Longstanding Discrimination Against Marginalized Communities Worsens Catastrophe by Meenakshi Ganguly, Deputy Asia Director, Human Rights Watch, New York, December 11, 2025 Sri Lanka is suffering a series of floods and landslides brought upon by Cyclone Ditwah this past November. Climate experts believethe intensity of seasonal storms, which also recently devastated Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia, are likely… Read more »
Monthly Archives: December 2025
Who Gets Warned? Language, Discrimination, and Disaster Communication in Sri Lanka
by Sanjana H., LinkedIn, Colombo, Nov.29, 2025 In a recent article related to the devastating impact of Cyclone Ditwah on Sri Lanka, the Tamil Guardian noted that, Officials describe the impact of Cyclone Ditwah as one of the deadliest weather-related disasters in recent years. Yet even as Tamils in the North-East grapple with the impact of of the… Read more »
Rivers of Sri Lanka
by Nuwan I. Senaratna, Dec, 6, 2025 From his X account: We cannot hope to understand floods without first understanding the #rivers that shape them. This repository offers GeoJSON maps of Sri Lanka’s rivers, extracted from from https://hydrosheds.org. (Each color in the map represent a river basin. The colors have been picked at random) @Github… Read more »
The Great Flood
by B. Skanthakumar, Polity, Colombo, December 5, 2025 Cyclone Ditwah ripped through Sri Lanka between 27 and 29 November. The toll is devastating. Seven days later, the official count is 486 deaths and 341 missing. To which should be added five navy and one air-force officer killed in rescue operations; and an electricity board technician… Read more »
Ten Jolting Takeaways from Trump’s New National Security Strategy
by Rick Landgraf, War on the Rocks, Washington, DC, December 5, 2025 The new National Security Strategy is out, and it’s a shock to the system. It is not just the latest public articulation of principles, ambitions, and priorities around which the United States organizes its foreign policy. Instead, it reads like a manifesto for a radically… Read more »
Sri Lanka’s Bloody Past is Re-emerging from the Soil
A blue schoolbag in a mass grave by Helen Regan, Kumanan Kanapathipillai, Kunal Sehga, Hanako Montgomery, CNN, Atlanta, GA, USA, November 29, 2025 https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/05/world/video/sri-lanka-mass-grave-hanako-montgomery-digvid . . EDITOR’S NOTE: This article contains images and descriptions that some readers may find distsurbing. Two human skeletons lie entangled on the rough earth – the arms of one wrapped… Read more »
MGR Remembered – Part 84
Health status – A Decisive Factor by Sachi Sri Kantha, November 22, 2025 Comments from R. Kannan After nearly 12 years of email correspondence, Kannan and I met face to face on Oct 17, 2025 in Tokyo. It was a pleasurable meeting for us, and to our spouses. Kannan’s son, residing in Tokyo, was the… Read more »