if u go thru this blog, u’ll c my (original) country is the same. this has ahppened recently and could be applied to seri lanka
we had to resort to web born protests, then to the streets, collected signatures for a popular law (50.000 needed, over 200.000 in 2 hours collected). the popular law to be discussed in the italian parliament will be 3 points:
1- mps/ministers/etc. foung guilty in the past and future can’t sit in parliament.
2- they can’t have more than 2 terms in office
3- at elections, parties must indicate candidates (this applies to Italy)

all this is to combat corruption (in ITaly). could it be done in sri lanka? can’t ppl collect signatures fo referendums etc? cant’ “popular laws” with signatures, be discussed passed here? anyone know the law?

check this great comedian’s blog, it’s also in english. he started his blog, got pissed off, created a MASSIVE movement. of course snobbed by all media, but made it thanks to his blog. theres a cahcne of getting rid of 181 corrupt mps and around 200 corrupt senators from the italian gvmnt!?!?!!!!!!at last…..!how many would disappear in sl?

much anger i sense in young sittingnut
sittingnut – why are you so hostile??

off topic -> while all this was going on there were these two scientists who claimed that they made a quantum tunneling observation to suggest that photons can travel faster than the speed of light

link

But its commonly believed that india is going to be a developed country in 2020

http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jun/11inter.htm

AT LEAST THEY HAVE A PLANE TO BE, ASK A SRI LANKAN POLITICIAN WHAT IS THE DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOE NEXT YEAR?

Is it per capita gross domestic product?
Is it the adult litracy rate?
Is it life expectancy, i.e. how long on average people live?
Is it infant mortality, i.e how many new born babies die within 1 year?

Sri Lanka is ahead of India on any one of those indicators. Just do a web search, statistics for these things are available all over the place. Don’t be taken in by all the hype.

To say that India is a developed country is at best a joke. It is progressing very fast and at this rate they will become a rich country very soon, but as of now it is still a very poor country. I really doubt if they were crazy to declare themselves a developed country already. Do you have any references to that claim? I did a web search and couldn’t find any article anywhere stating that India has declared itself a developed country day before yesterday!

That’s yet another baseless and false allegation!
I am not even going to ask what evidence you have to back this one because you cannot possibly have any evidence because I didn’t write that.

You clearly have many “enemies” all over cyber space. Maybe one of them took delight in you being cornered and not being able to provide evidence and enjoyed seeing how you desperately scramble for lame excuses for your inability to provide evidence. Have you thought about that possibility?
Or is it beyong your congnitive capacity to take that possibility into consideration?
I cannot possibly take responsibility for every time someone decides to attack you here or anywhere else using a different name.
Find some way of dealing with it that doesn’t involve baseless allegations.

I still inetend to reply to the comment you made before the one containing the false and baseless allegation b.t.w

For the record – I was also Prabhakaran on Facebook, ran the VK Samaranayake blog, invented the Internet, and am the real Slim Shady. I am also Keyser Soze.

when they cannot engage in rational debate they imagine things. adi cannot answer questions that if answered would prove my contention. so what is the response they adapt? post silly comments using another name .

who is sunanda btw? again a typical mistake.
(my real name which is quite different is ( and was from the beginning ) available to anybody who asks through email on a reciprocal basis )

but then some ppl esp his dogs must have been hurt when indi’s hidden identity as padashow was revealed. but don’t blame me . david blacker and indi himseslf revealed it when they were riled up . i didn’t . i just riled them up :-)

On the contrary, in modern times states tend to be larger (and much larger) and hardly centralized, in this case (as is obvious in SL) a rather small elite is created and these people are facing a large opposition of people who claim to be suitable enough to take the lead – result is corruption of those people or annihilation. (Same goes for many people in the modern era; many are suitable for doing something, but very few have more than limited skills, hence the need for useless jobs to be created).

