Category Archives: racism

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, art & allure bewitching, British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, commoditification, communal relations, constitutional amendments, cultural transmission, democratic measures, economic processes, electoral structures, ethnicity, female empowerment, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, language policies, Left politics, life stories, modernity & modernization, nationalism, parliamentary elections, politIcal discourse, power politics, press freedom & censorship, racism, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, war reportage, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes

July 19, 2024 · 5:19 pm

Underlining BLACK JULY in 1958: Poignant Reflections

Daya Wickramatunga to Jayantha Somasundaram, 14 July 2024, in Response to Jayantha’s Circulation of the DAILY MIRROR Item on the 1958 Riots: viz. …………………………. https://www.dailymirror.lk/opinion/Black-July-facing-the-moment-of-truth/231-287106

The ‘Sinhala Only Bill’ by SWRD was ridiculous. SWRD could hardly speak Sinhala when he returned to Sri Lanka from Oxford. That [the Sinhaal Only campaign] was obviously a political move by SWRD.

Photo shows Tamils being ridiculed and assaulted on Galle Roadin Colombo by Sinhala çitizens’…but check if this is from 1983

SEE https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-26/ty-article/.premium/minister-praises-frances-far-right-party-president-breaking-israels-official-boycott/00000190-53c3-d31c-afb9-dfd39a180000

2 Comments

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, atrocities, chauvinism, Colombo and Its Spaces, communal relations, Eelam, ethnicity, governance, historical interpretation, life stories, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, racism, riots and pogroms, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, Sri Lankan scoiety, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, terrorism, trauma, vengeance, world events & processes, zealotry

June 28, 2024 · 9:07 pm

A World Coalition of Pro-Israeli Right-Wing Forces?

A Sri Lankan American

Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli praised a speech given by France’s far-right National Rally president, Jordan Bardella, in which he declared a two-state solution ‘obsolete’
Israel’s Diaspora Minister praises Spain’s far-right Vox for ‘aligning with Israel’
Israeli minister courts Canada’s Christian far right
Top members of far-right Swedish party with neo-Nazi roots meet Israeli minister Bardella

Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, chauvinism, ethnicity, Fascism, fundamentalism, life stories, nationalism, politIcal discourse, power politics, racism, racist thinking, self-reflexivity, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, world events & processes, zealotry

June 22, 2024 · 8:39 pm

The Work of Anthropologists from Sri Lanka: Reviewing the World Scenario in 1987

Presenting an academic article published in Contributions to Indian Sociology , n.s, Vol 21, 1-25 … also reproduced subsequently in Sri Lanka in 1989 as No, 10 within the SSC Pamphlet Series marshalled by the late Ana Chittambalam, Willa Wickremasinghe , Hari hulugalle and Michael Roberts

Elizabeth Nissan: “The work of Sri Lankan anthropologists: A bibliographic survey”

Introduction: Although many of the studies included in this essay are concerned with Sri Lanka, this is not a bibliographic essay on the anthropology of that country. It is, instead, a survey of the work of Sri Lankan anthropologists, wherever they may have carried out their research.

NEAR BELGRADE, MAY 2013; Serbian Prime Minister (PM) Aleksandar Vucic with national flag during ceremony. Vucic will be running for president in 2017 Stock Photo – Alamy

Filed under Aboriginality, accountability, art & allure bewitching, authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, Buddhism, caste issues, centre-periphery relations, Colombo and Its Spaces, colonisation schemes, commoditification, communal relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, demography, discrimination, disparagement, Dutch colonialism, economic processes, education, ethnicity, fundamentalism, governance, hatan kavi, heritage, historical interpretation, immigration, Indian Ocean politics, Indian traditions, irrigation, Islamic fundamentalism, island economy, landscape wondrous, language policies, Left politics, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, nationalism, performance, pilgrimages, plantations, plural society, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, power politics, racism, religiosity, religious nationalism, riots and pogroms, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, travelogue, vengeance, violence of language, welfare & philanthophy, working class conditions, world events & processes, zealotry

June 21, 2024 · 8:07 pm

Brinkmanship at the Heights! Nuclear War Looming!

LISTEN TO SERBIAN PRESIDENT SPEAKING …. https://x.com/Anatolia_Today/status/1802467510886797508

Aleksandar Vučić believes we are just a few months away from a big #war between #West and #Russia: “We are now approaching a big disaster… Who is ready to lose 1, 2, 5 or 15 million people? I’m not, but that’s a question for other people”

A Reference sent to TPS by “Observer in a Black Sea Town” with the following set of thoughts : “Here, Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic, in an interview with a Swiss channel, shares his view that the world is approaching “a big disaster within 3 to 4 months” as neither Russia nor the US/NATO are prepared to back down. Each side believes they can win. Each side believes the other side is bluffing. Each side believes that escalation is the only pathway forward.

