gdp's Comments

Groundviews : 14 years ago: Memories of the Big Match

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:17:09 +0000

You are forgiven for being suspected of carrying explosives, and for other lapses in judgement and comprehension.

Groundviews : 14 years ago: Memories of the Big Match

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:36:05 +0000

The horror or delight in looking at your posterior is best left for others. That said, why on earth give more fuel to those who already accuse us of a certain fixation on them?!

Groundviews : 14 years ago: Memories of the Big Match

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:32:45 +0000

I agree, you really must stick to onanism, intellectual or otherwise. On the topic of taking photographs, perhaps the debate can be taken up with Nalaka, who bases a compelling article on an incident where a credentialed photojournalist was taken in for questioning by a CDF - http://www.groundviews.org/2008/02/14/endangered-...

Groundviews : 14 years ago: Memories of the Big Match

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:28:43 +0000

Comprehension is a desired quality in a 'commentator'.

Groundviews : 14 years ago: Memories of the Big Match

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:43:04 +0000

A prominent mobile telecoms company had plonked them to jump up and down whenever they pleased, but especially when there was a 4 or 6. Can't remember whether they were biased towards Royal or us... You contradict yourself in the last paragraph, but given that you coined an entirely new English word to begin with, I didn't expect too much.

Groundviews : 14 years ago: Memories of the Big Match

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:37:51 +0000

Ref comment above - the point was made in relation to the vicinity of schools and the overall context.

Groundviews : 14 years ago: Memories of the Big Match

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:36:30 +0000

Channa, The failure of comprehension is not limited to those points, but never mind, I'll take you for your word that you are not educated enough to comment. But since this realisation does not prevent you from going on to do so, I was pointing to the qualitative difference in the militarisation of polity and society. You weren't for example questioned by the CDF or arrested by the Police if you took photos outside a school. There weren't barricades around the entrances. There wasn't a sense of being garrisoned. The reasons for the emergence of security runs parallel to the increase in violence leading to an all consuming war at present. But this only qualifies the point that Thomians in and entering College today would face - literally and metaphorically - very different circumstances than when I was in College.

Groundviews : WINNING LOCALLY, WINNING GLOBALLY

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:24:03 +0000

Agnos, surely it was possible to say what you wanted to say without sounding like the regime you so abhor? Be the change you want to see. I have allowed this comment through, but please take note of the submission guidelines when you post to this site in the future. See http://www.groundviews.org/submission-guidelines. I have noted earlier that: "Dayan has published a number of articles on this site since July 2008 and all of them have been pro-war. Groundviews is the ONLY website where a senior diplomat of the Rajapakse administration can be interrogated. Further, Dayan himself, unlike others in government and the foreign service today, is open to serious and sustained questioning on a range of issues, including the war, as can be seen by the long comment threads on any one of his articles here. If we believe in and are to promote peace through peaceful means, we must continuously engage with and be prepared to accept the merits of counter-arguments. Sadly, the pro-peace movement and the pro-war movement in Sri Lanka operate in self-referential spheres. Dayan's articles are published here to break that trend. His sustained engagement with interlocutors on this site is appreciated also for this reason." (Under MULLAITIVU: CLOSING TIME, http://www.groundviews.org/2009/01/28/mullaitivu-...

Groundviews : It's not cricket

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:37:16 +0000

Hey Dayan,

1. Could you tell me from where in my article or subsequent comments you base the first assumption you attribute to me?

2. Fine. Say Western media is a bitch (for the record, does this include Al Jazeera too?). Let's get three media workers - one state journo, one private, one blogger - all armed with same equipment to do exactly what I wanted Sites to do. Place them in three camps. Or in the same camp. Non-western, endogenous eye balls whose bias can cancel each other out. The more the merrier, yes?

And lest this veers off into a debate on authenticity and identity, the issue is that with an atrocious track record of freedom of expression (don't even try to defend this one) the GoSL looks at public scrutiny with as much love as you have for the LTTE. This isn't about Western or Non-Western - it is simply about bearing witness to the humanitarian fall-out of war independently. However, I agree this may be a tall order for a regime that does not quite understand, in general, why independent media is important.

