Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, in Colombo Telegraph, 16 May 2022, where the title reads “Masks of Democracy & Energy Geopolitics: Is Full Spectrum Dominance the Endgame?”
South Asia’s Arab Spring has arrived amid energy wars and slow tectonic shifts in power and wealth eastward to Asia and the Indian Ocean Region. This has been hastened by the new Cold War proxy-war in Ukraine, US-led sanctions on energy-rich Russia and a refugee crisis in Europe.
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Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta, in Sunday Island, 16 June 2019, where the title reads “One Thing Leads to Another – Memories of a Great Guru”
SBD de Silva, at 92, acted like he would live forever. To the very end, he kept drafting in almost imperceptible scribble – with pen or pencil, whatever being handy, glasses falling off his nose, peering over some text or daily/weekly newspaper – filling an A4 until no blank space was left, and then, so as not to break his concentration or the sentence, without looking, reach for another blank…
Like Scheherazade of the 1001 Nights who had to keep narrating to save her life until each dawn, so did SB, by day and by night, keep writing as if fresh insights, expressed in perfect words, would make him immortal. Yet, ambushed he was by impermanence. But such dedication to his craft and to the country was sheer dream to witness, let alone to hope to emulate, yet must be upheld as a beacon of scholarship for future generations.
SBD de Silva (1926-2018) at a diplomatic reception in the 1950s. His classic, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, tracks our own economic history midst that of the world.
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‘The Writings of Dr Saman Kelegama’ is a collection of the scholarly edition of his writings enriched with his intelligence, experience and outlook. This dedicated digital platform enabling access and preservation of Dr Kelegama’s writings for publications, edited works, and other unpublished papers such as scripts of keynote speeches – is a tribute for him and a treasure for readers and researchers alike with a quest for knowledge.”
After a tasty rice & curry meal for lunch with Fruit salad, Ice cream, watalappam etc. provided by the Parliament Cafeteria, (for a subsidized price of Rs150) this is what you can expect !
ALSO SEE
* Shenali Waduge: “IMF bailout : Sri Lanka’s troubles only beginning,” 18 February 2016, …. http://www.sinhalanet.net/imf-bailout-sri-lankas-troubles-only-beginning
Mick Moore, 4 January 2015
I share with Razeen Sally the hope that Maithripala Sirisena will win the forthcoming presidential election. Like Sally – and a good chunk of the Lankan electorate – I have a strong distaste for corrupt, exclusionary, authoritarian rule. I also agree with Sally that a victory for Sirisena would be, at best, only the beginning of a long process of re-establishing stable, inclusive democratic rule. The obstacles to success are deep-rooted and formidable. But Sally’s advice – that a future non-Rajapakse government should put emphasis a combination of a pro-Western (and pro-Indian) foreign policy and a more market-oriented economic policy – is unlikely to be helpful. It is not that these things would be inherently wrong. Small doses of them might actually be useful. But they are either infeasible (foreign policy) or miss the point (economic policy). In broad terms, his is the same advice that ‘the West’ has been giving Sri Lankan governments since Independence over half a century ago. It remains largely unpalatable. In the current‘Asian century’, it is often impractical or irrelevant. And it also has a poor track record.
Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, communal relations, historical interpretation, island economy, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, press freedom & censorship, propaganda, Rajapaksa regime, security, Tamil civilians, the imaginary and the real, tolerance, transport and communications, truth as casualty of war, welfare & philanthophy, working class conditions, World Bank, world events & processes, zealotry
SEE Sri Lankan journey at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-27494822#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa…..20 May 2014 Last updated at 17:24 BST
About 300 miles separate the old Dutch fort of Galle on Sri Lanka’s southern tip and Mullivaikal, the strip of land in the north where an army assault on Tamil rebels ended a civil war five years ago. The BBC’s Charles Haviland travelled up the coast passing fish markets and seaside resorts, eventually turning inland towards the ancient capital and ending up in a desolate former war zone. These are the stories of the people he met on the way.
Michael O’Leary, Courtesy of Lanka Monthly Digest, 11 October 2011 edn … also see http://lmd.lk/
The World Bank’s (WB) official goal is the reduction of poverty and its function is to provide loans to developing countries for capital programmes. In the 1940s and ’50s, the bank adopted a conservative approach and its level of lending was low. From 1968, its President Robert McNamara shifted policy towards measures like building schools and hospitals, improving literacy and agricultural reform. Keynesianism was the ideology of the lender’s bureaucrat-economists, whose ideals echoed the domestic policies of the US governments of the time – LBJ’s Great Society, with its emphasis on growth and redistribution as a remedy for poverty.
McNamara’s Treasurer Eugene Rotberg acquired capital from the global bond market. Ironically, Swiss banks (many of which hoard much of the money looted by dictators from developing nations) contributed a substantial share of these funds. Unfortunately, from 1976 to 1980, debt levels in developing nations rose at an average annual rate of 20 per cent. Continue reading
thuppahi