Since the elite dont need to compete and are much harder to overthrow, sooner or later the situation is likely to degrade. After the fall or flight of the able elite (as is witnessed by mass brain drain from Sri Lanka) there are no people able to take lead in important areas, because most people were only taught to follow. This is my main point- not only against large dictator led states but against all large states. Capitalism seems to corrupt people most successively of all regimes.

One historical example – hopefully you wont see it as redundant – at the end of third century the competent emperor, Diocletian, took lead in Roman Empire. He gave strict orders and many people were bound to their jobs or positions in political structures. This worked for a while, until the imperial bloodline produced good leaders- after that ended there was no one to take leadership – people were used to following and worshiping emperor but not how to act independantly. I think this might be possible even now if Sri Lanka is taken over by dictatorship – people are degenerate enough now to follow, but they are too cowardly to stand against an incompetant leader, so feudal dictatorship will work for a while but won’t work for long in a country like SL.

your main argument seem to go like this : ” you ask questions instead of writing statements, therefore you have no evidence to prove your contention” ( very david blacker like argument and on cue he comes to your support )

you should know that asking questions is a good way to arrive at truth and bring out the errors in other person’s arguments. ask socrates .

so you are wrong when you say , “Asking me questions proves nothing!”
your present difficulty does not invalidate the 2500+ year long use of questions to prove ppl wrong .

One problem with answering all your questions is that you ask around 10 or 15 of them instead of doing what you should be doing, which is providing evidence to back up your allegations!

lol
fact is if you answered the questions truthfully, you would be forced to admit the truth of my contention that certain local media’s hostility to jeyraj is caste based. if you answered them falsely i will prove that you answer falsely. aware of this you avoid the questions. pathetic.

(only question you answer is the one about your not working in local media. which i specifically separated from the rest bc it is not part of my main argument)

-
You should stand by your own well established principles and provide proof for the allegations you make against the local media…. provide evidence to back up your allegation instead of expecting (and indeed, directly asking!) me to disprove your allegation. :-)

i stand by my contention and principles. unlike you who bc of some unexplained motives( see bottom ) adapts my participles and apply them partially .

you already have the evidence to prove the truth of my contention as i pointed out above. you just do not admit it. my questions are aimed at forcing you to admit that evidence. you know that and avoid answering. :-)

lol, now look whose “holier than thou”, well then practice what you preach and provide a direct answer to the question I asked you in the HSBC thread first! First come first served right? Well that question was asked before anything we discussed in this thread. :-)

did i tell you to practice what i don’t? no i told you to take your time and answer the questions (read above) as i take my time (after specifically informing you of the delay with reasons )to answer your questions in other thread. :-) that you felt the need to misrepresent what i said says a lot about your way of arguing. or are you really in a hurry and did not read?

don’t be in such a hurry like blacker. he makes mistakes bc he reads only parts of comments . now you are following in his footsteps. of course you are free to do so if you want :-)

you again proves you have not read my comment when you say i compare kadiragamar and jeyaraj as “if there wasn’t any difference between them except caste”. (i did not prejudge both ppl as you do, but i certainly did not write that). read what i wrote before writing such silly and false stuff. but given that your main desire is to avoid the question you have no other option.

your claim that castism is necessarily the only possible motive
did i make that claim? “necessarily the only possible motive”, where ? you as usual is arguing against ghosts . and deliberate misrepresentation . given your untenable position you have no choice perhaps.

Castism does exist in Sri Lanka, but it isn’t bad to the point that every time someone of a certain caste is attacked or ridiculed by someone else, that castism has to be assumed as being the motive!

again i ask did i say it was the only motive? where? again you are assuming things i have not said.
there may be other motives as well but given the very real fact of caste discrimination is also a motive esp when ppl are singled out and certain stereotyping words and attributes are mentioned

only thing i will not do, as i explained from the first, is to explain the attributes etc to clueless ppl.

