Midweek Review

‘An Insider’s Guide to Pandemics and Biosecurity’

Published

4 years ago

2022/10/19

Author: Raina MacIntyre (Sydney: NSW Press, 2022)

“June Twenty Second Sixteen Thirty-three
A momentous day for you and me
Of all the days that was the one
An age of Reason could have begun”
The Life of Galileo, Bertolt Brecht, 1939

Book Review
by Dr. Laleen Jayamanne

Senior Lecturer in Cinema Studies (retired) University of Sydney

Personal Connections

There is a wonderful long-ago-and-far-away connection between Bertolt Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo (1939), and Raina MacIntyre, the distinguished, internationally respected Lankan-Australian Epidemiologist and University Professor of Global Biosecurity. She is the daughter of Nalini and Ernest MacIntyre, the former a Vice-Principal of Ladies’ College, and the latter a leading member of The Stage and Set theatre group. Mac, as he is known, introduced Brecht’s theatre to Lanka by directing the Chalk Circle.

In 1969, as a little girl growing up in Colombo, Raina MacIntyre played the role of Planet Earth, dressed as a small green sphere, twirling around a larger child, dressed as our sun in the robust Carnival scene on the streets of Venice in Brecht’s play. The telescope, a new invention, was sold as an optical toy in the marketplace; Galileo had repurposed it as a scientific instrument and trained on the firmament, leading to his scientific proof of a heliocentric universe, which Copernicus was only able to posit. The people understood and celebrated the importance of this momentous discovery and created that little skit and songs and pamphlets celebrating the birth of scientific reason. For Brecht’s Galileo science was for the people, for their well-being, not an exclusive possession of a ruling clique who controlled knowledge, wealth and power. He knew that he had betrayed the highest calling of scientific reason by acquiescing to the demands of the all-powerful Holy Inquisition, recanting under threat of torture and death by fire.

In having completed his Discorsi secretly and having it smuggled out of Italy, Galileo did contribute to science but he judged himself harshly for not having stood up to the Church of Rome, in the interests of science. His infamous self-critique on his own lack of an ethical will was addressed to his former student. By that he perhaps hoped that his student, now a physicist himself, willing to risk smuggling his forbidden text out of Italy, might be true to scientific reason.

“Welcome to my gutter, colleague in science and brother in treason…” Galileo

Reading Raina MacIntyre’s timely book Dark Winter: An Insider’s Guide to Pandemics and Biosecurity, one gets a clear impression that the ‘gutter’ has considerably widened with some scientists quite comfortably settled in there and thriving by creating counter-narratives to whatever research topic they happened not to agree with disregarding sound scientific practice. Ethics in the conduct of science is a central concern of this book.

MacIntyre says her aim in writing Dark Winter is to focus ‘a historical lens’ on scientific practices related to pandemics and biosecurity. Staying with MacIntyre’s rhetorically productive technical image of the ‘lens,’ as an instrument which overcomes the limits of natural human perception, she provides us with both a telescopic and a microscopic perception of a certain history of science related to pandemics, outbreak detection and mitigation of biological warfare and bioterrorism – which are her remit.

This is a crisply written book for the lay reader. The normal scholarly steel armature of citations within the text is dispensed with and instead, the references for each chapter are alphabetically provided at the end of the book. It is a bit difficult if one wants to work out which piece of research went with which argument. But the strategy of creating a smooth narrative surface is important for a popular book on science (for which there is an avid readership), without compromising its scholarly rigour. The table of contents makes the book intriguing and inviting. Chapter One, ‘Believe the Unbelievable’, examines an instance of the US military releasing a pathogen into the San Francisco harbour secretly, causing serious urine infections and one death, in the 1950s. Chapter Three, ‘Error not Terror’ deals with the problem of formulating questions so as to guide research. In this instance, the question of whether a pathogen was natural or accidentally or deliberately released from a lab becomes a major professional battle between opposed camps. We are told that many scientists generally resist the lab error explanation and assume that it’s a natural event through animal transmission. The stakes are huge in terms of lab freedom and research funding. This debate has been headline fodder with the absurd politicization of Covid as though it were a virus with ‘Chinese characteristics!’ Chapter Five, ‘Jurassic Park for Viruses’, shows us how what was sci-fi a few decades ago is now available for scientific replication and cloning. Chapter Twelve, ‘Brain-Eating Viruses’, poses the question of how to deal with the emerging long-Covid syndrome, which is unknown territory. She focuses on the problem of protecting children by vaccination and improvement of air quality in classrooms. She poses the question of whether a famous sports star’s sudden death might have been related to his Covid infection. The book concludes with the sombre final chapter, ‘A Biological Winter.’ We can tell that MacIntyre enjoys writing and is a film buff with documentary, sci-fi and zombie horror cult movie interests as well, which she uses to convey scientific ideas pithily.

