“Cool War” is just a click away!

Toby Harnden, in The Australian, 26 April 2013, courtesy of The Sunday Times

IT is nearly a quarter of a century since the Berlin Wall fell, bringing the Cold War to a close. The triumph of liberal democracy briefly seemed to herald “the end of history” before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, triggered what the Pentagon called the global war on terrorism and a clash between the West and militant Islam.  Just over a decade later, this conflict is drawing to a close. Much of al-Qa’ida has been dismantled; US President Barack Obama has declared “the tide of war is receding” and it is time to conduct nation-building at home. America’s imperial ambitions are over, for the foreseeable future at least. The world is no longer uni-polar.

Rohan Gunaratna reviews Lanka’s Political Scene and calls for devolution within the central dispensation

Sunday Leader, 23 September 2012, where adifferent title was used: “Sri Lanka should devolve power at the centre.“

Prof. Rohan Gunaratna

International defence expert Prof. Rohan Gunaratna tells The Sunday Leader that rather than trying to breakup the country by region, ethnicity and religion, the strategy should be to unite the different communities, by devolving power at the centre by having a prime minister, several cabinet and other ministers, permanent secretaries and even a chief of the security forces from the Tamil and Muslim communities.

Q: How do you view the recent attacks on Sri Lankan travelers in Tamil Nadu, India, in the backdrop of a seemingly growing anti-Sri Lanka sentiment in the State?
A: Traditionally, Tamil Nadu has been a friendly state. When Prabhakaran broke the law in Pondi Bazzar, Tamil Nadu, in 1981, the Tamil Nadu police arrested him. However, Tamil Nadu became hostile to Sri Lanka with the emergence of Tamil nationalist politics in Sri Lanka and their counterparts in Tamil Nadu building a partnership with Sri Lankan separatists.

Humanising International Relations amidst Realpolitik

Jayantha Dhanapala, in The Island, 7 August 2012 **

My subject has been given to me by the Fulbright Commission but I tweaked it by adding the bit about ‘Realpolitik’ because I do feel, as Chris Teal, the Chairman of the Fulbright Commission has told you, that the humanist aspect in international relations has gradually encroached upon realpolitik but the hard core of realpolitik remains there.

Let me begin by saying that 2012 appears to be the Year of Diamond Jubilees. We had the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen of England which has, of course, been highly publicised. We had the Diamond Jubilee of the University of Peradeniya where Tissa and I went to University and many of us have very nostalgic memories of that university and, of course, today we celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of the Fulbright Commission in Sri Lanka. I have not been so academically gifted as to be a Fulbright grantee or recipient, but as a diplomatic representative of the Sri Lanka Government in Washington twice – as the First Secretary in the 70s and, subsequently, as an Ambassador in the 90s – I do recall the important role that the Fulbright Commission and Fulbright scholars, both Sri Lankan scholars in the U.S. and the U.S. scholars here, have played in enriching the U.S.–Sri Lanka relationship.

Ambassador Butenis in Farewell Visit to Jaffna & An Appraisal of her Stint in Lanka

Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe, courtesy of the Sunday Times

US Ambassador Patricia A. Butenis is wrapping up after three eventful years in Sri Lanka. During her term, the US Government played out its most controversial engagement so far in Sri Lankan affairs in the history of US-Sri Lanka relations. Yet, speaking to a group of businessmen in Jaffna, a few days before the end of her term, she says, “I think it is a mistake if people think that we can dictate to this Government. I worry when people come to us with these expectations.” “Why didn’t the UN intervene when there was so much killing?” asks one businessman. “Both sides were killing,” she reminds them. “Yes,” they nod. “You can’t just jump in. Look at Afghanistan. Iraq was a mess. I think it is dangerous for the Tamil community to think that the UN will come.”

We are travelling with Ambassador Butenis in Jaffna as she meets old acquaintances and bids farewell. She says a vehement “No” to a journalist who asks her if the US Government supports Eelam, and is aware that she could end up sounding like an apologist for the Sri Lankan Government.

Kim Phuc recovers her poise from the scars of war …. as a Vietnamese Canadian

In this iconic June 8th 1972 photo, children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, run down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places as South Vietnamese forces from the 25th Division walk behind them. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. From left, the children are Phan Thanh Tam, younger brother of Kim Phuc, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Kim’s cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. (AP Photo/Nick Ut).

Margie Mason of Associated Press, an article  which  has appeared under various title including “Iconic ‘napalm girl’ photo that shocked the world turns 40″

In the picture, the girl will always be 9 years old and wailing “Too hot! Too hot!” as she runs down the road away from her burning Vietnamese village. She will always be naked after blobs of sticky napalm melted through her clothes and layers of skin like jellied lava.

