They're protesting on the what?

[TheKwas]

Love your big dick wanking.

Blow me. It's apparent you don't even know the tiniest bit abotu the Tamil Tigers; who practically INVENTED the suicide bombing -- now that they're getting their asses kicked six ways to sunday by the Sri Lankans, and an end is now in sight to the 30-year old Tamil Tiger insurgency; all the bleeding hearts are coming out of the woodwork, calling for a "negotiated, peaceful end" to the conflict; which of course, will result in the Tamil Tigers still having territory under their control; rather than them being ground under into dust by the Sri Lankans.

To the Sri Lankans; I say, Faster, sir, Faster!

Exactly how does ANY of that make your statement about wishing to drive over thousands of non-violent protestors (most of whom aren't Tamil Tigers or have no significant connections to the Tamil tigers, anyways) any less of 'big dick wanking'?

It always amazes me that it is the diaspora which is always egging on the people back home to be more radical and violent.

How on EARTH are Canadian Tamils more radical and violent than Tamils in Sri Lanka? Are you seriously retarded? When was the last time anyone heard of Canadian Tamils even causing trouble before these non-violent (but disruptive) protests?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Stuart isn't quite right--there has been a Tamil population in the very far north of Ceylon / Sri Lanka what have you since the 10th century AD. The claims that Tamils are the original inhabitants of the island are idiotic but they have been there since the 10th century, for what it's worth, so they're real inhabitants--insomuch as it may be considered that they invaded/migrated there against the will of the inhabitants (more or less by definition, in those days) in the first place. That population is however smaller than the Indian Tamils, who are actually the ones from the 19th century. They however have never really been nearly as involved in the insurrection. A better analogy I think would be that of Brittany waging a violent guerrilla war for independence from France. Arguably due to the suppression of thier language the Britons have equal justification to an insurrection against France as the Tamils did for their insurrection against the Sri Lankan government, for that matter...

[Androsphinx]

Stuart isn't quite right--there has been a Tamil population in the very far north of Ceylon / Sri Lanka what have you since the 10th century AD. The claims that Tamils are the original inhabitants of the island are idiotic but they have been there since the 10th century, for what it's worth, so they're real inhabitants--insomuch as it may be considered that they invaded/migrated there against the will of the inhabitants (more or less by definition, in those days) in the first place. That population is however smaller than the Indian Tamils, who are actually the ones from the 19th century. They however have never really been nearly as involved in the insurrection. A better analogy I think would be that of Brittany waging a violent guerrilla war for independence from France. Arguably due to the suppression of thier language the Britons have equal justification to an insurrection against France as the Tamils did for their insurrection against the Sri Lankan government, for that matter...

Bretons.

[Stuart]

Stuart isn't quite right--there has been a Tamil population in the very far north of Ceylon / Sri Lanka what have you since the 10th century AD. The claims that Tamils are the original inhabitants of the island are idiotic but they have been there since the 10th century, for what it's worth, so they're real inhabitants--insomuch as it may be considered that they invaded/migrated there against the will of the inhabitants (more or less by definition, in those days) in the first place. That population is however smaller than the Indian Tamils, who are actually the ones from the 19th century. They however have never really been nearly as involved in the insurrection. A better analogy I think would be that of Brittany waging a violent guerrilla war for independence from France. Arguably due to the suppression of thier language the Britons have equal justification to an insurrection against France as the Tamils did for their insurrection against the Sri Lankan government, for that matter...

It's rather more complicated than that. Historically, there have been waves of Tamil invaders hitting Sri Lanka at varying intervals, probably due to population pressures on the mainland. These waves started well before the 10th Century, with some evidence they even took place in the BC era. In some cases, when the native Singhalese kingdoms were strong, the invaders were thrown back into the sea. In other cases, when the native Kingdoms were weakened by internal decay or internecine warfare, the Tamils managed to found their own Kingdoms in the North. Why the North? Its because there's a natural land/shallow water bridge from Tamil Nadu to Northern Sri Lanka that makes an easy invasion route. In the latter case, the Singhalese Kingdoms continued to resist the new Tamil kingdom until it was eventually driven out. The descendents of those Tamil invaders are part of the Sri Lankan Tamils (3.9 percent of the population).

The British brought a lot of Tamils over, starting in the 19th century and ending in the 1930s. Their descendents form the rest of the Sri Lankan Tamils. The Indian Tamils (4.6 percent of the population) in Sri Lanka arrived in the 1960s-1980s. Now, this division has had some interesting side-effects. One is that the LTTE are almost entirely an Indian Tamil organization and their main body of strength was in the northern part of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Tamils had their own organizations and their main center of strength was in Eastern Sri Lanka. One of the earliest actions of the LTTE was to attack and largely destroy the nationalist organizations of the Sri Lankan Tamils and absorn their survivors into the LTTE. In the end this led to a split forming in the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Tamils defected to the Government and attacked the LTTE, the result being that the eastern provinces fell to the Government in 2006-7.