In the chapter called ‘The Fuss about Face Masks,’ MacIntyre presents her pioneering research on this piece of modest preventive technology, which she began around 2006. During Covid, the mask she promoted for health workers, as the best for an airborne virus, was N95. The major opposition came from infection control specialists who promoted surgical masks instead. Her point is that for such a non-invasive technology to become so politicized, even among specialists, meant that something was not working in society. She says three major factors help in dealing effectively with pandemics, namely good leadership, a culture with a sense of public good and free public health. MacIntyre’s account of major public health institutions, governments and the science publishing industry, both local and global, gives us a historical understanding of how the politics of science worked within the post WW2 international order which included the Cold War. She focuses on epidemics, which didn’t happen naturally but ‘unnaturally’, through lab leaks or deliberate acts of sabotage. In these cases the world does not neatly divide into democracies as honest players and the autocracy of the Soviet Union as bad. The historical examples MacIntyre describes are taken from the US, the USSR and Great Britain and make for chilling reading.

One also learns about the ways in which, in our digital era, Biology has become a limitless field of invention enhancing life but also frequently destroying that very life through what’s called ‘dual-use research’. This kind of research linked to genetic engineering and gene editing, while benefiting humanity may also create pathogens like smallpox synthesized in labs. This process becomes a key to bio-warfare and bio-terrorism. The availability of materials and cheap technology that has led to the creation of DYI private labs which make the creation of biological material easier, poses dangers as they are not fully regulatable.

Interdisciplinarity

This book departs from a familiar pop-science genre, say of describing strangely fascinating case histories which Oliver Sacks, for example, does well up to a point, before we lose interest because it becomes just a pile up of empirical case studies, terribly sad though they are. No generalizable ideas or concepts are formulated: about the brain, say, and how it is thought about in the various branches that study it in relation to his case studies. Then there is the philosophically attuned, ever-humorous physician and neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran and his Phantoms in the Brain written with Sandra Blakesley. While he provides basic maps of the brain, which are useful for a layperson, he describes several pathologies including the phenomenon of Synesthesia, which is an inherited trait, or pathology or gift, depending how you look at it. While Ramachandran can describe the pathologies well and has also been able as a clinician to relieve pain in phantom limbs of patients whose limbs have been severed, he doesn’t stay on that plane of descriptive analysis alone. He is bold in his speculative interests, in art and evolution and their links to synesthesia for instance. So his book has a conceptual architecture that does not shy away from formulating ideas and concepts despite its hands-on low-tech clinical base.

MacIntyre’s book works with historical cases studies taken from a global context but it has a strong conceptual architecture able to identify serious institutional problems that make it difficult to promote sound scientifically tested methods to prevent the spread of a pandemic for example. She strongly argues for the absolute necessity of interdisciplinary work in health and biosecurity. She argues eloquently for taking seriously the work done by Law Enforcement and Intelligence as well as work with engineers in developing complex preventive strategies. She actually practises what she preaches by inviting a Law Enforcement official Tom Engells, chief of police at the University of Texas, Ebola research lab, to a high powered conference she organised, because she found his article, ‘The Insider threat – a new aspect of biosecurity’ important. She also arranged for him to give lectures on the topic to her postgraduate class. Her collaboration with him is exemplary of a true interdisciplinary scholar. She does not make the hierarchical professional distinction whereby the scientists are placed on a pedestal while law enforcement folk are treated differently.

