The world is still sympathetic to the terror organization LTTE

India with strong marketing caught the world attention on Mumbai 26/11

War has cost Sri Lanka 70,000 lives and cost US$200 billion to the economy

The Diaspora is only 1 million but Sri Lanka has 20 million voices

Last week when I saw my former colleague from the Government Peace Secretariat appearing before the "Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC)’ and later that evening we saw the adverse publicity on BBC and CNN, it was very evident that global perception were very sympathetic towards the LTTE. It was then that I decided that it is my duty to write these thoughts, given that we were part of the larger team that fought the war with the LTTE.

Had it not been for the Revolutionary war of Independence, America perhaps would have remained a colony of Great Britain for longer than it did. It was the disregard of the demands by American colonists that precipitated this war. The most significant reasons for their discontent were taxation without representation in the British Parliament, and the imposition of unreasonable taxes. If Great Britain had had the foresight that its stand on demands made would precipitate war, it would have been more accommodating. This would have delayed the cry for independence. The lesson to be learnt by those in power is how vitally important it is to continually gauge and ascertain the mood of the people, if consequences with serious implications are to be avoided.

In a joke used to promote the versatility of the famous London Department store, Ronald Reagan calls up Harrods and asks to order an elephant; to which the clerk replies “Asian or African?” For most of us our knowledge of the types of elephant species ends there. Thus many people in the country who head towards Pinnawala assume they are seeing just another herd of   Asian Elephants. However, many are unaware that elephants found within the country are an indigenous species that is fast being destroyed by various intrusive human activity.

The Sri Lankan Asian elephant is referred to by the scientific name of Elephas maximus, Maximus distinctly separate from the Mainland Asian Elephant, Elephas maximus Indicus, found all over the continent.

To live out your life on this earth is not so simple as crossing a field. – Russian proverb

There would have been no cause for cavil whatsoever if the EU had refused to extend GSP+ on the ground that Sri Lanka had failed to maintain certain human rights standards, assuming of course that that was a fair assessment. But the EU went far beyond that in stipulating those fifteen conditions for extension, stipulated furthermore in the manner of an ultimatum which would not have been acceptable to any self-respecting government. The purpose, surely, was to insult and humiliate. Why? The assumption in Sri Lanka, a virtually unchallenged assumption, is that the EU has been chagrined over the fact that we have succeeded in militarily scotching terrorism whereas they have been unable to do so. I find that unconvincing. I want to argue that the real reason is that the EU has been engaged in an exercise of the New Imperialism