Thuppahi's Blog

Rachael McDiarmid of RM Marketing Services, whose article is entitled “Brown. Female. Doctor.  The Journey of Dr Sarah Arachchi”

Dr Sarah Arachchi is a paediatrician who emigrated from Sri Lanka to Australia in 1990 as a four-year-old child. In Brown. Female. Doctor. A Memoir. Sarah reflects on her path to becoming a paediatrician, highlighting the challenges she faced from a young age and the intersectionality of her identity.

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Michael Roberts

The purpose and the  overall benefits/disadvantages of the Mattala airport project has generated debate over the years in  the  recent  past . Thuppahi has presented several items on the topic and they are listed here in calendrical order.

The 2016 news item from Wade Shephard was/is typical of the hasty assessments — in part fuelled by the political backlash directed at the Rajapaksa powerhouse in Sri Lankan politics. So, Thuppahi is encouraged NOW to promote a more considered appraisal with long-term  ‘eyes.’

Thuppahi has also been encouraged in this venture by brief email endorsements from Vinod Moonesinghe and Chandre Dharmawardena — personnel of critical mindand nobody’s puppets. 

Cows cross a road as trucks transporting Zhong Ding Boiler Co. boilers approach near Mattala, Hambantota, Sri Lanka, on Thursday, March 29, 2018. Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa spearheaded the project, taking Chinese loans to shower goodies on his home district of Hambantota — including a new international airport that still has just one daily scheduled flight. Plans are also afoot to build a logistics and industrial zone next to the port. Photographer: Atul Loke/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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Desert Wanderer, … with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

I wonder why Yakovleff fails to mention Israel’s role in this war. Trump would not have started this conflict if not for Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister drew Trump in by convincing him that decapitating the Iranian leadership via a forty-eight-hour ‘shock-and-awe’ campaign would cause the regime to collapse. Netanyahu’s goal was to destroy Iran, turn it into a failed state, and divide it into warring factions. But the plan failed. Trump has no strategy and no clue what he is doing; he is trapped in a war he cannot exit, so he simply escalates. Netanyahu remains in the driving seat. Yakovleff’s failure to explain this suggests he doesn’t understand the situation and is merely parroting a pro-NATO line—one asserting that NATO must always be in command.

SEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DACmMtd3pGQ

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Kamanthi Wickramasinghe  in The Daily Mirror,   March  2026 … where the headline is different.

Unlike sky rise buildings that dominate the skyline in Colombo, it is electric fences of various shapes and sizes that dominate much of the landscape in Galgamuwa today. With frequently occurring encounters between humans and elephants, the former is taking all precautions to protect their lives and those of their loved ones, sometimes at the cost of jumbo lives.

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HAPPY WORKERS in the Resplendent Isle of LANKA !!

Sunil Bastian

Right at the beginning of his book, ‘The Killing Fields of Inequality’ Göran Therborn says ‘Inequality is a violation of human dignity; it is a denial of the possibility for everybody’s human capabilities to develop. It takes many forms, and it has many effects: premature death, ill-health, humiliation, subjection, discrimination, exclusion from knowledge or from mainstream social life, poverty, powerlessness, stress, insecurity, anxiety, lack of self-confidence and of pride in oneself, and exclusion from opportunities and life -chances.’ These are concerns that motivated me to write this short piece on economic inequality in Sri Lanka.

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Cameleer

SEE https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/17/us-national-counterterrorism-center-director-joe-kent-resigns-over-iran-war

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A NOTE From LUCY McCANN of the BODLEIAN LIBRARY, OXFORD UNIVERSITY, 17 February  2026

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/discovery/search?query=creator,exact,Roberts,%20Michael,%201938-,AND&tab=Everything&search_scope=MyInstitution&sortby=date_d&vid=44OXF_INST:SOLO&lang=en&mode=advanced&offset=0

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AN ITEM SENT TO Thuppahi by Joe Paiva of Adelaide…………. Watch “How Sri Lanka Became a Diplomatic Sensation in the Iran Crisis #LNW” on YouTube

George Cooke interviewed by Nisthar Cassim …. 

              END NOTES

A = Haaretz is an Israeli daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel. The paper is published in Hebrew and English in the Berliner format, and is also available online.

Owner(s)  Schocken family (75%); Leonid Nevzlin (25%)

Publisher Amos Schocken

Circulation 72,000; (weekends: 100,000)

First issue date 1918

Founded 1919; 107 years ago

Editor Aluf Benn

Headquarters Global HQ: Tel Aviv, Israel; North American HQ: New York City

B  = From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Aluf Benn
אלוף בן
Born	1965 (age 60–61) Ramat HaSharon, Israel
Education	Tel Aviv University, Northwestern University
Occupation	Journalist

Aluf Benn (Hebrew: אלוף בן; born 1965) is an Israeli journalist, author and editor-in-chief of the liberal Israeli national daily Haaretz.^[1]

Biography: Aluf Bomstein (later Benn) was born in Ramat HaSharon, son of Atida and 2010 Israel Prize poet laureate Aryeh Bomstein (who publishes under Aryeh Sivan). He was named for his uncle, Aluf Horowitz, who was killed in action in the Gaza Strip during the Israeli retribution operations of 1955.^[2][3] Benn holds an MBA degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a degree from Tel Aviv University.^[1]

Media career:  He began working for the paper Ha’ir in 1986, and Hebraicized his surname Bomstein to Benn. In 1989, he moved to the newspaper Haaretz, where he served in various roles, including night editor, investigative reporter, head of the news division and wrote on security matters. His articles have been published in a variety of international newspapers, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs and Newsweek.^{[citation needed]} On August 1, 2011, he was appointed editor-in-chief of Haaretz.^[4]

References

1.  Aluf Benn author page at Haaretz
2.  הורביץ, אלוף (“לופי”) [Horowitz, Aluf (“Lupi”)] (in Hebrew). IDF.
3.  interview on eye7 (Hebrew)
4.  “Aluf Benn named new editor-in-chief of Haaretz”. Haaretz. Retrieved August 1, 2011.

External links

• Column archive at Business Insider
• Column archive at Foreign Affairs
• Column archive at The Guardian
• Column archive at Haaretz
• Column archive at The National Interest
• Column archive at Salon.com
• Aluf Benn on Charlie Rose
• Aluf Benn at IMDb
• Aluf Benn at Journalisted
• Aluf Benn (July 27, 2009). “Why Won’t Obama Talk to Israel?”. The New York Times.
  • Jeffrey Goldberg (July 28, 2009). “The White House Reacts to Aluf Benn’s Arguments”.
• The Politics of Benjamin Netanyahu: An interview with Aluf Benn – Fathom Journal
  
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