This book was written in the midst of the Covid global pandemic when MacIntyre’s several outstanding skills as a public speaker and expertise are in high demand to also (i) address public health issues on TV and (ii) write to the newspapers. In the midst of all this how she found the time and quiet focus needed to write this well-crafted book remains a mystery.

I also want to talk about MacIntyre’s work as a teacher and its links to her book. This is an issue that has been of importance to me since I taught cinema studies at the University of Sydney. In the new century, management made it very clear to us that teaching was not as important as research, and many academics, internalizing this injunction, longed to escape teaching which was handed over to tutors. I note that MacIntyre devised courses directly linked to her pioneering research and co-taught courses at postgraduate level which drew students internationally, especially from Asia. I know from personal conversations how much she enjoys teaching and she mentions two invaluable mentors, Dr Mike Lane and Professor Aileen Plant, who have guided her research just as she must now direct her students whose work she cites. It is worth noting the interlinked connections among her high-stakes research, administrative skills and teaching, the three components of an academic’s work. Especially in an Australian Neo-Liberal University ethos where teaching has been downgraded by managers it is heartening to note how seriously MacIntyre takes her teaching as well. Her sense of the intergenerational transmission of knowledge from guru to student was evident when she decided to do a podcast on her retired mentor Mike Lane, just a few years before he died and discovers with gratitude his past hands-on practice which she knew nothing about. This cherishing of the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and values is a South Asian trait, which I have found rarely in my thirty odd years in the Australian academy.

So, as a guidebook Dark Winter takes us through several circles of hell where scientific reason, and the values that are embodied in such an idea and its practices, have been violated by some scientists and scientific institutions themselves. Most professions have their share of malpractice, as in teaching or in the law but with science the scale of destruction is now planetary. And as an epidemic and biosecurity specialist MacIntyre says that we may be in a pandemic without knowing it for some time. The signs of a smallpox virus camouflaged by a monkey-pox virus are hard to read in a timely manner, we are told. When critical time was lost we all know what happened to the whole world with Covid. The next time might be even less perceptible, especially if those voices from the gutter are the loudest and the most powerful, in the virulent information-wars between scientists. There are indications of the professional difficulties MacIntyre has had as a ‘person of colour’ in an Australian University milieu dominated by white males unused to South Asian female intellectuals saying exactly what they think out loud and clear. Now in my retirement, it’s amusing to see some of these white men, of my long unpleasant acquaintance, scrambling to prove their diversity credentials. What I love about the tone of this book is the sense of deep enjoyment MacIntyre derives from all aspects of her multifaceted work, especially in the training of the next generation of ‘diverse’ researchers. The occasional sardonic whiplash wit is part of it for sure.

But MacIntyre’s book shows us many scientists, teachers and their interdisciplinary colleagues and students working quietly with enormous dedication and ethical awareness of the importance of defending scientific reason against great odds. The book advocates for the importance of an educated citizenry who appreciates science and it is the duty of scientists to make their specialist knowledge accessible also to those of us who have no formal scientific knowledge.

Brecht’s Galileo telescoped 17th Century scientific Reason and 20th Century Instrumental Reason, which saw the rise of Nazi medical experiments and the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Brecht was rehearsing his play in LA with Charles Laughton as Galileo, when the bombs were dropped in August 1945. He said he didn’t have to change much after the event. That struggle between reason and unreason will not go away any time soon, as pandemics and war are big business, says MacIntyre, and as we see so clearly right now. But in this book, she offers ways in which we as a democratic citizenry can take a more active interest in the scientific debates without leaving it to scientists, governments and corporations to make decisions about life-and-death matters. So, we do need more scientists like MacIntyre, who has a wonderful scientific imagination which enables her to seriously draw on film with flair, as an ally in her task as a populariser of science. I like to imagine that playing Planet Earth as a little girl, and seeing telescopes as toys, might have nourished her imagination, without which scientific reason itself cannot and does not advance.