Osama’s compound rubble as metaphor for several strained relationships

Amanda Hodge, in The Australian, 2 May 2012 where it was presented under a different title

A FUNNY thing happened at the site where Osama bin Laden’s house once stood the other day. Three Chinese businessmen, arrested for entering the Abbottabad neighbourhood where the al-Qa’ida chief lived a life of secret mediocrity, tried to cut a deal with police to sell “genuine bin Laden rubble” over the internet.

The story is as notable for its slapstick value as it is for the fact that residents of Bilal Town can finally – after a year of fear and intrusion – see something to laugh about.

Fundamentalisms Face-to-face as the Dhammadīpa concept is re-affirmed in Sri Lanka

Michael Roberts, 15 March 2012

There are many forces promoting the campaign to haul the Sri Lankan government – and implicitly Sri Lankan society – before the coals through a condemnatory resolution at the UNHCR sessions in Geneva this month. That big power interests (inclusive of their manifest double standards) power this drive is undoubted. That the Sri Lankan governmental agencies over the years 1977-2012 have much to answer for is also clear – though WHO should administer such a process of monitoring and/or accusation, and how practical & useful such a project would be, is far from clear in my mind.

Apart from Tamils seeking vengeance, in my reading it is equally evident that strands of secular fundamentalism centred in INGOs, Western political moralists and Tamil and Sri Lankan activists have also inspired such

Huge rally backs Imran Khan as Pakistan leader

Amanda Hodge in The Australian, 1 November 2011 … SEE http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/huge-rally-backs-imran-khan-as-pakistan-leader/story-e6frg6so-1226181910208 …..PAKISTANI cricket legend Imran Khan vaulted into the political mainstream at the weekend, drawing at least 100,000 people to a rally at which he vowed to build relations with China, stop CIA drone attacks on Pakistan and end dependence on US aid.

Two war fronts 66 years apart

ONE:  Libya’s rebels take revenge, by John Lyons in The Weekend Australian, 5-6 November 2011

SITTING in their home on the outskirts of Tripoli, a Libyan family is afraid. Their fear is that a knock on the door could come from the rebel militias that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. This situation is extraordinary. Only weeks ago, these people were enthusiastic supporters of the uprising against the Gaddafi regime. One of the members of the family sitting in the living room was a rebel fighter. He spent two days in a gunfight in Tripoli battling the bodyguards of Gaddafi’s son Mutassim, and still keeps a Kalashnikov in the boot of his car. FOR THE REST SEE http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/libyas-rebels-take-revenge/story-e6frg6ux-1226186182145

Hiroshima–Pic from Getty Images

TWO:  When the flames of hell rained on Japan, by Paul Ham in The Weekend Australian, 5-6 November 2011

GENERAL Curtis LeMay, commanding XXI Bomber Command, led America’s strategic air offensive against the Japanese home islands and earned the cold respect, if not the affection, of the pilots in his charge. He had flown, with courage and skill, several air raids against the Germans in 1943; he was willing to do so overJapan, and would have done so had not his knowledge of S-1 – the atomic bomb development project – grounded him at the US air base in Saipan; his superiors could not risk the secret’s extraction under torture. FOR THE RESTS. SEE http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/when-the-flames-of-hell-rained-on-japan/story-e6frg6z6-1226186152605

Canagaratna and trvnstar offer Alternative Perspectives on Gaddafi and the West

ONE: “The West’s hidden agende reaches fruition,”  by Selvan Canagaratna, in The Island, 29 October  2011

It’s easy to overlook what’s very important about the man President Ronald Reagan labeled ‘This mad dog of the Middle East’: that Muammar Qaddafi, since the late 1990s, had openly renounced his revolutionary heritage and, especially after 9/11, gave himself wholeheartedly to the terrorism preached by George W. Bush calling itself, funnily enough, the War on Terror. The proof of Qaddafi’s significant qualitative ‘conversion’ from ‘despotic’ terrorism to the ultra-modern ‘democratic’ version was that he readily allowed his not inconsiderably brutal prison-network in Libya to become an integral part of the archipelago of GWB’s secret torture sites used regularly by the CIA, by European intelligence and the recently-deposed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.

 ”What stories Qaddafi might have told if he were allowed to speak in open court?” mused Professor Vijay Prashad, the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT, in his piece on Qaddafi’s murder in CounterPunch magazine, then answering his own rhetorical query with Naeem Mohaiemen’s response: “Dead men tell no tales. They cannot stand trial. They cannot name the people who helped them stay in power. All secrets die with them.”