More from DJ Mitchell in Sri Lanka. He’s volunteering with Sarvodaya, an organization working to end the civil there. You can make tax-deductible donations to support their new peace initiative. (Pt 1. of his report is here)

Photo: View across Lake Street in Batticaloa. Life goes on despite the razor wire of an army installation (left) and a soldier guarding the intersection (right)

Batticaloa, Day 2. A thunderstorm rolled in about 1:30 am, and I listened to the rain and thunder for about an hour. I’m told it’s unusual for the rains to last past the end of January. These are unusual times.

It rained most of the night, and while I enjoyed the sound, it is sure to make the mosquitoes thick and the day hot & sticky.

I had planned to do a little walking while I’m here. The Butterfly Garden is nearby, a sanctuary for kids that uses art to help children from the conflict areas deal with their experiences. Run by a Catholic monk, in 1998 it was a welcome bright spot in a city occupied by one army and surrounded by another. There’s also a large Hindu temple that in 1998 was closed for renovation. Today it’s open for business. But my schedule has become so full that it’s unlikely I’ll get to see the sights.

There is much I could see and do if I had the time, but my primary mission is to gather information. I interview people, and use what they tell me to broaden understanding of the conflict. I’m scheduled to interview several NGO workers, all people who work regularly in the conflict area.

My goal this time is to better understand the schism that has arisen between the LTTE and the so-called Karuna Faction. Karuna Amman was the Eastern Commander of the LTTE until 2004, when he declared himself and his troops independent. Naturally this did not sit well with the LTTE leadership in Jaffna, and there has been prolonged violence between the two sides. Karuna himself is described as an able commander, and is said to have survived five assassination attempts. The LTTE has driven Karuna and his cadres into the jungle, where they fight a guerilla war against the LTTE—which itself began as a guerilla organization.

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Ok, I’ve had a lit-tle bit too much excitement today here on Polizeros. First, the Connections theme began acting oddly. So I went back to the theme you see now, SharePointLike, it’s called.

But then I decided to try a new theme, Regulus. Uploaded the code, clicked to install it. Bang, white screen with a javascript error on it and no blog. I couldn’t even get to the Control Panel to deinstall it. Yikes. Was Polizeros dead?

Called BlueHost tech support (where this blog is hosted - they are great BTW.) They said, um, maybe backup the database and do a clean reinstall or we can restore to last nights data.

While on the phone it occured to me, WordPress puts themes in their own folders under the Themes folder. Regulus was in its own folder, Regulus. So, while tech support waited, I, via ftp, deleted all the Regulus theme files from that folder and uploaded SharePointLike theme files into it, as I knew this theme works fine.

Took a deep breath, clicked to Polizeros, and, hello world, Polizeros was back. Whew.

I then explained to tech support what I did so they can use it for someone else, as they were surprised it worked. So was I.

And there will be no more playing with themes on Polizeros for a while…

PS I did manage to stay calm and look for solutions while this was going on. That may have been what saved the day.

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The new template that has been here a few weeks just stopped working

Oddly, I just reinstalled that theme in its original form, with no changes by me, and it’s still displaying weirdly, with the right column appearing underneath the main column rather than next to it. I’m baffled.

WordPress/CSS gurus, can you figure out what’s happening?

I’ve switched to another theme. Code for the theme in question follows.
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My epiphany, from Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, past Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

A number of readers have asked me when did I undergo my epiphany, abandon right-wing Reaganism and become an apostle of truth and justice.

I appreciate the friendly sentiment, but there is a great deal of misconception in the question.

When I saw that the neoconservative response to 9/11 was to turn a war against stateless terrorism into military attacks on Muslim states, I realized that the Bush administration was committing a strategic blunder with open-ended disastrous consequences for the US that, in the end, would destroy Bush, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement.

We have reached a point where the Bush administration is determined to totally eclipse the people. Bewitched by neoconservatives and lustful for power, the Bush administration and the Republican Party are aligning themselves firmly against the American people. Their first victims, of course, were the true conservatives. Having eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party.

He means this as real blackmail, as in, we know about your girlfriend and unless you shut up, your wife and Fox News will know too.

The United States is undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and democracy itself. The “liberal press” has been co-opted. As everyone must know by now, the New York Times has totally failed its First Amendment obligations, allowing Judith Miller to make war propaganda for the Bush administration, suppressing for an entire year the news that the Bush administration was illegally spying on American citizens, and denying coverage to Al Gore’s speech that challenged the criminal deeds of the Bush administration.

Absolutely, it’s not just neocons who are complicit, it’s the entire ruling class. The public is moving leftwards, the ruling class to the right.

The TV networks mimic Fox News’ faux patriotism. Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda.

Congress and the media have no fight in them, and neither, apparently, do the American people. Considering the feebleness of the opposition, perhaps the best strategy is for the opposition to shut up, not merely for our own safety but, more importantly, to remove any impediments to Bush administration self-destruction.

Hey, we in the ANSWER Coalition as well as many other groups have plenty of fight. And polls show public opinion moving our way. It’s hardly a lost cause.

Perhaps we should go further and join the neocon chorus, urging on invasions of Iran and Syria and sending in the Marines to disarm Hizbullah in Lebanon. Not even plots of the German High Command could get rid of Hitler, but when Hitler marched German armies into Russia he destroyed himself.

Too risky, and too many innocents could end up dead. Plus this cedes the initiative to the opposition. It’s far better to stand up and take action now.

The Bush administration is using the war to avoid accountability and evade constraints on executive powers. Arms industries, or what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex,” are using the war to fatten profits. Terrorism experts are using the war to gain visibility. Security firms are using it to gain customers. Readers can add to this list at will. The lack of debate gives carte blanche to these agendas.

The sadness and apprehension of the author, a member of the elite, reminds me of Kris Kristofferson last Sept. in concert, wondering what his father, a patriotic Air Force general, would have said about the way “they turned his dream around”, killing babies in Iraq in the name of freedom.

Try to tell the truth
And stand your ground
Don’t let the bastards wear you down.

“Don’t mourn, organize” is always the best advice. The more who stand in opposition, the easier our task. And the time to take a stand is now.