as you say caste discrimination does exist in sl and there are many historical examples recent as well as old relating to politicians. in such a situation when someone of a certain caste is attacked caste plays a part and when some ppl of certain castes are singled out when several have said similar things, that is noticeable. so yes when jeyraj is attacked caste prejudices of certain local media is a motivating factor esp when he is singled out. do you deny any part of this?

you’ll have to deal with the issues directly rather than obfuscate the issues.
well i do deal with issues directly. as in all the comments addressed or referring to indi. here.
in fact if i write long ( but not ‘obfuscating’ ) comment it is in reply to another long comment from a person like you.

it is you, who by avoiding questions, that does not deal directly with issues. if you want to deal directly answer the questions. take your time as i sometimes do, there is no hurry, but answer.

on the other hand if you do not want to admit the truth of my contention you have to avoid answering the the questions as you did above.

—
Well I do not consider that to be “merely a small part”, I think accusations of castism is a serious issue.
another blatant misrepresentation, in your effort to cover up inadequacy of your arguments.
did i say caste discrimination was not a serious issue ? words i used were “small part of my comment above”. and as everyone can read it was in fact a small part of my comment at the head this comment nest.

i was asking you as to why you avoided dealing with the rest of my comment.( and you used the above misrepresentation to avoid that question)

so will i ask again why is it that you avoid answering questions on the other things touched in that comments . (even going in your earlier comment as far as to to imply we were going offtopic by doing so, forgetting which comment is at the head here ) why is that? not bc it will displease indi surely ?:-)

so far you ( who appeared in last thread from nowhere) comes to the defense of indi when i leave a comment. you rightly ask me to come up with evidence to back my arguments, but till i prompted, did not ask anybody else. even after that you are certainly not showing the same ( comments on comments )desire to get the answers from indi etc. why is that? or do you deny all that ?

when someone (who presumably i have not met before on or off line ) come after me like that ( with one after another unsuccessful arguments and comments ) i am curious . and a little concerned. so i ask why this fascination with my comments here . after all this is indi’s blog. seriously why ?

i asked that question before. do answer ( take your time if you want but answer )

or if you prefer to avoid and say “asking questions prove nothing” you can do that too. lol

India’s big boost was from 1990 onwards, following Manmohan Singh’s reforms.

Despite repeatedly being urged to provide evidence to support your allegation that “certain local media” are hostile to Mr. Fernandopulle due to his caste, you haven’t been able to come up with a single shred of evidence to support your claim.
The only “evidence” you’ve come up is asking me dozens of questions, as if asking me question after question proves anything at all!
Do you want me and others to conclude that you don’t have any evidence to prove your allegation?
If you really believe it is irresponsible to make allegations without presenting evidence to prove those allegations, then you are welcome to do the right thing and prove the allegation you made, i.e. that certain local medai are hostile to Mr. Fernandopulle because of his caste.
Asking me questions proves nothing!

You seem to think that asking me questions endlessly is a good substitute for the need to provide evidence to prove your allegations.
I would like to inform you that this is not the case. :-)

“you accept that caste discrimination in general exists. you accept that politicians old and new have been subjected to caste discrimination. but you don’t find jeyraj is subjected to caste discrimination? why ?”

Because the mere fact that caste discrimination exists in Sri Lanka doesn’t prove that the present hostility to Mr. Fernandopulle by certain local media is motivated by castism.
Because I can think of many other possible alternative motives

Do you accept the fact that there exists castism in society is not enough to prove that “certain local media” are against Mr. Fernandopulle due to his caste rather than due to some other reason?

You did say –

“my basic answer to your request for evidence for caste discrimination is that it is you who should provide evidence for there being no caste discrimination.”