3. I have never been convinced that foreign / UN intervention is forthcoming or possible, even if desirable.

Fidel's spot on - what's fueling, inter alia, the hugely partial web campaigns by or in favour of the LTTE today, giving them more attention, traction and credibility than they deserve, is the obduracy and actions of the Government vis-a-vis human security. I refer you to Sara's article (Unending End Game) which points to aspects of Holmes' report to the SC that were conveniently ignored by the Government and State media reportage. These are concerns echoed by the recent ICG report, and to see them all as hegemonistic - interventionist discourses based on wild imaginings is an inadequate response.

But you know that.

Sanj

Groundviews : It's not cricket

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:32:13 +0000

Ahamed touché, but Chomsky in his tome speaks of a different animal, less dedicated to meaningful change, but appearing to be so.

Groundviews : It's not cricket

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:16:04 +0000

Hey Dayan, I think you've missed my point. Kevin would report. We would analyse, contest, refute. You, me and the rest of the world would finally have a perspective (perhaps on occasion real time, with the technology available today) from the ground to anchor meaningful debates on the humanitarian condition in the Vanni. As for intervention, or more precisely foreign intervention, do you actually believe the UN's R2P mechanism has the wherewithal to act or that the UN can muster member state consensus at the GA or get SC go ahead to intervene, with Russia, China and Vietnam as your allies? My suggestion does not put Sites theoretically in harms way. IDP camps cannot be targeted and if they are, it's a combination of one party's callousness and the other's inability to protect. Sites could be an important witness in this regard too, if as the GoSL and HRW note, its the LTTE that's doing most of the firing and have killed 2,300+ civilians since Jan? The only videos coming out from the region have been from the TRO - viscerally compelling, but essentially untrustworthy. Ergo, Sites. It is impossible, despite the GoSL's repeated assurances in this regard, that the humanitarian fall out of the war will be solved in a few months. An enduring media coverage - akin to coverage that exposed both INGO and GoSL failures and corruption in post-tsunami rebuilding and recovery long after Boxing Day 2004 - would be hugely helpful. My choice of Sites was deliberate - he's not an Anderson Cooper as some are also attempting to bring down to Sri Lanka. He can be guided to witness what civil society (seen here as a larger collective of peoples and more global than local NGOs and their constituencies) demands to be seen and heard. Technologies today can easily make this exercise fully interactive. As Orwell said, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." Thanks for reminding me of Chomsky. He's spot on about the power of media to shape public opinion. Radio Milles Collines is another example, though of a more dangerous nature. I was re-reading Chomsky's 9/11 again recently, where he notes that: "We should also remember that one exalted task of intellectuals is to proclaim every few years that we have 'changed course,' the past is behind us and can be forgotten as we march on towards a glorious future. That is a highly convenient stance, though hardly an admirable or sensible one."

Groundviews : It's not cricket

Sun, 8 Mar 2009 13:15:41 +0000

You ask me what I'm smoking when clearly you've got adrenalin junkies running war operations with aplomb, yet with disastrous consequences to humanitarian norms and human security to boot. 4. It is the case that whatever you write, or if you choose not to, you are appropriated by or reviled for it by the parties to the conflict. I am not at all convinced there is genocide in the Vanni. I am convinced that the LTTE is responsible for precisely that which HRW accuses it of, and much more. I am convinced that those who support the Govt do not want to hear, or see, the humanitarian fallout of the on-going war. Parallels to Gaza and Darfur are unfair in this sense - you're right. They had much more eyeballs on them - from high tech satellite surveillance and Google Earth initiatives to UN missions on the ground and the likes of Al Jazeera giving a worms-eye perspective of the ground situ. In Sri Lanka, we know more about Darfur and Gaza than we do about the Vanni. That's simply unacceptable. We must debate figures, fight over casualties, contest genocide claims, argue over humanitarian standards and protection and discuss ways to protect civilians. But this must be done with independent information, not just with the GoSL's wordplay. I'm more than happy to write in my Sunday Leader column, and on this site, that I was wrong. That Rajiva was right. But the information that allows that negotiation to occur ain't forthcoming from the LTTE, from Mahinda Samarasinghe, from Government analysts or from SCOPP. Perhaps you can post a few confidential reports up here? ;-) Thanks again, Sanj

