January 21, 2015 · 4:47 am

Muslims can make the pen mightier than the sword

ACL Ameer Ali, courtesy of the Australian, 21 January 2015. See http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/muslims-can-make-the-pen-mightier-than-the-sword/story-e6frg6zo-1227191285228 where there are numerous blog comments

THE attack on Charlie Hebdo and similar attacks on journalists, artists and authors carry the signature of a puritan, authoritarian Islam that has no room for tolerance of diversity, differences and doubt. This is the Islam of the gun. To the followers of this brand of Islam, history has virtually been frozen since the murder of the fourth caliph, Ali, in AD661. These Islamists want political power at any cost to bring back their so-called golden age of Islam, which covers about 50 years from the time of prophet Mohammed to the death of Ali.

This brand of Islam is not only authoritarian but legalistic, exclusivist and misogynist. Although puritan Islam has a long past, its current wave began in the wake of the oily affluence of the Middle East in the 1980s. Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabi puritanism and the guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, with its new financial clout automatically became the unchallenged leader of the puritan wave in the Sunni world. Continue reading →

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January 21, 2015 · 4:24 am

From Expeditionary Terror to Leaderless Remote Control Terror

David kilcullenDavid Kilcullen, in the Weekend Australian, 17-18 January 2015, where the title is ” Remote Control Terror” … See ttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/terror/new-terror-paradigm-after-charlie-hebdo-raids/story-fnpdbcmu-1227187609376 for web version where there are lively blog exchanges

LAST week Islamist terrorists killed 17 people in a horrifying raid on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and in a siege at a Paris kosher market. The attacks were a direct assault on free speech in one of the world’s oldest democracies, exacerbated fears of Muslim anti-Semitic violence in Europe and prompted a global response. The attacks particularly resonated in Australia, of course, after December’s deadly Martin Place siege.

CHARLIE HEBDO I KILL --AFP Charlie Hebdo attackers kill policeman–AFP

Fears of follow-on attacks have roiled Europe and America. Police evacuated Belgian newspaper Le Soir after a bomb threat, the French Army increased patrols at public sites and in Germany competing pro- and anti-immigration marchers rallied under heavy security. Continue reading →

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January 21, 2015 · 12:25 am

Conjectures on Early Human Migration to Australia

National Goegraphic ….. https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/migration-to-australia/ … where the title is “Human Journey”

HUMAN JOURNEY

About 50,000 years ago, a small band of humans landed in northern Australia, arriving on a primitive boat or raft. It is likely that the journey was planned because enough men and women arrived to found a new population there. Perhaps guided by rivers, the group ventured deeper inland, where they found giant mammals, birds, and reptiles ripe for hunting, and no other humans to challenge them. This intrepid group had stumbled upon a new continent, and they had it all to themselves. Continue reading →

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January 20, 2015 · 3:12 pm

Islamists driven by a Rage against the Historical Downturn in Islamic Political Supremacy

clive kessler Clive Kessler, courtesy of  New Mandala, 12 January 2015, where the title runs as follows: “A Rage against History” … while the version in The Weekend Australian has the title “”Islam cannot disown jihadists driven by rage against history“

The Ottawa parliament, Café Lindt, Charlie Hebdo and so many others too: these are all separate incidents.  But they are all part of the same global phenomenon. They are all expressions of a rage against history that lurks within modern Islam and animates Muslim militants worldwide today. It is a rage that has its source within the wounded soul of contemporary Islamic civilisation, of the modern Muslim world generally.

The Islamic religion and its social world are an intensely political tradition. It has always been so, going back to Muhammad’s dual role as both prophet and political leader in the original Islamic community in Madinah from 622 to 632 CE. More, within a century of Muhammad’s death his small desert oasis polity had become a vast transcontinental empire. And, in a succession of different forms or political frameworks (“caliphates”), the community of Muhammad’s faithful continued to live in the world on its own founding assumptions. Continue reading →

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January 20, 2015 · 1:50 pm

Osmund Bopearachchi on the Godavaya Wreck and Ancient Graeco-Roman Trade in the Indian Ocean

A  Note from Dennis McGilvray:

Dear Lankanists, ……………………..The positive response to my earlier email sharing the 2014 ARCHAEOLOGY magazine article about the ancient Godavaya shipwreck near Hambantota, Sri Lanka, prompts me to share this link to a video lecture by Prof. Osmund Bopearachchi (CNRS Paris), presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013.  His presentation includes extensive photos and maps that situate the Godavaya wreck in the larger context of Roman and South Indian maritime trade in the Indian Ocean.

http://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/lectures/roman-and-indic-worlds

Happy viewing!