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Midweek Review

A victory that can never be forgotten

Published

3 days ago

2026/05/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Matara victory parade, in 2014, held to mark the eradication of the LTTE.

The country is in deepening turmoil over the theft of USD 2.5 mn from the Treasury. The Treasury affair has placed the arrogant NPP in an embarrassing position. The controversial release of 323 red-flagged containers from the Colombo Port, in addition to two carrying narcotics and the coal scam that forced Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody to resign, has eroded public confidence though the NPP pretends otherwise.

Suspicious deaths of a Finance Ministry official, suspended over the Treasury heist of USD 2.5 million, and ex-SriLankan Airlines CEO Kapila Chandrasena shouldn’t distract the government and the Opposition from marking victory over terrorism.

But, the country, under any circumstances, shouldn’t forget to celebrate Sri Lanka’s greatest post-independence achievement. Dinesh Udugamsooriya, a keen follower of conflict and post-Aragalaya issues, insists that those who cherish the peace achieved should raise the national flag in honour of the armed forces.

The armed forces paid a huge price to preserve the country’s unitary status. Those who represent Parliament and outside waiting for an opportunity to return to Parliament must keep in their minds, unitary status is non-negotiable, under any circumstances, and such efforts would be in vain.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Sri Lanka celebrates, next week, the eradication of the bloodthirsty separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a conventional threat to the survival of this nation, at least in our hearts, even if the authorities dampen any celebrations. The armed forces brought the war to a successful conclusion on 18 May, 2009. The body of undisputed leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was found on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon, on the morning of 19 May, less than 24 hours after the ground forces declared the end of operations in the Vanni theatre.

The LTTE’s annihilation is Sri Lanka’s greatest post-independence achievement. Whatever various interested parties, pursuing different agendas say, the vast majority of people accept the eradication of the LTTE’s conventional military capacity as the armed forces’ highest achievement.

Sri Lanka’s triumph cannot be discussed without taking into consideration how the Indian-trained LTTE, who also went on to fight the New Delhi’s Army deployed here, in terms of the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord, signed in July, 1987, giving it an unforgettable hiding. The Indian misadventure here cost them the lives of nearly 1,500 officers and men. Just over a year after the Indian pullout, in March, 1990, the LTTE assassinated Rajiv Gandhi who, in his capacity as the Prime Minister, deployed the Indian Army here. But India launched the Sri Lanka destabilisation project during Indira Gandhi’s premiership.

Western powers, the now decimated United National Party (UNP), Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), and an influential section of the media, propagated the lie that the LTTE couldn’t be defeated. But, the United People’s Freedom Party (UPFA), under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s resolute leadership, sustained a nearly three-year long genuine sustained offensive that brought the entire Northern and Eastern regions back under government control.

The UNP relentlessly hindered the war against the LTTE. UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, hell-bent on undermining the military campaign, had no qualms in questioning the military strategy. The former Prime Minister went to the extent of sarcastically questioning the culmination of the military campaign in the East with the capture of Thoppigala (Baron’s cap) in the second week of July, 2007, calling it just a rock outcrop with no significance. Believing the military lacked the strength to continue with the campaign, Wickremesinghe publicly ridiculed the Thoppigala success. The then Brigadier Chagie Gallage, the pint-sized human dynamo, provided critical leadership to the highly successful Eastern campaign that deprived the LTTE the opportunity to compel the armed forces to commit far larger strength to the region. We clearly recall how he went to announce the prized capture from his forward base, that afternoon, driving his own jeep, dressed as a soldier wearing a cap, with his second in command seated by his side, obviously not to fall victim to any sniper hiding in the surrounding jungles.

The likes of Ravi Karunanayaka, Lakshman Kiriella, Dr. Rajitha Senaratna and the late Mangala Samaraweera demeaned such successes by contributing to a vicious political campaign that dented public confidence in the armed forces. Then Lt. General Sarath Fonseka’s Army needed a massive boost, not only to sustain the relentless advance into the enemy territory, but to hold onto and stabilise areas brought under government control. But the viciousness of these critics were such that Samaraweera had the gall to say that Fonseka was not even fit to lead the Salvation Army.

