Entrances and exits; and empires
The donor community last week expressed "bewilderment'' that the JVP is continuing to campaign against the peace process. This exclusive club then gave the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) a licence to keep killing political opponents, keep violating the ceasefire by assassinating army informants, keep recruiting child soldiers (while releasing a few with UNICEF help), and keep demanding that unconditional talks be held on 'condition' that the government agrees to negotiate on the LTTE's ISGA proposals alone.

That latter message to the LTTE of course was delivered only by implication. At Christmas time, the message of the 'Empire' is clear. If you need our funds, you comply with our systems of governance/our taxation. Researchers now say that these are the same principles that were applied during the time of the birth of Christ when the Roman empire was at its muscle-flexing best.

"In Jesus' time, the immensely popular emperor Augustus was setting himself up not just as the ruler but as the semi-divine saviour of the world. Wherever his censuses reached, his aggressive version of the Roman civic faith followed (along with his tax collectors.)'' That quote is from David van Biema, researcher, who also says "(Luke) by framing Christ's birth in the context of the empire-wide tally (census) was also suggesting that not just Jewish Palestine but also the entire known world was a possible horizon for Christ's kingdom…..The adult Jesus would later put it nicely (although Luke may have inherited this phrase from the earlier written Mark): "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesars', and unto god the things which be to God.''

What's clear then is that modern researchers thought of Christianity as a rebellion of a kind against the empire, even though it was a very subtle one that worked within the prevailing system of the time. There is no rebellion today against the American 'empire.'' But what's clear is that the empire exacts its price. The price for dollar hegemony - - the global currency system -- is that Americans with their powerful Western allies keep setting the rules. Therefore, the donors feel that the "JVP should be brought to heel'' but the LTTE can be allowed to make democracy a laughing-stock in the North and the East, and that's the diktat of the empire.

Christianity did not carry arms against the Roman Empire, as some sections of the Palestinian Jews did, say the historians. Today, in any case, any armed revolt against the American 'empire'' will surely be crushed by the most potent war machine ever devised by man. That has not stopped the Iraqi's from revolting though!

The rest of the world has two ways -- accept the American diktat, or manoeuvre within it while attacking its Achilles heel, which was the same Achilles heel of the Roman empire also - - greed, and an unhealthy disrespect for the rights of the empire's subjects.

This column has no truck with the JVP - - and the JVP's characterisation of the LTTE as "Hitlerite'' in a response to the donors may be less than tactful in the circumstances of a difficult ceasefire, and that's only mildly put.

But even so the donor attitude that the government should bring a coalition partner to heel -- while not asking the LTTE to bring itself to heel --- strikes deep into the issue of what the donors really want for this nation.

Some may say a few things in mitigation. One is that the United Sates previously chastised the LTTE when there was an attempt on the life of Douglas Devananda. The second is that the donors were addressing the Sri Lankan government, because they are donors to the Sri Lankan government and not donors to the LTTE.

Perhaps the donors forget that there is no ceasefire as far as the media-war is concerned. Everything that the donor's say will therefore be counted against the Sri Lankan government and everything that they don't say will not be counted against the LTTE - - and how can they not know that??

The record will tell you that the donors have been chastising the Sri Lankan government for aeons now - - The following was extracted from Tamilnet in August this year:

"..the co-chairs of aid donors to Sri Lanka issued a statement warning the Colombo government that there should be "no drift and no delay in resuming and taking forward the peace process."''

The donors therefore do not believe in keeping things in perspective, period. Many rationalisations can be extended to explain this behaviour. But none of them militate against the fact that Americans act as emperors, and their allies as those who extend that imperial writ….

END-PEICE: To write an obituary as a Tailpiece may be horrendous. But the passing of two journalists, Anton Weerasinghe - - and this week -- Reggie Siriwardene who were both mavericks of sorts, calls for a response out of character.

Anton Weerasinghe was as colourful as some of the other appreciations that have already appeared in newspapers have made him out to be. My personal debt to Anton is for his vouching for the fact that he enjoyed some of the racier columns written under my name! This used to be serious encouragement for a writer who happened on the newspaper scene much later than Anton did. When Anton Weerasinghe says 'I enjoy your columns on a Sunday morning' I know exactly what he means, and exactly what he drinks. So with apologies to temperance, here is to Anton, a sub-Editor who had no artifice. He was a hard working 'Sub' who had to endure the rigour and monotony of a sub-Editor's job in contrast to a writers, yet to him it was all in a day's work.

Reggie Siriwardne was a different kettle of fish. If Anton was rambunctious, Reggie was a saint. He was the archetypical man of letters, who did his criticism the way he talked, with a delicate touch. He cast his net wide - - and in his day he was literary critic, script-writer, translator muse and more, rolled in one. Yet his most ardent admirers were from the university campuses, which speaks for his extraordinary sensitivity to the world around him despite his intellectual accomplishments.

At least in this writers’ mind, he belonged to the era of the Lanka Guardian, which is now gone -- like its extraordinarily gifted founder Mervyn de Silva. Though Reggie Siriwardene has long been an institution before the Guardian came along, that was not my era. Maybe he had already mellowed by the time this writer encountered him (only last week I discovered a personal invitation from him to be present at the launch of his book "Among my Souvenirs'' -- which I had preserved among my souvenirs…).

But, he could still lash out when he wanted to. The Jathika Chinthanaya debates wouldn't have taken place without him - -and when he took an Editor to task in The Observer in the 90s, he gave it his all, even though perhaps not to much avail. Reggie was a maximally sentient being - a humanist, cliché though it may sound, and perhaps therefore a man of a fast disappearing breed in this country.

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