Category Archives: accountability

‘Covidiot Specialists’ as Another Menace

Dr Upul Wijayawardhana, in Island, 4 May 2020, where the title is Which is more dangerous, Covid or Covidiot?”

“Where knowledge is sparse, experts proliferate” is, perhaps, the most important lesson I have learned during this troubled time we all are going through. At times, I wished Sir Tim Berners-Lee patented his invention – the World Wide Web – rather than gifting it to humanity. That would have prevented so many of my friends, and relatives, from forwarding many frivolous items, by e-mail and WhatsApp, as I am a Facebook shunner. Had they been obliged to pay, even the tiniest amount, they would have thought twice before forwarding most of these which, at best, are silly and, at worst, laden with darned lies. Had Sir Tim been selfish, he would have been a multi-billionaire, the richest man in the world, perhaps, and could then be a ‘philanthropist’, like some Americans, doling out millions to help the fight against the unseen-enemy. But that is another story.

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Where Sri Lanka’s England Medical Training derailed Its Covid-Discovery Programme

Darshanie Ratnawalli

Having a technocrat as President, we started off well following in the footsteps of China and East Asia. We also introduced innovations such as using intelligence services for contact tracing and root ball operations, trying to cut out the infection paths from society the same way a malignant tumour is cut from the body.

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An Allegory: A Life for A Life

Sanjiva Wijesinha …. see https://sanjivawijesinha.com/2020/04/10/a-life-for-a-life/

The tall good-looking army officer rose from his chair, came around in front of his desk and extended his hand to Deborah Roth. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Roth” he smiled, motioning toward one of the leather-covered armchairs by the window. “Please take a seat.”

He turned to the sergeant who had met the woman at the front entrance of the military hospital and had accompanied her through the security checks. “Thank you, Tissa. I will call you when the lady is ready to return.”

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Pirapāharan the Megalomaniac: Stephen Champion’s Reading from 2007

A Composite Collection

Michael Roberts: An Introductory Note, 30 April 2020

In early April this year 2020 I came across new data – or rather, information which had bypassed me earlier – garnered by DBS Jeyaraj via his exchanges with KP Pathmanāthan[1] in KP’s capacity as the head of the international arm of the LTTE from 31 December 2008.[2] This data confirmed and elaborated on the processes of Western imperialistic intervention in Sri Lanka in 2009 as the LTTE slid to defeat.

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Richardson’s Paradise Poisoned as Yardstick in Evaluating Champion’s Lifework

John Richardson

Dear Michael, Thank you for your thoughtfulness it providing me the opportunity to comment on Champion’s photographic lens. However, I don’t know that a brief intervention from me would add much to the discussion. As you know, I spent more than 17 years trying to unravel and respond constructively to the tragic and not infrequently horrifying scenarios that unfolded during those years and subsequently.

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Godfrey Gunatilleke: A Gentleman for All Seasons

Leelananda De Silva, in Island, 28 April 2020,  and 11 August 2018, where the title is Godfrey Gunatilleke – A Life of Quiet Achievement”

Godfrey Gunatilleke is one of the leading intellectuals in the latter half of the 20th century in Sri Lanka. Never a man to be confined by disciplinary compartments, he straddled across many academic and administrative fields in his long career. An English scholar to start with, he was one of the finest products of the University of Ceylon which lasted in its pristine form (as envisioned by its founding fathers) for 20 years from 1943 to the early 1960s.

A= Godfrey Gunatillake (c) and Gen. Anton Muttukumaru, Ceylon’s High Commissioner in Canberra, at a 1965 ECAFE meeting in Wellington …. B = Godfrey clarifying a point

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On Stephen Champion’s Collaboration with Amnesty International in 2008

Gerald Peiris[1]

From the recent correspondence[2] between you and the ace photographer Stephen Champion, (published in your Thuppahi blog), I came to know about a composite event staged in London in July 2008 consisting of an exhibition of photographs recorded by Champion “while travelling around Sri Lanka Sri Lanka for over twenty-two years”, and the launch of an album containing such images, and a published report of an interview intended to publicise the exhibition and the album conducted by Saroj Pathirana for the BBC Sandēsaya programme. For several reasons I found this event quite interesting and relevant to an understanding a type of external intervention in Sri Lanka’s conflict situations and decided to respond to your request for my observations. What I find it necessary to say ought to be prefaced with a note that I have not met Champion, nor seen either the aforesaid exhibition or the album, and not listened to the Sandesaya broadcast. In my search for background information on Champion I came across three Internet image galleries titled, respectively, Colours of Change, Dharmadeepa and Portraits. Though I am no connoisseur of this or any other form of art, I did admire his black & white creations in the Dharmadeepa collection.[3]

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Reading Stephen Champion’s Photo Event in 2008 …. Today 2020

Michael Roberts

When I came across some ‘new’ material[1] of great import relating to KP Pathmanathan’s valiant efforts to extricate the LTTE leadership from their deteriorating military situation in early 2009 and to whisk them away to Eritrea with the active support of the great powers, and then reiterated my longstanding criticisms of the Western powers’ imperial effrontery in a fresh article this April,[2] I was surprised to receive an email note out of the blue from Stephen Champion in March this year 2020 – one wholly supportive of my slashing criticisms of the West.

I assumed that Champion was writing to me from UK and was mighty pleased because I was aware of his enterprising camerawork in trying and dangerous conditions in the late 1980s and have a copy of at least one of his pictorial works.[3] I decided to seek out more information on Champion via Google and immediately chanced upon Saroj Pathirana’s report in the BBC Sandeshaya programme describing an event mounted by Amnesty International in July 2008 displaying some of Champion’s photographic collections (see Pix above). Adhering to the principle of progressing step-by-step in temporal order, I placed this item within my Thuppahi site on 20th April 2020.

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Lovina Alphonso: A Rodi Waif who ‘converted’ a British Governor

N. Sarawanan, whose preferred title is The Story of Lovina Alphonso — A Dalit Heroine of her Time,” 9 April 2019 …. https://medium.com/@dalithistorynow/the-story-of-lovina-alphonso-a-dalit-heroine-of-her-time-7d43310dd7aa

The “Rodi” caste people are the most oppressed in the Sinhala community. Historically, this community was involved in folk religion, magic, mantras, and ritualised caste begging. Rodis were treated as untouchables and violently discriminated. Rodiya men and women were denied permission to wear any upper-body covering. It was also forbidden for them to cover themselves below the knee. In one era, both men and women were only allowed to cover their genital area and nothing else. Even if they felt ill or cold and clothed themselves to feel warm, and an “upper” caste person caught them in the act, they would have to say, “Please forgive me, Lord, I was feeling too cold!” It was up to the “upper” caste person, then, to decide whether to allow the act of covering or not.

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The Political Philosophy driving a Dangerous Programme against Covid-19

Isabel Frey: “Herd Immunity’ is Epidemiological Neoliberalism,” article in Economic Sociology ….. https://economicsociology.org/2020/04/24/herd-immunity-is-epidemiological-neoliberalism/

While most European countries are imposing lockdowns to stop the spread of the coronavirus, a few countries are opting for a different strategy: herd immunity. Instead of testing as many people as possible and implementing measures to increase social distancing, they want to purposefully let the virus spread among people who are at low risk, so that a large part of the population becomes immune. This approach was first proposed by UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson, who refused to implement social distancing measures until a few days ago. While the UK and then the Netherlands has officially distanced itself from this strategy, Sweden continues to hold on to this approach, despite harsh criticism by the WHO. However, the point of this article is to unravel the underlying paradigm of this strategy, not to make an argument about its effectiveness.

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