LISTEN & SEE https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=568469333253317&video_source=pages_finch_main_video
My message to Sri Lankan Youth, Beautiful day with Sri Lanka Unites, 6 December 2014 Continue reading
Mick Moore’s Reading of Razeen Sally’s Evaluation of the Sri Lankan Dispensation Today
Mick Moore, 4 January 2015
I share with Razeen Sally the hope that Maithripala Sirisena will win the forthcoming presidential election. Like Sally – and a good chunk of the Lankan electorate – I have a strong distaste for corrupt, exclusionary, authoritarian rule. I also agree with Sally that a victory for Sirisena would be, at best, only the beginning of a long process of re-establishing stable, inclusive democratic rule. The obstacles to success are deep-rooted and formidable. But Sally’s advice – that a future non-Rajapakse government should put emphasis a combination of a pro-Western (and pro-Indian) foreign policy and a more market-oriented economic policy – is unlikely to be helpful. It is not that these things would be inherently wrong. Small doses of them might actually be useful. But they are either infeasible (foreign policy) or miss the point (economic policy). In broad terms, his is the same advice that ‘the West’ has been giving Sri Lankan governments since Independence over half a century ago. It remains largely unpalatable. In the current‘Asian century’, it is often impractical or irrelevant. And it also has a poor track record.
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Jayasuriya and Senaratne: Brief Comments on Razeen Sally’s Evaluation
Sisira Jayasuriya, 22 December 2014
Dear Michael, I am with Razeen on this – on the pessimistic side. The boom in SL is temporary, based on a credit bubble and a public sector investment boom that is very wasteful and linked to policies that undermine the long term viability of Sri Lanka’s international competitiveness in global markets, hence unsustainable in the long term, particularly in the context of the current global situation. That said, a a further boost to stock prices etc following a likely strong Rajapakse victory in the election is quite possible, and Chinese funds can extend the boom. But it will only mean that the inevitable bust, when it comes, will be bigger.
In haste. Best for Christmas and new Year! Sisira
Gerald Peiris in Slashing Critique of Sally’s Evaluation of Sri Lanka’s Political Economy
Gerald Peiris, 18 and 20 December 2014
Michael,
This is unadulterated ‘Common Opposition’ propaganda and wishful thinking.
My prognosis is that things are proceeding much better for MR than initially expected, and he will win with a comfortable, (but smaller than in 2010) margin. It is the hotchpotch of parties behind the Maithreepala nomination that is disintegrating. Moreover, while the Joint Opposition has been able to buy a few high profile defectors from the MR camp, there are numerically large defections of the local government politicians from parties of the JO to the government side. They are the people who really understand their own grass-root situations. Even the SLMC which was expected to join the JO is now having second thoughts, a large segment of its politburo wanting to remain in the ranks of the government. (Their leader Rauf Hakim has a record of being thoroughly unreliable, but has always displayed a good understanding of what is good for him.). The JO will undoubtedly stage a massive campaign, with the funds it gets from some of the US-led embassies. But the government also has funds and other resources to match. Some highly damaging disclosures are also been made by Attanayake, the former General Secy. of the UNP, against key leaders of the JO like Ranil, Mangala and Chandrika .…..
Best regards, Gerry Continue reading
Engaging Razeen Sally’s Review of Sri Lanka’s Economic and Political Scenario
Michael Roberts
Razeen Sally is an acquaintance and a reputed scholar attached to the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. When I spotted his review of the Sri Lankan economy and its political setting in the prestigious Wall Street Journal in mid-December, I immediately inserted it in THUPPAHI with a feisty title of my own coinage. This was in part because I had reservations about some of his evaluations. These thoughts arose in part from some of the economic indicators emphasised by one Jon Springer of the prestigious Forbes agency in USA.
