What’s worse than war crimes and Wikileaks?

by Rajpal Abeynayake

(August 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) These days, many Sri Lankans are blaming the United States a great deal of the time and I do not think without reason. The US has been for long persecuting this seemingly insignificant country over the so-called issue of war crimes investigations. Wikileaks which basically haemorrhaged data recently about US war crimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan has not deterred that country’s top command and the legislators from pointing the finger at a small country which fought a war against terror and won. Of course, this is old news and the mere mention of the US to some may be cause for apoplexy. Some of those who have had a few years working experience in some part of North America God knows doing what, seem to think that that part of the world is the fountainhead of justice and clean living.

I just heard one of these people say ‘hic’.
But I’m digressing.
I think the current US persecution mania over this small country will eventually pass.
Wikileaks —- and the Internet — — has helped.

Notwithstanding the hypocrisy in trying to persecute a country for fighting terrorism while also declaring war on terrorism and castigating terrorists in the most extreme terms, the hypocrisy - and crass humbug — will eventually show up, particularly in this digitally-wired age where cyberspace lays bare the best laid plans of mice and men.

Competition

The US is in competition with China over obtaining a stranglehold over this country’s most important resource which is its geopolitical and strategic location, about which the core facts are only too well known this morning particularly, when the water filling ceremony of the Hambantota harbour built with generous Chinese input, takes place.

Also, the Empire is in trouble. There is almost Third World level insecurity with lost jobs not being regained in the US, and ‘too big to fail’ banks taking people’s money and running - AGAIN. Barak Obama is having a time of it, and warmongering in Afghanistan and perhaps next -stop Iran would be his only option, as that would keep the military-industrial complex humming, and perhaps the people tethered to the idea that all their misery is resulting from great sacrifices that have to be made for the nation’s sake, as a necessary war is being fought on their behalf at the other end of the world.

Even those who know this is a lie will have no option but to swallow the medicine that even Big Pharma would think is a bit much, in terms of sheer gimmickry potential.

So, I think Sri Lanka is essentially free from trouble from Uncle Sam’s quarter, even though I would not say that everybody is home free and should be triumphal about the war and should therefore celebrate the collateral civilian damage that happened while it was being fought.

My beef is also that this war crimes issue, and anxiety over US steamroller tactics vis-a-vis Sri Lanka on that score, are obfuscating many more vitally important matters that concern damage to Sri Lanka originating from the big Empire and its cohorts in the multinational military and civilian industrial complexes.

Coconut oil

Talking about coconut oil after pondering over the vexed issue of civilian deaths in war may appear a surreal journey from the sublime to the ridiculous. Today, essentially U.S-led companies have been able to wean Sri Lankans away from coconut oil and introduce them to all kinds of Canola fats and sunflower oils which are as coarse as the engine oil used in your car and are not therefore conducive to maintenance of proper body metabolism and general good health.

Coconut oil can hardly be found today in the supermarkets in this tropical island, even though I’m happy that I do not necessarily belong to the supermarket-set of consumers even though sometimes these places are doubtless more convenient than the corner stores and the Sunday fairs.

But, this is merely a consumer disaster — the true calamity is in the fact that coconut oil and coconut based foodstuffs are some of the most healthful in all of creation. Coconut oil kills the harmful organisms in your system, the bad-guy yeasts and funguses for instance, which are now known to be causative factors for serious illnesses such as cancers and inflammation attacks which lead to hardening of the arteries and eveWhat’s worse than war crimes and Wikileaks?


So we had the best medicine that we almost didn’t need any money to buy being mixed on a daily basis with our diet, and we traded that for engine oil, and this is the best part — we were told all the while that this exchange is good for us, because this ‘untreated’ so called coarse and basic coconut oil was said to be a commodity that causes cholesterol which leads to heart attacks!

