Category Archives: life stories

July 17, 2018 · 2:49 pm

A Slashing Critique of All Lanka’s Political Houses via a Bhikkhu who strangulates a Cop

Tisaranee Gunasekara, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, 15 July 2018, where the title reads “Clowns Or Murderers: Our Hobson’s Choice” …. with emphasis being the hand of The Editor, Thuppahi

The news was sensational, yet it was downplayed. The chief incumbent of a temple in Ratnapura strangled a police sergeant to death. The monk has been absconding after being charged with sexual abuse. The sergeant went to the temple to hand over the summons. He went alone and unarmed; after all, he was going to a temple to meet a monk. The sergeant’s screams alerted the neighbours who called 119. When a police team rushed to the temple, the monk greeted them with a hand grenade.

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July 17, 2018 · 5:25 am

Does Terrorism Work? The Palestinian Story, 1939-47

Bruce Hoffman

ABSTRACT: Does terrorism work? Its targets and victims steadfastly maintain that it does not; its practitioners and apologists that it does. Scholars and analysts are divided. But, if terrorism is as ineffective as many claim, why has it persisted for at least the past two millennia and indeed become an increasingly popular means of violent political expression in the twenty-first century? Using the Jewish terrorist campaign against the British in Palestine during the 1940s, this article attempts to shed light on this question.

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July 17, 2018 · 4:34 am

USA’s Recent Blackmailing Efforts against Breastfeeding Resolution at WHO Assembly in Geneva

Andrew Jacobs in New York Times, 8 July 2018, where the title reads “Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution by U.S. Stuns World Health Officials”

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes. Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children

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July 12, 2018 · 3:50 am

Neville Jayaweera’s Vavuniya Diaries on the JVP Insurgency of 1971

THE VAVUNIYA DIARIES (recollecting the first JVP uprising 5th April 1971 – 19th August 1971)

by Neville Jayaweera, Government Agent Vavuniya Administrative District 1970-1973

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July 10, 2018 · 2:11 pm

Accusers Accused — by Lord Michael Naseby

Item in Daily Mirror, 9 July 2018

Baron Lord Naseby said both the UK and the US were guilty of atrocities and that the two countries should inform the UN Human Rights Commission to withdraw the resolution against Sri Lanka. Lord Naseby, the President of the All Party British Sri Lanka Parliamentary Group, said this after reading the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee report published on June 28.

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July 10, 2018 · 10:55 am

A Wiradjuri Woman Medico becomes South Australia’s Rhodes Scholar for 2018

ONE: News Item from University of Adelaide: “Indigenous Doctor is Rhodes Scholar for South Australia,” 26 October 2017

Outstanding University of Adelaide medical graduate Dr Claudia Paul has become the third Australian Indigenous person to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, having been named the 2018 Rhodes Scholar for South Australia. Dr Paul, 24, a Wiradjuri woman from Broken Hill, will use her scholarship to undertake a Masters of International Health and Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford from next year. The Governor of South Australia, His Excellency Hieu Van Le, AC, announced Dr Paul as the Rhodes Scholar for South Australia at a ceremony at Government House late yesterday.

Claudia Paul with Governor Hieu Van Le …. a dinky-die local with a Vietnamese refugee migrant from the 1970s … Hurray

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July 8, 2018 · 2:23 pm

Foul Tactics in Soccer, Cricket, Sport … Yuck!

Will Swanton, from The Weekend Australian, 7-8 July 2018, where the title is “When Our Heroes cross the Line”

The Socceroos are playing Italy at the 2006 World Cup. Lucas Neill slides into a tackle on Fabio Grosso. His left elbow and hand make contact with the Azzurri player’s legs. Grosso goes down with the theatricality of Macbeth being slain by Macduff. The referee blows his whistle for a penalty. Francesco Totti kicks the last-minute goal and the Australians are on their way to the airport. All because of Grosso’s con job.

The Boomers Daniel Kickert

It’s a famous moment in Australian sport. The most potent of all Socceroos teams has threatened to beat a powerhouse of the global game and reach the quarter-finals of the World Cup for the first time.

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July 4, 2018 · 7:30 am

Profound Flaws in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Victory Speech in May, 2009

Michael Roberts

 This article was penned in Sri Lanka in late May 2009 on invitation from Muralidhar Reddy and appeared in FRONTLINE as lead article on Volume 26 – Issue 12 :: Jun. 06-19, 2009  with the title “Some Pillars for Lanka’s Future” and with a significant guideline photograph of the Ceylonese gentleman of varied ethnicity who pressed for constitutional reform in the 1900s and 1910son the foundations of all island thinking – albeit with an elitist upper-class bias. Note the radical proposal at the end of the article –which has  died without any takers …so there is no thinking outside the box.

Frontline also inserted this comment at the start: “Rajapaksa should match his sweet words with political reforms that institutionalise devolution and reach out to Tamil minds.”

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July 3, 2018 · 12:53 pm

USA’s Threatening Interventions during the Eelam War in 2009

Michael Roberts

This essay is an effort to unravel the whispers about an American military team’s secret mission to Sri Lanka at the height of the SL armed forces successful squeeze on the LTTE in 2009. The political significance of such a mission is profound and there are numerous tangential issues that are also significant.

The opening to this inquiry in 2018 was provided by Chandre Dharma-wardana’s welcome initiative in making an ethnographic notation about information mentioned by Foreign Minister Bogollagama in 2012. This item led me (earlier this year) to link it with other ‘mórsels’ of information and to explore the pressures mounted on the GoSL by the Western powers during the last phase of Eelam War IV in 2009. These inquiries have now produced additional information – morsels once again, but enough to take further steps in unravelling the interventions of USA and its allies. I will mark them in point form as A, B, C et cetera.

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July 2, 2018 · 5:03 pm

How Mahinda Rajapaksa rebuffed David Miliband

Michael Roberts

In 2008/09 Professor GL PEIRIS was Minister of International Trade in the Mahinda Rajapaksa government and I interviewed him on 2 July 2018 with the intention of securing more details re USA’s pressures on the government then in 2009.[1] GL Peiris did not have any details about one of my particular pursuits, namely, the PACOM’s recce visit to the island, but in response to my initial query he focused upon the pressures mounted by the EU team of David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner[2] [which was in late April 2009 after the SL Army had penetrated the LTTE’s Last Redoubt and released over 110,000 Tamil civilians and Tiger deserters].

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