Item in The Island,22 January 2020, with this title “China slaps sanctions on 28 Trump administration officials, including Pompeo”
China has imposed sanctions on 28 former Trump administration officials, including outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, agency reports said yesterday. In a statement released just minutes after President Biden took office, China’s foreign ministry said it had decided to sanction those “who have seriously violated China’s sovereignty and who have been mainly responsible for such U.S. moves on China-related issues.”
Neville Weeraratne, being Chapter IX in his opus, entitled “Collette’s Cullings. The satirist’s fine line”
COLLETTE: Cartoon comment in the Observer following a ‘43 Group exhibition.
Everybody enjoyed Aubrey Collette’s work though he would not have satisfied every political aspiration. You turned to him for your reading of the day, originally in the Times of Ceylon, later in the Observer, and then as ‘Spur’ in a series he did for the Daily News as well. He gave a sharp edge to his drawing which, indeed, was capable of cutting deeply but never maliciously. Collette had the rare and splendid gift of observation: to remember a foible, to swiftly size up a characteristic, and enjoy having summed up the hapless one who had fortuitously wandered into his sights. To have been noticed by Collette was itself honour enough, and those who had been so distinguished by a portrait, as in Collette’s 1954 FACES – a collection of seventy-three pastel studies – soon bought them up, more for the immortality it conferred on them than for the fear of what their enemies might make of the caricatures. Collette very simply had the gift of showing some how others saw them, bestowing upon them the poet’s wish. You might have rejected these insights as subjective had you not yourself been drawn inevitably into the process of assessing the subject.
Christopher Knaus and Josh Taylor,in an essay in 2019 which gains relevance in the light of the recent events in Capital Hill in Washington …. This essay was entitled “Revealed: the QAnon conspiracy theorist who is friends with Australian PM Scott Morrison”
A significant Australian proponent of the QAnon conspiracy theory is a family friend of Scott Morrison, and his wife is on the prime minister’s staff. The sprawling, disjointed and incoherent QAnon conspiracy variously claims that Donald Trump is leading a behind-the-scenes fight against a shadowy deep state, that powerful forces are hiding and protecting satanic paedophile rings, and that a secretive individual named Q leaves clues for his followers to decipher on internet forums.
In 1955, the Solar Eclipsecaused quite a commotion among people in Sri Lanka resulting in speculation on a range of outcomes. Some offered a Syrup (Paniya) called ‘Vada Kaha Sudiya’ claiming a potency to turn a darker coloured skin into a fairer skin colour. Hundreds of women jumped at this offer and placing faith in the claim (like snake oil) rushed to take the drink, drank the syrup and fell ill. Some died.
Extraordinary times produce unusual personalities and unusual concoctions. Like the Dhammika Paniya now offering a cure for COVID – 19.
Item in The NEWS, December 2020: “Bharathiraja asks Vijay Sethupathi to avoid Muralitharan biopic, [and] calls the latter a traitor ……. “Do you want your face to be forever associated with a racist person and be looked at with hatred by people?” he has asked Vijay Sethupathi in his letter.
Thileepan during his fast unto death n September 1987
·* it would be good if someone not so high in the government dealt with him, rather than the top leadership
·* That technique i described above is called “The Shanghai Treatment” and is well known in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.
If Pompeo is forcing “you are either with us, or against us,” on SL, the Sri Lankan govt should respond that as a predominantly Buddhist country, it always chooses the middle path.
Preamble: I flew to Sydney in Australia on Sri Lankan Airlines UL 606 leaving Katunayake at 17.00 o’clock on Wednesday 16th September. The airport was depressingly empty. Only about 35 passengers were on the flight –undoubtedly due to Australian restrictions. Two were Aussie women and the rest looked dinky-die Sri Lankan.
With much thought and strategy Sri Lanka has appointed Moragoda as Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to Delhi iced with cabinet ranking, the first such fringe benefit afforded to a high commissioner. No doubt, Sri Lanka is thinking the Moragoda magic will provide much relief to Sri Lanka, given the appointment is being made against tremendous objections.
