The Paper February 16, 2012

Volume 43- No. 07

by lyle e davis Editor’s Note: There is a great deal of superb reportage in the world.

Some of these stories and essays, however, have to be anonymous in order to protect the author and his family from certain death.

The Defeated Sri Lanka’s Tamils pick up the pieces after a war that defined—and shattered—the lives of a generation

By ANONYMOUS Published : February 2012 Inside the lives of Sri Lanka’s Tamils as they emerge from a multi-decade war that defined and nearly destroyed them: The Paper - 760.747.7119

website:www.thecommunitypaper.com

email: thepaper@cox.net

February 16, 2012

“In March 2009, when Swarna was asked to take the new recruits to war, she felt a churning in the pit of her stomach. She was used to taking orders, even when every bone in her body rebelled. She had shot a Sinhalese soldier, barely 20, at point-blank range, as he kneeled in front of her, begged her, and showed with his hands rocking an invisible cradle that he had two babies. She had killed a friend who had defied orders and cost the Tigers an entire operation. ‘I can kill when I can justify it,’ she says. But this, sending children to face a real army when they could barely hold a gun, didn’t seem to fit her larger cause.”

On the afternoon of 19 May, 2009, at around 1:20 pm, a ration shop

In 1987, 17 year old Niromi de Soyza, above left, shocked her middle-class Sri Lankan family by joining the Tamil Tigers in their struggle against the Sri Lankan government. Trained in combat and armed with a rifle and cyanide capsules, de Soyza took the fight to Sri Lanka's military for a year in the jungles of Vanni and the Jaffna Peninsula and was one of the rebels' first female soldiers. accountant named Sivarajan ran to the front of the winding lunch queue in the Zone 3 refugee camp to serve rice and sodhi, a watery concoction of chilies and coconut milk. Swarna, a former militant, sat in her tent nearby, yelling at her mother for having told an army man from the morning shift

The Defeated Continued on Page 2

that their family belonged to Mullaitivu, on the northeastern coast, where the war between the Sri Lankan Army and the separatists—“Tigers,” she called them— was still raging.

At that moment, they got a text message on their mobile phones from the government’s information department. Addressed to all Sri Lankans, it proclaimed, in Sinhala—a language neither Sivarajan nor Swarna could read— that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the man who led a 26-year-long separatist battle for a Tamil Eelam (state), had been killed by the army in a lagoon just a two hours drive north of where they were. So when the news was announced in Tamil over a loudspeaker that

Page 2 - February 16, 2012 ‘The Defeated’ Cont. from Page 1 evening, they did not believe it.

When it finally sank in, they realised—neither with remorse nor relief, but mere wonder at its very possibility—that in an instant the war they had been born into had left their lives.

Nothing would ever be the same again.

••••• It had to be inappropriate to want a bath when shells were raining from the sky. But for the fifth day in a row, it was all Siva could think of. Crouching with his wife, daughter and six others in a hastily dug five-foot deep hole in the ground that was dissolving in the nonstop downpour, he was going crazy with the thick layer of mud on his skin. It itched, and he was sure he could smell blood and shit on it.

Above Siva’s head, across the coconut orchard of Mullaitivu district, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan Army were exchanging gunfire. Aircraft ejected shells into the area, which had once been home to about 50 families; since April 2009, it had been transformed into a dizzying two sq km maze of felled trees and underground bunkers dug and redug by the army, LTTE and fleeing, hiding villagers. Below the rain rivulets and the rattle of machine

Give Us This Day Our Daily Chuckle

guns, about 3,000 people cowered underground, packed like iron rods in a truck, judging danger and safety by the ebb and rise of the sounds of battle. They were petrified, but more unbearably, they were hungry.

heavily, which made his legs look disproportionately long compared to his torso. Sitting in the cramped hole in the ground, unable to venture out for days on end, he often cursed his long frame for his incessant hunger.

His ears ringing, Siva looked around him in the bunker. It was mid-April, more than six months since they’d been on the road.

They were now left with only half a sack of rice, and a couple of charred semi-rotten coconuts they had collected from the bombed orchard. There was no way to cook anything. The wood was too soaked to build a fire, and his wife Latha had dropped the salt packet when a bullet whizzed past her head. Siva’s daughter, Dhanusuya, was curling up around her mother.

Only five years old, and she already knew to go to sleep when her stomach was rumbling. He looked at his wife’s pregnant belly.

Please oh please let the baby be all right, he thought.

Nearly three years before Siva would find himself huddled in a bunker, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, launched a military offensive on the separatist Tigers in Trincomalee, on the east coast.

The Tigers had forcefully closed the sluice gates of the Mavil Aru waterway to cut off the water supply to some 15,000 villages nearby.

Negotiations to open the gates failed, and the Sri Lankan Air Force attacked the LTTE bases. At the time, this had seemed to Siva like just another fight in the 26year-long cycle of attacks and counterattacks between the predominantly Sinhala armed forces and the LTTE. He had gone about his life unbothered, until Tamil men and women from the east, their whole lives bundled into little plastic bags, started to pour in closer to Siva’s home, to the northern part of the island. They were everywhere. And, soon, so was the army.

Siva was a doting father, the kind of man who easily wove bedtime stories starring animals that talked philosophically, stories whose endings often involved the triumph of a smart rabbit, deer or turtle over the powerful lions and panthers.

He was a dutiful son—he regularly sent money home to his aging parents—but did not think he could ever live under the same roof with them. His hair was greyer than it should have been at 39. He stood taller than six feet, but slumped

and Costello routines, so here’s a modern day version of one: COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America.

ABBOTT: Good Subject.

Terrible Times. It's 9%.

This week, a compendium of wit, wisdom and neat stuff you can tell at parties.

Enjoy!

The Kind Hearted Scotsman My girlfriend and I walked past a swanky new restaurant last night.

"Did you smell that food?" she asked. "Incredible!"

Being the nice guy I am, I thought, "What the heck, I'll treat her!"

So we walked past it again.

Abbott and Costello I always loved the old Abbot

COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?

ABBOTT: No, that's 16%.

COSTELLO: You just said 9%.

ABBOTT: 9% Unemployed.

COSTELLO: Right 9% out of work.

ABBOTT: No, that's 16%.

COSTELLO: Okay, so it's 16% unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, that's 9%...

COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 9% or 16%?

ABBOTT: 9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.

In January 2009, a combined force of infantrymen, helicopter gunships and naval commandos captured Siva’s home district, the LTTE’s last military base of Mullaitivu. For the previous six months, his family had been run-

COSTELLO: IF you are out of work you are unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, you can't count the "Out of Work" as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.

COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK! ABBOTT: No, you miss my point.

COSTELLO: What point?

ABBOTT: Someone who doesn't look for work, can't be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn't be fair.

COSTELLO: To who?

ABBOTT: The unemployed.

COSTELLO: But they are ALL out of work.

ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work. Those who are out of work stopped looking.

They gave up. And, if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.

ning from the war in a helplessly confused fashion, into uniformly bomb-ravaged northeastern islets, led and misled by bewildering stories of deaths, injury and betrayal.

Thin slivers of sunlight crisscrossed in the bunker. The gunfire stopped almost as soon as the rain did. Ants began to crawl in. Siva woke his daughter, and told Latha that it was time to move again.

The six-person family they were sharing the bunker with declined to follow; they had been waiting for 55-year-old Mahendran to return since he had ventured out the previous night to get food for his grandson.

As Siva and Latha shoved aside the logs covering the bunker, hopped up and stretched their legs, they saw a motionless man lying flat on his stomach just 100 metres away.

The wet soil around his bald head was red. As they got closer, they saw white specks in the blood. Oh god maggots, Siva thought, and closed his daughter’s eyes. They walked around the body. When he reached the road with the image of the fallen man still clear in his mind, Siva realised it must’ve been Mahendran. Because it wasn’t maggots he’d seen but spilt rice, no use to anyone now.

Siva had held one job all his life, as the only bookkeeper at the gov-

‘The Defeated’ Cont. on Page 3 COSTELLO: So if you're off the unemployment roles, that would count as less unemployment?

ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!

COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don't look for work?

ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That's how you get to 9%. Otherwise it would be 16%. You don't want to read about 16% unemployment do ya?

COSTELLO: That would be frightening.

ABBOTT: Absolutely.

COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means they're two ways to bring down the unemployment number?

ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.

COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down ‘Chuckles’ Cont. on Page 7

February 16, 2012 - Page 3

‘The Defeated’ Cont. from Page 2 ernment ration shop in the small town of Mallavi in Mullaitivu. He earned a government salary of LKR3,000, but was paid another LKR3,000 by an LTTE-appointed contractor, who actually ran the store. Siva had once been proud that he was a top class accountant.

He could forget a face, but never a number. “Useless,” he now thought. “What is the point of mathematics in war?”

But like a man who knew no other way, Siva continued to count everything. When his family had left home in Mallavi eight months ago, they’d carried stoves, vessels, three bags of rice, several bottled spices, gold jewelry, tables, cots, wires, a sewing machine, and even the doors of his house, all in a tractor they hired for LKR15,000.

Siva also packed four lorries (trucks) with all the stock (rice, lentils, oil, kerosene) from the ration shop where he worked— and swaddled the ledgers and receipt books in plastic covers. He knew that battle times were times of scarcity; he assumed he would be one of the few with food to sell, and he wanted to keep track of the inventory.

In January 2009, when the army entered Mullaitivu for the first time in more than a decade, Siva was selling rations to roving refugees at an inflated price: a handful of rice went for LKR30, which would ordinarily have purchased an entire kilogram. He justified it as “cost price plus war tax.”

As whole villages were evacuated, almost the entire Tamil population from the north moved en masse towards the ‘No Fire Zones’ created by the army in Puthukkudiyiruppu in the final phase of war. The price of essentials doubled, and then tripled. By April 2009, only three months later, you needed to exchange a boat or an autorickshaw to buy a handful of rice. Petrol and diesel pumps were closed, and people were using kerosene, which sold at LKR1,500 per litre, as fuel for lorries and tractors. The cost of running a tractor or bike was so high it was better to simply abandon them.

Siva had long been certain that the battle around him was just a blip.

Soon, he believed, it would be over, and he would go back to Mallavi with his ledger books and leftover rations to resume his life.

It was the blind confidence of a man who had spent more than half of his 39 years perpetually ready to get up and leave, who had moved house 12 times, none by his own choice, but always thanks to a battle, an air raid, an eviction order from local LTTE leaders. For Siva, displacement simply meant settling somewhere else, however temporarily. As his favourite song went: ‘the ground beneath our feet quivers, shifts, and caves in/ how we’ve learnt not to fall, but just to run to the other side.’ He didn’t

even complain anymore.

But Siva’s incessant dislocations had never taken him outside of Vanni, the sprawling mainland of the Northern Province in Sri Lanka composed of four Tamildominated districts. Named after medieval Tamil feudal chiefs called Vanniars, the Vanni had been a virtually impenetrable bastion of the Tamil Tigers since the 1990s.

Siva was taught that Vanni was where his country really began. It was, after all, the working prototype of what Eelam, the separate homeland of Sri Lankan Tamils, would look like. The Tigers ran everything there: a working state complete with an army, air force, navy, police, trial courts and a bureaucracy that issued motor vehicle licenses, food ration cards and Tamil Eelam citizen ID cards.

Kilinochchi was the political capital, and the more densely-forested Mullaitivu district, where Siva moved in his late 20s, was the LTTE military base. When the Sri Lankan Army gradually penetrated into the Vanni from January 2008 to May 2009, it wasn’t just attacking the military might of the LTTE: it was laying siege to the fiercely defended idea of Eelam.

In Mullaitivu, while it was ostensibly the Sri Lankan government that ran a post office, police station and ration store, there was no doubt about who was really in charge. Even as Siva carried on his government job through the civil war, making copious debit and credit entries, the LTTE was the invisible boss he feared, respected and ultimately worked for. For him, the seemingly natural loyalty of a Tamil man for the Tamil militants had never been quite easy.

As a boy in the Vanni, Siva had spent several orange evenings running through the lush paddy fields of Nedunkeni, looking for water snakes, newts and his favourite prey, chameleons, to chase, pee on or stone. He would do it for hours, until night fell or his mother called him indoors for homework. A few days after his sixth birthday, while he was aiming carefully to whack the raised head of a chameleon, Siva saw a young man pedalling his cycle furiously across the thin pathway running through the field. The man’s right hand was on the handlebar, and his left hand gripped a pistol.

It was the first time Siva had seen a gun. He didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell his parents, but unable to contain his excitement, he told a young uncle, who grinned and advised him to forget about it. “It’s just one of the boys, Siva,” he said.

For days after that, Siva went to the same field, hoping for another sighting. Who could the boy be?

Who might he have killed? How did he get the gun? Did the gun make a noise like in the movies?

Who’d taught him to use it?

Shrouded in mystery, the vision of the cycling boy, his gun glinting in the evening light, grew more and

more romantic. That weekend, when his mother served him dinner, Siva brought it up.

friends who urged him to join the LTTE. “Everyone cannot become a Tiger.”

“Amma, I saw a boy with a thuppakki (pistol),” Siva said, in a most casual tone.

In what seemed like an endless April in 2009, as he walked through the falling rain and shells for the sixth day in a row, Siva looked at the fraying ribbon of a road ahead of him, and the hundreds of mud-covered people plodding along in the same direction.

All of them were moving as if chained together, following blindly the person in front, and staying ahead of the person behind. Siva knew that all of them had, at some point, confronted the choice between being a warrior—with all the respect and power it brought—or a peasant. He wondered idly if he would have felt less helpless if he had a gun.

His mother looked at him with the disapproving, worried expression that usually appeared when one of her children failed an exam or got into a fight.

“What kind of nonsense goes on in your head?” she asked.

“Amma, really, I promise. I saw ...”

“Talk to me one more time about guns and some dangerous boys with stupid ideas, and you can forget about entering this house again.”

For years Siva’s parents were terrified that their son would be swept up in the collective frustration of rioting 20-year-olds all around and join a militant outfit. So they locked him in the house, and forbade him from joining Jaffna University, which was renowned for its liberal arts faculties and notorious for its pro-LTTE student politics.

