Category Archives: British imperialism

Whistle-Stop Cricket in Colombo as Inspirational Force

R Whitehead …. as rwhitehead61 … ……………….. https://wisdenblog.wordpress.com/2020/02/06/notes-from-a-small-island/ ………………….. with the title of this item and the underlining being impositions by the editor Thuppahi -who has also insertd the pistorial embellishments

Nicholas Brookes on the matches that played a pivotal role in the development of cricket in Sri Lanka.**

Until 1982 Sri Lanka were stranded on the fringes of international cricket: a small island, marooned. Life on the outside wasn’t easy, but Sri Lanka still had something to make most of the cricketing world envious. You might call it a geographical blessing. 

In the days before planes, the only way to get between England and Australia was by boat. It was an arduous journey that could take up to three months and required a stopover. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Ceylon (as it was called until 1972) emerged as the natural point of transit.

Don Bradman is met by SP Foenander on board ship in Colombo, early April 1930

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Fighting & Dying FOR Britain during the Two World Wars

A New Book on  The Ceylonese Volunteers in World War I and World War II

 

 

 

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The West’s Devious Demonization of Russia and China

Jeffrey Sachs, in Pearls and Irritations 24 August 2022 where the  title reads thus The west’s false narrative about Russia and China”

The world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part because of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about the causes of the escalating global conflicts. The relentless Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous. It is an attempt to manipulate public opinion, not to deal with very real and pressing diplomacy.

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The Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean,1842-2022

Michael Roberts

 Writing as a non-specialist after listening to the Chinese Ambassador’s speech at the Australian Press Club today,[1] I venture on what may seem to be outrageous geo-political hypotheticals by looking at Tasmania’s relationship with the continent of Australia. That is, I am deploying this outrageous issue as a thought-provoker.

 

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Channa Wickremesekera’s Books on Sri Lanka’s Past …. & Beyond

Channa Wickremesekera’s Publications

Channa Wickremesekera is the son of the late Percy Wickremesekera, an acquaintance of mine from Peradeniya Campus days and a ‘Trot’ activist who migrated to Australia. Channa lives in Melbourne. I got to know him when I was working on my book on Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period¸1590’s-1815 (which came out in 2003  …………………… https://www.amazon.com/Sinhala-Consciousness-Kandyan-Period-1590s/dp/9558095311).

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The British planted the Seeds of Lanka’s Bankruptcy in 1942

David Graham

I keep watching Karan Thapar’s interview with Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy: viz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLLMdx74-aw. It’s fascinating. Karan Thapar is a skilled, hard-nosed interviewer and Indrajit Coomaraswamy is a knowledgeable and articulate interviewee. So what you get is two clear thinkers who cut to the nub of the issue. It’s a trenchant analysis of how Sri Lanka got into this hole and how it can get out of it.

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Western Programme in Ukraine raised Existential Fears in Russia

Prof. John J. Mearsheimer will be delivering a LECTURE on The causes and consequences of the Ukraine war” …………http://www.defenddemocracy.press/the-causes-and-consequences-of-the-ukraine-war-a-lecture-by-john-j-mearsheimer/

 A NOTICE dated  18/07/2022

Professor John J. Mearsheimer will discuss the current Russian invasion on Ukraine whilst exploring the potential causes and consequences of the crisis.

In this lecture, Prof. Mearsheimer will aim to focus on both the origins of the war in Ukraine and some of its most important consequences. He will argue that the crisis is largely the result of the West’s efforts to turn Ukraine into a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Russian leaders viewed that outcome as an existential threat that had to be thwarted. While Vladimir Putin is certainly responsible for invading Ukraine and for Russia’s conduct in the war, Prof. Mearsheimer states that he does not believe he is an expansionist bent on creating a greater Russia. Regarding the war’s consequences, the greatest danger is that the war will go on for months if not years, and that either NATO will get directly involved in the fighting or nuclear weapons will be used — or both. Furthermore, enormous damage has already been inflicted on Ukraine. A prolonged war is likely to wreak even more devastation on Ukraine.

 

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Sri Lanka’s Crisis: Lies peddled by Naive Lankans in Western Agencies

Fair Dinkum

An article written by Dayanath Jayasuriya was published in Round Tablethe Commonwealth Journal of International Relations which is pro Western and commonwealth

It summarizes a few things in an unoriginal manner of things we all know,  but the last part, as expected from a Western sources, gives the misleading impression that China, India and Bangladesh are the main sources of SL debt, and ignores any mention of US-UK sources of debt. We have UK Lie Trap as well as a US debt trap

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Action Stations in the House of Commons, UK

UK House of Commons: Sri Lanka (Urgent Question)
Main Chamber on Wednesday 13 July 2022
 Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
(Urgent Question) To ask the Foreign Secretary if she will make a statement on the state of emergency declared in Sri Lanka.

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Western Deception re Sri Lanka: Many Agencies

Orcadian’s NOTES in response to Benjamin Norton’s Revelatory Essay on the Sources of Debt faced by Sri Lanka 

A = NORTON’S article needs to be tattooed on the brains of every mindless Western  journalist, every Western academic, everyone at the BBC, over the brains of Mike Pompeo, over Abe’s tombstone, over Morrison and Turnbull’s brain and over the Sri Lankans who repeatedly lie or fail to acknowledge that the vast majority of debt Sri Lanka owes is to the West, not to China.  There was NEVER a China debt trap. That was a false narrative propagated by Western interests to disguise the true picture about the vast US and Western debt trap.”

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