Word: colombos
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...Jayatilleka says the bombings and assassinations have gone on for so long that he now navigates Colombo according to where atrocities occurred. "Every place has a story of violence," he says. "The whole landscape." The brutality colors the way people think about the current fighting. Sri Lankan film star and would-be peacemaker Ranjan Ramanayaka is given to phrases like "the most powerful God is nature," and "the conflict can be ended with the weapon of love, the weapon of having sex, the weapon of making little babies together." But even he recently applied for a gun license after...
...difference who is in power in the capital. They have all failed to deliver any meaningful settlement to the Tamil people." Sri Lanka's Tamils have some valid grievances: Sinhalese chauvinism is evident in everything from innocuous conversations with money changers to the billboards that dot Colombo stating "One Country. One People." In the decades following independence, governments in Colombo progressively impinged on Tamil rights, forcing kids to learn Sinhalese, taking over land for Sinhalese settlements in Tamil areas, favoring Sinhalese candidates for government jobs. And so the L.T.T.E., which is now listed as a terrorist organization...
...rebels. As in Israel, domestic politics plays an important role. The cease-fire in 2002 was signed with a government more open to negotiation. But the election of President Mahinda Rajapakse in late 2005 saw the return of a more hard-line attitude toward the L.T.T.E. Top officials in Colombo oscillate between talking and fighting. "They forget that you can and should deal with the underlying problem with or without the L.T.T.E.," says Dayan Jayatilleka, a senior lecturer in the department of politics at the University of Colombo who was recently named Sri Lanka's ambassador to Switzerland and permanent...
...Even the normally peaceful agitate for war. A hard-line Sinhalese nationalist party of Buddhist monks is now part of the ruling coalition. Late last year some of the party's nine M.P.s scuffled with antiwar protesters-mostly Sinhalese but some Tamils-at a rally in Colombo. "Clearly when groups fight, the first attempt should be to solve it through talks," says the Venerable Athuraliye Rathana, who heads the Buddhist group. "But we cannot tolerate [the Tigers'] terrorist activities. We have to destroy [them], and then we can talk." It's the mantra of a nation: kill or be killed...
Look closely during upcoming Hill hearings into the U.S. Attorneys scandal, and there, whispering in Senator Chuck Schumer's ear, you'll see the person who has quietly powered the Senate's expanding investigation. Preet Bharara, Schumer's chief counsel on the Judiciary Committee, prosecuted the Colombo and Gambino crime families as an assistant U.S. Attorney before Schumer hired him in January 2005. Early this year, he began picking up complaints about the Bush Administration's firing of the eight U.S. Attorneys from sources in the Justice Department and suggested Schumer hold hearings. Now he's the point...