Helplessly, Siva often thought about the cycling boy with the pistol. He yelled at his parents for his house arrest; but he was also pretty sure that if he ever signed up for arms training, he would be outed as a coward. “The world needs farmers and accountants as well,” he told

President Theodore Roosevelt 'In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.

But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American and nothing but an American ... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.'

Through all these months, as his wife and daughter slept under trees and in schools closed for war, Siva kept making elaborate trips back to the ration shop on his motorbike to replenish stock.

Each time, he found new families in Mallavi raiding kitchens in halfbroken homes and hiding in toilets. When returning from one such trip, Siva made a wrong turn into a road blocked by a high wall of rusted rocket shells. When he returned to his family, Latha had delivered their son.

••••• Looking down from a mango

‘The Defeated’ Cont. on Page 5

MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. LOW WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG HOURS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS. SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN EVENT OF SUCCESS. Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic explorer (1874-1922) The advertisement above, placed in a London newspaper in 1912, inspired nearly 5,000 replies.

Shouldn’t you be advertising in The Paper, your local, community paper?

Subscribe to The Paper!

It’s Easy Just call 760.747.7119

Page 4 - February 16, 2012 “Johns” Arrested in North County Prostitution Sting Escondido, Vista and Oceanside saw a joint effort by the North County Regional Prostitution Human Trafficking Task Force that conducted sting operations in each city which netted 21 arrests. Most of the arrests were of men trying to pay for sex, according to law enforcement personnel.

Local and federal authorities conducted stings in all three cities simultaneously Saturday.

In Escondido, authorities arrested 10 people: Graciano Reyes, 45; Samuel Ocoa, 36; Homero Martinez-Sanchez, 27; Daniel Iraheta, 54; Ricci Kefren, 39; Lucas Gonzalez, 28; Jose Luna, 37; Jose Resendiz, 30; Robert Battle, 51; and Juan Sanchez Martinez, 29, according to the statement.

Those arrested in Vista were: Eric Austin, 32; Andrei Koudriavtsev, 41; Alex Flores-Padilla, 31; Paul

Local News Prince, 48; Gregory Cranford, 58; and Jason Poe, 50, according to the statement.

Three of the suspected johns were also booked into the Vista Detention Center on suspicion of sexual battery or possession of a controlled substance, the statement said.

Prince was also suspected of offering methamphetamine as payment for sex, Cranford was suspected of drug possession and sexual battery, and Poe was also suspected of sexual battery, the statement said.

Five were arrested in Oceanside, according to the statement said ---- three on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute, one on suspicion of loitering for prostitution and a woman suspected of being a prostitute. Their names were not released.

Oceanside Planning Commission Nixes Electronic and Feather Signs Electronic/Digital Signs and

the “Feather Signs’ may go the way of the Dodo Bird if the The Oceanside Planning Commission’s recommendations are followed.

On Monday, after hours of discussion, the Commission decided to recommend to the City Council to not allow some major changes, such as digital billboards, but also wanted to make updated changes to the laws regarding signage. This would include barring displays called feather signs, which typically consist of a pole with banners displaying messages.

The City Council is not bound by the recommendation. The council is expected to take up the matter at a meeting next month.

North County Dog Rescue Organizations Join in Special Adoption/Foster Days A number of North Cunty Rescue Organizations are joining the San Diego Animal Defense Team this Sunday, February 19th, and the following Sunday, February 26th, in an exercise designed tering or adoptions. He’s doing these tasks pro bono.

That’s a fancy Latin word that means “no fee charged.”

As much as I admire Ernie (and his gorgeous wife, Katy), he is nowhere near as cute as another professional photographer, Michelee Scott.

Man About Town One of the neat things about being in this business: You get to meet really neat people. Talented, compassionate, good people.

Cases in point: Ernie Cowan. I’ve known Ernie for at least 40 years. Knew him when he was with the old Union-Tribune, with KGTV, with his own professional photography studio,

Ernie Cowan, shooting outdoor photos knew him when he was a councilman, when he was the Mayor of Escondido . . . knew him when he suffered the loss of his first wife (to cancer), watched his kids grow up into great people as well . . and now, we are forming a foundation, The Puppy Coalition Foundation, which is designed to save countless puppies and dogs from being needlessly euthanized. Ernie has kindly offered his professional photographic talents to take pictures of these puppies and dogs and present them for your review, and possible fos-

Michelee Scott, pet photographer, landscape and urban or street photographer Michelee I have not yet met, but she, too, has offered her professional services as a photographer to help save our puppies and dogs.

While Michelee is a professional photographer, with special emphasis on pet photography, she also does landscape and urban or

to both find “Forever Homes” for puppies and dogs that are available and also to educate the public to adopt from rescue organizations and not buy from pet stores, where much of their inventory is directly from “puppy mills,” organizations that collect and breed dogs over and over and do not care for them properly.

The event takes place from noon to 2pm at Puppy Star’s, 6167 Balboa Ave., San Diego.

Participants with dogs/puppies available for adoption or fostering should have signs saying “Adopt Me,” or “Foster Me.” If you don’t have a dog, you are invited to join and line the streets in protest against pet stores selling puppies and dogs. Many shelter dogs are killed because they were unable to be adopted. This is an effort to prevent the needless euthanization of dogs.

The Paper is in full support of this effort and will be participating personally as well as editorially. You, your family, and friends, are invited to join us. street photography. She donates more than 50 percent of her time and resources to animal rescue projects . . . and that’s what we are all about.

She’s a registered nurse, has traveled world wide and has several email addresses where you can see her work. (She’s currently working on her Master’s Degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis on photography.) She has that uncanny ability to capture the personality of your pet.

You may want to check her work out at: http://www.mscott-photography.com/ ••••• Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a Leonberger pup named Bear.

Bear had the good sense to adopt a beautiful human being by the name of Cherrie (pronounced Sherry) Giles. As it happens Cherrie loved all dogs but she fell in love with Bear like she’s never fallen before. As Leonbergers do, Bear grew up. And grew. And grew . .

‘Man About Town’ Cont. on Page 7

February 16, 2012 - Page 5

‘The Defeated’ Cont. from Page 3 tree that had just begun to flower, Swarna cursed herself for losing her Type 56 assault rifle. It was a souvenir from her first successful operation after joining the LTTE, gleefully stolen from a burning Sri Lankan Army camp in Omanthai in 1997. She was 17 then, the second commander of the squadron, and had made sure every one of the nine girls she led came back alive.

They looted everything from the camp except Sinhalese books and what Swarna called “dirty films,” The operation was so successful that Prabhakaran himself sought her out so he could shake her hand and praise her for being the kind of woman Tamil Eelam needed.

Young women recruited into the Tamil Tigers force Now she’d gone and lost her gun to the very same army—to

Sinhalese boys half her age, boys she wanted to shoot right now, as she watched them rip the camouflage shirts off her squadron members down below. The girls were screaming in Tamil, except for one who seemed to be repeating the word epa like a loud and shrill chant. That wasn’t how the Sinhalese word was usually used, but Swarna had often heard it shouted by Sinhalese policemen and the army. “Epa!” when they didn’t want you to sell apples by the road in Jaffna. “Epa!” when you tried to drive on through the checkpoint at Vavuniya. “Epa!” ‘Don’t!,’ when they kneeled, hands tied in front of her gun.

One army man was snapping off the cyanide capsules hanging like pendants from the girls’ necks.

Another short chap rammed the butt of his rifle into one girl’s hipbone. As she clutched at the pain and crumpled to the ground, he kicked dry leaves and sand into her face. The front of his boot hit her nose. Writhing in pain, the girl folded her hands towards him. But he was already unzipping himself, and pushing her on her back. Swarna looked away.

One rainy afternoon, when

Swarna was 13, her school cancelled the post-lunch session. Some athletic men and women walked into her class, wearing long black shirts over their blue jeans. They started by talking to the kids, advising them about getting good grades, and then joking around about the rotund headmistress.

Swarna stared at them in awe, knowing they were Liberation Tigers—like her father. They had brought along a stereo and started to play some music on it. Swarna and most of her classmates, having grown up largely in LTTE-controlled areas, had heard the songs before, blaring from speakers on Martyr’s Day in November or the Tamil New Year in April. The songs were full of powerful imagery: the strong Palmyra tree of Yalpanam (the Tamil name for Jaffna) standing upright in all storms, except when uprooted and burnt by dark hands that resented its growth.

Just as she was humming to herself, an elder sister asked Swarna and another girl to come to the front of the class. They were asked to perform to a song that rang through the room: “Panirendu vayadhinile tholil thuppakki potukkittu (Just 12, look at how she holds the rifle over her shoulder).”

Swarna today believes she was in a trance when she marched, danced and carried a wooden ruler over her shoulder, trying to imagine being on the frontline without fear, her heart full of pride for her Tamil people. When she finished,

one of the Tiger women patted her back. “The song is about a 12 year old,” she said. “You are 13.” Then, in unison, the group said, “One from every family.” Seven girls— including Swarna—signed up with the LTTE that evening.

At that point, in 1993, the Tigers were the strongest voice of the Tamils. Their militant empire had spread all across the north, especially in Vanni, and into parts of the east. As guerrilla armies go, the LTTE had managed by now to spearhead “a protracted people’s war”—a war that they intuited had to begin in the minds of the Tamils.

What the LTTE fought and recruited girls like Swarna for was a Tamil Lanka that had begun to take shape quietly in many Tamil minds from the time the British gave Ceylon independence in 1948, leaving behind a nation deeply fractured.

The first person to openly demand that Tamils snap ties with the island and create a separate nation was a politician—and a moderate nationalist at that—whose fury had first been stoked by a law that made Sinhala Ceylon’s only official language. “The Tamils of Ceylon have been tricked and betrayed,” C Suntharalingam, Ceylon’s first minister of com-

‘The Defeated’ Cont. on Page 13

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Dr. Stephen Heilman Sincerely, Stephen Heilman, D. C. PS. One of the biggest myths about pain is that it will go away by itself, without any treatment.

A study in the British Medical Journal found that myth to be untrue, showing that 75% of back pain sufferers -- who do not seek treatment -- will have either pain or disability 12 months later.

Bottom line . . . if your pain has not gone away by now, it’s not likely to go way on its own. Life is too short to live in pain!

Call 760.480-4480

The

Social Butterfly

Page 6 - February 16, 2012 reception will follow to greet the artists.

For more info, call 760.745.5100.

Congressman Duncan Hunter to Speak at Republican Luncheon

Evelyn Madison The Social Butterfly Email Evelyn at: thesocialbutterfly@cox.net

At a recent coffee meeting, the Vista Friends and Newcomers had fun decorating cupcakes with handmade candy roses. Pictured (l-r) Olive Hubbard, Jane Gilbert, and Judy Patterson. The group meets on the 2nd Thursday of each month at Arcadia Place. Call 760.758.4120, or check the website at www.VistaFNC.com.

Concert to Feature Norwegian, Danish and American Sacred Music The First United Methodist Church of Escondido invites the community to attend a Music Series concert of Norwegian, Danish and American Sacred music on Sunday, February 26, at 3:30pm in the Sanctuary, 341 So. Kalmia St., Escondido.

Escondido Republican Women, Federated, is hosting Duncan D. Hunter, 52nd Congressional District, as their featured speaker on February 22. A former U.S. Marine, currently a Captain in the Marine Corps Reserve, the Congressman served three tours of duty in the middle east. He was elected to Congress in 2008 and serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The speaker will be David Hughes from Yucaipa; born in Scotland.

He is an international banker, real estate investor, and business owner. He will tell "How Sweet It Is" to travel around the world and be able to find the gift of life. A special feature is "Death by Chocolate," a special presentation of all kinds of delectable, sweet tasting and mouth watering chocolate. Entertainment will be special music, "Coated in Chocolate," by "Cowboy Jack" Johnston, from Vista, a real music legend. He performs all over the country.

Men are invited and other guests are welcome too. Come taste some special chocolate candy, meet the guest speaker, singer and CC the special feature presenter.

The club has no membership or dues. All are encouraged to make reservations by Thursday, February 16 for the luncheon.

Cost is $17/person inclusive. The luncheon is sponsored by Stonecroft Ministries/Christian Women's Club. For more information, go to www.stonecroft.org. For reservations, call Daisy at 760.591.0155 or Carolyn at 760.744.0957.

Tax Preparers to Help Low and Moderate Income Taxpayers

Congressman Duncan D. Hunter

AARP-sponsored tax preparers are providing confidential, FREE tax

preparation and filing for low- and moderate-income taxpayers, with special attention to those over 60, at the Senior Service Council, Escondido (SSCE), 728 N. Broadway (next to Joslyn Senior Center at 210 Park Avenue.)

Preparers are available Monday, Tuesday, & Friday between 9:00am and 2:30pm until April 17, and will prepare Federal and California State tax returns which are automatically “e-filed” with the IRS and CA Franchise Tax Board.

Taxpayers are encouraged to make an appointment; walk-ins are also accepted. Last year, Tax-Aide preparers filed tax returns for over 1,100 local residents. For information, call 1.760.480.0611 (Mon-Fri 9:00am-3:00pm), or visit the Senior Service Council office to learn more about the free tax preparation service, request an appointment with a tax counselor, and to get a detailed list of tax-related documents and statements you must bring with you when coming to the Center.

Calendar of Meetings/Events Kohl's Cares Scholarship Program Nominate a Young Volunteer: top winners will receive $10,000 each. Do you know a kid who's making a difference in your community through volunteering?

‘Social Butterfly’ Cont. on Page 7

The meeting begins promptly at 11:30am at Cocina del Charro, 890 W. Valley Parkway, Escondido, followed by a buffet luncheon for $12/person, and is open to the public. For reservations (due by February 18), contact Vivian Herron at v.herron@cox.net or 760.480.7850.