7 Comments

Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, Fascism, fundamentalism, law of armed conflict, military strategy, nationalism, nuclear strikes & war, power politics, racism, Russian history, self-reflexivity, the imaginary and the real, Ukraine & Its Ramifications, vengeance, world events & processes, World War Three?, zealotry

June 10, 2024 · 8:45 pm

Us/Them Semantics in Sinhalese Confrontations with Other Forces Over Time

Michael Roberts presenting the Synopsis of an Article published after a refereeing process in the journal NATIONALISM and ETHNIC POLITICS Vol 9/3 Summer 2003, pp. 75-102

The collective identity of Sinhala-speakers over four centuries dating from the 1590s is analyzed with due attention to the structural form of (a) the Kingdom of Kandy and (b) the British colonial regime that took control of the whole island by 1815/18. The analysis dwells on the modes of oral, visual-iconic and written forms of cultural transmission that pre-dated print technology, while drawing attention to the relative uniformity of the Sinhala language in both geographical and temporal scale. A semantic pattern of political alliances based on the opposition of inside to outside which works contextually like a nestling Chinese-box is one dimension of this linguistic order. This supported the tendency of Sinhalese representations to adopt an associational logic which merged past enemies (the wicked Tamils) with contemporary enemies (the Portuguese, the English) during the liberation struggles of the Kandyan state and its militia in the pre-1818 period. Such tendencies and the continuation of disparaging epithets coined during the period of Portuguese imperial intrusion into the vocabulary of the twentieth century must inform any theoretical efforts to distinguish the collective consciousness of the Sinhalese after the substantial transformations initiated under the British from that which is expressed so powerfully in the war poems of the pre-British period.

VISIT this Digital-Reference:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Language-and-national-identi ty%3A-the-Sinhalese-and-Roberts/003324e5fbcdd

Special ADDITIONS for TPS …. The “US vs THEM” Phenomenon

Filed under authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, demography, Dutch colonialism, economic processes, ethnicity, governance, hatan kavi, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, island economy, Kandyan kingdom, language policies, law of armed conflict, life stories, literary achievements, nationalism, patriotism, politIcal discourse, population, Portuguese imperialism, power politics, racism, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, Sri Lankan scoiety, transport and communications, world events & processes, zealotry

May 25, 2024 · 2:23 am

A Lament: Biased US Media Coverage of the Pro-Palestinian Protests at Columbia University

Mobashra Tazamal’s LAMENT from The Campus at Columbia University

“I am left with the understanding that to be Muslim at Columbia is to face extreme censorship of your language to appease an audience that doesn’t represent nor respect you. To be Muslim at Columbia is to be racially profiled and doxxed, beg for administrative resources and support, and still receive none. To be Muslim at Columbia is to face Islamophobia on campus—to be spat on and called “terrorists”—and receive no University acknowledgment or recognition. Instead, our experiences are interrogated, as administrators try to poke holes in our narratives, questioning whether they even happened, while others get seats at the table with the University President and the governor of New York, dedicated to making sure they feel seen, heard, and valued.

To be Muslim at Columbia is to have your community and peers be suspended, arrested, and brutalized by the New York Police Department for peacefully protesting the genocide of those who widely look and practice like us, and still being made out to be the aggressors.”

Filed under accountability, centre-periphery relations, discrimination, disparagement, education, ethnicity, governance, Islamic fundamentalism, landscape wondrous, life stories, Middle Eastern Politics, Palestine, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, racism, religious nationalism, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes

May 20, 2024 · 2:49 am

A Lifetime Addressing Nationalist Political Currents & Zealotry

Michael Roberts

As I attend a friend’s funeral every now and then in Adelaide or receive mail conveying sad tidings re good friends and other acquaintances, I am reminded that I will disappear into the dust in due course relatively soon. So be it.

However there has been a lifetime of endeavour in various fields. One range of activity has been in the academic realm investigating socio-political events and processes in the world …. with particular attention directed towards my home-country Sri Lanka’s affairs.

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, Buddhism, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, discrimination, disparagement, economic processes, electoral structures, ethnicity, governance, hatan kavi, historical interpretation, insurrections, Islamic fundamentalism, island economy, language policies, Left politics, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, modernity & modernization, Muslims in Lanka, nationalism, parliamentary elections, patriotism, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, racism, religious nationalism, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, terrorism, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, violence of language, war reportage, world events & processes, zealotry

May 18, 2024 · 3:47 am

Totalitarianism Defined …. With Hitler as the Epitome of the Phenomenon

Richard Koenigsberg and the LSS, aka Library of Social Science, located in New York

Totalitarianism: the psychopathology is the identification, refusal or inability to conceive of a self in separation from society; of a self that does not exist in a symbiotic tie to the nation. “Symbiosis” is not an “infantile phase of development,” rather It’s the ground of our being the fantasy we are connected to something “out there” (and cell phones represent the apotheosis of merger of self with society).

HITLER 22

GERMANY – MAY: Adolf Hitler, winner of the Prussian and Bavarian elections, giving a speech, in May 1928, in Germany…Photo by Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images.

Listen to Hitler: “Our Nation is not just an idea in which you have no part; you yourself support the nation; to it you belong; you cannot separate yourself from it; your life is bound up with the life of your whole people; the nation is not merely the root of your strength, it is the root of your very life.”

Filed under accountability, atrocities, chauvinism, disparagement, ethnicity, fundamentalism, historical interpretation, Hitler, life stories, nationalism, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, psychological urges, racism, racist thinking, self-reflexivity, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, violence of language, world events & processes, zealotry

May 14, 2024 · 12:19 am

Devastating Israeli Assaults on Rafah

Observer in a Black Sea Town … writing on 7/8th May 2024 after Israel’s devastating assault began the day before.

Israel has just launched its devastating attack on the densely populated city of Rafah promising to use extreme force against 1.4 million Palestinian citizens. The Wankers of the White House, may shed crocodile tears for the slaughtering of Palestinans and they will wank on about it not being a good idea, but the fact remains that the US did absolutely nothing to prevent it, which means they condone it.