Finally, the world is uniting against the Cabal and the control
I’ve covered a lot of rallies in my time, but I’ve never seen anything like what unfolded in London on September 13. An enormous number of people flooded the streets for Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally. The atmosphere was electric. It wasn’t just another protest; it felt like a cultural revolution in motion.
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Michael Roberts
This epic and fascinating TV series serial has brought its curtains down and called it a night [to alter the idiom]. My first intimation of this event was in reading Ed Potten’s account in The Australian 13-14 September 2025 ….but I cannot access this news item because the !@#!$!!! paper demands money for web-access ….even though I receive the print-paper daily.
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Downton Abbey is … {was] ….. a British historical drama television series set in the early 20th century, created and co-written by Julian Fellowes. It first aired in the United Kingdom on ITV on 26 September 2010 and in the United States on PBS, which supported its production as part of its Masterpiece Classic anthology, on 9 January 2011. The show ran for fifty-two episodes across six series, including five Christmas specials.
‘Downton Abbey’ Duo Talk Success And Controversy, But Some Questions Are Off Limits
Tom Branson and Lady Mary return for the final Downton Abbey movie(Image: Rory Mulvey/Focus Features)
Filed under art & allure bewitching, Britain's politics, British social order, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, ethnicity, female empowerment, gender norms, heritage, historical interpretation, life stories, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, travelogue, unusual people
Michael Roberts
Sinnappah Arasaratnam was one of my inspirational teachers in History at Peradeniya University in the late 1950s. In chancing upon a printed copy of one of his articles — entitled “Sri Lanka’s Tamils under Colonial Rule,” (date ??), I have been inspired to remind new generations, as well as older ones. of his contributions to scholarship in Lanka, Malaysia/Singapore and Australia.
It was to my benefit that I was able to interact with him on occasions after he moved to Malaysia and Australia. Alas, the details of these exchanges have not taken root in my fading memory.
Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, Britain's politics, British colonialism, caste issues, centre-periphery relations, commoditification, communal relations, cultural transmission, demography, Dutch colonialism, economic processes, ethnicity, European history, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, Indian traditions, island economy, land policies, language policies, Left politics, life stories, modernity & modernization, nationalism, parliamentary elections, patriotism, plural society, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, power politics, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, Sri Lankan scoiety, Tamil civilians, teaching profession, transport and communications, world events & processes
“From Minute Hands can an Ongoig ‘Edifice’ be built”– Thupphiyaaa
AN APPEAL ON EMAIL from THE GUARDIAN
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DBS Jeyaraj, in the Financial Times, 28 March 2025 where the title reads “How UK-sanctioned “Col” Karuna was deported from Britain 17 years ago”
Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias “Col” Karuna
After the UK sanctions were imposed the Tamil newspaper “Thamilan” interviewed Karuna about it. Karuna was dismissive saying that the UK sanctions would not affect him or his politics in any way. Karuna denied that he was responsible for any human rights violation. Speaking further he said that if he was guilty of any human rights violation, the UK could have penalised him when he sought refugee status there. “Why didn’t they do it then? Instead they sent me back home safely,” pointed out Karuna. He went on to say that he was not bothered by the UK sanctions.
It is indeed ironic that a man who was deported from the UK years ago has now been forbidden from travelling to the UK due to the sanctions imposed in a different context. Is Karuna being honest in saying that the UK authorities deported him instead of penalising him for alleged human rights violations because he was not guilty of any such offence? What were the circumstances under which he went to the UK 17 years ago and what exactly happened to him then?
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Verbatim Record of Claude Malhuret’s Speech in French Senate, March 2025 **
A box of Impeachmints, … related to his dealings with Ukraine.
On Thursday, 19 December 2019, in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Donald Trump caricature is seen on a trailer in Krakow, Poland on July 25, 2024. The figure, which was previously a theater prop, has been bought by local politician Lukasz Wantuch. Now he is planning to present it at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies…. Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
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Introduction
British Governors relied on mostly unsalaried Mudaliyars (leaders) from select families who exchanged service for land grants.[1] Educated in public schools Mudaliyars’ Anglophile sons increasingly inhabited a Jane Austenian lifeworld, particularly as they donned European attire in the middle of the nineteenth century. Unfolding around them was a countervailing Buddhist revival associated with Sinhala cultural resurgence. [2]
Chitty Family in 1899 … Standing L-R = Christian, Wilfred, George Snr, Marian, Charles ….. Sitting L-R = Mitzi, Rose, Maude, Laura, James
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Michael Roberts
My elder sister Audrey’s article on cross-cultural marriages & families in England via detailed interaction with several well-educated families in Oxford in the 1990s has been reproduced in TPS in the full … https://thuppahis.com/2024/10/28/not-all-issues-are-black-or-white-some-voices-from-the-offspring-of-cross-cultural-marriages/. It has the potential to inspire comments from British folk of varied backgrounds; and, hopefully, to promote studies in the today which could mark contrasts – or similarities – now some 20-30 years later.
Audrey in an acting role at Peradeniya Uni, mid-1950s …. & at a church in Oxford in the 2010s
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Audrey Maxwell [nee Roberts] … a chapter in Rosemary Breger and Rosana Hill (eds). Cross-Cultural Marriage. Identity and Choice, Oxford, Berg, 1998, …. ISBN 1 85973 968 7 paper … with this reproduction being rendered possible by our nephew-in-law Tissa Abeywardena
Although this volume focuses on intermarriage, it seems appropriate to include some voices of children of such marriages – which are becoming more numerous because of the expansion of worldwide contacts within the ‘global village’. This chapter is not an in-depth study of a representative sample, but rather intends to recognize that cross-cultural marriages produce consequences for their progeny. Such children face ambiguous loyalties and difficult choices in their life encounters. Nevertheless, though media coverage tends to highlight their problems rather than their advantages, the offspring who spoke to me indicated clearly that they felt there are many rewarding features deriving from their cultural inheritances. It is encouraging that, though having no claim to representativeness, these accounts at least all end on a positive note.
In 1995 I interviewed eight such ‘children’ (aged between eighteen and thirty four), reached through networking among people connected, in one way or another, with the University of Oxford. The respondents are middle class, well educated and articulate. I encouraged them to talk of their life histories using open-ended, unstructured, tape-recorded interviews. The accent was on their own thoughts and how they see their world.
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thuppahi
