Category Archives: world events & processes

October 11, 2016 · 10:11 am

“Aiyo! Aiyo!” AIYO penetrates the Oxford Dictionary

News Item, 10 October 2016

Aiyo! It’s officially In Oxford Dictionary Now!

aiyyyo

“Aiyoh”, a common expression in Sri Lanka, South India, Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa.  Now it is among more than 1000 newly pinned words that made it into the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary last month. Oxford Dictionary is the most widely referred book for English nuances. The Oxford dictionary is 150 years old and for people who swear by it, if a word is not included in this book that word is not English. Period. It keeps updating its list of words each year by adding some commonly used words.

“Aiyoh“, defined as expressing many emotions – distress, regret, pain, surprise, grief, disappointment, irritation and disgust.

It has been reported that Oxford English Dictionary believes that this word has originated from China (Aiyoh in Mandarin). The Oxford English Dictionary adds new words four times a year. Some scholars are believed to be unhappy with the inclusion of these words in the dictionary as they believe this takes away the purity of the English language in all effect and is offending, but they have been using these colloquial words in their daily lives. Continue reading →

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October 10, 2016 · 9:54 am

Perilous Big Power/UN Interventions Here-There-Eveywhere

Thalif Deen, from the UN courtesy of InterPress Service, 7 October 2016, where the title is “UN Security Council’s ‘Perilous Interventions’ in War Zones” … Emphasis inserted by Editor, Thuppahi.

When the UN Security Council last week discussed the “deliberate” attacks on medical facilities in war-ravaged Syria and Yemen, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon implicitly criticized some of the warring nations lamenting that “even a slaughterhouse is more humane” than the ongoing indiscriminate killings of civilians in the two devastating conflicts.The attacks on hospitals, he warned, were “war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law”. But Joanne Liu, International President of Medicins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), singled out “four of the five permanent members of the Security Council” for the continued atrocities and lambasted them for their role in the attacks against medical facilities. “The conduct of war today knows no limits,” she regretted, pointing out that the failure of the Security Council “reflects a lack of political will among member states fighting in coalitions and those who enable them.”

aa-thalif

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October 9, 2016 · 2:36 pm

Palitha Kohona’s Review of USA’s Relations with Sri Lanka, 1948-2016

palitha_kohona-blogs-uvu-eduPalitha Kohona, courtesy of the International Press Syndicate, October 2016, where the title is “Sri Lanka and the US – The Past, the Present and the Future.”  Kohona’s sub-titles are in red.  Emphasisin blue highlighting has beena dded by the Editor, Thuppahi.

Sri Lanka’s relations with the US go back a long way and have encompassed many different areas of interest. These have mostly enriched the relationship. In recent times, the bilateral relationship has undergone considerable stress. As to whether Sri Lanka occupied the central attention of US foreign policy makers to any significant degree in the past, or even at present, can be the subject of a useful discussion, perhaps after a few glasses of good Californian wine. But for Sri Lanka, the US has been a vital foreign policy concern, especially in the recent past. A brief survey of the relationship in the past reveals that the US established a consulate in Galle as far back as 1857, at a time when many of the countries with embassies in Colombo today, did not even exist as countries. Then, the main interest of the US was the need to provide consular services to the US whaling fleet operating in the Indian Ocean. Continue reading →

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October 9, 2016 · 1:21 pm

Introducing Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General to be

Thalif Deen, courtesy of Sunday Times, 10 October 2016, where the title reads “New UN Chief: “Secretary” to the P5 – “General” to the Rest of the World” … Note that the highlihghting emphasis below is my imposition Editor, Thuppahi. 

When the 15-member Security Council decided, by acclamation, to recommend Antonio Guterres of Portugal as the new UN Secretary-General (UNSG), it also torpedoed two proposals on the negotiating table: a woman as the first UNSG, or in the alternative, an Eastern European as the first UNSG. But both proposals fell by the wayside as the Security Council opted for another Western European: the fourth UNSG from an over-represented geographical region, beginning with Trygve Lie of Norway (1946-1953), Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden (1953-1961) and Kurt Waldheim of Austria (1972-1981).

alchetron-com-unhcr-chief1 Guterres as UNHCR chief –Pic at alchetron.com Continue reading →

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October 8, 2016 · 1:40 pm

Believe IT or Not????

neanedertythals-1 The Origin of the Species? Continue reading →

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October 7, 2016 · 5:56 am

Samantha Power leads USA’s Threatening Squeeze on Russia

Christopher Black, in Near Eastern Outlook 3 October 2016, where the title is “NATO’s War On Russia: The Winds Howl Before the Storm”

A few weeks ago I wrote, “I have been a defence lawyer most of my working life and am not used to gathering evidence for a prosecution, but circumstances impelled me to open a file for the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, or perhaps some future citizen’s tribunal, in which is contained the evidence that the NATO leaders are guilty of the gravest crime against mankind, the crime of aggression. I would like to share with you some brief notes of interest from that file, for your consideration.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the Heads of State and Goverment during the Air power flypastNATO

