Do NOT use Condoms, it can increase your chance of getting AIDS.

This is a public service announcement. I’m not writing any of my own opinions, since it is not really necessary.

Pope Benedict, Our holly father, Servant of the Servants of God, talking about AIDS in Africa last week announced,

“You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms, On the contrary, it increases the problem."

So guys if you engage in some sort of sexual activity please do NOT use condoms by any means. It can worsen AIDS problem and it will not help protecting you from those sorts of diseases.

Tamil Struggle vs Black Struggle. (A reply to BeyondFrame)

When it comes to so call Tamil Struggle in Sri Lanka, there are few deferent views among Sinhalese out there. The first group of Sinhalese haven’t spend a day in their life to learn what it is, but pick a bit from there and bit from here like a old cow in a barn, eventually surrender to someone else’s assumptions since it is easiest thing to do. Then there is other group, who honestly don’t bother. I kind of like this attitude for so many reasons. They accept all the terrifying bombs, never-ending war and daily bad news as a fact of life like in-laws or neighbors. The other group opposes to the Tamil Struggle and they are very well annoyed by it. The last group, that I assume Beyond Frame also belongs to sympathized the Tamil Struggle and believe in a root cause. They believe by treating root cause, we can solve the terrorism too, which is a part of so call Tamil Struggle. It is quite logical and sensible approach.

Beyond Frame wrote this blog about black struggle in America and current situation of black community. Even thought it received very less attentions than his usual fiery posts, that is a topic I find very interesting. He suggests, rightfully, we should look at similar situations in other countries, such as Black issues in America and compare them with our own issues.

Here is my comparison.

1. Minorities always get their ass kicked.
There are minorities in every country, Tamils in Sri Lanka, Muslims in India or Gays in America. They all get their ass kicked one time or another. I find American homosexuals issue is pretty interesting to look at. Blacks, who were discriminated back then, voted for a bill to discriminate Gays in California this year. My point here is, there is no country without faults. Correcting them is a journey, not an event. Sri Lanka also had her faults, she corrected lot of them, there is lot more, and we will correct them along the way too.

2. Minorities always win.
Minorities always win rights at the end. But they never win rights only for themselves; instead they create rights for everyone. If any minority group gains rights only for themselves, it won’t pass the brutal test of time. Blacks in America did not won rights only for blacks, they create set of Civil Rights that can enjoy by whites, blacks and every other color in that country. Tamils in Sri Lanka are not fighting for set of civil rights like how blacks did in America. They are exclusively demand for themselves. Whenever situation is such, they have to use excessive amount of violence to achieve such goal. And even if they successive, it cannot survive without continues use of force.

3. Conflict is a Compulsory Evil
If you look at history of any free country, it is the minorities, who always won rights for everyone and make the country better each time. Even though face of Tamil Struggle is selfish terror campaign, as a byproduct, Sri Lankan social structure may possibly improve.

3. Black vs Tamils, discrimination.
This I find quite interesting. Blacks were slaves and Tamils were not. I guess until British gained control of the whole island, Tamils who was the ruling class of the Kingdom (also elite Sinhalese) had Sinhalese Slaves (source: Kanadian court records) and owners had rights to punish even by the brutal act of amputation. After the power swap, Tamils dominated the upper class of the country, and Sinhalese worked as servants for them. Now there is nothing wrong with serving anyone and matter of fact, if you talk to those old people who spend their youth as servant-boys, they still speak very highly of their Tamil masters and they have a bit of pride too. This is complete opposite to the African American situation.

13% of Americans are black, but they all speak English or Spanish, not Kiswahili. Or any time of the history they did not demanded any African language to be an official language. And matter of fact, use of African tongue was banned all together back then. Now talking about Language, English was the Language in Sri Lanka until Bandaranayaka changed it in to Sinhala “with reasonable use of Tamil” (the part everyone forget to mention when they talk about this), and later on, Tamil also considered as national language.

Unlike blacks in America, Tamils in Sri Lanka had access to Parliament since the day one. When blacks were fighting to sit front of the bus, Tamils are demanding 50-50 seats in the parliament. Democracy or parliament may not be perfect, considering it is the democratic system that banned gay marriages in US or been gay a crime in SL, still democracy have ability to self correct and do the right thing. Therefore it is the best system we have so far, and Tamils had all the rights (or even more than Sinhalese) to participate in it.

More than Sinhalese I said? Yes. Let me explain why. By Sri Lankan constitution, Tamils have exclusive right to own lands in north of the country while they also have freedom to own land in any other place of the country. In otherworld, Sinhalese could not own land in north of the country till this day. That gives Tamils possibility to represent the parliament from any part of the country as they usually do, while rest do not have same possibility.

