Accusers Accused — by Lord Michael Naseby

Item in Daily Mirror, 9 July 2018

Baron Lord Naseby said both the UK and the US were guilty of atrocities and that the two countries should inform the UN Human Rights Commission to withdraw the resolution against Sri Lanka. Lord Naseby, the President of the All Party British Sri Lanka Parliamentary Group, said this after reading the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee report published on June 28.

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A Wiradjuri Woman Medico becomes South Australia’s Rhodes Scholar for 2018

ONE: News Item from University of Adelaide: “Indigenous Doctor is Rhodes Scholar for South Australia,” 26 October 2017

Outstanding University of Adelaide medical graduate Dr Claudia Paul has become the third Australian Indigenous person to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, having been named the 2018 Rhodes Scholar for South Australia. Dr Paul, 24, a Wiradjuri woman from Broken Hill, will use her scholarship to undertake a Masters of International Health and Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford from next year. The Governor of South Australia, His Excellency Hieu Van Le, AC, announced Dr Paul as the Rhodes Scholar for South Australia at a ceremony at Government House late yesterday.

Claudia Paul with Governor Hieu Van Le …. a dinky-die local with a Vietnamese refugee migrant from the 1970s … Hurray

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Foul Tactics in Soccer, Cricket, Sport … Yuck!

Will Swanton, from The Weekend Australian, 7-8 July 2018, where the title is “When Our Heroes cross the Line”

The Socceroos are playing Italy at the 2006 World Cup. Lucas Neill slides into a tackle on Fabio Grosso. His left elbow and hand make contact with the Azzurri player’s legs. Grosso goes down with the theatricality of Macbeth being slain by Macduff. The referee blows his whistle for a penalty. Francesco Totti kicks the last-minute goal and the Australians are on their way to the airport. All because of Grosso’s con job.

The Boomers Daniel Kickert

It’s a famous moment in Australian sport. The most potent of all Socceroos teams has threatened to beat a powerhouse of the global game and reach the quarter-finals of the World Cup for the first time.

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Figures…Roaming…Roaming the Sri Lankan Countryside

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Profound Flaws in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Victory Speech in May, 2009

Michael Roberts

 This article was penned in Sri Lanka in late May 2009 on invitation from Muralidhar Reddy and appeared in FRONTLINE as lead article on Volume 26 – Issue 12 :: Jun. 06-19, 2009  with the title “Some Pillars for Lanka’s Future” and with a significant guideline photograph of the Ceylonese gentleman of varied ethnicity who pressed for constitutional reform in the 1900s and 1910son the foundations of all island thinking – albeit with an elitist upper-class bias. Note the radical proposal at the end of the article –which has  died without any takers …so there is no thinking outside the box.

Frontline also inserted this comment at the start: “Rajapaksa should match his sweet words with political reforms that institutionalise devolution and reach out to Tamil minds.”

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USA’s Threatening Interventions during the Eelam War in 2009

Michael Roberts

This essay is an effort to unravel the whispers about an American military team’s secret mission to Sri Lanka at the height of the SL armed forces successful squeeze on the LTTE in 2009. The political significance of such a mission is profound and there are numerous tangential issues that are also significant.

The opening to this inquiry in 2018 was provided by Chandre Dharma-wardana’s welcome initiative in making an ethnographic notation about information mentioned by Foreign Minister Bogollagama in 2012. This item led me (earlier this year) to link it with other ‘mórsels’ of information and to explore the pressures mounted on the GoSL by the Western powers during the last phase of Eelam War IV in 2009. These inquiries have now produced additional information – morsels once again, but enough to take further steps in unravelling the interventions of USA and its allies. I will mark them in point form as A, B, C et cetera.

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How Mahinda Rajapaksa rebuffed David Miliband

Michael Roberts

In 2008/09 Professor GL PEIRIS was Minister of International Trade in the Mahinda Rajapaksa government and I interviewed him on 2 July 2018 with the intention of securing more details re USA’s pressures on the government then in 2009.[1] GL Peiris did not have any details about one of my particular pursuits, namely, the PACOM’s recce visit to the island, but in response to my initial query he focused upon the pressures mounted by the EU team of David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner[2] [which was in late April 2009 after the SL Army had penetrated the LTTE’s Last Redoubt and released over 110,000 Tamil civilians and Tiger deserters].

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Hambantota Port: Dirty Economics from the New York Times

Michael Roberts

The New York Times “distinguished itself” in 2009 by participating in the campaign to intervene in the Sri Lankan government’s campaign to end the LTTE military states’ control of parts of Sri Lanka. It was also partial to the Western powers’ successful efforts to oust Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Presidential Election in 2015 via the formation of what is known as the Yahapaalana Consortium.

The Hambantota Port gets only a small percentage of Sri Lanka’s port business, overshadowed by the main complex in the capital.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times

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Creeping Neo-liberal Stranglehold on Sri Lanka

Tamara Kunanayakam, from Island, in Three Parts with title Sri LankJune 2018, an sovereignty, non-negotiable!”

Sri Lankan sovereignty – its supremacy in domestic policy and its independence in foreign policy – is under a two-pronged attack. In Sri Lanka, the neoliberals seek physical appropriation of territory and all that it contains, targeting the very substance of sovereignty and independence – the inalienable right of the people to full and permanent sovereignty, including possession, use and disposal, over all their wealth, natural resources and economic activities. Without permanent sovereignty, there can be no independent domestic or foreign policy; without it, independence and sovereignty are but empty shells.

 

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A Guardian Hitler: Gotabhaya! Really!

Sasanka Perera. in Island, 25 June 2018, where the title is “Pining for Hitler”

Ven. Endaruwe Upali, Deputy Chief Priest of the Asgiriya Chapter in the Buddhist ecclesiastical order, is in the news. But it is not for his knowledge of the Dhamma or for the erudite delivery of a sermon worthy of Buddhism’s timeless appeal or for his strict adherence to vinaya, the set of disciplinary rules, which is expected to embellish the moral and ethical character of the Buddhist clergy. In fact, he is in the news for all the wrong reasons.

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