Category Archives: authoritarian regimes

January 22, 2021 · 10:54 am

China Sanctions Pompeo and Other Trump Wheeler-Dealers

Item in The Island, 22 January 2020, with this title “China slaps sanctions on 28 Trump administration officials, including Pompeo”

China has imposed sanctions on 28 former Trump administration officials, including outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, agency reports said yesterday. In a statement released just minutes after President Biden took office, China’s foreign ministry said it had decided to sanction those “who have seriously violated China’s sovereignty and who have been mainly responsible for such U.S. moves on China-related issues.”

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January 17, 2021 · 8:28 am

Investment in Sri Lanka Today: Questionable Steps and Looming Influences

Dr. Sarala Fernando, in The Island, 10 January 2021, with this title “Selling the Family Silver” and India-Sri Lanka bilateral relations

A remark attributed to the US Congress that “Sri Lanka is a valuable piece of real estate” had made the news here hinting at the strategic value of our island location. while some had connected the remark to the MCC, an economic project integral to the US pivot to the Indo Pacific. This sudden interest in Sri Lanka’s land assets made the headlines after Harvard economists in 2016 advised on the incorporation of a land project under the MCC to address constraints to national growth by a re-survey, re-valuation and deed grants on lands around the country. Local experts argued that such a programme would lead to pressure on smallholders to sell land to more powerful entities for commercial exploitation increasing rural poverty, environmental and wild life destruction and water scarcity.

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January 13, 2021 · 1:51 pm

Galle Fort built on the Backs of African Slave Labour

Jeevan Thiagarajah in Daily News, 25 March 2019,  with this title“Slaves built Galle Fort” … …. with highlighting emphasis imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

The topic of the piece today was triggered by a conversation with the current High Commissioner in Colombo from South Africa, Ruby Marks, who has also posted on her Facebook page this passage, “Calvin Gilfillan, Head of Die Kasteel, affirmed what we suspected-the Dutch conceptualized and supervised, but it was the labour of an estimated 15,000 Africans brought from Portuguese and Dutch colonies, that did the back breaking work of actually building the Fort and the other ones scattered across Sri Lanka. I was shocked by how little was known in Sri Lanka about this. I visited the cramped quarters where the slaves were kept, the dungeons where they were imprisoned, and the cemetery-now a car park where they were buried. And my heart wept.

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January 10, 2021 · 9:02 am

QAnon Right-Wing Extremists and Scott Morrison: Ominous Togetherness

 and in an essay in 2019 which gains relevance in the light of the recent events in Capital Hill in Washington …. This essay was entitled “Revealed: the QAnon conspiracy theorist who is friends with Australian PM Scott Morrison”

A significant Australian proponent of the QAnon conspiracy theory is a family friend of Scott Morrison, and his wife is on the prime minister’s staff. The sprawling, disjointed and incoherent QAnon conspiracy variously claims that Donald Trump is leading a behind-the-scenes fight against a shadowy deep state, that powerful forces are hiding and protecting satanic paedophile rings, and that a secretive individual named Q leaves clues for his followers to decipher on internet forums.

 

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January 4, 2021 · 1:38 pm

Sabotage! FIVE EYES Operation undermined Oz-China Relations

Tony Kevin, in ConsortiumNews, 8 December 2020, where the title reads “Australia Sabotaged Its Own Interests in China Relations”

The destruction over the past five years of Australia’s mutually beneficial diplomatic and trade relationship with China was probably a successful “Five Eyes” information warfare operation,  writes Tony Kevin.

Hong Kong protester throws egg at President Xi Jinping’s portrait on China’s National Day, Oct. 1, 2019. (Studio Incendo, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The address to Federal Parliament by Chinese President Xi Jinping on  Nov. 17, 2014, marked a highwater mark in bilateral relations.  Xi was in Australia for the G-20 summit in Brisbane hosted by Prime Minister Tony Abbott. His theme was that China was committed to peace but ready to protect its interests.

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January 1, 2021 · 10:59 pm

Two Horrendous Assassinations

THUPPAHI darkens our entry into The YEAR 2021 and its Cumulus Cloud of COVID with two pictorial memories of two horrendous acts of political assassination by Pirapaharan and the Tamil Tigers ….. that of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Neelan Tiruchelvam in 1999 …. with the roadside memorial painting at the junction of Rosmead Place and Kynsey Terrace where the LTTE’s female suicide killer ended Neelan’s life on earth (as he headed for his office) marking the moment …. albeit in temporary modality …. WHILE conveying an everlasting message.

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December 28, 2020 · 4:27 am

For Lanka’s Future and Serenity: Skanda’s Appeal from the Heights of Haputale

Somasundaram Skandakumar …. with highlighting emphasis imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

A path to prosperity for Sri Lanka will ONLY evolve when the majority community that so passionately talks about Buddhism have it in them to abide by Lord Buddha’s profound teaching, in their hearts, minds and in Public.

It was the Lord who wished for ALL beings to be happy. It was the same Lord who said that when ALL beings are happy, nature will smile on the Country and prosperity will be assured from the ensuing blessings.

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December 27, 2020 · 2:34 pm

From Facing Elara to Vanquishing the Tamil Tigers at Nandikadal

Lynn Ockersz, in The Island. reviewing Siriweera’s Sinhala book Vijithapura Sita Nandikadal Thek Sri Lankeya Sangrama Ithihasaya’  ….

This book by one of Sri Lanka’s most eminent historians, Senior Professor Indrakeerthi Siriweera, gets into the hands of the public at a time when there is an urgent need for a clear, concise, and above all, enlightened understanding of Sri Lanka’s wars and their underlying causes. From Sri Lanka’s wars of antiquity, including the legendary Vijithapura armed conflict, to the contemporary landmark and decisive battle on the banks of the Nandikadal lagoon in northern Sri Lanka in May 2009, ‘Vijithapura Sita Nandikadal Thek Sri Lankeya Sangrama Ithihasaya’  provides us a detailed chronicling of Sri Lanka’s major armed conflicts and confrontations over the centuries and thereby proves a treasury of knowledge.

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December 23, 2020 · 3:46 pm

A Refreshing New Study of the Anagarika Dharmapala’s Endeavours

Nandi Jasentuliyana, former Deputy Director-General, the United Nations. reviewing Bhadrajee Hewage’s new book,  viz., A Name for Every Chapter: Anagarika Dharmapala and Ceylonese Buddhist Revivalism,  in the Sunday Times, 20 December 2020 where the title is different.

The unexamined life is not worth living.’ – Socrates.

Rarely has so much been written both in the West and in the East about the work of a ‘revivalist,’ that one would conclude there is nothing left to be revealed of the man or his work. That is until you read Bhadrajee Hewage’s “Anagarika Dharmapala and Ceylonese Buddhist Revivalism.”

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December 16, 2020 · 1:27 pm

Today’s Strongmen cast in the Shadow of Yesterday’s Fascists

Olivia B Waxman, in TIME, interviewing Ruth Ben-Giat …. https://time.com/5908244/strongman-fascism-history/

Critics of President Donald Trump have been calling him a fascist ever since he was running for President in 2016, and those characterizations continued in the aftermath of Election Day, as Trump repeated false claims of widespread voter fraud and baselessly accused President-elect Biden of trying to steal the election. “Donald Trump is a fascist,” Late Show host Stephen Colbert argued in an emotional monologue on Nov. 5.

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