Defeat of LTTE cannot be classified as a ‘Great Military Victory’

By Prof. Charles Sarvan “It is the propaganda of the winner’s that enters the history books. The reputation of the losers is shaped by the winners” – (New York Review of Books, February 2008, page 44) How does one judge whether a particular military victory is ‘great’? During the years and centuries of Western domination, “native hordes” [...]

Its high noon at the OK Corral

And after all the hype and speculation it seems that everything has come down to a straight forward showdown. Two men facing off in the glare of the public eye. The corpulent and corrupt sheriff against his lean but rather mean deputy. Sarath Fonseka and Mahinda Rajapakse were once a dynamic duo. Like the cowboy/sidekick duos [...]

Presidential Election – 2010

Government’s argument: The y got 2.2 milion votes than the UNP & JVP at recent Provincial Council elections and therefore, Mahinada starts his Presidential election campaign with a lead of 22 lakhs of votes. Reality In keeping with the same calculations Mahinda would have started his 2005 Presidential Election campaign with a lead of 900,000 as [...]

Special Report

Modern Recovery: The New Sigiriya Museum ‘Artifact as Text’

The major consideration when planing, designing and constructing the museum was not to have it overshadowing, in the slightest, the Rock itself. The museum, the excavated gardens and all else is secondary to the Rock. This was the principal idea of Chandana Ellepola FIA, Architect of the Sigiriya Museum Project funded by the government of [...]

Snippets From Asia

• A suicide bombing in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, has killed at least five members of the paramilitary civil defence force, military officials said. (more...)
• Security is tight across Bangladesh for elections to return the country to democracy after two years of a military-backed interim government. (more...)
• (RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced its relief after journalist and writer Lenin Kumar Roy and his two assistants were granted bail by a judge in Bhubaneswar district on 17 December 2008 (more...)
• (FNJ/IFEX) - The Nepalese media has witnessed a series of attacks on media workers and media outlets over the past several days, most of them at the hands of ruling party unions. (more...)
• (FNJ/IFEX) - The premises of the Himal Media group, based in Hattiban, Lalitpur, a region in central Nepal, were attacked by two groups led by the Maoist-allied All Nepal Communications (more...)