How is it that most writers from the ‘third world’ now living in the west see only the dark side of life in their homeland? Is it that they do not have any pleasant experience of their countries, or have they forgotten.
Is it only garbage and slums in the old country? What about the beaches, jungles, wild animals, waterfalls?
Is it only corruption, violence and ignorance? Would there not be even one honest human being and what about art, theater, music?
There was an article in one of the English dailies in Lanka, ‘The Island’ on Jan. 22nd, 2009 under the by-line of Revata S. Silva in his ‘Reverse Swing’. He had made a scathing attack on Kumar Sangakkara, which raises many questions to my mind.
This column is about cricket and appears in the ‘Sports’ page. Yet it is one of the most ‘UNSPORTY’ articles i have read recently. Even among all sports, cricket is considered still as the ‘Gentleman’s game’. It is altogether a different issue whether the people who invented and developed this game could be considered gentlemen. Whether cricket itself could be considered a ‘Sport’ today or as a business, is another issue which i would not want to comment here.
The fact remains that Sangakkara, like most other cricketers and sportspersons, had been promoting various brands. He is also not the only sportsperson in the world to have changed brand loyalty over the years.
Before we talk about the ethics of changing brand loyalty, we have to consider how ethical advertising itself is. Advertising has become a necessary evil. None of the media, printed or electronic would be able to survive today without advertising. Thus we cannot blame the media for towing the line of the advertising companies who support them.
In the end it is the consumer who pays for all the advertising, and who pay the celebrities for their promotions. When we read a newspaper, we pay for the advertisements they carry in their paper. The consumers have no choice in the form of advertisements or other promotional activities. The only way a consumer could have some say is by using the produce advertised or by rejecting it.
I agree whole heartedly with Revata S Silva in what he says about TV advertising and what has been done in France. However, in this open and competitive world of business, would it ever be possible to ban all advertising? Sarkozy could do it with state television in France, because the state could continue to run the TV stations with the money from the people of his country.
If people consider that what Sangakkara has done by changing his brand loyalty is wrong or unethical, they can refuse to use the new brand and send their message to Sangakkara and also to the advertising agent.
In a world where everyone has the freedom of choice, who are we to tell Sangakkara that once he decides to promote any particular brand, that he has to be loyal to that brand for a life time? In a world, where people could divorce one spouse and marry another, could change from one political party to another, could move from one country to another and seek citizenship of the new country, where people could change from one religious faith to another, how could it be unethical to change a brand loyalty.
However, i also agree with Revata S Silva that money talks and the habit of selling knows no ethics. If we talk of ethics and ’selling even their mothers’, then cricketers should not even accept any money from the Cricket Board, or sign contracts and fight for higher payments. Because they are said to be playing for their country, they are doing their patriotic duty. If accepting money to play for one’s country is ethical, then accepting money for promoting a commercial product should also be ethical.
The article referred to http://www.island.lk/2009/01/22/sports6.html
we are proud to claim we are the most devoted Buddhists on earth. we observe the five precepts every day. as the first precept we say we will not hurt or kill any living creature.
but this is the realit in Sri Lanka
http://lktube.com/view/206/crazy-elephanat/
At last India has taken a correct step in giving up the use of elephants on their military parade.
Elephants are not meant to go on parades or religious processions. In Lanka we see them regularly on Buddhist temple procession and yet we all accept that a true Buddhist woudl not harm or hurt any living creature!
Here is an article i wrote sometime ago
not so wonderful Thailand
daya dissanayake
Thailand is a wonderful country. Wonderful people. Wonderful markets. Wonderful temples. That is how i saw it on my previous visits. Unfortunately during my last visit i was in the wrong place at the wrong time, which shattered my ideas about Wonderful Thailand. It was my second visit to Ayuthaya. What i remembered from my first visit was the wonderful legacy left behind by the earlier rulers and the beautiful temples and the ruins of a bygone era. This time i saw something i had missed on my first visit. The elephant rides.
There was the mahout seated right in front, and behind him on the chair was a couple of Europeans. They were laughing. They were having a ride of their life. Something they could always talk about, and tell their grand children someday. They would have arrived in Thailand by air, stayed at a star class hotel in Bangkok and driven to Ayuthaya in a luxury car. They could have seen the ruins of Ayuthaya from the car, in air-conditioned comfort. But they found it more enjoyable, riding the elephant, under the hot mid day sun. They did not mind the heat and the dust and the shaky ride. It was fun. It was fully worth the money they had paid for the ride, and the visit to Thailand.
