(June 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) My fellow drinker and thinker Aratchige Medis - he claims he is the legendary Archimedes reincarnated and points to similarity in names - was attempting to answer the query: What is his solution to the problems facing Sri Lanka -terrorist, economic, political, fuel and food? Perched on a high stool at the ancient water hole, Archie as he is called by his friends was holding forth: To every problem there is no solution. Take the problem of squaring the circle. Can all the super computers and whiz kids of today resolve this problem that has come down millennia? Is the shortest distance between two points a straight line as in Euclid's Theorem No 1 we learnt in geometry in school correct and how does it square with Einstein's theory that it can't be a straight line because space is curved? Is there a solution to Vermin Silva and is a half open door the same as a half closed door as the UNP rebels/ renegades/democrats/ still think?
And is a half empty glass the same as a half full glass? Queried another thinker with an empty glass and was looking around for a benefactor.
A family planner who had wrecked many a happy family claimed that the answer to all the world's problems - food, water, air, pollution, global warming etc etc etc was to curb the urge to merge. Zero growth was the answer.
A JHU pioneer firmly backed by a BJB (Bambalapitiya Junction Balavegaya) a living fossil of the sixties, accused the family planner of conspiring to eliminate the Sinhala race. Others will accelerate, we will decelerate and disappear from the face of the earth the JHUer thundered.
Let's skip one meal a day - dinner - it will cut global food consumption by one third suggested a diabetic and heart patient. This was countered by an Embassy Kakaka regular in the cocktail circuit. How can you have cocktails and not have dinner afterwards? Cocktail parties will come to an end, knocking out a basic prop of diplomacy, he pointed out.
A furious thinker of the Mahinda Chintanaya, think tank, Chintanapala interrupted. "I say you fellows of the 'there is no military solution but only political solution' school of thought have been made to look asses by the Wall Street Journal, the Bible of the American capitalists. They have said that there is a solution - a military solution - to terrorism and Sri Lanka under our great leader Mahinda Rajapakse has shown the way. What can your NGOs pundits say now?
Archie broke his silence. Of course there is a military solution to any terrorist problem. Bomb your opponents back into the stone age. The Yanks solved the Japanese problem in World War 11 with Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Our benign former masters the British bombed Dresden and other German towns into the stone age and hanged German generals for war crimes. Quite recently they resolved the Balkans dispute by bombing Serbia - the uppity Serbs going with the Russians and not NATO - created Kosovo and are trying Serbs for war crimes. They threatened to do so to Musharraf too but the wily Musharraf preferred George Bush to the stone age. But you must know which side the big brothers - white or brown - are on. Remember what happened to JRJ when he threatened to invade Jaffna and nearly got bombed with parrippu back into the Elara age?
'I say Archie don't bash the Yanks simply because one Yankee Journal supported our leader. Why don't give out your solution, challenged Chintanapala..
Archie: 'As I said before there is no solution to every problem. But there are ways to work round the problem which may create another problem and make people forget the real problem. Our great leader Mahinda Percy Rajapakse's address to the Rome FAOSummit attended by 40 world leaders holds the key. There is an acute shortage of food around the world. So resolve it by creating a global food crisis funds and regional food security funds as well. Cynics will say there is a global shortage of food and how could a fund come into existence? There is an economic crisis setting in the world with the down turn of the American economy and will the oil sheiks and robber barons of the west be generous enough to fund this global fund? Never mind if there is no food or money. The main thing is to make the proposal for a global food crisis fund and regional funds as well. Everyone will hail it and do nothing about it. Why don't we have a Lanka food crisis fund? No rice , No money?
Family Planner: This is like our former Prime Minister Sirima proposing a third world bank at the Non Aligned Colombo Summit when the third world was dead broke. The entire third world hailed it and did nothing about it thereafter.
Chintanapala: You think we are fools? The best brains were behind the proposal: PBJ, Kohona, Cabraal, Rajiva, Dayan and Bogollegama were all behind it.
Voice: Was there an input from dear Vermin?
Archie: You've got to know history of resolving problems in Sri Lanka. There was at one time a Prime Minister called Solomon Bandaranaike who had the remarkable talent to create problems. He had a set formula to resolve them. He should get on to Radio Ceylon as the state owned radio was known and spell it out as follows: 'There is a problem and it has become a problem within a problem and now it has become an international problem..
Voice: So was the problem resolved?
Archie: As I said before there are no solutions to every problem. So work around them and create diversions. People will be distracted.
Chintanapala: I say Archie you are talking just like that fellow Ranil. He has said that the two provincial councils were dissolved to distract attention from problems faced by the people. You better watch out.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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