Category Archives: governance

September 3, 2025 · 4:11 pm

AI Looms Over Our Future …. Look-Out!

ITEM in LUMEN, Adelaide University Magazine, September 2025 or so … no date specified clearly & bearing this title: “The  Future and  AI” …. Authorship unclear: maybe Carolyn Semmler, maybe Isaac Freeman

Whether we like it, or not, artificial intelligence is here to stay. The genie is out of the bottle. Its rapid evolution has been embraced by some, and met with raised eyebrows by others.

  In our earlier issue of Lumen this year, we asked readers to describe their hopes and fears for the future. AI was an overwhelmingly present theme.

We shared some of these letters with academics from both the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia to help clarify and respond to concerns on four broad themes: impact on jobs; global security; wellbeing; and the potential for cognitive decline.

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September 3, 2025 · 1:29 am

Those Directing Sri Lanka Cricket TODAY ….

Michael Roberts

I realised that I had limited information about who held the reins of Sri Lanka cricket these days and That my knowledge was, at best, partial. In rendying this abysmal shortcoming, I am presenting  basic .details drawn  from the web. It seems that the cotreie of powerprokers associated with Shammie  Silva and Jayanatha Dharmadasa continue to command the board room; while Ashley de silva remains as CEO. This may not be a necessarily detrimental dimension ….. I simply do not know

It is  the Selection Committee and coaching staff [including physios] who really matter. Some of these details are also presented below. I invite commentary.

    Shammi Silvs spesking …with  Jayantha Dharmadasa on his right

 

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August 26, 2025 · 7:43 pm

The Insidious Power-Brokers Aligned behind Israel in Today’s World

APOYI-APOYI 

The title and the highlights in this presentation have been  imposed by the Editor of Thuppahi –who receives The AUSTRALIAN and is aware of its heavy bias. Apoyi-Apoyi, incidentally, is a  White man

SEE …. https://youtu.be/dpkD0uGAE90?si=HroPfWPxaM3K1-1t…… Here, Malaysia’s PM Anwar Ibrahim describes Netanyahu as “truly insane and inhumane” and “sick.” He said he is 73 years old and in his lifetime has never seen such appalling inhumanity as is now occuring by Israel in Gaza. Very young children are killed as Netanyahu claims they too are Hamas.

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August 24, 2025 · 3:08 pm

Bob Carr Reveals: Power of the Israel Lobby in Australia

VISIT FACEBOOK …https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=24703724925930545

My attempt to  place the digital  Reference  here was defeated [initiall] by the engines of the digital world. It seems that the Israel Jewish  maesros can  reach  far …. wide  …. and DEEP !!@!!

…aah …problem circumvented  -God knows how.

My thanks to Dulip Karunaratne  in Queensland for this item …. That old Aloysian lobby does some fruitful work eh! … the Green & the Gold esto perpetua!

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August 24, 2025 · 2:03 pm

Reviving Australia’s Convict Past via AI

Tomos Morgan, BBC News, 19 August 2025, where  the title runs thus: “Faces of Welsh convicts sent to Australia recreated by AI” ++

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has helped researchers generate what they believe could have been the faces of Welsh convicts sent to Australia in the 19th century. The lives of 60 criminals deported from Anglesey for crimes as small as stealing a handkerchief have been traced by a team of volunteers and researchers.

 They have used detailed prisoner records from the time, historical sketches and, where possible, photos of the prisoners’ modern day descendants to create a profile of what they may have looked like.

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August 22, 2025 · 7:28 pm

War Crimes Issue Develops in Sri Lanka: Chemmani & Beyond

N.  Sathiya Moorthy, in Ceylon Today, 22 August  2025, where the  title reads  “How Historic is the Opportunity” ... with highlighting being  the intervention of The Editor Thuppahi

 In what has become the ritualistic report of the UN Human Rights Commissioner to the UNHRC Council of 48-member nations, elected by rotation, incumbent Volker Türk seems to have settled for a credible, independent mechanism to probe Sri Lanka’s war crimes and other allegations of human rights violations. This is in contrast to the decade-plus-long attempts by the ‘international community’ (read: West) to impose an ‘independent, international mechanism’ for the purpose.