The mahout and the owner of the elephant earned money. It was a great tourist attraction. It helped bring in more dollars and euros and yen. It was good business, all round.
Then my eyes went to the elephant. He was very young. Two small tusks had started growing. I looked at his eyes. At first i though he was blind, but then saw that he had his eyes almost shut, either in pain, boredom or sheer disgust. The chair was an iron contraption, crudely made, with cushions for the human beasts seated on it. There was some kind of sheet or carpet under the chair on the elephant’s back. I could not see if it was padded and thick enough to soften the pressure of the iron frame of the chair. The iron bars would be pressing on the back of the elephant, rubbing his skin as the chair swayed with every step he took.
His feet were bare. Elephants did not wear shoes or sandals. Their feet were meant to walk on bare earth, over fallen leaves and grass and little shrubs and on mud and sand. Today this elephant had to walk on asphalt and concrete, growing hotter as the sun moved over them.
My eyes followed the poor elephant and the human beasts riding the elephant. Without any prodding by the mahout the elephant trudged along the pavement, crossed the road to enter a small open area. I thought he had stopped to put the beasts down, but it was only so he could turn around and begin his return journey. He crossed the road once more at the same place and walked along the pavement, unmindful of all the people and all the cars and busses and trucks moving past him.
How could he be so unmindful, when his lungs would be coated with exhaust fumes and dust and the noise hammering into his ears all the time. His nostrils were meant to detect the smells of the jungle, of other animals and his sources of food and water. His ears were meant to detect the slight foot falls of other animals and the singing of the birds in the forest.
I watched the elephant disappear around the next corner only to see another elephant walking towards me. The elephant looked older. There was a young woman and her child on the elephant, behind the mahout. The mother was pointing out the ruins by the road side to the child. They were happy, she looked a kind and devoted mother and the child’s eyes reflected the love for his mother.
The mother did not see that this elephant too would be a mother. That her baby elephant would have been taken away from her soon as he could be put to work. That probably the calf never had a happy childhood, playing with other baby elephants and roaming around freely in the forest and the grassland and in the rivers.
The elephant would have seen the mother and the child, reminding her of her own children, and perhaps wondering where they would be this day. The elephant followed the same path as the earlier animal, turned back to retraced her steps along the pavement.
How many times would these elephants walk this path, i tried to guess. I had no idea when they would start their day and if they ever had any break during the day. Perhaps they would have a little rest when the mahout stopped for a drink or a meal, unless he had it as they walked along with the human load on the elephant’s back. I did not want to ask from the mahout or from anyone else about this, because i did not wish to learn the worst, that the elephants never stopped for any rest or food till evening. Or did they work through the night too, till as long as tourists flocked to this ancient city.
The elephants reminded me of squirrels in circular cages, running not stop as the cage revolved. They reminded me of caged lions and tigers, walking round and round their small cage in the zoo, ignoring the beasts who came to look at them.
I thought that we in Sri Lanka were torturing our elephants in the name of the Buddha, when we paraded them during temple processions and festivals. But the Sri Lankan elephants were lucky in that they had to suffer this only a few times a year. The Thai elephants had to suffer it everyday.
All life is sacred. All animals, man or beast, feel pain, get tired, thirsty and hungry. All animals wish to live in their natural habitat, among their own kind, with their own families.
Have the Thai’s forgotten the word of the Buddha about Ahimsa? Or have they started to believe that Bhatt is more important than Buddha?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7832506.stm
The t-shirt for sale on Union Square NYC, had a picture of Geronimo and 3 others. it said ‘Fighting terrorism since 1492′.
We in Sri Lanka have been fighting terrorism since 543 B.C., if Sri Lankan historical record the Mahavamsa (http://lakdiva.org/mahavamsa/chap006.html ) is to be believed.
the only problem today is we have no way of identifying the invaders from the natives, but we still keep fighting
the WHO declared Oct. 15th as the Handwashing Day and 2008 as the year of sanitation. Lets us hope that it would nto be ignored and forgotten like HFA 2000 or the plans of WHO to provide Health For All by 2000!
Washing our hands will never cleanse us of all the dirt of corruption and all the blood of direct and indirect harm brought upon the innocent children of the world.
