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It has been told a thousand times. A single picture is worth a thousand words. This is not a permanent verity but it is so often true. How true was clearly captured in media photographs of US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power wielding the elle stick in a playing field at a girl’s school in Jaffna.

Samantha Power: On a mission to teach human rights to Sri Lanka

What it did tell us was that Power is used to playing games (she admitted she wanted to be a professional baseballer) but nothing so innocent as elle. She is accustomed to wielding the big stick. It is not for nothing that President Obama sent her to the UN to cajole and bully less powerful members to shape the UN in Washington’s own image.

Speaking to youth at Colombo’s town hall where she liberally doled out compliments to some and advice to all to the obvious delectation of moderator and audience, she made a remark that seems to have passed without comment by the media, enthralled perhaps by the journalist- turned- academic-turned diplomat and her easy going manner.

Her boss President Obama, she said, inquired every day about the situation in Sri Lanka and how the yahapalanaya government (not that she used the word) was doing in that far off island. One would have thought that in these dying days of the Obama administration he had enough on his White House plate, what with trying to put out the many fires that his predecessor started. The man who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize even before he could warm the chair in the Oval Office, he has not been averse to starting a few conflagrations around the world, ordering a few drones to go round and see how things are in other parts of the world killing innocents by the hundreds in the process, not to mention keeping a tab on his Guantanamo Bay Gulag, which you might remember, he promised to close down when he became president.

If the Nobel Committee that awarded him this accolade has not dug itself a hole and buried itself in shame, it is not too late to show remorse. Unless of course those worthies in the committee intend to give him another award before he quits the Oval Office next January. Surely President Obama has had to keep a weather eye open to what Teheran was doing since he struck a nuclear deal with the mullahs, Washington’s implacable foes not too long ago.

He has enough trouble in the South China Sea what with China flexing its muscles and missiles. Moreover, with his super power state virtually in hock to China he must surely be nervous about what would happen to his last White House Christmas dinner if the Chinese economy catches a cold and the US gets pneumonia.

Why, with Washington engaged in a war of words with Moscow over the situation in Syria and ISIS, which US and the West helped give birth to, breathing down western necks poor Obama must be having a lot to ponder before he packs his suitcase.
Yet, according to Samantha Power, Obama while trying to unravel the bloody mess that Washington has made in West Asia and numerous other theatres, never lets a day pass without inquiring about his new friends in Sri Lanka.

So does Obama whisper into Samantha’s ear and ask, do they have enough to eat? Have they found the human rights manuals which Mahinda Rajapaksa said that every soldier carried in one hand with the automatic weapon in the other? Are they treating those LTTE fellows whose leaders Washington planned to rescue, well and other such intimate questions?

Would they like to borrow a few cells in the Guantanamo Bay to lock up a few unsavoury and troublesome chaps who are trying to create trouble for the yahapalanayas? Are they ready to help in the illegal rendition of some suspected jihadists to Guantanamo or Diego Garcia base via Mattala airport which is only good enough, it seems, for storing paddy?

If Obama spends some time each day trying to undo the unholy mess that the powers that be first started by trying to drag Sri Lanka onto the international dock with its harsh and one-sided resolutions, no wonder the US cannot find the time to clear up the violent conflicts it encouraged elsewhere.

That is if you believe dear Samantha who seems to have bewitched our leaders with soothing words and ego-ballooning remarks about how much attention Washington was paying to Sri Lanka where a new dispensation pledged to introduce a clean political culture and do away with such disgusting practices as nepotism, is in the driving seat with a load of backseat drivers.

By the way Samantha how is that chap (what’s his name again?) in Sri Lanker handling this nepotism thing? Any more brothers, brothers-in-law or cousins twice removed planted in plum jobs? Do let me know when they run out of relatives. I’m sure there are others hanging around here. The other nasty fellow we got rid of had several of them in our neck of the woods and quickly made landfall in Colombo.

All this is good fun really, with dear Samantha not only playing games in Sri Lanka but also with Sri Lanka. And the likes of Foreign Minister Samaraweera seem to think they are the flavour of the month just because Samantha calls him friend.
In his youthful days Samaraweera fancied himself as a fashion designer and if I remember correctly called himself Mangala Innocence. The innocence, it appears, has not worn off. One needs to be less naïve and more wary when ego- massaging becomes a diplomatic ploy and one becomes putty in the hands of manipulative big powers.

Instead of studying fashion designing in the UK it might have been more useful in these mature years if he had studied the designs of big powers who have still not abandoned their devious imperialistic ways. So Samantha used her power to lecture our leaders on accountability, on weaning our armed forces, on looking after widows in one part of the country without a word of anguish for other women made widows in the rest of the country by terrorism.

Power seems to be good at preaching to others about the need for accountability. Ironically the country she serves has never held itself accountable for hundreds of despicable actions- from the atomic bombing of Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the use of chemical and biological weapons in Vietnam, the evil that Kissinger did ordering the massive bombing of civilians in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the illegal invasion of Iraq and the killing of a million or more Iraqis, the bombing of Libya and other atrocities.

Has the US even apologized for locking up and torturing British national Shaker Aamer who was released only recently without charge after 13 years in Guantanamo Bay? Perhaps Ambassador Atul Keshap would dismiss this as a minor mishap in US interventions round the globe.

Did the US apologise for any of this and has it leaders been held accountable for these atrocities? No. Yet the likes of Power have the audacity to come here and lecture on what we should do and how it should be done.

In its editorial last week the Sunday Times referred to Samantha Power as a “bleeding heart”. Her auricle might be bleeding but certainly not her ventricle which seems coagulated with accumulated atrocities.