Thuppahi's Blog

YES, Shehan … not Sanath ! … to be more precise I am referring to  Gampalage Shehan Naveendra De Fonseka Gunawarna Jayasuriya, a left-hand batsmen from Prince of Wales moratuwa wgo also bowls right arm off spin,…Michael Roberts

A Facebook Item …. ……………….source reference misplaced …maybe https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c802e7jk458o …. with highlighting being the hand of The Editor, Thuppahi

French Villagers just called Pete Hegseth “persona non grata” and demanded he stay home from D-Day ceremonies.

Pete Hegseth made the trip to Normandy, France for the D-Day anniversary — but residents of Langrune-sur-Mer made clear he was not welcome. Locals and civic groups in the small coastal town publicly declared him unwanted before he even landed, releasing a pointed statement demanding his visit be canceled outright.

http://www.rarehistoricalphotos.com

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Niyas Raskin in Facebook

The Alumni Association of University of Colombo organized a felicitation ceremony today (June 2nd) to honor Dr. Kumari Jayawardena, who has made an incomparable contribution to the transformative development of the social, political, intellectual, and academic fields of our country. Dr. Kumari Jayawardena was one of the pioneers of Sri Lanka’s feminist movement and her role as a public intellectual, as an academic and her political journey have contributed to revolutionize the labor and women’s movements in the country.

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Michael Roberts

The Nowak Killing and the seeming police failures in its immediate aftermath is cause for reflection. A violent black man was believed and a dying, voiceless white man left to whither away. To what extent one can generalise beyond  this tale to trends in the police establishment in Britain is amoot point.

However, as I lived in Britain for four years in the early 1960s and had sisters who resided in the Brixton-Streatham areas of London …..and visited them every now and then in  subsequent decades — I can tell the younger generations in the world today that this kind of police failure would have been unthinkable THEN. For a Blackie –whether West Indian, African or Asian — to be taken at vocal face value in such a scenario was extremely unlikely. The coloured man who was assailant, Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh migrant from India, is now under arrest. But it is the initial Police failure that I am marking here.

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Greg Sheridan in THE AUSTRALIAN, 6-7 June 2026 via ………………………………. https://wentworthreport.com/2026/06/06/henry-nowak-death-the-left-is-to-blame/ … where the title reads: “Henry Nowak death: The left is to blame”

The death of 18-year-old university student Henry Nowak is as terrible as anything you’ll ever see. … Nowak is not even given the dignity of being hated or abused. There is just utter indifference to him, the cold, bureaucratic hand of identity politics, which has delivered us not into a land of racial justice, but into Dante’s Inferno, the fourth circle of hell. …

An accusation of racism was more important than murder, and the desperate need for first aid. …

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Michael Roberts 

The British  Empire was carved out over the centuries by intrepid adventurers aided by the weaponry developed in the British Isles and anability to organize their power to maximum effect. When pursuing my interest in cricket and taking in a Sri Lankan cricket match in my beloved home town of Galle on …., I met two intrepid Brits of the modern era, Nick White and Danny Byrne (see photo at Galle taken by me).

Yes …………..  two dinky-die Brits; both cricket nuts. But Danny outdoes Nick. He has invested a good part of his time in recent years travelling on local transport (and a few readers know full well what this means) and watching cricket in all manner of sites in India and Sri Lanka. His latest remarkable move has been to the match played at Dharamsala where a new venue was christened at Chandigarh in Mohali District in the Punjab (see ……………………….. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharaja_Yadavindra_Singh_International_Cricket_Stadium).

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Arthur Saniotis & Michael Roberts:  “Empowering the Body and ‘Noble Death’,” .… a reprint of an article pubd in Social Analysis, Volume 50, Issue 1, Spring 2005, 7–24 © Berghahn Journals

Facing death with equanimity and with a honed, trained body is an expression of sheer power.1 When a group of like-minded individuals confronts an oppositional force with equal mental and bodily capacities, whether on a sports field or in a warring conflict, the result is power compounded. Each article in this special section ‘confronts’ such powers. Together they explore several regionally specific projects in Asia in which dying for a cause is seen as a virtue.

There are several parts of Asia where social practices and cultural traditions have consciously nourished bodily empowerment. In these select yet dynamic traditions, mind and body are conceived as a unity. Attentiveness to cosmic powers is an integral aspect of disciplined ascetic practices that seek to harness bodily energy in maximal ways. These practices confront death. They are directed toward transcending the fear of death—and death itself. When they are inserted into a moment of violent conflict involving interpersonal combat, they encourage a steely, terrifying fearlessness as well as deadly striking power.

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Andrew Miller in ESPNcricinfo.com, 5 June 2026

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Last Stand in Kandy Kindle Edition,  by Miliani Philip Sansoni (Author)

The book “Last Stand in Kandy” discusses the annexation by the British of the Kingdom of Kandy, after centuries of its’ stubborn resistance to foreign powers. It also covers the period before annexation, full of negotiations, intrigue and finally open warfare. The book also deals with the advent of Western colonisation and discusses the rivalry between the Dutch, the British and the French, insofar as it affected Sri Lanka.

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Richard Koenigsberg

Just to go back in time a bit. Before High School, I lived in a lower-middle class neighborhood, (Irvington, New Jersey). I lot of Italians, Poles, etc., although I didn’t pay much attention to ethnicity.

Many of the tough guys at school called me “Jew boy.” Didn’t bother me a bit. I wasn’t religious. My classmates were very much against me at first. I had to reverse this.

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