December 14, 2015 · 10:55 pm

Benedict Anderson crosses Another Border

Jeet Heer, 14 December 2015, courtesy of https://newrepublic.com/article/125706/benedict-anderson-man-without-country?utm_content=buffer29b54&utm_medium=social&utm source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer, where the title is Benedict Anderson, Man Without a Country

BBEN ANDERSONBenedict Anderson, who died yesterday at age 79 in Malang, Indonesia, is internationally famous for his 1983 book Imagined Communities, far and away the most influential study of nationalism. Unlike earlier scholars who took a negative view of the subject, Anderson saw nationalism as an integrative imaginative process that allows us to feel solidarity for strangers. “In an age when it is so common for progressive, cosmopolitan intellectuals (particularly in Europe?) to insist on the near-pathological character of nationalism, its roots in fear and hatred of the Other, and its affinities with racism, it is useful to remind ourselves that nations inspire love, and often profoundly self-sacrificing love,” Anderson wrote in Imagined Communities. “The cultural products of nationalism—poetry, prose fiction, music, plastic arts—show this love very clearly in thousands of different forms and styles.” Continue reading →

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December 14, 2015 · 7:41 am

Saving a Stranded Whale — A Tale of Sinhala Tamil Cooperation that Lanka NEEDS for another stranded Whale, viz., The Island Polity

whale 7 A recent scene off the north eastern coast of Sri Lanka at Kokilai, a small town in the Mullaitivu District of northern Sri Lanka…. courtesy of http://www.fuzzfix.com/what-these-soldiers-did-to-save-this-whale-will-make-you-proud-to-be-human/2/… and with thanks to Senaka Weeraratne … not far from where the last battles of Eelam War IV were fought and where talaivar Velupillai Pirapaharan met his death Continue reading →

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December 14, 2015 · 2:28 am

Moving from Nationalism to Multiculturalism: A Lake House Editorial Plea in Sirisena’s Voice

Daily News, 14 December 2015 … with emphases being the additions from The Editor, thuppahi who has also taken the liberty of dding a few bibliographical references from his own pen.

For the past 65 years, we have been talking a great deal about national unity. We talked amongst ourselves, in the media, at meetings and in legislative bodies. Yet, even with such a plethora of discussions, we still disagree over how national unity is best achieved, what it should look like, and precisely what it is that needs to be unified. We are always in question and, strangely, we have no shortage of answers – answers that are painfully polarized.

We often talk as if we have discovered the answer to our national question, but our tone of voice has a predictable, almost scripted, quality. Having rehearsed our lines, assumed our positions, and located our opponents, we are ready to perform. Some of us demand equal treatment of all citizens, regardless of their cultural, ethnic, racial, language, religious, gender, or other characteristics, saying Sri Lankan citizenship must be left undifferentiated, equal, and symmetrical.

Multi-cultural SL  independence-commemoration

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December 11, 2015 · 1:52 pm

Goodness Gracious Me! How Siri-Ranil-Paalam has boxed itself into a Corner

N. A. De S. Amaratunga in The Island, 3 December 2015, where the title is “Government’ Dilemma” …. http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=136400

1364002696fea9-4The government seems caught up in a quandary of its own making. In both the economy and the security spheres, the Government seems to be perplexed as to what it should do on its own will rather than on the bidding of its Western “friends”. It appears the Government has got into an intransigent alignment with the West, with all the benefits accruing to the latter. In the economic sphere, the alignment is designed to drain our wealth, as clearly shown by the gradual devaluation of the rupee, which amounts to about 8% since January 8th 2015.

Several Western leaders and officials have visited Sri Lanka but none had pledged meaningful economic assistance, other than money for the North and the East, which is part of their political game in Sri Lanka. IMF officials came and laid down their conditions which have never helped any poor country to rise above poverty. IMF, World Bank and the ADB are the tools of the West, which make sure the passage of wealth is in one direction. Continue reading →

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December 10, 2015 · 1:36 am

Nature at its Best .. Unpredictable Even

best of PISS

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December 9, 2015 · 3:37 am

USA under Assault: How Tamil Activists Secure Attention, 2009 and Today

Michael Roberts, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, where the title is different and where a range of blog comments may eventuate

 At the height of Eelam War IV, as the Wikileaks material reveals, American officials in Colombo as well as Washington and New York were bombarded with email demands and/or information from ardent Tamil advocates concerned about the deteriorating situation of the LTTE and the populace corralled within Thamiīilam’s declining terrain. The very diversity of fervent messages had an impact on the thinking of key American policy makers in 2009. The extremism of the vast majority of messages was immediately dismissed. But, in unplanned manner, these missiles opened the door for the US personnel of the State Department to give credence to the claims of the moderate few. This is the implication one can draw from Blake’s Despatch No. 314 of 20 March 2009. BLAKE -slguarian.org Robert Blake-Pic fr srilankaguardian.org

