Archive for the ‘Media and Communications’

The Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA): What implications for Sri Lanka?

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There are a lot of websites in the US that have gone black to protest against the proposed Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Wikipedia has gone to the extent of taking down its site for the day, and lists its reasons here. Action across such a large number of key internet companies based in the US is unprecedented, and demonstrates clear opposition to the two pieces of legislation. The White House has itself distanced itself from both in their current form. And yet, they remain for consideration by lawmakers. As Wikipedia notes, …neither SOPA nor PIPA is dead. On January 17th, SOPA’s sponsor said the bill will be discussed in early February. There are signs PIPA may be debated on the Senate floor next week. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. In many jurisdictions around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation that prioritizes overly-broad copyright enforcement…

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Wishes for a peaceful and a happy New Year from the President

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I probably was one among millions of people in Sri Lanka privileged to receive a SMS from the President, wishing me “a peaceful and a happy New Year”. (A large majority who do not own a cell phone would receive no such wishes from the highest in the land). While many might argue this to be another gimmick of the President to gain popularity at the expense of the exchequer, I was prepared to grant His Excellency, these minor indulgences, since it causes little harm to anyone, and may even give an ego boost to some, to receive a direct wish from the President himself. However I thought if the President had taken the liberty to wish me out of the goodness of his heart, then I felt obliged to return his wishes. I therefore typed a message to the President, and tried sending it using the “Reply” option, only to receive a automated response stating “invalid contact details: President”….

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Australia’s Tamil Eelam Lobby and CHOGM

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Photo credit AFP via Haveeru Online Introduction The war on the battle field may be over, but the propaganda war is alive and well. The Australian news media, particularly the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, were in an uncontrollable frenzy two weeks before the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) by the predictable lobbying against Sri Lanka. There are legitimate issues that Australia must and did raise with Sri Lanka during CHOGM 2011. Unfortunately, these publicity stunts risked derailing and overshadowing those conversations and hardening the stance of some of the non-Western members of the Commonwealth. The first was John Dowd’s submission of a brief of evidence to the Australian Federal Police. It was timed conveniently just prior to the questioning by the Greens Senator, Lee Rhiannon, at the Senate Estimates hearings. The other was the war crimes charges by Arunachalam Jegatheeswaran, also known as Jegan Waran, against Mahinda Rajapaksa. The latter is frivolous and vexatious, but the…

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Going beyond mainstream media: The best Twitter feeds on and from Sri Lanka

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Just over a year ago, in April 2010, Groundviews launched two curated Twitter lists on Sri Lanka to help those in and outside the country access news, information and critical conversations that went far beyond mainstream media’s economic and partisan shackles. One list featured some of the most compelling bloggers in Sri Lanka. The other, a list of news sources and Twitter accounts of journalists. Because they are oriented towards an international audience, the lists largely capture content published in English, though feeds like @vikalpavoices publish mostly in Sinhala. Coupled with our own feed, the two lists are comprehensive and by the very nature of the medium, constantly updated windows into issues, processes and events mainstream media could not, or would not cover. And even when they did, the Twitter updates on these feeds added new perspectives and often, information vital to understand context. On occasion, they have also served to hold mainstream media – both domestic and international –…

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ICTs, science fiction and disasters: A conversation with Nalaka Gunawardene

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I last spoke to Nalaka Gunawardene on public television in February 2009. Nalaka’s varied interests and experience is hard to pin down, but the issues he most often writes on are anchored to science and technology, including information and communications technologies (ICTs). Nalaka blogs and he tweets, which is rare among the guests I have on the programme. He is a regular contributor to Groundviews, a public speaker and frequent commentator on other old and new media fora, including the Sinhala language media. A lot had happened since we last spoke, from natural disasters (Pakistan floods, Japan earthquake) to the heightened use of social media around the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the Royal Wedding. Also between the time we last spoke, Assange spilt the beans on US diplomacy and more recently, local media created mass hysteria with a botched attempt at covering untested science. All of these are issues Nalaka’s written on. At the beginning of the interview,…

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The education of a Muslim girl: Snapshots of Fatheema

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15-year-old Fatheema Sulaika has lofty plans for her future. Study hard, become a psychologist, do her bit for mankind and hope that her example inspires oppressed women the world over. Needless to say, encountering such vibrant ambition down one of Slave Island’s drearier streets was rather unexpected. A tall, lithe and uncommonly beautiful girl, Fatheema Sulaika – or Sulaika as her family likes to call her – was shy at first, self-consciously stifling smiles at the camera and shooting glances at the overprotective gaggle of female relatives who were always close at hand, craning over each other’s shoulders to see what it was about their young family member that we were so interested in. Read Fatheema’s story in full and watch her video here. Produced by Sharni Jayawardena and Tarika Wickremeratne, as part of Walkabout: Slave Island. Watch the trailer to this series below, and visit the Moving Images website for more stunning content on Sri Lanka.

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Hotel Nippon: An icon of Colombo

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Originally from Ragama, Chandrika Serasinghe believes it was her destiny to end up working at the Nippon Hotel – a place whose unusual façade always had a pull on her whenever she passed by it in her younger days, but that she now thinks of as her second home. The Nippon Hotel is one of Slave Island’s oldest and most well known landmarks and its salmon pink exterior has always been its signature feature. Still, with its old-fashioned salons and parlours, it has retained a kind of elegance through the years, despite its unusual colour. Today though, it is being repainted a much more conventional white – yet another reminder of Slave Island’s dynamic nature. Read her full story and watch the video here. Produced by Sharni Jayawardena and Tarika Wickremeratne, as part of Walkabout: Slave Island. Watch the trailer to this series below, and visit the Moving Images website for more stunning content on Sri Lanka.

