Thuppahi's Blog

September 14, 2021 · 9:24 pm

Izzy Bee: Busy Aiding Koalas on Magnetic Island, Queensland

Robert Moran, in Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September 2020, where the title runs thus: “Meet the 13-year-old ‘Koala Whisperer’, Australia’s new conservation superstar”

Ali Bee, a veterinarian on Queensland’s Magnetic Island, and her partner Tim didn’t think they’d ever have children. “That’s basically why we bought the animal clinic, we didn’t think Izzy was going to eventuate,” Bee recalls. “Five months later, I was pregnant with Izzy. “It was a very happy surprise. She has been at the vet clinic her whole life. I had to go back to work just five weeks after she was born, so she has literally been brought up at the clinic.”

Izzy Bee, 13, is the star of Netflix's Izzy's Koala World. — **Izzy Bee, 13, is the star of Netflix’s Izzy’s Koala World.CREDIT:NETFLIX**

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No Debt Trap at Hambantota: False Picture on China’s Role

Deborah Brautigam & Meg Rithmire, in The Atlantic, 6 February 2021, where the title is “The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth “

The narrative wrongfully portrays both Beijing and the developing countries it deals with. China, we are told, inveigles poorer countries into taking out loan after loan to build expensive infrastructure that they can’t afford and that will yield few benefits, all with the end goal of Beijing eventually taking control of these assets from its struggling borrowers. As states around the world pile on debt to combat the coronavirus pandemic and bolster flagging economies, fears of such possible seizures have o nly amplified.

Ben Shmulevitch

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September 13, 2021 · 2:43 pm

Yvonne Between Richard Nixon and Sir John

This striking photo was proably snapped before Sir John Kotelawela led the UNP to Debacle in the 1956 General Elections. [on 23 November 1953 — as kindly pointed out by Sachi Sri Kantha…. see below]

Lord Soulbury is seated on the extreme left –so this snap has been taken before he left Ceylon. It would be useful if other “personalities’ could be identified. The lady looking pensive in her pensive middle postion betwen Kohn Kotelawela and Richard Nixon is Yvonne Gulam Hussein nee Tousaint — a prominent socialite in Colombo.

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September 13, 2021 · 1:06 am

Radio Ceylon: King of the Airwaves in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Gaston de Rosayro, in Daily News, 13 February 2017 where the title reads “When Radio Ceylon was King of the airwaves!”

World Radio Day was first celebrated in 2012, following its declaration by the UNESCO General Conference. It was subsequently adopted as an International Day by the organisation. The theme for the 2017 edition of the event is ‘Radio is You!’, a call for greater participation of audiences and communities in the policy and planning of radio broadcasting.

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September 12, 2021 · 1:18 pm

September 11: Back to Square One 20 Years After

David Kilcullen, in The Weekend Australian, 11-12 September 2021

Twenty years after 9/11 the terrorism threat is larger and more widespread, the Western alliance is weaker, and the US is in sharp decline relative to its rivals. Democratic societies are less free, stunted by “safetyism”, less resilient and more divided.

The abandonment of Afghans amid the return of an unreformed triumphant Taliban just in time for the 20th anniversary of 9/11, underlines the failure of the global war on terror and the need for a radical rethink. This is particularly true for Australia, which faces the most threatening geopolitical environment in a century.

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September 12, 2021 · 2:11 am

In Defence of a Voice from the Grave, That of Sunila Abeysekera

Jane Russell presenting “a reply to unjustified criticism ” …. * …. [see endnote]

Foreword: I first met Sunila Abeysekera at a joint exhibition of sculpture and poetry which my Sri Lankan partner, sculptor Malathie de Silva, and I held at the Lionel Wendt Gallery in 1976. Sunila was twenty-four; I was two years older. She brought her father along and he purchased one of my poems which I‘d produced as wall-posters.:

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September 12, 2021 · 1:14 am

Indelible. Unforgetable. 9/11 in Pictures

We Shall Remember.