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August 21, 2025 · 9:41 pm

The Ethnic Abyss in Sri Lanka Still Remains

Dr S.  I. Keethaponcalan,in where  the title reads “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict: From Reconciliation To Reescalation – Analysis,” … pubd on 21 September 2023 at EURASIA REVIEW ++

The national discourse in Sri Lanka moved from conflict termination to reconciliation with the end of the war in 2009. This essay argues that the concerned parties should shift the discourse from reconciliation to de-escalation because (1) the reconciliation project failed, and (2) the ethnic conflict shows signs of reescalation. It also argues that the possibility of anti-Tamil riots in the future cannot be dismissed.

               Reconciliation Failed

When the war ended in 2009, domestically, none of the parties were interested in reconciliation. The Tamils had more severe problems to deal with. For example, mourning their dead, finding disappeared members of their families, and resettling the internally displaced community members were some of the immediate issues the Tamil community encountered. Reconciling with the Sinhalese was the last thought in their minds. Therefore, they were not concerned about postwar reconciliation. None of the Tamil leaders discussed the need to promote reconciliation.

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August 21, 2025 · 2:11 pm

Sachi’s Review of Bradman Weerakoon’s Autobiography

Sachi Sri Kantha,  reviewing  Bradman Weerakoon, Rendering Unto Caesar, Vijitha Publications, Colombo, 2004, 396 pp. under the title  “Rendering Unto Caesar: a Book Review”**

Of the millions of Sri Lankans born in the 20th century, Bradman Weerakoon is the only fellow to be blessed uniquely.  He was blessed for the first time in the year of his birth (1930), when his police officer father Edmund R.Weerakoon christened the name of legendary Australian cricket batsman Donald Bradman to him.  In 1930, Bradman became a phenomenon in the cricket arena by scoring 974 test runs in his England tour.  Bradman Weerakoon was blessed again – the only Sri Lankan – to serve nine Sinhalese politicians who held nominal executive power from 1954 to 2004.  Thus, Weerakoon was privy to the thoughts and work styles of these nine politicians (John Kotelawela, Solomon W.R.D. Bandaranaike, W. Dahanayake, Dudley Senanayake, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, J.R. Jayewardene, R. Premadasa, D.B. Wijetunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe) whom he has sketched in this memoir.  In addition to the nine leaders, even the first prime minister Don Stepehn Senanayake also receives passing mention, as the father of Dudley Senanayake.

Bradman Weerakoon

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August 18, 2025 · 1:24 pm

Deathscapes in Recent World History

Richard Koenigsberg, whose  chosen title is “LOVING WHAT KILLS US:  The History of the Twentieth Century”

 

Loving what kills us: what Nazism was.

Loving what kills us: what the Second World War was for the Japanese.

Loving and Dying for Stalin: what Russian Communism was.

Loving and Dying for Mao: what Chinese Communism was. Continue reading →

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August 17, 2025 · 12:58 am

Reading Richard Simon’s THOMIA

Uditha Devapriya, via Thilina Walpola in The Island, 10 August  2025 …………….. Review of “Thomia: The Entangled Histories of Lanka and Her Greatest Public School” by Richard Simon. In 2 volumes. Lazari Press. 869 pages.

Richard Simon’s Thomia is a massive undertaking, though to describe it as such is to indulge in cliches hardly deserving of such books. Where does one begin with a publication like this? It is, as the author notes at the beginning, not just a history of “Lanka’s greatest school”, but a fairly comprehensive and I would say eclectic history of Sri Lanka before and after British rule. The author is at his best when he draws attention to the parallel histories of school and country. Needless to say, he is at his best throughout.

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