A window into primitive minds:

POLITICO’s Laura Rozen:

“A forensic report said he was shot at close range, with four bullets in his head and one in his chest,” ABC cited the Anatolian news agency.

From the Washington Post

“Psychologically, this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey,” Davutoglu told reporters over breakfast in Washington before going to the State Department to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

From the Washington Post

“Psychologically, this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey,” Davutoglu told reporters over breakfast in Washington before going to the State Department to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

A lot of anger in the comments on this interview I conducted with the Sri Lankan foreign minister a couple of days ago (although it appears many of those comments have now been deleted). For those of you not acquainted with the scale of violence that transpired in Sri Lanka in ‘09, the Times of London reported extraordinary civilian casualties, estimating at one point that roughly 1,400 people were were dying each week at an internment camp for Tamil refugees.

An excerpt from the interview:

POLITICO: Another take on Sri Lanka’s reputation globally – there is a great deal of criticism of the manner in which the government achieved its victory over militant Tamil separatists. The International Crisis Group has a report alleging that the Sri Lankan military may have killed more than 30,000 civilians during its 2009 military operations against Tamil rebels. Tens of thousands of people displaced by fighting still live in camps that have tough living conditions. Furthermore, there have been concerns about freedom of speech – last year the editor in chief of a major newspaper was killed most likely for his politics, and the Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Sri Lanka 4th highest on its global impunity index. The CPJ also devoted a special report saying the end of the war with the rebels has not eased repression of independent media.

G. L. Peiris: Regarding The ICG report : If you look at the report there are several things that are very striking about it – one thing is the allegations are so vague …. and sources are not identified. Verification is impossible.

The war has come to an end in Sri Lanka, the military action is over, and the LTTE cannot rearm and regroup and fight a war again the shores of Sri Lanka, but that doesn’t mean that they have no influence elsewhere. The huge financial resources they have accumulated over the quarter of century is still as their disposal, and they have a very sophisticated communication network. The diaspora is very active in Western capitals and multilateral institutions, and they’re basically waging an economic war with Sri Lanka — their activities have been transferred from the field of battle to the field of diplomacy. The second point is that if there are allegations, President Rajapaksa has set up a fully empowered commission to probe those allegations, and a mandate of that commission includes authority to determine whether any individual or group of persons have been responsible for violations of international humanitarian law.

Finally, regarding media freedom, just a couple of weeks ago, we took action to scale down the emergency regulations under which the country has been governed for as a long period as 4 years and 8 months. The government went to parliament without any pressure, no duress, and no coercion from any external source … and more than 70 percent of the emergency regulations were expunged. All countries including western countries make provisions for extraordinary legal regimes to deal with an extraordinary situation. But those laws are not intended to be applied in perpetuity.

After much tumult, this website is officially up and running. Against Simplicity is an ongoing experiment, and it is in its first phase. In Phase I it will not produce analysis at the rate of a conventional blog, and the type of analysis will vary a great deal. It will, however, consistently be interesting for anyone who has exquisite taste in politics, culture, national security and foreign policy.

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