Category Archives: psychological urges

September 25, 2020 · 1:53 pm

Sri Lankan Expressiveness: Warm Gratitude and Vicious Vituperation

Michael Roberts

I did not see the article that highlighted the manner in which the Tamil people of Vishvamadu feted and lamented the departure of the Sinhalese Military Commander of that arena, Ratnapriya Bandu, when it was originally placed in the public domain in late 2018. This striking presentation was the result of a combination between Shenali Waduge in Lanka and the SPUR organisation in Melbourne, an alliance that immediately indicates orientations laced with sentiments of a chauvinist Sinhala hue.

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September 11, 2020 · 1:10 pm

Myth-making Ridiculous: Raavana on Fire!

Grace Bains in  Scoopwhoop where the title is “A Demon For Us But A Hero For Sri Lankans, The Fascinating Story Of Ravana, According To Lanka” and Chandre Dharmawardena, in Island, 11 September 2020

As we celebrate Dussehra, we recount Ramayana and the lessons that come with it. For us, the Ramayana isn’t just a story of Lord Rama winning over Ravana and rescuing Sita. It is about good winning over evil despite the many obstacles. It is the story that gives Indians hope and motivation to keep fighting for what they know is right.

But we all know that every story has two sides.

Source: Daily Mirror

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July 20, 2020 · 4:38 pm

Donald Friend assessed by Venerable Bhikkhu Dhammika in 2003

In this era of political correctness and moral extremism exemplified in the Me Too movement, the assault on ‘offensive’ statues of famous men with questionable attributes, etc, etc, let me tweak the nether regions of these evangelical reformists by featuring Donald Friend, an Australian homosexual and paedophile of a brazen disposition, who displayed a wide range of artistic talents and happened to sojourn in Ceylon for quite a while — linking up with the talented and wealthy Bawa brothers (themselves members of the gay middle class community in the island’s tolerant ‘climate’– an environment that also attracted Arthur C. Clarke) …. Michael Roberts

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June 19, 2020 · 5:27 pm

Smashing Statues: Issues of Sense and Sensibility … and Nonsence

Rihaab Mowlana, in Lifelk, 19 June 2020, where the title runs thus “Are We Erasing History?”

The statue of Thomas Jefferson, the founding father who also enslaved more than 600 people, was toppled in Oregon, while the statue of navigator and coloniser Christopher Columbus was ‘spray-painted, set on fire and thrown into a lake’. In England, the Statue of Edward Colston suffered a similar fate, resulting in ‘the boarding up of the Cenotaph in Whitehall and Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square’. In many parts of the world, the predicament will befall many such monuments.

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June 13, 2020 · 3:31 pm

Pablo Neruda and Thangamma … His Work in Ceylon

Dr. Kumar Gunawardane. in Island, 13 June 2020, where the title runs “Neruda and his daughter”

“It’s night time ,
I’m alone and sad,
Thinking in the light of a flickering candle,
about joy and pain,
about tired old age,
and handsome arrogant youth”
Pablo Neruda

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June 4, 2020 · 5:03 pm

Gananath Obeyesekere’s 1975 Article on Murder by Sorcery

Gananath Obeyesekere: “Sorcery and Premeditated Murder: The Canalization of Aggression”[1]

In this paper I want to deal with a series of interrelated problems beginning with the following specific questions and propositions. First: how far can we make inferences about the human psyche and social structure from official statistics computed by government agencies, in this case statistics on homicide and crimes of violence? Criminology as a discipline is especially concerned with this problem, and criminological studies in Sri Lanka have made social structural, cultural and psychological inferences from the statistical data.[2]  At the outset, let me emphasize that I am not concerned with the conventional debate about the accuracy of governmental statistics. Criminologist who have dealt with this issue are agreed that Sri Lanka’s official statistics on homicide and violent crimes are reasonably accurate, and on the face of it there is perfect justification for using these data for social analysis.

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June 3, 2020 · 6:35 pm

The Web Site on “Sacrificial Devotion” …. Its Short Run

Recent Thuppahi entries have highlighted the Workshop on “Sacrificial Devotion” held in Adelaide University in late 2005, one framed within the concept fashioned by Michael Roberts to study and comprehend suicidal commitments to political cause. Note the ITEM

Thilipan on Fast unto death in 1987

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May 12, 2020 · 4:43 pm

War: Its Stark Truths

Richard Koenigsberg

Wars are fought–soldiers die–to testify to the truth of a society’s sacred ideal. If so many people die for an ideology—it must be real.

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May 4, 2020 · 12:12 pm

Marooned between LA and Colombo as Working Man

Escape from LA: Why Lockdown in Sri Lanka works for MyEtherWallet Founder …. http://www.dailynews.lk/2020/05/01/features/217633/escape-la-why-lockdown-sri-lanka-works-myetherwallet-founder

Any rational assessment of the 1996 Kurt Russell thriller Escape From L.A. will conclude that the movie is truly awful. How ridiculous is a plot in which an authoritarian dubs himself President For Life and builds a giant wall to keep undesirables out of the United States, before injecting the hero with a potent strain of a ‘flu-like virus?

These days the 28-year-old co-founder of MyEtherWallet climbs thirty flights of stairs each day. Or to be precise, he climbs the same flight of stairs, thirty times. It’s about the only physical exercise he can get at his mother’s house in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, which has been under a diligently-enforced 24 hour a day curfew.

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April 18, 2020 · 5:01 am

Anti-Chinese Racism flares up in Australia

ONE: A Note from Fair Dinkum in Melbourne, 17 April 2020

There have been over 178 attacks on Chinese people and anyone of Asian appearance in the last weeks in Australia which began after the Australian government launched a vicious attack on China, for political reasons. Note that the New South Wales govt has been anti- China for quite a while.

If you follow the Australian media, they simply replicate the government’s discourse on China. The government and the media work together.  So, it is right to blame the government.

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