Category Archives: performance

May 8, 2020 · 6:34 pm

Australian Airlines: Flying into ‘Covid-Skies’

Patrick Hatch, in The Age, 8 May 2020, with this title “Masks or eye-watering fares? Airlines prepare for COVID-19 flying” 

Face masks could be mandatory for passengers on all flights within Australia, but a reprieve from planes’ dreaded “middle seat” could be short-lived as airlines prepare for interstate travel restrictions to ease.

A pilot wearing a mask at Brisbane International Airport in January. Airlines are working out what precautions to put in place as travel demand slowly returns. A pilot wearing a mask at Brisbane International Airport in January. Airlines are working out what precautions to put in place as travel demand slowly returns. CREDIT:AAP

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May 8, 2020 · 5:29 am

Popular Assessments of Sri Lankan Government’s Covid Battle: In Graph Mode

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May 6, 2020 · 5:55 pm

Medical Pontifications from Australia that miss the Mark

 The universe today has been bombarded by medical expertise from every which way pontificating on “solutions” to a covid-pandemic of an extremely complex and varied character. Chandini Liyanagama, a senior Sri Lankan Australian medic, has essayed criticisms of the processes in Sri Lanka on the basis of a webinar broadcast from the island.[1] It is, of course, best to respond to this appraisal on the foundations of the webinar sessions that provoked this assessment.[2] So, I sent it to a few Sri Lankan medicoes within the island for their appraisals.

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May 5, 2020 · 6:06 pm

Crisis? Imponderables Economic, Covid and Political in Sri Lanka Today

Jehan Perera,  in Island, 4 May 2020, with this title “President can decide without burdening the courts”

A study by the Economist magazine has shown that Sri Lanka is one of the countries least able to deal with the economic fallout of the coronavirus induced world economic crisis. Out of 66 countries assessed, Sri Lanka came 61st in terms of its ability to handle the crisis without being economically debilitated and fared much worse than its South Asian neighbours. Bangladesh at 9th place, India at 18th and Pakistan at 43rd place all fared better than Sri Lanka. The human cost of the crisis is visible in media images of thousands of angry young workers from around the country stranded in the vicinity of the Katunayake free trade zone, many of them abandoned by their factory employers, unable to get back to their home villages due to the coronavirus travel restrictions.

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May 5, 2020 · 11:23 am

Dirty Australian Twists to the Chinese Ambassador’s Remarks

Joceleyn Chey, 1 May 2020, where the title is “Who Would Be a Chinese Ambassador?”

I write in defence of PRC Ambassador Cheng Jingye, who is accused of threatening a tit-for-tat trade war. Cheng has been abused for this by commentators in the press, including Skynews Paul Murray on 28 April. If we follow what Cheng actually said in the original interview, we can see that he was cornered by a leading question. A more experienced diplomat might have been able to escape from such an awkward position. He was certainly foolish, but we should look at his entire statement and not take one remark out of context. It seems some people simply wish to ratchet up tensions between Australia and China.

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May 5, 2020 · 7:51 am

Duncan White’s Stellar Performance at the 1948 Olympics

Rear Admiral Dr. Shemal Fernando, in Sunday Observer E-paper, May 2020 where the title runs “White who started the spark”

Having been a close observer and student of the world’s most beautiful sport of athletics for fifty years, my effort is to make a justification to the enormous impact, prestige and influence made by Sri Lanka’s inimitable athlete, Duncan White who put our country on the world map. I thought the ideal time for such an exertion is the run up to an Olympic Games.

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May 2, 2020 · 1:50 pm

Where Sri Lanka’s England Medical Training derailed Its Covid-Discovery Programme

Darshanie Ratnawalli

Having a technocrat as President, we started off well following in the footsteps of China and East Asia. We also introduced innovations such as using intelligence services for contact tracing and root ball operations, trying to cut out the infection paths from society the same way a malignant tumour is cut from the body.

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April 29, 2020 · 5:39 pm

Godfrey Gunatilleke: A Gentleman for All Seasons

Leelananda De Silva, in Island, 28 April 2020,  and 11 August 2018, where the title is “Godfrey Gunatilleke – A Life of Quiet Achievement”

Godfrey Gunatilleke is one of the leading intellectuals in the latter half of the 20th century in Sri Lanka. Never a man to be confined by disciplinary compartments, he straddled across many academic and administrative fields in his long career. An English scholar to start with, he was one of the finest products of the University of Ceylon which lasted in its pristine form (as envisioned by its founding fathers) for 20 years from 1943 to the early 1960s.

A= Godfrey Gunatillake (c) and Gen. Anton Muttukumaru, Ceylon’s High Commissioner in Canberra, at a 1965 ECAFE meeting in Wellington …. B = Godfrey clarifying a point

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April 28, 2020 · 6:57 am

Reading Stephen Champion’s Photo Event in 2008 …. Today 2020

Michael Roberts

When I came across some ‘new’ material[1] of great import relating to KP Pathmanathan’s valiant efforts to extricate the LTTE leadership from their deteriorating military situation in early 2009 and to whisk them away to Eritrea with the active support of the great powers, and then reiterated my longstanding criticisms of the Western powers’ imperial effrontery in a fresh article this April,[2] I was surprised to receive an email note out of the blue from Stephen Champion in March this year 2020 – one wholly supportive of my slashing criticisms of the West.

I assumed that Champion was writing to me from UK and was mighty pleased because I was aware of his enterprising camerawork in trying and dangerous conditions in the late 1980s and have a copy of at least one of his pictorial works.[3] I decided to seek out more information on Champion via Google and immediately chanced upon Saroj Pathirana’s report in the BBC Sandeshaya programme describing an event mounted by Amnesty International in July 2008 displaying some of Champion’s photographic collections (see Pix above). Adhering to the principle of progressing step-by-step in temporal order, I placed this item within my Thuppahi site on 20th April 2020.

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April 27, 2020 · 7:00 am

Dr CG Uragoda: A Man for All Seasons

Dr B. J. C. Perera, “Tribute to A Superlative Human Being,” Island, 26 April 2020

I am greatly honoured, and indeed tremendously privileged, to present this homage of remembrance to a great son of Mother Lanka who left this worldly life on the 28th of March 2020.

Deshabandu Doctor C. G. Uragoda MBBS(Ceylon), MD(Ceylon), Honorary D.Sc (Colombo), FRCP (Edinburgh) and FRCP (Glasgow), is portrayed on the Internet as a Physician, an acclaimed expert on occupational respiratory disorders, a renowned author, an unmatched folklorist, a celebrated historian and a dedicated ecologist. That is a superlative description; one that has reached the pinnacle of excellence. Continue reading →

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