Michael Roberts
In presenting a Zoom Lecture relating to the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka in April 2021 for Dr. Geethika Dharmasinghe’s class at Colgate University in USA a month or so back, I deployed the work that went into one of books: that entitled FIRE & STORM.
I now atempt to shock people around the world with pictorial illustrations of some — note “Some” (with all its partialities) — photographs of the political and Eelam War scenarios in Sri Lanka displayed in Fire & Storm.
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Janaka Perera, in The Daily News, 5 April 2023, entitled “Oh What A Lovely War for the Colonels of Ceylon – Remembering the April 1971 insurgency – a reporter’s experience,” …. With this qualifying Note: “This however is not meant to be a reflection on JVP’s present-day politics but only a brief recording of history.”
April 5th marks the 52nd anniversary of JVP’s April insurgency of 1971. It saw the first armed insurrection in post-independence Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). All legally recognized political parties at the time cooperated with the then Government in suppressing the insurgency since they did not consider it a people’s uprising.
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X stresses
David Page & Manisha Ganguly, in The Guardian, 6 April 2023, with this title “India archive reveals extent of ‘colonial loot’ in royal jewellery collection”
File from India Office archive details how priceless items were extracted from colony as trophies of conquest. Five years ago, Buckingham Palace marked its summer opening with an exhibition celebrating the then Prince Charles’s 70th birthday with a display of his favourite pieces from the royal collection, Britain’s official trove of items connected to the monarchy. “The prince had a very, very strong hand in the selection,” the senior curator said.
Among the sculptures, paintings and other exhibits was a long gold girdle inlaid with 19 large emeralds once used by an Indian maharajah to decorate his horses. It was a curious choice to put into the exhibition in light of the violent means by which it had come into the hands of the royal family.
Emerald girdle of Maharaja Sher Singh, c 1840. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023
X in Serial Reportage …. with the highlighting being the imposition of THe eDitor Thuppahi
A: Macron is seen here with Xi in Beijing yesterday to inspect Chinese troops. It doesn’t seem to have registered in the West that Europe is in deep shit economically thanks to Biden and Blinken sabotaging Europe-Russia relations. France is in a deep crisis that may well see Macron out of power this year. Knowing full well how much damage the Americans have done to Europe, Macron is in China to salvage economic ties, because it is the only way out for France at this stage.
Michael Roberts
Sri Lanka has been blessed with generations of talented cricketers over the decades: from
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USA’s AUKUS programme today[i] in the midst of the war raging in the Ukraine demands reflections upon the death-toll and horrors of trench warfare during World War One.
“Every nation was profligate of its manpower and conducted the war as if there were no limit to the number of men who were fit to be thrown into the furnace to feed the flames of war.” …. David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister on the First World War
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NOTES from “Raucous-Aucous”
ONE: Aukus wins the Marx/Goebbels Award for propaganda campaign of 2023…………..
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Mt. Lavinia 1954 Prize Giving-Address by the Right Honourable Sir John Kotelawala, K.B.E., M.P. — with thanks to Harry De Sayrah of Sydney, who added this little preface “When politicians were literate and articulate …………………..” with a few highlights and an arbitrary selection of photographs inserted by The Editor, Thuppahi
1954 PRIZE GIVING. Presided by The Warden, Canon R.S.de Saram, MA , OBE.,St. Thomas’ College, Mt. Lavinia. ……………. *Prime Minister of Ceylon, at the Distribution of Prizes,* …………. *S. Thomas’ College, Mt. Lavinia, Saturday, 31 st July,1954*
When I played for Royal against S. Thomas’ many years ago my intention, which was shared by my team-mates, was to give the Thomians a good drubbing, and, if that was not possible, at least to give them a test of endurance. Much as I value the opportunity which I now have of presiding at your Prize Distribution, I shall endeavour to do neither this afternoon. I mist congratulate the Warden on his Report, which illustrates what opportunities schools like S. Thomas’ have of continuing to play a leading part in the training of our youth and the moulding of their character.
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Uditha Devapriya, in The Island on 24 March 2023, with this title “Sri Lanka under British rule: Neither Gemeinschaft nor Gesellschaft”
Since at least Marx and Malinowski, anthropologists have been fascinated by, and focused on, the links between “primitive-tribal” and “modern-secular” societies. I use these terms with a pinch of salt – hence the asterisks – for the simple reason that no society can be said to fit one case or the other. In its initial phase the social sciences did, admittedly, distinguish between the two, and took the teleological position that the one would lead to another: hence Ferdinand Tönnies’s idea of a progression from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft. Such progressions were depicted as long, eventual, but inevitable, and were accepted widely at a time when Europe, the harbinger of industrialisation and colonialism, had consolidated its position as the main, if not sole, locomotive of world history.
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thuppahi
