Read It To Believe It: Israels Ties in Sri Lanka

Israel continues to supply Sri Lanka with arms and excessive military training even after the United States and Britain stop endowing military supplies to Sri Lanka over the government’s human rights violations.

Why aren’t we hearing about this in the media?

I guess you had to read it,to believe it.

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Sri Lanka na de shock

Naomi Klein schrijft in The Shock Doctrine o.a. over Sri Lanka, na de verwoestende tsunami van 2004.

Het kan geen kwaad om haar boek te lezen om conflicten zoals die zich in Sri Lanka voordoen in perspectief te zetten.

I started researching the free market's dependence on the power of shock four years ago, during the early days of the occupation of Iraq. I reported from Baghdad on Washington's failed attempts to follow "shock and awe" with shock therapy - mass privatisation, complete free trade, a 15% flat tax, a dramatically downsized government. Afterwards I travelled to Sri Lanka, several months after the devastating 2004 tsunami, and witnessed another version of the same manoeuvre: foreign investors and international lenders had teamed up to use the atmosphere of panic to hand the entire beautiful coastline over to entrepreneurs who quickly built large resorts, blocking hundreds of thousands of fishing people from rebuilding their villages. By the time Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, it was clear that this was now the preferred method of advancing corporate goals: using moments of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic engineering. Most people who survive a disaster want the opposite of a clean slate: they want to salvage whatever they can and begin repairing what was not destroyed. "When I rebuild the city I feel like I'm rebuilding myself," said Cassandra Andrews, a resident of New Orleans' heavily damaged Lower Ninth Ward, as she cleared away debris after the storm. But disaster capitalists have no interest in repairing what once was. In Iraq, Sri Lanka and New Orleans, the process deceptively called "reconstruction" began with finishing the job of the original disaster by erasing what was left of the public sphere.

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Sri Lankan Military Intensifies Offensive Against Tamil Tigers; 13 Die in Hospital Shelling

The Sri Lankan government offensive against the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels is continuing amidst growing concern for the fate of over 250,000 civilians trapped in the fighting. The Sri Lankan president declared Monday that the army was on the verge of crushing the rebels after a twenty-five-year war. The army’s attack has reduced the territory under rebel control from 7,000 square miles a year ago to just over 100 square miles today. [includes rush transcript]

Lees en kijk bij Democracy Now

250,000 Civilians Trapped in Sri Lanka Fighting

As with Gaza, there's also more than enough blame to go around in Sri Lanka, where as many as 250,000 civilians remain trapped in the fighting between the Sri Lankan military and rebel Tamil Tigers.

The UN reports that a hospital bombed last week is now deserted, while the World Food Program is still struggling to supply food to hundreds of thousands of civilians who've fled their homes.

Lees verder bij Humanitarian Relief