Item in Newsfirst: “Experts say only debt cancellation offers Sri Lanka a chance of recovery”
DEBT JUSTICE speaks out …….
Item in Newsfirst: “Experts say only debt cancellation offers Sri Lanka a chance of recovery”
DEBT JUSTICE speaks out …….
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The Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA) leader and Colombo District MP, Mano Ganesan received a telephone call from Ranil Wickremesinghe on 19 July 2022
It was a day before the Presidential election where the MPs were scheduled to vote and elect a new executive President to fill the vacancy created by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation. Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was the then Prime Minister and acting as the interim President, was a candidate for the Presidential election.
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Uditha Devapriya, in The Island, 9 December 2022, where the title runs thus: “Some reflections on nationalism, extremism, and warfare”
“Ethnonationalism was not a chance detour in European history: it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit that are heightened by the process of modern state creation. It is a crucial source of both solidarity and enmity, and in one form or another, it will remain for many generations to come. One can only profit from facing it directly.” …. Jerry Muller, “Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism”, Foreign Affairs (Council on Foreign Relations), March 2008 The first Human Security Report, published by the Human Security Centre, released in 2005, and subtitled “War and Peace in the 21st century”, strikes a dissonant chord in a world still reeling from the horrors of the September 11 attacks. Noting a decline in armed warfare since the end of the Cold War, its authors dismiss worries of increasing conflict in a section tellingly titled “Myths and misunderstandings.”
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The Debate in the House of Lords in the UK on “The Truth and Recpncilaition Commission in Sri Lanka”
A topical question on Sri Lanka was raised by Conservative peer Lord Daniel Moylan in the House of Lords on Thursday, December 1st which was followed by additional supplementary questions that were answered by Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, Minister of State at the Foreign & Commonwealth Development Office (Middle East, North Africa, South Asia & the UN).
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Michael Patrick O’Leary, aka Padraig Colman, presenting an essay that did not make the top grade
To help me through these troubled times, this sordid age, I have been bingeing on the oeuvre of the Divine Plum, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.
The Age of Aquarius has long departed. We are now living in the Age of Ukridge, a time of fact-free posturing. This is the Age of Systemic Deceit, the post-truth era. Once a lie finds a sympathetic ear, rebuttals, facts, will not persuade people that it is not true. To believe anything else would create a sense of cognitive dissonance. Memories of corrections fade rapidly, but the memory of the original lie remains. Goebbels had something to say on this subject. Media scholar Caroline Jack coined the phrase “unintentional amplification”, which in turn leads to another phenomenon which she identifies as “inadvertent legitimisation” – the act of giving credibility to “strategic lies” simply by repeating them. In Truth and Truthfulness, his last published book, philosopher Bernard Williams focused on what he identified as the “virtues” of truthfulness, Accuracy and Sincerity. We can’t get along without trust (human flourishing creates a “need for cooperation” (b) but trust requires truthfulness, and (c) truthfulness presupposes that there are (at least some) truths. For Williams, lies are pernicious for at least two reasons: (1) the liar betrays the trust of the dupe; and (2) the liar exerts power over the dupe, manipulating his or her beliefs and thus (potentially) his or her choices. Today, all citizens are taken for dupes and patsies, marks in the great political confidence trick.
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Fair Dinkum, in an EMAIL COMMENT which Thuppahi has presented to the world with his okay … with highlighting added
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Colonel Douglas Macgregor in Interview with Andrew Napolitano…. recorded on 29 November 2022 …. and already ‘mounting’ 77,877 views …
... so LISTEN TO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3MkvWxdJrU
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Michael Roberts
The Thuppahi items on the Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi have recently attracted a range of “Hits” …. that is, visitors/viewers. I am puzzled as to why; but list them below – with added reference to the first hit on Rajiv on 30th April 1987 when a Sinhala nationalist seaman from Ratgama attempted to assail him for imposing what is known as the “Indo-Lanka Pact” on Sri Lanka in a conscious move to assist the Tamil liberation movement. Wijemuni De Silva’s blow in fact hit Rajiv’s shoulder in a glancing blow because of the Prime Minister’s quick reaction. It could have been fatal (see “Clobbering …….…,” at https://thuppahis.com/2019/08/08/clobbering-rajiv-gandhi-as-chastisement-in-1987-a-guti-dheema/).
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Michael Roberts
Padraig Michael Colman is an experienced journalist and writer who pursued his trade in England and Europe before moving to Sri Lanka with his vivacious Sri Lankan wife Tiny and a coterie of dogs. They settled down awhile in Uva district; but have moved to the outskirts of Colombo in more recent times…. and have since moved back to Great Britain.
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