Bharatha Mallawarachi, Krutika Pathi and Joe McDonald, in The Diplomat, 20 May 2022, where the title reads “China Becomes Wild Card in Sri Lanka’s Debt Crisis”
China’s Maverick Status in Sri Lanka’s Economic Crisis
Filed under accountability, charitable outreach, China and Chinese influences, economic processes, foreign policy, governance, island economy, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, trauma, world events & processes
Rukshan sings for Sri Lanka’s Resurrection
Item in The Island, 24 May 2022, with this headline “Bring back Paradise”
Maestro Rukshan Perera is one artiste who is regularly in the news, and grabs the spotlight, in a big way, every time an important event, or a disaster, takes place in the country, or in the world.
The Economist sums up Sri Lanka’s Situation
ITEM ONE: “The Morning After”…. page 25 of 14th May Issue “Sri Lanka has no money and no government. What now?””
The prime minister and the cabinet are gone but the president clings on
For more than a month the anti-government protesters camped along Galle Face, the seafront in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, had been mostly peaceful. They were demanding the departure of the president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and the prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, his brother. There were tents, stages for political plays, and singing. “Go home Gota!” their signs read, using the name by which the president is commonly known. He did not budge. Neither did the protesters.
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The Assassination of SWRD Bandaranaike Revisited
Sanjiva Senanayake, in The Island, 17 October 2021, where the title reads “Beyond reasonable doubt? The Killing of a Prime Minister”
Many people ‘know’ the conventional tale about the assassination of the Prime Minister of Ceylon, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, 62 years ago. However, they each have a slightly different take and theory about the facts, the reasons, the conspiracy theories and who ‘actually’ did it. Those then unborn or too young to have been aware of it at the time, have heard about it from older people. We have to assume that the intrinsic Lankan sense of rumour would have spiced up the details as time went by.
Leonard Woolf: Innocent Imperialist turned Pragmatic Internationalist
Jane Russell
Leonard Woolf & Arthur C Clarke
Foreword: “When I’m in the Strand or 42nd Street, or at NASA Headquarters or the Beverley Hills Hotel, my surroundings are liable to give a sudden tremor and I see through the insubstantial fabric to the reality beneath…” These words by Arthur C. Clarke, the sci-fi writer, are quoted at the end of Roloff Beny’s photographic chronicle “Island Ceylon”. But where does Clark’s reality reside? He writes, “No other place is so convincing as Sri Lanka,” and as he spent almost fifty years there, we are tempted to believe him. Continue reading
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Portuguese Creole in Sri Lanka: Faint Traces & Remnants
Shannine Daniel, at ……………….. https://www.sundaytimes.lk/220522/plus/spreading-the-word-of-sri-lankan-portuguese-creole-483176.html
Dr Hugo Cardoso, a linguist from the University of Lisbon and his team who have been researching this historical language spoken in the East of Sri Lanka have now taken to social media to preserve this fast fading heritage.
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The Political Travails of the Indian Tamils in the State Council Era 1931-48
Uditha Devapriya, in The Island, 21 May 2022, where the title runs thus “DS Senanayake and the Indian Tamil Question”
In his recent work on D. S. Senanayake, K. M. de Silva explores certain controversial aspects of Ceylon’s lurch into independent statehood. Among these is the issue of the fate of the country’s Indian Tamils. Brought to the island from South India amidst conditions of famine and mass starvation in the early part of the 19th century, Indian Tamil workers replaced Sinhalese and resident Tamil labour in the island. Governed by a semifeudal set-up that shut them out from the world outside, Indian Tamil labour grew up in a world of their own. It was their tragic fate that while the colonial government feigned little interest in their welfare, their lives lay in the hands of that government.
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Portuguese Creole in Sri Lanka in Performative Mode
SHIHAN DE SILVA JAYASURIYA presents her interview with Udena Wickremasooriya (son of Gerald Wickremasooriya, founder of Sooriya records) from you tube…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zil7pncoEkM
Thuppahi also presents “the recordings that Sooriya Records in Colombo made a few years ago for posterity. There are 4 links for the 4 songs below.”
Olde Time Organ Music at the Capri in Adelaide
Baritone Andrew Crispe joined organist Chris McPhee for a very entertaining afternoon of music featuring music from Broadway.at the Capri Theatre on Goodwood Road in Adelaide this Ssunday 22nd May 2012.
Australia’s “Whitey” Parliament of Yesteryear
Frances Mao, BBC News, Sydney 20 May 2022, where the title runs as “Australia election: Why is Australia’s parliament so white?”
Some of Australia’s MPs, pictured here, fail to reflect the country’s diversity, critics say
Australia is one of the most multicultural nations in the world, but it’s a different story in the country’s politics, where 96% of federal lawmakers are white. With this year’s election, political parties did have a window to slightly improve this. But they chose not to in most cases, critics say.
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