Category Archives: news fabrication

April 10, 2017 · 8:16 am

The Games that the Almighty Play: Syria Now, Sri Lanka Then

Sanja De Silva Jayatilleka, from The Island, 10 April 2017, where the title is “Watching Syria, seeing Sri Lanka” … highlighting in this presentation being my workas Editor …. and with further Commentary and Bibliographic References at the end

It was not easy to watch the proceedings on Friday April 7 that the UN Security Council’s emergency ‘open session’ on Syria without thinking of Sri Lanka, although the actual circumstances of the UN’s engagement with the two countries are very different. Only one thing seemed alarmingly similar. It seemed like a set up. US Ambassador Nikki Haley’s dramatic gesture of holding up photographs of chemical-gassed children only served to bring to mind the now famous theatrical display of a vial of anthrax by US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the same venue to warn the Council of the imminent danger that lay before the world from WMDs in Iraq.

Image #: 24024242 Pigeons lie on the ground after dying from what activists say is the use of chemical weapons by forces loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad in the Damascus suburbs of Arbeen August 24, 2013. Picture taken August 24, 2013. REUTERS/Ammar Dar (SYRIA – Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST CONFLICT ANIMALS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) REUTERS /STRINGER /LANDOV

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March 31, 2017 · 1:18 am

Mighty USA and the Israel Lobby in This Our World

I  sent Kamal Wickremasinghe’s article to several individuals who have a better grounding than myself in the complex jungle of international politics and Christopher Black has responded immediately to indicate that Wickramasinghe has muddled his emphasis by arguing that the Israeli tail wags the dog. In his view — presented here at the end — it is the other way about: USA calls the shots. Michael Roberts as Editor, Thuppahi.

Kamal Wickremasinghe: “Cabals behind the UNHRC inquisition,”  Island, Midweek Review, 28 March 2017

The 34th sessions of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) have just ended, and another resolution on Sri Lanka adopted Resolution A/HRC/34/L.1 requests the Commissioner and his special procedure mandate holders to strengthen their technical assistance to Sri Lanka on the promotion and protection of human rights, truth, justice, reconciliation and accountability. More importantly perhaps, the resolution calls for a written update on the implementation of resolution 30/1 (of 2015) at the 37th session of the UNHRC, and a comprehensive report at its 40th session. These requirements are clearly designed to keep Sri Lanka ‘on the leash’ for the foreseeable future. Needless to say it was the hand of the global enforcer, the US that was behind these impositions on Sri Lanka. The foreign minister, in co-sponsoring the junk resolution with the self-appointed imperium may have thought, cynically, that it will soon be someone else’s problem anyway!

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March 25, 2017 · 9:59 am

Final Passage for McGuinness and Prabhākaran: Sharply Contrasting

Michael Roberts

 The ‘final’ journeys on this our earth for Martin McGuinness and Velupillai Pirapāharan have been sharply different: McGuinness’ mortal remains were borne in March 2017 by his very own with a massive crowd of IRA and other Irish around; Pirapāharan’s in May 2009 was borne by his deadly enemies with no Tamils present…. and, definitely, no Tamil Tiger fighters.

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March 13, 2017 · 1:23 am

Bill Leak etches no more…. Appreciations galore

Bill Leak, the editorial cartoonist for THE AUSTRALIAN, passed away at the age of 61 from a heart attack. The VALE iin appreciation in that newspaper extends to several pages. But perhaps the best epitaph was from the cartoonist Paul Broelman in the Geelong Advertiser–showing a memorial in stone of a hand with the index finger extended as “Up Yours!!”

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February 1, 2017 · 1:12 am

The LLRC Sittings in Pictures

The recent presentation in Thuppahi of a specific proposal from the LLRC on national anthems as well as the issues raised by Thuppahi on the topic of DISAPPEARANCES prompt me to present a number of images from the sittings conducted by this peripatic body of personnel together with a brief officla report. the images have been helpfully provided by Kithsiri De Silva an old Aloysian class-mate who was an officer servicing the work of this august body.  I am also tacking on an official report on the LLRC plus one dissenting note about its lopsided composition from Harshadeva Amarathunga. Michael Roberts

llrc-1

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January 3, 2017 · 3:00 pm

HRW in Syria and Sri Lanka: Moral Fervour generating Political Blindness and Partisanship

Michael Roberts,  courtesy of Colombo Telegraph where the title is different and reads as “The Political Bankruptcy of the Western Human Rights Lobby: Their Stance in Syria & Sri Lanka in Juxtaposition.” I anticipate lively blog-comments therein –with the usual quota of disparaging ‘assassinations’.  Highlighted emphasis in RED in the version below is my work.

 A friend in Adelaide recently directed me towards an article in a prestigious world media outlet by Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. In this essay entitled “What Trump Should Do in Syria,” Roth contends that Donald Trump needs to pursue “a much tougher approach toward Moscow than he so far envisions” because the Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has been “targeting and indiscriminately firing upon civilians and civilian infrastructure in opposition-held areas” with Russian backing. In his reading the enormous civilian death-toll is the product of the regime’s deliberate strategy, Besides generating an outflow of refugees, he says that the consequence will also produce an escalation of Islamist extremism. 

As an outsider with a limited knowledge of the extremely complex Syrian and Middle-Eastern ground situation, what strikes me about Roth’s declamation is its one-sidedness and its simplifications. It slides over the impact of US and NATO bombing runs. It implies that the extremism of ISIS, Al Qaida and other forces who are challenging the Syrian dictator is an outcome of the latter’s policies and says little about (a) the Sunni-Shia rivalries that are one aspect of the complex politics in Syria and the Middle East and (b) the repercussions flowing from the American dethronement of Saddam via invasion.

