May 24, 2015 · 5:20 pm

DHEEPAN: A Fictional Tale of Tamil Tiger Asylum Seeker – Now in the Cannes spotlight

“Dheepan” is one of 19 films in competition for the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or top prize,  to be awarded on Sunday. The story of Dheepan is that of  a former fighter in the Sri Lankan civil war trying to make a new life in France with a fake family.

“Dheepan” by one of France’s most acclaimed film directors, Jacques Audiard, tells the story of the  war-scarred title character meeting a young woman and a nine-year-old girl in a refugee camp. In order to win passage to France, they assume the identities of a dead family to use their travel papers. The Film appears to have received wide acclaim and is featured in several media reports, including the Guardian, Washington Times and The Daily Mail. 
London’s Evening Standard newspaper called it an “intense thriller that goes to the heart of the immigrant crisis”. And cinema trade magazine Screen International said the picture offers “the pleasures of captivating storytelling with an irresistible human pulse”
Sri Lankan immigrant drama ‘Dheepan’ finds a home at Cannes
From left, actor Jesuthasan Antonythasan, director Jacques Audiard, actress Claudine Vincent Rottiers and actress Kalieaswari Srinivasan pose for photographers during a photo call for the film Dheepan, at the 68th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Thursday, May 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau)

From left, actor Jesuthasan Antonythasan, director Jacques Audiard, actress Claudine Vincent Rottiers and actress Kalieaswari Srinivasan pose for photographers during a photo call for the film Dheepan, at the 68th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Thursday, May 21, 2015. ..by JAKE COYLE – Associated Press – Thursday, May 21, 2015

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May 24, 2015 · 5:09 pm

Muslim Aussie Protest Action Drowned out by Irreverent Aussie Aetheists

SEE https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=937981969546403&set=vb.100000038277260&type=2&theater …..

Nattie Goldberg Nameri
Muslim protester’s gather in Melbourne then get the shock of their life when Patriotic Aussies surround them and show them who’s boss. this is the way they should be silenced everywhere they open their mouths! SHARE
מפגינים מוסלמים מקבלים את שוק חייהם כשפטריוטים אוסטרלים מקיפים ומראים להם מי הבוס! כך צריך להשתיק אותם בכל העולם! שתפו

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May 24, 2015 · 4:26 pm

The Spirit of Emperor Ashoka in Remembrance Day, 19th May … and thus A Step towards Rapprochement

Gnana Moonesinghe, courtesy of The Sunday Island, 24 May 2015, where the title runs “Remembrance Day for Victory Day deflects from triumph to rapprochement”

                                 “It is the gentle law of men

                                  To change water into light

                                  Dreams into reality

                                 Enemies into brothers” …….  Paul Eluard

The name change from Victory Day to Remembrance Day to commemorate the same event reflects a change in approach towards May 19 2009, that is the end of the three decade war. Remembrance Day evokes a sense of pathos and perhaps a desire to reflect even as Emperor Asoka did at Kalinga. His victory gave him no joy; he could only see the disarray on the battlefield; the dead and the mangled. It made him reflect; it changed him and made him look up to the Buddha’s teachings for solace. It gave this country Buddhism through the children of Emperor Asoka who brought the word of the Buddha to this country.  A 11 Sri-Lankas-Tamil-natives-commemorate-civil-war-anniversary-as-Remembrance-Day 

Sri Lankan women police officers march during a Victory Day parade in Matara, about 165 kilometers (103 miles) south of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Tuesday, May 19, 2015. Sri Lanka's government Tuesday marked the sixth anniversary of the civil war victory over ethnic Tamil separatists. (AP Photo/Nishan Priyantha)

Sri Lankan women police officers march during a Victory Day parade in Matara, about 165 kilometers (103 miles) south of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Tuesday, May 19, 2015. Sri Lanka’s government Tuesday marked the sixth anniversary of the civil war victory over ethnic Tamil separatists. (AP Photo/Nishan Priyantha)

A33 Continue reading →

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May 22, 2015 · 6:20 am

The sheer Galle of it: ‘Regaling’ Sri Lanka

Freddy Halliday, courtesy of  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-3086195/The-sheer-Galle-Turtles-notch-accommodation-total-relaxation-Sri-Lanka-finds-new-boho-chic-atmosphere.html where the title runs “The sheer Galle of it: Turtles, top-notch accommodation and total relaxation as Sri Lanka finds a new boho-chic atmosphere

