A Toxic Cocktail Threatens the Kelani Ganga and Its Environs
Suranjan Karunaratne in The Island, 2 October 2025, with this title “Kelani Ganga at a crossroads: Suranjan Karunaratne warns of an unfolding crisis”
From the misty montane forests around Adam’s Peak, the Kelani Ganga tumbles down rocky headwaters, gathering tributaries before rolling past rubber estates, tea plantations, shanty towns and finally Sri Lanka’s bustling commercial capital. For centuries this 145-kilometre river has been the country’s lifeline, supplying water, fish, fertile soils and cultural meaning. Today it sustains more than six million people in the Colombo District alone.
But the river is in trouble.
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Buddhist Principles in the Whirlpool of Warfare!!
Brian Daizen Victoria, in Buddhist Door, 29 September 2025, where the title runs thus: “The Prospect of Buddhist Complicity in Genocide, Part Two”
In December 2024, I wrote an article titled, “On the Prospect of Buddhist Complicity in Genocide.” Despite its title, the article was primarily devoted to issues related to the emergence of a Buddhist military chaplaincy within the US military. It was only in the last line of the article that I expressed the possibility “at least some Buddhists” might end up complicit in genocide. At the time, I found it difficult to imagine there would come a time when Buddhism or Buddhists would in fact become complicit in anything resembling genocide.
IDF soldiers. From google.com
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A Searing Review of the Trump-Blair Peace Plan for Gaza
Dr Anas Iqtait of , whose chosen title was “Tony Blair’s ‘Board of Peace’ is a farce, not diplomacy”
Donald Trump’s 20-point “peace plan” for Gaza, unveiled with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s endorsement, has been presented as a blueprint to end the war. In reality it is adocument designed less to resolve conflict than to reframe it.
Its language is intentionally vague, its mechanisms impractical and its assumptions historically dishonest. The plan reinforces Israel’s position while leaving Palestinians with little more than recycled illusions. Yet at this stage it may be the only practical path to pause the killing and save what remains of Gaza’s population from Israel’s unhinged war machine.
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USA in Rock’n Roll in the Mid-Twentieth Century
Rock’n Roll with the Stars & Stand-out Leaders in USA in the Mid-Twentieth Century
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What’s in an “I”. Peris/Peiris …. !!
Earlson Forbes
I read with interest the exchange among Victor, Kyle and yourself regarding the question of whether Nova Peris is of Sri Lankan heritage, albeit ever so minor. A few years ago, an article I had written titled … (From Ceylon to Australia: Migrant Journeys, 1860ies to 2010… was published in your excellent Thuppahi Blog. In summary, some of the content of that article establishedv THAT:-
& In 1882 some 500 Ceylonese entered Queensland as indentured labourers.
& The development of the Pearl Fisheries and later jewellery trade, brought several Ceylonese to Thursday Island as skin divers, boatman, traders and utility workers.
suger plantation workers in Queensland ina photo served up within Earlson’s article
‘camel riders at sunset in Broome
Lame Duck Netanyahu says “Sorry” while Big Daddy looks on….
Camel Rider
On Saturday (27/9) George Galloway and his wife were detained by armed counter-terrorism officers at Gatwick Airport under the Terrorism Act when returning there from Russia. Galloway was told he had no rights to silence, that he had to answer their questions, otherwise he would instantly be breaking the law and arrested under the Terrorism Act. He was detained and interviewed for four hours, while his wife, unknown to him, had been detained by armed officers in a separate room and held for 5 hours under intense interrogation.
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Sharika Thiranagama in Profound Q & A on Sri Lanka’s Traumatic Past
Kaniyan Pungundran – Editor-in-Chief of Jaffna Monitor ….September 2025 … ..where the title runs thus: “JVP Still Denies the Tamil Ethnic Question: Sharika Thiranagama Speaks to Jaffna Monitor”
It feels like yesterday. As a student, I remember flipping through Amuthu, a Tamil-language magazine published by Lake House. One day, I came across an article about Dr. Rajani Thiranagama—her brilliant career, and how she was cowardly and mercilessly assassinated. More than the tragedy of that brave woman, what seared itself into me was the image of her two young daughters standing beside their mother. Even as a boy, I felt a deep and overwhelming compassion for them. That night, I hugged my mother tightly, whispering questions to the God I was raised to believe in: How could anyone kill the mother of two small children?
Years later, I found myself sitting across from one of those children—Sharika Thiranagama—interviewing her in detail for Jaffna Monitor. As we spoke, what struck me repeatedly was not only her brilliance as an academic but also the warmth, composure, and clarity that radiated from her. That evening, I watched as she disagreed with some of my friends. The way she objected—polite, firm, and unshakably precise—made me realize that though her life was marked by loss at the most vulnerable age, she had absorbed her mother’s humility, bravery, and steady mind. It was in that moment I understood how personal tragedy had forged not bitterness, but intellectual rigor—how the child who once heard gunshots from her doorstep had grown into a scholar determined to dissect the very forces that create such violence.
Filed under accountability, anti-racism, asylum-seekers, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, discrimination, economic processes, education, Eelam, electoral structures, ethnicity, female empowerment, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, IDP camps, island economy, language policies, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, mass conscription, military strategy, Muslims in Lanka, nationalism, outmigration, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, racist thinking, Rajapaksa regime, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, Tamil Tiger fighters, terrorism, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, war crimes, war reportage, world events & processes, zealotry
Cold War Machinations in the Past: Allende & Bandaranaike
Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, whose chosen title is “The Cold War Killing of Ceylon’s Bandaranaike and Chile’s Allende: ‘Operation Colombo’, Culture War and the Disinformation Game”
Decolonizing Global South History and WOKE Film
Rithika Kodithuwakku as a Tamil Sakkili Woman in Asoka Handagama’s art house rape fantasy which effectively character assassinated Chile’s Poet Laureate, Pablo Neruda in a different sort of ‘Operation Colombo’ to that which followed the CIA backed coup against Democratic Socialist President Dr. Salvador Allende in September 1973
September marks anniversaries in the chilling deaths of two democratically elected Socialist heads of state during the United States’ led Cold War anti-communist crusade that unfolded across the world for almost half a century between: The first assassination of concern here, happened in Colombo, the capital of the geostrategic Indian Ocean island of Ceylon on September 25, 1959. The second death happened half way across the world in South America– fourteen years after the assassination of Ceylon’s first Socialist Prime Minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike.
On September 11, 1973, President Salvador Allende, South America’s first Socialist head of state died during a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), backed coup as military helicopters strafed the Presidential Palace in Santiago de Chile.
Filed under accountability, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, foreign policy, governance, historical interpretation, legal issues, life stories, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, world events & processes