My point of all these examples is – Tamils were not discriminated as such as Blacks or quite possibly not even as much as Sinhalese. Now again, I do not deny Tamils were discriminated (or gays or children) or I don’t say blacks are not discriminated in America even now either.

4. Separate county.
Black struggle had three diferent goals, overlapping each other time to time. Specially in early ages, they wanted to go back to Africa. They thought Africa is the rightful place and quite large number of Black Americans moved to Liberia. It is quite contrary in Sri Lanka. They fought to stay here first and then they gave up the complete idea, Tamilnadu is their homeland.

Second face of black struggle is a separate state. This mainly lead by Elijah Muhammad and supported by Malcolm X at some point. Now this is very much equal to Tamil Struggle in Sri Lanka by so many ways. They both had influence of other countries and backing of religion. But this face did not work out for black people and did not work for Tamil people either.

Third and most successful face is Civil Right movement lead by MLK and others. MLK valued and respected America deeply. Let me repeat it again. MLK value and respect America deeply, the country that kept his people as slaves for hundreds of years, baned reading or writing, vote, and even owning property. This is totally opposite to Tamil Struggle in Sri Lanka which the main tactic is destroying Sri Lanka economically and structurally (that they did quite well)

MLK speak in Montgomery:

“We are here, we are here this evening because we're tired now. Now let us say that we are not here advocating violence. We have overcome that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people. We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. And secondly, this is the glory of America, with all of its faults. This is the glory of our democracy. If we were incarcerated behind the iron curtains of a Communistic nation we couldn't do this. If we were trapped in the dungeon of a totalitarian regime we couldn't do this. But the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.”

5. Where is Tamil Beyond Frame.
Beyond Frame and many other Sinhalese, continually speak for Tamil rights; criticize the government all the time. But I have not seen a single Tamil criticize even the most terrible acts of LTTE (well, except Anandasangari). Some says, because Tamils are scared of LTTE. Well, Sinhalese also die for criticizing the government isn’t it? And Beyond Frame still speaks his mind and it is same with the black community in US too. But end of the day, all Tamils voices are very much monolithic.

Unlike Black struggle, only two things can put a stop to Tamil Struggle. Tamil Rights are not one of them, because Black struggle is a struggle for rights. But Tamil struggle is not. Giving them what they are fighting for, asking for, can stop the Tamil struggle, which is a separate country. Or a Tamil leader who value and respect Sri Lanka with all her faults, just like MLK did, can put a stop to so call Tamil Struggle too.

Private University Dialog – My Response

We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free. ~ Epictetus

I was reading all those arguments about private universities these days here, here and here and thought of writing an answer to all of them at once. So here it is. I’m trying to keep that in point form, so it is easy for anyone to challenge each point.

1. It is not free higher education. It is closed education.
It is true; one characters of our higher education system is “free” price tag, among other characteristics, such as class room education or weekday classes. But all those characteristics belong to a closed education system. When someone refers to free higher education system, they are defending or arguing not about the free price tag as one might think, but they are referring to the closed system.

2. “Free education” was an answer to a monopoly. Not meant to be a monopoly.
Until free education reforms, aristocrats were created by church, which had enough wealth to provide education with a free price tag to selected few, who they thought deserve to be educated. There was no challenge to such a monopoly back then, since concept of privately organized institutes was none exists. So government with a surplus budget did the right thing by breaking the monopoly of religion. Also in Early 1900s, Sri Lankans (and most of other countries) had unrestricted access to Europe where there was best organized higher education system in the world, for relatively cheap price. Free education was implemented in ADDITION to that, not as a REPLACEMENT. But this access and price tag dramatically changed after WWII.

3. Assumed Intelligence vs Wealth.
One argument keep on popping up loudly is, “fairness”. By letting people with private wealth access to knowledge openly, forces assumed intelligent without wealth, struggle “unfairly”. A person who simply passed A/L is no better or any special than illiterate Kamalawathi, who worked in Jordan and generated wealth for the nation. I can’t possibly see the principle behind the philosophy of assumed intelligence needed to be treated specially than proven wealth. I would be very glad if someone can explain the philosophy behind this argument.

4. A/L is not a way to decide intelligence.
There are three sub points:
1. One most arrogant and offensive argument coming up time to time is, people for open education or against close education are A/L dropouts. Let me simply say it is not true.

2. If only intelligent people deserve to be educated, then A/L is not the way to prove intelligence. Einstein, Da Vinci, Edison, Picasso, Churchill, Jefferson, Washington, Ted Turner, Richard Branson, Henry Ford, they all are dyslexic, therefore without what so ever possibility to be a success in Sri Lankan education system.

