Author Archives: thuppahi

About thuppahi

Sri Lankan and Australian nationality; student of Sri Lankan society and politics; sociology of cricket;

Pepe Escobar on Pivoting and Powermongering

PEPE ESCOBARI. Pepe Escobar: “Who’s Pivoting Where in Eurasia?” 18 May 2014, .… Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch.

Consider this: our advanced robotic creatures, those drone aircraft grimly named Predators and Reapers, are still blowing away human beings from Yemen to Pakistan.  Meanwhile, the Pentagon is now testing out a 14,000-pound drone advanced enough to take off and land on its own on the deck of an aircraft carrier — no human pilot involved.  (As it happens, it’s only a “demonstrator” and, at a cost of $1.4 billion, can’t do much else.)  While we’re talking about the skies, who could forget that the U.S. military is committed to buying 2,400 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, already dubbed, amid cost overruns of every sort, “the most expensive weapons system in history.”  The bill for them: nearly $400 billion or twice what it cost to put a man on the moon. USA ACFC Continue reading

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Hate is now a Major Mainstream River Here, There, Everywhere, says Zeid

Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, in address to HRC, 13 June 2016, being  – global update by the High Commissioner at the 32nd session of the Human Rights Council under heading: “Hate is being mainstreamed”

Portrait of HRH Prince Zeid, HC Designate (and passport photos)

UN-HRC-by-UN-Geneva-CCBYNCND-2.0

Distinguished President of the Council, Director-General, Excellencies,Colleagues and friends

When the Inter-American Commission announces it has to cut its personnel by forty percent – and when States have already withdrawn from it and the Inter-American Court;

When States Parties have threatened to withdraw from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – and, even more recently, others threaten to leave the United Nations, or the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union;

When those calling for departure have seemingly already fled in their minds from the urge to protect the world from the untold sorrow and miseries which twice swept it, and brought about the creation of many of these very institutions; Continue reading

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Royalists at Loggerheads: Indrajit Eviscerated

Gamini Seneviratne

Those here and overseas who scan our English language media would have read or heard by now that Indrajit Coomaraswamy  was the compromise candidate arrived at  for the post of Governor of the Central Bank. The President had accepted it in the face of the Prime Minister’s insistence on extending the tenure of Arjuna Mahendran a man as incompetent and shameless as Ranil Wickremasinghe.

GAMANI Gamini Seneviratne Indrajith Coomaraswamy Indrajit Coomaraswamy

That of course is a load of hogwash. Coomaraswamy was Ranil’s key advisor during his previous, and infamous, spell as Prime Minister which saw Wickremasinghe set up his own Green Channel for the LTTE to acquire arms to wage war against Sri Lanka. He was also advisor to Milinda Moragoda whose ‘Regaining Sri Lanka’was a blue-print for transferring this country to external capital. Moragoda though had sufficient conscience to baulk at the proposed take-over of Eppawala by corporate predators: ‘There are people there’, he said. For this Coomaraswamy that clearly is not a factor. Continue reading

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The Eternal Bob Hope

On his death bed they asked him where he wanted to be buried. His answer was, “Surprise me.” !!!!

BOB H 2I had forgotten that he lived to be 100, and also didn’t realize it has been over 10 years since he died. Always enjoyed him, his movies, and his show. He touched a lot of lives during his life. Thought you might enjoy a bit of memory touching. Enjoy and recall a great comedian. Continue reading

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Nude Bathing on Rocky Beach

free love Free Love

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Snakes Alive!! Better Dead

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A Sensitive Prisoner Memoir: Commodore Boyagoda’s Captivity in LTTE Heartland

Sunila Galappatti in conversation with Commodore Boyagoda, courtesy of The Wire, 14 July 2016, where the title is “The Risks of Testimony: ‘Memories of Captivity with the Tamil Tigers”

It takes a long time to tell this story to friends: to say that I have a book just out; that I worked on it for five years without speaking openly about it; that it is a memoir written in the voice of a naval officer who was held captive for eight years during the Sri Lankan civil war and that he speaks of that experience in an understated and accepting way.­

SUNILAThis acceptance is the most surprising thing about the story and, almost immediately, people ask, “Did he go Stockholm?” I tell them it is a joke the commodore makes. “Maybe I have Stockholm syndrome,” he will say, and laugh. How is he to know, or I? We are not able to make a diagnosis, any more than the people who ask the question.

34a - Black Tigers Marching 36b-T-tigresses

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USA’s Imperial Embrace marked in 2015 … and Now Continuing

Natasha Gooneratne, writing on 29 June 201 5, courtesy of  the Peace and Conflict Monitor, where the title reads “Under the Guise of Protecting Human Rights and Establishing Democracy: US Intervention in Sri Lanka” … In the present context where two Assistant Secretaries of State from USA are in amicable dialogue with key members of GSL, this reading of American foreign policy by a young academic with some international experience is pertinent  — and should be meditated upon in the light of articles on R2P and the either/or epistemology of “people of righteousness” referred to at the end. Editor, Thuppahi

AAA External Affairs Minister, Mangala Samaraweera in ‘media hug’ with Nisha Biswal (US Asst Sec-of-State) and Tom Malinowski (Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour) –Pic from Daily news, 2 days back

The paper argues that strong US intervention in Sri Lanka after the end of the island’s armed conflict in 2009 is not based on altruistic efforts to protect human rights as presented in mainstream sources, but stems from deepening US geopolitical and ideological interests in the Indian Ocean region.

aa= ng

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Reflections of a Maverick Tamil Intellectual about Politics amidst OEG, DS, Banda and Others

From the Daily News, 12 July 2016

suntharalingamOn the land like unto ocean, I assume the form of a wave, And trusted dreams as a lifeI was trapped in the whirlwind of three desires, Ensnared day after day For the mound of my body I searched for food Without rest night or day I eat, eat and sleep seeing nought else, I get no gain On the shore of sorrow, I erect a tent of five virtues, I regarded thou as my mother, my son Yet thee treat me in this fashion Without interceding on my behalf Standing in-between and questioning meIs it good to remain so? Oh! My Lord! The Lover of Sivakami!! Thou who created me, oh! Natarajah of Thillai!

This poem from the Natarajapathu was translated by Suntharalingam on January 14, 1978 (Thaipongal Day) and annotated in his mother’s copy of the Kandapuranam from 1930.

What does a grandfather’s letter mean to you? Boring… pedagogical… jam-packed with advices? For C Anjalendran, his grandfather’s letters reveal a bygone grand era of Ceylon. His grandfather was a strange combination of being a professor of mathematics, lawyer and – most interestingly – a politician walking shoulder to shoulder with D S Senanayake, S W R D Bandaranaike, J R Jayewardene, Sir John Kotelawala and Sir Oliver Goonetilleke.

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Robert Koch’s Bacteriology and Hitler’s Final Solution

Richard A. Koenigsberg,  whose title is “Hitler as the Robert Koch of Germany”

On March 24, 1882, the German physician and scientist, Robert Koch, presented his discovery of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. Subsequently, the causal organisms of a great number of bacterial diseases were isolated. Writing on the history of German medicine, Paul Weindling (1989) describes how bacteriologists became aligned with the state—through the use of military analogies in their observations on bacteria. Koch described how “alien parasites” entered the body. Bacteriology was glamorized by comparing laboratory researchers to soldiers, “Warriors against Disease.”

koch at work Robert Koch at work

Weindling explains how spectacular advances in bacteriology during the 1880s and 90s greatly enhanced the public prestige of laboratory science. There was widespread adulation of Koch. Thousands of handkerchiefs on which his face was embroidered were sold. Continue reading

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