Simon Gully
Category Archives: life stories
The Three Amigos at the World’s Peak
Simon Gully
Filed under authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, China and Chinese influences, disparagement, governance, human rights, landscape wondrous, life stories, military strategy, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes, zealotry
Putin’s Puppet in the White House
Frank Collins
Golden-boy Trump has renamed the Department of Defence as the Department of War which is a better name given the forever wars the US have mounted since 1945. He believes the US has never won a war since 1945 because the Pentagon had the wrong name ‘Department of Defence’. Now that it is called “Department of War”, he is confident the US will win every war from now on. It’s all the name. He won his first battle the other day against Venezuela when American fighter jets blew up a Venezuelan fishing boat instantly killing 11 fisherman which Trump claimed was a boat laden with drugs bound for the US, 1000 miles away, even though the jet engine boat only had sufficient petrol to travel 200 miles.
Mishara leads Many Hands in Stride to Victory in Third ODI
Sunil Thenabadu in ?? ….where the title runs thus: “MISHARA”S 73* AND KUSAL PERERA’S 46* SEALS SERIES T 20 WIN FOR SRI LANKA”
Mishara’s maiden fifty seals Sri Lanka’s T20I series against Zimbabwe He added an unbroken 117 for the third wicket with KJ Perera as SL chased 192 down
Sri Lanka 193 for 2 (Mishara 73*, Perera 46*, Evans 1-28) beat Zimbabwe 191 for 8 (Marumani 51, Raza 28, Hemantha 3-38) by eight wickets
Zimbabwe put forward a team effort led by Tadiwanashe Marumani’s fourth T20I fifty to post an imposing 191 for 8. But Sri Lanka’s top four batters made light work of their target by ending the game with 14 balls and eight wickets to spare. With it, Sri Lanka took the series 2-1.
AKD: ‘Palm Leaves’ For Tamils & Jaffna
Rajan Philips in 7 September 2025, where the title runs thus: “Crowded agenda includes Cricket but no visit to Chemmani” … wth highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
The President goes to Jaffna! ... President Anura Kumara Dissanayake made yet another visit to Jaffna last week. With all good intentions, he may be on course to set a record for visiting Jaffna more times than all his predecessors combined. There is no Lyn Ludowyk among us to make a political satire of presidents going to Jaffna, reversing the time honoured old trope – “He Comes from Jaffna!”.
Foundation for Cricket Stadium
Filed under accountability, anti-racism, centre-periphery relations, charitable outreach, communal relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, legal issues, life stories, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, reconciliation, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, social justice, Sri Lankan cricket, transport and communications, unusual people, world events & processes
Ramifications From Past Killings in Sri Lanka … Burgeoning Issues
Meera Srinivasan, in The Hindu 1 September 2025, where the title runs thus: “Decades Later A Difficult Story Finds Its Way to the Sinhala South” … with highlights being the work of The Editor, Thuppahi
Forensic experts has been unearthing human remains from a mass grave in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka. The number of skeletons retrieved has now crossed 200, including some of children.
The grave site and the mounting toll of human remains found in it dominate daily headlines in the country’s Tamil media, while receiving little attention in the country’s mainstream English and Sinhala media. In response to this gnawing gap, three young journalists decided they must tell the story to the majority community, Sinhala-speakers. Wasting no time, they pooled resources and made multiple reporting trips and conducted several interviews with locals and experts over the last few months to write Chemmani, a Sinhala-language book on the mass grave site in the locality, believed to contain the remains of Tamil civilians, and dating back to the mid-1990s, shortly after the Sri Lanka military captured Jaffna.
Filed under accountability, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, ethnicity, historical interpretation, human rights, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, politIcal discourse, power politics, racist thinking, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, terrorism, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, war crimes, world events & processes
Indigenous ‘Touches’ within the British Colonial Era of Capitalist Expansion
Vinod Moonesinghe, IN Factum Perspectives March 3, 2025, where the title runs thus: “Tindals, Dhonis, and Sampans – The interconnectedness of historical Indian Ocean commerce” …. NB: the two photos & the map are insertions by The Editor, Thuppahi
In the days of the British Raj, bullock carts were used to transport goods inland and to bring coffee beans (and later tea) from the montane plantations down to Colombo, for shipment overseas.
The distance from the coffee plantations to the main seaport of Galle caused the colonial government to override the wishes of the British Admiralty and of the steamship lines (who all wished to operate from Galle, which was closer to the main sea route to the Orient) and to develop Colombo harbour at a considerable cost.
Filed under art & allure bewitching, British colonialism, caste issues, centre-periphery relations, Colombo and Its Spaces, commoditification, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, export issues, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, plantations, sri lankan society, transport and communications, unusual people, working class conditions
Zimbabwe Squash Sri Lanka
Andrew Fidel Fernando in ESPNcricinfo, 6 September 2025
Sri Lanka never recovered from a terrible start • Associated Press
Zimbabwe 84 for 5 (Musekiwa 21*, Burl 20*, Chameera 3-19) beat Sri
Zimbabwe 84 for 5 (Musekiwa 21*, Burl 20*, Chameera 3-19) beat Sri Lanka 80 (Mishara 20, Raza 3-11, Evans 3-15, Muzarabani 2-14) by five wickets
Sri Lanka crashed to their second-lowest T20I total ever, going down for 80 inside 18 overs, as Sikandar Raza, Brad Evans, and Blessing Muzarabani shared eight wickets between them. At no point in their batting innings did Sri Lanka stage even a mild recovery. There was a 26-run partnership for sixth wicket, but even that appeared laboured, and had multiple close calls.
Zimbabwe‘s top partnership was also worth just 26, but they strung greater periods of batting competence together, even in the face of some penetrative bowling from Dushmantha Chameera. Tashinga Musekiwa’s assured 21 not out off 12 balls helped the hosts stroll to victory in the 15th over.
Filed under accountability, cricket selections, life stories, performance, trauma
Two Reviews in 2010 of Copeman’s Book on Blood Donations in India
https://sacrificialdevotionnetwork.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/jacob-copeman_veins-of-devotion/
ONE …. REVIEW OF Jacob Copeman: Veins of Devotion: Blood Donation and Religious Experience in North India (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009, 233 pp)………….by Ron Barrett of Macalester College …. Taken from the American Ethnologist May 2010, vol. 37/2, pp. 380-81.
Recent years have seen an emerging literature on the sociopolitical dynamics of human tissue exchange. Most of these studies are of a critical nature, focusing on the exploitative aspects of organ trade and other high-profile controversies. Yet few studies have closely examined the apparently mundane forms of biological exchange and the remarkable contexts in which these everyday activities can occur. Jacob Copeman addresses this important gap with Veins of Devotion, a well-researched ethnography about the contributions of several North Indian devotional movements to voluntary blood donation campaigns. Critical in the classical sense, this volume traces the flows of blood, spirit, and power through expanding domains of kinship, asceticism, nationalism, purification, and gift exchange in the urban heart of neoliberal India.
Filed under British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, charitable outreach, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian religions, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, medical puzzles, psychological urges, religiosity, self-reflexivity, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes
A Cricketer Who Survived ……..
From FACEBOOK Entry by Lankan Lions, Sept 2025
He made a brilliant century, which set up Zimbabwe’s first ever Test win when they beat Pakistan in 1995. Two years later, scoring 203 against New Zealand, he became the youngest Zimbabwean batsman to score a Test double century. He has represented Zimbabwe in three World Cups (1996), 1999, and 2003, and during his 10-year career, he took 139 international wickets in addition to 4912 international runs.
