Category Archives: world events & processes

November 6, 2021 · 7:12 pm

Sri Lankan Army’s Alms as Arms across the Ethnic Divide

Retd Brigadier Hiran Halangode** has told me about a schoolmate from Ananda College, one Kumar Weerasuriya, who has donated over 15 houses with funds from friends and labour from the Army in Jaffna. He indicates that Weerasuriya is “a true son of Sri Lanka who gives back to all Sri Lankans with all his mite. You may be able to share his story in Australia and globally.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Halangode has also sent the three images presented here of houses donated by 3 different individuals to the homeless in Jaffna. Their stories can be extracted from this website, which is the Jaffna Security Forces website on Civil Affairs. [www.cimicjaffna.lk Continue reading →

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November 6, 2021 · 11:12 am

A Tale of Resistance: The Story of the Arrival of the Portuguese in Sri Lanka

Michael Roberts, reproducing here an article that appeared initially in 1989 with the same title in Ethnos, 55: 1-2:69-82. … and also in Swedish in Lanka. Tidskrift om Lankesisk Kultur (Uppsala), No. 2, March 1989. I regret that the presentation here has not been able to incoroporate diacritica for indigenous words. Standing now in 2025, I have added highlighted colouring in red or purple in order to emphasize points.

ABSTRACT: This essay decodes a sixteenth century folktale which records the Sinhalese reaction to the arrival of the first Portuguese. Where the historiography has interpreted this tale as benign wonderment in the face of exotica, a piecemeal deconstruction of the allegorical clues in the ‘story is utilised to reveal how the Sinhalese linked the Portuguese with demons and with Vasavarti Maraya; the arch enemy of the Buddha. In this fashion the Portuguese and the Christian sacrament of communion were represented as dangerous, disordering forces. The piecemeal reinterpretation of this short text, however, must be overlaid by a holistic perspective and the realisation that its rendering in oral form enabled its purveyors to lace the story with a satirical flavour: so that the Portuguese and Catholicism are, like demons, rendered both disordering and comic, dangerous and inferior – thus ultimately controllable. In contending in this manner that the folktale is an act of nationalist opposition, the article is designed as an attack on the positivist empiricism which pervades the island’s historiography and shuts out imaginative reconstructions which are worked out by penetrating the subjective world of the ancient texts.

 

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November 5, 2021 · 10:12 pm

Hassina Leelarathna: In Action, In Words And In Commemoration

LT Times,  November 2021

Hassina Leelarathna, a co-founder of the only Sri Lankan newspaper in the U.S. and an activist who spurred fellow immigrants to help when disasters struck their homeland, has died at age 73. Leelarathna died in Sherman Oaks on Oct. 17 after battling lung cancer for the last five years, said her son, Sahan Gamage.

 

Hassina Leelarathna co-hosted a bilingual radio show called “Tharanga,” focusing on news, music and culture. The program began in San Francisco at KFJC-FM, pictured here, before migrating to Los Angeles when the family relocated south in 1985 (Sahan Gamage)

 

 

 

 

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November 4, 2021 · 6:56 pm

A Supposed Wonder Drug gets Rubbished

A Recent Email Drum-beat touted a supposed wonder drug in the treament of cancer! ….. But the Essay meets Its Match in Two Caustic Comments from Two Sri Lankan Doctor Friends

ONE:  Dr Colin Fernando in Adelaide,  4 November 2012

This is certainly not a brilliant new discovery. The use of cyanide from Apricot  Kernel and from Manioc as a treatment for cancer has been touted since the 1950’s at least. It was patented as “Laetrile” and has been carefully studied and rejected by respected researchers.

 Kiributh with lunumiris — as tasty as non-curative! Continue reading →

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November 3, 2021 · 11:46 pm

Self-Immolation in Protest: Reflections

Michael Roberts, reproducing here an expanded version of article printed in Lanka Monthly Digest, September 1999, Vol 6:2, pp. 56-57…. with citations added.

 

 

 

 

 

A Kurd in Germany immolates self in protest vs Ocalan’s fate

 ONE : In February 1999 a Kurdish nationalist leader, Ocalan, was caught by the Turkish authorities. Kurdish refugees in the Western world erupted in protest. In London a young girl Neila Kanteper set herself alight. In Sydney a young lad was caught on camera with petrol can and cigarette lighter as he threatened similar action. As I walked into the local news-agency in Adelaide that week the proprietor[1] waved the picture of Kanteper in flames in front of me and in considerable alarm inquired how anyone could take such an extreme measure. He could not ever take such a step, he said. His remarks gain in significance from the fact that they were unsolicited and had not been preceded by prior conversation. I was in a hurry and did not explore matters further, but I conjecture that his bewilderment stemmed not only from the method of death by fire, but also from such terminal commitment to a collective cause. The question, therefore, is whether in similar circumstances an act of martyrdom involving death by hand-gun would produce the same level of astonishment. Relatively speaking, death by gun seems to be so much more acceptable to the Western world than death by flame.

