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
I present several comments from Sri Lankans in New Zealand and Sri Lanka
A NOTE from SM in Colombo, 7 Sept 2021
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Filed under accountability, american imperialism, atrocities, historical interpretation, human rights, Islamic fundamentalism, life stories, military strategy, nationalism, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, transport and communications, trauma, war reportage, world events & processes, zealotry
Lynn Ockersz, in The Island, 2 September 2021, where the title is “Power and sovereignty issues come to the fore in Afghanistan”
“More and more strength to those women and other vulnerable groups that are mustering for their rights in Afghanistan right now.” This is likely to be the wish of progressives everywhere. The enormity of their courage could be gauged from the fact that they are in direct confrontation with the Taliban who are no champions of fundamental rights. Now more than ever before, women’s organizations the world over and international progressive opinion need to rally round these protesting sections in Afghanistan.
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ONE
Even as the Vice-President with Obama, Biden was opposed to keeping US troops in Afghanistan. When Obama supported the Army’s request for a troop surge in 2009, VP Biden strongly opposed it. It is also known that most Americans did not want their soldiers and airmen to remain in that country after Bin Laden was taken out.
Biden made the announcement in May this year, that he will pull out all US troops by the end of August. His desire was to complete the withdrawal before Sep 2021 (the 20th Anniversary of 9/11 attacks on the USA).
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, atrocities, foreign policy, historical interpretation, Islamic fundamentalism, law of armed conflict, life stories, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, Taliban, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes, zealotry
Qadri Ismail, in Groundviews in 2015 with this title “The Import Of Sri Lankan Muslim Names”
My name is Mohamed Qadri Ismail. Mohamed Qadri Ismail is not my name.
The statements may prompt a wtf. (The acronym, btw, of the World Taekwondo Federation.) Surely one cannot affirm a position and its contradiction. Yet I do. The second sentence doesn’t necessarily negate the first.
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Text of the final Pastoral Letter written by the Anglican Bishop of Kurunegala, Rt. Rev. L Wickremasinghe, in September 1983 after the July 1983 Violence …… [Bishop Lakshman passed away some weeks after this on October 23rd 1983] ………….. from http://dbsjeyaraj.com 28 July 2021, 9:28 pm
“The Tragedy is that it is Becoming Harder in 1983 for Sinhala Christians to Acknowledge that what was done is a GREATER Moral Crime than in 1958” …………….. Bishop Lakshman Wickremesinghe
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Michael Roberts reproducing an article that originally appeared on the 19th March 2010 in https://sacrificialdevotionnetwork.wordpress.com/
One’s academic trajectories and journeys are invariably subject to vagaries and contingencies. The events and researches leading to my interest in “communal violence” and “zealotry” in the 1990s, and thereafter to what I have called ‘sacrificial devotion” (embracing the topics of “terrorism,” suicide bombers and Tamil Tigers),[i] were shaped by such contingencies. Since my web site will present some short essays on both these topics in the course of this month, let me detail some moments during my research work that resulted in the journeys that produced such outcomes.
In 1986-87 I spent about 14 months in Sri Lanka on research work during my sabbatical year. I was completing my research and writing on the history of Colombo in British times and the associated rise of a Westernized middle class-cum-bourgeoisie – work that resulted in the book People Inbetween (Sarvodaya, 1989).[ii] The island was still under the clouds cast by the attacks on Tamils in the southern parts of the island in July 1983. Following the British colonial lexicon this momentous and tragic set of events was generally described as the “1983 riots.” But such politically-aware scholars as Newton Gunasinghe and Shelton Kodikara were among those who depicted the event as a “pogrom.” This was a sensitizing revision that I accepted.
Riots May 1958 – A Tamil passenger was taken out of the vehicle and beaten up
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Liyanage Amarakeerthi, whose chosen title is “A Fatal Intersection: Three Small Shops in North Western Sri Lanka that No Longer Exist” …. with highlighting imposed by The Editor Thuppahi
I was born and raised in a little community in Kuliyapitiya, a typical agricultural area with three small tanks (wewa), which watered paddy fields, within walking distance on three sides of my house. Of course, there were also three Buddhist temples, almost within walking distance from each other. It was a typical village in the North-Western province, a part of which is known as bath kooralee or ‘rice province’. Where there were no tanks or paddy fields there were coconut plantations, big and small. Not surprisingly, much of the ‘coconut triangle’ is also in this province.
Stephen Champion’s cover photo has been deployed here by Thuppahi as an external intervention to highlight the scenario of the 1980s
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thuppahi