Today, an entire swathe of urban workers have been duped into believing that they have cholesterol conditions which lead to heart attacks, and doctors, oops specialists, keep prescribing these folks cholesterol medicines which directly enriches the giant pharmaceutical industry —- which is second only to the armaments industry in terms of global wealth accumulation capacity. The entire cholesterol scare is a mere bogey with moneymaking being uppermost in the minds of those who propagate this fashionable cholesterol angst, and more details are sure to come in this newspaper.

People spend fortunes on anti cholesterol drugs, and then they spend more fortunes on side-effect diseases such as kidney failure etc., which can be directly traced to long-term use of these drugs.

That’s the tip of the iceberg with regard to the multinational assault on our home-grown produce, and by extension our natural and sustainable lifestyles. That the US multinationals are doing this type of thing everywhere, mostly in their own home country is no consolation.

The effects of these (anti) consumerist attacks which are all money and greed-driven, far outweigh the effects of so-called war crimes tribunals and other such red-flag issues, that it makes me seriously think sometimes that such political issues foisted through US agency in this country are but a smokescreen for the all-wrecking consumerist subterfuge let loose by the US multinational behemoths.

Hilarious hillbilly ...

Talk about a gun and a banda! A bum and a gooda (with sincere apologies to my Communist party friends from Kerala) accosted me in a corridor of the Mt Lavinia hotel the other day when I was leaving the Editors’ Guild awards ceremony.

The fellow, I gather his name is Emil Van der Poot or some such earful, insisted on boring me with details of his blood toil tears and sweat days in Canada before he became a ‘journalist’, something he has been writing reams about with reasons that seem to have to do with extreme ennui or irrepressible buffoonery, (probably both.)

Why pay?

Despite my protestations that I have no time of day for this risible specimen, he insisted on clutching at my buttonhole blabbing about his days in some godforsaken boondocks of North America, and three articles he says he has never been paid for, the issue by which his entire life has been defined these last few years. Why anybody would want to pay for the pusillanimous drivel written by a greybeard in an obvious advanced state of senile dementia beats me.

Of course, some do take pity and publish such natterings, and I hold no grudge against such acts of charity.

Flattered

Old dogs cannot be taught new tricks I know, and this one absolutely cannot write for two weeks without either mentioning this newspaper or Malinda or our frequent contributors such as Dayan about which I’m quite flattered no matter from which quarter such honourable mention is deemed worthy. It’s downright fascinating when his likes quaintly insist on declaiming ‘I deem this’ or ‘I decide that’ with such papal authority that I’m not sure whether to laugh or to cry, but when other folks of his vintage are mostly pushing the daisies age-specific delusions of grandeur I suppose go with territory.

By the way, when in one pellucid moment this prize bozo insisted we’re “independent’ I do understand his need to distinguish us in some way from the rag sheet the man is now hilariously in puppy-love with, whose editor makes belated confessions of editorial board and management decisions to support a certain political party in the teeth of nationwide elections, while also being fiercely impartial. Now that’s how to be cute, I’d say.
The man, who has pretensions to journalism, is in dire need of journalistic training. He calls the Editors’ Guild and SLPI Excellence in Journalism awards the SLPI awards, but who knows, there may be a method in that madness.

He proceeds to say he met me at the awards and casts insinuations, and which kind of depraved boor would go home and try to take down his host after admittedly drinking the host’s scotch and enjoying his hospitality? As a newspaper editor, I was indeed one of the hosts of the Editors’ Guild awards for excellence along with other editors, and I dare this boor to contradict that. Incidentally, my being a host is one of the reasons I suffered this specimen when he accosted me to deliver himself of his ramblings.

By the way, about the bum and the goonda? Psst, his ever-smiling wife was not one of them - just saying. I do thank her for congratulating us on the multiple awards we bagged that night including the biggie for (need I even mention independent?) Journalist of the Year. By the way then, about our generally unadvertised unimpeachable credentials just who would you believe, eh, your lying eyes, or a delirious hilarious Quixote de la Mancha?