What I hear from the Red Cross and UN people is that the situation is dire. About 250,000 civilians and LTTE are being herded into a ‘safety zone’ and sorted out with the bombs. The real asshole in this drama, however, is certainly the LTTE. They are preventing people going out and using human shields as policy. Don’t get me wrong, they are a terrible stain on this nation and the world and the greatest threat to the Tamil people. If only because the language now becomes about fighting terrorism, and that justifies any amount of collateral damage. The LTTE must be eliminated, but the sad effect is that this is being done by killing and oppressing the shit out of the Tamil people. Collateral damage.

Just got down to Galle. Staying at this quiet hotel in Una, balcony overlooking the sea. Place is happening, happening, you should come down. I’m in a poetry/prose reading on Saturday at the Closenberg Hotel. Then on a media panel (as New Media) with Tejpal and hopefully Sonali Samarasinghe (Lasantha’s wife). Been sitting on the balcony trying to take long exposures of the sea and write fresh stuff for the reading. Here’s a poem I did last week, about Google coming alive and eating your babies.

I put my camera on the train tracks and let the train run over it. There’s enough room. Train tracks run all along the coast, so a day at the beach inevitably involves crossing the tracks. Not crossing so much as loitering, reconnoitering and perhaps having a picnic. Sri Lankans treat rail tracks with about as much caution as AK-47s, which is to say none at all. People live by the tracks, walk on them, let their kids play there. Remarkably, few people seem to get hit. I’ve taken a private train down to Bentota before and ridden the public up through Kandy. I’m pretty sure the Railways Corporation is losing money, but there’s still a certain romance. About 1:15 into this video you can see another train heading down Marine Drive.

And no, not just Obama. I mean obviously, I still stop in the supermarket and go ‘wow’ just thinking about a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama being President, cause it’s obvious ability that mattered. What I mean is American people. A lot of people tell me that Americans are stupid, and they’re not. They’re often wrong, but they’re not stupid. Above is a caller to the Ellen Degeneres show who literally had me cracking up all morning. It’s literally the funniest shit I’ve heard all year and she’s just an average old lady in America. And I lived in America for 12 years and you honestly meet a lot of people like that. They were wrong for eight years, and now they’re right again, and that’s what being smart is. Not being right all the time, but righting yourself.

Journalists are now being called ‘Paper Tigers’ and, given the current climate, it’s OK to kill them with impunity. To quote the Daily Mirror, “The government warned yesterday the LTTE members were now attempting to infiltrate the South under the guise of being journalists.” So if you have a media card you might as well flash a Tamil Eelam ID. Note that no one has been convicted nor any case filed. This is completely above (or accurately, below) the rule of law. It would be comic were it not so deadly serious. Journalists are being killed and assaulted on an almost weekly basis. The governments words now are deeply irresponsible and almost assault in themselves – basically incitement to violence. The government has said it, Mervyn Silva has done it in public and everyone has gotten away with it. It’s open season on journalists.

January isn’t even over and two editors have been assaulted (one killed) and a TV station burned. In the same time the Defense Secretary has gone on TV and called a few journalists terrorists by name, forcing them to go into hiding. These actions and words are, of course, unrelated. Last year the Rivira Group’s Keith Noyahr (who wrote for the nation) was also assaulted in the streets. I think he’s gone into hiding. Whatever words the national leadership is saying about journalists are being heard, and acted upon. When Gotabaya says they’re threats to national security and traitors people listen, and journalists get assaulted and killed in the streets.

Life in Colombo is always an inch from death and a meter from sanity. I’ve seen buses fit down trishaw paths and I’ve seen trishaws carrying a busload of people. That is, the laws of physics don’t really apply. Except when they do. I hung out with the family cat for a while and was driving home when I noticed a ton of gawkers on the Kysney/Horton Place corner. Squeedle through and it’s a wreck, man, ambulance all battered up and a bus that’s gone clean through a stone wall. Some of the buses court destiny on a daily business, and I guess it’s hard to do that without the probability catching up to you. Of course, who’s fault I dunno, but it takes a lot of force to bust through a wall. Didn’t see any injured people, so hope everyone’s OK.

I’ve thought about this before, but the logistics seem daunting. You can print and distribute blog posts as a newspaper. Print is dying in the West, but it is still pretty powerful in the developing world. Internet is still non-competitive in the Third World because not enough people have access. Print media can still travel to more poor, rural people and reach more eyeballs. This article discusses an interesting bridge between the two – republishing blog posts in print media and distributing on the ground.

So, I got this video of a cat waiting for a prawn, which he never gets. It’s a metaphor for life, and destiny. And density. I put a Cure song over it to cover for the paucity of the content. Now, however, it seems that Warner has canoodled YouTube into scanning the track against their music and then muting it. But it’s a 20 second video of a cat which like three people are going to watch, featuring back catalog music. I can understand Warner demanding a share of that ad revenue, or demanding a free ad with a link to that song on iTunes, but I fail to see how muting the song makes any business sense. It’s effectively a free ad, there’s a direct advertising channel built in, but instead all you get is silence. I don’t know when the music business became more about suppression that expression, but that business model has changed.

Historic event, etc, etc. Dialog TV says its the concert special is broadcast at 4:30 PM local on HBO, CNN and then at 7:30 on HBO Signature. Since it’s CNN it should be watchable on mobile via MyTV. I assume that CNN and those guys also have webcasts. I watched most of the other events over the web and those were OK. The Democratic Convention in particular had really good streaming. This, however, I think I’ll go to CR&FC or something and watch live on a real TV. Or my parents house or something. I haven’t had a TV for something like 5 years now. Should be a good show. Update: This time is for the concert. I think the actual inauguration is at 12:30 PM our time.