Dateline Colombo by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera
  • Toward Post-Terror Stability in Sri Lanka
    Asanga Abeyagoonasekera   ·    17 Jun, 2019   ·    5592
    A few weeks ago, a security expert who has studied the so-called Islamic State (IS) rightly said to this author, that “Your country was ‘staged’.” While the IS attempted to take credit for the attacks, they do not appear to have ...
  • The Geopolitics of Ports and the Silk Road of the Sea
    Asanga Abeyagoonasekera   ·    26 Sep, 2018   ·    5518
    The expertise of a country ...
  • Sri Lanka and the World: Whither Political Prudence?
    Asanga Abeyagoonasekera   ·    01 Jun, 2018   ·    5475
    There is piercing hopelessness for the future when listening to certain political rhetoric in Sri Lanka. The International Workers Day, a day to remember workers ...
  • Racism, Riots, and the Sri Lankan State
    Asanga Abeyagoonasekera   ·    19 Mar, 2018   ·    5451
    Only when fear and hatred is spread by extremists does serious reflection haunt a community. The teardrop-shaped island of Sri Lanka, a seeming paradise hanging off the Indian subcontinent, has been provoked yet again. Within a few hour ...
  • Sri Lanka: The New Regime and the Revolution
    Asanga Abeyagoonasekera   ·    13 Feb, 2018   ·    5432
    At a meeting in Davos in 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a speech supporting the agenda on globalisation. Meanwhile, back in the US, President Trump was highlighting the importance of the US confining its national boundaries. &ldq ...
  • Changing Political Horizons in Sri Lanka?
    Asanga Abeyagoonasekera   ·    04 Dec, 2017   ·    5402
    The circumstances were right in 1933 for James Hilton to craft the image of Shangri-La in his novel Lost Horizon. It appeared as food for thought to many thinkers in the west who were disillusioned with the direction of world events and k ...
  • The Geopolitics of Floating Bases and the New World Order
    Asanga Abeyagoonasekera   ·    14 Nov, 2017   ·    5391
    US naval officer and strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan’s advice in 1890 for the US to push outwards to rule the oceans is still heeded by US maritime forces in the present day. The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, standing 23 stories high ...
  • Monuments Over Mortality?
    Asanga Abeyagoonasekera   ·    09 Oct, 2017   ·    5380
    At the time of Renaissance, a not-so-tall statue of a brave young underdog warrior David, standing just over 5m tall and weighing 6 tons, mesmerised the world. This masterpiece was set into stone with a hammer and chisel by Michelangelo.& ...
  • Sri Lanka: Leveraging the Politics of Geography
    Asanga Abeyagoonasekera   ·    22 Aug, 2017   ·    5343
    Rural Hambantota was once best known thanks to featuring in a book by Leonard Woolf in the early 20th century, and now, as a port shaping Sri Lankan politics. Woolf’s Village in the Jungle was the first novel in English literature to ...
  • The Forgotten Professions: The Plight of a Nation
    Asanga Abeyagoonasekera   ·    24 Jul, 2017   ·    5332
    The Sri Lankan public has become the unfortunate victim of the nation’s health and sanitation crisis. The policymakers are questioned by both the public and the media of their inability to manage the ongoing situation.  ...
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