Category Archives: accountability

November 13, 2020 · 9:17 am

Gallipoli, the Disastrous Attack on the Ottomans – A BBC Review in 2015

On the 11th November 2020 BritaIn and its former colonies marked REMEMBRANCE DAY to honour the dead in their 20th century World Wars. On 25th April every year AUSTRALIA and Britiain too remember the dead at Gallipoli … Anzac Day as it is called in Ausralia and New Zealand. In the year 2015, one hundred yeas after the event, the BBC clarified the course of events at Gallipoli with a documentary: ….. including this NOTE =

“Casualties are hard to estimate due to conflicting reports, but here are some approximate numbers …..

    • Around 21,000 British empire troops were killed
    • Some 8,000 Australians
    • 2,500 New Zealanders
    • 55,000 to 85,000 Ottomans

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November 12, 2020 · 2:27 pm

Kamikaze, Mujahid, Tamil Tiger: Sacrificial Devotion in Comparative Lens

Michael Roberts, reprinting an essay drafted in 2007 and since presented in Fire & Storm in 2010 (chapter 19: 131-38)

  • “Gandhi tried for years to reduce himself to zero” (Dennis Hudson 2002: 132).
  • Hitler: “You are nothing, your nation is everything” (quoted in Koenigsberg 2009: 13).
  • LTTE: “the martyr sacrifices himself for the whole by destroying the I…” (Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam’s interpretation of a Tamil Tiger supporter’s poem; 2005: 134).
  • Spokesman for Al Qaida after the Madrid bombing: “You love life and we love death”
  • Col. Karuna, ex-LTTE: “Death means nothing to me….”
  • The Hagakure is “a living philosophy that holds that life and death [are] the two sides of the same shield” (Yoshio Mishima in his The Way of the Samurai, quoted in Moeren 1986: 109-10).
  • “Bushido means to die” (Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney 2002: 117).
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVpbl0azdFM …. Kamikaze strike

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November 11, 2020 · 9:47 am

Stomping on Trump in the Manner-Trump

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November 11, 2020 · 7:49 am

Remembering Jayantha Jayamuni De Silva and His Philisophical Messages

Malinda Seneviratne, in Daily News, 11 November 2020, ….https://www.dailynews.lk/2020/11/11/features/233326/jayantha-jayamuni-de-silva-weapon-wisdom

Almost 30 years ago, a bunch of young people, mostly undergraduates, spent a few days in a small temple in Matara. Anandaramaya, Pallimulla, Matara. They had gathered to discuss politics with a view to forming a political organization. Many things were discussed under various topics which included history, economics, philosophy and how these informed political practice.

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November 11, 2020 · 3:48 am

Combatting Terrorism Today: Three Imperatives

John Richardson

For what they are worth, here are three “imperatives for preventing conflict and terrorism” (from the 10 that conclude Paradise Poisoned) that seem particularly relevant to this discussion. These are excerpted from “elevator talk” I gave to Board members of the US Association for the Club of Rome a year or so ago.

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November 11, 2020 · 2:39 am

Mahindapala on Trump and USA after Trump with Kamala Harris in the Biden Team

H. L. D. Mahindapala, in LankaWeb, November 2020, where the title reads: “Post-Trump America with Biden – not to mention Kamala Harris”  …. highlighting by Editor, Thuppahi

Say what you like against Donald Trump, the man was a phenomenon. Whether the legacy he leaves behind is good or bad is a judgement that will be determined finally by those who will feel the impact of his regime in the years to come. Win or lose, (he is losing at the time of writing) he will be remembered as the leader who articulated and released the underlying undercurrents that had been dormant in the political landscape, awaiting a leader to take up the challenge. Trump is the leader that represented the subterranean forces which the pundit class had never expected to rise to levels raised by Trump. Though Trump seems to be doomed at the polls (now its midday – Friday) the Trumpism he generated has the force to haunt US politics in the foreseeable future. One of his ambitions has been to make his  mark in history. He would achieve that place as the most  unorthodox, controversial and unpredictable president ever who bucked the system and won. In short, he has changed the style, the substance and the contours of American politics with  the arrogance of an outsider spitting into the inside.

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November 10, 2020 · 8:24 am

The Ideology of Sacrificial Death and Australian Nationalism during World War One

ALSThis short essay appeared  in the year K????K within the Website run the Library of Social Science headed by Richard Koenigsberg and he has sent it to me this month (November 2020) — presumably inspired by the recent jihadist attacks in Europe and by Thuppahi’s determined pursuit of the comparative literature on martyrdom pursued in a variety of contexts by diverse forces (not merely Islamic).

Michael Roberts

Addressing the practices of remembrance in Australia, Richard Koenigsberg has noted the irony that a battlefield defeat at Gallipoli in World War One, 1915, served a people as an emblem of nationhood: the “Australian nation, came into being on the foundations provided by the slaughter of its young men.”

Burying the dead at Gallipoli in 1915 ,,,and The Last Post

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November 10, 2020 · 2:01 am

Biden’s Challenges –New and Old

SWR De A Samarasinghe, aka “Sam”, in Daily Mirror, 10 November 2020, where the title reads  “Biden Presidency Faces Old Problems and New Challenges”

Joe Biden will assume office as the 46th president of USA on January 20, 2021. He defeated the incumbent Donald Trump in a bitterly fought contest. Biden polled 75.2m (50.7%) votes and has secured 290 of the 538 electoral college votes that are allocated among the states roughly in proportion to the size of the population in each state. Trump polled 70.8m (47.7%) and has 214 electoral college votes. The final vote tallies will be a little higher because some votes are yet to be counted.  But those votes will not affect the result because Biden already has 290, that is above the minimum 270 needed to win.

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November 9, 2020 · 1:04 pm

Remembering Sean Connery…. the Quintessential James Bond

Anura Gunasekera, in Sunday Island, 9 November 2020, where the title reads  “The Quintessential Bond and the Quintessential Scot”” 

As a teen my introduction to James Bond was “Casino Royale”, a tattered paperback copy bought second-hand, for a few rupees, from the Bethel Book shop in Dehiwala. The cover image depicted the full figure of a curvy female in distress, overshadowed by the head and shoulders of a cruelly handsome, steely-eyed male, hair artfully disheveled, forelock falling across the forehead, and the Walther PPK ready for action. With an uncanny prescience, the cover designer had captured the key ingredients that subsequently built the film franchise.

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November 8, 2020 · 8:46 am

Tamil Tiger ‘Martyrs’: Regenerating Divine Potency?

This article from my pen was probably drafted in 2004. It appeared in Studies in Conflict  & Terrorism vol. 28 in 2005 after the usual refereeing process. Some of the details and arguments have, in fact, been obliterated within my fading memory. For this reason, it was a refreshing READ for me and brought up specific details that are pertinent to any debate surrounding the motivations that induce self-immolation, jihadist killings of a suicidal nature, et cetera… The Bibilography will also aid present investigations though, of course, other writings have appeared since then on Islamic jihadists and other martyrdom operations…. Michael Roberts, 8 November 2020 … The photographs are fresh additions … and so too the highlighting within the text.

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