Monthly archive

By Gopal Ethiraj

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi today assured he would work for finding a political solution for Tamils in Sri Lanka, rehabilitate them and ensure their rights. Karunanidhi said this to a group Sri Lankan MPs belonging to Tamil National Alliance headed by R. Sambantham on Saturday when they called on Chief Minister at his residence and discussed developments in Sri Lanka. R. Sambanthan, the parliamentary leader of the TNA, was accompanied by other Sri Lankan Parliamentarians Mavai Senathiraja, Suresh Premchandran, and Selvam Adaikalanathan, official sources said.

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

By conscripting children to feed his war machine and by silencing dissenting Tamil voices, often through murder, Vellupillai Pirapaharan undermined his own image as the liberator of Tamils. By incarcerating hundreds of thousands of civilian Tamils in camps, by preventing even close family members from visiting them and by refusing to give reputed aid agencies access to them, the Government of Sri Lanka is undermining its own claims of being the government of all Sri Lankans.

By Habib Siddiqui

Recently Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visited the White House but offered little support to Obama’s commitment to a two-state solution. It is highly unlikely that he will honor Obama’s wish without receiving a supplemental guarantee from the White House that it will do Israel’s dirty war against Iran. Netanyahu has Dennis Ross, Obama’s "point man for Iran" on his side. Ross’s ties to hawkish pro-Israel groups in the U.S. and to Israel itself are well-known. He parrots the Israeli position to punish Iran. He is the co-founder of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and former chair of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (a non-profit created by the Israeli government-funded Jewish Agency).

Hemantha Abeywardena writes from London…..

A few years back, it was reported in the press at the time, that ambitious relatively wealthy Americans were waiting in hotel suites in London to be picked up by certain members of ‘African Royalty’ to complete the ‘deals’, already agreed upon online, mainly through emails. Those were the early days; as the World Wide Web grew exponentially, so did the rate of these American folks on fiscal missions to make more money, waiting to be collected from their hotels both in London and Amsterdam. As the facts trickled in, it became clear that they were the victims of a spectacular fraud – the infamous 419 or Advance Fee Fraud - by which the organized African gangsters preyed upon unsuspecting wealthy Americans and Europeans in such a cunning manner that took even traditional career fraudsters by surprise.

By Malinda Seneviratne

With the end of the war and the defeat of terrorism in Sri Lanka, the focus has shifted to the issue of a ‘political solution’. Sure, we get the usual rant from the British press about non-existent war crimes, rants that are given dignity by ill-informed politicians in Britain and elsewhere in the Europe, all of whom seem to have little to say about 'Abu Ghraib', a place that silences into embarrassment the loquacious tongues holier-than-thou brigade of the world. We know they are a little peeved about being brought down to post-empire dimensions and that the hot hair inside their inflated egos was let out and so on. We also know that Britain and the USA are more than fixated with non-existent things, such as weapons of mass destruction and who knows, even Osama bin Laden.

By Gopal Ethiraj from Chennai

M.K.StalinDMK supremo Karunanidhi has safely settled his children, who had political ambition, in the political firmament. He was waiting for a long time for an opportune time. Came the general elections, his eldest son M K Azhagiri, a strongman in the south, could be lifted as an MP, and in the same speed perched as a cabinet minister at the Centre. M K Stalin, his second son, who has seen four decades political ups and downs with his father, was long waiting to be elevated. He was an MLA, Mayor of Chennai Corporation, president of the DMK’s youth wing and suffered the emergency arrest, and hence called fondly "Thalapathy". But Kalaigner was mulling over it for an apt time. That happened yesterday when Karunanidhi made him Deputy Chief Minister.

Hilary Rajakarunanayake, Editor – Sri Lanka, Asian Tribune

Amarasiri DodangodaSri Lankan Minister of Justice and Legal Reforms Amarasiri Dodangoda passed away Friday evening (May 30) after a prolonged illness. He was 67. Mr. Dodangoda first entered parliament in 1983 representing the Baddegama electorate, which he has represented continuously. He had been the Cabinet Minister of Public Administration and Home Affairs since April 2004. He served as Chief Minister of the Southern Province of Sri Lanka for one term from 1993 to 1994 and another term in 1994. He represented the Galle electoral district in the Sri Lanka Parliament.