Michael Roberts
Early in the month of February 2023, I was invited by a young friend, Dr Geethika Dharmasinghe, to deliver a Zoom Video Lecture to a small class of her students at Colgate University in New York. These students were following her course on “Religion and Violence in Asia.”
Gandhi speaking and Zahran Hashim in pact with fellow Lankan jihadists 
…. Zahran was one of the two suicide bombers at the Shangri La Hotel in Colombo on Easter Sunday 2019 where where 36 people died
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, atrocities, cultural transmission, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, jihadists, landscape wondrous, life stories, LTTE, meditations, Muslims in Lanka, nationalism, politIcal discourse, racism, religiosity, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, trauma, unusual people, vengeance, world events & processes
LT Times, November 2021
Hassina Leelarathna, a co-founder of the only Sri Lankan newspaper in the U.S. and an activist who spurred fellow immigrants to help when disasters struck their homeland, has died at age 73. Leelarathna died in Sherman Oaks on Oct. 17 after battling lung cancer for the last five years, said her son, Sahan Gamage.
| Hassina Leelarathna co-hosted a bilingual radio show called “Tharanga,” focusing on news, music and culture. The program began in San Francisco at KFJC-FM, pictured here, before migrating to Los Angeles when the family relocated south in 1985 (Sahan Gamage) |
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, anti-racism, atrocities, communal relations, cultural transmission, ethnicity, female empowerment, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, landscape wondrous, language policies, life stories, literary achievements, patriotism, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, the imaginary and the real, tolerance, travelogue, unusual people, women in ethnic conflcits, world events & processes
Anbereen Hasan
On 9/11 I was at my desk at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA. We had just started our morning meeting when the planes hit the World Trade Towers in NYC. We sat in stunned silence, trying to absorb the catastrophe before our eyes; then we shifted to frantic action. Overnight, my professional world changed. I was now front and center in our fight against terrorism. The walls outside our embassies only got higher as the world saw the U.S as a target and a threat.
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, conspiracies, ethnicity, historical interpretation, Islamic fundamentalism, landscape wondrous, life stories, military strategy, photography, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, the imaginary and the real, trauma, world events & processes
Jolly Somasundaram
“Truth is like the Sun, one can shut it off for sometime, but it will not go away.” …. Elvis Presley
Afghanistan has done it again! A country, where her geography was her destiny, made her push towards repeated trysts with history- Alexander’s Greeks, Mongols, Mughals, the Brits, Russians, Americans. She, redoubtable to foreign invaders, specialised in making her country, micro- Kanattestans for these invading hordes. These done-in foreign forces now out-done, were not small fry but superpowers.
Troops from Britain- the Rotweiller in her time slot of Empire building- were decimated three times, bleaching this arid landscape. Undaunted, Sysyphean Britain ventured on the fourth, though now a metamorphosed American poodle: same wipe-out. Russia, in her own time slot of imperial hope, was similarly sent scurrying home. Smaller European countries- Australia, Germany, France Italy, Canada, wishing to taste Petite Gloire but lacking oomph, hitch hiked on the NATO bandwagon: the same degrading exit.
Filed under accountability, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, american imperialism, authoritarian regimes, British imperialism, conspiracies, fundamentalism, historical interpretation, Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, landscape wondrous, life stories, Middle Eastern Politics, military strategy, power politics, religious nationalism, security, self-reflexivity, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, world events & processes, zealotry
Fire and smoke billows from the north tower of New York’s World Trade Center on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. (AP Photo/David Karp)
A person falls from the north tower of New York’s World Trade Center as another clings to the outside, left, while smoke and fire billow from the building, Tuesday Sept. 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, atrocities, conspiracies, fundamentalism, historical interpretation, immolation, Islamic fundamentalism, landscape wondrous, life stories, military strategy, photography, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, suicide bombing, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, trauma, vengeance, world events & processes
John Pilger in Consortium News, Volume 26, Number 240, 28 August 2021, with this title ““The Great Game of Smashing Nations”
More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the U.S., Britain and their “allies” destroyed.
Outside the gate of the Arg, the presidential palace, in Kabul, the day after the Saur revolution on April 28, 1978. (Cleric77, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” [then] destroyed.
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, american imperialism, authoritarian regimes, British imperialism, conspiracies, fundamentalism, governance, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, insurrections, Islamic fundamentalism, life stories, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, war crimes, war reportage, world events & processes, zealotry
Clive Williams in Email Note to Michael Roberts, 18 August 2021 *&*
Taliban fighters in Kabul on Monday. Picture: ReutersFiled under accountability, Al Qaeda, american imperialism, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, fundamentalism, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, Islamic fundamentalism, life stories, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, unusual people, vengeance, war reportage, world events & processes
Michael Roberts
All those addressing the fervour that promoted the killing work of the Zahran Hashim jihadist network in Sri Lanka in April 2019 must come to grips with the modern currents of Wahhabi political thinking that go back to the outpourings of the Egyptian intellectuals Sayyid Qutb[1] and Al-Zawahiri[2] in the latter half of the 20th century. This step will then take investigators to the Al-Qaida movement[3] and thence to the more recent brand of Wahhabism embodied within ISIS.
Sayyid Qutb 
al-Zawahiri
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, arab regimes, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, chauvinism, communal relations, conspiracies, cultural transmission, disparagement, Eelam, ethnicity, fundamentalism, governance, historical interpretation, insurrections, Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, landscape wondrous, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, Middle Eastern Politics, Muslims in Lanka, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, propaganda, racist thinking, religiosity, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, suicide bombing, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes, zealotry
Michael Roberts
I recently watched a good part of Stephen Sackur’s dialogue with a French lady politician [whose name I have forgotten]. Sackur pursued his usual hard-line aggressive and bullying mode of questioning – posing vigorous criticisms of the French government’s position on secularism and its hostility to the carving out of sacred domains by French Muslim peoples. The implicit suggestion[1] was that the British system’s tolerance of religious sensibilities was a better line of policy.[2]
Muslim protests … and the selfie proudly posted by the Islamic terrorist who was responsible for the killings in Nice in October 2020
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, arab regimes, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, conspiracies, cultural transmission, ethnicity, European history, fundamentalism, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, Indian traditions, Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, landscape wondrous, life stories, martyrdom, Middle Eastern Politics, politIcal discourse, power politics, religiosity, religious nationalism, self-reflexivity, suicide bombing, Taliban, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes
Richard Koenigsberg
Wars are fought–soldiers die–to testify to the truth of a society’s sacred ideal. If so many people die for an ideology—it must be real.
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, american imperialism, fundamentalism, life stories, LTTE, mass conscription, meditations, military strategy, nationalism, patriotism, power politics, prabhakaran, propaganda, psychological urges, security, self-reflexivity, suicide bombing, Tamil Tiger fighters, unusual people, vengeance, war reportage, world events & processes, World War II, World War One, zealotry, Zen at war
thuppahi
