Category Archives: life stories

February 4, 2019 · 4:07 am

February 4th 1948: “We Are Independent and One”

Sajitha Prematunge, in Island. 4 February 2019, with Pics by Jude Denzil Pathiraja and title reading “Swarnamali recounts reading solidarity message at first Independence commemoration”

The day was February 4, 1949, the first commemoration of Independence at the Torrington Square. With synchronised grace, four athletes – Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Burgher – handed over scrolls of solidarity from the four corners of Ceylon to four charming and self-conscious young ladies. Swarnamali Amarasuriya, Sirimani Ramachandran, Ayesha Zally and Phyllis de Kretser read those messages in their respective languages and handed them over to Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake to be enshrined with the foundation stone.

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February 2, 2019 · 3:54 pm

Simple Blundering Simon: Gideon Haigh’s Venture into Sri Lankan Political History

Michael Roberts

Gideon Haigh is an incisive and formidable researcher. He is a whiz-kid on the financial underpinnings of the business of cricket in India and even more adept in analysing the processes surrounding cricket matches in Australia, India and beyond. But in his recent excursion into Sri Lankan politics, he has dived into a morass he is not familiar with.[1]

He has seized on the standard interpretations in the western media world and, willy-nilly, become an agent of US-UK-EU imperialist designs. Take note of this summary survey on his part. “In noting that 2018 was a bad year for Sri Lankan cricket, we should note also that it was a very bad year for Sri Lankan democracy, rocked by President Maithripala Sirisena’s attempts to install his notoriously authoritarian predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister over the head of incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe……. by the estimate of The Economist Intelligence Unit, in no country did the cause of democracy retreat so far as Sri Lanka last year.”

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February 2, 2019 · 8:35 am

America’s Looming Interference and Dominance in Sri Lanka

Ashley de Vos, in Island, 2 February 2019, where the title is  “Base in the centre of the Shipping lanes”

Henry Kissinger once said: “Globalisation is the Americanisation of the world”and one assumes that most humans have been consumed by the mad rush to join the lifestyle band wagon to keep up with ‘the Joneses’ and get further into debt. It is unforgivable that cultures that have withstood the vicissitudes of change for thousands of years and that have evolved as proud nations are also being forced and encouraged to join or face the wrath of countries that have no cultural matrix as a base to fall back on––except a fine tuned technology for the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.

 

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January 31, 2019 · 3:19 pm

The Split within the JVP in 1983 and the Programme of State Repression in the 1980s

Lionel Bopage, in Sri Lanka Guardian, 29 March 2019,where the title is ‘The Frozen Fire’ — Art and Political Reality

There are diverse views about the politics of the JVP and the inherent limitations contained in their political discourse. In particular, many of the views that exist regarding the politics of comrade Rohana Wijeweera and his assassination have contrasting narratives. In such an environment, even coming forward to produce a cinema work like ‘The Frozen Fire’ is a matter that needs commendation and appreciation.

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January 30, 2019 · 2:46 pm

Marie Colvin’s Media Lies about Homs in Syria

Rick Sterling, in off Guardian, 29 January 2019, where the title is “Marie Colvin, Homs and Media Falsehoods about Syria”

n April 2014 I was part of an international delegation which visited Syria for five days. The delegates came from many different countries. Among the notables were the Irish Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire, a Syrian-British heart surgeon and Julian Assange’s father. We spent time in Damascus, then traveled by bus to Latakia and then Homs. In each city we had meetings with political, religious and social leaders but also had time to wander about and talk with people on the streets.

In Latakia, I met Lilly Martin, an American woman who married a Syrian and has lived there, raising a family for the past twenty-five years. She told me how wrong the western media coverage was. Contrary to media claims, she said protests in Latakia were violent from the start. After the first outbreak of violence, Syrian police and military were ordered to not carry weapons. Protesters continued to burn and destroy government offices with incidents of knifing and shooting unarmed police. Continue reading →

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January 30, 2019 · 12:51 pm

British Government Stance on War and Aftermath castigated by Defenders of Lanka’s Realm

Rajeewa Jayaweera. in Island, 26 January 2019, with this title “Boycott UK Defense Advisor”

According to a recent media report, UK government (GoUK) has recently appointed a Resident Defense Advisor in Sri Lanka after an absence of ten years. The story was accompanied by a photograph of the newly appointed Colonel David Ashman with Chief of Defense Staff Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne taken during a courtesy call paid by the British RDA on the CDS. His purported mission is to help the Sri Lankan military to fulfill the obligations as required by the UNHRC 30/1 Resolution originated by the US and UK and so pusillanimously co-sponsored by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe-Samaraweera triumvirate.

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January 29, 2019 · 1:52 pm

Sovereignty, Space and Civil War in Sri Lanka: Porous Nation

Anoma Pieris has produced yet another book, this time with the prestigious Taylor & Francis imprint. In hardback it runs to 236 pages and has line drawings, tables and 35 illustrations — so it is expensive: Aus $ 216.88

 

Analyses of the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009) overwhelmingly represent it as an ethnonationalist contest, prolonging postcolonial arguments on the creation and dissolution of the incipient nation-state since independence in 1948. While colonial divide-and-rule policies, the rise of ethnonationalist lobbies, structural discrimination and majoritarian democracy have been established as grounds for inter-ethnic hostility, there are other significant transformative forces that remain largely unacknowledged in postcolonial analyses.

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January 29, 2019 · 12:32 am

No Surprises with Sirisena. Challenging Mike Roberts

An Introductory Note from Michael Roberts

 Gerald Peiris and I were undergraduates at Ramanathan Hall Peradeniya in the late 1950s and met on occasions when we were pursuing postgrad studies in UK and I visited Cambridge. Thereafter we were colleagues in the Arts Faculty at Peradeniya University from 1966 to 1975. Quite vitally, we were active members of the Ceylon Studies Seminar. During those seminars and at times in private tête-à-tête over drinks the two of us occasionally engaged in discussions, sometimes with sharp disagreements on specific issues.

 

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January 28, 2019 · 2:49 pm

Pathos. Comedy. Revelation. President Sirisena’s Sermon to a ‘Captive’ Cabinet

Michael Roberts

Having been forced to accept an UNP government by a Supreme Court decision in December 2018 after he had attempted to ditch them in a coup from above in late October, President Maithripala Sirisena utilised the opportunity provided by the swearing in of a new UNP Cabinet under Ranil Wickremasinghe on 16th December 2018 to deliver a sermon to a captive audience of ‘enemies’ who were, ironically, about to enjoy the fruits of victory and destined to assume state power.[1] Sirisena’s Address was delivered in Sinhala and is marked by pathos, recrimination and selective biographical tales from the past that illuminate aspects of Sri Lankan politics.

 

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January 27, 2019 · 3:10 pm

Tamil … with David Shulman

Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue for so many speakers. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil—language, literature, and civilization—emphasizing how Tamil speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history. Impetuous, musical, whimsical, in constant flux, Tamil is a living entity, and this is its biography.

Tamil: A Biography, The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2016

HARDCOVER , $35.00 • £25.00 • €31.50  …………….ISBN 9780674059924

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