life goes on…
between trying to meet deshan’s deadlines, getting hit on by someone who does it impressively well, and determinedly refraining from making any commentary on the murder of our foreign minister, life goes on quite unpeturbed.
however, morquendi, anush, scourge, ian, mahangu and indi all have interesting things to say, and take different stands in this issue. i for one, dont know what to say, think or feel. while being truly disgusted, i would also like to remind everyone that it may not be as black and white as many of us think it is. this is the real life, this is a very serious issue that goes far beyond our heated one-on-one debates about the privatization of universities. take a while before you make rash statements to think carefully about what your sincere opinion is and not get caught up with the flow of other people’s theories, everyone is talking alot these days. remember, all our blogs are read by a huge online community everyday. it is our duty as bloggers to quote reliable sources and relay accurate information responsibly, or not at all. its too early, and hence difficult to pin labels on people right now. everything is chaotic, and the information that streams out is muddled and confused. lets try and keep our heads till everyone gets a handle on things, and then decide who we want to call the bad guys.
everyone is saddened and upset by this loss, no doubt. but lets not get ahead of ourselves. this is something beyond all of us, and something that is much bigger and important than any of us could have ever imagined. lets just keep in mind that it will do no good to speculate at this point in time.
as i said on nittewa, yes, this is not some innocent argument we have between ourselves. this is a deeply rooted and serious issue. one cannot irresponsibly claim to know the culprits who were behind the murder of a very important man. yes, one needs to use tact if one is trying to convey accurate and informative reports of the situation to the online public. i read scourge’s, mahangu’s, ian’s and anush’s blog posts on this, and i must say they are all very well done. to remain alert to honest information and impartial if one has none, is probably the best and most useful thing in times of turmoil.
It was too early to say who did it on friday night or rather early saturday morning, therefore we said suspected or GOSL suspects or didn’t mentione anyone at all. But now, it seems, according the intercept on tiger radio that it is them. “We finished Kadirgamar” or something to that effect.
1. If this is disinformation for the benefit of those listening to tiger radio, then it essentially means that they are claiming responsiblity for it, regardless of whether they did it or not.
2. If it was a genuine message, then we know who did it.
Like you say, this ain’t an open and shut case. The implications of this, no matter who pulled the trigger is astronomical. I doubt we’ve fathomed the magnitude of the situation.
For now, it seems that its the LTTE…..
Comment by Scourge — August 16, 2005 @ 9:34 am
electra: aren’t you being a little too cautious? do you really think people rely on bloggers for reliable information? instead i think they should clearly state their opinion (extreme, speculative, confused what have you) and back it up with sources they have, if any and allow others to comment on their opinion and the sources. that way readers will be able to come to a considered judgment.
this ability to quickly gather all sorts of (accurate and inaccurate ) information about a topic is the main strength of blogosphere. and it works (e.g. bush’s national guard memos, blogs that first pointed out that the cbs memos were fake may have been biased but they were able to defend their position unlike the ‘reliable’ cbs.)
nothing in life is black or white but this certainly is not beyond us to discuss.
scourge: where did you get intercepts of tiger radio?please give details.
‘implications of this’ are NOT ‘astronomical’. just look at the stock market, investors put their money where their mouth is.
Comment by sittingnut — August 17, 2005 @ 1:33 am
exactly !!!.. have to agree with sittingnut on this one… bloggers AND the readers should realize that they aren’t the same as news anchors….
Comment by SpectralCentroid — August 17, 2005 @ 4:12 am
sittingnut: Where did I get the radio intercept? I didn’t, I don’t sit around listening to radio frequencies. The intelligence guys did. It was on the news and the papers, at least the sinhala papers. So yeah I suppose they did kill him.
Who said bloggers are news anchors? However there are people. who do rely on SL bloggers for SL information about SL. You have the BBC and CNN and all of them, but people read blogs for more information.
The implications may not be astronomical, but they are huge with reagard to the peace process. I don’t know about anyone else, but that’s what I think.
Comment by scourge — August 17, 2005 @ 4:45 am
Er….guys..
You’ve got a news anchor here who IS a blogger! 
or vice versa…
Comment by Nuzzy — August 17, 2005 @ 6:02 am
well… that’s all good but they should realize that what one sees on a blog are usually personal opnions wrapped around facts/speculation/intuition/independent ideas/imagination etc (as it should be)… hence it might not be prudent to form or change one’s own opinion based entirely on a blog discussion…
btw.. news anchors are news anchors only when they are “news anchoring”
Comment by SpectralCentroid — August 17, 2005 @ 8:53 am
Scourge: The ‘intelligenc’e got the radio intercept huh! The same intelligence that went on about how an expensive coffin from India was imported for Prabakaran’s wife’s/Thamilchelvam’s funeral after the Tsunami. Give me a break! Where did that ‘intelligence’ go when it came to Sivaram’s murder? for that matter Kumar ponnambalam’s murder huh?
Comment by Kavi — August 17, 2005 @ 10:09 am
i dunno kavi… maybe you could ask “where did that intelligence go” from the LTTE who kept killing the intelligence people throughout the “cease fire”… oh im sorry… let me re-phrase… ask “whoever” it is that killed them…
Comment by SpectralCentroid — August 17, 2005 @ 11:59 am
Spectral, if you remember well, Muthalif was killed well after Kumar ponnambalam and Taraki and the so called intelligence were very much alive during these murders and many more in the last few years so don’t give me that crap. And about the trying-to-be witty comment , ask “whoever” who killed them- we all know that the LTTE killed them and I have no reservations on that.
Comment by Kavi — August 17, 2005 @ 12:10 pm
scourge: don’t you know that some sri lankan papers esp. divaina and island sometimes run completely bogus stories about war and peace attributing them to anonymous sources? did those reports about radio intercepts give a named source (such as military spokesman)? we should expose such stories in the blogs.
Comment by sittingnut — August 17, 2005 @ 6:52 pm
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Comment by testanchor903 — October 16, 2005 @ 12:18 am
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Comment by msnimiekle — May 3, 2009 @ 4:01 pm