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Sri Lanka’s and South Asia’s first citizen journalism iPhone app

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19 March 2011, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Groundviews is proud to launch today Sri Lanka’s as well as South Asia’s first citizen journalism app for Apple’s iOS platform. The Groundviews app works on the iPod Touch, iPad and is optimised for the iPhone 4′s Retina display. “This inovative app enables those, particularly in the diaspora, to more easily access updated content published on the site” said Sanjana Hattotuwa, founding Editor of Groundviews. “Based on our experience in developing this app, we welcome inquiries to help develop similar iOS apps for other citizen journalism and mainstream media initiatives”. Apple has around 25% of the smartphone market in the US alone, and its mobile app store is the world’s largest with around 350,000 apps downloaded well over two billion times. The Groundviews app is free and allows a user to, Read all the latest updates to the site Read all the special editions, including the critically acclaimed End of War Special Edition Read…

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Maghreb: Mythicising Model, Misapplying Mode

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Photo courtesy Vikalpa The conversation I had on Lankan trajectories and ‘declinist’ discourses in a Paris cafe on a Sunday with my friend and former colleague, Prof. Nira Wickramasingha, now holding the Chair of South Asian History at the University of Leiden, reminded me of a point she had made sharply in her slender book ‘History Writing’. Sri Lanka, she had remarked, was one of the few countries in which mainstream newspapers carried pieces on history by those without any credentials or formal training in the disciplines of history and historiography. This, she wrote, would never happen in India for instance, where any incursion into history in the quality press would have to be backed up with credentials in order to secure publication. What she said of history is just as true of politics. Sri Lankan newspapers and websites are replete with pieces that go beyond intellectually legitimate critical commentary to the pontifically prescriptive and hortatory — almost in inverse…

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A MATTER OF DECENCY: MATCH-FIXING ALLEGATIONS AND THE STATE MEDIA

For anyone familiar with ITN’s Vimasuma programme, the storm of controversy it raised this week with a thinly veiled allegation of match fixing against Mahela Jayawardene and Thilan Samaraweera in the World Cup ODI against Pakistan should come as no surprise. Vimasuma is a five minute post-news segment scripted by a party hack by the name of Mahinda Abeysundara, which is usually used to heap innuendo, calumny, smears, slurs and sundry abuse on anyone or anything perceived as critical of the regime. Favourite targets in the past have included the international community, independent journalists, civil society activists, and of course the political and civic opposition. It is variously snide, spiteful or just plainly malicious in its tone. Guided by the unerring compass of servility to the regime, the tools of Abeysundara’s trade are fear, hatred, prejudice, paranoia, conspiracy theories, economy with the truth, terminological inexactitude, and a hefty chip on the shoulder. It is a caricature of agitprop that is…

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Living in the Global Glass House: An Open Letter to Sir Arthur C Clarke

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Colombo, Sri Lanka: 16 December 2010 Dear Sir Arthur, I write this on your 93rd birth anniversary. Just over a thousand days have passed since you departed. Like all true rationalists, you didn’t believe in any afterlife. So I don’t expect you to be somewhere there, ‘keeping an eye on us’. You did enough of that during your 90 years on this planet! But as the first decade of the Twenty First Century draws to a close, I find it helpful to address this to you, and to reflect on some of your timeless ideas. You not only had remarkable powers of prescience and imagination, but also remained upbeat that humanity will survive its turbulent adolescence. As you were fond of saying, you had great faith optimism as a guiding principle, “if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy”. Three years ago this month, I worked with you in drafting and filming your 90th birthday…

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Expecting too much from your expectations of others?

I had an “aha“ moment this morning about my own patterns of habits when I was reflecting on an incident when I felt let down by someone close to me. I have always been secretly pleased (and smug) with myself about the fact that I can eventually learn to let go of the expectations I have of people close to me. I can over time learn to let them be free from my neediness and therefore have a freer relationship. I learn to accept them for what they are willing to give me in the relationship. Eventually! But what I didn“t realise was I hadn“t still learnt to stop expecting things from those close to me. So I go through this never ending cycle of imagining what another person can give me, and then realising that they may not always fulfil these expectations and then reminding myself that they are only human and that I should accept them for who…

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Bell Pottinger and official communiqués of the Sri Lankan government

Statement issued by Mr Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the President of Sri Lanka For security reasons the speech by His Excellency President Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka at the Oxford Union, the home of free speech, has been cancelled. This is a decision that has been made unilaterally by the Oxford Union, reportedly as a result of pressure applied by pro-LTTE activists. His Excellency said: “I am very sorry this has had to be cancelled but I will continue to seek venues in the UK and elsewhere where I can talk about my future vision for Sri Lanka.“ His Excellency went on to say “I will also continue in my efforts to unite all the people of our country whether they live in Sri Lanka or overseas. As a united country we have a great future. If we allow divisions to dominate we will not realise our true potential. We have had thirty years of division and conflict. We must now…

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Wikileaks on Sri Lanka: A breakdown and implications

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Updated 2.15pm, 30th November with added analysis of tags “The first is that, in Sri Lanka, it would never be possible for any one to play “Julian Assange” and dare face an open media briefing in Colombo, to justify his or her claims on war crimes and torture. Right or wrong, excessive or not, that “democracy” is nowhere within the shores of Sri Lanka and would not be, for many decades to come. There is also no possibility of any lawyer, any public litigant, requesting Courts to “order” relevant authorities to begin investigations into allegations of crimes committed during war, as in Britain. Relevance if any on such democratic practices, is almost naught.” – From WikiLeaks to WikiLanka: War Is Definitely Savage Though “Accusations” Differ, Kusal Perera The unprecedented release of US diplomatic cables (i.e. confidential briefings) by Wikileaks is, at the time of writing this, only just making it to global news media. Called Cablegate by Wikileaks (which was…

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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