I saw what I assume is the April issue of Business Today, uh, today. It had Mervyn Silva on the cover. I mean, c’mon. Somewhere around the war BT went from being the usually businessy bullshit to complete propaganda. The covers were Gotabhaya repeatedly, Sarath Fonseka, et cetera. They did it to curry favor with the government, which is good business I guess, but not a very good magazine. Now the thing honestly just makes you stupider to read.

I love Mad Men. I actually have a slight man crush on Don Draper. The first few seasons were a rollercoaster of depth and awesome as the characters slowly peeled, onion-like, to reveal different levels of both repugnancy and beauty. ie, humanity. The danger with the fifth season is that the characters are all largely revealed. I still like them, but it’s sorta like watching actors after a play. There’s a certain level of humanity which is just dull.

I recently wrote that, despite an unfair UN resolution, we should not be asses to each other. Enter Mervyn Silva. He has now threatened to break the limbs of journalists, admitted involvement in a prior assault and – due to dangers on his life – entrusted his violent, drug-addled and widely reviled son to the public trust. This is the Public Affairs Minister, mind you.

Today’s UN Human Rights thing vote is largely symbolic, and it means different things to different people. The government has framed it as a vote against Sri Lanka. Rump Eelamists also. Most Sri Lankans are like ‘eh’? So WTF is going on?

Minister Bandula Gunawardena has said that a family can live on Rs. 7,500 a month if they don’t eat out so much. This is madness. He’s taken two random data points from his meanderings when there’s an actual Household Income And Expenditure Survey that tells you what the average family spends. It’s Rs. 13,000 a month on food, which isn’t even eating that well.

I went for a lunch meeting with Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne of Sarvodaya. He asked me if I wanted to tag along to see some of their work in Kilinochchi and I said OK. It’s quite encouraging to see. Sarvodaya supports over 15,000 village in Sri Lanka to support themselves. Of those villages, 3,000 have attained Grama Swarajjya status, which is a specified level of development. What Sarvodaya is doing now is trying to knit these developed movements into a national force. A parallel Parliament, of sorts.

The US Resolution vaguely against Sri Lanka is the news around certain circles, but I’ve found that it actually doesn’t affect my life that much. Whatever the text of the resolution, it’s just become a political football. The government has framed it as a vote against Sri Lanka, and those that hate on SL have framed it as a vote against. If it passes, it won’t be the text that matters, it’ll be these stupid frames. I honestly think it hurts more than it helps.

This is a very interesting interview with Cho S. Ramaswamy, editor of the (Indian) Tamil weekly Thuglak. He says: “Suppose the US or some other country sponsors a similar resolution tomorrow on Kashmir. Are we going to honour it? We will say that the UN has no right to do this. The LTTE was the most powerful and ruthless terrorist group.” This is in regards to the ongoing brouhaha about America’s chiding UN resolution, even though they have their own issues with the UN.

This Daily Show episode highlights America’s foreign policy piece de retardance – the Israel-Palestine affair. Now the US is cutting off funding for UNESCO (largely humanitarian work) because they dared vote to recognize Palestine. That sucks, but the Daily Show has fully and hilariously called them on it. That’s what’s great.

Channel 4′s new doc is still bullshit, wrapped around a seed of truth. People suffered and died, but Channel 4 – like Kony2012 to a degree – is too quick to use that suffering to further a simplistic agenda. They completely ignore the history and context of Sri Lanka’s civil war and instead offer up war porn, strategically staged by the LTTE, proposing the decapitation of Sri Lanka’s elected government and military as a solution. It’s bullshit.