News of the unending stream of brutality, violence and carnage in America; the daily killings, the mindless shooting of children and adults, the pushing of folks into the path of oncoming trains and other traffic, police brutality and the vicious partisan struggle for political power, brings to the mind of the outsider the subtitle of Hans Habe’s book about his travel across the American continent in 1963; ‘Anatomy of Hatred, The Wounded Land, Hans Habe, (George C Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1964)
“The Wounded Land” speaks of this sensitive European-American writer’s tender feelings for his adopted country as he traversed it with his wife and experienced America as an outsider. Habe, a Hungarian, had fought for France at the start of the Second World War and became an American citizen in 1941. A successful novelist and social commentator, Habe’s “Our Love Affair with Germany”, has been selected by scholars as being “culturally important
by Ram Manikkalingam Director, Dialogue Advisory Group Sri Lanka’s democracy is on a knife edge. When Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his post, Ranil Wickremesinghe became acting president. And then he got officially elected to the post of President with the support of the Rajapaksas in parliament. Whatever our political views about Wickremesinghe, he did follow the […]
By Chandre Dharmawardana chandre.dharma@yahoo.ca The title of this article, and some of the material are in what I wrote (The Island, May 6 th, 2013) when the then Rajapaksa government hiked the price of electricity on the May Day of 2013. A decade later, Wickremesinghe’s energy minister Wijesekera has increased the electricity tariffs, refusing to […]
By Daya Gamage Former US State Department Foreign Service National Political Specialist Activating the 13th Amendment and devolution of power – possibly with the merger of two provinces –seems to have returned to the national agenda with President Ranil Wickremasinghe taking a lead role. He undertook a similar endeavour as the prime minister in 2001-2004 […]