May 27, 2022 · 12:24 am

Multi-National Companies = Today’s Grey Powers Behind the Scenes

Malinda Seneviratne, in Email Memo

If you really really wish to know who controls our economy regardless of who we elect…………… read this passage, 10,001 times over and over… it is they who should be sent to their homes..

Multinational conglomerates like Unilever, etc., infiltrate international agencies, including the UN system. With their effective intelligence networks, they can even destabilize governments. While making use of the military and diplomatic power of international capitalism as represented by the USA, they in turn serve its political interests.

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May 25, 2022 · 12:15 pm

China’s Maverick Status in Sri Lanka’s Economic Crisis

Bharatha Mallawarachi, Krutika Pathi and Joe McDonald, in The Diplomat, 20 May 2022, where the title reads  “China Becomes Wild Card in Sri Lanka’s Debt Crisis”

Beijing has promised to “play a positive role” in talks with the IMF and offered Colombo more loans but is reluctant to cut its debt.

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May 24, 2022 · 8:50 pm

Rukshan sings for Sri Lanka’s Resurrection

Item in The Island, 24 May 2022, with this headline “Bring back Paradise”

Maestro Rukshan Perera is one artiste who is regularly in the news, and grabs the spotlight, in a big way, every time an important event, or a disaster, takes place in the country, or in the world.

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May 24, 2022 · 1:04 am

The Assassination of SWRD Bandaranaike Revisited

Sanjiva Senanayake, in The Island, 17 October 2021, where the title reads “Beyond reasonable doubt? The Killing of a Prime Minister”

Many people ‘know’ the conventional tale about the assassination of the Prime Minister of Ceylon, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, 62 years ago. However, they each have a slightly different take and theory about the facts, the reasons, the conspiracy theories and who ‘actually’ did it. Those then unborn or too young to have been aware of it at the time, have heard about it from older people. We have to assume that the intrinsic Lankan sense of rumour would have spiced up the details as time went by.

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May 23, 2022 · 8:36 pm

Leonard Woolf: Innocent Imperialist turned Pragmatic Internationalist

Jane Russell

Leonard Woolf  &  Arthur C Clarke

Foreword:  “When I’m in the Strand or 42nd Street, or at NASA Headquarters or the Beverley Hills Hotel, my surroundings are liable to give a sudden tremor and I see through the insubstantial fabric to the reality beneath…” These words by Arthur C. Clarke, the sci-fi writer, are quoted at the end of Roloff Beny’s photographic chronicle “Island Ceylon”. But where does Clark’s reality reside? He writes, “No other place is so convincing as Sri Lanka,” and as he spent almost fifty years there, we are tempted to believe him. Continue reading →

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May 23, 2022 · 7:07 pm

Portuguese Creole in Sri Lanka: Faint Traces & Remnants

Shannine Daniel, at ……………….. https://www.sundaytimes.lk/220522/plus/spreading-the-word-of-sri-lankan-portuguese-creole-483176.html
Dr Hugo Cardoso, a linguist from the University of Lisbon and his team who have been researching this historical language spoken in the East of Sri Lanka have now taken to social media to preserve this fast fading heritage.

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May 23, 2022 · 2:26 pm

The Political Travails of the Indian Tamils in the State Council Era 1931-48

Uditha Devapriya, in  The Island, 21 May 2022,  where the title runs thus “DS Senanayake and the Indian Tamil Question”

In his recent work on D. S. Senanayake, K. M. de Silva explores certain controversial aspects of Ceylon’s lurch into independent statehood. Among these is the issue of the fate of the country’s Indian Tamils. Brought to the island from South India amidst conditions of famine and mass starvation in the early part of the 19th century, Indian Tamil workers replaced Sinhalese and resident Tamil labour in the island. Governed by a semifeudal set-up that shut them out from the world outside, Indian Tamil labour grew up in a world of their own. It was their tragic fate that while the colonial government feigned little interest in their welfare, their lives lay in the hands of that government.

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May 23, 2022 · 2:00 am

Portuguese Creole in Sri Lanka in Performative Mode

SHIHAN DE SILVA JAYASURIYA presents her interview with Udena Wickremasooriya (son of Gerald Wickremasooriya, founder of Sooriya records) from you tube…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zil7pncoEkM

Thuppahi also presents “the recordings that Sooriya Records in Colombo   made a few years ago for posterity. There are 4 links for the 4 songs below.”

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May 23, 2022 · 1:47 am

Olde Time Organ Music at the Capri in Adelaide

Baritone Andrew Crispe joined organist Chris McPhee for a very entertaining afternoon of music featuring music from Broadway.at the Capri Theatre on Goodwood Road in Adelaide this Ssunday 22nd May 2012.

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May 22, 2022 · 1:00 pm

Australia’s “Whitey” Parliament of Yesteryear

Frances Mao, BBC News, Sydney 20 May 2022, where the title runs as “Australia election: Why is Australia’s parliament so white?”

 Some of Australia’s MPs, pictured here, fail to reflect the country’s diversity, critics say

Australia is one of the most multicultural nations in the world, but it’s a different story in the country’s politics, where 96% of federal lawmakers are white. With this year’s election, political parties did have a window to slightly improve this. But they chose not to in most cases, critics say.

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