Category Archives: self-reflexivity

April 27, 2025 · 2:23 pm

Facing Total Commitment to Political Resistance

Michael Roberts

Within a context when the Western world surveyed the scenarios of violent conflict that involved warfire tactics, protests and rebellions that involved suicide attacks the usual concept depyed was that of “suicide killers” ….. Facingwith its attendant disgust.  However, I chose to deploy the term “sacrificial devotion” and even embrace the acts of suicide protest (e.g. Norman Morrison in New York). some South Vietnamese monks, Jan Palach in Prague) as an overarching conceptual frame.

Herewith are some pertinent essays on the topic. Also note the literature featured in what is now a non-operational website that is still accessible:  sacrificialdevotionnetwork.wordpress.com

16-four fighting Leaders

Pictorial – Cover

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Tamil Tigers recruits in camp–Pix by Shyam Tekwani circa 1989(?)
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April 27, 2025 · 1:48 pm

A Cardinal Rebuff from A Cardinal

An Item Conveyed by Vijitha Yapa of Sri Lanka, … with another title: “Drinking Habits Of British MPs”

A past report (perhaps from the 1960s) on the drinking habits of British MPs concludes with this amusing anecdote:
George Brown, the Foreign Secretary under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, was well known for his love for drinking. Perhaps the most well-known session occurred at an official reception on a state-visit to Brazil. Spying an attractive person in a red dress, he asked for a dance. “There are three reasons, Mr Brown, why I will not dance with you,” the object of his affection reputedly replied. “The first, I fear, is that you’ve had too much to drink. The second is that this is not, as you suppose, a waltz that the orchestra is playing but the Brazilian national anthem, for which you should be standing to attention. And the third reason why we may not dance, Mr. Brown, is that I am the Cardinal of Sao Paulo.”
🤣🤣🥂🤣🤣💃

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April 27, 2025 · 1:22 pm

A Brain Drain from USA In Progress

Tom Whipple, in The Times, 25 April 2025

Some of America’s brightest are increasingly uncomfortable in a country where ideology threatens to constrain science …

It is, said the president of the Australian Academy of Science, an “urgent and unparalleled opportunity” to grab the best US minds for Australia. The president of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore agrees, but thinks the chaos in US academia is, instead, a “golden opportunity” for Asian universities.

Au contraire, says President Macron of France. As his country’s universities launch programmes of “scientific asylum” for researchers fleeing the US, the time is right, he says, to “Choose France for Science”.

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April 25, 2025 · 6:00 pm

The Casualties at Gallipoli in 1915

Gallipoli casualties (not including illness)………….. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_Campaign
Dead Wounded Missing & Prisoners Total
Ottoman Empire[5] 56,643 107,007 11,178 174,828
United Kingdom[228] 34,072 78,520 7,654 120,246
France[229] 9,798 17,371 – 27,169
Australia[230] 8,709 19,441 – 28,150
New Zealand[230] 2,721 4,752 – 7,473
British India[230] 1,358 3,421 – 4,779
Newfoundland[230] 49 93 – 142
Total Allies[228][230][229] 56,707 123,598 7,654 187,959

 

A NOTE, 25 April 2025

Take stock of the proportion of Injured/Wounded to Dead.

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April 25, 2025 · 3:02 pm

A Jewish American’s ‘Reading’ of Modern World History

Richard Koenigsberg

“History” records the acts of political leaders who have killed a great number of people. Historical significance is measured by counting skulls and dead bodies.  Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and Mao  are among those who chose this path to enduring fame (see photos below).

Historians collaborate with men like these to record their deeds. It would be naive to imagine that mass-murderers and those who write about these men are independent variables. Mass-murderers are acutely aware that their deeds will be chronicled.  Mass-murderers and authors collaborate to produce  the stuff of “history books.”