GALLE 11 A place awash with history: Galle’s colonial heritage is visible on all corners of the city’s Old Town

We are sitting in a balcony restaurant in the Old Town, with views over the ramparts to the becalmed Indian Ocean beyond.It is our first night. ‘Ah, wonderful,’ says an Englishwoman, emerging from the stairs below. ‘I was up at 5am swimming with sea turtles just off Galle Fort. You should try it. A place awash with history: Galle’s colonial heritage is visible on all corners of the city’s Old Town What a way to see the sun come up. Continue reading →

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May 22, 2015 · 4:25 am

Koenigsberg on the Western INVESTMENT in Bloody Warfare and Suicidal Missions

Letter from Richard Koenigsberg to Michael Roberts, 21 May 2015

Again, your description is great—like to see more of this kind of “literary” prose. I think you have an idea of what I’m doing, but let me put it forward again (this is where it all began): I’m trying to point out that the West is DEEPLY IMPLICATED in “suicide missions” (SM as you call it, or is it S&M?) In the scene you just saw—and in nearly every battle in the First World War (and also in the Civil War), generals sent soldiers into battle with a high probability that they would be slaughtered. THE SCALE OF THIS DWARFS WHAT ANY TERRORIST ORGANIZATION HAS DONE.

Yet, for some strange reason, people in the West have difficulty seeing this: it’s right in front of our faces, yet we can’t see it. We take it for granted. It’s part of our culture. We take war for granted.

richard koenigsberg 22 Continue reading →

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May 21, 2015 · 7:04 pm

War as Blood and Gore: Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944

In support of my concept of “sacrificial devotion” and in keeping with his consistent criticism of all the generals on all the sides in World War One, Richard Koenigsberg has sent me a video clip of US troops storming and blundering onto Omaha Beach at Normandy on D-day 6th June 1944. It is an unfolding picture of fear, faith, bravery, death and carnage. You see men kissing their rosaries and crosses as the landing craft approach the beach  —  you see guys shot to pieces, limbs being torn asunder, a man with entrails hanging out shouting “Mamaaaaaa” …

It is actually a set of scenes from Saving Private Ryan with Tom Hanks involved. However its is realistic fiction involving the use of contemporary film pyrotechnics  to capture the horrors of war. So those young bucks who head for war zones and chauvinists and patriots who push for insurgency do need to absorb the effects.

You can click either of these links

 But, a WARNING …the film’s realism is horrible.

NOTE: David Hart, an authority on war movies, had this to say: “The stir caused by Spielberg’s WW2 combat movie “Saving Private Ryan” (1998) has been caused by the unflinching depiction of the nature of combat for those American soldiers who landed at Omaha Beach in Normandy on 6 June 1944. For many viewers it is the first time in 54 years that the nature of an amphibious assault under fire by modern weapons has been depicted in such graphic detail on the screen.”

For more on  and by HART see http://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/pdf/Hart-ProPatriaMori.pdf

ALSO SEE http://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/surviving-d-day-omaha-beach-1944-full-documentary.html AND use the material to reflect upon “The Will to War…” Continue reading →

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May 19, 2015 · 11:29 am

Reflections on Caste Disabilities in the Jaffna Peninsula in 1973 and Movements towards the Present

Jane Russell  …. Memo to Michael Roberts re Articles to Sri Lanka Guardian from Sebastian Rasalingam (Toronto) and Thomas Johnpulle (London) on the topic of caste in Jaffna and its effect on politics and culture in Sri Lanka

When I first lived and studied in Jaffna in late 1973, there were elderly women who went around the villages, streets and markets with no upper covering over their breasts. I had come from a UK where young women occasionally went bare-breasted as an extreme commitment to feminism. This was different.. yet somehow also the same…these women appeared to have no embarrassment nor shame about their nakedness..their sagging breasts were blatantly exposed to all..I wondered whether Gloria Steinem might even have approved? But also I instinctively felt that Simone de Beauvoir would have immediately recognised an abuse…..of birth, of poverty, of gender which those women had internalised to the point where it didn’t matter to them anymore.

