Category Archives: transport and communications

Gross & Oversimplfied Propaganda Lines in the Australian Press Today

X … with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

In the Western world, we are taught to believe there are two worlds – a good world and a bad world. There is no in-between. The West is always on the side of good because, we are told, it has “values”, though we are never told what those values are. The word “values” could well relate to the values of colonialism, neocolonialism, liberalism, and exploitation of non-Western societies.  
Analyse this article by Matthew Knott in The Age

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Bernard’s Odyssey in Sri Lanka: Further Marvels

Bernard Van Cuylenberg, whose chosen title is  “An Odyssey: The Search for Heritage, Part Two”

Nilaweli Beach in 2020 –Pix by one Mike Roberts

PROLOGUE: Saying “Goodbye” is never easy. The “Goodbyes” I bid to the Staff at Nilaveli Beach Hotel after a relaxed idyllic holiday following the first leg of my tour was hard. This was where I cut my teeth on life’s road and the ties that bind me to this Hotel were, and remain, very strong. But there was a long road ahead, a road I never travelled before. Travice Ondaatjie, whose late Dad Mr. George Ondaatjie was my Boss when I worked for Nilaveli Beach Hotels Limited drove up to Nilaveli on Friday the 24th and told me that on Sunday the 26th March we would leave for Passekudah, Arugam Bay and travel down the Eastern seaboard right down to the Lahuggala National Park in Amparai to visit the archaeological sites there, and then head for Wellawaya and finally to Colombo.

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Australia is Now a Lapdog of USA & UK

Graham Hryce, in RTcom.news, 20 March 2023 where the title runs thus “The AUKUS deal confirms Australia’s complete dependence on the US and the UK” ….  Canberra is once again serving, and paying for, Washington and London’s regional ambitions.

Last week, amidst a great deal of pomp and ceremony at a San Diego, California naval base, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed off on the AUKUS submarine deal with the United States and the UK.

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Artificial Intelligence: Humankind’s Master or Servant?

Chandre Dharmawardana, in The Island, 17 April 2023 , ….. whose preferred title is “The relevant and irrelevant fear of Artificial Intelligence”

The oracle-like power of the ‘large-language’ Chatbot named chatGPT  has frightened rational techies and mystic mullahs alike. Elon Musk, Steve Wozniac who co-founded  Apple Inc., historians like Yuval Harari,  and academics like the Turing-prize winner Yoshua Bengio of Montreal University called for a six-month pause for developing AI  beyond GPT-4, the latest technology released by OpenAI.

 

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AUKUS becomes QuadAukus … and alarms “Raucous-Aucous”

NOTES from “Raucous-Aucous”

ONE: Aukus wins the Marx/Goebbels  Award for propaganda campaign of 2023…………..

Note.  A recent news item in The Australian revealed that plans are being made with Japan, India, UK, US and Australia to combine Quad and Aukus into one alliance – probably to be called QuadAukus.
There is also talk of NZ and the Philippines joining, or at least considering joining.

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Cricket & Galle in Rothman’s ‘Potted’ History of Sri Lanka

VIEW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNJyW-rdZPQ …. entitled The Modern Origins of Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict”

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Guns Blazing! Obama on the American Warpath

X

Obama has been in Sydney and Melbourne this week wearing his dark cool shades, dazzling his many female followers, and giving speeches which earned him a couple of million dollars just enough to pay for breakfast at Tiffany’s. He was in Melbourne yesterday, picking up another million, while dazzling his audience with his analysis of the world. Yep, you got it. It was one of those “China is the bad boy – the US is the good boy” speeches.
 A NOTE from Thuppahi:
The highlightonh emphasis is my ntervntion …nad let me note that “X” resides in the ANZAC world of Australia-New Zealand and therefore has to secure (hopefully) his security.

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Sri Lanka Crunched within Cold War Manouevres?

TPI Media, “The Hidden Hand of US Influence in Sri Lanka: Cold War Strategies Revisited | CIA,” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPUuMZiDSXg

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Australia’s Deep Shit! New Zealand Shuns AUKUS

Raucous Aucous … with highlighting imposed by Thuppahi

A:  A Report from New Zealand: (see news headline in Appendix).  They are not interested in Aukus or Quad and wish to keep right out of it which is ironic as the Philippines, an Asian country, wants to dig their noses right in it.

Former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark says, “New Zealand interests do not lie in being associated with Aukus” because it would damage their foreign policy, which is a very strong statement.

Unlike the Philippines, New Zealand is not aligned with the US military, nor does it wish to do so. That will irritate Australia as well.

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Port Project in Solomon Islands for China

Reuters Item, 22 March 2023

The Solomon Islands has awarded a multi-million-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, an official of the island nation said on Wednesday.

The United States and its allies, including Australia, New Zealand and Japan, have held concerns that China has ambitions to build a naval base in the region since the Solomon Islands struck a security pact with Beijing last year.

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