October 24, 2021 · 7:20 pm

Vale: Joe Weeramunda, Versatile Anthropologist, Warm Friend

Dr. Sarath Rajapatirana, in The Island, 28 August 2021, with this title  “Appreciation Professor Anton Joseph Weeramunda”

I write this appreciation as one who has been Joe’s classmate at St. Joseph’s, roommate at Marcus Fernando Hall at the University of Peradeniya, and a life-long friend. Joe was an exceptional human being who was quiet, modest, smart, and kind to all and sundry to a fault. His family and friends will miss him terribly. All the friends that I contacted to let them know about Joe’s passing away have written back expressing their profound sorrow to learn about his passing. He was a genuine person that all of us came to admire, like, and be devoted to.

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October 24, 2021 · 12:42 am

Betwixt India and China: Little Lanka

ACL Ameer Ali in Colombo Telegraph, 6 June 2021, where the title is “Delhi’s Choice & Colombo’s Highway to Beijing ”  … but note that the highlighting is an imposition of The Editor, Thuppahi

Post-war Sri Lanka has turned into a contestable terrain for a new Great Game played chiefly between two regional powers, India and China with their respective allies. Although India’s presumption of control over the Indian Ocean remained uncontested once the former colonial masters started leaving the region one by one, Indian historians and political strategists like K. M. Panikkar warned Independent India of economic and security perils of surrendering control over Indian Ocean[…]

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October 23, 2021 · 8:11 pm

Andrew Fernando’s Clinical Assessment of Sri Lanka’s Prospects in T20 World Cup

Andrew Fidel Fernando, in ESPNcricinfo, October 2021, where the chosen title is “Not a lot is expected of Sri Lanka, and that may free them up to punch big”

If you look at a certain set of statistics, you’d think Sri Lanka were T20 World Cup kings. In the history of this tournament, they have won more T20 World Cup games (25) than any other side, their win/loss percentage of 2.083 unmatched. They have reached the final in half of the six World Cups played. And they have produced some of the World Cup’s most iconic performances. But such has been their rate of decline since 2014 (when they won), that they were forced to qualify for the main draw this time. They arrive in the Super 12s ranked tenth in the world, having won only two of their last 12 bilateral T20I series. Since the last T20 World Cup, they have had at least five captains in the format. Although their ODI and Test cricket has also suffered substantially over the past few years, T20Is have been Sri Lanka’s worst format.

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October 23, 2021 · 7:45 pm

Comparative Insights: USA’s Failures in Vietnam and Afghanistan

H.D.S Greenway, in Sri Lanka Guardian, 23 October 2021, … where the title runs thus  = Half century long American misadventures

A veteran war correspondent recalls the ignorance, poor judgement, exceptionalism, and hubris in all of [USA’s]  interventions.

Nearly half a century ago I watched the South Vietnamese army, an army that had been trained and equipped by the United States, simply melt away before a less well equipped but better-motivated army of North Vietnam. The South Vietnamese fled in panic before the North’s final offensive. I saw soldiers taking off their uniforms and fleeing in their underwear. Cities were falling before the North Vietnamese had time to get there.

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October 23, 2021 · 6:52 pm

Namibia as Lilliput among the Giants in Cricket’s T20 World Cup

Firdose Moonda, in ESPNcricinfo 20 October 2021 where her title is “Namibia live out their desert dream”

Namibia is a country of 2.5 million people, nine cricket fields, five cricket clubs and 16 contracted players. And they’ve made it to the Super 12s of a T20 World Cup. Along the way, they’ve won their first-ever major tournament match and they’ve beaten a Full Member. Over the next three weeks, they will play against four others and they have automatically secured a spot at the next T20 World Cup too. Their performances will get people talking about the deserts and the desolate landscapes of the country they call home; a place where you can drive for hundreds of kilometres and not see another soul; of Africa’s last colony, with no major cricketing achievements to its name until now.

 

 

Namibia’s captain Gerhard Erasmus top-scored in the game that took them to the Super 12s  ICC via Getty Continue reading →

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October 22, 2021 · 7:53 pm

LTTE Activists at Work in Britain, 2021 …. stirring both Labour and Tories

Maya Anthony, in Ceylon Today, 14 October 2021,where the title reads  “The LTTE Born Again; Second-Generation Terrorists”

The remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are regrouping in the UK. Like Osama bin Laden groomed Hamza bin Laden to succeed him, the LTTE leaders and members are grooming their own children. Prabhakaran too set an example by training and grooming his children; Charles Anthony, Dwarka and Balachandran. To radicalise their next generation, the separatists are promoting a false narrative. Using funds and votes, the terrorists are planning to penetrate both the Labour and Conservative Parties in the UK. 

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October 22, 2021 · 4:55 pm

DB Dhanapala’s AMONG THOSE PRESENT

Ravindra Wijewardhane, in Sunday Observer, 25 July 2021, where the title readsv “One of Dhanapala’s best books”

This is a collection of newspaper articles on important people who shaped events in Sri Lanka and even made history. Published in 1962, includes 22 articles or biographical reviews on 22 people – Anagarika Dharmapala, Ananda Coomaraswami, D.S. Senanayake, Dudley Senanayake, John Kotelawala, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, Sirima Bandaranaike, Oliver Goonetileke, Philip Gunawardhane, P. de S. Kularatne, G.P. Malalasekera, L.H. Mettananda, Senarat Paranavitana, G.P. Wickramarachchi, Yakkaduve Thero, Nicholas Attygalle, Herbert Hulugalle, Soliyas Mendis, Nittavela Gunaya, Victor Dhanapala, Arunachalam Mahadeva, Ediriweera Sarathchandra.

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October 22, 2021 · 12:01 am

The Religious Threads and Corporate Institutions behind Our World Wars?

Brian Victoria, presenting an article that has appeared in Countercurrents on 19 October 2021 with this title “Something Worse than Slavery?”

With the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement, together with the emergence of Critical Race Theory, the spotlight has once again been shone on the heinous institution that was slavery and its aftermath, racial discrimination. Could anything be worse than a system in which a human being becomes the property of another, to do with as the slave owner sees fit?

For good reason, the ownership of one human being by another is now universally prohibited, at least legally, for the inhumane abomination it has always been. Yet, in rejecting slavery it is easy to overlook one aspect that may be identified, for lack of a better word, as its sole positive feature. Namely, it was not in the slave owner’s interest to kill their slaves outright, for only living slaves made it possible for the owner to profit from their labor.

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October 21, 2021 · 6:17 pm

The Modern Nation States’ Victims

Adam Henry Hughes, whose original title runs thus “Hiding the Body Bags: The Nation-State, Killing and Death”

During a lecture [in 2010], the famous news correspondent Robert Fisk told a story of the reaction of a Reuter’s news agency (London) to receiving graphic pictures of civilian death and destruction caused in Iraq by British forces. Reuter’s called the pictures “obscene” and therefore not fit to be shown back home.(1)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We learn about the abstract war, the war of nationalist or ideological sacrifice and endurance, the achievement of some military objective or another; the war that is remembered in one national cemetery or memorial museum. But we must not see the broken and mutilated bodies—the final state of the human being once steel, bomb, bullet or blade meets flesh.(2)

 

 

 

 

Many died in the Battle at LONE PINE

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October 21, 2021 · 5:00 pm

Stefan D’Silva: Intrepid Cameraman, Adventurer and Sri Lankan

Michael Roberts … in introducing his latest treasure trove of photographs in and around the Batticaloa Lagoon let me point readers towards previous items in Thuppahi …

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