In part my queries arose from my readings of the political economy of Sri Lanka in spatio-economic terms on the basis of my historical and political researches. Several themes associated with this peculiar respective had already been presented in my review of the issues surrounding the construction of a cricket stadium at Sooriyawewa as one pillar in the Rajapaksa family’s “cultivation” of their “home garden,” viz., Hambantota District — an essay that had earned me a reprimand (private email) from a good friend in Jayantha Dhanapala and attracted sarcastic comments in transcurrents. Continue reading
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Chitrasena’s “Dancing for the Gods” to perform in Canberra …. and Sydney
About Chitrasena and His Heritage
As a teenager, Chitrasena, the founder of the Dance Co, was inspired by the visit of Rabindranath Tagore’s Indian dance troupe to Sri Lanka in 1934. Tagore stressed the need for a people to discover their own culture to be able to assimilate the best of other cultures. At his father’s insistence, Chitrasena first spent over six years in a Sri Lankan village studying the Kohomba Kankariya dance ritual under one of the great masters. Continue reading
Filed under cultural transmission, performance, unusual people
Dhanapala evaluates the Lead-up to Sri Lanka’s Presidential Election and Its Main Issues
Jayantha Dhanapala, courtesy of IDN or In-Depth news, 1 January 2014, at http://www.eurasiareview.com/01012015-sri-lanka-presidential-election-third-term-fresh-start-analysis/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29
President Mahinda Rajapakse’s proclamation on November 20 last year decreeing a Presidential Election two years before the expiry of his second term of office has provided the voters of Sri Lanka with an unexpected opportunity to make a unique democratic choice on January 8, 2015. With the Sri Lankan voter enjoying universal adult franchise from 1931 – even when the country was a colony of Britain – this island nation has, since gaining independence in 1948, changed its rulers through the peaceful use of the ballot a total of nine times. The choice has been between the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) or coalitions led by each of them.
Since 1978, under a Republican Constitution, the elections, with admirably high voter out-turns, have been for both Parliament and the Executive Presidency (EP). The electoral choices hitherto has resulted in a series of false dawns for the citizens of the country with extravagant promises only being implemented with more of the same – corruption in high places; jobs for the boys and girls; high costs of living; lumpen development and widening inequalities. Continue reading
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“I was once a corporal.” Graphic Images of HITLER in all his Power & Potency
SEE Photos rares du 3e Reich conservées par la revue Life
AT https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/14aa5b5291ff242a?projector=1
Three Aussie Lankan Amigos forge a Amazing 3-Minute Film in Sri Lanka
Laura Ma, for CNN Travel, with a different title at http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=features/filmmakers-release-amazing-three-minute-sri-lanka-tour
They met a daring cliff jumper. They followed the path of religious pilgrims. They negotiated with a road-blocking elephant.And then a team of Australia-based cinematophers on a two-week road trip through Sri Lanka produced a three-minute memoir of their trip that ranks as the most “I wanna go there!” videos we’ve seen in a while.
“We all have Sri Lankan backgrounds and as we were growing up, we heard many stories from our parents about their childhoods in Sri Lanka,” says Rukshan Fernando, co-founder of Melbourne-based Ferndara Creative and Creative Motion Cinematography. Together with Ferndara co-founder Chamika Bandara and assistant Niha Sathasivam, the team has travelled often to Sri Lanka to film destination weddings for private clients. Continue reading
Former Tigresses and their Sufferings in the North Today: More Comments
Tamil Tigress fighters
Tigresses in “My daughter the terrorist” — a film by Beate Arnestad
NOTE: these images 9and those below) serve to set the preceding context and are NOT aspects depicted in the documentary HAUNTED TIGRESSES. Michael Roberts
MY STEPS … Michael Roberts
STEP I: in May 2013 the anonymous collective known as the SOCIAL ARCHITECTS ( a collective whose work has featured before in Groundviews) carried out investigative research with video camera and ethnographic work and composed a documentary film with the title “Haunted Tigresses” which described the pressures and oppression encountered by a handful of former female fighters from the LTTE who were living in the Tamil areas of the north and/or east. See the results in https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nSSv9Kk3tkI
STEP II: I sent this documentary to several friends who had engaged in research and/or social service in the Tamil regions and asked them to pen their comments on the work. Five responded and their thoughts have been available on web since 9 October 2014 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nSSv9Kk3tkI Continue reading
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