CHANDRE DHARMAWARDANA Canada Courtesy The Island According to an Island newspaper report, “responding to the Global Tamil Forum’s (GTF) plea, the South Asia Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on Feb. 22 assured Surendiran that the UK took the incident ‘very seriously’ and Minister for South Asia personally got in touch with Sri Lankan […]

By Chandre Dharnawardana, Canada Can you predict the outcome of a toss of a coin, given enough data and a sufficiently large computer? Can you predict the outcome of the next election if we are given enough opinions polls and a sufficiently large computer? These are of course the sort of questions that might interest […]

by Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada. (chandre.dharma@yahoo.ca) The claim that Sri Lankan soils and its agricultural produce are full of toxins, and that it is a “killing field”  is an attractive slogan for those foreign agents who compete with Sri Lanka’s  agricultural products. It is also a useful cry for those who want to destroy the rural […]

Chandre Dharmawardana. Please see:https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2017/12/20/the-khapra-beetle-and-using-that-russian-credit-line/ There are those who wish to kill the tea plantations arguing that it is an unprofitable, ecologically unsound, colonially imposed liability etc.  While  some aspects of those arguments are true, many observers have suggested  a hidden agenda  behind all this.  The tea industry is being channeled  to collapse by (i) banning […]

Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada. Sri Lanka’s tea industry had been hit hard in recent times from several quarters. The drought brought trouble for tea, and even more trouble for  the paddy farmer. The knee-jerk ban of the herbicide glyphosate falsely claiming it to cause kidney miles away from the tea plantations, in the Rajarata, was another […]

By Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada. The blazing banner  of a media release (14-Nov-2017)  by the Swiss-based  Research Institute of Organic agriculture”  caught  headlines all over the world as it made the claim that organic farming can feed the world after all” (see also the scientific paper in Nature communications”).  In Strategies for feeding the world more […]

Chandre Dharmawardana , Canada. After deliberations that lasted almost a month, and months of preliminary review at various levels, the European Union countries have votes over-overwhelmingly to extend the use of the controversial herbicide Glyphosate. Monsanto and many other agro-chemical companies sell the product since the original Monsanto patent expired decades ago . It has […]

By Chandre Dharmawardana My article entitled Why do ‘Vanniye-Attho’ and NCP Farmers get CKDu while their cows don’t?” produced several curious responses (Lanka Web, 17-11-2017) which fit in with the well-known way in which proponents of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories extend their claims when faced with the actual facts. Basically, they spin additional explanations that […]

Chandre Dharmawardana,  Canada. Regarding Kidney disease among the Vanniye-Aththo. Unfortunately, this author (Dr Amarasiri De Silva, an anthopologist)  has not checked his facts and instead simply followed what a young Swedish Research student who had come to write a social studies  thesis on Anthopology has said, ignoring the excellent work done by local scientists and […]

Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada What caught my eye regarding the  Mangala” budget were the headiness claiming that it is an eco-green  budget. On reading more about it, one can only say in Colombo English, Aiyoo!  See”, i.e.,  Alas ! Look (at this scam)”. But the Aiyoo-see” can also be written as IOC, the Indian Oil […]

By Chandre Dharmawardana,Canada When a pot of water heats up, small bubbles form, then bigger bubbles form, and convection currents begin to cause much agitation, increase of entropy and turbulence; the water is ready to undergo a dramatic “phase transition”. Water becomes steam. Social systems too, when highly stressed show increasing social turmoil, disruption and […]

By Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada The proposed constitution has provoked much debate, but mainly within the framework of traditional thinking with emphasis on the usual issues, i.e., Unitary and  Devolved power, the place of Buddhism, or the executive presidency.  Whether devolution should be district-based  or province-based has been debated for at least 50 years, with […]

CHANDRE DHARMAWARDANA Ottawa, Canada September 29, 2017, 10:04 pm The proposed constitution has provoked much debate, but mainly within the framework of traditional thinking with emphasis on a few issues like “Unitary and Devolved power, the place of Buddhism, or the executive presidency. In my view, these ignore the most urgent issues that Sri Lanka […]

CHANDRE DHARMAWARDANA Ottawa, Canada September 24, 2017, 9:12 pm It is interesting to read the debate about what the unit of devolution should be. Recent articles, by Dayan Jayatilleke (Island, Sep. 20, 2017) and Neville Ladduwahetty (Sep. 23, 2017) argue for the Province (DJ), and for the District (NL). Interestingly, both the TNA, and their […]

By Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. Commenting on my article entitled The AluthParlimenthuwa” Debate on Glyphosate” that appeared in the Lankaweb ( https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2017/09/02/the-aluthparlimenthuwa-debate-on-glyphosate/),  a writer who uses the fake name Cerberus” has gone shopping for free  on the internet and comes back to tell us that glyhosate causes not only kidney disease, but also many other […]

By Professor Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. The government banned  the popular herbicide  known as Glyphosate” in 2105 using the epidemic of Kidney Disease in the Rajarata as justification for its drastic action. It proposed to create a toxin free nation” eventually banning agrochemicals.  Ven. Ratana  is  Sri Lanka’s presidential adviser on agriculture, promising to rid […]

Chandre  Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. There are many toxic substances used in our food. Because every substance  is toxic when exceeded beyond certain limits, and these limits are quite low for many substances. It is not just tobacco which is now well known as being dangerous, but the CEOs of tobacco companies have not been hauled […]

Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. The following letter was sent to the Sri Lankan High Commission in Ottawa recently when a CBC broadcast  stated  the following about refugees sent back to Sri Lanka. This is about  Sri Lankan refugees in Hong Kong who had sheltered  the Wiki-Leaks journalist Snowden. There’s good reason to believe that they […]

by Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Sudath Gunasekera, writing to the Lanka Web (6th may 2017) has discussed the imposing statue by the Parakrama Samudra and raised questions about the grain going across the statue and its interpretation as a silver thread of the Brahaminic tradition given by some scholars. I have raised similar issues […]

By Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada. April 21, 2017, 8:57 pm The Buddha you never knew, and parts of the Tripitaka that never survived. Bhante Dhammika of Australia, writing in the Island Newspaper (21st April 2017) presents a valuable and timely reminder that what is often believed to be “core facts”of Buddhism cannot in fact be confirmed […]

Chandre Dharmawardana. All of us, even those living in remote parts of Sri Lanka or India have been eating Genetically Modified (GM) foods for decades. Most  US or Canadian flour  is from GM wheat.  The bread, buns, etc., consumed by everyone is made of GM flour. Similarly, most  Soya  products are from GM  soya. Many […]

Chandre Dhamwaradana. We should let the courts case against Monsanto and EPA officials take its course before jumping to conclusions. It is Monsanto and EPA officials, and not glyphosate, that is on trial. Litigation  is quite common in the US,  to sue companies for various grievances. Here is is a different case, where due process […]

Reviewed By Professor Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Gavin Karunaratne, a seasoned administrator and Economist trained at the University of Michigan. He has presented to the reading public a little book of 60 pages, where he takes up cudgels against the International Monetary Fund. The story is told using his newspaper articles and editorial comments […]

Professor Chandre Dharmawardana Canada. March 27, 2017, 8:46 pm Dr. K. Rajendra, writing to the Sunday Island, 26th March, makes some very important points on how to detect and deal with Dengue fever. I wish to engage on one of his comments and state how Dengue can in fact be completely eliminated rapidly, and in an […]

Chandre Dharmawaradana [A shorter version appeared in the Island, 11-Jan-2016] Two writers,  Dr. Pethiyagoda  (9-01-2016, Island) and Dr. Weeraratne (11-01-2016 Island) have raised the question why Sri Lankan scientists and government authorities are not moving to Murunga seed (seeds of Moringa Oleifera, or drumsticks”) to exploit  its claimed efficiency for water purification- a green solution”.  […]

by Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. Engineer Harsa Kumara, a former Vice chairman of the NWSDB and General Manager of the water resources board has posted an article in the Lankaweb (Dec 14th, 2016) arguing his case in favour of Reverse Osmosis (RO) machines to provide clean water to the farmers in the dry zone who […]

by Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. A few years ago a newspaper report (Sunday Times, 2013) stated that Sri lankan rice took second place in a twelve-country list of rice containing high amounts of the toxic  metal known as cadmium. Many people even now claim that Sri Lankan rice has excess cadmium (Cd), and that this […]

Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada The government,  some private sector groups, and NGOs have  spend a large amount of money on reverse osmosis (RO) machines for the purification of water as it was advocated  by a number of people who feared  that there are metal toxins (Arsenic, Cd, etc) in the water. The claim that metal […]

by Chandre Dharmawardana Roundup is one of the commercial names of a glyphosate-based herbicide (“weedkiller”). Glyphosate is manufactured mainly in China, though it originated in the USA. The government has just announced that the ill-conceived ban on glyphosate – an essentially harmless herbicide – has been relaxed to allow the tea industry to use it, […]

by Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. It is well known that ecosystems and societies are complex systems that do not permit careless tinkering. Social revolutions led by visionaries – usually with tunnel vision narrowed down by some ideology- have almost always ended in reigns of terror or long-lasting social chaos. However, when the government, goaded by eco-extremists […]