So, the current situation can really be seen as a continuation of a well-established pattern. A Tamil invasion, an effort to ste up their own Kingdom and its eventual elimination.

By the way, remember that hospital that supposedly got all the shelling? The Sri Lanka Army just overran it. No sign of any damage other than a few stray mortar rounds. All the stories concerning it appear to have been falsified.

[ray245]

Stuart isn't quite right--there has been a Tamil population in the very far north of Ceylon / Sri Lanka what have you since the 10th century AD. The claims that Tamils are the original inhabitants of the island are idiotic but they have been there since the 10th century, for what it's worth, so they're real inhabitants--insomuch as it may be considered that they invaded/migrated there against the will of the inhabitants (more or less by definition, in those days) in the first place. That population is however smaller than the Indian Tamils, who are actually the ones from the 19th century. They however have never really been nearly as involved in the insurrection. A better analogy I think would be that of Brittany waging a violent guerrilla war for independence from France. Arguably due to the suppression of thier language the Britons have equal justification to an insurrection against France as the Tamils did for their insurrection against the Sri Lankan government, for that matter...

It's rather more complicated than that. Historically, there have been waves of Tamil invaders hitting Sri Lanka at varying intervals, probably due to population pressures on the mainland. These waves started well before the 10th Century, with some evidence they even took place in the BC era. In some cases, when the native Singhalese kingdoms were strong, the invaders were thrown back into the sea. In other cases, when the native Kingdoms were weakened by internal decay or internecine warfare, the Tamils managed to found their own Kingdoms in the North. Why the North? Its because there's a natural land/shallow water bridge from Tamil Nadu to Northern Sri Lanka that makes an easy invasion route. In the latter case, the Singhalese Kingdoms continued to resist the new Tamil kingdom until it was eventually driven out. The descendents of those Tamil invaders are part of the Sri Lankan Tamils (3.9 percent of the population).

The British brought a lot of Tamils over, starting in the 19th century and ending in the 1930s. Their descendents form the rest of the Sri Lankan Tamils. The Indian Tamils (4.6 percent of the population) in Sri Lanka arrived in the 1960s-1980s. Now, this division has had some interesting side-effects. One is that the LTTE are almost entirely an Indian Tamil organization and their main body of strength was in the northern part of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Tamils had their own organizations and their main center of strength was in Eastern Sri Lanka. One of the earliest actions of the LTTE was to attack and largely destroy the nationalist organizations of the Sri Lankan Tamils and absorn their survivors into the LTTE. In the end this led to a split forming in the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Tamils defected to the Government and attacked the LTTE, the result being that the eastern provinces fell to the Government in 2006-7.

So, the current situation can really be seen as a continuation of a well-established pattern. A Tamil invasion, an effort to ste up their own Kingdom and its eventual elimination.

By the way, remember that hospital that supposedly got all the shelling? The Sri Lanka Army just overran it. No sign of any damage other than a few stray mortar rounds. All the stories concerning it appear to have been falsified.

Didn't the Sri Lanka Tamils got marginalised and discriminated for a long time as stateless citizens?

[ray245]

Sorry for posting another reply so fast, but you guys might want to take a look at this.

AP

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Sri Lanka's president declared victory Saturday in his nation's quarter century civil war with the Tamil Tigers rebels. But the group's top leaders remained at large as troops and the cornered insurgents fought fierce battles across the war zone.

A triumph on the battlefield appeared inevitable after government forces captured the last bit of coastline under rebel control early Saturday, surrounding the remaining fighters in a 1.2-square mile (3.1-square kilometer) patch of land.

Thousands of civilians who had been trapped by the fighting poured across the front lines, the military said.

"My government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation finally defeated the LTTE militarily," President Mahinda Rajapaksa said referring to the rebels by their formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

"I will be going back to a country that has been totally freed from the barbaric acts of the LTTE," he said in a speech in Jordan that was distributed to the media in Sri Lanka.

The rebels, who once controlled a de facto state across much of the north, have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for minority Tamils after decades of marginalization by the Sinhalese majority. Responsible for hundreds of suicide attacks — including the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi — the Tamil Tigers have been branded terrorists by the U.S., E.U. and India and shunned internationally.

The rebels also controlled a conventional army, with artillery units, a significant navy and even a tiny air force.

