Harry's Place

This is indeed serious! You might ask the Chinese to solve other terrorist problems we have in the world today! The press were excluded from this jamboree so it went well according to Detective Colombo. Really serious are the numbers of trash and erstwhile apologists of terrorism we have in London. I have always maintained and been insulted for it that the Sikhs, and Tamils and not just the muslims but all children of the partition are a problem to western democracy.

“I have always maintained and been insulted for it…”

You pretty much deserved those ‘insults’ then.

The Austrian fascist Robert Schwarzbauer who converted to Shiite Islam blames on his website Eiserne Krone the “duplicity” of Israel for the events in Sri Lanka. Israel favoured according to him the Tamil tigers, because Sri Lanka takes a pro Arab line. But on the other hand he is accusing Israel of having good relations with Sri Lanka.
It reminds me of the Nazi, who accused Jews to be responsible for capitalism and communism.

Well that’s certainly a relief.

We here in Israeli were beginning to feel a bit too, eerily, ignored for this latest round of bloodletting on Sri Lanka….and come to mention it, for the human catastrophe in northern Pakistan, as well…(come to mention it, does that Austrian progressive humanist dude have anything to contribute on the relationship between Israel and Swat)?

To what extent is this disinterest, lack of partisanship, by the average onlooker owing to the lack of graphic coverage? Would the response have been different if there had been images? (Possibly not- there have been graphic images of Darfur.) A war reporter who has covered this conflict for 26 years asks:

“Where are the images of horror from Sri Lanka?

Those pictures don’t exist. The Sri Lankan Government has been amazingly successful at keeping people away from this conflict and, as a result, appalling atrocities have been committed.
That beach on the Indian Ocean will be a bloodbath. Families have been sheltering without food or water in holes dug in the sand, subjected to shelling for days. A doctor in the area has spoken of thousands of bodies lying unburied and the “stench of death” hanging over the war zone. For the victorious soldiers there is always the temptation to take revenge for friends killed earlier in the conflict.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors
/article6307730.ece

I am still trying to understand why there has not been a single voice among impartial onlookers that acknowledges any merit in the claim of Tamils to self determination, even excluding the violent means they went about trying to achieve it. Other than the ludicrous reason given by a commenter here that, unlike I/P Sri Lanka was too small to subdivide.

Congratulations, Karl Pfeifer, you win the competition for finding a Zionazi connection with the Tamil Tiger business, i.e., the Austrian fascist Robert Schwarzbauer who converted to Shiite Islam. Your next trick is to find a Zionazi, if possible, Mongolian, connection with the moon landing.

Just worth repeating what I and few others have said recently here. Those of us wgho work close to the Parliament Square demo have noticed no one but those apparently of Tamil origin on the demo. No solidarity marchers and no “we are all Tamil Tiger” banners.

PS Why is your clock an hour slow?

The abysmal ignorance and incuriosity of journalists never ceases to amaze.

Not one commentator so far has mentioned the intimidation and extertion pracriced by the LTTE support and fund-raising arm among Tamils living abroad.

From Melbourne to Zurich and from Toronto to Osaka, Sri Lankan Tamils in the Tamil diaspora have been squeezed remorselessly. On occasion this has taken the form of threatening reprisals against family members trapped within the zone [formerly] controlled by the LTTE.

Can anyone explain this glaring omission?

I am aware of Tamils who apply for, and are sometimes granted, asylum in the UK on the grounds that they refused to join the LTTE and had to flee in fear of their lives because of this refusal.

Two, three years ago there was a scandal of small Tamil owned shops being pressured into installing fake credit card scanners to skim money for the LTTE.

The current events should show what the Israeli military *could* inflict on Gaza and the West Bank. Thank goodness it doesn’t.

On the LTTE’s supporters in the UK, and their links with MPs, the CSC had this to say:

http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/blog/2008/11/tamil-tigers-event-graced-by-supporter-of-terrorism.html

Oh, Jeremy Corbyn, how could I forget that ~*expletive on account of being on university network*~?