Article 8bis of the Rome Statute, the governing statue of the International Criminal Court states: “For the purpose of this Statute, “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter on the United Nations.” Continue reading →

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October 7, 2016 · 4:40 am

Sri Lanka leads World in Path to Eliminate Malaria

Sarah Boseley, in The Guardian Weekly, 22 September 2016, where the title reads “Beginning of the End for Malaria,” ... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/09/malaria-sri-lanka-china-iran-malaysia-end-for-disease 

Hopes of eliminating malaria from more than 30 countries with a total population of 2 billion have risen following the successful removal of the disease from Sri Lanka. Public health officials said 13 countries, including Argentina and Turkey, had reported no cases for at least a year and may well follow the success of Sri Lanka, which this week declared itself malaria-free after meeting the criterion of going three years without an infection. By the end of the decade, another 21 countries, including China, Malaysia and Iran, could be free of the disease, which kills 400,000 people, mostly babies and pregnant women, every year.

Public health officials believe that in years to come the elimination from Sri Lanka, highly symbolic because the island came within a hair’s breadth of defeating malaria more than 50 years ago, may be regarded as the beginning of the end for the disease.

aa-lanka-malaria-11-eranga-j-for-ap A Sri Lankan worker fumigates buildings to control mosquitoes in Colombo. Photograph: Eranga Jayawardena/AP
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October 6, 2016 · 9:23 am

Analysing the Kashmir Imbroglio

Gerald H. Peiris, in an essay which is an abridged and up-dated version of Chapter 8 of G. H. Peiris: Political Conflict in South Asia (2013, a monograph published by the University of Peradeniya).

 Information on the Indo-Pakistan conflict pertaining to Kashmir being widely circulated in the context of the recent upsurge of their mutual hostilities has a distinct pro-India bias, mainly because the bulk of international news that reaches us tends to be filtered through the media of mass communication in the global ‘West’. The present crisis in Kashmir is, of course, the latest episode of a complex saga recorded from many perspectives, with no heroes and villains, an abundance of zealotry, and countless victims of circumstances. What is attempted in this paper is to present a brief but objective portrayal of this conflict in order to forestall the possibility of our views, here in Sri Lanka, being influenced by prejudice and ill-informed pronouncements on rights and wrongs. 

kashmir Kashmir — from internet kashmir-gerry Continue reading →

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October 6, 2016 · 2:52 am

Drones ready to Zoom the World

Jamie Walker,  courtesy of The Australian, 5 October 2016, where the title reads “Drones do it better as the technology leaps ahead”

Haven’t heard of Andrew Trid­gell? Well, perhaps you should have. In the micro world of unmanned aerial vehicle buffs, he’s a bit of a legend. The man known as Tridge is the guy to talk to about the future of flying robots. He is lanky, laconic and there’s a touch of the geek about him, which is certainly not out of place in the backblocks of Dalby on Queensland’s Western Downs, where the air fills with cactus moths and the buzz of tiny aircraft engines.

aadrones

The occasion is the UAV Challenge Outback Rescue, a world-class proving ground for technology that’s on the leading edge of where unmanned aerial vehicles are going in public use. The idea is to set a demanding task and get some of the top thinkers and practitioners in the converging fields of robotics, artificial intelligence and software development to fulfil it. The original mission, back in 2007 when the biennial UAV Challenge began, was to get a bottle of water to a point in a distant paddock occupied by a dummy nicknamed Outback Joe. This was supposed to replicate a real-life search and rescue operation for someone injured in the bush. Continue reading →

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October 5, 2016 · 1:20 pm

Rathika Pathmanathan Face-to-Face and Woman-to-Woman

Frances Bulathsinghala, courtesy of Daily FT, 5 October 2016, where the title reads “Facing the past, bridging the divide” ... with emphasis inblue highlghts added by the Editor, Thuppahi.

The life of 25-year-old Rathika Pathmanathan is a testimony of a post-war nation at the crossroads. She has lived the hideous gore of war, bloodied trenches and is now living the possibilities of peace. She has dared to trust and she has dared to forgive.  In her book ‘There is a Darkness Called Light and I Grope for Myself in the Thick of It,’ published in English, Sinhala and Tamil, recounts her days as a teenaged fighter in the LTTE frontlines of the last phase of the war; the nights and days of starvation in the trenches, the excruciating combat training, the loss of family and the new world of Colombo where she arrived for medical treatment for the leg she almost lost. Seated in the small, sparsely-furnished room she occupies on rent in a remote Sinhala majority suburb in the outer periphery of Colombo, Rathika speaks of wanting to rebuild her life, to study and most of all to actively work towards reconciliation in Sri Lanka, a task she is engaged in at present through her book and as an activist.

rathika

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