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November 3, 2021 · 11:11 pm

Self-Immolation and Buddhism: Tibetan Protests Vs China in 2012

Jamyang Norbu, in Buddhist Channel TV, 5 January 2012 https://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=70,10661,0,0,1,0

The Yiddish word “chutzpah”, pronounced “huspa”, has the exact same meaning as the Tibetan word “hamba”, and even shares a passing tonal quality to it. Leo Rosten, the humourist, defined chutzpah as “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”

 

 

This image from video footage released by Students For A Free Tibet via APTN purports to show Buddhist nun Palden Choetso engulfed in flames in her self-immolation protest against Chinese rule on a street in Tawu, Tibetan Ganzi prefecture, in China’s Sichuan Province Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. Continue reading →

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November 1, 2021 · 8:21 pm

Choosing Gnanasara Thera! ‘Unmandated’ Madness!

Prabath Sahabandu, Chief Editor of The Island, where this item appeared on 31 October 2021, with the title “Sri Lanka: Mandates Stupidity“

A popular mandate is not a licence for a leader to do as he or she pleases. Instead, it is the authority the people confer on a political leader to act as their representative and serve them.

It has been reported that the Rajapaksa brothers saw red when one of the SLPP coalition leaders, at a recent meeting, expressed his displeasure at the appointment of Ven. Galagodaatte Gnanasara as the head of the so-called one-country-one-law presidential task force. They reportedly demanded to know what right the dissenting leader had to question the decision of a President who had received a mandate from 6.9 million people. Their line of reasoning defies comprehension. Do they think the mandate they are crowing about has made the President infallible?

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November 1, 2021 · 12:27 pm

The Development of Transportation in Ceylon, 1800-1947

L. A. Wickremeratne aka Ananda Wickremeratne**

The history of transportation in Ceylon forms an interesting backdrop to the economic developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the beginning of the nineteenth century however, military exigencies rather than economic considerations were the determining factors in the construction of roads by the colonial government. Understandably, much attention was centered on the recently acquired Kandyan territories over which the British were determined to strengthen their hold.

The Satinwood Bridge at Peradeniya (a description questioned by /Gerald Peiris)

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October 31, 2021 · 7:59 pm

The Faculty of Science, University of Ceylon in the 1960s

Presented by HSM Pieris

The photograph shows a section of the notable and distinguished academics of the Faculty of Science, University of Ceylon.

Seated (L to R) – Prof. (Mrs.) WPD Pereira, Prof. KD Arulpragasam, Prof. PPGL Siriwardane, Prof. S. Cruz, Prof. AW Mailwaganam, Mr. SJ Walpita, Prof. BA Abeyawickrama, Prof. V. Appapillai, Prof. MS Thambiah, Prof. P. Kanagasabapathy, Prof. GP Wannigama, Prof. PW Vithanage.

Standing (L to R) 1st Row – Prof. S. Balasubramaniam, Prof. MD Dassanayake, Prof. V. Tharmaratnam, Prof. GA Dissanayake, Prof. PCB Fernando, Prof. PW Epasinghe, Prof. C. Dahanayake, Prof. SG Canagaratna, Prof. RGA Rodrigo, Prof. JKP Ariyaratne, Prof. MLT Kannangara, Prof. HH Costa, Prof. AH Sathananthan.

2nd Row (L to R) – Prof. MR Kulatilake, Prof. HNC Fonseka, Prof. PD Gunatilake, Prof. HW Dias, Prof. VK Samaranayake, Prof. M. Selvaratnam, Prof. RS Ramakishna, Prof. WWD Modder, Prof. RN de Fonseka, Prof. I. Balasooriya, Prof. KOIF Jayaweera, Prof. OW Jayaratne.

Photograph Credit: Family photograph collection fromthe  late Prof. B.A. Abeywickrama

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October 31, 2021 · 1:23 pm

Amazing! Gnanasara Thera’s Appointment as Point Man for Reconciliation!

 Rajan Philips, in Sunday Island, 31 October 2021, where the title reads “One Country, One Law. What is it? Why now?”

The gazette announcement that Ven. Galagodaaththe Gnanasara Thera will be heading a new Presidential Task Force to study “the implementation of the concept, One country; One law, and prepare a draft Act for the said purpose,” was more befuddling than it was shocking or infuriating. “It defies comprehension,” said The Island editorial on Thursday. Many also found the announcement somewhat hilarious while mindful of its ominous implications. The hilarity stems from this government’s seemingly unlimited capacity to be ridiculously irrational in political tactics, even as it is utterly incompetent on matters of policy. Comprehending the government’s actions is not the problem. Fathoming how far the consequences of those actions will go and how damaging they will be to the public good is the challenge.

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