But when they were young? Imagine the society in which these sixty year old women had entered puberty and grown to adulthood in the 1930’s….where their nudity was demanded by upper caste men and (presumably) the wives, sisters and daughters of upper caste men: possibly these upper caste women felt relief that they were excused this dishonouring custom by the Victorian prudery adopted by the English educated class of which they were part. Continue reading →

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May 18, 2015 · 6:49 pm

Debating Tales of Caste Oppression in the North

Michael Roberts

Sebastian Rasalingam and Thomas Johnpulle have been frequent essayists on Sri Lankan and Tamil politics. They seem to be elder statesman of sorts, apparently residing in Canada. The name “Johnpulle” could be Colombo Chetty or Sri Lankan Tamil. While the article by Rasalingam which drew my attention suggested an Indian Tamil background in one spot, elsewhere it seemed that his family had been at the severe end of caste discrimination in the Jaffna heartland. After some detective work Chandre Dharmawardana in Canada has clarified matters on this latter score in his site http://dh-web.org/place.names/rasalingam/

“Mr. Sebastian Rasalingam has declined our attempts to meet with him. He has communicated with us by e-mail and sometimes sent us his articles (that we had missed) by e-mail. He has stated that Prof. Hoole, and many other distinguished Tamil academics have also communicated with him, and that he is in no position to meet with anyone, especially because of his advanced age.
It is believed that he lives with his children who have immigrated to Ontario, Canada. Based on his writings, we surmise that, unlike most Tamil-speaking writers, he is an educated, vocal “low-caste” Tamil. He seems to have grown up in the Donoughmore era (1930s), lived in Jaffna, Mannar and Hatton. We discern his wife to be an “Indian Tamil” from Hatton. Their arrival in Colombo is said to have opened him the possibility of further self-education in night schools etc., unhindered by the caste restrictions and threats that he had faced in previous locations.”

The claims presented by Rasalingam about the discrimination encountered on trains taking Indian Tamil peoples to India via the Mannar rail route struck me as questionable and I decided to draw on Victor Melder’s long and loving experience with the Ceylon Government Railway[1] to test one facet of Rasalingam’s tale. Likewise my initial readings of both articles suggested a measure of stridency and overkill in their assertions. Continue reading →

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May 18, 2015 · 5:11 pm

Rasalingam and Johnpulle on Caste Discrimination in Tamil Society in the Past and Its Pertinence Today

Two old articles penned in 2011 by Sebastian Rasalingam and Thomas Johnpulle on alleged caste oppression in Jaffna Tamil society turned up in my email letter box a few months back. Because of my long engagement with caste issues in the Sinhala south and more recent explorations of the caste factor within Tamil nationalist politics and in the story of the LTTE, I embarked on a project of arousal. The procedure will be clarified in another post alongside this one. Here I content myself with reproducing the two essays with my thanks extended to Nilantha Ilangamuwa and the Sri Lanka Guardian for their original sponsorship of these writings. Michael Roberts

ONE: SEBASTIAN RASALINGAM –  “Keeping Tamil culture and uprooting the caste system from the North,” July 2011, http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2011/07/keeping-tamil-culture-and-uprooting.html

My article published in the Sri Lanka Guardian, entitled “Sinhalizatioon of the North and the Tamilzation of the South” was provoked by a response to D. B. S. Jeyaraj’s article on Kokachchankulam by Prof. Dharmawardana who maintains a detailed website on place names. My article was followed by a very compassionate and hopeful article by Pearl Thevanayagam and Dr. Narendran. We also see Jeyaraj taking up the same theme within a different script under the title “Tamil destiny is inextricably intertwined with that of the Sinhalese“.

rasalingam JP coast Continue reading →

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May 18, 2015 · 1:12 pm

One of Skandakumar’s Reflective Journeys in 2012

S. Skandakumar, in The Island, 23 June 2012, where the title is “Some things British and some Brits I have known” … being the Speech made on the occasion of the Sri Lanka UK Society’s celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee

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Your Excellency, John Rankin, High Commissioner for Britain in Sri Lanka, Eminent Excellencies of the International Diplomatic Corps, distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, When Carlo your President invited me on behalf of his committee to this evening’s function, I said to him, “Carlo I am four years into retirement, I have spent it all in relative hibernation in Haputale and many feel that soon I will be ready for the Archives “…to which his response was ‘Ah that’s just the profile we are looking for !!” Continue reading →

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