December 7, 2014 · 11:33 am

The Impending Slug-Fest: Q and A with Chandrika Kumaratunga

, who also tried to eliminate Chandrika Dharisha Bastians, courtesy of Daily FT, 4 December 2014 where the title is  “Momentum gainst Executive Presidency is unstoppable –CBK”

SRI LANKA-POLITICS-RALLY https://bandaragama.wordpress.com/2008/06/

Chandriak + Ranil Chandrika + Fonseka -blogdzone.lkblog.dzone.lk

Love her or hate her, ex-President Chandrika Kumaratunga is a force to reckon with. Coming out of a nine-year retirement last month, the former Head of State has joined forces with a broad opposition movement attempting to abolish and reform the presidential office that she once held for 11 years.  The declaration of SLFP frontliner Maithripala Sirisena as a common opposition challenger to President Mahinda Rajapaksa has cemented Kumaratunga’s position in the public psyche as polls fever hits the nation. As she struggles alongside Sirisena, the UNP and the civil society movement coalescing around the abolition platform, Kumaratunga is perceived as the leader of the SLFP rebellion that is threatening to crack open the ruling coalition ahead of the 8 January 2015 poll. She remains one of the fiercest critics of the Rajapaksa administration, but the fears of her children held her back from contesting as the opposition candidate in this election.  As she lingered over a late lunch at her Independence Avenue residence, before the elections were declared, President Kumaratunga engaged in a frank and laidback discussion with Daily FT about constitutional revolution, SLFP politics and when the hostility with President Rajapaksa began. The former President laughed about how she sketched the original design of the Nelum Pokuna, her essay-writing skills that she is using towards penning her memoirs and how much she loves being a grandmother. She also shared what aspects she would try to do-over if she could turn the clock back on her two-term presidency. Continue reading →

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December 5, 2014 · 1:22 pm

Tessa Bartholomeusz’s IN DEFENSE OF DHARMA, 2002

Preface by Tessa Bartholomeusz, with Basic Book Details & Table of Contents followed by two book reviews

IN DEFENSE Tessa (1)

I. PREFACE

The “Sinhala Army Song” graces the final pages of the 1999 commemorative volume of the fiftieth anniversary of the Sri Lankan Army (Sri Lanka Army, 50 Years On: 1949–1999, 1999, p. 918). According to this publication, the song was composed by a Buddhist monk, Rambukkana Siddhartha Thero. In view of the identity and vocation of its author and inasmuch as it reflects many of the themes that I explore in the pages that follow, it is worth reproducing the song in full here (in an English translation by C. R. de Silva and myself): Continue reading →

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December 4, 2014 · 12:52 pm

Tessa Bartholomeusz: In Memory of a Scholar Lost Far, Far Too Early

 Jeff Tatum’s FOREWORD for In Defense of Dharma and Florida State University’s Lecture Program in Her Memory Tessa (1) Tessa among her colleagues

I.  Tessa J. Bartholomeusz Lecture Series:  The Tessa J. Bartholomeusz Lecture in Religion has been established by the faculty of the Department of Religion, Florida State University, in memory of our late colleague. Tessa Bartholomeusz (1958-2001) came to Florida State as assistant professor in 1993, following an appointment at Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis and the completion of a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1991. She was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1997, and to full professor in 2001. While at Florida State, Professor Bartholomeusz established a reputation as a leading interpreter of Buddhism through such works as Women Under the Bo Tree (Cambridge, 1994), Buddhist Fundamentalisms and Minority Identities in Sri Lanka (State University of New York, 1998), In Defense of Dharma (Curzon Press, 2002), and numerous articles in scholarly journals. Professor Bartholomeusz also received a number of awards for teaching at Florida State University, served as treasurer for the American Institute of Sri Lanka Studies and as the book review editor for the Journal of Asian Studies. The Tessa J. Bartholomeusz Lecture is supported by the Department of Religion through its account at the Florida State University Foundation. Anyone wishing to join in supporting this project is invited to contact the Department of Religion at 850-644-1020, or to speak with one of the faculty. Continue reading →

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December 4, 2014 · 1:50 am

Blind Brides: British Women drawn to ISIS Men

Marsh Pic from Times

Stefanie Marsh in The Times, December 2014, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/article4284138.ece,where the title is “‘I can’t wait to have my own jihadi “

A growing number of British women are trying to make contact with IS fighters in Syria — most with marriage proposals In a bedroom in Birmingham, a well-educated 15-year-old girl logs on to her computer and leaves another hopeful message for Omar Yilmaz: “You have beautiful eyes,” this one reads. “I just want to be with you.”

Compared with the boys she knows at home, Yilmaz — a soldier in the Dutch Army not so long ago — is a man of action and strong oral character. The girl is drawn by his fervour ….

Both THE TIMES and THE AUSTRALIAN demand your cash before you can read the rest on web.

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December 2, 2014 · 12:38 pm

Kerala matches Lanka in its Beauty and Variety

KERALA 14 
The Famous Padmanabhaswamy Temple of Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.

