Category Archives: atrocities

November 26, 2021 · 11:45 pm

World’s Leading Mass Killers? Who? Answer = US Military Machine

Michael Moore, in Information Clearing House, 23 November 2021, where the title reads thus: “A Memorial to the Terrorists – when the Terrorists are US!”

Eleven days ago on Veterans Day, while watching the cable news, I learned that our Congress, never missing a chance to ingratiate themselves with what they think Middle America wants — more money for the military, more flags flying everywhere, more fake patriotism and more pandering to the fake patriots — decided it was time to create a brand new national memorial on the already overcrowded National Mall in Washington, D.C., between the Lincoln Memorial and the U.S. Capitol building. The memorial will be called “The Global War on Terrorism Memorial.” I’m not making this up.

And what patriotic politician or red-blooded American wouldn’t be in favor of that!

Well, me. I’m not in favor of it. And I hope you won’t be, either.

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November 23, 2021 · 12:51 pm

Continuation of Venom and Bias at the UNHRC

Malinda Seneviratne in his web-site MalindaWords where the title runs “Spit and venom in Geneva (same old, same old)”

 

 

 It’s Bachelet’s hour. That’s Michelle. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The second of her bi-annual Christmas-come-early party in Geneva. Time to get her kicks, probably. The grave countenance, deep tone and malice disguised as concern.  Yes, folks, it’s that time of year of regurgitating tired arguments based on tendentious claims made by unreliable sources with agendas that have little or nothing to do with human rights.

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November 10, 2021 · 12:09 pm

Roger Byard at the Cutting Edge in Forensic Pathology

University of Adelaide Newsroom, October 2021, where the title runs  “GUARDIANS OF THE DEAD PODCAST: TRUE STORIES AND FASCINATING CASES FROM A WORKING FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST”

Professor Roger Byard has opened up his case files and trawled back through his personal recollections for a new podcast from The Advertiser and the University of Adelaide, Guardians of the Dead, which sheds a light on the macabre but fascinating world of forensic pathology. “I say that pathologists are almost the guardians of the dead, because we are the last doctor to look after this person and this is a person,” Professor Byard , Chair of Pathology at the University of Adelaide, said. “Father, mother, brother, whatever. They’re part of a family and there are people who will miss this person for a long time so we have tremendous responsibility in this.  Particularly for parents who’ve lost a child or a baby, they want to talk to me… they just want to eyeball the person who looked after their baby. And so I can look at them and just say ‘this is not (just) a case. This is your dead child. And we can’t imagine what you’re going through, because we’re so saddened by it.”

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November 9, 2021 · 6:07 pm

Joe Biden’s Gas Outage at Glasgow Gathering

Prince Charles at his Best at the Glasgow Summit

At Glasgow, the Duchess Camilla
Said, Biden’s a jolly good fella.
But his tasteless solution
For Mankind’s pollution
Was too lengthy and loud and a smeller.

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November 8, 2021 · 7:34 pm

The Obelisk marking the Battle of Randeniwala

Arundathie Abeysinghe, in e-Lanka, 28 October 2021 …

A monument constructed at the ninth kilometer post on the *Ella–Wellawaya Road near the village of Randeniwela is a unique obelisk to commemorate the Battle of Randeniwela (Battle of Randeniya or Sinhalese – Portuguese War), a battle fought on August 25th 1630. The battle was fought between Portuguese forces commanded by the *Governor Constantinu De Saa de Noronha and King Senarath’s (1604–1635) youngest son Prince Maha Astana (pre coronation) who was later crowned as King Rajasinha II (1635–1687), the second ruler of Kandyan Kingdom and his brother Prince Vijayapala.

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November 5, 2021 · 10:12 pm

Hassina Leelarathna: In Action, In Words And In Commemoration

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)

 

 

 

 

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November 3, 2021 · 11:46 pm

Self-Immolation in Protest: Reflections

Michael Roberts, reproducing here an expanded version of article printed in Lanka Monthly Digest, September 1999, Vol 6:2, pp. 56-57…. with citations added.

 

 

 

 

 

A Kurd in Germany immolates self in protest vs Ocalan’s fate

 ONE : In February 1999 a Kurdish nationalist leader, Ocalan, was caught by the Turkish authorities. Kurdish refugees in the Western world erupted in protest. In London a young girl Neila Kanteper set herself alight. In Sydney a young lad was caught on camera with petrol can and cigarette lighter as he threatened similar action. As I walked into the local news-agency in Adelaide that week the proprietor[1] waved the picture of Kanteper in flames in front of me and in considerable alarm inquired how anyone could take such an extreme measure. He could not ever take such a step, he said. His remarks gain in significance from the fact that they were unsolicited and had not been preceded by prior conversation. I was in a hurry and did not explore matters further, but I conjecture that his bewilderment stemmed not only from the method of death by fire, but also from such terminal commitment to a collective cause. The question, therefore, is whether in similar circumstances an act of martyrdom involving death by hand-gun would produce the same level of astonishment. Relatively speaking, death by gun seems to be so much more acceptable to the Western world than death by flame.

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November 3, 2021 · 11:11 pm

Self-Immolation and Buddhism: Tibetan Protests Vs China in 2012

Jamyang Norbu, in Buddhist Channel TV, 5 January 2012 https://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=70,10661,0,0,1,0

The Yiddish word “chutzpah”, pronounced “huspa”, has the exact same meaning as the Tibetan word “hamba”, and even shares a passing tonal quality to it. Leo Rosten, the humourist, defined chutzpah as “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”

 

 

This image from video footage released by Students For A Free Tibet via APTN purports to show Buddhist nun Palden Choetso engulfed in flames in her self-immolation protest against Chinese rule on a street in Tawu, Tibetan Ganzi prefecture, in China’s Sichuan Province Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. Continue reading →

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October 24, 2021 · 7:55 pm

Shock! Terror! 9/11…… From Within CIA Headquarters at Langley

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.

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October 22, 2021 · 12:01 am

The Religious Threads and Corporate Institutions behind Our World Wars?

Brian Victoria, presenting an article that has appeared in Countercurrents on 19 October 2021 with this title “Something Worse than Slavery?”

With the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement, together with the emergence of Critical Race Theory, the spotlight has once again been shone on the heinous institution that was slavery and its aftermath, racial discrimination. Could anything be worse than a system in which a human being becomes the property of another, to do with as the slave owner sees fit?

For good reason, the ownership of one human being by another is now universally prohibited, at least legally, for the inhumane abomination it has always been. Yet, in rejecting slavery it is easy to overlook one aspect that may be identified, for lack of a better word, as its sole positive feature. Namely, it was not in the slave owner’s interest to kill their slaves outright, for only living slaves made it possible for the owner to profit from their labor.

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