Weerawansa Disrobed or the Birth of a Sinhala Karuna
Image courtesy JVP website Some priests in ascetic orders who indulge in carnal pleasures, though not very often, do get excommunicated. A prominent catholic priest of high rank in Europe who had…
Month: April 2008
Groundviews back online, with new features and enhanced for mobile phones
is fully back online after an upgrade of its back-end content management system to the latest version of WordPress. While the site looks and feels the same, improvements under the hood make…
POWER-SHARING: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
The constitutional reform debate in Sri Lanka is in a particularly enervated state as we approach the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, with a government in power that displays that bizarre concoction…
India: Necessity, not option
Peace talks in Sri Lanka are temporarily on hold. The Ceasfire Agreement of 2002 has crashed and burned and the Norwegians and the SLMM have bid a quick but reluctant goodbye. To…
Scheduled downtime for Groundviews
Groundviews will be down tomorrow, 10th April, for a scheduled upgrade. The site should be up and running as normal by 11th April the latest, but we don’t really expect it to…
The JVP today – Videos and Interviews
A selection of videos on the the JVP in Sri Lanka, including footage from yesterday’s farcical press conference, interviews with JVP leaders from 1971 and interviews with Lionel Bopage. Note that most…
Current ground situation in Mannar, Sri Lanka
View Larger Map Ruki Fernando of the Law and Society Trust speaks about the present situation in Mannar, Sri Lanka. Click here for the video in Sinhala and here for more videos…
Fear: A Personal Experience in Sri Lanka
By Benita Sumita “Beware of suspicious looking objects” – this is a commonly heard public announcement these days in airports, markets and metro stations from New Delhi to London to downtown Chicago.…
The Other Out There
By Chandrika Yesterday one of my overzealous office buddies forwarded to me a sensational photograph (as she thought) of half of a mangled bomb victim who happened to have been a prominent…
Madhu Shrine: the struggle to preserve the sanctity of a sacred shrine and humanitarian space
Presently located in areas under the control of the LTTE, but in the frontlines of the recent battle fronts, the Madhu Shrine has now become a prized target to claim in the…
Sloppy Journalism?
Reuters reports that Mr Fernandopulle was “the second minister to be killed since January”, citing Minister for nation building, D.M. Dassanayake, as the first. I seem to recall the killing of the…
Public Servant or Public Sahib?
I used to think that every little trip away was a wonderful respite from the madness most of us living in Sri Lanka are subject to. A respite whence one can return…
An education to die for
Mangalanath Liyanarachchi – Trincomalee The students of the Trincomalee campus face an uncertain future if government plans to move their campus to an insecure location are realized. Students of the Eastern University’s…
ISSUES FOR TAMIL NATIONALISM: REVISITING PUBLIUS
Early in February we were treated to a cogent, indeed, masterful, essay by Publius [Editors note – read ETHNOS OR DEMOS? – QUESTIONING TAMIL NATIONALISM]. Locating the debate within the general difficulty…
Some rudimentary thoughts on Arthur C. Clarke’s funeral
There may have been some two to three hundred mourners at his funeral. Most of them seemed to have been his close acquaintances or those known to him at least remotely. I…