June, 2009

• 4 June

  Creating Terrorists By Noam Chomsky

  There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information — the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified. By the same argument, when Nicaragua captured U.S. pilot Eugene Hasenfuss in 1986, after shooting down his plane delivering aid to U.S.-supported Contra forces, they should not have tried him, found …

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• 4 June

  New Dream for Tear Drop Island – Part 2

  Atricle Continuation from New Dream for Tear Drop Island. Regrouping Under the circumstances, it is impossible for the LTTE   to regroup.  Numerous factors that favoured the LTTE in their early stages  had turned against them  today. The changing regional and international political scenarios virtually crippled the LTTE with India, Pakistan China and Russia standing behind Sri Lankan government while   …

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• 3 June

  Adopting Bush’s Positions By Noam Chomsky

  An argument can be made that implementation of the CIA’s “torture paradigm” never violated the 1984 Torture Convention, at least as Washington interpreted it. McCoy points out that the highly sophisticated CIA paradigm developed at enormous cost in the 1950s and 1960s, based on the “KGB’s most devastating torture technique,” kept primarily to mental torture, not crude physical torture, which …

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• 3 June

  New Dream for Tear Drop Island

  Now that the dreaded Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, which was all out to set up a separate Tamil state in the predominantly Tamil speaking North and East of Sri Lanka, is crushed the nation is celebrating the victory while northern Tamils remain disillusioned. There have been numerous sessions of peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the …

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• 1 June

  The Victim Syndrome, the West, and the LTTE

  Alas! It is a great and terrible world. – the Lama in Kipling’s Kim. My purpose in this article is to argue that the West has done incalculable harm to Sri Lanka, though without any malevolent intent, through its over-indulgent attitude towards the LTTE. That attitude bred in the LTTE what might be called a victim syndrome which became a …

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• 1 June

  New Translation Prompts Debate on Islamic Verse By NEIL Mac FARQUHAR

  Dear friends,  this is a fascinating article. The commonsense of the matter is given in the Egyptian Grand Mufti’s view that the Koran , more specifically parts of it, should be read through “the prism of the era”, meaning that some Koranic provisions take into account varying cultural practises in different societies at different times. The most potent argument against …

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• 1 June

  LAST DAYS OF THIRUVENKADAM VELUPPILLAI PRABHAKARAN – Part 2 – By D.B.S. Jeyaraj

  Blunder But the biggest blunder of all was to believe wrongly that the LTTE could at some point deliver a crippling blow on the battlefront and exact a heavy casualty toll. This would demoralize the army and help reverse the process, he surmised. The politico – military situation deteriorated but Prabhakaran living in a fool’s paradise was pretty sure that …

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