The Measure Of Intelligence

I’m a sucker for political jokes. Here’s a good one:

 

Former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge, while on a visit to the UK, posed this question to Queen Elizabeth the Second: “As a monarch, how do you mange to keep all the affairs of state running so smoothly?”

“Well, I make sure to appoint intelligent Ministers,” replied the Queen, “And I occasionally pose questions to them to gauge how intelligent they are.”

Then, as a demonstration, she summoned Tony Blair to her and asked him, “Your mother has a child, your father has a child but it is not your brother or sister. Who is it?”

“It’s me, Your Majesty,” he replied.

Impressed by this, President Kumaratunge (CBK) decided to try this out with her own Ministers. Upon her return to Sri Lanka, she summoned her Minister of Communications Mangala Samaraweera to her and asked him;

“Mangala, your father has a child, your mother has a child but it’s not your brother or your sister. Who is it?”

Minister Samaweera hemmed and hawed for a good hour, but unable to come up with a solution, was forced to go and consult Minister G.L Peiris. After some reflection, G.L Pieris finally pronounced, “it’s me.”

Minister Samaraweera hurried back to CBK in excitement.

“I know the answer!” he announced. “It’s G.L Pieris!”

“You bloody fool!” yelled the President, “I would have thought it was simple enough for even a moron like you to figure out! It’s Tony Blair!”

 

Tee Hee.

 

In other news, the word out on the street is that the LTTE is going to declare war again in March. I give no credence to this rumor simply because, unlike most traitorous assholes, I can remember that the LTTE is incapable of declaring war. A declaration of war is something that is done by a recognized military authority, not a murderous terrorist cult who are at best nothing more than a gang of vigilantes.

What I can lend credence to is the fact that they’ve been running protection rackets among the Sri Lankan community in countries like UK and Canada, threatening to kill and kidnap their families back home if they don’t pay up. I know because my uncle who lives in Canada has been approached by them, and he’s a pure Sinhalese. Earlier, the rackets were restricted to the Tamil community. If they’re also threatening Sinhalese and Muslim groups as well, I think it’s safe to say that somebody’s in a hurry to gather funds. No prizes for guessing what for.

I’m all for President Rajapakshe’s no tolerance policy, but even I know that we’re not in any shape to fight a war right now. In large part, this is thanks to former Premier Ranil Wickramasinghe’s “ceasefire efforts” (read: back alley deal) which the Tigers took advantage of to wipe out our most valuable intelligence networks. Good men and women, most of them Tamil, who had worked for decades to bring down those monsters from the inside were betrayed and slaughtered in their hundreds, the unnamed casualties of the war. And yet their deaths hardly made a ripple in the outward veneer of political stability; as far as people are concerned if there are no open fire and bombings it means there is also no war. Who cared if intelligence operatives got murdered behind the scenes? I think we’re about to care very much in the coming months, however.

I used to get so damn mad. They were picking our spies off one by one during the bloody phony ceasefire, and all the government ever did after each of them was to issue a statement saying that “investigations on why the military failed to give the victims adequate protection are being conducted.”

You bastards! They gave you their blood and sweat and spine so’s you can sit in your high diplomatic chairs and figure out how next to sell the entire nation out to the international corporate parasites and baby-killing fanatics and you let them become cannon fodder for your pay packets and now you sit there and spout this bare-faced bullshit while kissing the asses of those devils who killed them!! “Investigations on the failure of the military”?! Why not investigate why those murdering bastards killed our men during your so-called cease-fire in the first place?! Why don’t you burn down their hidey holes and shoot their brains out through their skulls?! Why don’t you avenge the widows and the orphans and the families whose sons will never come home because of that bastard whom the world now calls Mr. Vellupille Prabhakaran? Mr. Anton Balasingham?

Premier Ranil Wickramasinghe, in our Buddhism texts we learned that matricide is on of the five Unforgivable Sins. You have killed your motherland, you and your cohorts. I can only hope that you burn in hell for the rest of eternity, the anguish of those who died for your political agenda tormenting you! You and Prabhakaran both!!

Of course, all politicians have a special place in hell. I hope it’s right next door to the terrorists. Do you know that in Sri Lanka, they kidnap children and put them in camps to be brain washed and turned into suicide soldiers?

Right. Rant over. Am calm now. After all, what’s coming will come, and we’ll meet it when it does.

To misquote Homer Simpson: “ the answers to life’s problems aren’t at the bottom of a bottle. They’re in the Harry Potter books.”