3. Even we have a solid way to locate intelligence; it is an unacceptable argument to say only intelligent people deserved to be educated. Intelligence is a result of education (whatever the form of education it may be), not education a result of intelligence. Therefore this argument fundamentally wrong.

5. People in Sri Lanka are poor and therefore they cannot afford Higher Education.
Simply not true. Those so called poor people already spend on higher education. Unfortunately may not on their own children, but on other group of kids selected by the government. Still that, closed education system is not an alternative to finical aid or scholarships. Open education system can increase the level of finical aid and scholarships to the people who rightfully deserve.

6. Where is our Socrates?
We have invested so much on a closed education. But what it has given us in return, that an open education system could not provide? All our major wealth generating industries base on human labor and contributed by people without higher education or higher education is not required. Right now people without higher education support and fund the higher education system and results of higher education system. A shame! Now please don’t tell me Sri Lankans work in NASA. A country can live on pride alone.

7. Where is the return of investment?
Education is a direct investment. It is perfectly alright for government to invest on individuals, but if those individuals could not payback, as a nation we should immediately look in to more profitable investments, such as milk cows.

8. Closed education system creates a form Aristocracy.
Back then Queen used to choose aristocrats, but in the absence of a Queen, our government chooses individuals and creates an elite group of people separated from the rest. They were provided free exclusive knowledge required for special set of jobs that do not open to rest of the society. As the same way Queen commissions her aristocrats, we commission our elite group to each of those jobs that may secure their future till death. This system morally and ethically contradicts with democracy. Whenever someone propose to open up the education to public, these aristocrats, start to bully the public viciously, the same way British aristocrats used to do back then.

I honestly don’t know any other country in the world that denies their people access to knowledge that we desperately need in this century. I don’t know if it is a crime to deny people education, but I know it should be a one.

Tamil Student Need More Marks than Sinhalese to go to University?

I was listening to Nihal on BBC today @ youtube and came to this argument that I have heard few times before. Apparently Tamil guy said it is true, they have to have more marks than Sinhalese to enter in to a Sri Lankan universities and Sinhalese guy said it is not true. And they argue about it few times, like they always does on radio, then move on to a deferent entertaining argument. Now I don’t know is it really true or not. If you know, could you please tell me? I’m sure there are lot of people out there really wants to know too...

Let’s blame British today. Shall We?

I’m not a big fan of blaming west for our own mistakes like most of us usually do in our spare time. Colonization is a too old word, usually meaning "robbing other people, and building the Museum of London". Even though colonization is outdated, like Windows XP or Disco, there are new releases, such as modern-colonization or neo-colonization. I don’t know what the exact meanings of those words are, but I begin to believe it is the same process of robbing other people, but ingeniously, without building railroads like they had to do last time. Whatever it may be, I’m not here to blame British for that. Let them have the things they took from us, and even let them action those as they wish, and let us move on with our lives.

Taking about moving, I came cross another visa related insult today (here). This time British officials start to inspect passengers departing Sri Lanka at the Bandaranayake Airport, (which we named after Bandaranayake family just like everything else in here) like it their grandmother’s kitchen. It seems they are there to inspect and stop passengers as they wish. I’m used to them treating me like a common thief. But this is the first time they start to make sure that I feel absolutely worthless about myself as a human being even before I leave the country.

The common and most accepted excuse for this sort of dominant and submissive relationship between west and rest of the world is, we are the people from third world countries, immigrate to their neck of the woods and rob their way of life, the same way they robed rabbits from imperial garden. I don’t know when human migration becomes a crime. It was perfectly fine till last century, since the time Eve got kicked out of Eden for playing naked with a big snake. It is part of natural human survival mechanism to migrate to richer and safer lands as the surface of world changes. Even that, we all know, it is not every single person leave Katunayaka airport, migrating to some other country where there is a Royal family without a dental plan.

This is all about keeping us behind the queue, or in other words, they staying front of the queue displaying us their behind. Even before the time of Globalization, British knew the opportunity value comes with traveling. The Grand tour was not only about getting laid in Venice, it is about young British gentleman finding new opportunities in the ever changing world. By making traveling is uttermost difficult and insulting thing for us to do, they make sure we won’t have the sort of an opportunities they are having. A legal or natural British (Shell Gas or Barnaby from Lancashire) can roam around the earth freely, and find better and more profitable opportunities before everyone else. A young client of mine, a British lad in early 20s, visited Sri Lanka with his brother regarding a new business he wanted to start. It was cheap and easy for him, and most of all; he had the opportunity to expand himself globally in early age of his life without whatsoever restrictions, while same opportunities were denied to us very aggressively.

Behalf of our spineless leaders, I would like to tell all the British Airline Liaison Officers at Colombo Airport, please go kiss a cunt of a cow.