Osmund Bopearachchi 22 Osmund Bopearachchi 11 Professor Osmund Bopearachchi

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January 20, 2015 · 1:22 pm

An Appreciation: Graeme Hugo …… Renaissance Man

graeme hugo 22

Graeme Hugo’s sudden demise has cut deeply into my being. It is also a tragedy for the University of Adelaide and Australia in general. As his lengthy list of publications, the awards he has received and his services to Australian academia in numerous boards indicate, Graeme Hugo was a man of enormous energy and varied talents.

I go further: he was a renaissance man. Such a word-picture may seem an unlikely epitaph for a demographer, but he was no ordinary number cruncher. I believe that in his younger days he had been a “boat person” experiencing the illegal movement of Indonesian to neighbouring Malaysia. In this sense he was not just an armchair researcher, but also an ethnographer who knew what fieldwork was and is. Continue reading →

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January 10, 2015 · 3:20 pm

Populist Authoritarianism. Why Mahinda Rajapaksa will abdicate the Reins: A Forecast in 2012

Michael Roberts

 Reflections in January 2015

In the course of my teaching and researches I developed some interest in the phenomenon known as “populism” which informed political currents in interwar USA, Romania and parts of Eastern Europe in the 20th century. I gained considerable inspiration from the book Populism. Its Meanings and National Characteristics, edited by G. Ionescu & E. Gellner (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Populism had affinities with fascism, but had its roots in farming populations. Thus it was a form of “peasantism” — thereby slotting into  the university courses on peasant rebellions which I had initiated within the Department of Anthropology at Adelaide University.

This background informed my reading of political developments in Sri Lanka from the 1940s –especially the influence of the panchamahābalavēgaya 1] at the electoral revolution in 1956 and the continuing force of the ideological currents associated with the“1956 revolution” in subsequent decades (see Roberts 1994f). This necessarily meant attentiveness not only to the (Sinhala) nativism at the heart of the 1956 ideology, but also to the implications of the catch-cry duppath podhu janathāva (poverty-stricken common man). The latter, in my reading, was the equivalent of the currents of “peasantism” and “nativism” at the centre of several populist movements in other parts of the world. Continue reading →

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January 10, 2015 · 11:51 am

Thaji Dias and the Chitrasena Troupe seduce Sydney’s Aficianados

Deborah Jones, in The Australian, 9 January 2015, where the title is “Thaji Dias stars in Chitrasena Dance Company’s Dancing for the Gods at Sydney Festival”

IF there is a more immediately captivating dancer than Thaji Dias, I have yet to see her, or him. Dias is the leading dancer of Sri Lanka’s Chitrasena Dance Company, granddaughter of its founder and was clearly born to carry on his work. She isn’t the only reason to see the company but would be reason enough. At the Sydney Festival on Thursday evening, Dias dazzled on every level: her technical command was exhilarating and her artistry ravishing, and if that were not enough Dias has megawatts of charisma.

CHITRASENA TROUPE Continue reading →

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January 10, 2015 · 10:41 am

China and Sri Lanka: “Money Talks,” says David Brewster

Ellen Barry, in The New York Times, 9 January 2015, with title “New President in Sri Lanka Puts China’s Plans in Check”

On a Sunday four months ago, a vessel pulled unannounced into Sri Lanka’s Colombo harbor: the Chinese Navy submarine Great Wall No. 329, which is designed to carry torpedoes, a cruise missile and a 360-pound warhead. Sri Lanka’s defense minister shrugged it off as an “operational good-will visit.” But anxiety was already radiating as far as New Delhi, where the visit was seen as a clear declaration that China had arrived in India’s backyard — with the blessing of Sri Lanka’s president at the time, Mahinda Rajapaksa.

ChangZeng2-China-Sumarine-CICT-Colomo-Sep15 Pic from srilankaoneislandtwonations.tumblr.com

Whatever China’s long-term plans were for strategically important Sri Lanka, they met with a sudden obstruction on Friday morning, when Mr. Rajapaksa was voted out of office in a startling upset. David Brewster, a visiting fellow at the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University, said that was the price to be paid for dealing with a government that had increasingly centralized power. “You think you only need to deal with one guy,” he said, “and then if you lose that one guy, it has a serious impact on the relationship.” Continue reading →

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January 10, 2015 · 10:09 am

A Surprise! The Resilience of Sri Lanka’s Democracy

UYAN--GuardianJayadeva Uyangoda, in The Hindu, 10 January 2015  where the title reads “For a fresh beginning in Sri Lanka”

Other than among the diehard supporters of the outgoing Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, there was no doubt about the victory of Maithripala Sirisena, the common Opposition candidate in the country’s Presidential election held on January 8. Yet, what surprised Mr. Rajapaksa’s supporters and opponents alike was his decision to concede defeat and leave the official residence early morning of the day after, hours before even a third of the official election results were out. A peaceful transfer of power without post-election violence, after a relatively peaceful election campaign, is testimony to the resilience of Sri Lanka’s democracy after three decades of civil war and half-a-decade of semi-authoritarianism.

sirisena oaths Continue reading →

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