After repeated stalemates on the battlefield, the military broke through the rebel lines last year and forced the insurgents into a broad retreat, capturing their administrative capital at Kilinochchi in January and vowing to retake control over the rest of the country.

The rebels have insisted that if they are defeated in conventional battle, they will return to their guerrilla roots.

On Saturday morning, government troops sweeping in from the north and south seized control of the island's entire coastline for the first time in decades, sealing the rebels in a tiny pocket of territory and cutting off the possibility of a sea escape by the rebels' top leaders, the military said.

Government forces have been hunting for the reclusive rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his top deputies for months, but it was unclear if they remained in rebel territory or had already fled overseas.

Two senior fighters, known by their nicknames Sornam and Sasi Master, were killed in Saturday's fighting, Nanayakkara said. On Friday, the navy intercepted a boat off the northeastern coast Friday and arrested the fleeing wife, son and daughter of the rebels' naval leader, known as Soosai, Nanayakkara said.

Even as Rajapaksa declared victory, the military reported that fighting continued to rage in the northeast war zone. Huge explosions could be heard across the battlefield as rebels detonated their ammunition stocks and artillery dumps, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.

Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred most journalists and aid workers from the conflict zone.

Some 11,800 civilians escaped the war zone Saturday, joining more than 200,000 others who fled in recent months and are being held in displacement camps, Nanayakkara said. Rights groups say the rebels were holding the civilians as human shields to blunt the government offensive. The rebels denied the accusation.

U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said an estimated 20,000 people had emerged from the combat zone in the past few days and were being processed by the government.

"We have no access to that process. We hold grave fears for the safety of the estimated 30,000 to 80,000 people who are still inside the combat zone," he said.

Weiss expressed concern for the fate of the top government health officials working in the war zone — Dr. Thurairaja Varatharajah and Dr. Thangamuttu Sathyamurthi — "who courageously kept the medical services going throughout the months of the siege of the combat zone."

The pair ran a badly understaffed makeshift hospital in the war zone that was repeatedly shelled and overwhelmed with hundreds of casualties from the fighting nearly every day.

The U.N. says 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded from Jan. 20 through May 7. Since then, health officials say more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in a week of heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces.

The government denied firing heavy weapons and brushed off calls for a humanitarian truce.

[Pelranius]

Hallelujah!

News CENTRAL/S. ASIA
Sri Lanka rebels concede defeat

Sri Lankans in Colombo celebrated after the president announced the 'defeat' of the Tamil Tigers [AFP]

Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels have decided to lay down their arms after admitting that the conflict in the north of the island had reached a "bitter end".

The rebel declaration on Sunday came shortly after the army said that at least 70 Tamil Tiger had been killed as they tried to flee the conflict zone.

"This battle has reached its bitter end," Selvarajah Pathmanathan, the international spokesman of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), said in a statement on the pro-separatist Tamilnet website.

"We remain with one last choice - to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns."

LTTE chief's fate

Mahinda Rajapakse, the Sri Lankan president, had declared the previous day that the Tigers had been "defeated," after the military said it had captured the last area of coastline held by them.

"I am proud to announce ... that my government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has, in an unprecedented humanitarian operation, finally defeated the LTTE," he told a summit in Jordan.

Focus: Sri Lanka

Q&A: Sri Lanka's civil war
The history of the Tamil Tigers
Timeline: Conflict in Sri Lanka
He returned to the capital, Colombo, on Sunday to street celebrations.

Despite the claim of victory, the whereabouts of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of Tigers, remain unknown, and hundreds of thousands of civilians are still either on the move or in camps for the internally displaced.

Narayan Swamy, editor of Indo-Asian News Service and author of Tigers of Lanka: From Boys to Guerrillas, told Al Jazeera: "It is highly unlikely that Prabhakaran would ever surrender or show the white flag.

"It is possible he may die fighting, it is possible he may commit suicide. As of now, there are conflicting reports about his whereabouts and the whereabouts of his top associates. There is no definite confirmation.

"Being captured alive would be the ultimate humiliation for a man who took on the Sri Lankan state with the view of breaking it up and forming an independent Tamil homeland.

"It is clear he has failed in his objective. That is bad enough.

"There are certain legitimate Tamil grievances, that's why the international community has repeatedly been telling the Sri Lankan government to get its act together," Swamy said.

Civilian displacement

The Sri Lankan ministry of disaster management and human rights said on Sunday it was continuing to process civilians rescued from the fighting.

Rajiva Wijesinha, a secretary at the ministry, told Al Jazeera from Colombo: "We heard that the last of them [civilians] had been saved. This was one of our great priorities in the last couple of weeks to make sure we got the civilians safely away."

