September 10, 2025 · 11:42 pm

A Zealot in USA targets Sri Lanka

Rohana R. Wasala, in The Island, 10 September 2025, with this title “The root of all evil”

Professor Michael K. Jerryson of Youngstown State University, Ohio, USA,  testified on the subject of ‘Human Rights Concerns in Sri Lanka’ before the ‘Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, House Committee on Foreign Affairs (of the U.S. House of Representatives) on June 20, 2018. While delivering his statement, Jerryson submitted a written testimony into the record. He thanked Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass, and other Members of the Committee  for ‘addressing a very important issue facing Sri Lanka, which is also a larger issue of peace and stability for South and South Asia today’

A file photo of a US House Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting …. graced this item but refused  to comply with  Thuppahi’s ‘request’

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September 10, 2025 · 4:19 pm

East & West: Cross-fertilisation in Sri Lanka, 1940s et seq

Michael Roberts

An EMAIL Exchange with Vinod Moonesinghe recently prompted me to search for relevant literature and I came across this text from my hand in People Inbetween (1989, Sarasavi Publications, page 111).

“In brief, in the 1900s and 1910s the literati who engaged themselves in English drama developed no synthesizing link with the Sinhala theatre which was flourishing at the same time in and around the Tower Hall in Maradana, Colombo. The latter, as we know, had some awareness of the Western theatrical traditions [81]. Our speculative point is that the fertilizing influence, such as it was, moved in one direction only.      Pathiraja

 Sarathchandra 

Ludo
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September 9, 2025 · 9:31 pm

Asia Cup Now … Gruelling Schedule for Sri Lanka

Shashank Kishore in  ESPNcricinfo, 9  September 2025, where  his  title runs  thus “Back-to-back games plus travel ‘not ideal’ – Asalanka, Rashid on gruelling schedules”

“If you start complaining about these things, it affects your performance on the field,” Rashid Khan says.

“Right now, I’m feeling very sleepy,” Charith Asalanka announced, to peals of laughter around the room. It was a brutally honest opening quip from Sri Lanka‘s captain, who had flown into Dubai from Harare via South Africa just hours earlier for the men’s T20 Asia Cup.

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September 9, 2025 · 12:05 pm

The Three Amigos at the World’s Peak

Simon Gully

 

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September 9, 2025 · 11:58 am

Putin’s Puppet in the White House

Frank Collins

Golden-boy Trump has renamed the Department of Defence as the Department of War which is a better name given the forever wars the US have mounted since 1945.  He believes the US has never won a war since 1945 because the Pentagon had the wrong name ‘Department of Defence’. Now that it is called “Department of War”, he is confident the US will win every war from now on.  It’s all the name.  He won his first battle the other day against Venezuela when American fighter jets blew up a Venezuelan fishing boat instantly killing 11 fisherman which Trump claimed was a boat laden with drugs bound for the US, 1000 miles away, even though the jet engine boat only had sufficient petrol to travel 200 miles.
Screenshot_20250908_150730_Adobe Acrobat.jpg

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September 9, 2025 · 1:52 am

Mishara leads Many Hands in Stride to Victory in Third ODI

Sunil Thenabadu  in ??  ….where the title runs thus:  “MISHARA”S 73* AND KUSAL PERERA’S 46* SEALS SERIES T 20 WIN FOR SRI LANKA”

Mishara’s maiden fifty seals Sri Lanka’s T20I series against Zimbabwe He added an unbroken 117 for the third wicket with KJ Perera as SL chased 192 down

Sri Lanka 193 for 2 (Mishara 73*, Perera 46*, Evans 1-28) beat Zimbabwe 191 for 8 (Marumani 51, Raza 28, Hemantha 3-38) by eight wickets

Zimbabwe put forward a team effort led by Tadiwanashe Marumani’s fourth T20I fifty to post an imposing 191 for 8. But Sri Lanka’s top four batters made light work of their target by ending the game with 14 balls and eight wickets to spare. With it, Sri Lanka took the series 2-1.

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September 8, 2025 · 2:05 am

AKD: ‘Palm Leaves’ For Tamils & Jaffna

Rajan Philips in    7 September 2025, where the title runs thus: “Crowded agenda includes Cricket but no visit to Chemmani”  … wth highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

The President goes to Jaffna! ... President Anura Kumara Dissanayake made yet another visit to Jaffna last week. With all good intentions, he may be on course to set a record for visiting Jaffna more times than all his predecessors combined. There is no Lyn Ludowyk among us to make a political satire of presidents going to Jaffna, reversing the time honoured old trope – “He Comes from Jaffna!”.

Foundation for Cricket Stadium

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September 7, 2025 · 10:05 pm

Ramifications From Past Killings in Sri Lanka … Burgeoning Issues

Meera Srinivasan, in The Hindu 1 September 2025, where the title runs thus: “Decades Later A Difficult Story Finds Its Way to the Sinhala South” … with highlights  being  the work of The Editor, Thuppahi

Forensic experts has been unearthing human remains from a mass grave in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka. The number of skeletons retrieved has now crossed 200, including some of children.

The grave site and the mounting toll of human remains found in it dominate daily headlines in the country’s Tamil media, while receiving little attention in the country’s mainstream English and Sinhala media. In response to this gnawing gap, three young journalists decided they must tell the story to the majority community, Sinhala-speakers. Wasting no time, they pooled resources and made multiple reporting trips and conducted several interviews with locals and experts over the last few months to write Chemmani, a Sinhala-language book on the mass grave site in the locality, believed to contain the remains of Tamil civilians, and dating back to the mid-1990s, shortly after the Sri Lanka military captured Jaffna.

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September 7, 2025 · 9:26 pm

Confronting Vicious Vituperation……

A RESPONSE From Thiru Kandiah in Perth – to – A Vituperative Verbal Assault on Michael Roberts From A Person who Signed Himself as “N W Goonewardena” **

My horror of involving myself in exchanges in public fora (to participate in which, I recognise, I am in any case ill-equipped) has been increasing considerably across the decades, and this has led me to send my response to your messages mentioned above via your private email rather than through your blog (is that what it is termed?).

The responses made to those messages on your blog are absolutely consistent in their complete rejection/censure of the appalling attack on you by Goonewardene that you forwarded to us in them, even while mentioning a range of reasons for the position they have adopted on it.  Perhaps C.R.’s characteristically considered and dispassionate response clearly and succinctly (and without getting on your nerves as I am doing!) sums up the basic issues that underpin the consensus they together all reveal.

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September 7, 2025 · 2:57 pm

Indigenous ‘Touches’ within the British Colonial Era of Capitalist Expansion

Vinod Moonesinghe, IN  Factum Perspectives March 3, 2025, where the title runs thus: “Tindals, Dhonis, and Sampans – The interconnectedness of historical Indian Ocean commerce” ….  NB: the two photos &  the map are insertions by The Editor, Thuppahi

 In the days of the British Raj, bullock carts were used to transport goods inland and to bring coffee beans (and later tea) from the montane plantations down to Colombo, for shipment overseas.

The distance from the coffee plantations to the main seaport of Galle caused the colonial government to override the wishes of the British Admiralty and of the steamship lines (who all wished to operate from Galle, which was closer to the main sea route to the Orient) and to develop Colombo harbour at a considerable cost.

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