biased journalism: was kebitigolawa bus a military target ?

after yesterday's terrorist suicide bomb targeting innocents, certain foreign correspondents (from afp and reuters specifically) took it upon themselves to make a totally unfounded judgment about terrorist's targeting criteria. they said that ltte has not targeted civilians in recent years ( even they cannot deny earlier horrors of pussies) limiting themselves to military targets. they went on to say that this targeting may be a retaliation for military operations.

have they forgotten kebitigollewa bus massacre that killed at least 67 people including 15 children on 15 June 2006 (link contains photos and is not for the faint of heart). this was before mavil aru so before any major military operation by gosl. have they forgotten the killings of innocent farmers that happen regularly (last one on 26 november 3 days ago in mahavilachchiya e-village)

of course this kind of biased pro terrorist reporting is nothing new. as i and others have pointed out, racists like simon gardner of reuters and bbc' sri lankan section regularly and repeatedly engage in this sort of reporting. in addition to such white washing of terrorists, such reporters engage in several other forms of biased journalism when it comes sri lanka; racist equation of tamils with terrorists, unquestioning acceptance of ltte's false claim to be representative of tamils, wrong identification of gosl as "sinhalese" (when it fact all the major democratic minority parties are in it), and repetition of absurd white van conspiracy theories of terrorists among others.

so what are we, as ordinary sri lankans opposed terrorism, to do to counter them ?

well for a start, speak out when you see such reports, write about them, and openly condemn them. write to the editors or administrators of mainstream news outsets (be they newspapers, tv stations, or websites) that publish this kind of reporting. most have feedback options, use them. just state the facts and why the report is inaccurate, simply. don't worry too much about english. be authentic.

such write backs matter because generally people who run mainstream news organizations and websites want to preserve their reputations and credibility. as people who have worked in news organizations will know pro israeli organizations and individuals (rightly) send letters by the dozens when there is even a hint of an inaccuracy in reports about israel in any newspaper anywhere in world. we cannot match that, but we can start. in any case reports about sri lanka are comparatively rare, so any letter you write will ultimately help induce people who write and publish, to think twice and check facts in the long term.

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blog reactions to terrorist bombing
bloggers have reacted in various ways; some merely acted as reporters, a lot expressed shock and horror, some have been sober and solid in their analysis, others (like cerno) have made valid points about our psychological non reaction to bombs (though it must be stated that most ppl i know were genuinely concerned and hardly indifferent, even though or because of, like me, most have experienced bombs at first hand).

most "interesting " have been the reaction of peacenik bloggers (btw it is great that blogosphere that only two years ago consisted almost exclusively of peaceniks, a tiny minority of sri lankan public at large, now increasingly accommodate other bloggers. at this rate, as i predicted, we would eventually have a blogosphere that will genuinely represent sri lanka).

anyway the peacenik bloggers were "oh so horrified", and after blaming mahinda buffalo, chithanaya, militray, and even the public ( but never the terrorist pussies who according to them will "love peace" if given the opportunity - really !) want us to appease terrorist so that we get "peace". they as usual forget to mention that such a course will involve giving up principles of democracy, human rights, justice, and freedom. similarly they forget millions who will have to suffer a living death under ltte if there was such an appeasement. to peacniks those people (or anyone outside their colombo/foreign cocoons for that matter) are not human.

i was tempted to challenge them in their own blogs but unfortunately am busy at the moment. however as soon as i get some free time i will write a post going through a selection of their posts in detail and examining their confused logic and attitudes.

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loser pussy celebrates birthday with murder

as can be expected terrorist criminal velupillai prabhakaran is desperate; under pressure from military, cowering in some hole, number of his suckers, some of whom are underage, getting ever smaller, losing his supply lines, his peacenik ngo friends getting increasingly exposed, his attempts at manipulating politics in sri lanka gone completely wrong .

so true to his nature (known to everyone but peaceniks) he resorts to mass murder, as he has done from the first. incidents like today are nothing new and will continue.

only racist terrorists and peaceniks believe he is a "freedom fighter", is supported by tamils, and is their sole representative. in fact another attempt at enforcing this false and anti democratic sole representative claim failed when minister douglas devananda escaped(yet again). expect peaceniks to redouble their attempts to character assassinate minister devananda now that their master failed in physical assassination, as they are doing with defense secretary after he too escaped assassination.

as i said before even when terrorists are reduced to a handful they will not stop killing, question is whether we change our principles because of their actions and appease them, giving up human rights, democracy, freedom, and justice, for "peace", or whether we stand up for human rights, democracy, freedom, and justice, and for fellow sri lankans still under ltte oppression and defeat them as far as possible so that only thing we have to fear is occasional suicide bomb.

as i have said before if you are a moral person you will not choose appeasement. and if you are a pragmatic person you will not choose appeasement either, because you will know that "peace" through appeasement has never worked anywhere

only peaceniks and individuals corrupted by terrorists using money, prospect of political office or appointments, or because they are stupidly naive, will advocate appeasement. it is our duty to expose them as much as we can.

