This post is an ODE to Bruce for the enthusiasm, breadth of knowledge and liveliness he brings to the commentary he provides in all those fields he addresses. Thank you and Hurrah, BRUCE.
Bruce has placed on record SEVEN of the great moments he covered during his career in a variety of sports ……….SO I present a few glimpses here.
Cathy Freeman all smiles at Sydney Olympics Continue reading
Filed under performance, unusual people
Iain Mackay
This track definitely wasn’t on the map, and it certainly wasn’t on the Google earth print-out I was using to navigate. I was twenty miles north east of Unawatuna in the south of Sri Lanka and it was starting to look like I might be lost. One of the most enjoyable things about exploring Sri Lanka on a mountain bike is the fact that you can easily access the beautiful countryside and quiet backroads that criss-cross the island: simply head off into the countryside and five minutes after leaving the town you will be riding through rice paddies, rainforest or tea plantations. Continue reading
Filed under cultural transmission, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people
David Doring, a Turkic Kazakh, with his pan flute
Amazing Grace, David Döring, Panflöte in den Bergen, Panflute
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Filed under cultural transmission
Greg Sheridan in The Australian recently. This item appeared also in The Island with title “Neighbour asks for a hand to tame Tiger”
Gamini Lakshman Peiris wants Australia to proscribe the LTTE as a terrorist organisation, making any support to it from Australia illegal. The LTTE is a proscribed terrorist organisation in Europe and North America but, perversely, not in Australia. Peiris says that although the war between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE is over, Tamil Tiger networks still intimidate Tamil families in the diaspora and extort money from them, as well as engaging, he believes, in a range of other criminal activities. Continue reading
Filed under asylum-seekers, australian media, democratic measures, ethnicity, historical interpretation, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, nationalism, politIcal discourse, propaganda, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, truth as casualty of war, world events & processes
Dinouk Colombage in http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dinouk-colombage/sri-lanka-forgetting-to-r_b_3459138.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share
In the light of triumph the mistakes of the past are often thrown in to the shadows to be forgotten. For Sri Lanka this bodes true, as the government continues to bathe in the “glory” of its defeat of the LTTE back in 2009. Four years have passed since Sri Lanka’s brutal and bloody civil war came to an aggressive end. At the time many rejoiced with the news, and expectations that after 26 years the country could reconcile. It now appears as though reconciliation is playing second fiddle to the growing political intrigue on all sides. Continue reading
Courtesy of The Hindu
A political battle of major proportions, perhaps the most portentous in years, is looming in Sri Lanka this year and is being preceded by a debate amounting to a battle of ideas. The matter at hand is the much delayed and deferred election to the Northern Provincial Council.
Political forces are arrayed in four positions on the battlefield. On the Tamil side there are those who hold that the existing 13th Amendment to the Constitution under which the Northern Provincial Council was established, was inadequate from the start and that therefore, contesting the election and holding office would be of no positive consequence, and may even have the negative consequence of legitimising the institution. The other position occupied within the Tamil political spectrum is of those who regard the 13th Amendment to be flawed and deeply unsatisfactory, but grasp the value of contesting and winning the election, and occupying the political real estate that remains. Continue reading
Jehan Perera in The Island, 17 June 2013
The government is getting ready to pass a 19th Amendment to the constitution as an urgent bill. For the past several weeks, the government has been engaging in internal debate about the powers of the provincial councils and how they should be reduced. The urgency arises from the government’s much debated decision to finally hold the long-postponed elections for the Northern Provincial Council in September. The proposed constitutional amendment seeks to take away the power of two (or more) adjacent provincial councils to decide to merge together to form one merged province. The merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces has been a sore point for successive governments and Sinhalese opinion leaders. They see the possibility of a merged North East province to be a threat to the unity of the country. Such a province would have a non-Sinhalese majority, and being about 30 per cent of the country, could also become a viable independent state in which the majority of the population would be Tamil and Muslim. Continue reading
Anoma Pieris
Abstract: The role of the home, the domestic sphere and the intimate, ethno-cultural identities that are cultivated within it, are critical to understanding the polemical constructions of country and city; tradition and modernity; and regionalism and cosmopolitanism. The home is fundamental to ideas of the homeland that give nationalism its imaginative form and its political trajectory. Continue reading
“There are two main reasons for welcoming The Sri Lankan Republic at 40: Reflections on Constitutional History, Theory and Practice. The work presents the detailed recollections and reflections of Sri Lankans concerned with the making of the Constitution in 1972 that explore legal, political and social dimensions. Moreover, it contains much cogent analysis by scholars from across the globe of current thinking on the difficult path for constitutionalism in face of the power-struggle that has been, or is still being, waged in many diverse states and nations. These volumes are thus not only an important aid to a deeper understanding of the history of Sri Lanka; they are also a valuable addition to the growing literature on comparative constitutional law. A fine standard of editing is evident throughout and can be seen, for instance, in a remarkably full bibliography. The publishers are to be congratulated on the attractive design and printing of the work, which do full justice to the rich quality of its contents.”– Anthony Bradley, Q.C., Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law of the University of Edinburgh; Barrister, Cloisters Chambers; co-author of A.W. Bradley & K.D. Ewing (2011) Constitutional and Administrative Law (15th Ed.) (Longman). Continue reading
Eran Wickramaratne
The reactivation, of the Press Council Law and the government-proposed Code of Ethics for journalists have to be viewed with great suspicion for many reasons. Ethics is beyond the realm of legal codification. Ethics is about moral principles that govern a person or a group’s behaviour. While some philosophers suggested that it should exemplify justice and charity, and benefit the person and society, others later introduced the idea that ethics entrains one’s duty towards others and respect for others. The attempt to encourage better ethics or behaviour amongst journalists, while being laudable cannot become coercive. Attempts to legalise ethical systems have been made by religious orders from time to time the world over empowering clergy to become the ethical police. Such systems have universally failed. A Code of Ethics for the media imposed by a government will of necessity make the relevant government ministry the ethical police. The recent Island newspaper editorial made the point “There is no difference in our book, between politicians extolling the virtues of ethics and prostitutes pontificating on chastity.” Continue reading
thuppahi