If only someday we can all wash our minds of all evil and all greed coudl we think of any future for mankind.
Today outsourcing mean ‘Call Centres’ in Colombo, Chennai, Pune or Mumbai. It came to our part of the word first as data entry operations for overseas companies, then for medical transcriptions, accounting, payrolls, even sales and stores management, and a few months ago a Bangalore based company contracted to monitor the carbon emissions and credit for a European company.
It was all good business, until the world economy fell into a crisis. Till then, there was employment for our young people, dollars and euros pouring into enterprising business organizations, and lower costs for the companies in the ‘developed’ countries. Today the easy jobs for our youth are under threat, there is increasing agitation in the countries which have been using outsourcing to find employment for their own youth and also there is less and less business all-round to justify the modern day outsourcing.
Yet outsourcing has always been a necessary evil from perhaps the stone age. Like most things we find as essential today for our lives, it too is an evil we have got to live with.
When our ancestral hunter found it easier to get another man to make his weapons, his stone tools, and then pay him with a share of the meat, that was outsourcing. When one man got another to gather food for him, or later on cultivate it for him, that was outsourcing. Still later, making of the clay pots, furniture, weapons had to be outsourced. even war became an outsourced business with the arrival of mercenary soldiers which we find very often happened even in our own country. We pay others to kill or die for us and we reap the benefits of victory.
One of the worst evils we face today from outsourcing is the food business. When it all began in pre-historic times it would have been considered a great new development. But it became a curse in more ways than one.
Prehistoric hunter gatherer probably had the freedom of choice to decide what to eat and when to eat, as long as food was available. With the evolution of man and the ‘progress’ of his civilization, this freedom was lost gradually till man became a slave of the multinational food merchants.
The freedom man had enjoyed to pluck or pick or dig whatever food he felt like eating, would have continued for some time even after he had begun to grow some of this food. As a few men took on the task of growing all the food needs of his tribe was when man began to lose his freedom. From then on man had to eat what the farmer decided to grow, and later on what the trader decided that the farmer should grow.
Then inequality raised its evil head. To grow the food a few men began to lay claim to little bits of the earth, which in turn increased their greed to grab more and more land and to grow more and more food. Those who did not own any land and could not afford to pay for the food had to go hungry while those who owned the land had a surplus, which they would rather destroy than give away to the hungry and the needy. Even the men and women who worked in the farms did not get enough food, because they did not own the land, and the food that was grown was claimed by the few who claimed ownership. Today even though 1/3rd of the land mass is under cultivation, more than half the people on earth are starving or malnourished.
Man could obtain food only from what he earned and what he could afford, and not what he needed to feed his family and children. This situation became worse as the landowner began to outsource the distribution of his produce. The next class of exploiters were born. The traders gradually began to dictate terms even for the land owner, or bought over the land themselves and grew into huge blood sucking octopuses engulfing the entire earth.
Today outsourcing of the food needs had reached the highest point (which is really the lowest depths it could go down) with the big businessmen having enslaved not only the consumer, but also the retail trader, the producer of processed food, the farmer and the land owner. Today these food cartels decide not only what all human beings should eat, but also how much they should pay for it and our nutrition depends on what each of us could afford to pay for them.
Today man does not have the freedom to have a simple meal of boiled grain of his liking, or a roti made of a powdered grain, grown by himself, or purchased directly from a farmer. Today he can only have the processed items available in the market. Here the people with money and power gets the highly processed food at the highest prices where the essential natural ingredients have been taken out to make other products and only artificial nutrients and flavours have been added. The get to eat such food will all the poisons and carcinogens that had been added during the plant growth, during harvest and during processing and packing. Those who do not have money or power have to eat only what is left over trash from processing the high priced food items.
The ‘progress’ of the modern civilization means that both the mother and the father has to go out to earn a living to feed and care for the family. The children do not get the care and attention of the parents during their young days and the parents do not have the time to prepare a nourishing meal for the children. What they have to feed the children are precooked instant meals, because she doesn’t have the time to cook or because she has been brain-washed to think the instant food is better, more nourishing and also the in-thing to do. The mother does not realize that when she buys a packet of processed cereal, for Rs. 100, she could have bought the same raw cereal for just about Rs. 7.00, taken it home, washed and boiled and fed to the child, and she would not have to go out and work to earn that extra Rs. 93.
