Brian Victoria* … in Informed Comment … https://www.juancole.com/2024/02/judaism-tribalism-universalism.html…. where the title read thus: “The Battle for the Soul of Judaism: Tribalism, Amalek and the Axial Age Universalism of Isaiah”
Brian Victoria* … in Informed Comment … https://www.juancole.com/2024/02/judaism-tribalism-universalism.html…. where the title read thus: “The Battle for the Soul of Judaism: Tribalism, Amalek and the Axial Age Universalism of Isaiah”
Viewers of Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Vladimir Putin may have been surprised by Putin’s lengthy reference to the historical founding of Russia. What does that have to do with Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine one might ask.
Yet, as any student of history, let alone a diplomat, will testify, conflicts between nations cannot be understood, let alone resolved, without an understanding of their historical roots. Could this also be true of the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians?
Filed under accountability, ancient civilisations, anti-racism, asylum-seekers, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, disparagement, ethnicity, European history, Fascism, historical interpretation, Jews in Asia, jihadists, landscape wondrous, law of armed conflict, legal issues, life stories, meditations, Middle Eastern Politics, military strategy, nationalism, Palestine, politIcal discourse, power politics, racist thinking, security, self-reflexivity, terrorism, trauma, truth as casualty of war, Ukraine & Its Ramifications, unusual people, vengeance, war reportage, world events & processes, World War Three?, zealotry
Michael Roberts
The Bullfights staged in custom-built arenas in Spain and Latin America are spectacular pageants that are said to have held watchers spellbound (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullfighting). Presumably they still do. But someone sent me a striking still-shot that immediately held me spellbound.
This picture reveals an experienced matador in wailing repentence …. with a forgiving bull facing him calmly in stoic sadness.
Michael Roberts the Thuppahiyaa
Dear MP for WAITE in South Australia, friends and countrymen
A =ISSUES with the MOBILE PHONE
This is a remarkable tale of TELSTRA failures amounting to persecution of a couple in their mid-eighties.
Filed under accountability, atrocities, Australian culture, australian media, centre-periphery relations, economic processes, governance, legal issues, life stories, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, taking the piss, terrorism, trauma, world events & processes
Ajith Samaranayake, in The Island in 1983 … now presented again on the aniversary when the plane carrying Wijewardene and others from KL to Sri Lanka simply disappeared
Between Sri Lanka’s 35th independence anniversary and his birthday Upali Wijewardene boarded his executive Lear Jet at Kuala Lumpur and in a single fateful flash became solidified into an enigma and a legend. The flamboyant tycoon who had left with five others never arrived in Colombo. Somewhere over the Straits of Malacca the plane disappeared with not a clue or a trace.
APPLENEWS conveying BBC Podcast = https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alexei-navalny-the-death-of-putins-biggest-critic/id1715473158?i=1000645632931
Russia’s most significant opposition leader for the past decade, Alexei Navalny, has died in an Arctic Circle jail, the prison service has said. What does that mean for the future of Russia, its opposition movement and its leader, Vladimir Putin?
Filed under accountability, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, disparagement, ethnicity, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, legal issues, life stories, politIcal discourse, power politics, press freedom & censorship, Responsibility to Protect or R2P, self-reflexivity, taking the piss, trauma, Ukraine & Its Ramifications, unusual people, vengeance
Vindhya Buthpitiya: “How to Capture Birds of Freedom: Picturing Tamil Women at War,” Trans Asia Photography (2023) 13 (1) … derived from ………………………………………… https://doi.org/10.1215/21582025-10365016 … with the aid of my Aloysian mate KK De Silva; whilr the highlighting is my imposition.
Abstract: This article examines the uses of images of women fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during and after the Sri Lankan civil war (1983–2009) to explore the contrasting mobilizations of visual representations of Tamil women cadres, focusing on the cultivation and framing of contradictory nationalist imaginaries by competing ethnic and state actors. In northern Sri Lanka, portraits of gun-bearing women fighters were wielded to signal revolutionary possibilities for the future of the Tamil nation-state as well as to inform the political socialization of its hopeful citizens. Meanwhile, images of Tamil women cadres were cast as gendered and ethnicized threats by the Sri Lankan state in what constituted a calculated form of visual ethno-political othering and weaponization. This article reflects on the ways in which such appropriations exacerbated the political precarity of and the denial of victimhood to Tamil women.
Malathy was the First Tamil Tigress to face death for the Tamiil for the Tamil Cause
Filed under accountability, anti-racism, asylum-seekers, authoritarian regimes, caste issues, centre-periphery relations, chauvinism, communal relations, cultural transmission, discrimination, disparagement, doctoring evidence, Eelam, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, human rights, language policies, legal issues, life stories, military strategy, nationalism, news fabrication, NGOs, patriotism, photography, politIcal discourse, racist thinking, Rajapaksa regime, refugees, rehabilitation, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, Tamil Tiger fighters, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, vengeance, war crimes, war reportage, world events & processes, zealotry
This LISTING of Israeli War Crimes in Palestine by Yanis Varafoukis — clearly Greek in identity — was sent to me by Manel Fonseka in Colombo.
War crimes – Grave breaches of the Wilful killings of the 1949 Geneva Conventions
Filed under accountability, arab regimes, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, disparagement, ethnicity, Fascism, fundamentalism, historical interpretation, law of armed conflict, legal issues, life stories, Middle Eastern Politics, military strategy, Palestine, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, psychological urges, racist thinking, security, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, the imaginary and the real, trauma, unusual people, vengeance, war crimes, world events & processes, zealotry
Social Scientists’ Association, No. 380/86, Sarana Road, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka, 2023, 312 pp, ISBN: 978-955-0762-47-7,
Printers: Karunaratne & Sons (Pvt) Ltd., 65 C, Thalgahawila Road, Midellamulahena, Horana, Sri Lanka.
Filed under accountability, anti-racism, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, Buddhism, centre-periphery relations, Colombo and Its Spaces, disparagement, Empire loyalism, governance, historical interpretation, life stories, nationalism, patriotism, politIcal discourse, racism, religiosity, riots and pogroms, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, trauma, unusual people, world events & processes
Bernard Van Cuylenburg ….. presenting an essay penned in 2020 – one which has had highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi … and pictorial additions
This is the story about a family – a personal story which I wish to share with a wider world. This family consisted of four brothers who lived in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. They were the Eagars and one day, following catastrophic events in the land of their birth, they set their sights on far horizons and left their motherland for a little island still known today as the ‘pearl of the Indian ocean’. One of them was my great grandfather, Halley Eagar.

A partial map of Ireland with a miniature crate of potatoes depicting the potato famine of 1845 – 1852
An Informed Internationalist
Countries Denying Genocide Allegations: ……………. United States of America … plus …. United Kingdom
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, arab regimes, centre-periphery relations, Fascism, Hitler, Islamic fundamentalism, life stories, Middle Eastern Politics, military strategy, Palestine, power politics, religious nationalism, security, self-reflexivity, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, war crimes, war reportage, world events & processes, zealotry