May 16, 2021 · 2:57 pm

An US Combat Cameraman’s Film Journal of Ceylon in 1944-45

Ettoro Porecca: “A Soldier’s Film Journal of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 1944-1945″ (HD) ……..Jun 17, 2016

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t9WPtqFciM .... Film and Narration by Ettore Porreca (1920-2013) 6,721 views

Ettore Porreca was a United States Army combat cameraman in World War II. In 1944 he was attached to the British army, and he was sent to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) for a few months in the winter of 1944-1945. ….

Ettore aged 92 …. https://buffalonews.com/news/local/ettore-c-porreca-92-noted-wedding-photographer/article_37a79fbd-cc2e-56b0-87ad-deb7948867f3.html

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May 14, 2021 · 3:39 pm

Ceylonese in the Indian Independence League in Malaysia during World War II

Kumar Kirinde, drawing largely on work by PK Balachandran, in ana rticle he has titled as “fighting for Freedom from the British in the 1940s: …,”

Introduction: When the Japanese occupied Malaya and Singapore in 1942, a large number of Indians joined the Indian Independence League (IIL) and the Indian National Army (INA) headed by Subhas Chandra Bose*, the Indian freedom fighter who was striving to free India from the British, in collaboration with the Japanese armed forces.

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May 14, 2021 · 2:56 pm

Indu and Anoma’s Reawakening in the Face of Covid

Indu Hewawasam & Anoma Gunawardena

Most of us usually find that we are distant physically & emotionally from disasters and crises that are reported from around the world. Early this year it seemed that was the case at first, with a new virus originating in a Chinese city, Wuhan, that many of us had not heard of until then. However, within a month or two, everyone around the world would be engaging with what seemed like a storm, or even a kind of Tsunami, with repetitive waves. The virus, soon labelled SARS- CoV-2, and its associated disease Covid-19, began to spread. Most of us focussed on its immediate impact on our little corner and concentrated on our selves or our family’s strategy for survival.

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May 14, 2021 · 8:21 am

Peradeniya Practices: Face-to-Face in Debate

Michael Roberts

Both Kingsley de Silva and this writer were nourished as undergraduates, and then as teachers, in the History Department at Peradeniya University in the 1950s and 1960s. This atmosphere fostered vigorous debate. The epitome of debate was deepened in the cross-disciplinary setting of the Ceylon Studies Seminar inaugurated on the 10th November 1968[1] and held within the premises of the Sociology Department (then headed by Gananath Obeyesekere – an initiative in which I was one of the hands and a tradition sustained into the 1980s via the exertions of CR de Silva and SWR De (Sam) Samarasinghe.[2]

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May 13, 2021 · 2:40 am

Hurdles: Entering Sri Lanka TODAY –Guidelines

The procedure for entry into Sri Lanka has been reviewed and new guidelines have been applied with effect from 12 May 2021.

Accordingly, all persons arriving in Sri Lanka (Sri Lankans, Dual Citizens, Tourists, Foreign national arriving in Sri Lanka for work including members of diplomatic Missions) irrespective of their vaccination status (whether they have received the recommended doses of a Covid vaccine or not), should be mandatorily quarantined at a Quarantine Hotel/Quarantine Centre/Safe and Secure Certified Level 1 Hotel for 14 days.

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May 12, 2021 · 6:42 am

Australia’s Case for War against China is driven by Irrational Thinking

Fair Dinkum, an original essay –with highlighting being an imposition by The Editor, Thuppahi

In a recent article in The Australian, the Department of Home Affairs Secretary Michael Pezzullo put forward an argument advocating a war against China as necessary to defend “democracy” and “liberty,” insinuating that China is a moral equivalent to Nazi Germany. The Australian government have sent a clear signal to the world that Australia – acting as a proxy for the United States – is now preparing for a major war against China – and it is very likely to be a Nuclear war.

ZHAO YANNIAN | Protest |1956 | Wood engraving on paper | 38 x 48cm ….. This work depicts a Chinese delegation visiting the Nazi-German consulate in Shanghai in 1933 to protest the killing of innocent people in Europe.

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May 10, 2021 · 10:27 am

Socio-Political Insights from Views of the Aussie-Ceylon Match in 1938

Michael Roberts

The recent entry in THUPPAHI on Lindsay Hassett has underlined certain strands within the history of Sri Lanka in the 1930s to 1950 through the background scenery displayed by the photographs deployed therein.

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May 10, 2021 · 10:25 am

The Hegemony of Colombo from Way Back

Michael Roberts

After discovering the Lorenz letters in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society in the 1980s I worked on the history of the island in the ninetenth cenury-and-thereafter with aid from Percy Colin-Thome and Ismeth Raheem in a book which apeared as People Inbetween under the imprint of Sarvodaya Book Publishing Services in 1989. One of its central themes is embodied in a chapter entitled “Colonial Transitions: The Development of Colombo’s Hegemonic Power.”

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May 9, 2021 · 2:15 pm

Lindsay Hassett: As Unruffled as Australian

Abhishek Mukherjee, in cricketcountry.com, 27 August 2017, with this title: “Lindsay Hassett: Master of strokes, shrewd cricketing brain, terrific sense of humour”

“There are others who have made more runs and taken more wickets [than Lindsay Hassett], but very few have ever got more out of a lifetime.” Richie Benaud.

It would be wrong to think that Arthur Lindsay Hassett did not want to win. Of course he did; everyone playing any sport at any level does; he was as much a professional as any of his colleagues. The War heroes Denis Compton, Keith Miller, Godfrey Evans, Hassett had also probably seen death too closely to give a sport a larger-than-life image.

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May 9, 2021 · 3:04 am

Dujuan’s History Lesson for Non-Aboriginal Australians All

Vibeke Venema of BBC News, 6 May 2021, where the title reads “The ‘smart and cheeky’ Aboriginal boy teaching Australia a lesson”

A documentary about a 10-year-old Aboriginal boy’s experience in school, In My Blood It Runs, has reignited a debate about Australia’s failure to give indigenous children a good education and a fair start in life.

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