"Sweet Sensations" Theme of Christian Women's Meeting When the San Marcos-Vista Christian Women's Club meets

The San Diego County Cymbidium Society recently installed Officers for 2012. From left: Dennis Wharton, Director; Phyllis Prestia, Past President; Anita Spencer, Director; Jerry Spencer, Co-President; Lena Shiroma, Co-President; Christina Hsing, Co-Secretary; Harry Clyde, Director; Bill Wong, Co-President; and Warren Stehle, Director . Not pictured, Patty Barna, Co-Secretary; Marjorie Kuhlmann, Treasurer-CoPresident; and Devon McFerran, Membership.

The Vor Frue Kirkes Drenge Mandskor from Aalborg, Denmark and the Vanse Guttekor -- Deo Gloria from Farsund, Norway, will combine in concert.

No tickets are required; a free-will offering will be received and a

for their February meeting, the theme will be "Sweet Sensations."

The meeting is Monday, February 20, at 11:30am at the Barn Burner (formerly called the Quails Inn), 1025 La Bonita Drive, San Marcos.

The cost of the luncheon is $17/inclusive.

February 16, 2012 - Page 7

‘Social Butterfly’ Cont. from Page 6 Nominate them for a Kohl's Cares Scholarship. This year Kohl's is recognizing over 2,200 kids ages 6-18, with more than 440,000 in scholarships and prizes ranging from $50 Kohl's Gift Cards to $10,000 Scholarships. Learn more at kohlskids.com.

Nominations run through March 15, 2012. Nominators must be 21 or older.

Take off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS) is a non-profit weight-loss support group.

Chapter 116, meets from 8:30 to 10:00am every Friday at Trinity Episcopal Church, 845 Chestnut St., Escondido.

Chapter 685, meets from 6:00 to 8:00pm every Monday at Madrid Manor Mobile Home Park, 1401 El Norte Parkway, San Marcos. These groups offer encouragement, education, healthy living ideas, contests, and other activities to support personal weight loss. For information on the Friday morning chapter, call 760.213.2501 (Al). For information on the Monday night chapter, call 760.746.9027 (Mona).

The national website is www.TOPS.org.

The Village Idiots Literary Society meeting on Friday, February 17, from 79pm, will feature an open mic reading; bring a favorite poem, short story or other piece to read. The meeting will be at Gallery 204, 204 Main Street in downtown Vista. The event is free and open to the public. For info: call Jeannie Ortiz at 760.414.1056, the gallery at 760.305.8278, or email to villageidiots@cox.net.

Kumeyaay Pottery Workshop on Saturday, February 18, from 8:30am to 12:30pm, at the Kumeyaay-Ipai Interpretive Center (KIIC), 13104 Ipai Waaypuk Trail (Silver Lake Road), Poway. Martha Rodriguez, KumeyaayTipai, poter, basket weaver, artist, and educator, will conduct a class on pottery making, from raw clay to taking home a small olla. Registration fees are $40 for

‘Man About Town’ Cont. from Page 4 Bear, you see, is a big dog.

A mighty big dog. It is quite a sight to see when Bear rides in Cherrie’s SUV. Here’s this lovely, beautiful young lady, and this big ol’ Bear.

members of KIIC or San Diego Archaeological Center (SDAC), a cosponsor of the workshop. Non-members, $55. For more information, call Dan Cannon at 858.922.8043 (KIIC) or Annemarie Cox (SDAC) at 760.291.0370, or email acox@sandiegoarchaeology.org.

Reservations are required; classes limited to 30 students.

The Escondido Republican Club (TERC) will meet on Monday, February 20, at Cocina del Charro Restaurant, 890 W. Valley Parkway, Escondido. Doors open at 11:30am; lunch at 12noon. Police Chief, Jim Maher, will be the speaker.

Cost is $12/person for buffet lunch which includes tostada bar, enchiladas, beans, rice, and salad; also includes chips, salsa and beverage. Reservations by Friday, February 17. Members can reserve via email response; guests can reserve by calling 760.743.1195. Visit TERC's website at www.escondidorepublicanclub.org.

Art Reception for Marlene Levitt and Terry Anderson at Cafe Lily, 4045 Midland Road, Poway, on Wednesday, February 22, from 6-8pm, where there will be art, food and music. For info., call Marlene Levitt at 858.673.7791.

The Senior Service Council of Escondido, 728 No. Broadway, offers many services for seniors. For information and/or reservations, if required, call the office at 760.480-0611. Computer classes are being offered now, with sign ups on Thursday, February 23, from 9am to 12noon; classes start the week of March 6. For beginning and intermediate Windows 7, Vista, XP, and iMAC with OSX Snow Leopard, classes are 1.5 hours/week for 8 weeks and costs $25.

Email/Internet classes are 1.5 hours/week for 4 weeks and costs $12.

Specialty classes on Word, Excel, Photo Story, and other programs are also available. One-on-one tutoring is $5/hour.

Classes consist of three students per instructor, and are held in the Council's computer lab, equipment provided.

ball players tear and which will often end their careers).

Cherrie spent $4000 to have Bear’s ACL surgically repaired. Bear is grateful.

He never leaves Cherrie’s side if he can help it. He guards Cherrie and the office, lying

City of San Marcos Theatre West invites youth, ages 7-17, to audition for "Chicken Little" at at the San Marcos Community Center, 3 Civic Center Drive, San Marcos, on Monday, February 27, anytime between 5 and 8pm. Be prepared to sing a one minute excerpt from a song of your choice. Bring an instrumental CD or sing a cappella. Also bring a school photo and a short list of past experiences you have had speaking, singing or dancing in front of a group. Rehearsal schedules will be available at auditions. Beginners are welcome.

The performances will be held at the San Marcos Community Center on March 29, 30, 31, and April 1. Thursday and Friday at 7:30pm, Saturday and Sunday at 2pm and 6pm. For further information, call 760.744.9000 or go to www.sanmarcos.net.

Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War 1861-1865, Nancy Hanks Lincoln Tent #5, will meet on Tuesday, February 28, at 11am in the Veterans Memorial Building, Zoo Drive and Park Boulevard in Balboa Park, San Diego.

The program will be presented by Louise Jefferis on "The Story of Fort Sumter."

This is a direct lineage organization whose ancestors fought for the Union in the Civil War. For information, call 619.475.0153.

OASIS Day Trip to Bowers Museum Enter the great tombs and temples of the powerful and cunning men and women who ruled imperial China, with OASIS Escondido on Thursday, March 1. This landmark exhibition at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, features three of the most formative dynasties in Chinese history: the Qin, the Han and the Tang.

The exhibition also features the famous life-sized terra cotta warriors, protectors of China’s first emperor Qin Shihuangdi.

Smaller in size but equally impressive are some of the more than 40,000 smiling terra cotta warriors from the imperial tomb of the Han dynasty. Prior to our 1:00pm tour, there will be time for lunch on your own at a nearby restaurant or you may bring your own lunch. Cost is $53.00 and includes transportation, coach refreshments and entrance to the museum.

Pick up locations are R.B. Community Center, 12408 W. Bernardo Dr. At 8:30am; Escondido Transit Center, 500 W. Valley Pkwy at 9:00am, or Oceanside Park ‘N Ride, south side of College & 78 at 9:30am.

Call 760.670.5538 for reservations.

OASIS North County invites adults over 50 to participate in the many programs offered throughout North County, with new classes starting each week.

OASIS office is located at the Joslyn Sr. Center, 210 Park Avenue, Escondido. A one-time trimester processing fee of $10 is charged, in addition to class fee. Check the website for information about all classes, and registration can be completed on line at www.oasisnet.org/escondido, or call 760.796.6020.

Caribbean Nights Event at SDCDM - May 3

See for yourself how big ol’ Bear really is. Just to give you an idea of Bear’s wisdom in selecting Cherrie (a brilliant property management specialist) as his adopted human, it came to pass that Bear tore his ACL (that’s the tendon/ligament that foot-

comfortably on a large, a very large, pad. You can stop in and visit Bear at Giles & Company, a great Property Management and Real Estate firm located at 1882 A West El Norte Parkway, Escondido, in the Escondido Country Club area.

San Diego Children's Discovery Museum will Present Caribbean Nights on Thursday, May 3, from 6-10pm, at the Museum, 320 No. Broadway, Escondido.

Live Caribbean music from Trinidad to Cuba; Caribbean paradise decor, with cold drinks and food from Stone Brewing. To purchase tickets, go to SDCDM.org or call 760.233.7755. Before April 1, $100/person; $125 after April 1; $150 at the door.

Have an item for the Social Butterfly? If your club or organization has an event you’d like to publicize, let us know about it! Send an email to: thesocialbutterfly@cox.net

‘Chuckles’ Cont. from Page 2

if someone gets a job?

ABBOTT: Correct.

COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?

ABBOTT: Bingo.

COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to just stop looking for work.

ABBOTT: Now you're thinking like an economist.

COSTELLO: I don't even know what the heck I just said!

And now you know why the administration’s unemployment figures are improving!

Wifely Trust There comes a time when a woman just has to trust her husband ... for example ...

A wife comes home late at night and quietly opens the door to her bedroom. From under the blanket she sees four legs instead of two. She reaches for a baseball bat and starts hitting the blanket as hard as she can. Once she's done, she goes to the kitchen to have a drink.

As she enters, she sees her husband there, reading a magazine.

"Hi Darling," he says, "Your parents have come to visit us, so l let them stay in our bedroom.

Did you say ‘hello’?”

Why Men Have Better Friends Women's Friends: A woman didn't come home one night. The next day she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend's house.

The husband called his wife's ten best friends. None of them had seen her or knew what he was talking about.

Men's Friends: A man didn't come home one ‘Chuckles’ Cont. on Page 8

Page 8 - February 16, 2012 ‘Chuckles’ Cont. from Page 7

night. The next day he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend's house. The wife called her husband's 10 best friends. Eight of them confirmed that he had slept over, and two claimed that he was still there.

One Question IQ Test Here's a one-question IQ Test to help you decide how you should spend the rest of your day......

There is a mute who wants to buy a toothbrush.

By imitating the action of brushing one's teeth, he successfully expresses himself to the shopkeeper and the purchase is done. Now, if there is a blind man who wishes to buy a pair of sunglasses, how should he express himself?

Think about it first before scrolling down for the answer...

He opens his mouth and says. 'I would like to buy a pair of Sunglasses.' He’s blind, not mute! If you got this wrong, go stand in the corner.

Understanding Your Real Estate Options

by Cherrie Giles Certified Property Manager Giles and Company Residential & Commercial Real Estate, Leasing and Property Management SHOULD YOU BUY A FORECLOSURE?

It’s possible for you to find that diamond in the rough if you are looking at foreclosed properties. But you need to make a list of points to be aware of and make sure you scrutinize each one.

Consider the following:  Look at the exterior of the home. If the exterior of the home is in poor condition, you can expect the interior

Chester is believed to be a Westie-Chihuahua blend. He is only about a year old and 5 pounds of fun. He gets along with everyone!! Chester loves to play with other dogs, he likes his walks and sleeps so nicely in his crate with his friends … no doors, just loves the group.

Like all our pups, Chester has been neutered and microchipped. His vaccines and rabies are all up to date. He comes with a full 4 piece safety equipment set, food for his transition and any favorite toys or bedding he has collected. Please visit him on our website and see a few more pictures as well as other pups in our rescue that need homes. We have some wonderful pups and add more every week. Check us out at www.forgottenpaws.org or contact us at admin@forgottenpaws.org.

Thank you very much.

to look the same, if not worse. You need to trust your instincts!  Make sure your offer is contingent on an inspection of the property, even if the property is sold in “as-is” condition. It is an absolute must to hire a licensed inspector. You need to know the condition of the property, the condition of the roof and if the home is up to code. This will give you an idea of the costs involved in repairing the property before you purchase the home.  In addition, if a property needs extensive repairs, you will face some difficulty in locating a financial institution to provide you with a loan. Extensive repairs also result in “cash investors” making an offer with no contingencies and all cash.

That is stiff competition!  If the property is owned by the bank, they normally will not make any repairs to the property. You can ask for a credit – but you may or may

Eggo (as in "Leggo my Eggo") is a 2 year old, 9 pound, neutered, male, Lynx Point cat. He arrived at Rancho Coastal Humane Society through our FOCAS program.

Eggo is a laid-back kitty who sits back, props up his paws, and takes life easy. If you already have another cat, Eggo is fine with that. If you want him to be your only cat, Eggo is okay with that, too.

RCHS will "Leggo this Eggo" for an adoption fee of $125.

That includes neuter, up to date vaccines, veterinary exam, and microchip.

Rancho Coastal Humane Society is at 389 Requeza Street in Encinitas. Adoption hours are 11 am to 5 pm Wednesday through Monday.

For more information call 760753-6413 or log on to www.sdpets.org.

not receive one.  Try to get the real story from the listing broker.

What happened to the previous owners and did they remove anything of value from the home? Water heaters and air-conditioning units can magically disappear.  It is important that you order a title search on the property. Look to see if there is only one mortgage.

If there is a second mortgage, this needs to be resolved before purchasing the property. The title search will also show you if there are any liens on the property.  Find out how long the home has been vacant. If the utilities have been shut off for a long time, the home could have deteriorated quickly. In addition, homes that are more than 50 years old could have faulty plumbing or inadequate electrical wiring.

If you are thinking, “this is a foreclosure – it’s going to be a

Patches is a 7-year-old spayed female calico mix, ID 60707.

She is a loving, mellow girl who loves to be petted and scratched.

She is past all of the silly kitten antics and is content just to be close to you. She is very friendly and will fit well into any family. Patches is front declawed.

She is available for adoption at the Escondido Humane Society, 3450 E. Valley Parkway. Her $55 adoption fee includes her spay, microchip, up-to-date vaccinations and vet exam. For more information, call (760) 888-2247 or log on to www.escondidohumanesociety.org.

The Escondido Humane Society Adoption Center is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week.

steal,” don’t be so sure. Asset managers with banks know the value of homes, have obtained appraisals on the property and many times will list the property at a higher than the appraised price. Remember, they too, are trying to recover as much of their money back as possible.

Still, even at the higher than appraised price, the property can be substantially lower than it was four or five years ago!

Please call our office at 760746-1234 with your questions about real estate. We are located at 1882 A West El Norte Parkway, Escondido 92026 in the Escondido Country Club area in the Country Club Plaza next to 7-Eleven and Cenote Grill.