We have all become the slaves of the ‘instant’ syndrome, not only in food, but even in medicine. Instead of boiling a little coriander or a ‘paspanguwa’ at home, we want to drink an instant packet of ‘herbal’ medicine, not knowing what is in it or how it has been prepared, not realizing that ‘herbal’ is neither a proven home remedy nor an ayurvedic treatment.
Another reason why we do not get all the grain and vegetables we wish to eat is because most of the food is grown to feed animals and the food cartel is force feeding us the flesh of these animal, once again with all the drugs and hormones which have been fed to these animals. Today we are talking about bio-fuels to save the earth, but unless we stop eating animal flesh, we would have to starve to death to save the earth, because all the land used to grow feed grain would not be enough to cultivate bio-fuel to generate the energy needs of our society.
All the processed and instant food only help the rich food cartel to get richer. Today no one worries about the real nutritive values of the food they produce and sell. Fruit and vegetables varieties are developed so they could grow faster, could be transported long distances by road, by sea or by air and then stay fresh on the shelf for a long time. It is of no concern of the farmer or the trader if the agrochemicals and the preservatives added cause slow and painful death of the consumer.
There is another cartel, the drug makers and drug pushers who thrive on all the diseases resulting from eating all this food.
It is the same story with the meat products. A few decades ago it would have taken about 10 weeks for a chicken to grow fat enough to be killed. Today in the USA it would take only about 6 weeks and this can only be achieved in an animal factory and not in an animal farm. The feed is prepared and fed like raw material in a factory, the feed mix containing anything and everything that would ensure rapid growth without diseases at the lowest cost. In the United States, a factory to run successfully it has to kill and process at least 2 million birds a week. Two thousand pigs an hour. And all this meat is force fed to the gullible Americans, to keep the business going.
Another example of how we have become the slaves of the food cartel is the way people all over the world have been made to become coffee addicts by one enterprising multinational. When Brazil could not sell her coffee harvest and had to burn it, these people stepped in and today they have made us drink 300 million cups a day, not because our body needs it, but because they want to make a quick profit.
Our children were made to prefer powdered milk over fresh cow milk by first giving away free milk to school children several decades ago. That is why today our village folk sell the fresh pure milk and take home a processed powder in the name of milk, which would only whiten the cup of tea for her children and make them believe that it contains all the ingredients for the growth of the brain and the muscles and the bones. The Chinese children today have got used to drinking processed milk for the same reason, ad in their case even with melamine added.
Those who still shout the slogan ‘kolambata kiri gamat kekiri’ should realize that the village child who survives on pumpkins are more fortunate than the kids in Colombo who are fed on artificial milk, that is, unless all the pumpkins are brought to the supermarkets and the village child is left to eat the leaves only.
All this could be traced back to outsourcing. By allowing other people to do even the simple day to day chores. It is the belief that if we earn enough money, we can buy everything we want, that we do not have to do anything on our own, for ourselves and our children. This allows us more time to earn more money, so we could pay more for simple things that we could have easily done ourselves, and be our own masters.
Today our lives are controlled not by the Gods, not by the Governments, but by the different cartels, we have allowed to flourish by allowing outsourcing to enslave us.
it was 9/11 for America. 11/26 for India. But for for all of us it is 24/7, it has been for a long time.
the devastation from 9/11 or 26/11 fade into nothing when we think of the death and destruction faced today by all living creatures, every moment of their lives. the threats are from the terrorist organizations which are releasing all the carcinogens, dioxins, and other polutants, who are damaging the ozone layer, who are contributing to global warming and climate change, who are causing starvation and epidemics.
by 2042 the minorities could take over the united states. that is poetic justice. then who could call it their homeland or motherland. who on earth, any where on earth could claim a piece of land as a mother land or homeland
living in New York for a few days, showed me more and more of the Inequality aong mankind.
Here is a war against calaories and carbohydrates, with everyone trying to cut down, and every pack of food giving the nutrition details, not for people to look for high nutrion values, but lower, and lower. Lower the better. They talk about the Three White Killers. Salt, Sugar and Flour.
In other countries, among other people, the war is to find enough Calories and even Carbohydrates. Even the children have to eat food with the lowest values, not because they prefer it, but because they can’t afford high nutrition value food.
The sad part of this situation is that the money people earn to continue overeating, is most often earned by depriving the food of the people in poor countries, one way or the other.