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ps
i was and will be busy during this week, i will respond to emails and comments in previous posts and elsewhere as soon as i am free. until then thank you.

update
read this excellent post in lanka rising blog. i don't agree with that blogger's mainly leftist cum non secular attitude on some issues, but on terrorist question he is spot on.

u.s. freezes tro assets

u.s. treasury department has frozen the ltte front tamils rehabilitation organisation (tro)'s assets. because,

"According to sources within the organization, TRO is the preferred conduit of funds from the United States to the LTTE in Sri Lanka.

TRO also has facilitated LTTE procurement operations in the United States. Those operations included the purchase of munitions, equipment, communication devices, and other technology for the LTTE.

TRO's efforts worldwide reportedly have allowed the LTTE to use humanitarian aid, which TRO collected from the international community after the December 2004 tsunami, to launch new campaigns to strengthen LTTE military capacity."

this has been long time in coming (they were after all designated as a terrorist front in fbi's case against canadian and us based terrorists arrested in 2006 august) but is welcome even late. it must be remembered that all prominent ngo peaceniks in sri lanka have taken tro's part at one time or other. this becomes interesting when we consider the following extract of us treasury's press release.

"Recent information indicates that the LTTE has ordered international NGOs operating in its territory to provide all project funding through local NGOs, which are managed collectively by TRO. This arrangement allows TRO to withdraw money from the local NGO accounts and to provide a portion of the relief funds to the LTTE. The LTTE has reportedly exerted pressure to comply on a few international NGOs that have resisted these arrangements."

let us hope local ngos that were used in this way will be named soon and all dealing with tro and other ngos will be made public.

anyway even as it is, it is interesting and sheds further light in certain things.

cha memebership
for instance in 2006 annual general meeting of consortium of humanitarian agencies (cha - a sort of umbrella group of ngos in sri lanka) ngo peaceniks clamored to get tro admitted as a full member ( it was just an associate till then ) even though credible allegations against its activities were already current, till they got their way. given that cha's executive director jeevan thiagarajaha (the same one who was sued by his wife for harassment and physical abuse involving even dogs - wonder why sunday time's original story is now missing. see the google cache here ) is one of those peaceniks that was not surprising. this inevitably and justifiably tainted all members of cha with tro's help for terrorist murders.

white van abduction theories and tro
tro under terrorist pussy direction started the white van conspiracy theories by staging the fake abduction of 20(?) of its members in january 2006 (words "white van" first appeared in this context in tro statement about this) . when obvious problems with its story (common to many of other fake white van "disappearances") were pointed out peaceniks refused to listen and fell to abusing anyone who dared point them out. i came in for abuse at moju (predecessor of groundviews blog, associated with uber peacenik ngo center for policy alternatives) when i raised questions there. this (along with cpa's report on so called trinco riot which as i pointed out was plagiarized from an article by ltte apologist dbs jeyaraj) was one of the main reasons i personally began to doubt the good faith of most peaceniks. before that as my posts here will indicate my attitude was different. people who are unable to tolerate exposure of terrorist propaganda do not stand for human rights. anyway peaceniks still unquestioningly give credence and propagate these white van abduction theories and abuse anyone who question their reality.

moju/groundviews collaboration
moju blog and admins went on to publish (and then defend when their basis and bias were questioned) tro statements in full or part on all manner of subjects, to propagate the terrorist viewpoint until tro's assets were frozen in sri lanka after the u.s. arrests in august 2006 mentioned above. i personally think that the main motivation for sanjana hattotuwa's deletion of moju blog and its replacement by groundviews (where opposition to prevailing terrorist parroting there is subjectively and arbitrary censored) was the desire to cover up increasingly undeniable evidence of moju's past use as a terrorist propaganda vehicle. however he will be frustrated since moju posts can still be obtained through cache sites; nothing ever gets deleted on the internet. when will he do the same for groundviews? i will accept bets :-)

cha reports and tro
anyway after the tro accounts in sri lanka were frozen its propaganda personnel used cha as a convenient backup. most reports issued by cha were done with the help and participation of tro and its current or former employees. for instance it is a cha team that discovered (?!) the bodies of the 15 aid workers (they inexplicably missed the other two bodies(!) hmmmm...- remember the aid worker's employer said only 15 were missing initially) in muttur on the day military recaptured the town when all other ppl were not in a position to visit (!).

and what do you know? peaceniks and groundviews regularly use and publish the same reports or posts based on them. in the same way they and moju published tro's statements, without raising the obvious questions

will they accuse me of calumny again as they did when i and others called tro a ltte front? let us hope so. it always feels great to be right before most ppl .