A Weekly Message from the Mayor of Your Community Sponsored by Arie de Jong, in the belief that it is important for elected leaders to communicate with their constituents and that constituents have a means of hearing from their elected leaders.

A Community Service of Arie de Jong

Escondido • Mayor Sam Abed

San Marcos • Mayor Jim Desmond

New Dining Opportunities in Escondido

Annual State of the City Address to be held this month

We have some new restaurants in Escondido, bringing new dining opportunities to our city along with private investment and jobs. The most recent addition, Jersey Mike’s Subs, started as one small sub shop on the Jersey Shore back in the 1950s and has grown into a national chain. Their amazing growth hasn’t affected quality -- all their subs are served on bread baked fresh each day.

Another is Five Guys Burgers, which opened last month. They also started as a small operation on the east coast decades ago, and have since expanded to hundreds of locations nationwide. The Washington Post

calls Five Guys “the Willy Wonkas of Burgercraft.”

Downtown Escondido has many unique restaurants, and some new ones have recently established themselves along Grand Avenue. The California Avocado Grill’s menu is inspired by the avocado. The Grand, which opened in December, offers locally-inspired cuisine and a martini lounge.

We are anticipating the spring opening of Vintana, the newest Cohn restaurant located at the Lexus Centre. The view from the dining room is spectacular. Stay tuned for two more new restaurants opening this year at Westfield North County as part of their full-scale renovation and expansion. For more restaurants go to www.escondido.org/uniquelyescondido.aspx and enjoy working your way through the list!

The City of San Marcos’ 2012 State of the City Address will take place on Tuesday, February 28 at Williams Barn at Walnut Grove Park, 1950 Sycamore Drive. The lunch event will begin at 11:30 am and the Mayor’s address will start at 12:30 pm.

Tickets are available for $25 per person by calling the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce at (760) 7441270. Corporate sponsorships are also available through the chamber.

This year’s theme is “Honoring Our Vibrant Heritage. Celebrating Our New Horizons,” and will touch on our overall accomplishments while

Last week, I announced more positive results of the managed competition process, which has yielded another significant benefit to taxpayers through competitive bidding between employees and private firms.

Under the winning bid by the city’s own employees, San Diego’s street sweeping function will now cost $560,000 less annually – a 12 percent reduction. The winning bid includes no reduction in service levels; our streets will be swept with the same frequency, but at a lower cost to taxpayers.

City workers beat out three independent contractors in the bidding

With more than $6 million in annual savings to taxpayers so far, we’ll continue putting other functions through the process. The next functions slated for competition are stormwater facilities operations and traffic engineering and operations.

Vista • Mayor Judy Ritter Last week I had the privilege to present the State of the City to the community.

The following are highlights from the address. The complete speech is available at cityofvista.com.

• The global and national trends are still affecting all of us in Vista. This past year has been about coming together and strengthening our community in a difficult time.

• In 2011, we continued the City’s strong focus on creating jobs in Vista and helping businesses to thrive.

I am cautiously optimistic that the Vista economy is making some progress as new businesses open in the

Zora Neale Hurston

process. Last year, city employees also won the competitions for publishing services and fleet services, which together resulted in annual savings of $5.5 million.

Competition spurred our employees to devise a plan to work smarter and more efficiently – which is exactly what managed competition is designed to do. The savings mean millions more that can be spent on public safety and on repairing roads, maintaining parks and operating our libraries.

city and City staff work to keep existing ones here. I applaud all of these new ventures. These business owners had the vision and confidence to invest in Vista.

• Whether a business has been here for years or they are a new addition, they all recognize the unique opportunities this city has to offer and have selected Vista as the city to start, or expand and grow their business.

• I look forward to the year ahead as we complete existing projects, tackle new initiatives, and work with our partners to make Vista as good or even better tomorrow as it is today.

The State of the City Address will reair on San Marcos TV Channel 19 (Cox Communications), Channel 24 (Time Warner Cable) and Channel 99 (AT&T) during the month of March on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 9 am and 6 pm, and Saturdays and Sundays at 11 am and 3 pm. It will also be available on the city’s web site.

For event tickets or sponsorships, please contact the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce at (760) 7441270.

Oceanside • Mayor Jim Wood

Rancho Bernardo • Mayor Jerry Sanders Same Service, Lower Cost

presenting the city’s vision for the future in the areas of public safety, parks and community services, community development, traffic and transportation, and other quality of life issues.

2012” event.

The month of February in Oceanside has been dedicated to the “Big Read

Through the great work of our Oceanside Public Library (OPL), City staff members have worked tirelessly to obtain a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to sponsor this great event and encourage the community to share in the enjoyment of reading great works of American literature.

In cooperation with OPL, numerous community groups and individuals will be sponsoring a monthlong series of discussions inspired

by the book, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston; a powerful book about an African American woman’s journey to finding her own voice.

As a very special treat for the public, Ms. Hurston’s niece, Lucy Anne Hurston, will be a featured speaker as the author of “Speak, So You Can Speak Again” The Life and Times of Zora Neale Hurston on February 18 at 3:00 PM at MiraCosta College’s Little Theatre (1 Barnard Drive, Building 3601, in Oceanside).

All RSVPs should be done through the North County African American Women’s Association via their website, www.ncaawa.org.

It should prove to be an exciting afternoon in Oceanside!

pp n you y

February 16, 2012 - Page 10

HAPPY St. PATRICK’S DAY!

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Page 12 - February 16, 2012 obsolete in two or three years.

“Moores Law” saw optical drives increased in speed, hard drives get bigger, and memory and CPU speeds balloon. Software designers countered with ever more powerful applications, Microsoft was forced to provide a new OS every two or three years, DOS, Windows 3.1, 95,98, ME, 2000 and in 2001, XP. Nome and Paul Van Middlesworth email: pvanmid@yahoo.com The Computer Factory The Need for Speed

In 1965 Gordon Moore, a founder of Intel Corp, predicted a long-term trend whereby the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit would double approximately every two years.

Known as “Moores Law,” it meant that the power of computers could be expected to double every two years. That prediction has held true for nearly 50 years.

The average PC today is twice as fast as a two year old PC, four times as fast as a four year old and eight times as fast as a six year old PC. From the early 1980s through the 1990s, the relentless increase in speed and capability rendered a new PC

High Tech Fair Inspires Students Scores of technology companies gathered last week to showcase their breakthrough inventions and spotlight the growing number of career opportunities available to students trained in science and technology. The event marked the 14th annual High Tech Fair. Each year, organizers hope to spark student interest and encourage young minds to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, also known as STEM. The 50-plus exhibits showcased innovations in fields like biotechnology, aerospace, and robotics. To demonstrate how technology impacts the daily work of local companies like Lockheed Martin and Genentech, students were given an opportunity to learn about technology firsthand in an exciting, interactive way.

Today XP is nearly twelve years old and hasn’t been sold since 2007, yet it is still used on half the PCs in the world. XP still runs virtually all Windows applications, new or old faster than Vista or Win7. How can that be when PCs speeds have increased thirty fold since 2001? The answer is simple, technology has changed but we haven’t.

way we use our PCs in order to take full advantage of the power available in new PCs. The things most of us use our PCs for today are either Internet based (Email, Skype, social networks, browsing etc) or applications (MS Office, Quick Books, Turbo-tax, Family Tree Maker, photo and audio editing, watching movies, etc). All of these applications are easily handled by a six year old PC with Windows XP, a clean OS, sufficient hard drive space and a couple of GB of RAM.

for speed” is a non-issue, enough is enough.

The slow sale of new Win PCs is due in part to the fact that savvy users are still using their XP PCs. Most new PCs purchased today are replacements for either dead XPs or slow “Vista” PCs.

If you are a “power user” like a high-end gamer you’re always looking for more speed but for the vast majority of us the “need

At The Computer Factory, we can keep your old XP PC running like new or sell you a brand new Win7 notebook or desk top PC, (high quality, not like a Dell or HP). We can also take your old PC as a trade-in, refurbish it and sell it to some one who needs a PC but can’t or won’t pay the price for a new one.

Win/Win.

Think about it this way. Lets say the tooth fairy swapped your family car out for a new Bugatti Veyron while you slept. Its top speed is 267MPH. Will you be able to take advantage of that incredible speed going to work, church or the grocery store? Of course not. You would need to change your life-style drastically in order to fully enjoy your new toy.

The same principle is in play with PCs. Most of us would need to drastically change the

As the success of the event highlights, San Diego boasts an extensive network of high-tech companies and research institutions.

Our neighborhood schools are therefore uniquely positioned to collaborate with these groups and increase STEM opportunities in the classroom.

Additional STEM programs are necessary to ensure that our students are prepared to compete for the jobs of the future. The High Tech Fair serves as a model program that engages students and increases their enthusiasm for science education.

Public Safety Should be a Priority

cases, classified as “serious” or “violent” by the state.

The main purpose of government is to maintain law and order in our communities. The most effective way to achieve that is to catch criminals and put them behind bars for the compulsory amount of time.

Unfortunately, Sacramento Democrats have a different vision. They want to give career criminals undeserved leniency, putting law-abiding Californians at risk.

That may sound reasonable to some, but appearances deceive. Our complicated laws do not readily identify what is a serious or violent crime.

Hundreds of felonies, such as human trafficking and solicitation to commit murder are not legally considered serious or violent by the state!

Senator Mark Wyland represents the people of the 38th Senate District, which includes San Diego (Rancho Bernardo, 4S Ranch, Rancho Penasquitos, Carmel Valley) and Solana Beach, Encinitas, Carlsbad, Rancho Santa Fe, San Marcos, Escondido, Vista the south Orange County cities of San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano.

Assembly Democrats recently passed Assembly Bill 327, which would water down California’s Three Strikes law, the tough-on-crime measure that voters passed overwhelmingly in 1994. AB 327 would require that in order for its 25 years to life imprisonment penalty to apply, the three felony offenses must be, in most

That is why I am strongly opposed to any plan that weakens Three Strikes. We must fully fund public safety and vigorously prosecute criminals to the fullest extent of the law. Coddling criminals by giving them a slap on the wrist sends the wrong message and makes California much less safe as a result.

Become a Subscriber! Delivered every Thursday to your Mailbox Just call 760.747.7119 for subscription details.

February 16, 2012 - Page 13

‘The Defeated’ Cont. from Page 5 merce and trade, fumed in an open letter to the prime minister in 1957. “They must go all out and save themselves ... from Sinhala colonisation and establish in the first instance an independent Tamil Lanka.”

Next came a republican constitution that said the Sinhalese were the original inhabitants of the island, and that their greatest duty was to protect Buddhism. With a roar of enthusiastic ayes in a majority Sinhalese Parliament, multiethnic Sri Lanka, with its Tamils, Malayalis, Burghers, Christians and Muslims, was declared a Sinhala-Buddhist country.

Swarna knew about Suntharalingam and the constitution, but to her, all that was a pointless prelude to the real story—the part where she came into the picture, when she learnt about the massacres of Tamils, the denial to them of jobs and college seats they had come to expect. She didn’t know, and didn’t care to know, that Sinhala Buddhist nationalism was initially a reaction to proselytising Christian missionaries and Westernisation. That when the majority locals felt threatened by British culture, they set up more Buddhist vernacular schools and printed more Sinhala text books. Literature, mass media and political meetings all began to spread the message of Sinhala superiority, of the need to defend the indigenous culture of the ‘Lion Race.’ The first victims of this new chauvinism were not the Tamils, but the Sinhala Christians in the south and the west; after them came the Muslims, the Indian Tamils who worked in the central tea plantations, the Malayalis, and, finally, the biggest minority, the Sri Lankan Tamils.

As state persecution increased, Swarna’s generation began to see the elderly political leadership as being too submissive and willing to compromise.

Since Independence, Tamil leaders were in fact protesting ethnic oppression by holding fasts, protest marches, sit-ins, and blockades.

When they came back home, however, they were drenched in sweat and frustration. “The leaders in my area didn’t come back like victors,” Swarna says. “They came back like people who had just hit their heads on a wall and returned with nothing but a mozhai (big bump) on their foreheads.”

Swarna and her friends grew up imbibing the fears, wishes, and bitterness of their parents, teachers and their community. They were surrounded by cinema, books, song, myth, superstition, schools, and political and religious leaders— all of them talking only of fears and threats. And when they felt the doors of employment and education shut on them, they believed the discrimination had gone on for too long.

Every time Swarna must explain her anger, she speaks of Tamil honour: an intangible, glorious, exclusive thing that she believes only a Tamil can ever understand.

“It’s inside, you know, and it gives us strength,” she says, slamming her chest with her right hand closed into a tight fist. “Without it, you don’t feel anger, you’ll only end up feeling shame. Anger is what you need to defend yourself. And when you feel it burning inside, you can’t drink a glass of water and sit at home. You must go out and unleash it.”

insisted. Swarna, like all LTTE combatants, was given a new name when she joined. She was called Tamizhazhagi, a woman as beautiful as Tamil. Scores like her who joined dreamt of their roles in a historic victory, never imagining that they would die, as most of them did, on the frontlines of a losing war.

Many politicians unleashed this cherished anger through democratic protests. They were optimistic about change coming from the government, a feeling the Tigers did not share. Instead, the Tigers ignited, fed and thrived on a destructive rage of impatience.

In July 1983, the simmering hate between the Sinhalese and Tamils exploded on to the streets. Mobs lashed through Sri Lankan Tamil ghettos in Colombo, raided shops owned by Tamils, dragging out owners and customers, beat and stabbed them, and tore off their limbs. Riots erupted across Sri Lanka. An estimated 3,000 Tamils were killed (a death toll that is still hotly contested; the government maintains that only 400 died). The largely Sinhalese police looked on and did nothing.

It was the first time there was strong evidence of government complicity, the first time it was clear that the government had targeted thousands of civilian Tamils.

That it was provoked by the Tigers’ killing of 13 Sri Lankan soldiers weeks earlier did not matter to the bereaved Tamils.