KERALA 24 Training for the famous Keralian Snakeboat Race at Alleppey in Kerala (It coincides with the Onam Festival around August) 
Continue reading →

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November 29, 2014 · 12:43 am

Australian Patriotism and Sacrificial Christian Symbolism embodied in One Image commemorating Phil Hughes

Michael Roberts

Patriotism & Chritian sAcrifice in HUGHESPic from Getty Images

This image adorned the front page of The Australian on Friday 28th November 2014 beside the headline “Nation shares AGONY of an innings cut short” which was the title of a news item by Peter Lalor.

Michael Roberts

This visual composition snared my interest. For one, the rays of light from above suggested Christian cosmological strands of inspiration (note the two illustrative images within this post). Secondly, it reminded me of a pictorial etching of Westminster Abbey in London in a news article in 1916 describing the mourning and commemoration of the Australian dead at Gallipoli.[1] Continue reading →

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November 28, 2014 · 1:01 am

A Pragmatic Evaluation of the Sirisena Challenge and Lanka’s Political Issues

Neville Ladduwahetty, courtesy of The Island 28 November 2011 where the title reads “A reality check on the common candidate’s pledges”

The coalition that Mr. Sirisena represents has diverse interests. The formulation of the new Constitution has to be undertaken by this diverse group. Therefore, it would be reasonable to expect the process of formulating a new Constitution to take more time than the 100 day time frame he has pledged if he is to repeal the Executive Presidency. This was the case too with others who ran for this office and who had pledged to repeal the Executive Presidency.

MIAHTRIPALA Maithripala Sirisena Continue reading →

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November 27, 2014 · 1:34 pm

Eye-Catching Trees … Wow!

Courtesy of http://www.boredpanda.com/most-beautiful-trees/ and Stephen Emerson

1=TREE-BAOBANBB  These baobabs in Madagascar are excellent at storing water in their thick trunks to use during droughts. (Image credits: confitalsurf)

How do I love thee, tree? Let me count the ways; you change carbon dioxide into the oxygen we breathe, you sequester carbon, and you provide shelter for countless critters. There are many reasons for which we should all be tree-hugging hippies, but within the scope of this article, all we’ll focus on is how amazing some of them look.

Granted, not all of these amazing beautiful trees are trees (the Wisteria is a vine, Rhododendrons are shrubs, and bamboo technically belongs to the grass family), but we’ll give them a pass because they are amazing, huge and beautiful. So once you step outside and take a breath of fresh air, hug the nearest tree and say thank you! Continue reading →

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November 26, 2014 · 5:34 am

Fallen Warriors. What should we call Them?

David Weddle, a review essay, courtesy of the Library of Social Science, commenting on Kelly Denton-Borhaug: US War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2014.

1=corpses Frozen corpses from World War One

 34--shavendrasilva2may09-looking After the final battles at the Last LTTE Redoubt, 18-19 May 2009

“Denton-Borlaug notes that she is not an “extreme” pacifist, yet she concedes little ground for waging legitimate war. In the face of   actual threat or invasion, is a national community justified in defending itself, as individuals are? If so, then between the religious category of redemptive sacrifice and the economic description of lost assets, there may be a place to name those who die in combat as “good workers” in the service of a more humane world. Bestowing that honor requires no theology at all.”

2=corpses =Dead German bodies after the battle between Arras and Lille in the spring of 1915 german-bodies-after-the-battle-between-arras-and-lille-in-the-spring-of-1915.jpg

3=anzac dead burials  Australian ‘Diggers’ burying dead Anzac comrades between lines during ceasefire May 24, 1915

 DAVID Weddle

One of the brutal facts of war is that technologies of death are always more advanced than methods of healing. The widespread use of cannonballs in the American Civil War caused more mangled limbs than the overworked saws of surgeons could manage to amputate; the resulting gangrene took thousands of lives in hospital tents. Anti-personnel mines—suddenly rising like flushed quail to propel their jagged contents into human flesh—create nearly irreparable wounds when they do not simply end life altogether. Continue reading →

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November 25, 2014 · 4:38 am

Story-Telling in the Past: A Critique of Benedict Anderson and Post-Modern Conceits

Michael Roberts ….. This essay appeared as a booklet under the auspices of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, in 2002, ISBN: 955-580-068-7, one that took up  46 pages. A modified version became chapter 2 in Roberts, Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period, 1590s-1818, Colombo, Yapa Publications, 2004. It has also appeared in Colombo Telegraph where readers will be entertained by the blog comments.

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The word “media” connotes a great deal today: it suggests a powerful force, a pervasive influence, a job market and much more. These connotations mark the technological force of the television set and the computer in the contemporary global order. Among academics in the 1950s and 1960s, a similar power was attributed to the written word, that is, to the word in print form (as distinct from palm-leaf). Both phenomena can be treated as signs of modernism. In the 1950s and 1960s this imprint of modernism within the social sciences was embodied in “modernisation theory.” This theory was one of the ruling models in social science literature and was rooted in the distinctions between “modernity” and “tradition,” and the related differentiation between “modern societies” (invariably Western) and underdeveloped “traditional societies.”[1] In questioning the rigidity of this distinction in their book The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago: 1967) with reference to South Asia, the Rudolphs implicitly emphasised the force of such forms of conceptualisation.

Continue reading →

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