I go further. In explicit conjecture I contend that the same process has been at work in the past few years, especially at the moments when the UN bureaucracy was witch-hunting Sri Lanka in the interests of the desired regime change and/or reform in the island. So, it is a continuing process proceeding now, TODAY. Continue reading →

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December 7, 2015 · 9:44 am

Basil Fernando’s Perceptive Fulminations on Legal System in Lanka

Chathuri Dissanayake, in The Daily News, 7 December 2015, with title “Critical changes necessary to restore eroding public faith”

basil f“It’s time to come up with a proper implementation plan to investigate and punish those involved in the corruption and crimes that occurred during the previous decades, says leading Human Rights activist, Basil Fernando”

The former Executive Director of the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) highlighted that if the positive tide created in January 2015 is to be transformed in to a long-term movement, urgent legal reforms aimed at tackling graft and serious crime is a vital necessity. “I don’t say the government could have dealt with everything in eight months. But they could have declared a proper implementing policy, let it be known to everybody. By now, people should be talking of this policy, not creating political gossip about who was arrested,” claims Fernando. Continue reading →

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December 6, 2015 · 2:12 pm

Incisive Thoughts on Constitutional Reform for Sri Lanka — Here & Now

Jayampathy Wickramaratne in Q and A with Manjula Fernando… in Sunday Observer, 6 December 2015

Q: Is there a necessity for a new Constitution for Sri Lanka. India’s Constitution was drafted in 1950 and even after 100 amendments, no government thought of replacing it?

A: In India, according to the Supreme Court, the basic structure of the Constitution cannot be changed. But in our case, the 1978 Constitution was modeled on a presidential form of government with a strong executive at the centre. Today there is a mandate for the abolition of the Executive Presidency. It calls for fundamental changes to the present constitutional structure. No new Constitution can be built on the existing structure, that is the reason why we need a new Constitution.

jayampathy-wikramaratna-J Pic from athavaneng.com Continue reading →

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December 6, 2015 · 9:55 am

Beyond the Saffron Robe: Virulent Bhikkhus in Burma and Sri Lanka

Amanda Hodge, in the Weekend Australian Magazine, 5 December 2015, where the title is “Losing Their Religion” and where the web-version has the heading “Buddhist monks in Myanmar and Sri Lanka preach anti-Islam message” … and do please visit the internet link to see thee many comments drawn by this article, mostly from Aussies but also from “Sunil” — Editor, Thuppahi  = http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/buddhist-monks-in-myanmar-and-sri-lanka-preach-anti-islam-message/story-e6frg8h6-1227634213663?sv=b6c5f520b02333c7386c5daca57c0533

aa-wirathu theroAshin Wirathu Thero sits primly beneath a flashing neon Buddha at his Mandalay monastery, a few dozen saffron-robed novice monks at his feet.

The walls of the ­classroom from which he delivers hate-filled lectures are plastered with images of the two most ­dominant Buddhists in this part of the world: Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha, who founded the religion 2600 years ago), and ­Venerable Wirathu himself, the self-styled ­Buddhist defender at the helm of an extremist nationalist movement that threatens to destabilise Myanmar’s democratic transition. Continue reading →

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December 5, 2015 · 1:55 pm

Political Islam in a Nutshell through a Historical Excursus

Clive Kessler, courtesy of The Weekend Australian, 5 December 2015, where the title is “Islamism: third phase seeks Islam as a way of life” … with emphases added by the Editor Thuppahi

  • “Political Islam today is in its third phase and driven by the historical impulse to reaffirm and redeem Islam as a way of life” — Kessler
  • “jihadism is the use of force tos pread Islamism” — Maajid Nawaz 

These days Islamism is a deeply contested term. One frequently encounters and is reprimanded by Muslims, or political apologists for certain forms of Islam, for the use of that term. They rebuke others for naming and seeking to discuss what they themselves do: ideologising Islam, transforming it from a traditional religion and faith-based civilisation into a modern, and very narrow, political cause. Britain’s Maajid Nawaz, writing in Inquirer after the Paris attacks (“Muslims and non-Muslims must openly denounce Islamism”), is right when he says: “Islam is a religion and like any other it is internally diverse. But Islamism is the desire to impose any version of Islam on society. Hence, Islamism is Muslim theocracy. And where jihad is a traditional Islamic idea of struggle, jihadism is the use of force to spread Islamism.”

ISLAMISM -MOSQUE Continue reading →

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