To Swarna, the details of the bloody carnage are frozen in a single image: that of her mother wailing, rocking back and forth on her haunches, clutching her long hair at the temples. “They want to finish us,” Swarna remembers her mother repeating in a mad loop. “They didn’t even spare babies and women!”

There was no turning back.

Demagogues like Velupillai Prabhakaran started to stoke deep passions, appealing to language, religion, Tamil soil and Tamil blood. The killings strengthened not only the mass support for a separate Tamil nation, but also the feeling that violence was the only way left to achieve it.

Barely a month after what Sri Lankan Tamils across the globe now call Black July, the LTTE started to recruit young women.

They produced a document titled Women and the Revolution, a Tamil copy of which Swarna had to burn when she would later leave her home in the ‘last war,’ the one that would end the conflict. It outlined the role of women in the Tamil liberation struggle. A woman should learn to defend herself, it said. A woman is the embodiment of Tamil culture, it

Female Tamil Tigers Initially, the women were involved only in political propaganda. But from mid-1984, they began to receive military training, and a women’s guerrilla unit was established. By the time Swarna joined the LTTE in 1993, women manned checkpoints, bunkers, and learnt to make and use ammunition. They directly participated in combat against the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.

Swarna’s hardest moment in the LTTE was the haircut. After a 10day training at the Siruthai Puligal facility, all 20 girls of her batch were asked to form a line under the harsh sun. One by one, their heads were shaved. Symbolically, they were being sheared of their femininity, lest it cripple their readiness for war. Practically, it did what easily identifiable smocks in rehab facilities do: it prevented recruits, especially minors, from escaping back to their normal lives. Swarna went through the haircut ritual for the eight years that she was a fighter. Each time she bowed her head under the razor, it brought on a fatalistic impulse. She remembered that she had no identity but that of a combatant, no freedom to run if she ever let herself feel fear. Running her hand over her prickly scalp, Swarna felt like a part of something larger. It was a war, but she believed it was a revolutionary struggle. In recognition of her commitment, she was one of the few batches of girls that were taught satellite technology, and she became a navigator for GPSdependent weaponry.

A number of Tamil women—some who fought and some who did not—still insist that under the reign of the LTTE they felt like full partners in their community’s struggle, with a greater sense of equality and freedom from harassment. During the civil war, Tamil women invested in political and social change: they came together to demand that only female soldiers from the Sri Lankan Army

body-search female civilians from the Tamil community, to rally for the release of family members from detention, and to create a movement in which they were not just playing a supportive role.

Swarna is aware of the other side of this coin: women who fled from forced recruitment, who lost their family members, who were shown no mercy if their missions failed.

She had herself dragged back many girls who were forcefully recruited and then tried to escape, identifying them in markets and crowded streets by their shaved heads— sometimes to save them from the thrashing and humiliation reserved for deserters and sometimes to bring them back to duty.

“Women don’t tend to kill easily,” she says. “To become stronger, we need more training.”

What Swarna desperately wanted to do was join the Black Tigers, the small, elite suicide squad established in 1987. At that time, there were, according to different estimates, between 300 and 2,000 female suicide bombers. They were regular combatants picked for their inconspicuous looks and vanilla personalities, but also for their mental resilience and iron commitment to Eelam. Almost always, they were personally approved by Prabhakaran. They were taught to make and detonate bombs, speak chaste Tamil and some Sinhalese. Women were also asked to read translations of international feminist literature. “Anna (Prabhakaran) knew that women are no less powerful than men,” Swarna says. What Prabhakaran also knew was that female terrorists could be more effective than men, because they were unanticipated and underestimated.

For Swarna, being a suicide bomber was not about ambition. It was, to her, like a coveted whitecollar job in the insurgency. One woman would be sent alone on a mission. Her death would mean that her people would be a step closer to Eelam. She would be remembered forever; her bravery would inspire generations. In mid2005, taken in by the glamour of sacrifice, and the chance to meet Prabhakaran in the flesh, Swarna pestered her unit leader (also a longtime friend) to nominate her for suicide training. The middleaged leader, however, told Swarna she was far too valuable to lose.

“That’s just sentimental talk,” Swarna spat. “Black Tigers are respected the most. Come on, you know I will be good. I want to die for Eelam!”

‘The Defeated’ Cont. on Page 14

Page 14 - February 16, 2012 ‘The Defeated’ Cont. from Page 13 “Please understand,” said her leader.

“Give me a reason. One good reason.”

The unit leader cursed. “It’s your own fault,” she said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Who asked you to get married?” she said. “And then have children also?”

••••• Wrapped tight in the only Sari Latha had decided to hold on to, little Dhanushan was born in an abandoned school converted into a hospital. There was one doctor for what seemed to be nearly 200 people. Latha remembers feeling iffy about him—he looked too young, this Dr Devan, and he didn’t even have a stethoscope. And, of course, he was covered in dried blood.

People were screaming, crying, bleeding and dying all around him, and he looked like he was a second away from storming off.

The night Latha’s son was ready to

Escaping Tamils be conceived, Devan gave her an undivided three minutes of his attention. After the birth, over her newborn son’s high-pitched wail, the exhausted doctor said to her, “This was the easy part. Go now, and keep him safe. I don’t want to ever see you again.”

When he recounts the ‘last war,’ the fourth and final phase of the conflict, Siva is almost always guilty of forgetting Dhanushan’s birth. He hadn’t been there—he was lost somewhere 20 kms away, looking for food. But for both Siva and Latha, the birth of their son barely registered among the volley of other perils they had to dodge; the birth was a predictable event, almost a chore. Siva mentions it almost as an afterthought, when he explains why they had to dump the enormous sacks of foodgrains on the way somewhere. “Money and food were of no use when they were just dead weight. Oh, and it was cumbersome when we had one more child to carry.”

On the 10th day of their walk to safety in Vanni, they waded through a muddy river to reach Ottisuttan. The shells were still falling, making big, hot splashes.

No one was screaming anymore.

Few were even talking. Everyone

was tired, walking towards an unknown haven like zombies.

Ahead of the long stream of bobbing heads, Siva saw a toddler fall down every few minutes, inadvertently breathing in and swallowing large gulps of the dirty river. His mother was already holding three babies, and the child had no choice but to feebly hang on to the trailing end of her sari. Later in the refugee camp, when Siva would see the boy being treated for his tiny lungs, poisoned by the inhaled gunpowder, blood and rotten flesh, he would feel like he was watching a scene on TV. After 10 damp, gruelling, fearsome days, he was inured to the death and desolation that surrounded him. He was carrying his daughter on his shoulders, and his pregnant wife and newborn son were some 100 metres away. His family was all he had. He didn’t want to help anyone else.

be safe in the No Fire Zone,” the voice repeated over and over in a Tamil thickly accented with Sinhala. “There are no bombs there, no shooting. We will give you food.

Come to us, come to us. Move towards the No Fire Zone. Move!”

The Tamils had by then sensed that this war was different from the others they had been through.

Fewer Tigers seemed to be around in uniform, and the longer the fighting went on, the more army there seemed to be. They sensed defeat. They had begun to trust whoever was there to give instructions.

It took Siva and his family 16 days to reach the army-patrolled road, which was really just an avenue of sludge. At least 50,000 dirty, drenched people were dragging their feet, bags and last shreds of optimism through it. One man dropped his basket of chickens.

Before he could bend to retrieve them, some five grubby hands snatched the birds away.

“We have become animals,” Latha said, as they slid into the human chain. “At this rate, we are going to end up eating each other soon.”

“Why would the army send us there then?!” yelled Siva. Latha started to cry.

Siva touched the shoulder of an elderly man walking by him.

“Aiyya, where exactly are they taking us?”

“You don’t know?” the man asked.

“You don’t know?” Siva threw back.

The man shrugged. “No one is telling us anything.” He lifted his grubby white shirt smeared with mud and what looked like snot.

Near the knot of his lungi, a small transistor black radio pressed against his wrinkly skin. “We can try BBC radio whenever it catches a signal,” he said.

Throughout the last phase of the war, the BBC Tamilosai broadcast, thanks to its shortwave frequency, was the only source of information for tens of thousands of Tamils lost in the labyrinthine battleground in northern Sri Lanka. It had also prevented Siva from making “the world’s worst decision.”

The Sri Lankan Army was announcing over loudspeakers across the Mullaitivu district that Tamil civilians should go to a ‘No Fire Zone.’ “Tamil people, you will

As hundreds of families changed direction and made for the No Fire Zone, the old man with the radio flagged Siva down. The No Fire Zone was being attacked.

Hundreds—the BBC’s source couldn’t confirm the exact figure— could be dead.

“The [LTTE] doesn’t care about us anymore,” replied the radio man.

“You think the army will?”

The radio man told them about his 18-year-old daughter, Vinoda, who he thought was stuck somewhere in Puthukkudiyiruppu, unable to join the rest of his family. Vinoda was one of the over 5,100 people the Tigers were holding as human shields. The army and navy had taken over the island’s entire coastline for the first time in decades, cutting off any escape route by sea.

A thinning group of Tigers was cornered in a two sq km area.

They built high bunds around the area, lit circles of fire along the perimeter and forcefully held thousands of terrified civilians, hoping the army would hold its fire. They didn’t. Shells continued to fall over thousands of civilian hostages. One night, Vinoda’s husband, panicking and losing his mind, decided to make a run for it.

When he tried to break through the bunds with some 20 others, the LTTE shot them all. Later, when Vinoda was reunited with her father at a camp for the internally displaced, she would tell him that when the army finally rescued her, she saw charred bodies lying along the periphery of the battle zone.

As night fell, Siva found a temple for his family and the radio man to sleep in. Just as they lay down, a couple of young LTTE fighters ran in. Stripping down to their underwear, they dug a shallow pit in the mud, and dumped their weapons, green uniforms and cyanide capsules into it. Then they grabbed Siva’s extra lungis and ran out.

They were trying to blend in as civilians. Being unarmed and vulnerable was the only way they would be safe.

Siva thought about how he had once felt protected by the ‘boys,’ who had for the past three decades appointed themselves the sole leaders of 2.5 million Sri Lankan Tamils. Now, he felt, being a gov-

ernment ration shop clerk had probably been the safest identity he could have had.

••••• Swarna had fallen asleep on the tree, and woke up coughing furiously. Remembering where she was with a start, she slapped both her hands over her mouth. It was eerily quiet; in the past five months of the escalating last conflict, mornings had come unceremoniously, without even the chirping of birds. Below her, the carnage was over. Five naked girls, their bodies twisted in the last moments of struggle, lay still on the ground. Where were the others? Where had they gone? They didn’t even know how to get around the dense forests without her.

Swarna pressed her throbbing knee. Her old injuries, the ones that had dragged her out of the war and into family life, seemed to be burning again.

Swarna’s had been the first wedding in Vanni after the 2004 tsunami. She’d met her husband while lying injured in a battle in Mannar.

A missile shard had hit her square in the abdomen, and after running through bramble for an hour, she had collapsed from excessive bleeding. A combatant who happened to pass by lifted the half-unconscious Swarna, threw her on his left shoulder, and continued to run, still shooting with his right hand. “I was hurting, but I was embarrassed … My clothes were fully torn from here to here,” Swarna says, her finger making a straight line from her stomach to her inner thigh.

When she came to the Mullaitivu Base Hospital, Swarna found a man lying in a stretcher next to her. His shoulder was in a cast, and almost his entire body was punctured by tiny shrapnel. The doctors told her it was he who had saved her life.

When no one was around, Swarna asked him his name. “Deepan,” he replied, giving her his LTTE name.

When they were discharged from the hospital, Deepan and Swarna were declared unfit for battle. She was transferred to the LTTE’s films division, while he was made a jeep driver. In a few months, they decided to get married.

The wedding was held in Pudukkudiyiruppu, in early 2005.

Swarna was a Hindu and Deepan a Catholic, but after they joined the Tigers, they had forsaken religion and any faith in god. They came to their wedding ceremony in fatigues, and in place of a mangalsutra or a ring, Deepan tied a thick yellow thread with a golden Tigertooth pendant around Swarna’s neck. This was followed by an oath. “Even though we’re married,” they vowed, “we will place our nation, our Tamil soil, our Tamil people above each other. We will pick

‘The Defeated’ Cont. on Page 15

February 16, 2012 - Page 15

‘The Defeated’ Cont. from Page 14 the gun over any birthday, family function, or consideration of love and kinship.” It was an oath every Tiger man and woman had to take if they chose to marry while serving in the LTTE. At the LTTE’s inception, Prabhakaran had banned marriage, relationships and sexual activity among the cadres. It was part of a rigid disciplinary code for combatants, which included bans on smoking, drinking and gambling.

Believing that lust would distract combatants from the call of duty, and that family life would make them selfish, Prabhakaran ruthlessly enforced celibacy. He is known to have defamed, excommunicated, and even murdered those who strayed from his diktat. One of those who he allegedly killed was a dear friend and cofounder of the LTTE. Soon, however, Prabhakaran himself fell in love. Several versions of the story of his first love exist, all told with varying degrees of glee and irony, but always in a guilty whisper, as if even after his death, talking about his personal life would reduce Prabhakaran’s carefully constructed larger-than-life persona. According to one story, a pretty young girl came to the leader’s attention through a newspaper report. She was on a hunger strike to protest the killings of hundreds of Tamils by the Sri Lankan Army, and Prabhakaran sent his close friends to find out more. Eventually, he decided to meet the girl in person. He ended her weeklong hunger strike with a glass of juice, and then, struck by her dedication to the Tamil cause, asked for her hand.

Another theory had it that the girl had accused Prabhakaran of not caring enough about his cadre, and letting them die like cattle without so much as an apology for their martyrdom. She is said to have challenged the LTTE leader to stop her from fasting unto death.

Prabhakaran is said to have abducted her to silence her accusations, but when tongues started wagging about the leader living with a girl, Prabhakaran announced a wedding.

Whatever the version, soon after his own wedding, Prabhakaran revoked the anti-sex and anti-marriage rule. It was a big relief for several clandestine lovers in the LTTE, but the stigma, as Swarna realised when she tried in vain for several postmarital years to become a Black Tiger, seemed to have remained. A married woman would always be suspected of infidelity, of loving more than just Tamil Eelam. She would be considered weaker, unless she proved otherwise.

