Category Archives: politIcal discourse

Red Alert! Commentary on the Failures of GoSL pinpointed by Peiris and Malik

A Cricketing Friend with Senior Mercantile Firm Experience, 21 May 2021

If the powers that be sought the advice of these professionals the country would not be in the situation we are in. The army cannot decide what is best on medical matters…… https://thuppahis.com/2021/05/21/for-lanka-a-science-based-strategy-to-control-the-present-covid-situation/

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The Burgher Elite and the British Raj

Michael Roberts 

   George F Nell, Louis Nell, C. A. Lorenz,  James Alwis and Charles Ferdinands moving anti-clockwise

Preamble:[1] In locating the Burghers in ‘social space’ the book People Inbetween deploys statistical detail, text and quotation to place them within the Ceylonese middle class of British Ceylon.[2] The socio-political clout which accrued to the Burgher segment of the middle class is further illustrated by indicating the complex ways in which they fulfilled intermediary roles between the mass of the people and the British rulers and/or between powerful segments of the majority community, the Sinhalese. The extract printed below is a section of Chapter 6 [in People Inbetween] devoted to this purpose and is reproduced without citations.

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Appreciating Sunil De Silva: Urbane Master of Many Trades

Hugh Karunanayake, in an Obituary Appreciation in THE CEYLANKAN, Vol XXIV/2, May 2021 **

My acquaintance with Sunil De Silva was mainly after he migrated to Australia in the early 1990s when I encountered him at a Sri Lanka Association dinner which he attended in formal attire replete with a curved pipe, (ala Sherlock Holmes) firmly placed in his mouth. We immediately acknowledged each other, he  recognizing me as a senior student from his old school and as a fellow denizen of a small town in Colombo called Pamankade.

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Lord Naseby on Global Britain and Its Sri Lanka Relations

House of Lords: The Rt Hon Lord Michael Naseby spoke in the Queen’s Speech Debate on Wednesday May 19, 2021 …. [with highlighting emphais here being the work of The Editor, Thuppahi]

My Lords, I welcome the gracious Speech. My comments will be on global Britain, specifically the Indo-Pacific tilt. My own background is that I have lived and worked in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and I know the rest of ASEAN quite well. I will specifically address Sri Lanka, and I declare an interest as joint chair of the All-Party Group (on Sri Lanka).

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Bullshit Artists in Agricultural Science: A Raging Sri Lankan Email Debating Circuit

Chandre Dharmawardana

[Several personnel in this vibrant Sri Lankan EMAIL DISCUSSION CHAIN] have presented a conspiracy claim (that companies like Monsanto practically buys scientists by providing them scholarships and research grants). [This type of assertion] is easy to make, and was started in the mid 1990s when whole-foods supermarket chains began to clamour for a larger share of the market, and a well calculated disinformation campaign was launched.
Can we say that all the Nobel Laureates who believe that glyphosate is a very safe herbicide are all paid agents of Monsanto?
[alleged] Glyphosate injury on raspberries. Photo credit: OMAFRA.

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Sri Lankan Tamil Rally in London: Protest in Commemoration

Tamil Guardian News Item, 18 May 2021

British Tamils rallied in London today to commemorate the tens of thousands of lives lost in Mullivaikkal in 2009. Protesters demonstrated at Parliament Square, demanding justice for the atrocities perpetrated by the Sri Lankan state in Mullivaikkal 12 years ago.

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Vignettes in Assessment of Angela Merkel, A Scientist become World Leader Par Excellence

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An US Combat Cameraman’s Film Journal of Ceylon in 1944-45

Ettoro Porecca: “A Soldier’s Film Journal of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 1944-1945″ (HD) ……..Jun 17, 2016

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t9WPtqFciM .... Film and Narration by Ettore Porreca (1920-2013) 6,721 views

Ettore Porreca was a United States Army combat cameraman in World War II. In 1944 he was attached to the British army, and he was sent to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) for a few months in the winter of 1944-1945. ….

Ettore aged 92 …. https://buffalonews.com/news/local/ettore-c-porreca-92-noted-wedding-photographer/article_37a79fbd-cc2e-56b0-87ad-deb7948867f3.html

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Ceylonese in the Indian Independence League in Malaysia during World War II

Kumar Kirinde, drawing largely on work by PK Balachandran, in ana rticle he has titled as “fighting for Freedom from the British in the 1940s: …,”

Introduction: When the Japanese occupied Malaya and Singapore in 1942, a large number of Indians joined the Indian Independence League (IIL) and the Indian National Army (INA) headed by Subhas Chandra Bose*, the Indian freedom fighter who was striving to free India from the British, in collaboration with the Japanese armed forces.

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Peradeniya Practices: Face-to-Face in Debate

Michael Roberts

Both Kingsley de Silva and this writer were nourished as undergraduates, and then as teachers, in the History Department at Peradeniya University in the 1950s and 1960s. This atmosphere fostered vigorous debate. The epitome of debate was deepened in the cross-disciplinary setting of the Ceylon Studies Seminar inaugurated on the 10th November 1968[1] and held within the premises of the Sociology Department (then headed by Gananath Obeyesekere – an initiative in which I was one of the hands and a tradition sustained into the 1980s via the exertions of CR de Silva and SWR De (Sam) Samarasinghe.[2]

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