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we should win the test matches against australia

equation is rather simple. without (quite unlikely) interruptions there will be two results in the two test matches. question is who will win?

because we have the better bowling attack we should. (for the same reason, in theory we should have better results from tests than one day matches during next year or two generally; longer the match format better results we should have) while our batting is not at its best and not quite up to the standard of australians (esp. without kumar sangakara) it has more than enough talent and experience to post the scores required to get australians out twice.

if we lose, it will be our fault, period. (yes luck plays a part, but that is why there are two innings, thus two dice rolls, in tests)

ps
i personally don't agree with the way that marvan atapattu was included in the squad. he is a valuable and even necessary addition imo. but i shouldn't have any say on that decision, nor should the minister or the public at large. selectors and captain should have the final say and the responsibility. if they did not want to have atapattu (which i doubt) they should have had the freedom to leave him out.

as i have said before, cricket team is not a government and should not be a politically correct democracy or a popularity contest. if it is, we will end up with a team full of dull dependable mediocrities (a bit like the south african team or in another context american idol/sirasa super star) that always end up in the middle ranks of tournaments and league tables that actually test ability.

anyway i don't think it will have a big effect on these two matches since all the ppl involved in this instance are hopefully bigger than that.

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terrorist pussy roasted!

murderous smiling pussy otherwise called thamilchelvan was killed during a sri lankan air force air raid on a terrorist camp.

and now i cannot wipe the smile off my face :-)

just four months ago roasted one said, after they were kicked out of east, that "we will weaken the military capacity of the government of sri lanka, which will invariably end up hitting economic targets as well"

i along with great majority of sri lankans well aware of the sri lankan reality asked "so what?" what else have these terrorists been doing for so long? but as usual terrorist parroting peaceniks wanted sri lankans to give into threats and appease terrorists in order to get 'peace'

no doubt now peaceniks will predictably say that death of thamilchelvan is a blow to peace and such other crap, forgetting what he actually said and did.

in fact peacenik jehan perera from national peace council (aka sacrifice- millions- of -ppl- to terrorist- oppression- so- we- can- engage- in- missionary- activity- in- 'peace' council) as usual acting as terrorist's back up spin unit has already said "the ltte will try to retaliate to even the score,'' (again we have to ask, "so what?". were they not trying to kill and attack everyone not in ltte before?) `this will make peace talks harder to resume as tamilchelvan was the political face of the ltte ''

and another peacenik cum back up terrorist spokesman paikiasothy saravanamuttu of center for policy alternatives ( aka center - for- whitewashing- terrorist- atrocities- and- propagating- absurd- white- van- conspiracy -theories), said "that the assassination would vindicate the hard-liners on the rebel side...i would imagine the ltte . will want to hit back."(again so what? were they not doing so already?)

this peacenik criminal (btw he is not the peacenik accused of abusing his wife though that is exactly the sort of thing we can expect from him) who has a long record of excusing terrorist human right violations also said “they are now the mirror image of each other in every respect,” (meaning government and ltte) “they are both in zero-sum mode.” typical of this terrorist parrot to see a democratically elected government trying, as it is it is duty bound to do, to end the activities of a criminal gang, so long allowed to operate and violate human rights with impunity, and those criminals on an equal level. he has lost all sense of morality in his desire for terrorist money.

man do these hypocritical idiots live in a fantasy or what?

hope that big pussy will be dug out of his hole eventually. i am sure that like all cowardly bullies (saddam, wijeweera etc) he will surrender and give up his fellow pussies than get killed.

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no to censorship!

i was going to write a post denouncing a proposed censorship of military news, and suggest ways to get and publish such news without getting imprisoned when i heard the welcome news that after all there won't be a censorship. so i will keep this short and keep that draft in case some idiot decides to impose a censorship for real.

as i have pointed out before, so far there isn't any state censorship in sri lanka, as anyone who actually examines a sri lankan newsstand will know. all points of view (including that of terrorist pussies) are amply represented. both substantiated and unsubstantiated allegations and mud throwings are allowed free reign. this should continue unhampered. to put this freedom in perspective; you wouldn't find any other country allowing enemy terrorist statements to be published in full in national newspapers and electronic broadcast media. ever seen full speeches of osama bin laden in new york times? or bbc? but we see unedited full speeches and interviews of big pussy and rest of his thugs. that is a good thing imo. sri lankan public can judge intelligently .

when it comes to freedom of expression only real compliant that can be made against the current administration is the temporary blocking of tamilnet. btw it is now freely accessible.

all other incidents usually cited by terrorist parrots like so called free media movement ( in fact nothing more than another pro terrorist peacenik ngo) when examined in detail do not stand up as censorship (not counting censorship imposed by local cultural/pc standards which can be found in every country; we ban fashion tv and on-air sex on radio, united states censor certain words and 'wardrobe malfunctions' etc.) . for instance in the recent case about abc radio network, abc clearly was irresponsible to report a false news story about an ltte attack. and if the remedy of canceling their license was too strong (as i personally think it is), abc has recourse to normal law. let the courts decide what the equitable remedy is in such cases. that is not censorship that is justice.

as for terrorist parroting peaceniks (who btw are not shy to censor any opposing views in places they control) let them cry themselves hoarse in the local media, as they have a perfect right to do, about an imaginary censorship. (however ppl who point out their hypocrisy and subservience to terrorists also have a similar right.)

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