Groundviews : It's not cricket

Sun, 8 Mar 2009 13:15:30 +0000

Hey Dayan - good one, thanks. I've put the link to Rajiva's full response for brevity, but also because Rajiva's already got his personal blog running on the SCOPP website homepage and I have no desire to give the man more space than absolutely necessary on the web. You asked me over email what I was smoking when I drew a parallel between Darfur and Gaza. I guffawed at that, also because your unrestrainted candour continues to underpin our friendship, much to the dismay of some of the readers here. In the same vein, here's my response. I didn't aim to draw grotesque parallels of body counts and trauma between Darfur, Gaza and the Vanni. An erstwhile UNAMID staff member, former military from a country with impeccable credentials as being neutral in matters related to the conflict in Darfur, said that during his time, he could find ZERO evidence for genocide by the janjaweed / Sudanese govt., and that numbers used in the case against Basheer were inflated and could never, in a court of law, be proved. There simply wasn't evidence on the ground. Likewise, the parallel was not aimed to fuel claims of genocide in the Vanni, or suffering beyond that which we know is the result of both the LTTE and Govt being unable and unwilling to protect civilians. The culpability is shared and may be asymmetrical, but there is no getting away from the fact that, 1. We have no impartial eyeballs in the area to monitor the situation. Any reports that come out are immediately and viciously dismissed by the likes of your friend in SCOPP and others in GoSL. No dialogue therefore can be established to contest and clarify the substance of these reports. 2. This pattern of scoffing at disturbing reports from sources other than the GoSL is the triumph of propaganda over fact, of fear over investigation, blather over reason. 3. I find unacceptable and absurd that we are asked to believe the propaganda of the GoSL as a true and impartial account of what is occurring in the North today. It is as unacceptable and absurd as the LTTE's accounts of what is happening on the ground, using sophisticated web campaigns by and for the diaspora to whip up inflammatory emotion leading to shocking self-immolations. Yet this reservoir of outrage is filled by audacious statements such as, admitting to the culpability of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) shelling Puthukkudiyiruppu hospital, when Gotabaya Rajapakse noted that "No hospital should operate outside the Safety Zone...everything beyond the safety is a legitimate target".

Groundviews : Bad Buddhists, Good Buddhists and True Buddhists

Sat, 7 Mar 2009 05:03:11 +0000

Saliya,

As the Sinhala Buddhist who edits Groundviews, let me warn you against sweeping generalisations that only serve to highlight the your own ignorance.

Sanjana

Groundviews : Bad Buddhists, Good Buddhists and True Buddhists

Wed, 4 Mar 2009 14:17:12 +0000

Not sure what you mean? The length of comments is determined by IntenseDebate's platform - nothing I can do about it. You are free to connect comments, as others have done, by submitting longer ones that are broken up into parts. There is no limit to the number of comments per article, or per commentator - though if the discussion occasionally gets personal or pedantic, I step in and ask the interlocutors whether it would be best for them to conduct discussions bilatarally through email.

Groundviews : Artistes of hypocrisy in Sri Lanka

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:24:40 +0000

Ajith, thank you for your note. However, your feedback isn't the reason for the new comment system on Groundviews. IntenseDebate was acquired earlier this year by Automatic, the makers of Wordpress, and what you see here is a precursor to what may well become the standard comments system on hosted Wordpress blog (i.e. wordpress.com). I have been tweaking the settings of the new version 2.0 (beta) plugin of their comment moderation system for Wordpress for a while. Coincidentally, this new system addresses every single one of the points you raised regarding security, online identity management, voting / popularity ratings and adds a few more features to boot. Perhaps next time, before you pontificate, it may help to first ask what I'm doing to address any concerns you have and certainly point me to resources and ideas elsewhere on the web that I should take a look at to make this site better.