In this second part of a long interview, South Asia’s first systems ecologist Dr Ranil Senanayake shares his views on many facets of biological diversity. He looks at the challenges involved in…
Photo courtesy Given the comments to the article I wrote on 19th May, I felt it was better to respond to them substantially. The first question point I raise is still debatable…
Image courtesy 3mana In my interview with the Secretary of Defence, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, broadcast on the BBC a week ago, his comments on the demography of the North aroused particular interest. DBS…
The decision of the Justice Ministry to amend the law relating to the period of detention of people arrested and to extend it to forty-eight hours instead of the existing twenty-four is…
Photo courtesy news360.lk Professor Urmila Phadnis the late of Lankanology in Indian academia was utterly discerning when she concluded over two decades ago in her last book (‘Ethnicity and nation-building in South…
Systems Ecologist Ranil Senanayake in conversation with Science Writer Nalaka Gunawardene. For Part 2 of this interview, titled , click here. Dr Ranil Senanayake is a rare public intellectual in Sri Lanka….
Screen grab from BBC video In March after making a feature on enforced disappearances for the BBC, I made a further radio broadcast for our From Our Own Correspondent programme, later expanded…
Not In My Name (NION) ran from 27th April to 31st May 2012. The blog was created and launched late on the 26th, just under a week after a violent attack on…
31 years ago, the public library in Jaffna was burnt. As noted online, at the time of its destruction, the library was one of the biggest in Asia, containing over 97,000 books…
Image courtesy I must admit that reading Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke’s (DJ) recent piece, on Groundviews and elsewhere, on Mr. R. Sampathan’s (RS) speech at the ITAK convention, left me very disturbed. In…
Image courtesy Sri Lanka Travel Guide Rabindranath Tagore[1] This is what the Portuguese unleashed in 1505 in Lanka, the machine of plunder. They were followed by the Dutch and ultimately the British…
Photo courtesy: Steve Chao /Al Jazeera via JDS With our Government busy defending itself from war crime allegations, protecting the sovereignty of the country and advising the common man to say ‘no’…
Image courtesy eHow Once upon a time, after I presented a public talk in Oslo courtesy of Kumar Rupesinghe, a Norwegian journalist provided me with a refreshing insight into the difference between…
The keynote speech by Mr. R Sampanthan, the leader of the main Tamil parliamentary party at the recent congress of that organization is in many respects a landmark event. It sheds light…
Image credit Ishara S.Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images via The Baltimore Sun The eyes stared expressionlessly back at me from the fifteen small pictures, some clear, and some blurred; reflections that only hinted at the…