The Opposition campaign was meant to deter the stepped up recruitment campaign that enabled the Army to increase its strength from 116,000 to over 205,000 at the end of the campaign. In spite of disgraceful Opposition attempts to cause doubts, regarding the military campaign among the public, with backing from Western vultures, who were all for LTTE success, the Rajapaksa government maintained the momentum.

President Rajapaksa had a superb team that ensured the government confidently met the daunting challenge. That team included Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Vice Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda, Lt. General Sarath Fonseka, Air Marshal Roshan Goonetileke and the then Chief of National Intelligence (CNI) Maj. General Kapila Hendawitharana. There were also the likes of Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera, who returned from retirement to transform the once ragtag Home Guards into a worthy back-up to the military, as the Civil Defence Force, at critical places/junctures.

The then Governor of the Central Bank, Ajith Nivard Cabraal, played a significant role in overall government response to the challenge. The then presidential advisor MP Basil Rajapaksa’s role, too, should be appreciated and Prof. Rajiva Wijesinghe as well as Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe contributed to counter the false propaganda campaigns directed at the country. Whatever the shortcomings of the Mahinda Rajapaksa-led UPFA may have had, the armed forces couldn’t have succeeded if the resolute political leadership he provided, with his team of brothers, failed both in and outside Parliament. That is the undeniable truth.

During the 2006-2009 campaign, the UNP twice tried to defeat the UPFA Budget, thereby hoping to bring the war to an abrupt end. Th utterly contemptible move to defeat the UPFA Budget ultimately caused a split in the JVP with a section of the party switching its allegiance to President Rajapaksa to save the day.

Amidst political turmoil and both overt and covert Western interventions, the armed forces pressed ahead with the offensive. It would be pertinent to mention that the Vanni campaign began in March, 2007, a couple of months before the armed forces brought the eastern campaign to an end.

Vanni campaign

The Army launched the Vanni campaign in March, 2007. The 57 Division that had been tasked with taking Madhu, and then proceeding to Kilinochchi, faced fierce resistance. The principal fighting Division suffered significant casualties and progress was slow. An irate Fonseka brought in Maj. Gen. Jagath Dias as General Officer Commanding (GoC) of the 57 Division to advance and consolidate areas brought under control.

The Army expanded the Vanni campaign in September, 2007. The Task Force 1 (later 58 Division) launched operations from the Mannar ‘rice bowl’. Fonseka placed Gallage in command of that fighting formation but was replaced by the then Brigadier Shavendra Silva, as a result of a medical emergency.

The Army gradually took the upper hand in the Vanni west while the LTTE faced a new threat in the Vanni east with the newly created 59 Division, under Brigadier Nandana Udawatta, launching offensive action in January, 2008. Having launched its first major action in the Weli Oya region, that Division fought its way towards Mullaitivu, an LTTE stronghold since 1996.

The 53 (Maj. Gen. Kamal Gunaratne) and 55 (Brig. Prasanna Silva) Divisions, deployed in the Jaffna peninsula, joined the Vanni offensive, in late 2008, as the TF 1 fought its way to Pooneryn, turned right towards Paranthan, captured that area and then hit Elephant Pass and rapidly advanced towards Kilinochchi. The TF 1 and 57 Division met in Kilinochchi and the rest is history.

Once the Army brought Kilinochchi under its control, in January, 2009, the LTTE lost the war. The raising of the Lion flag over Kilinochchi meant that the entire area, west of the Kandy-Jaffna A9 road, had been brought under government control. By then the LTTE had lost the sea supply route, between Tamil Nadu and Mannar region. The LTTE was surrounded by several fighting formations in the Vanni east while the Navy made an unprecedented achievement by cordoning off the Mullaitivu coast that effectively cut them off on all sides.

During the final phase of the naval action, they captured Sea Tiger leader Soosai’s wife, Sathyadevi, and her children Sivanesan Mani Arasu and Sivanesan Sindhu. Spearheaded by the elite Fourth Fast Attack Flotilla, the Navy conducted a sustained campaign, with spectacular success in the high seas, and, by late 2008, the Navy dominated the waters around the country.