That is contrary to the principle that one is assumed innocent until proven guilty. You should stand by your own well established principles and provide proof for the allegations you make against the local media.
You didn’t “dispute” that one has to be responsible and provide evidence when making an allegation, oh no! You only said that your “basic answer” to being challenged to provide evidence is that it is I who should provide evidence that your allegations are false! lol

So since you admit that it is irresponsible to make allegations without providing evidence, I suggest you follow through on that and provide evidence to back up your allegation instead of expecting (and indeed, directly asking!) me to disprove your allegation. :-)

“before giving a comprehensive answer to you about questions you asked from me esp since .you did not answer my questions. first come first served”

lol, now look whose “holier than thou”, well then practice what you preach and provide a direct answer to the question I asked you in the HSBC thread first! First come first served right? Well that question was asked before anything we discussed in this thread. :-)

One problem with answering all your questions is that you ask around 10 or 15 of them instead of doing what you should be doing, which is providing evidence to back up your allegations! Some of them are truly ridiculous, like comparing the late foreign minister Mr. Lakshman Kadiragamar to Mr. Jayraj Fernandopulle as if there wasn’t any difference between them except caste! Mr. Lakshman Kadiragamar was a great gentleman, a great patriot and he was always civil, polite and diplomatic in the usual sense of that term! The comparison you made proves nothing!
Other questions weren’t at all relevant since their purpose was merely to assert that casitsm exists in our society (duh!)
(The question about the late president Premadasa and the JVP leaders fall into that category.)

One recent question you asked is also indicative of how silly some of your questions are. You asked why the media is going easy on the opposition leader regarding threats not to pay back debt. Can’t you think of any other reason than caste difference?
I certainly can think of many possibilities! Maybe these some of these “certain media” are owned by UNP supporters or sympathisers and maybe they want to remain in the opposition leaders “good books”. Maybe, that is the case, who knows?
Also attacking the ones who are in power (the government ministers) is always and everywhere much more “fashionable” than attacking those out of power!
I can think of more such possibilities, but that’ll be enough, I am sure you are capable enough to think of other possibilities on your own, if you really give it a try! :-)
(And these are only “possibilities” that I am presenting to disprove your claim that castism is necessarily the only possible motive, I am not presenting these as allegation against anyone.)

I can go on and on like that about every question you asked and demonstrate how silly it is to claim that those questions are related to the allegation you made. Castism does exist in Sri Lanka, but it isn’t bad to the point that every time someone of a certain caste is attacked or ridiculed by someone else, that castism has to be assumed as being the motive!

“do answer .why are you interested in only small part of my comment above? do give reasons. don’t jump out of the question.”

Well I do not consider that to be “merely a small part”, I think accusations of castism is a serious issue.
Whether or not I choose to discuss why I take a greater interest in discussing some issues rather than other issued is my own prerogative! :-)

btw you do not work for “certain local media”? this is important if you do work in media.
No I don’t.

“hopefully you will continue to ask questions about all the unsubstantiated allegations”

Hopefully I will not bother! I am already cursing myself for getting into this useless discussion with you! :-)

“no doubt you will engage in a many comments long effort will get answers from him as you do with me (i must warn you that i have been asking him similar questions and have not received many answers)”

Well thanks for the warning! lol
But if you want full marks for engaging in a many comments long effort, you’ll have to deal with the issues directly rather than obfuscate the issues. :-)

The funding for the two main parties comes from very dubious and possibly criminal sources. They have extremely deep pockets, the business community will find it hard going to stump up the kind of money that is needed. (about Rs.1,000m at least for a presidential campaign) I do not want to name names here, but If you doubt the extent to which the underworld finances politics, just look at the hangers on to the politicos, a minority of whom make it to the newspapers.

If the international comunity can impose soem transparency in the fund raising – list of donor to be published, names of donors contributing in excess of 100,000 to be sent to inland revenue with the relevant tax file details if available) and independent audit of donations. This should keep the black money out of politics.

Then some mechanism to prevent the abuse of state resources for election purposes, (the ruling party will resort to this top gain an advantage) and then a fair fight becomes possible

“I am not interested in taking up any other matter contained in that comment with you. ”
why not ? i am interested in all of comment. you took only small part not the main point. in my comment above and try to concentrate the discussion only on that part . is that bc you agree with the rest. and if you disagree why take only a small part. do answer .why are you interested in only small part of my comment above? do give reasons. don’t jump out of the question.
-
i on the other hand will deal with all parts in my comment including the part you deal with.
no for the fun part.

