The Sunday Times Columns - Sunday, February 25, 2007

	Political Column
	President gets list of 22 'Mangala' men
	By Our Political Editor
	Even if President Mahinda Rajapaksa had not tasked him as "peace envoy," Plantation Industries Minister, D.M. Jayaratne chose to meet his one time cabinet colleague Mangala Samaraweera to learn what had gone wrong.
	5th Column
	Never trust Clowns for they are just a joke
	By Rypvanwinkle
	My Dear Avamangala,
	Situation Report
	Media victories, military victories and realities
	By Iqbal Athas
	Unlike in the movies where coming attractions are heavily advertised, it is just the opposite when it comes to the military.
	The Economic Analysis
	Poverty reduction inadequate and uneven
	By the Economist
	The World Bank has just released its latest report: Sri Lanka Poverty Assessment Engendering Growth with Equity: Opportunities and Challenges. It has both good news and bad. The gist of the findings is that overall poverty has declined in the last decade but inadequately.
	Thoughts from London
	Britain can ill-afford all this moral posturing
	By Neville de Silva
	If the British High Commission wishes to exorcise its ghosts back home it should look elsewhere and not to this newspaper. Within hours of The Sunday Times reaching its readers last week the British High Commission working overtime on the Sabbath issued a press release innocuously......
	Issue of the week
	Not published with this week issue
	By Ameen Izzadeen

	Focus on Rights
	Challenging powerful states when citizens’ rights are in issue
	By Kishali Pinto Jayawardena
	The specious logic that the domestic State and its institutions are the ultimate arbiters of how rights are protected takes us back to positively Third Reich thinking whereby ‘tinpot’ Hitlers reveled in their notion of ‘just law’. It is a weary recollection that the Nazi atrocities of the World War era were, in fact, justified on existing law.
	Lobby
	COPE report: Just another means for political blame game
	By Chandani Kirinde, Our Lobby Correspondent
	You would expect all the 225 legislators in Parliament to speak in one voice when an issue like corruption is under discussion, but when the much anticipated, controversial COPE report was taken up for debate, it became more a blame-game than a united call to put an end to the rot that has set in at state-run institutions.
	Inside the glass house
	Bush’s coalition of the willing crumbling
	By Thalif Deen at the united nations
	The Bush administration's inept foreign policy — long characterized by political arrogance and dubious double standards — took a severe beating last week.The Brits say they have decided to trim their forces in Iraq while the Danes and the Lithuanians have announced plans to withdraw all of their token troops from the military inferno in Iraq.