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November 19, 2016 · 7:10 am

Leonard Woolf as An Accidental Civil Servant in Ceylon

addendum:Joe Kovacs in Literary Traveller,  23 June 2005, …. http://www.literarytraveler.com/articles/leonard_woolf_ceylon/ where the title runs “The Accidental British Servant: Leonard Woolf in Ceylon”

When I joined the Peace Corps and went to Sri Lanka in 1997, I took a leave of absence from a graduate program in English literature at Fordham University. I was unhappy with academia as an aspiring creative writer; I wanted to make literature, not analyze it. I had no idea how international development work in Asia could help, but at least it would provide a long-overdue vacation from education. I’d never left the United States before, and after an exhausting trip west from New York through San Francisco, Tokyo and Bangkok, the third flight of my trans-global journey arrived in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo at two in the morning. I spent the rest of those benighted, pre-dawn hours in a retreat center in the jungle, trying to sleep. But the dense heat drenched me in sweat, even as I lay still in bed, the uncompromising mattress made my back sore and a swooping blue mosquito net left me entombed. Had I just made a mistake? From the jungle outside came a sudden high-pitched screech, convincing me that I’d come to a land of monsters. llw-222 lw-11

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November 14, 2016 · 6:43 am

A ‘Parachute History’ of the Sri Lankan War and the Island’s Circumstances Today

Robert Draper, courtesy of the National Geographic, November Issue, where the title runs thus: “Can Sri Lanka Hold On to Its Fragile Peace?” …with photographs by Ami Vitale … …. …. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/11/sri-lanka-tamil-peace-civil-war/… with the title here being the Editor’s imposition – see Note below.

The photograph the young woman holds is barely the size of a postage stamp. But it is the only one of her husband she could find here in her parents’ house. They had not approved of her marriage, given that he was just a fisherman from the coastal town of Mannar, while her family has lived in Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, for generations. But as the photo attests, her husband, a Tamil like herself—is broad-faced and confident. Staring at the tiny image of the man who went missing a decade ago, her mahogany eyes brighten as she loses herself in memories.

draper-11 A military color guard lowers the national flag on Galle Face Green, a popular park in Colombo. The country’s largest city shows few signs of the strife that divided the Sinhalese and Tamils for 26 years.

They’d fallen in love at a refugee camp in southern India in 1999, when she was 17. Both had escaped Sri Lanka’s wantonly vicious civil war, pitting the army, controlled by the majority Sinhalese, against Tamil rebels. She had fled Jaffna with her family, leaping over the corpses of neighbors as the military’s bombs plummeted from the sky. He had escaped Mannar after he saw an army officer shoot his youngest sister to death in their home. They had married under the withering glare of her mother. Continue reading →

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November 1, 2016 · 10:33 am

Manipulative Distortions & Duplicity in ABC Programme on Nauru Detention Centres

Carolina Overington & Rosie Lewis, in The Australian, 19 October 2016,  where the title runs “ABC’s Four Corners slammed over old, selective Nauru footage.” Go to http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/broadcast/abcs-four-corners-slammed-over-old-selective-nauru-footage/news-story/f80ceeb432f4ec5907a10beff3697877 for Blog comments from Aussies and note the Caustic Summing up by The Editor, Thuppahi at the end of this post.

The ABC has endured excoriating criticism of its flagship current ­affairs program, Four Corners, after Monday’s episode about refugee children on Nauru was found to include old photographs of facilities no longer in use, and random footage of brawling adults, previously published on YouTube by a user known only as “NoRulz”. During intense questioning at Senate estimates yesterday, ABC editorial director Alan Sunderland admitted the ABC did not film the footage that went to air on Monday night, but said he was satisfied the vision was “appropriate” for a program devoted to the lives of refugee children on Nauru.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton last night accused the ABC of irresponsibility and said Four Corners had declined to use new photos and videos, offered by his office, of schools upgraded at a cost of $8.3 million. The Australian has established that the program included what appears to be random footage of a group of men on Nauru hitting each other with steel poles that can also be found on a YouTube channel run by NoRulz. On YouTube, the footage is in a video called “Who Let The Dogs Out”. It is one of a series of fight videos posted by NoRulz, who has also posted clips called “Nauru Shit Shit Fight” and “Batud the Deadly”.abc-11

The ABC used the footage to ­illustrate the Four Corners argument that Nauru is a violent ­society where refugees feel unsafe, because they have witnessed and been subjected to acts of violence. Continue reading →

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October 4, 2016 · 1:17 pm

The Geneva Juggernaut and the Yahapalanaya Complicity

gyou-11A Panel Discussion entitled “Geneva and You” was organized by the civil society group Sri Lanka Inc. on 29th September 2016 at the Sri Lanka Foundation institute. The event aimed to educate people about the US led UNHRC Resolution which was co-sponsored by Sri Lanka by exploring the events surrounding the adoption of the resolution and its possible impacts on Sri Lanka as a whole. In this manner the aim was to stimulate discussions on the issues developing from this process.

The line-up of panelists expressed concerns about the nature of events surrounding its adoption and current setting. While all the panelists agreed on the negative aspects of the resolution, views differed on the overall reality behind its adoption and ultimate implementation. The event was chaired by Chamithri Rambukwella, former 2nd Secretary to the Permanent Mission to the UN in New York. The speakers and panelists were Natasha Gooneratne Maurice, Fr. Vimal Tirimanne, Chris Dharmakirti, Dr Palitha Kohona and Dr. Dayan Jaytilleka.

gyou-11-rambukwellaChamithri Rambukwella opens the panel  gyou-11-audienceA segment of the audience

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