“One is presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
did i dispute that, in fact i have repeated that recently in another post. though the crime was in a different level altogether .:-)

“When one makes an allegation, one has to be responsible and provide evidence.”
thanks for repeating that again. again did i dispute that. hopefully you will remind that to veryone unprompted by me in the future.

“O.K. done :-)”
ok then i will await indi’s answers :-) (before giving a comprehensive answer to you about questions you asked from me esp since .you did not answer my questions. first come first served )
hopefully you will continue to ask questions about all the unsubstantiated allegations ( esp about sl and not limited to certain politician)in his posts. no doubt you will engage in a many comments long effort will get answers from him as you do with me (i must warn you that i have been asking him similar questions and have not received many answers). :-)

-
btw you do not work for “certain local media” ? this is important if you do work in media.
–
meanwhile i will give you a partial answer while you wait indi to answer and remind you of certain questions that you have to answer in order to take the argument forward.

you accept that caste discrimination in general exists. you accept that politicians old and new have been subjected to caste discrimination. but you don’t find jeyraj is subjected to caste discrimination? why ?
why do you think that while society at large is guilty, media is innocent ?
i ask from you again, do you think “that certain characteristics attributed to him are derived from disgustingly stereotyping character attributes imputed to his caste?” do you you understand what i am talking about here? now this attribution is done mainly through media. do you deny that ?
and why is there singling out of him while others make similar statements as he does? you did not answer that as well. why not pm( with ‘undiplomatic comments and opposition leader with his ‘undiplomatic’ absurd threats not to play sovereign debt?) why is that?

my basic answer to your request for evidence for caste discrimination is that it is you who should provide evidence for there being no caste discrimination.

Nooooooooo!
You are the one who is making an allegation so you are the one who should provide evidence to back up your allegation.
One is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Most of your comment was an (needless) attempt to prove that castism exists in Sri Lanka. That is something I know very well, thank you :-)

However the fact that castism exists doesn’t prove that “certain local media” are against Mr. Fernandopulle because of his caste.

act is these things go back. in first election for locals for one seat in early 1900’s ( electorate limited by education and wealth ) the ‘tamil’ ‘high’ caste candidate was esp. brought in from india ( by certain ’sinhala’ ancestors of a present political leader) to defeat the ‘ sinhala’ candidate from another caste through united votes of similar ‘tamil’ and ’sinhala’ voters . do you deny or even know that ? read history of that period.

Well yes and in fact it goes much much farther far back than 1911! King Dutugamunu’s son prince Saliya had to give up his claim to the crown because he took a wife who was from a (supposedly) “low” caste.
But that doesn’t prove that “certain local media” have castist motives when they attack Mr. Fernandopulle.

And yes, I did know that Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan was elected in an all island election in 1911 and I did know that that election was contested largely along caste lines :-)

absence of any mention of caste in an interview is not evidence of there being no caste discrimination ( do you agree ?)

Yes I agree. But I am not attempting to prove that there is no cast discrimination is Sri Lanka or that Mr. Fernandopulle never faces any caste discrimination. I am not even attempting to prove that your allegation against “certain local media” are false.
I am only challenging you to prove your allegation against “certain local media”.
When one makes an allegation, one has to be responsible and provide evidence.

i take it that you agree with the rest of my above comment ?

Nope.

i not it would be better if you come out with all the objections at once. instead of going on to comment after comment as in previous thread

I am not interested in taking up any other matter contained in that comment with you. But I reserve the right to make as many comments as I want. I might even make 2 comments in rapid sequence if that’s what I want :-)

after all you have these questions for me, only me :-) hopefully you go beyond that and will ask indi to substantiate his statements with evidence

O.K. done :-)