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April 24, 2025 · 8:00 pm

The Fort of Galle via WIKIPEDIA: An Incisive History

A NOTE by Michael Roberts, April 2025

I came into this our world in 1938 within the Galle Fort and lived fruitfully therein till circa 1959. It is an intimate and deeply entrenched part of my memories. Despite such a background, the Wikipedia description of the FORT introduced many, many details that I was totally unaware of .

Let this picture of my shortcomings as I returned from a swim at the Girl’s Bathing Place near our rented house … a snap taken by a naughty elder sister … emphasise the worth of the Wikipedia details.

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April 10, 2025 · 12:20 pm

Dynamite at the Heights! The Elon Musk-Trump World

Presenting an You-tube item sent to me by my Aloysian compatriot in Canada, Sarri Junaid — formerly from the Fort of Galle ….

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April 8, 2025 · 5:40 pm

Linguistic Bombs Within A Cross-Cultural Marriage

Courtesy of NIMAL DIAS JAYASINHA in Facebook, April 2025

A Polish man married an American woman, and even though his English wasn’t perfect, they got along just fine.
One day, he bursts into a lawyer’s office, looking panicked.
Man: “I need divorce! Please help!”
Lawyer: “A divorce? Well, that depends on your situation. Do you have any grounds?”
Man: “Yes, yes! One acre and nice little house.”
Lawyer: “No, I mean—what’s the foundation of your case?”
Man: “Oh! Made of concrete.”
Lawyer: sighs “Sir, do you and your wife have a grudge?”
Man: “No need! We have carport!”
Lawyer: “Let’s try again… what are your relations like?”
Man: “All still in Poland.”
Lawyer: “Sir, has there been any infidelity in your marriage?”
Man: “Oh yes! We have hi-fidelity stereo and good DVD player.”
Lawyer: “No, I mean… does your wife ever beat you up?”
Man: “No, no, I wake up before her every day!”
Lawyer: getting frustrated “Then why do you want a divorce?”
Man: “Because she try to kill me!”
Lawyer: “What?! What makes you think that?”
Man: “I have proof! She buy bottle at drugstore… put in bathroom!”
Lawyer: “And what did the bottle say?”
Man: “Right on label… ‘Regular Polish Remover!'”
May be an image of flower
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April 6, 2025 · 1:10 am

Fermenting Divisions, Favouring the Mighty … in the North & the East of Lanka

Tisaranee Gunasekara in Financial Times 2 April 2025 …. where the title reads “Cauldron-stirring time, again?” … while the highlighting is the work of The Editor, Thuppahi [with a caveat noted at the end of this presentation]

 “Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble…

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth, boil and bubble.” – Shakespeare in Macbeth

In the run up to the 2019 Presidential election, there was Muhudu Maha Viharaya. While Candidate Gotabaya, reassuring in his moderate mask, did the kovil and mosque rounds, his official and unofficial surrogates busied themselves stirring the extremist cauldron. In the Pottuvil Muhudu Maha Viharaya, Muslim extremists are destroying statues depicting the Buddha’s eighty great disciples, social media posts claimed. These statues, built by the Rajapaksa administration in 2013, are being razed to the ground under the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration in 2019. If that Government is re-elected, the same horrendous fate will befall the Samadhi statue, the Tholuwila statue and the statues in Gal Viharaya.

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April 5, 2025 · 7:33 pm

Introducing A Cutting Edge Journal: SOUTH ASIA

Michael Roberts

SOUTH ASIA has been a form of Australian exploration — in the plural form of manifold journeys and investigations — in South Asia for several decades. I was a small cog in this cluster of activities some 20 years back; but, alas, fell away. Some old partners in arms are still part of the Editorial Advisory Board; but its a fresh and bright team that is bringing the Indian subcontinent into the Aussie arena. Sri Lankan scholars and readers need to take note of this work and chip in with their own ‘commentary’ — whether in article form or as avid readers.

Check https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/csas20 …. AND/OR write to ……….. OR ……………………….. priya.chacko@adelaide.edu.au

Cover image for South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Volume 47, Issue 6 Continue reading →

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