· February, 2007

Stories about Sri Lanka from February, 2007

Sri Lanka: Inheriting Colombo

  28 February 2007

The Lolly DJ writes a fabulously touching piece on inheriting Colombo from a grandpa who came to Sri Lanka 65 years back.” In 1942, my grandfather, Arthur, was en-route to Singapore, when the impregnable city fell. The soldiers who were there became the stuff of myth, imprisoned and emaciated under...

Sri Lanka: What is the LTTE trying to do?

  27 February 2007

Indi.ca on LTTE's antics. “The LTTE is well on their way to pissing off everyone on Earth. After their strategically brilliant ploy of assasinating the Indian PM, Rajiv Gandhi, they’ve followed up in the last few years with a failed attack on the Pakistani envoy, and today by injuring the...

Sri Lanka: Saddam and the Sri Lankans

  27 February 2007

True Sri Lankan on what appears to be a lot of silence regarding the execution of Sri Lankans. “When Saddam Hussein was hanged there were massive protests in Sri Lanka organised by certain sections of the muslim community but a few days ago 4 Sri Lankans were beheaded and then...

Sri Lanka: On Identity

  26 February 2007

Tiny Little Fractures on the exploration of identity in the Sri Lankan blogosphere. “Here’s the thing, I think barking up the tree of a “Sri Lankan national identity” is a mistake, especially when it seems to involve pigeonholing people into being Sri Lankan. I mean what makes a Sri Lankan,...

Sri Lanka: On Flaming

  22 February 2007

Indi.ca on the psychology of flaming. “Towards that end, I’ve been trying to figure out ways to engender civil discussion without excessive comment moderation. Moderation is necessary for large blogs, both for spam and flames, but it’s time consuming and annoying. Plus, especially vituperative flamers will post again and again...

Sri Lanka: Turtles!

  21 February 2007

Ayubowan on Sri Lankan marine turtles – “The present situation regarding the future of the Sri Lankan turtles is moving to an optimistic conclusion with the people of the country taking a more environmental friendly attitude towards these creatures and putting away the superstitions that cause them their reduction in...

Sri Lanka: Numbers and Deaths

  20 February 2007

Cynically Yours on numbers and dead soldiers. “I'd love to be able to say that when I hear 5 soldiers are dead I feel sad, but I don't. All my life I have heard about soldiers dying. After the first few years it just stopped affecting me. If it is...

Sri Lanka: Obama and Identity

  16 February 2007

Indi.ca has a post on identity in politics, now at centre-stage because of Obama in the US. “Obama is in many ways like myself, a product of the modern age of communications and international travel. By a different shuffle he could be Kenyan, Indonesian or any number of things, but...

Sri Lanka: Future of University Education

  15 February 2007

A Week in Sri Lanka on the future of university education. “In my view, the Sri Lankan universities today rarely encourages free thinking amongst its student population and fails to serve the original purpose of a university. I myself am an undergraduate in the University of Colombo and I have...

Sri Lanka: Ethics of comment moderation

  12 February 2007

Indi.ca writes on the ethics of comment moderation. “There is some law of numbers in the world. In science you call it random error, in email it’s spam, in politics it’s terrorism, and in blogging it’s the combo of spam and trolls. For every 100 people you get 1 crazy.”

Sri Lanka: World Wild Criticism

  10 February 2007

The Evil Lankan does a tongue-in-cheek post about internet critics who obsess over grammar, spelling and punctuation. “All this harassment from us other perfect blogger brother and sister friends (Perfectly anonymous as well) reminded me of several incidents last year.”

Sri Lanka: Human Rights and Independence

  8 February 2007

groundviews on why democracy is undermined by the lack of respect for human rights, and why Sri Lanka needs to get together the case for fighting violation of human rights. “There is no way in which effective human rights monitoring can be conducted by national institutions. The National Human Rights...

South Asia: British Identity Debate

  3 February 2007

Sepia Mutiny on another round of the British Identity debate. “This moves the discussion into the realm of public policy, which is the whole point of course, but does so with an off-hand definition of “multiculturalism,” a term that is bandied about a great deal in the UK political conversation...

Sri Lanka: 104 Ministers!

  1 February 2007

Strong reactions to the expanding bus of ministers in Sri Lanka. Indi.ca says “Governance is not a prize for betrayal. It is a duty and a service, and Mahinda has corrupted it even further.”. LankaWatch comments “That’s a total of 104 parliamentarians now serving as the government of Sri Lanka....