May 7, 2020 · 4:56 am

Keeping Covid at Bay: Sri Lanka’s Work ….1st January to May

Dr Palitha Kohona, in IndepthNews, .…… with this heading “Sri Lanka Has Been Successful in Countering COVID-19”

Sri Lanka has been successful so far, compared to most countries in the world, in the fight against Covid-19. The mind-numbing figures of death and infection streaming in from many parts of the globe are not being reflected in Sri Lanka. An infection rate of around 700 with 7 deaths in a population of over 21 million are figures to arouse excitement. But surprisingly, no glowing headlines applauding the success of this small relatively poor Indian Ocean island embellish the front pages.

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May 6, 2020 · 5:55 pm

Medical Pontifications from Australia that miss the Mark

 The universe today has been bombarded by medical expertise from every which way pontificating on “solutions” to a covid-pandemic of an extremely complex and varied character. Chandini Liyanagama, a senior Sri Lankan Australian medic, has essayed criticisms of the processes in Sri Lanka on the basis of a webinar broadcast from the island.[1] It is, of course, best to respond to this appraisal on the foundations of the webinar sessions that provoked this assessment.[2] So, I sent it to a few Sri Lankan medicoes within the island for their appraisals.

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May 6, 2020 · 2:08 pm

A Pooja for Kandy

Gerald H. Peiris **

Almost exactly eighty years ago a young woman, then in her first appointment as a teacher serving a village school off the township of Mawanella, and her husband, evangelist of the Methodist Church in the same village, rushed their infant son to the General Hospital in Kandy in the desperate hope that he would somehow survive through the bout of high fever and infection diagnosed as diphtheria – a disease with which an infant mortality rate quite close to 100% was associated at that time in ‘Ceylon’. They both maintained vigil at the hospital cot, day and night, throughout the fortnight or so of treatment and their child’s erratic recovery.

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May 5, 2020 · 6:06 pm

Crisis? Imponderables Economic, Covid and Political in Sri Lanka Today

Jehan Perera,  in Island, 4 May 2020, with this title “President can decide without burdening the courts”

A study by the Economist magazine has shown that Sri Lanka is one of the countries least able to deal with the economic fallout of the coronavirus induced world economic crisis. Out of 66 countries assessed, Sri Lanka came 61st in terms of its ability to handle the crisis without being economically debilitated and fared much worse than its South Asian neighbours. Bangladesh at 9th place, India at 18th and Pakistan at 43rd place all fared better than Sri Lanka. The human cost of the crisis is visible in media images of thousands of angry young workers from around the country stranded in the vicinity of the Katunayake free trade zone, many of them abandoned by their factory employers, unable to get back to their home villages due to the coronavirus travel restrictions.

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May 5, 2020 · 2:52 pm

On Kandy. For Kandy.

Gerald H Peiris’s New Book: PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE OF KANDY …. a monograph

2. Cover image ….. 

Kandy 1

Kandy is considered the epitome of Sri Lanka’s civilisational heritage, both as a supremely venerated sanctum in the world of Thēravāda Buddhism as well as from perspectives of harmonious multiculturalism evident in its demographic, structural and functional characteristics…..

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May 5, 2020 · 11:23 am

Dirty Australian Twists to the Chinese Ambassador’s Remarks

Joceleyn Chey, 1 May 2020, where the title is “Who Would Be a Chinese Ambassador?”

I write in defence of PRC Ambassador Cheng Jingye, who is accused of threatening a tit-for-tat trade war. Cheng has been abused for this by commentators in the press, including Skynews Paul Murray on 28 April. If we follow what Cheng actually said in the original interview, we can see that he was cornered by a leading question. A more experienced diplomat might have been able to escape from such an awkward position. He was certainly foolish, but we should look at his entire statement and not take one remark out of context. It seems some people simply wish to ratchet up tensions between Australia and China.

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May 5, 2020 · 7:51 am

Duncan White’s Stellar Performance at the 1948 Olympics

Rear Admiral Dr. Shemal Fernando, in Sunday Observer E-paper, May 2020 where the title runs “White who started the spark”

Having been a close observer and student of the world’s most beautiful sport of athletics for fifty years, my effort is to make a justification to the enormous impact, prestige and influence made by Sri Lanka’s inimitable athlete, Duncan White who put our country on the world map. I thought the ideal time for such an exertion is the run up to an Olympic Games.

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May 5, 2020 · 4:44 am

John Richardson’s Case Study of Protracted Conflict in 2005

David Sallach, reviewing John Richardson: Paradise Poisoned: Learning about Conflict, Terrorism and Development from Sri Lanka’s Civil Wars. Kandy: International Center for Ethnic Studies, 2005. xvi + 764 pp. $25.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-955-580-094-5…. way back in 2007 …. https://networks.h-net.org/node/3180/reviews/6309/sallach-richardson-paradise-poisoned-learning-about-conflict-terrorism

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May 4, 2020 · 12:12 pm

Marooned between LA and Colombo as Working Man

Escape from LA: Why Lockdown in Sri Lanka works for MyEtherWallet Founder …. http://www.dailynews.lk/2020/05/01/features/217633/escape-la-why-lockdown-sri-lanka-works-myetherwallet-founder

Any rational assessment of the 1996 Kurt Russell thriller Escape From L.A. will conclude that the movie is truly awful. How ridiculous is a plot in which an authoritarian dubs himself President For Life and builds a giant wall to keep undesirables out of the United States, before injecting the hero with a potent strain of a ‘flu-like virus?

These days the 28-year-old co-founder of MyEtherWallet climbs thirty flights of stairs each day. Or to be precise, he climbs the same flight of stairs, thirty times. It’s about the only physical exercise he can get at his mother’s house in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, which has been under a diligently-enforced 24 hour a day curfew.

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May 4, 2020 · 8:48 am

Viral Gossip and Story-Mongering TODAY

Daily News Editorial, 4 May 2020

“Going viral” is now a popular catchword which, after this real-life pandemic, must surely ring more ominously. The deathly ambience of COVID-19, both physically and economically lethal, also drives home to us the dangers of instant, mass scale, indiscriminate spreading of sensational messages.

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