Gus Mathews
This is a very incisive interview with Tamara Kunanayakam, a former ambassador to the UNHRC in Geneva. In a no-nonsense manner she unravels why the pursuit of Sri Lanka by the Western nations is taking place.
Category Archives: vengeance
Debating Human Rights in Warring Contexts
Chandre Dharmawardana, 30 March 2021, in Email Memo entitled “Alleged Human Rights Abuses of the Sri Lankan Army” ……….. a memo commenting on responses to his previous Essay[i] … with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
Ramesh Somasundaram, (commenting on the Thuppahi website) is absolutely right in saying “that the Sri Lankan governments and the Sri Lankan military personal have been correctly accused of human rights abuses. “Sri Lankan Soldiers have been accused of grave crimes, and they should be investigated and brought to trial. Many of the soldiers were simply carrying out orders, and so the high command must bear the final responsibility except in cases where the soldiers exceeded their acts as soldiers and acted even more inhumanely than needed.
Situation Map 2 February 2009 — an excellent work by, I think?, the Daily Mirror
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Boom! 3rd May 1986: Air Lanka’s Tristar 36 blown up on Runway by LTTE
Menaka Ashi Fernando, whose chosen title is “The Deadly Flyaway Kit: Explosion in AirLanka Tristar, Part 1 –The Explosion and Its Immediate Effects”
“Every 3rd of May, for the past 34 years, like a bunch of anxious surfers, we catch the rising wave of grief, glide on the intensifying emotions for a while and fall back to our senses as the wave of reality breaks. Although words can never remove the ache, I have worded this in memory of our dear friend Johann Chunchee who was killed that fateful day, and in honour of all my colleagues and other Air Lanka staff who survived the carnage”
Filed under accountability, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, historical interpretation, insurrections, life stories, LTTE, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, tourism, transport and communications, trauma, vengeance, war crimes, world events & processes
The “China Research Group” in UK: Frontal Picture …. and Possible Underground Chambers?
The Frontispiece on Google
The China Research Group was set up by a group of Conservative MPs in the UK to promote debate and fresh thinking about how Britain should respond to the rise of China. The group’s work looks beyond the immediate Coronavirus crisis or issues relating to Huawei, with the aim of considering the longer term challenges and opportunities associated with the rise of China and its industrial and diplomatic policies.
Tom Tugendhat & Neil O’Brien 
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Trump and Hitler in Same Bed? Generating Love and Hate?
A NOTE from Richard Koenigsberg, March 2021 …. in an Item presented four years back and headed thus: “Is Trump Stealing Hitler’s Playbook? How does One Test the Truth of a Hypothesis: Predictive Validity.”
Hitler addressing rally in May 1937 — Associard Press Photo …https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/books/review/the-nazi-menace-benjamin-carter-hett.html
Donald Trump speaking at Phoenix on 23rd June 2020 (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-24/trump-phoenix-speech-demagogue)
A wonderful Internet radio program, Howard Bloom Saves the Universe, is hosted by Chad Dougatz. Howard invited me to join the show to explore the question, “Why does Donald Trump stir us (either negatively or positively).”
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Addressing Diversity. Six Sri Lankan Scholars in ICES Webinair Lecture Series
A WEBINAR SERIES, 18 November to 9 December 2020
These six webinars explored the challenges that we face in learning about and engagingwith the past in multi-religious, multi-ethnic contexts. This webinar series was presented in collaboration with the Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung…….
…. Herstory-History-Ourstory ….. Click here to watch all the webinars, or on each topic to watch the individual webinars.
Filed under ancient civilisations, centre-periphery relations, charitable outreach, communal relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, economic processes, education, ethnicity, fundamentalism, governance, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, language policies, Left politics, legal issues, life stories, religiosity, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, social justice, sri lankan society, teaching profession, the imaginary and the real, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, world events & processes
The Making of Wahhabi Zealots in Sri Lanka, 1980s-2019
Michael Roberts
All those addressing the fervour that promoted the killing work of the Zahran Hashim jihadist network in Sri Lanka in April 2019 must come to grips with the modern currents of Wahhabi political thinking that go back to the outpourings of the Egyptian intellectuals Sayyid Qutb[1] and Al-Zawahiri[2] in the latter half of the 20th century. This step will then take investigators to the Al-Qaida movement[3] and thence to the more recent brand of Wahhabism embodied within ISIS.
Sayyid Qutb 
al-Zawahiri
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, arab regimes, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, chauvinism, communal relations, conspiracies, cultural transmission, disparagement, Eelam, ethnicity, fundamentalism, governance, historical interpretation, insurrections, Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, landscape wondrous, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, Middle Eastern Politics, Muslims in Lanka, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, propaganda, racist thinking, religiosity, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, suicide bombing, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes, zealotry
Rise in Anti-Chinese Sentiments in Australia
Naaman Zhou, in The Guardian, 4 March 2021, with this title “How Anti-Chinese Seniment in Australia seeped into the Mainstream”
Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images
Community members say current levels of anti-Chinese sentiment have been fanned by the pandemic, Donald Trump’s rhetoric, souring trade relationship and a political atmosphere that encourages a ‘creeping distrust’ of Australians of Chinese heritage.
Threatening letters sent to Asian councillors and a surge in race hate attacks during the pandemic has renewed calls for a centralised hate tracker.
Councillor Kun Huang received [a hate] letter on a Monday. Among the insults about his name, the threats of death, the blame for the Covid-19 pandemic, the accusation that he had been stealing all the milk powder, buying up all the houses and bringing disease to Australia “for centuries”, the staff at the Cumberland Council noticed a name and an address. This was a race hate letter signed by its supposed perpetrator.
Filed under accountability, Australian culture, australian media, chauvinism, communal relations, cultural transmission, disparagement, economic processes, historical interpretation, legal issues, life stories, politIcal discourse, taking the piss, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes
Cricket Crazy Cricket! Dananjaya’s Roller-Coaster
Madushka Balasuriya in ESPNcricinfo, 4 March 2021, where the title is “Kieron Pollard’s six sixes in an over trumps Akila Dananjaya hat-trick in dramatic chase”
West Indies 134 for 6 (Pollard 38, Hasaranga 3-12) beat Sri Lanka 131 for 9 (Nissanka 39, McCoy 2-25) by four wickets
In one of the more ridiculous T20 run-chases you will witness, Kieron Pollard became just the third player to hit six sixes in an over in international cricket off the same bowler, Akila Dananjaya, who had rocked West Indies’ chase just an over earlier with a hat-trick.
The Murder of Lional Silva by the JVP in 1984
Sanjeewa Karunaratne, whose favoured title is “Stories from Sri Lanka’s Civil War – Lional Silva“
During 1984-89, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (“JVP”) or People’s Liberation Front launched a clandestine attack against the Government of Sri Lanka. Since its fighters were mingling among the public, the military and its militia groups were struggling to cope with this invisible enemy. As a result, spies were everywhere—one wrong word, move or contact may bestow a gruesome death on top of a burning tire. It may be an “in-kind” response to the JVP, whose piece of paper was enough to close down an entire city; and who did not hesitate to execute a school principal, government servant, singer, politician, or an ordinary person who disobeyed their orders, in front of their loved ones. It was a crisis of epic proportions and a very uncertain time in the country.
Filed under atrocities, authoritarian regimes, education, historical interpretation, insurrections, island economy, Left politics, life stories, politIcal discourse, power politics, riots and pogroms, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, trauma, unusual people, vengeance, world events & processes