The Tigers had been fightng for a separate homeland for 25 years [AFP]
Amin Awad, a representative of the UN refugee agency, said "almost all the population in the conflict zone - about 60,000 - had left.

He told Al Jazeera that the displaced were being "processed at the Omanthai crossing point. That leaves very few, if any, people in the conflict zone".

Both the government and the Tamil Tigers have been criticised for not allowing civilians safe exit from the area and for precipitating a humanitarian disaster.

The Tamil Tigers had been fighting for more than 25 years for a homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east of the country, arguing that they were marginalised by the ruling majority Sinhalese government.

'Sick and hungry'

James Elder, a spokesman for Unicef, told Al Jazeera that civilians from the conflict zone were arriving "sick and hungry" and that women and children were malnourished.

"This latest massive influx of people who have endured those extreme conditions is going to put even greater strain on those camps," he said.

"These camps are being created by the government, which argues they are on the basis of state security and the time needed for mines to be cleared before resettlement can occur.

"At the same time, it is urgent that the government comes out with very clear screening and separation policies and a timeline so those who are termed non-combatants are allowed freedom of movement and are allowed to resettle."

About 200,000 civilians have escaped the war zone in recent months, while more than 7,000 are believed to have been killed in fighting since January.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/ ... 25722.html

[Mayabird]

<snip>

Exactly how does ANY of that make your statement about wishing to drive over thousands of non-violent protestors (most of whom aren't Tamil Tigers or have no significant connections to the Tamil tigers, anyways) any less of 'big dick wanking'?

Dude, it's Shep. It's what he does. It'd be like a thread about some moron in Georgia doing what he does best (namely, being stupid) without me entering and talking about how much Georgia sucks and how much I hate it and await the second coming of Sherman.



Back on topic, BBC coverage adds a few other notes. I moved the commentary from the BBC correspondent to the bottom to make the formatting less weird.

Sri Lanka rebels 'call ceasefire'


Tamil rebels trapped in a tiny enclave of northern Sri Lanka have declared a ceasefire, a rebel spokesman says.

The Tamil Tigers (LTTE) had given up their fight against a major government offensive and "decided to silence our guns", he said on a pro-Tamil website.

"This battle has reached its bitter end," said Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the Tigers' chief of international relations, in a statement on Tamilnet.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has already claimed victory in the 26-year war.

A later statement on the Tamilnet website appeared to modify the rebel position.

Mr Pathmanathan said the LTTE was "prepared to silence its guns if that is what needed by the international community to save the life and dignity of the Tamil people".

"In the past 24 hours, over 3,000 civilians lie dead on the streets while another 25,000 are critically injured with no medical attention," said the statement.

A senior Sri Lankan media spokesman told the BBC the government did not respond to documents posted on Tamilnet or take them seriously.

Lakshman Hulugalle said the government was waiting for an official "request" from the LTTE.

Civilians trapped

In contrast, Sri Lanka military officials said earlier that all the civilians who had been trapped in Sri Lanka's northern war zone had escaped.

The government rejected the ceasefire calls, saying that as all trapped civilians had now fled from the area of conflict, there was no reason to stop its offensive.

Army spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said some 50,000 ethnic Tamils had fled the area over the past three days.

Like all accounts from the war zone, neither claim can be independently verified.

Fighting is still continuing, but there has been no sign of the Tigers' leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Sri Lankan defence minister told the BBC.

For months, tens of thousands of Tamil civilians have been trapped in the war zone, vulnerable to bombardments as the government and Tamil Tiger rebels fought bitterly.

The United Nations says they were being forcibly kept there by the rebels and that more than 6,000 have been killed since January.

The UN has told the BBC the army figures reinforced its view that Sri Lanka's authorities were ill-prepared for the huge influx of internally displaced people.

Refugee camps inland are already badly strained accommodating the huge numbers of those who have fled the conflict.

Rebels 'cornered'

Both the UN and Western governments have called on Sri Lanka to exercise restraint in its pursuit of a military victory over the Tigers.

INSURGENCY TIMELINE
1976 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam form in the north-east
1987 India deploys peace-keepers to Tamil areas but they leave in 1990
1993 President Premadasa killed by Tiger bomb
2001 Attack on airport destroys half Sri Lankan Airlines fleet
2002 Government and rebels agree ceasefire
2005 Mahinda Rajapakse becomes president
2006 Heavy fighting resumes
2009 Tigers call for ceasefire after army takes main rebel strongholds, confines Tigers to small coastal enclave

Despite President Rajapaksa's claim of military victory on Saturday, senior officials told the BBC that fighting was still continuing in the area where the LTTE leaders were said to be cornered.

