The original Sri Lankan, says the Ramayana
It’s difficult to picture Barack Obama or Nicholas Sarkozy chatting with Osama bin Laden over a cup of tea. However, heads of state and foreign ambassadors have routinely met and discussed with the leaders of a decades-old terrorist outfit responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Rarely has the world witnessed an enigma like the Tamil Tigers (formally the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE). Despite being named a terrorist organisation by the EU, India, and the United States among others, the Tigers have also enjoyed reciprocal relations with the very nations that marked them as terrorists. Unlike most other terrorist organisations, the Tigers are not synonymous with religious sectarianism – indeed, their story lends itself to romanticism; a desperate people take up arms to free themselves from the oppression of the state, not unlike the fight for American independance. Born out of a period of youthful protest and nationalism, the LTTE and their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, rose to challenge the Sri Lankan state and even India as their fight for independence drew on through the decades.
Kraftwerk
The recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai have reinvigorated a spectre that was rapidly diminishing in the minds of most – the spectre of organised terror. Even India, long attacked by fundamentalist terrorists for its secularism and democracy, was itself shocked by this brazen raid on progressive thought. Mumbai’s symbol of power and wealth, the Taj Mahal Hotel (coincidentally also one of its easiest targets), along with a group of other buildings including hangouts for the affluent and a Jewish centre, were brutally raided by a group calling themselves the ‘Deccan Mujahideen’ (The Economist 2008).
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading into the various philosophies and movements in continental Europe (mainly the Germanosphere) that led to the racial theories of Nazi Germany in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s detailed and informative 
As I like to be up-to-date on events in both my home countries, I try to find reliable sources for both Indian and Canadian news. I subscribe to a periodical on South Asian affairs called 
It is generally agreed upon in the developed world that the Asian Indian populace is typically one of the more affluent and better-educated ethnic groups – indeed, the Indian population of the United States is the highest earning of all groups in the nation. Similar success is mirrored by the Asian Indian community all over the developed world, from Toronto to London to Singapore. However, there are other nations around the world where the Indian population is exceptionally high (to the point of being a majority, in select cases) yet the majority of the migrant population is uneducated and impoverished. This is a common trend in the Gulf nations and in Malaysia. Now, the argument of proximity may be drawn as an explanation as to why the Indian migrants in these nations are, for the most part, uneducated and poor. However, the nation of Singapore is home to a vibrant and thriving Indian community, indeed more affluent than the native Malays themselves. Then why are the Indians of neighbouring Malaysia struggling? They are much less successful (as a whole) compared to their Singaporean brethren (the Economist, 2007), but for what reasons?.jpg)
It seems that the headlines always revolve around those that stand firm behind their idealogies to a point of near fanaticism – and it seems that these individuals are almost always conservatives, in some way or another. Let’s analyse some of the major newsmakers – Iran’s Imamate theocracy and their representative Mr. Ahmadinejad are definitely conservatives, as are the leaders of their Arab opponent, Saudi Arabia. Harassing Mr. Ahmadinejad for his (conservative) policies is the conservative American leader George Bush. Global terror is also a huge topic in the news world. The leader of the Shia organisation Hizbullah is socially and ethically conservative in many aspects, as is the extremist Sunni organisation Hamas. The most notorious terrorist outfit, global-reaching Al-Qaeda, is most definitely conservative. It seems like almost all the individuals ‘affecting’ our world profoundly are, for the most part, conservatives in some way or another. However, it is also remarkable that while liberals around the world usually seem to sympathize with one another, the trend is almost reversed when that is applied to conservatives – they absolutely detest eachother despite their many shared traits.
I’m sure that you are all wondering what we’ve been up to for the last month, since this blog doesn’t cover our daily lives. Actually, I doubt you’ve been wondering, so let’s not discuss our individual exploits and acheivements (it would take decades to list) and jump to a particular new section. We spend a great deal of time reading and checking out new sounds and sights – so we’ll let you in on our recommended reads and tunes for the month.
The age of piracy is not as dead as we would like to believe. In recent months Pirates have attacked and raided both shipping vessels and private boats off the Somali coast, last April a French luxury yacht was held hostage by Somali pirates bringing the problem of piracy in those waters to the public eye. The Waters off the coast of Somalia are a vital shipping route that connects the Indian Ocean to the canals reaching the Mediterranean, making it a popular target for pirates. Add the fact that the civil war in Somalia is getting worse by the day and you get a pretty tense situation. The war is being fought by the current government which is backed by the United States and an Islamic fundamentalist group, despite the fact that the current government is faltering the United States refuses to accept the possibility of negotiating with the Islamic faction as it suspects they are linked to Al Qaeda. The Islamic faction has agreed to talk with the government for a possibility of peace but it says it will only do so after Ethiopian troops which have been stationed in Somalia since 2006 leave the country. Due to the fact that the government is too pressed with the civil war t deal with the piracy there has been an almost exponential increase in raids in the last few months, so far private Spanish, French, and Dutch ships have been seized as well as several shipping and aid boats. However this is not entirely bad news, The United Nations recently gave several countries permission to send warships into Somali waters to patrol and protect their interest and the only restriction is that Nations must have the consent of the Somali government before doing so. This helps ease the burden of the already stressed Somali government and allows safe and secure shipping to continue off the Somali coast. However even though one problem appears to be fixed it has yet to be seen if this new plan will work as it is intended, and there are still many more problems in Somalia that need to be fixed.