In the ‘last war,’ Swarna was appointed navigator and cameraperson. She had not been in a battle for years; her hair had grown long, and she felt unfit. Still, a month before she would find herself hid-

ing up a tree, she had been put in charge of a group of girls between nine and 13 years old. Within a minute of meeting the group, Swarna smelt their fear. The girls didn’t want to be there, and it was written all over their faces.

Swarna, her younger brother, father, and husband had all joined the Tigers voluntarily. They’d undergone intense training before they were sent off to fight with their platoons and stayed in quarters built specifically for troops.

Swarna sent her two sons to LTTE-run crèches where they were fed and cared for when she went to war. As she puts it, “The LTTE made everything so comfortable for you that you felt ashamed if you didn’t go out there and fight for them with all your heart.” There was, in a sense, at least an illusion of voluntarism.

From 2006, however, young boys and girls didn’t have a choice. It was the beginning of the catching season, when Prabhakaran realised that his guerrilla army didn’t have enough soldiers to fight a conventional battle with the Sri Lankan Army. Children would be ‘caught’ by the LTTE—kidnapped from their homes and schools and forcefully sent to the frontlines, with barely 10 days of training. Between 2003 and 2008, the United Nations recorded 6,000 cases of recruitment of children as young as 14.

Swarna clarifies that age didn’t really matter. Anyone around five feet tall, boy or girl, was dragged away.

As the ‘catching’ escalated, several families dug out bunkers under their houses, in which they hid their teenagers for years. They didn’t go to school, didn’t venture outdoors, and didn’t talk to anyone other than immediate family.

One of the girls Swarna was in charge of said her 12-year-old sister got married to escape conscription.

But the LTTE soon wised up.

They had photographs of every family that lived in Vanni. They would crosscheck the photo with everyone in the house. If anyone, especially a youngster, was missing, they’d take a hostage.

The new recruits were tonsured and sent to training camps, and told a drone with cameras would circle overhead, watching their every move. Anyone trying to escape was either shot at immediately, or brought back to the commander, who would publicly beat them.

In March 2009, when Swarna was asked to take the new recruits to war, she felt a churning in the pit of her stomach. She was used to taking orders, even when every bone in her body rebelled. She had shot a Sinhalese soldier, barely 20, at point-blank range, as he kneeled in front of her, begged her, and showed with his hands rocking an invisible cradle that he had two babies. She had killed a friend who had defied orders and cost the Tigers an entire operation. “I can kill when I can justify it,” she says.

But this, sending children to face a real army when they could barely hold a gun, didn’t seem to fit her larger cause.

The girls stood shivering in front of Swarna, their faces pale with hunger and fear. In the previous decade, they had only seen loved ones die, their older brothers leave on boats to foreign countries, and their schools shut down every few months. Their parents had ideological reasons to rebuild their community from scratch over and over again through a lifetime of war. But for them, it was an exorbitant price to pay for wars they had not chosen. These children were born to the war, but not its justifications. They did not have easy enemies and heroes. They did not see why they must fight, Swarna had thought, and it was useless to tell them.

Was this how the Tigers had been fighting in the last few months? Is this how they expected to win?

With children? This was uncharacteristically inefficient, she thought, especially to face a newly strengthened Sri Lankan military that had been given orders “to finish the job.” Child guerrillas stood no chance against a conventional army that was attacking from all sides. Maybe that’s why the LTTE was retreating more than advancing. Maybe that’s why more combatants seemed to be dying.

A feeling of doom overcame her.

She realised the war was long over.

What was going on now was a charade, a last ditch attempt by the Tigers to remain a fighting side.

Swarna swore on the Tamil soil and did as she was told. “It’s not like I could just leave and go join an office as a clerk,” she explains. “I could have thought more about it, but I couldn’t have objected.

Sometimes, you do things for something you love, and you hope it will make sense later.”

But now every one of those girls was gone, raped and killed in a war they’d never understood. It did not make sense.

Swarna swung off the tree, looked at her compass, and walked eastwards. She had to find her family.

On the way, she took off her chain with the tiger-tooth pendant and dumped it in a river.

••••• On the 18th day, Siva reached a bund, beyond which was Matalan, from where the Sri Lankan Army was taking Tamils to the rehabilitation camp. In front of them was a pile of rubber slippers that people had left before clambering up.

Siva added his black pair to the pile, smiling. It felt like he was entering a temple.

He jumped down to the other side, and crossed the shallow end of the Nandi Kadal Lagoon. At the shore, a young soldier extended his hand to help him up. That was the first time Siva had ever seen a Sinhalese person up close. The boy told him to keep moving, collect his food parcel, and go to the next village,

Senduranchilaiyadi. From there, a bus would take him to the Vavuniya camp.

Senduranchilaiyadi was mayhem.

Instead of going to the bus, the Tamils were shoving, hollering and snatching at the potato-curry and rice packets that were being served. Some were running wildly in the mango orchard nearby, climbing the trees and slobbering through the mangoes. Biscuit packets were being given out, but people ravenously rushed at the army personnel distributing them.

Overwhelmed, the soldiers began beating the Tamils, trying to get them in a queue and shove them into the bus. “We thought 2,0003,000 people will come,” mumbled a soldier. “If all you two million come and sit on our heads, what will we do?”

Little did Siva know that entire villages had been evacuated. That about 300,000 people like him were roaming homeless, the largest number of people ever displaced in Sri Lanka. What he knew, however, was that he had already begun to reshuffle his loyalties—place his life in the hands of the army he had been bred to hate; and hate the LTTE he had looked up to, sheltered and worked for, in whose promise of Eelam he had almost lost his family.

••••• When Swarna reached her mother and sons near Puthukkudiyiruppu, she decided it was time to take a boat to India. The asking rate was LKR60,000, but she knew the boatman, a handicapped ex-fighter.

She could give him her pistol, some kerosene she had stashed somewhere, and LKR30,000. Her husband had been shot near Devipuram, and he wouldn’t survive a nightlong motorboat ride.

He had decided to surrender to the army.

Yes, I should leave Sri Lanka, leave this damn place, she thought. Go first to Rameshwaram in India, and then from there to Malaysia, then maybe seek asylum in Canada. People had done it before.

She should try, she resolved.

When she told her brother her decision, he was appalled. “How can you leave?” he asked. “You’ll abandon your people?”

“I have children, Guna,” said Swarna.

“You will be a traitor if you leave,” he growled at her. “If all of us leave, there will never be Tamil Eelam. All the people who died for it will have died in vain. Go, drohi! That’s what you were anyway, a traitor.”

Guilt-ridden, Swarna didn’t leave.

She pretended to be a civilian, got to Matalan and took the crowded bus with her sons to the army-run Ramanathan camp in Vavuniya.

••••• After about five days in the

‘The Defeated’ Cont. on Page 16

Page 16 - February 16, 2012 ‘The Defeated’ Cont. from Page 15 camp, everyone learnt to answer questions quickly. If you didn’t have a specific answer, you lied.

Old people made up dates of birth.

Everyone said they had two acres of land in their hometown, even if they had not an inch. No one gave their combat names. Years spent in the LTTE? Two months, at most three. Yes, I was forcefully recruited. Yes, even though I am 35.

Swarna was told to teach Tamil in the makeshift school. After close to 15 years, she began wearing skirts instead of trousers. She always kept her children close. She knew it was their cute faces that kept her beyond suspicion.

Siva was asked to help serve lunch every other day. His government employee card was opening several doors. The day his baby son turned over onto his stomach, a Sri Lankan Army cadet helped to smuggle a local photographer into Siva’s tent. They draped a red sari over the sheet-tin walls, and took studio-type pictures.

On 18 May 2009, on the day Swarna was running a fever, and Siva received his son’s photo album, Prabhakaran was killed.

The streets of Colombo erupted in impromptu celebrations. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced it to the world as the end of terrorism in Sri Lanka. Speaking on the government TV channel from Parliament, Rajapaksa said, “Today is a day which is very, very significant—not only to us Sri Lankans but to the entire world. Today, we have been able to liberate the entire country from the clutches of terrorism.”

The war, he said, was a device for a nobler task: that of assimilating the Tamils into Sri Lanka for a unified national identity. The terrorists were taken out of the equation.

Peace would prevail; warring Sinhalese and Tamil identities would be reconciled.

Most of the 300,000 people in the camps in Vavuniya hated Rajapaksa, but the speech stirred many of them. They were surprised to hear the president make the distinction between the LTTE and the Tamil people. If he was sympathetic enough to realise that all Tamils were not Tigers, maybe things would get better.

••••• It would be six months before Siva would leave the camp, briefly, with some others picked at random by the army. They were being taken to Jaffna in a bus to bring back food rations from the army camp there. As soon as their bus left Vavuniya city, it hit the A9, the 320-km-long highway that bisects the island from the south to the north, ending at the claw-like tip of Jaffna.

To this day, the A-9 embodies the impermanence of Sri Lanka, connecting the two ethnic communities in whose name wars were waged for a quarter of a century. It

was shut in war by the LTTE and opened during ceasefire. After the ‘last war,’ and just before the presidential elections in January 2010, the A-9 was cleared for traffic. But this time, it didn’t comprise army vans, NGO cars, bicycles and scooters. The postwar A-9 was choc-a-bloc with tourist buses from Colombo. It had been about 30 years since Sri Lankans from the south had set eyes on the north. There was a festive air in the TV-coaches, and large families came with picnic baskets.

The army checkpoint in Omanthai in Vavuniya, however, remained. Buses were stopped, everyone got out, their IDs were checked. Standing in the queue, Siva felt in his pocket for his national identity card. Since the end of the war, the ID had become critical to his life. It identified him immediately as Tamil—his name was printed in both Sinhala and Tamil, while that of a non-Tamil would have been in Sinhala alone.

But without it, he was suspect, a man without a record, whose very existence could drive the army to paranoia. And that could lead to anything from being arrested, sent to a detention camp, separated from your family, to being interrogated or harassed for days on end.

In an oddly conciliatory role for a people whose homes and lives were entirely lost in war, the Sri Lankan Tamils seemed to spend all their energies trying to calm the military. Everyone in Siva’s bus kept their voices low, and their opinions to themselves. They refused to converse in Tamil in the presence of a Sinhala cadet, lest he assume they were conspiring, or poking fun at him. The army was perpetually on the lookout for undercover Tigers, so Tamils— even those with nothing to hide— spent every waking moment displaying an active innocence.

As they drove up from Omanthai, Siva looked eagerly out of the window. While he was at the camp, how had his Vanni changed? The scenes whizzing past were those of trees freshly chopped down, houses recently shelled. Women and children sat outside a few haphazardly-built huts with blue tarpaulin roofs. They stared glassily at the passing vehicles. There were soldiers with guns every 15 kilometres. The Vaani looked like it had never been home to anyone.

For Siva and his family, the protracted Eelam war was devastating, but its end far more unsettling.

They were finally free to move around, but aware that they were watched constantly. The army that had bombed their homes was now their neighbour and benefactor.

They were desperate to start life anew but felt too hemmed in to try. In a fundamental sense, was the war over at all?

The bus passed Kilinochchi, the city that had served as the Tigers’ operational headquarters from 1995 to January 2009, when it was

captured by the Sri Lankan Army.

Although many Tamils had started returning to their homes from the camps, Kilinochchi remained closed to civilians. Those who wished to return had been told that the area was being demined.

The Kilinochchi that Siva knew was now a trail of burnt wooden cots, broken ceramic toilets and smashed cars. There were rows of half-standing buildings with their roofs caved in. Tamil signboards had been blacked out, or covered with posters of a waving President Rajapaksa. The police headquarters, court complex, market, temples—they were all gone. The once-prosperous administrative centre of the Tigers was the most thoroughly destroyed city on the island.

Suddenly, a towering, glossy white statue of the Buddha loomed into view. Some Sinhala soldiers were praying at the altar. This hadn’t been there before, thought Siva.

Near it, was a broken down Hindu temple. It was being used to charge the cellphones of army troops. A few hundred feet from the Buddha stood a tall, bronze installation of a lotus, a symbol of Buddhism, growing out of a bullet-hit wall. A bombed out water tank had been converted into a tourist spot, complete with a ‘war memoirs’ shop. A family of tourists was snapping a photograph in front of it.

The Tamil areas were all being mended and buffed under government supervision. Once the seat of Eelam, Kilinochchi was being raised from the ashes, but with a more Sri Lankan personality.

Army watchtowers on both sides of the road displayed the government’s declared mission: ‘Free Beautiful United Sri Lanka.’

The final checkpoint was at Elephant Pass, the thin strip of road where the A-9 ends and the Jaffna Peninsula begins. But the ‘Yalpanam’ board that Siva always looked for was missing. In its place, was a new sign. It said ‘Yapanaya,’ the Sinhala name for Jaffna. Round the bend, a freshlypainted, large yellow board said: ‘One Nation, One Country.’

After they collected the rations, Siva decided to sleep on the bus all the way back to camp. The world he had grown up in was going through an alienating revamp, and he couldn’t bear to watch.

••••• of December, week last the In celeChristmas a after just 2001, was Swarna NGOs, with bration her with camp the leave to allowed camp When mother. her and sons officials asked for her ‘place of origin,’ she conjured up a random address in Point Pedro, the northernmost town on the island, north of Jaffna. When she got there, she found a sprawling house whose owners were in England, broke into it, and decided to make it home for a while. Her children would be safe, and she could hope to make the seemingly impossible

transformation from combatant to free civilian.

A lot had happened in Swarna’s life since the war’s end, and that of the LTTE: She had voted for the first time in her life, in the January 2010 presidential election, although the only choices she had were between Mahinda Rajapaksa and his army general. She was still in camp then, and was taken in by the wave of hope that swept through the Tamils. Later that year, the prime ministerial and municipal elections also took place, and in both, Swarna reluctantly voted for the Tamil United Liberation Front, once the political puppet of the LTTE. “They were a bunch of cowards who ran abroad during the war,” she says, “and had rushed back right in time for poll speeches.” But they were the only ones left.

