Somasiri Devendra
It’s a hundred years since the World War One ended.
It was called “the war to end all wars”, a war “to preserve Democracy”. It was, in fact, fought for nothing more than the needs of a handful of European countries wanting yet bigger pieces of the global pie, fighting each other for it or to deny it to others.
a war cemetery in Europe
British Garrison Cemetery Kandy
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On the 11th November 2020 BritaIn and its former colonies marked REMEMBRANCE DAY to honour the dead in their 20th century World Wars. On 25th April every year AUSTRALIA and Britiain too remember the dead at Gallipoli … Anzac Day as it is called in Ausralia and New Zealand. In the year 2015, one hundred yeas after the event, the BBC clarified the course of events at Gallipoli with a documentary: ….. including this NOTE =
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Michael Roberts, reprinting an essay drafted in 2007 and since presented in Fire & Storm in 2010 (chapter 19: 131-38)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVpbl0azdFM …. Kamikaze strike
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A. S. Wirasinha
It was an important day in 1914 when two brothers E.A. and E.R. de Silva left the Wesleyan Mission Boys’ High School at Ambalangoda and enrolled as pupils at Richmond College. Galle. Arthur, the older brother, proved a quiet and steady worker and later worked his way to posts of high responsibility in the postal department of Sri Lanka. It was the younger brother, Richard, who was to make a vital contribution to the school.
... with DS Senanayake
Malinda Seneviratne, in Daily News, 11 November 2020, ….https://www.dailynews.lk/2020/11/11/features/233326/jayantha-jayamuni-de-silva-weapon-wisdom
Almost 30 years ago, a bunch of young people, mostly undergraduates, spent a few days in a small temple in Matara. Anandaramaya, Pallimulla, Matara. They had gathered to discuss politics with a view to forming a political organization. Many things were discussed under various topics which included history, economics, philosophy and how these informed political practice.
John Richardson
For what they are worth, here are three “imperatives for preventing conflict and terrorism” (from the 10 that conclude Paradise Poisoned) that seem particularly relevant to this discussion. These are excerpted from “elevator talk” I gave to Board members of the US Association for the Club of Rome a year or so ago.
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H. L. D. Mahindapala, in LankaWeb, November 2020, where the title reads: “Post-Trump America with Biden – not to mention Kamala Harris” …. highlighting by Editor, Thuppahi
Say what you like against Donald Trump, the man was a phenomenon. Whether the legacy he leaves behind is good or bad is a judgement that will be determined finally by those who will feel the impact of his regime in the years to come. Win or lose, (he is losing at the time of writing) he will be remembered as the leader who articulated and released the underlying undercurrents that had been dormant in the political landscape, awaiting a leader to take up the challenge. Trump is the leader that represented the subterranean forces which the pundit class had never expected to rise to levels raised by Trump. Though Trump seems to be doomed at the polls (now its midday – Friday) the Trumpism he generated has the force to haunt US politics in the foreseeable future. One of his ambitions has been to make his mark in history. He would achieve that place as the most unorthodox, controversial and unpredictable president ever who bucked the system and won. In short, he has changed the style, the substance and the contours of American politics with the arrogance of an outsider spitting into the inside.
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Daya Gamage, in Asian Tribune and Elanka.com where the title runs thus: “Kamala Harris: Tamil Iyer Brahmin US VP for Sri Lanka Tamil reparation?”
As Joe Biden becomes the U.S. 46th president of the United States, Kamala Devi Harris will be sworn in as the Vice President on January 20 next year.
She is of South India’s Tamil Iyer Brahmin heritage. To date she has proudly retained her South Indian heritage – maintaining a certain level of the Tamil tongue – that could extend her vice-presidential reach to the South Asian region. Having a senior staffer of Sri Lankan Tamil-heritage, there is strong possibility that the Biden White House could add Sri Lanka’s ‘national issues’ or ‘ethnic issues’ as one of the US foreign policy planks – once again – in the form of ‘Tamil reparation’.
ALSThis short essay appeared in the year K????K within the Website run the Library of Social Science headed by Richard Koenigsberg and he has sent it to me this month (November 2020) — presumably inspired by the recent jihadist attacks in Europe and by Thuppahi’s determined pursuit of the comparative literature on martyrdom pursued in a variety of contexts by diverse forces (not merely Islamic).
Michael Roberts
Addressing the practices of remembrance in Australia, Richard Koenigsberg has noted the irony that a battlefield defeat at Gallipoli in World War One, 1915, served a people as an emblem of nationhood: the “Australian nation, came into being on the foundations provided by the slaughter of its young men.”
Burying the dead at Gallipoli in 1915 ,,,and The Last Post 
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thuppahi
