How Decent a Society are we?
Editors’ note: This article was first published in the Daily Mirror on the 18th of March 2011. invites its readers for further discussion and debate. Avishai Margalit the Israeli philosopher wrote a…
Editors’ note: This article was first published in the Daily Mirror on the 18th of March 2011. invites its readers for further discussion and debate. Avishai Margalit the Israeli philosopher wrote a…
Photo credit: Indi Samarajiva, 2010 The drive along the A9 from Vavuniya to Killinochchi is brought to a temporary halt at the ‘exit-entry point’ at what used to be the forward defence…
Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) asked a Sri Lankan newspaper for a retraction, as the newspaper carried a “severely distorted,” news article regards a panel discussion that had taken place…
[Editors note: Emil van der Poorten is a regular columnist in the Sri Lanka media. His short article in the Edmonton Journal (. Emil’s story and his many adventures with politics recounted…
, edited by Tissa Jayatilaka, is the commemorative volume published by the Bandaranaike Museum Committee to mark fifty years since Mrs. Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike’s first accession to power on 21st July…
India’s mistake was to take our Prime Minister seriously. Ours is to allow him to continue in office. Few in Sri Lanka care to know what is said in Parliament, and it…
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…
Transcript of speech delivered by Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu accepting the first Citizens Peace Award, 28 February 2011. Video of speech below. Members of the Head Table, Venerable Sirs, Your Excellency President Kumaratunga…
For anyone familiar with ITN’s 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…
Photo credit: Eranga Jayawardena / AP, taken from Peace in our country cannot last long without reconciliation. And there can be no reconciliation until the people in the North and East and all…
In consideration of the vague exposition on the reasons behind the meeting between Ban Ki-moon and representatives of the Sri Lankan Government in New York on the 23rd of February 2011, as…
To be able to engage in dissent politics one needs enormous courage. Not only in terms of the threats and dangers that come your way as a result of your decision to…
On 4 February, Sri Lanka celebrated its 63rd birthday. After nearly three decades of armed conflict, it is now one of Southasia’s calmest and fastest-growing countries. Its social indicators, apart from the…
The sweeping wave of protests over West Asia is refreshing to see twenty-two years after the fall of the Berlin wall. The demise of repressive communist regimes in Eastern Europe was not…
In an often quoted line Marx remarked, “history repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce” and years later, Henry Ford, not known exactly either for his scholarship or his political wisdom,…