Category Archives: accountability

April 26, 2021 · 2:23 am

Remembering the Aussie Air Force Personnel Who Died in World War Two

Steve Waterton, in The AUSTRALIAN, Special Magazine Edition, 31 March 2021

Stella Bowen, one of the few Australian women to be appointed an official war artist, began her preliminary pencil sketches for the painting on this magazine’s cover on April 27, 1944. Her subjects were the crew of a Lancaster bomber of 460 Squadron, six Australians and their English flight engineer. That night their raid took them over Friedrichshafen, an important German industrial centre; the next morning they were reported missing, presumed dead.

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April 26, 2021 · 2:07 am

Amidst Doom & Gloom in India …. IPL Cricket…. !#@!!$!!!

Gideon Haigh, in The Weekend Australian, 23/24 April 2021, where the title runs: “Forget About India’s Covid Chaos, There’s Cricket to be Played”

In the Indian city of Nashik on Wednesday, 22 COVID patients in a hospital ward perished when the oxygen tanker on which their ventilators depended sprung a leak. Perhaps you saw the footage — scores of workers running ineffectually in all directions through swirling clouds of vapour, representative of the chaos and futility enveloping India as its second, steepling pandemic wave bears down.

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April 25, 2021 · 9:58 am

Premier Zhou Enlai’s Visit to Ceylon in 1957

Tony Donaldson, with underlining emphasis inserted bt The Editor, Thuppahi

On 1 October 1949, the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed by Mao Zedong. Two months later, on 6 January 1950 the Ceylon government recognised Red China– one of the first countries to do so. Seven years later, in early 1957, the Premier of China, Zhou Enlai, made an historic five-day visit to the island, which paved the way for the establishing of diplomatic relations between Ceylon and China. Before exploring Zhou’s visit to Ceylon, it is worth diverting for a moment to briefly sketch the key events that led to his historic visit.

Zhou Enlai in China relaxing at the Huairou Reservoir, Beijing, in August 1960 …  Photo by Du Xiu Xian Continue reading →

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April 22, 2021 · 5:18 am

A Tale of Resistance: The Story of the Arrival of the Portuguese

Michael Roberts

An ABSTRACT of an article that appeared in print in Ethnos, 1989, vol 54: 1 & 2,  pp. 69-82…. available online for payment to Taylor & Francis.

This essay decodes a sixteenth century folktale which records the Sinhalese reaction to the arrival of the first Portuguese. Where the historiography has interpreted this tale as benign wonderment in the face of exotica, a piecemeal deconstruction of the allegorical clues in the ‘story is utilised to reveal how the Sinhalese linked the Portuguese with demons and with Vasavarti Mārayā, the arch enemy of the Buddha. In this fashion the Portuguese and the Christian sacrament of communion were represented as dangerous, disordering forces.

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April 20, 2021 · 4:10 am

Shirley De Alwis: The Hand behind Peradeniya University’s Designs

KNO Dharmadasa**

Shirley D’Alwis, the first University Architect, died in harness. He was working day and night to complete the job entrusted to him – the preparation of the buildings he had designed and started constructing – for the university to be shifted to its intended site in Peradeniya. After a long and protracted “battle of the sites” fought in the legislature and in the media, the State Council had finally decided in September 1938 that the proposed University of Ceylon was to be a unitary and residential university and that it should be sited in the land to be acquired from the New Peradeniya Estate, a tea and rubber plantation on the lower Hantana range on the banks of Mahaveli Ganga. It was a picturesque site with the tree clad hilly terrain sloping down from the Hantana range to the river bank.

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April 19, 2021 · 3:19 pm

Lord Soulbury, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at Peradeniya University

This striking and rare photograph from 20th April 1954 shows Lord Soulbury leading the young Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on their way to inaugurate the formal opening of the University of Peradeniya at its “Senate Building” — whereupon Prince Philip displayed acumen in deploying the original words –“more open than usual” when verbally administering the opening. What apt words!

This Pix has been sent to me by Gerald Peiris.

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April 18, 2021 · 2:30 pm

A Chinese Tale: From Surviving the Titanic to Racial Hate in USA

Liu Mengqiu and Cai Xuejiao, in The Sixth Tone, 18 April 2021, where the title runs thus: The Six’ Recounts Tragic Tale of China’s Titanic Survivors,”

The story of how the survivors received a racist response in the U.S. is prompting viewers to reflect on China’s rise. During the editing of “Titanic,” the 1997 blockbuster about the ship’s fated maiden voyage in April 1912, a scene of a Chinese man laying on a door, floating in the ocean and awaiting rescue, was left on the cutting room floor.

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April 16, 2021 · 3:29 pm

Sri Lanka’s Ecological Crisis in Overview in the Context of the HR Accusations

Asoka Bandarage, in Asia Times, 3 April 2021, where the title runs thus:  ‘Human rights’ and Sri Lanka’s ecological crisis “

A UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution of March 16 brought extensive charges against Sri Lanka over alleged human-rights violations, but is arguably seriously flawed. Opportunistic and strategic use of human rights by the Western powers to maintain hegemony continually ignores violations of the rights of nature and humanity rooted in the destructive model of economic development the same powers introduced to the world.

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April 15, 2021 · 9:44 am

Where Cricketers outshine Politcoes …. In Every Field

Lakshman Kadirgamar

“Ladies and Gentlemen, let me see whether politics and cricket have anything in common. Both are games. Politicians and cricketers are superficially similar, and yet very different. Both groups are wooed by the cruel public who embrace them today and reject them tomorrow.

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April 12, 2021 · 10:58 am

Prince Philip’s Indelible ‘Marks’ in Sri Lanka

Photo courtesy of my old student pal Piyasiri Wickramasekara ….more details below

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