Welcome aboard..

to Re(P)lay, our twin publication of Thayagam. (other being the evil one!)

In the era of blogs and online journals, traditional media, especially the newspapers, are becoming more irrelevent. Democratization of news publishing, thanks to the internet revolution, empowered those who have a Word to spread. But, falling in the wrong hands, it may be abused to spread hoaxes and urban myths or to spew hatred. As always, smelling an opportunity, some snake oil salesmen enrich themselves by promising enhancement of certain body parts, size wise or performance wise, making fools part with their money. So much is the sustaining power of the authenticity (or lack of it!) of the news.

But this democratization never made the access to information free. There are still powers that be, besides desseminating misinformation, trying to restrict the access to news.

So much for the public's right to know the truth!

 Virtual monopoly over the tamil media by powers that be has only one goal.. "manufacturing consent."

News, like beer, is cold-filtered, artificially flavored and cleverly marketed for mass consumption, in versions such as "Premium" (Hard core propaganda) or "Lite" (controlled media masquerading as unbiased). No wonder the news is so intoxicating that it hampers the judgement.

We have our own share of snake oil salesmen as well, offering magic 'bullet' to solve the ethnic question.

 Like the often heard question directed towards the Almighty, 'Why Me?', there will be questions.. Who is doing Why? Who is behind it? Is it terrorist or intelligence outfit?

We don't blame them.

We are coming from cultures where even the altruistic intentions are suspiciously looked at. And we are living in lands where 'right hand wouldn't give without left hand' holding the tax receipt.

Though our critics may say otherwise, there are no Grand designs here to conquer the world. Nor some sinister design to sabotage the existence of intelligent life on earth.

Having mandates and missions don't serve any purpose. It only pushes you against the corner to defend yourself for the choices you made or for the promises not kept.

 We start with a simple objective.

 As much is "Lost in Translation", we try to Relay the news, not accessible through regular channels, to make it within reach and Replay any views within reason in their original format and version,

 But, this opens up a new window of opportunity to reach over the other sides, opposite and out, and make some points, though you are free to convince us otherwise by discussion or debate.

* LTTE's terrorism is no excuse to deny the legitimate aspirations and rights of Tamil people.

* Despite its claim of sole representation, LTTE doesn't enjoy the support of the majority of tamils. It is only considered as a deterrent to a possible military onslaught and the sole bargaining chip to attain the legitimate rights from the sinhalese chauvinism.

* we have voices of reason within tamil community which can not be silenced with threats.

We have a vocal minority running the show and silent majority is watching helplessly. Silence is not a sign of agreement. When refusal to toe the line ensures a bullet with your name on it, you have little choice.

This leaves the vocal minority to sing in chorus "Praise The Lord"

 Be forewarned that we are neither pro journalists nor english majors.

We may not match the fluency and vocabulary of those political and military  analysts who like  to show off their liguistic abilities than logical skills.

We may not be using quotes from Nietzsche, Satre et al. But, we can do the same from Dubya to Doonsbury.

And We wouldn’t be 'contemplating' even for a moment, while a simple 'think' can do the same job.

 We draw our inspiration from Dubya, (and to some extent, from Bush Sr-Quayle duo) who (un)skillfully demonstrated that the fluency of the language is neither required nor essential to lead the largest english speaking nation on earth. And he has his grand designs of world domination.

 Running a news site should be much easier than running a country.

Dubya may have his army of speechwriters to take on the 'axis of evil' with his 'coalition of the willing' (or weakling?)  to look for non-existent WMDs, 'leaving no stone unturned', (or is it "no turn unstoned"?) for his eventual world domination.

'Make no mistake about it!'

We may not have that ambition of world domination. But armed with the well worn copy of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, we will win the hearts and minds of those misinformed and undecided souls, one at a time, while keeping an eye on those WMDs.. weapons of mass deception.

Enjoy your stay.

Drop us a line or two.

May it be about the error in facts, logic or judgement.. or just a simple 'syntax error'.

It will help us to 'abort' the concepts and 'retry'.

But we will never 'fail' nor 'ignore' you.

 We may not be able to make big changes, but we believe we can make a difference, as we did with our Tamil twin, Thayagam (Motherland).

 As Mr.Incredible, an animated hero, and the entertainers from the Sin City, Las Vegas, would say, "It's showtime, Baby, you ain't seen nothin' yet!".

 George R.Ckrhushchev

Editor, Thayagam/Replay