it right, as you correctly pointed out. Haviland himself says as much. But it shows that they were not being unfair or biased. It’s standard practice that is wrong. They didn’t bend it only for this particular case so that that they can favour the LTTE.

Now, as for the rest of your argument with Haviland, you’re wrong. If someone says “everybody knows X happened”, it’s fair to say “he believes X happened”. Even if someone says “I know X happened”, it’s still fair to say “he believes X happened” because when you are writing about it in third person it’s rarely ever said “he knows X happened.” This is not epistemology. In fact, most philosophers will tell you that all propositional knowledge indeed is belief (as opposed to perception). But this is ordinary journalism and you hardly ever say “he said he knows JFK was assassinated by Russians.”

5. My response to the above has not received a reply for two years!

Yes, I’m sure Charles Haviland was left speechless.

You say “It is often said that the Tamil Tigers used Tamil civilians as a shield during the final stages of the war. This is often used to justify attacking them, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths”

The Civilian Shield was not used as a justification for attacking the LTTE.
The terrorism perpetrated by the LTTE on the 20 million population of Lanka was the justification.
To say otherwise is calculated misrepresentation which perhaps was needed to start with your conclusion to reverse engineer the argument.

You say “But the vast majority of people haven’t actually read the UN report, haven’t actually watched Callum MaCrae’s documentaries and don’t even know what reputable foreign media say about these things”

But their are people who have read that UN report that says the LTTE did not commit the War Crime of using a Human Shield. This calls in to question the integrity of the writers of that report and the value of the report itself.

Their are also people who have watched Callum Macrae’s so called documentaries and have wondered about the inexplicable, complete absence, of LTTE Dead or wounded in the ONLY Hospital available to the LTTE in the war zone. The war in the war zone of Puthukkudiyiruppu had killed and injured only Civilians going by the visuals of these so called “documentaries”! Defies all Logic.

I trust you would group the BBC amongst that reputable foreign media.

Here is an exchange I had with Mr Charles Haviland of the BBC. http://groundviews.org/2012/06/04/gotabhaya-rajapaksa-on-ethnicity-in-northern-sri-lanka-post-war/#comment-1002150603

OTC – BBC does not have the word terrorists in its vocabulary when reporting on Lanka (don’t know whether it used that word when reporting on the London bombs or 9/11). But for certain he is adept at distorting the truth, that is for sure.

————–
BBC’s Charles Haviland’s response – http://groundviews.org/2012/06/04/gotabhaya-rajapaksa-on-ethnicity-in-northern-sri-lanka-post-war/#comment-1002150625

I’ve just seen Off the Cuff’s remarks here and also on the transcript of my interview with Sarath Fonseka. In reply:

– when Mr Fonseka said “Everyone knows xxx” and this is summarised by “Mr Fonseka said he believed that xxx” I think most people would agree this is a fair usage in reported speech. In fact I did not write that report myself (you may note that it does not have my byline) but I would defend the wording.

– I reject your contention that I am “adept at distorting the truth” or your implication that I am a “terrorist supporter”. BBC usage is not to use the word “terrorist” in any of our reporting on international outlets. You do not need me to explain the reasons why. The BBC HAS traditionally used the word in its domestically oriented outlets, mainly with reference to the IRA in Northern Ireland, although many BBC staff do not agree with this discrepancy. And the word did also slip into even our international coverage after 9/11.

—————-
My response to the above has not received a reply for two years!

http://groundviews.org/2012/06/04/gotabhaya-rajapaksa-on-ethnicity-in-northern-sri-lanka-post-war/#comment-1002150626

OTC – Let’s examine how your contention stands up to scrutiny. A summary is not a license for distortion. It must contain the essence of what was said.

This was your question. On the subject of the war – we’ve referred to it already – a panel appointed by Ban Ki-Moon said there might have been up to 40,000 civilian casualties – civilian casualties on a mass scale. The government absolutely rejects that. Where do you stand on this?

This was SF’s answer. I totally reject, refuse the numbers given that thousands of civilians died. Because I knew exactly how the battle was fought. How the military was moving forward. The reaction of the civilians. What were the civilians doing. Of course a certain amount of casualties would have been there because everybody knows the civilians were also manning the LTTE bunker lines. Civilians – there were pictures and the video footage to show that even elderly women aged 60 or 70 going through weapon training. So there is no question – of a few civilians getting killed obviously but you can’t blame the military for that – because civilians were given weapons and put in the front line, it would not be possible for the military to identify such people. But the large figures of 30,000, 40,000, dying, it was not practicable. The way we conducted the war, the type of weapons systems we used, the manuals we made, we were always concerned about the security of the civilians.

SF rejected the high figure of 40,000 that you quoted by stating that
1. He KNEW exactly how the battle was fought.
2. He KNEW the reaction of the civilians
3. He KNEW what the civilians were doing
4. He and everybody KNEW that civilians were manning LTTE bunkers

All the above statements are definitive statements of his knowledge, there is no room for anyone to interpret them as a belief. A belief is not definitive knowledge. The word belief conveys absence of definite knowledge and its use was designed to devalue what he said.

This is what the BBC web stated. “He said that he believed civilians were given weapons and put on the front line by rebels and as a result the army would not have been able to tell them apart”

Where did he say anything about belief? He said he knew.
What was the necessity to avoid using the word “Knew” in favour of the word “belief”?

The word count in the summary would have been the same. But the meaning would have been different.
How can you term the BBC version of the summary Fair Comment when it was deliberately corrupted?

I understand that your byline has not been used but the story quotes you and you have declared that you stand by the wording. In the case of the SF interview, Truth had been distorted.

“BBC usage is not to use the word “terrorist” in any of our reporting on international outlets.
The BBC HAS traditionally used the word in its domestically oriented outlets, mainly with reference to the IRA in Northern Ireland, although many BBC staff do not agree with this discrepancy. And the word did also slip into even our international coverage after 9/11, something which many staff were equally unhappy about and a usage which I think has largely ended “

What you are really saying Sir, is that if the LTTE attacked a civilian transport it would either be labelled as Terrorist or Rebels depending on whether that attack took place in the UK or Sri Lanka.

To the BBC, the IRA are Terrorist but the World’s most ruthless terrorist group (recognised as such by the world) is not. Is this not support for the terrorist cause as long as it does not happen in the UK or USA?

No wonder that right thinking people within the BBC itself object. This brings hope for the future, a hope that the BBC will stop even indirect support for any Terrorist cause.

Just because it is BBC style it does not become right.

It is unfortunate to see journalism being corrupted in this way, by an establishment that preaches to others.
————————

Who or what then are “Reputed” foreign media?

This is precisely Rajapakse Law where anything goes when it comes to Tamils, Muslims and even some handpicked Sinhalas! Rather, welcome to devil’s island.

This is a rather bizarre statement. From your moniker I assume you are Sinhalese. So imagine that you were brutally murdered and it so happens that everyone who would’ve cared about you are already dead, and the Sinhalese people who are still alive just don’t care about you and instead support your murderers who are also Sinhalese. Is it therefore morally permissible for the rest of the people to not care about your death and worry whether a generally accepted code of conduct was breached?