Swarna had only focused on two things in the past two years: hiding her identity, and getting her husband out of detention. The first had worked better than she had expected—so well, in fact, that she felt a sharp pang of guilt every time she saw someone mistakenly singled out by the army as a Tiger.

The second, that of freeing her husband, was a cyclical nightmare.

She had approached every NGO that came to the Ramanathan camp, she had tried phoning former LTTE commanders in hiding, she had even given interviews to the international press when they came for brief camp visits.

At the end of February 2011, she had received a text message from her husband, saying that he would be released any day. Swarna had left her sons with her mother, and went to Vavuniya to pick him up.

A few days later, however, Sri Lankan Prime Minister DM Jayaratne announced in a press statement that there might still exist three secret LTTE camps in Tamil Nadu. There was a conspiracy afoot to kill Indian political leaders, he said, and to create a civil war in Sri Lanka once again. In 48 hours, the Tamil Nadu police denied the charges and the PM apologised, saying he’d made a mistake. But ‘due to security reasons,’ all detainee releases were cancelled. A depressed Swarna returned to Point Pedro alone.

Swarna’s six-year-old firstborn screams at her every morning, asking her when he can go to school.

But this wasn’t the world she had envisioned for him. Or for herself.

Every time she went to the Jaffna market for groceries, Swarna’s bags were opened and she was frisked. She knew of at least five women, in Point Pedro alone, whose husbands were shot by unknown bikers wearing helmets.

Jaffna reported more crime than ever before. Ever since she left camp in December, Swarna had been looking for a job—sewing, cooking, manual labour, anything but house work. Nothing had

‘The Defeated’ Cont. on Page 17

February 16, 2012

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••••• In the year since he left the Refugee Camp and moved to Jaffna, Siva had tried getting his government job back. Instead, he was charged with pilfering rations and embezzling funds from January to May 2009. In an elaborate and well-worded letter, Siva narrated his family’s ordeal, and listed reasons for having given away food to starving people and later abandoning the rest of his stock to save his life. The defence didn’t stick. He was fired, and fined LKR65,000.

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Siva ran the ordeal through his mind over and over again, looking for reason, logic and karma in the acts and omissions that eventually saved his family’s life—the moment they chose to flee, the villages they chose to avoid, the strangers they trusted their children with. He didn’t want to ever be in that situation again.

Siva decided to stop challenging the government, army or police.

Dhanusuya had just started third grade and loved it. His two-yearold son was a delight—a healthy, chubby boy who didn’t seem to bear any of the scars of having spent his first months in this world in the thick of the worst war any of them had experienced. Latha seemed content in the little mud hut they had built with their own hands. Things were unnervingly normal.

Siva joined a media school, “to pass the time.” In early March 2010, his class was discussing press freedom in the new democracy they were confronted with. Siva was one of the few who insisted that the Tamil papers and the Tamil community should stop talking about war crime investigations. “Of course, I might have thought differently if I had lost any family in war, but I doubt it is safe for even bereaved families to openly mourn,” he said, referring to the frequent crackdowns on mass mourning ceremonies.

The Sri Lankan government had set up a domestic Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Committee to look into crimes in the 2006-09 war, and it submitted a report in late 2011. Although it barely skims over war crimes, it does strongly recommend shifting from the military-led economic development to a political solution, of giving more democratic power to Tamil-dominated provinces.

The UN, several NGOs and much of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora,

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however, continue to demand an international war crimes investigation. Siva insisted that this would only rake up memories everyone was trying to erase, and reignite the suspicion and uncertainty the government felt towards the Tamils. “We should decide whether, how and when we want the crimes investigated!” he said emphatically.

“Not those who do not live here, like we do, with the guns to our forehead.” A young man in the front of the class asked: “And what is your plan instead?”

Siva looked him squarely in the eyes and said, “I plan to shut up.”

•••••

Denise Rodriguez, 20, of Escondido, Ca., passed away on February 2, 2012.

Walter Mudry, 90, of San Diego, CA., passed away on February 7, 2012.

Marian Drake, 86, of Murrieta, CA, passed away on February 5th, 2012.

Margaret Smith, 84, of Escondido, CA. passed away on February 5, 2012.

Stanley R. Regele, 84, of San Marcos, Ca. passed away on February 4, 2012.

The author, whose name has been withheld for security reasons, is a journalist in India.

Doris Lessig, 98, of Poway, Ca., passed away on February 6, 2012.

Names have been changed to protect identities.

Betty J. Copthorne, 96, of San Diego, Ca., passed away on February 13, 2012.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002908 The name of the business: Johnny’;s Bike & Triathlon, located at 1559 Eden Court, San Marcos, Ca. 92078, is hereby registerd by: John W. Hatala 1559 Eden Court San Marcos, Ca. 92078 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was 1/17/2012. /s/John W. Hatala J. This statement was filed with Ernest Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/31/2012.

2/09, 2/16/, 2/23, and and 3/01/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-0027543 The name of the business: Iron Group Protective Service Inc., located at 1076 Phillips St., Vista, Ca. 92083, is hereby registerd by: Iron Group Prtective Service Inc. 1076 Phillips St. Vista, Ca. 92083 This business is conducted by a corporation. First day of business was 10/05/2009. /s/Zeljko Petrovic, President J. This statement was filed with Ernest Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/30/2012.

2/16/, 2/23, 3/01 and and 3/08/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-003485 The name of the business: Karina European Skin Care, Karina Pawlukiewicz, Karina’s Skincare, located at 2002 Jimmy Durante Blvd, Del Mar, Ca. 92014, is hereby registerd by: Karina Pawlukiewicz 237 Amatista Way Oceanside, Ca. 92056 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was 1/06/1988. /s/Karina Pawlukiewicz J. This statement was filed with Ernest Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 02/06/2012.

2/09, 2/16/, 2/23, and and 3/01/2012

Richard Ganelin, 61, of San Diego, Ca., passed away on February 12, 2012.

Frank Gamble, 86, of Escondido, CA., passed away on February 10, 2012.

Beverly Amann, 65, of Escondido, Ca. passed away on February 11, 2012.

Martha A. Hadley, 78, of Escondido, CA., passed away on February 11, 2012.

••••• Arrangements by California Funeral Alternatives, of Escondido and Poway

Page 18 - February 16, 2012

Commentary This little ol’ weekly newspaper is a soft touch when it comes to puppies and dogs.

We love ‘em. And they love us right back.

Unconditionally and forever.

We find it hard to believe that there are people in this world that will abuse puppies and dogs . . . absolute innocent creatures that would not only not hurt anyone else but would literally die to be your friend for life.

One of the areas we despise is those life forms that collect dogs and breed them over and over and over and let them live out their lives in uncomfortable, unclean cages. They

are known as ‘puppy mills.’

One of the best ways to get puppy mills out of our lives and, in the process, save a lot of dogs, is to eliminate the market for puppy mills.

How? By dissuading pet stores from selling puppies.

It’s the pet stores that provide the market for puppy mills.

Check the origin of those cute little puppies in the pet stores. Chances are they came from Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, midwestern states where puppy mills are common. You buy that puppy from a pet store and the puppy mill will soon replace it, often with pups that have genetic or other diseases or anomalys.

From noon till 2pm, during the next two Sundays, February 19 and 26th, a number of us are going to line the streets near Puppy Star's, 6167 Balboa Ave., San Diego, and call attention to pet stores that encourage puppy mills by selling their pups. We will also have rescue dogs available for adoption or fostering.

Even if you don’t have a dog, join us. Your presence makes a statement.

There is an important piece of legislation that is on the books and Governor Brown proposes to repeal it. It is known as “The Hayden Law,” named after Senator Tom Hayden, who sponsored it and shepherded it through to passage. This legislation made animal shelters in California more accountable and gave the public longer to find their lost animals before they were euthanized. It mandated more "work friendly" hours to the public for going to the shelters, and after a few years of the law being in place (July 1, 2001), began offering

owner-surrendered animals the same amount of time (four to six business days, not including the day of impoundment) to remain alive before being eligible for euthanasia.

If this bill is repealed by Governor Brown, thousands of dogs will be killed, needlessly.

500 dogs a day are killed in Los Angeles County alone. Please, contact Senator Mark Wyland and Assemblyman Martin Garrick and ask them to

oppose the repeal of this bill. senator.wyland@sen.ca.gov mgarrick@gmail.com

DOUG BEST SWINGS! Saturdays 7AM-12PM About the show

Ole lovable Doug Best brings you the best in swing music with just a touch of New Orleans jazz. Join Doug every Saturday morning starting at 7AM as he takes out those old phonograph records and takes you on a trip down memory lane with the likes of Glen Miller, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Lawrence Welk. And in the final hour of the show it's the "Sweetheart's Corner", where Doug sets the table for you and provides the music while you and your sweetheart do the rest.

Phone (during Doug's show only): 760-744-1150 x5576

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About Doug Best Doug Best is a radio legend with over 50 years of broadcasting. He enjoys bringing all the best in swing and jazz to radio listeners.

Doug loves music and feels that it can reach out and touch people's lives.

Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong

Benny Goodman

Glenn Miller

Legals

The Paper FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2011-035339 The name of the business: Donna Drummond’s Gourmet Treats, located at 5553 Coyote Court, Carlsbad, Ca. 92010, is hereby registered by the following: Kyle David Inc. 5553 Coyote Court Carlsbad, Ca. 92010 This business is conducted by a corporation. First day of business was 11/01/11. /s/Kyle David Hammond, President This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 12/28/2011.

01/26, 2/02, 2/09 & 2/16/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-001844 The name of the business: Vaalki, located at 8015 Calle Pinon, Carlsbad, Ca. 92009, is hereby registered by the following: Purvi Kanji 8015 Calle Pinon Carlsbad, Ca. 92009 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was n/a. /s/Purvi Kanji This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/20/2012 01/26, 2/02, 2/09 & 2/16/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-001909 The name of the business: Wilson Ave Muscle Cars, located at 2080 Wine Ridge Pl, Ste E, Escondido, Ca. 92029, is hereby registered by the following: Bradley Richards 1811 E. Grand Ave. Escondido, Ca. 92027 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was 1/20/2012. /s/Bradley Richards This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/20/2012 01/26, 2/02, 2/09 & 2/16/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2011-035529 The name of the business: Tow Ranch, Teodora O’Connor Worldwide Ranch, located at 120 Ave Rd 244, Porterville, CA. 93257, is hereby registered by the following: Teodora Vialpando Pinpin O’Connor 242 Calle Florecita Escondido, Ca. 92029 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was December 4, 1968. /s/Teodora Vialpando Pinpin O’Connor, Owner This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 12/29/2012.

01/26, 2/02, 2/09 & 2/16/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2011-035256 The name of the business: Festive Faces, located at 306 Vista Village Drive, Vista, CA. 92083, is hereby registered by the following: Jessica Beatriz Hernandez 306 Vista Village Drive Vista, Ca. 92083 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was n/a. /s/Jessica Beatriz Hernandez This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 12/27/2011.

01/26, 2/02, 2/09 & 2/16/2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-001895 The name of the business: Cosmo Industrial Products, located at 1222 Corte Dulce, San Marcos, Ca. 92069, is hereby registered by the following: Gerardo and Hector Ruiz 1222 Corte Dulce San Marcos, Ca. 92069 This business is conducted by CoPartners. First day of business was 1/20/2012. /s/Gerardo Ruiz This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/20/2012 01/26, 2/02, 2/09 & 2/16/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002182 The name of the business: Wurth It Designs, located at 2080 Wineridge Pl, Ste E, Escondido, CA. 92029, is hereby registered by the following: Richard Wurth 13522 Robley Ranch Rd. Poway, CA. 92064 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was 1/23/2012. /s/Richard Wurth This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/24/2012 2/16, 2/23, 3/01 & 3/08/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-003518 The name of the business: Glam and Go, located at 699 Liquid Amber Way, San Marcos, CA. 92078, is hereby registered by the following: Wendy Lopaty, LLC 699 Liquid Amber Way San Marcos, Ca. 92078 This business is conducted by an Limited Liability Company. First day of business was n/a. /s/Wendy Lopaty This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 02/07/2012 2/16, 2/23, 3/01 & 3/08/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002447 The name of the business: G G B Interiors, located at 142 North Cedros Ave., Solana Beach, Ca. 92075, is hereby registered by the following: Frigon Construction, Inc. 142 N. Cedros Ave. Solana Beach, CA. 92075 This business is conducted by a corporation. First day of business was 1/25/2012. /s/Lou Frigon, President This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 1/26/2012.

2/02, 2/09, 2/16 & 2/23/2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-001158 The name of the business: Classic Apparel & Design, located at 1537 York Dr., Vista, CA. 92084, is hereby registered by the following: Mark Dorlaque 1205 Fulton Rd. San Marcos, Ca. 92069 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was n/a. /s/Mark Dorlaque This statement was filed with FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., STATEMENT County Clerk/Recorder of San #2012-001809 The name of the business: Moratto Diego County on 1/12/2012.

2/09, 2/16 & Consulting, located at 1769 2/02, Warpaint Pl., Escondido, Ca. 92029, 2/23/2012 is hereby registered by the following: Larry Moratto FICTITIOUS BUSINESS 1769 Warpaint Pl. NAME Escondido, Ca. 92029 STATEMENT This business is conducted by an #2012-002898 individual. First day of business was The name of the business: TK 04/01/04.

Nails, located at 633 N. Escondido /s/Larry Moratto This statement was filed with Blvd., Escondido, Ca. 92025, is Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., hereby registered by the following: County Clerk/Recorder of San Tien Lam 3595 Altadena Ave. Diego County on 01/19/2012.

01/26, 2/02, 2/09 & San Diego, CA. 92105 This business is conducted by an 2/16/2012 individual. First day of business was 1/30/2012.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME /s/Tien Lam STATEMENT This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., #2012-000272 The name of the business: County Clerk/Recorder of San Zombiewild.com, located at 2575 Diego County on 1/31/2012.

