More on Sri Lanka

The Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Ranil Wickramasinghe, has held talks in Washington with President Bush, as his country grapples with a deepening political crisis.

The Sri Lanka PM is in a death battle with their President, who just suspended Parliament and ordered troops into the streets.
It is beyond coincidence the Sri Lanka PM just happened to be in the US meeting with Bush as these tumultuous events occurred.
Moreover, my Sri Lanka contact can not recall any Sri Lanka government official ever meeting a US President prior to this.
(More on the story here on Polizeros)

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Greenquake: Matt Gonzalez wins runoff spot for S.F. Mayor

Greens are rejoicing. Matt Gonzalez a Green and currently President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, will be in the run-off for mayor against Gavin Newsom, the darling of the downtown business interests.

Gonzalez came out of nowhere to win election to the Board of Supervisors, then upset established interests when he was elected President of that board. Now he’s upset them again by forcing a runoff election for mayor. This guy has seriously good political chops…

Matt Gonzalez.com (currently loading slowly, it’s probably getting many many more hits than usual)

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Howard Dean’s flag comment

Rivals of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean accused him Saturday of embracing a racially divisive symbol when he said he wants to be the candidate “for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.”

Dean said he was making the point that, in order for the Democratic Party to win the White House, its nominee must appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats, including Southern voters.

I don’t understand the brouhaha here. Dean is correct! To guarantee a win, Democrats need to pick up votes across the spectrum, and to me, that’s all Dean was saying.

PS A reader posted Dean’s complete statement in the comments here, which I’m reposting here.

“I intend to talk about race in this election in the south because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I’m going to bring us together, because you know what? White folks in the south who drive pickups trucks with confederate flags decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don’t have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too.” - Howard Dean

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Oligarch accused of plundering company

Ex-CEO of HealthSouth indicted on 85 counts including fraud and money laundering

“The magnitude of the alleged fraud is staggering,” Mr. Wray said. “The indictment alleges that Scrushy and his accomplices reported $2.7 billion — let me say that again — $2.7 billion, in fictitious income over the course of the conspiracy.”

From the FBI: Government seeks more than $278 million in forfeiture

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Just so there’s no misunderstanding

Bush says God selected him for presidency

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Sri Lanka President suspends parliament, troops in streets

A gloves-off political fight between Sri Lanka’s president and prime minister that threatens a fragile peace process with Tamil rebels sparked concern in Washington and neighboring Asian countries.
Sri Lanka’s President Chandrika Kumaratunga sacked three ministers on Tuesday and suspended parliament, drawing a furious response from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who said her surprise move was aimed at undermining efforts to heal Sri Lanka’s racial divide and would spread “chaos and anarchy.”

This is currently a featured story on news.google.com, unusual indeed for a story about Sri Lanka, which is generally given little notice by world media.
The President appears to be using fears that the insurgent Tamil Tigers will gain their own nation as a pretext to inflame the Right and thus solidify her own power - this from a friend who has spent several years there working for a peace organization.
A few years back the CIA said the Tamil Tigers were the most effective terrorist organization on the planet. They’ve been fighting since the 70’s and tens of thousands are dead. Their army of 10,000 consistently clobbers the vastly larger Sri Lanka army, and they control serious chunks of the country.
My friend tells me this is a complicated mix of ethnic groups, the caste system, and economics with minority Tamils opposing the majority Singhalese, and lower caste Tamils doing much of the insurgent fighting - while everyone else ducks for cover. He feels the underlying cause is the politically fragmented Singhalese needing an external enemy to unify them.
Two things stand out here. 1) The President said she is reacting to threats that occurred within the past few days, yet there is no news to indicate what this might be, 2) This is making world headlines, unusual for this island nation.
Sri Lanka government paper
Tamil Tigers

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Spooky rumor of the day

As we contemplate the difficulties facing our military, we hear rumblings from the hills of Scotland that worry peace activists who suspect we may soon see the mighty bombardiers of our Air Force back in action. Consider yourself a newly appointed member of the just created Media Channel Intelligence Agency (MCIA) and help me evaluate some “raw intelligence” coming in from across the Big Pond. It comes from a group called the Peacewatchers at the US Airforce Fairford and Welford bases in Scotland:

Since Saturday, people in the Highlands of Scotland have been witnessing large movements of US warplanes overhead. Experienced observers say the large numbers are reminiscent of those that preceded the bombing of Iraq in 1998 and military strikes on Libya in the 1980’s as well as the first Gulf War.

At the weekend warplanes were flying over at a rate of roughly one every 15 minutes. As well as watching them from the ground the plane spotters have also been able to overhear pilots talking by listening to their radio frequencies.

At this rate some 288 warplanes would have passed over Scotland in three days. It is thought that the planes have flown on a route from the US over the north pole to bases in Europe and the Mediterranean. The size and scale of the movement suggests that the US may be preparing to strike at a country in the Middle East in the next week to ten days.

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Calif. halts electronic voting certification

Uncertified software may have been installed on electronic voting machines used in one California county, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Marc Carrel, assistant secretary of state for policy and planning, told attendees Thursday at a panel on voting systems that California was halting the certification process for new voting machines manufactured by Diebold Election Systems.

Diebold. Again.

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