නීති වෘත්තියේ සදාචාර පරිහානිය
Professionals are those who have completed the education and the other qualifications a particular calling requires. They are the backbone of any field, and they make up the most important stratum of a country’s middle class. This article is about what has become of one of those professions, and much of the evidence in it is Ivan’s own experience as a client.
අන්තර්ජාතික අවුල ලිහාගැනීම
The government had a programme with a strong vision for defeating Prabhakaran’s separatist terrorism at home. It had no such vision for the international questions that would follow the victory: it failed to see them coming, and even once they had become serious it did not manage to build a programme with a strong forward vision for meeting them.
බින් ලාඩන් හා ප්රභාකරන් පරාජය කිරීම
America has at last managed to end the life of Bin Laden, the terrorist who held the whole of America in dread. Ivan sets that beside the two Sri Lankan cases — Wijeweera’s second insurrection and the defeat of Prabhakaran — and asks what a war against terrorism is, and where the difference lies.
අභියෝගය ජයගැනීම
Whatever the wrongs and shortcomings within the counter-campaigns launched to defeat the terrorist war Prabhakaran led and the terrorist war Wijeweera led, had those campaigns failed and those two movements won, what could have followed was a great destruction. In that sense, Ivan writes, whatever their faults, those campaigns protected the country’s existence.
ජනාධිපති මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ, දෙමළ අර්බුදය හා එක්සත් ජාතීන්ගේ සංවිධානය
The disagreement between Sri Lanka and the United Nations over the war against the LTTE is ripening into something that will go a long way, and personal factors have influenced its growth more than they should have. The way Sri Lanka responded when the UN asked its questions of a member state was neither right nor fair: what was needed instead of anger was a calm explanation.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට කැඳවාගෙන ඒම -5
As in many other colonised countries, the political awakening that sought reform came out of the religious revival — the native religions, pushed into a low condition under foreign rule, working to recover the standing they had held. In Ceylon that happened in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට කැඳවාගෙන ඒම (4)
The British took the Kandyan kingdom in 1815 not by battle but by a crafty programme, and Sir John D’Oyly admitted as much in a long conversation, describing the programme he had run and naming several of the natives who acted as its chief pawns. It succeeded because of the support the Kandyan chiefs gave, in the expectation that the power to rule under British authority would come to them.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට කැඳවා ගෙන ඒම (3)
Gandhi’s analysis of the crisis modern Sri Lanka faces and of the way to overcome it comes with his commentary on Sri Lankan history, and this instalment is his reading of the Portuguese and Dutch periods: the conversions, the Karava and Salagama communities, the Malays, and the taking of the Kandyan kingdom.
සංවර්ධනය හා ජනමාධ්යවේදීන්ගේ සමාජ වගකීම
By development Ivan means progress in any field — a country’s as a whole, or the economy, politics, health, transport, education, science, the environment, the spiritual — and what he wants to talk about is what a journalist’s part in that process should be. Seven sections follow, from Warren Buffett to the development of Colombo.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට ගෙන්වා ගැනීම (II)
It was Gandhi who showed the world that spiritual strength joined to popular power can be turned into an undefeated motive force working for the progress, the justice and the liberation of ordinary people, free of self-interest, malice and hatred. Einstein said at his death that a powerful following can be won not only by political cunning but by the example of a disciplined and exalted human conduct.