2/09, 2/16 & Sea Scape Glen, Escondido, Ca. 2/02, 2/23/2012 92026, is hereby registered by the following: FICTITIOUS BUSINESS Aaron Ausejo NAME 2575 Sea Scape Glen STATEMENT Escondido, Ca. 92026 #2012-001566 This business is conducted by an The name of the business: Keith individual. First day of business was Senior Living Consultants, located at 1207 Westport Rd., San Marcos, n/a.

Ca. 92078, is hereby registered by /s/Aaron Ausejo, Owner following: This statement was filed with the Kay L. Keith Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., 1207 Westport Rd. County Clerk/Recorder of San San Marcos, Ca. 92078 This business is conducted by an Diego County on 01/04/2012.

01/26, 2/02, 2/09 & individual. First day of business was 09/01/11.

2/16/2012 /s/Kay L. Keith This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., FICTITIOUS BUSINESS County Clerk/Recorder of San NAME Diego County on 01/18/2012 01/26, 2/02, 2/09 & STATEMENT 2/16/2012 #2012-001956 The name of the business: Madame FICTITIOUS BUSINESS Butterfly Photo Booths, located at NAME 16913 #139 Laurel Hill Ln., San STATEMENT Diego, Ca. 92127, is hereby regis#2012-001796 The name of the business: tered by the following: Software & Tonie Pecaro-Nutley and David Vanguard Technology, located a 1263 Corte Nutley Famosa, San Marcos, Ca. 92069, is 16913 #139 Laurel Hill Ln. hereby registered by the following: San Diego, Ca. 92127 Dana B. and Masayo Reed This business is conducted by a 1263 Corte Famosa Husband and Wife. First day of San Marcos, Ca. 92069 This business is conducted by a business was n/a.

Husand and Wife. First day of /s/Tonie Pecaro-Nutley business was 1/1/2007.

This statement was filed with /s/Dana B. Reed Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., This statement was filed with County Clerk/Recorder of San Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 1/20/2012.

Diego County on 01/19/2012 2/02, 2/09, 2/16 & 01/26, 2/02, 2/09 & 2/23/2012 2/16/2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002092 The name of the business: Piazza Market, located at 3400 Piazza De Oro Way #160, Oceanside, Ca. 92056, is hereby registered by the following: Eddie and Blanka Sanin 116 Brenna Lane Palm Desert, CA. 92211 This business is conducted by a Husband and Wife. First day of business was n/a. /s/Eddie Sanin This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/23/2012 2/02, 2/09, 2/16 & 2/23/2012

NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES Date of Filing Application: January 23, 2012 To Whom It May Concern: The Name of the Applicant is: BLANKA SANIN, EDDIE SANIN The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to sell alcoholic beverages at: 3400 PIAZZA DE ORO WAY STE 160 OCEANSIDE, CA. 922603789 Type of license applied for: 41-On Sale Beer and Wine Eating Place 2/02, 2/09 & 2/16/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002667 The name of the business: TNT Water Truck, located at 2030 Indian Pl., Escondido, Ca. 92027, is hereby registered by the following: Anastasios Anastasopoulos 2030 Indian Pl. Escondido, Ca. 92027 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was Jan 30, 2010. /s/Anastasios Anastasopoulos This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/30/2012.

2/02, 2/09, 2/16/, and 2/23/2012

STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME #2012-002695 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME: Mo Manna Banded Together, Mo Manna Bridge of Hope, located at 1024 Via Vera Cruz, San Marcos, Ca. 92078. THE FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME REFERRED TO ABOVE WAS FILED IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY ON 6/19/2009 and assigned File No. 2009-018236 IS ABANDONED BY THE FOLLOWING REGISTRANT(S): Mo Manna Ministries 1024 Via Vera Cruz San Marcos, Ca. 92078 I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. (A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime). /s/ Stacey Mueller, President This statement was filed with David Butler, County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 1/30/2012.

2/02, 2/09, 2/16 & 2/23/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-000452 The name of the business: Black Wind Ranch, located at 16161 Highland Valley Rd., Escondido, Ca. 92025, is hereby registered by the following: Jennifer Marie Heylman 16161 Highland Valley Road Escondido, Ca. 92025 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was n/a. /s/Jennifer Marie Heylman This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/05/2012.

2/02, 2/09, 2/16/and 2/23/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-000708 The name of the business: The Drunken Monk, The Limping Frog, located at 31 San Miguel Dr., Chula Vista, Ca. 91911, is hereby registered by the following: David Montemurri 31 San Miguel Dr. Chula Vista, Ca. 91911 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was n/a. /s/David Montemurri This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/09/2012.

2/02, 2/09, 2/16/and 2/23/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002048 The name of the business: Escondido Pure Pools, located at 1773 Larkhaven Glen, Escondido, Ca. 92026, is hereby registered by the following: Edgar Pavars 1773 Larkhaven Glen Escondido, CA. 92026 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was n/a. /s/Edgar Pavars This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/23/2012.

2/09, 2/16/, 2/23, and and 3/01/2012

February 16, 2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002120 The name of the business: Impressions Beauty Salon, located at 661 S. Rancho Santa Fe Rd., San Marcos, Ca. 92078, is hereby registered by the following: Socorro Becerra 341 Flower Hill Way San Marcos, Ca. 92078 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was 7/12/2004. /s/Socorro Becerra This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 1/23/2012.

2/02, 2/09, 2/16 & 2/23/2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-003183 The name of the business: J & A Roofing, located at 3417 De Leone Rd., San Marcos, Ca. 92069, is hereby registered by the following: Jose Velazquez and Arturo Velasquez Dominguez 3417 De Leone Rd. San Marcos, CA. 92069 This business is conducted by General Partnership. First day of business was n/a. /s/Jose Velazquez Dominguez This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 2/02/2012.

2/09, 2/16, 2/23, and 03/01/2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002612 The name of the business: Rancho Medrano, located at 1280 Bear Valley Pkwy, Escondido, Ca. 92027, is hereby registered by the following: Vincent and Fidelina Medrano 1280 Bear Valley Pkwy.

Escondido, Ca. 92027 This business is conducted by a Husband and Wife. First day of business was 1/27/2012. /s/Vincent Medrano This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 1/27/2012.

2/02, 2/09, 2/16 & 2/23/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2011-035413 The name of the business: Backstage Pros, Santa Express, located at 1671 Curry Comb Drive, San Marcos, Ca. 92069, is hereby registered by the following: Douglas A. and Anne Delgado 1671 Curry Comb Drive San Marcos, Ca. 92069 This business is conducted by a Husband and Wife. First day of business was Jan 01, 2010. /s/Douglas A. Delgado This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 12/29/2011.

1/26, 2/02, 2/09 and 2/16/2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002914 The name of the business: Aqua Finn, Aqua Finn LLC, located at 2255 Seaquest Trail, Escondido, Ca. 92029, is hereby registered by the following: Aqual Solver LLC 2255 Seaquest Trail Escondido, CA. 92029 This business is conducted by a Limited Liability Company. First day of business was n/a. /s/Paul A. Curtis, President This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 1/31/2012.

2/09, 2/16, 2/23, and 03/01/2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002876 The name of the business: Global Protection Shield, located at 2718 Athens Ave, Suite 1, Carlsbad, Ca. 92010, is hereby registered by the following: Hermann Binek 2020 North Vermont Ave. Los Angeles, Ca. 90027 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was n/a. /s/Hermann Binek This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/31/2012.

2/02, 2/09, 2/16/, and 2/23/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002943 The name of the business: Antiques on Cedros, A Cedros Mercantile, Solana Beach Mercantile, located at 118 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach, Ca. 92075, is hereby registered by the following: BiJoux Del Mar Estates 1106 Second St., #118 Encinitas, Ca. 92024 This business is conducted by trust. First day of business was n/a. /s/Anisa Moinuddin, Trustee This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 01/31/2012.

2/02, 2/09, 2/16/, and 2/23/2012

STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME #2012-001458 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME: Tara’s Wedding Flowers, located at 1214 Palomine Road, Fallbrook, Ca. 92028. THE FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME REFERRED TO ABOVE WAS FILED IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY ON September 17, 2010 and assigned File No. 2010-025301 IS ABANDONED BY THE FOLLOWING REGISTRANT(S): Florence Ark 1286 Discovery #68 San Marcos, Ca. 92078 I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. (A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime). /s/ Florence Ark This statement was filed with David Butler, County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 1/17/2012.

1/26, 2/02, 2/09, and 2/16/2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-003037 The name of the business: Ambrose Armory, located at 914 Applewilde Drive, San Marcos, Ca. 92078, is hereby registered by the following: BAFTA, LLC 2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400, Wilmington, DE. 19808 This business is conducted by a Limited Liability Company. First day of business was n/a. /s/Brian D. Ambrose, President This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on February 01, 2012.

2/09, 2/16, 2/23, and 03/01/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-000576 The name of the business: The Compound, located at 3803 Oceanic Dr., #202, Oceanside, CA. 92056, is hereby registered by the following: Claudia Ortega and Sean Loeffler 3803 Oceanic Dr #202 Oceanside, Ca. 92056 This business is conducted by a Joint Venture. First day of business was 6/14/2007 /s/Claudia Ortega This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on January 06, 2012.

2/02, 2/09, 2/16 and, 2/23/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-001114 The name of the business: Hecker Bros. Cabinets, located at 135 N. Pacific St #B, San Marcos, Ca. 92009, is hereby registered by the following: Kevin Hecker2454 Linda Ct. Escondido, Ca. 92027 Marc Hecker 2164 Rock View Glen Escondido, Ca. 92026 This business is conducted by a General Partnership. First day of business was 1/1/2012. /s/Marc Hecker, Kevin Hecker This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on January 11, 2012.

2/09, 2/16, 2/23 and, 3/01/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-003465 The name of the business: Buy Smart 101, located at 5600 Avenida Encinas, #118, Carlsbad, Ca. 92008 is hereby registered by the following: A Better Way Wholesale Autos, Inc. 6954 Sweetwater St. Carlsbad, CA. 92011 This business is conducted by a corporation. First day of business was 10/01/2008. /s/Brian S. Lee, President This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on February 06, 2012.

2/09, 2/16, 2/23 and, 3/01/2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002822 The name of the business: 8Point8 Wood Reuse Company, located at 1227 Clarence Dr., Vista, CA. 92084, is hereby registered by the following: Brian Behncke 1227 Clarence Dr. Vista, Ca. 92084 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was 1/1/2012.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS /s/Brian Behncke NAME This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., STATEMENT County Clerk/Recorder of San #2012-003348 The name of the business: Prime Diego County on January 31, Cut Grill, located at 344 S. Twin 2012.

Oaks Valley Rd, Suite 147, San 2/09, 2/16, 2/23 and, 3/01/2012 Marcos, CA. 92078, is hereby registered by the following: M A Lee, Inc. 922 Antilla Way San Marcos, Ca. 92078 This business is conducted by a corporation. First day of business was n/a. /s/Michael Lee, President This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 02/06/2012.

2/09, 2/16/, 2/23, and 3/01/2012

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ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME 37-2012-00050773-CU-PT-NC TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS: Petitioner Tim and Mayumi Smith on behalf of Angelina Kanon Smith filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: Present name: Angelina Kanon Smith and Mayumi Aihara Smith to Proposed names of Kanon Angelina Smith and Mai Mayumi Smith.

THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter shall appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objections that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing.

NOTICE OF HEARING: Date: March 27, 2012, 8:30a.m., Department 3. The address of the court is: 325 S. Melrose, Vista, CA. 92081. A copy of the Order to Show Cause shall be published at least once each week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing on the petition in the following newspaper of general circulation, printed in this county: San Marcos News Reporter, dba, The Paper, 845 W. San Marcos Blvd, San Marcos, Ca. 92078. Dated 02/10/2012. /s/Aaron H. Katz, Judge of the Superior Court 2/16,2/23, 3/01 and 3/08/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-003991 The name of the business: Grand Massage, located at 1915 San Marcos Blvd, #110, San Marcos Ca. 92078, is hereby registered by the following: Dan Su 1915 San Marcos Blvd, #110 San Marcos, CA. 92078 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was 2/09/2012. /s/Dan Su This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 2/09/2012 2/16, 2/23, 3/01 & 3/08/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-003501 The name of the business: A Quiet Place, Therapeutic Massage Spa, located at 1525 Grand Ave., San Marcos, Ca. 92068, is hereby registered by the following: Robin Ruesga 1379 Andorra Ct. Vista, Ca. 92081 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was n/a. /s/Robin Ruesga This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 2/06/2012.

2/16, 2/23, 3/01 & 3/08/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002620 The name of the business: Pacific Tool & Abrasive, Pacific Abrasive & Tool, located at 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Rd, San Marcos, Ca. 92078, is hereby registered by the following: Craig R. Schindler 2809 Cazadero Dr. Carlsbad, Ca. 92009 This business is conducted by an individual. First day of business was n/a. /s/Craig R. Schindler This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 1/27/2012.

2/16, 2/23, 3/01 & 3/08/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002864 The name of the business: Step Above Construction, located at 1752 Cottonwood Dr., Vista, Ca. 92081, is hereby registered by the following: Tracy Kent and Nancy Louise Jors 1752 Cottonwood Dr. Vista, Ca. 92081 This business is conducted by a Husband and Wife. First day of business was 12/31/11. /s/Tracy Kent Jors This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 1/31/2012.

2/16, 2/23, 3/01 & 3/08/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-002478 The name of the business: Auto Body of San Marcos, located at 1011 Rancheros Dr., San Marcos, Ca. 92069, is hereby registered by the following: Collision Repair Group, Inc. 1011 Rancheros Dr. San Marcos, Ca. 92069 This business is conducted by a corporation. First day of business was n/a. /s/Ruben F. Contreras, President This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 1/26/2012.

2/16, 2/23, 3/01 & 3/08/2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT #2012-004081 The name of the business: Morris Matthews Production, 24/7 Media, located at 8895 Towne Center Dr., Ste 105-169, San Diego, Ca. 92122, is hereby registered by the following: Matt Morrison 8895 Towne Center Drive San Diego, CA. 92122 This business is conducted by n individual+. First day of business was n/a. /s/Matt Morrisson This statement was filed with Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr., County Clerk/Recorder of San Diego County on 2/10/2012.

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