I’m glad the Tamil terrorists were *defeated*. And yes, I didn’t need any propaganda to arrive at that conclusion. Is there anything wrong with that?

“The current events should show what the Israeli military *could* inflict on Gaza and the West Bank. Thank goodness it doesn’t.”

Yes, that would be the end of Harry’s Place.

I think we need to step back a bit, whilst the Tamil Tigers might have been defeated militarily in Sri Lanka, I can’t see that being the end of it.

There is still a political and ethnic dispute on that island, and until that it resolved in a political fashion then there is always the possibility (and I”d say, probably) of a return to some form of violence.

Obviously it wouldn’t be in the same way as before, but outside of Sri Lanka there seems to be more then sufficient funding for another armed conflict, in one shape or form.

Dare I say it, unless the root causes of this ethno-political dispute are unscrambled then nothing has really been achieved, maybe a lull, a few years and then a new group starts up with the violent attacks again, Tigers Mk II, etc

PS: good to see muffin postings.

Modernity, you are absolutely right.

In ethnic conflicts you can’t win the war – all you can is either to win a battle or solve the conflict in a manner acceptable to both sides. If you win a battle, you might enjoy a big celebration, perhaps few years of quiet – but sooner or later another generation of embittered enemies, who have even less to lose, will emerge.

That’s why anybody who genuinely wishes well to both ethnic groups in Sri Lanka must hope that the Rajpaksa government will be intelligent and foresighted enough to use this moment of victory and the demise of particularly vicious and extremist group, to forge a long term future for both Sinhalese and Tamils.

Yeah, but are you glad that the Tamil terrorists were defeated? And is Sri Lanka better off now that they are dead?

Shmuel,

the point, surely, is that they are defeated in a military operation in Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tiger diaspora wasn’t. So unless a political solution is found, then another lot could arise and return to Sri Lanka to take their place, but in a different way

Yeah, but are you glad that the Tamil terrorists were defeated? And is Sri Lanka better off now that they are dead?

Sadly, once conflicts simmer beneath the surface, once there is a deep sense of grievance and once an ethnic minority has an overarching feeling that they have no stake in the wider polity, it is always easy to find extremists, terrorists and deluded young men (they are mostly men) willing to blow themselves up in crowded markets. You kill them and others appear after a while.

Which is not an argument not to fight terrorism. But you cannot overcome terrorism just by killing terrorists, rather than dealing with the grievances underlying them, any more than you can overcome mosquito infestation by swatting the beasties one by one. (And before anybody manages to misunderstand me, I said “dealing with the grievances”, not “surrendering to the demands”.)

Shmuel, it is good that the Tamil terrorists have been defeated and their leader killed, that was something that had to be accomplished before anything else could be done. But it is only the first step as both Modernity Blog and S.O. Muffin pointed out. The causes of the war in the descrimination and violence that the Sinhalese majority has inflected on the Tamil minority must stop and equal rights be granted to the Tamils otherwise there will be a new and bloody guerrilla war in 10 to 20 years time.

God willingly, the post-war policy Sri Lanka’s President Rajapakse and his government will follow and the people of Sri Lanka will support will be along these lines:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Abraham Lincoln, Second Innagural Address
Washington, March 4, 1865

But it seems that the overwhelming feeling is that it will be a lot easier to deal with legitimate Tamil grievances now that the terrorists have been utterly and totally defeated; that is, surrendered.

It’s ironic that in a piece about double standards in respect to another unnamed ethnic conflict, nobody can stomach to cede this basic point of fact.

among impartial onlookers that acknowledges any merit in the claim of Tamils to self determination, even excluding the violent means they went about trying to achieve it. Other …..

yer yer… well let the Sri Lankans have full domicile rights in Tamil Nadu with full voting rights as a sweetner then!!!!