A military spokesman has told the BBC the last remnants of the rebels are trapped in 1.5 square kilometres of jungle. Again, his assertion cannot be verified.

More than 70,000 people have died in the bitter war for a Tamil homeland.

Sri Lanka's army said earlier 70 rebels had been killed trying to escape from a tiny enclave where they are holed up in the island's north-east.

The army says it has cut off rebel access to the sea.

Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said a "process of identification" was going on to identify the 70 rebels killed while trying to cross a lagoon in six boats.

President Rajapaksa is expected to give a nationally televised news conference in parliament on Tuesday, when reports suggest he may officially declare the war over.


Charles Haviland
Charles Haviland, BBC News, Colombo

The Tamil Tiger statement sounds permanent but there is no use of the emotive word "surrender" nor an explicit admission of defeat. A defiant note is sounded when he says that "no force can prevent the attainment of justice for our people".

But the Sri Lankan government, on the crest of a wave of military success, says the fighting has not finished.

The defence minister said the military had yet to clear a small area of jungle where some LTTE members might be hiding, but added that 250,000 people had fled the conflict zone in recent weeks and not a single one had reported seeing the Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran inside the area.

It may not be done quite yet.

[ray245]

<snip>

Exactly how does ANY of that make your statement about wishing to drive over thousands of non-violent protestors (most of whom aren't Tamil Tigers or have no significant connections to the Tamil tigers, anyways) any less of 'big dick wanking'?

Dude, it's Shep. It's what he does. It'd be like a thread about some moron in Georgia doing what he does best (namely, being stupid) without me entering and talking about how much Georgia sucks and how much I hate it and await the second coming of Sherman.

Any reason why Shep is getting a free pass everything from posting things like this?

Back on topic, I have to ask, is the Tamils ( Indian and Sri Lanka alike) being treated by the sinhalese? Are they still being heavily discriminated in recent times?

[Mayabird]

Ray, it's not giving him a free pass. It's saying that he's not waving his dick around and posturing to look like a tough guy. It's just Shep and he does that.

[Enigma]

Unfortunately, someone decided a long time ago that the right to "peaceful protest" somehow included the right to block traffic. That's why unions are allowed to do it, and that's why these clowns can get away with it.

Only mass arrests would take away this mentality that a protester is entitled to block traffic, and I don't see that happening any time soon.

If I recall, the last time protests led to blocked traffic in Chicago there WERE mass arrests - several hundred people in one night. That was only a couple years ago. Well, I guess we got something right....

Do that in Canada and it would be a major scandal.

[Lonestar]

Any reason why Shep is getting a free pass everything from posting things like this?

It isn't Dick-waving. I'd say there's a 50-50 chance Shep would actually do what he claims he would do.

Maybe more than 50, now that he's a postal employee.

I absolutely hate major protests, especially when I commute here in DC. There's soemthing annoying abotu the fattest woman I've ever seen in my life with the word VEGAN on her purse spilling hot starbucks(signs all over the train saying "no food or drink") on me because the car is packed with her and 5,000 of her closest idiot friends.

[ray245]

Any reason why Shep is getting a free pass everything from posting things like this?

It isn't Dick-waving. I'd say there's a 50-50 chance Shep would actually do what he claims he would do.

Maybe more than 50, now that he's a postal employee.

It's just annoying when Shep posted something that has a total lack of human lives again and again even when people telling him not to do it.

[Samuel]

Any reason why Shep is getting a free pass everything from posting things like this?

It isn't Dick-waving. I'd say there's a 50-50 chance Shep would actually do what he claims he would do.

Maybe more than 50, now that he's a postal employee.

It's just annoying when Shep posted something that has a total lack of human lives again and again even when people telling him not to do it.

Uh, I don't think that is what you meant to post. On topic, given that the government won by crushing the Tamils and pulping their military, I'd say that Shep style methods would work.

[ray245]

Uh, I don't think that is what you meant to post. On topic, given that the government won by crushing the Tamils and pulping their military, I'd say that Shep style methods would work.

I'm talking about Shep's talk about driving over thousands of non-violent protesters.

[Edi]

Any reason why Shep is getting a free pass everything from posting things like this?

It isn't Dick-waving. I'd say there's a 50-50 chance Shep would actually do what he claims he would do.

Maybe more than 50, now that he's a postal employee.

It's just annoying when Shep posted something that has a total lack of human lives again and again even when people telling him not to do it.

It's even more fucking annoying when you try to play backseat mod about it. Shut up.

[Ryan Thunder]

EDIT: hit post instead of preview and thought better of it.