Fire and smoke billows from the north tower of New York’s World Trade Center on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. (AP Photo/David Karp)

A person falls from the north tower of New York’s World Trade Center as another clings to the outside, left, while smoke and fire billow from the building, Tuesday Sept. 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

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Lakshman’s Hambantota Diarrhoeas

Lakshman Gunasekara … with highlights being the intrusion of The Editor, Thuppahi

I recall reading both these articles,[1] or at least parts of these articles just a few weeks ago sent by you.

1) China:- I am an admirer of China (just as much as I am an even bigger admirer of India, simply because of cultural and geographical affinity) and I am specifically an admirer of China’s role in the world today as a relatively civilised and certainly civilisational (in terms of Difference) counter to the old, beginning-to-fade Western imperialism. This is not to say that I do not have problems with China’s internal, unnecessarily repressive, political system. While I am a long-time Communist and I continue to watch with interest the successes and failure of the single-party system (the Communist Party is not at all the typical western-liberal-style ‘political party’), I am surprised at the lack of more dedicated practice of electoral politics within that one-party system, especially at the higher levels of national structures. Theoretically, I prefer the Communist one-party state than the bourgeois-liberal multiparty competitive electoral system as the best way toward greater democracy and consolidating social democracy.

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September 10, 2021 · 6:19 pm

9/11 Chaos: How Lewis Porte and Gander in Canada met the Overflow from 9/11

It is almost 20 years since 9/11 and here is a wonderful story about that terrible day. …..Jerry Brown Delta Flight 15… (true story)

Here is an amazing story from a flight attendant on Delta Flight 15, written following 9-11:

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, we were about 5 hours out of Frankfurt, flying over the North Atlantic. All of a sudden, the curtains parted and I was told to go to the cockpit, immediately, to see the captain.

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A Battle Map of the Dutch Invasion of Kandy in 1765

Presented by Brig Hiran Halangode, retd] GW SLA

Chamikara Pilapitiya, author of book titled *‘Maha Nuwara Yugaye Apprakata Viththi’** has gifted a copy of a rare Battle Map of the Dutch invasion of Kandy in 1765 to Trinity College Kandy. An image of the gifted copy of the map is given below. It shows a detailed description of the trench lines and the gun batteries in and around the town of Kandy, which was used by the Kandyan army to attack the invading Dutch army in 1765.

Mr. Chamikara Pilapitiya presenting a copy of his book to then Principal of Trinity College in 2019.

The original map is available in Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Thuppahi's Blog

Izzy Bee: Busy Aiding Koalas on Magnetic Island, Queensland

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No Debt Trap at Hambantota: False Picture on China’s Role

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Yvonne Between Richard Nixon and Sir John

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Radio Ceylon: King of the Airwaves in the Mid-Twentieth Century

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September 11: Back to Square One 20 Years After

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In Defence of a Voice from the Grave, That of Sunila Abeysekera

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Indelible. Unforgetable. 9/11 in Pictures

We Shall Remember.

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Lakshman’s Hambantota Diarrhoeas

Like this:

9/11 Chaos: How Lewis Porte and Gander in Canada met the Overflow from 9/11

It is almost 20 years since 9/11 and here is a wonderful story about that terrible day. …..Jerry Brown Delta Flight 15… (true story)

Here is an amazing story from a flight attendant on Delta Flight 15, written following 9-11:

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, we were about 5 hours out of Frankfurt, flying over the North Atlantic. All of a sudden, the curtains parted and I was told to go to the cockpit, immediately, to see the captain.

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A Battle Map of the Dutch Invasion of Kandy in 1765

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We Shall Remember.

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It is almost 20 years since 9/11 and here is a wonderful story about that terrible day. …..Jerry Brown Delta Flight 15… (true story)

Here is an amazing story from a flight attendant on Delta Flight 15, written following 9-11:

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, we were about 5 hours out of Frankfurt, flying over the North Atlantic. All of a sudden, the curtains parted and I was told to go to the cockpit, immediately, to see the captain.

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