The sinking of floating LTTE warehouses, with the intelligence provided by the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) and the US Pacific Command, after the Americans decided to speed up the inevitable, and a campaign, directed at operations across the Palk Strait, weakened the LTTE. By early January, 2009, the LTTE had lost its capacity to carry out mid-sea transfers, and the use of Tamil Nadu fishing trawlers to bring in supplies, and it was only a matter of time before the group surrendered or faced the consequences.

Although Tamil Diaspora still believed in the LTTE launching a massive counter attack on the Vanni east front and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), under the leadership of the late R. Sampanthan, worked hard to halt the offensive, President Rajapaksa declared that the offensive wouldn’t be called off. President Rajapaksa had the strength to resist the combined pressure brought on him by the West and the UN until the armed forces delivered the final blow.

The despicable efforts made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to block IMF funding for Sri Lanka is in the public domain. Clinton was obviously trying to please the Tamil Diaspora. The US made that attempt as the ground offensive was on the last phase against the backdrop of the international community suspending relief supply ships to Puthumathalan.

The IMF provided the much required funding to Sri Lanka, regardless of Clinton’s intervention.

A targeted assassination

The Air Force conducted a strategic campaign against the LTTE while providing support to both the Army and the Navy. Despite limited resources, the Air Force pulverised the enemy and high profile target assassination of S.P. Thamilselvan, in his Kilinochchi hideout, in early November, 2007, shook the LTTE leadership. The deployment of a pair of jets (Kafir and MiG 27), on the basis of intelligence provided by the DMI and backed by UAV footage, to carry out a meticulous strike on Thamilselvan’s Kilinochchi hideout, caused unprecedented fear among the LTTE.

Current Defence Secretary, Sampath Thuyakontha, in his capacity as the Commanding Officer of No 09 Squadron, played a vital role in action against the LTTE. Thuyakontha earned the respect of all for landing behind enemy lines in support of LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol).

As the Army advanced on the Vanni east front, thousands of LTTE cadres gave up their weapons, threw away their trade mark cyanide capsules and surrendered. Their defences crumbled and even hardcore cadres surrendered, regardless of the warning issued by Prabhakaran. By the time the armed forces concluded clearing operations, over 12,000 LTTE cadres were in government custody. Although those who couldn’t stomach Sri Lanka’s victory over the LTTE propagated lies regarding the rehabilitation programme, the ordinary Tamil people appreciated the project.

C.V. Wigneswaran, in his capacity as the Chief Minister of the Northern Province, called for a US investigation into the death of ex-LTTE cadres in government custody. The retired Supreme Court judge sought to consolidate his political power by alleging the Army executed surrendered men by injecting them with poison. The then Yahapalana government failed to take action against Wigneswaran who claimed over 100 deaths among ex-combatants.

Instead of initiating legal action, the war-winning Rajapaksa government rehabilitated them. Even after the change of government, in 2015, the rehabilitation project continued. Almost all of them had been released and, since the end of war, the members of the defeated LTTE never tried to reorganise, though some Diaspora elements made an attempt.

The LTTE’s demise brought an end to the use of child soldiers. Those who demand justice for Tamils, killed during the war, conveniently forget that forcible recruitment of children, by the LTTE, also ended in May, 2009. Struggling to overcome severe manpower shortage, amidst mounting battlefield losses, the LTTE abducted Tamil children, from the early ’90s, to be press-ganged into their cadre.

Although the UN and ICRC sought a consensus with the LTTE, way back during Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s tenure as the President, to cease forced recruitment of children, they couldn’t achieve the desired results. The much publicised UN-ICRC projects failed. The LTTE continued with its despicable abduction of children. The LTTE never stopped child recruitment and, depending on the ground situation, it carried out forced recruitment drives. The signing of the Norwegian arranged Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), too, failed to halt forced child recruitment.

The Darusman report that accused the military of killing over 40,000 civilians during the last phase of the war revealed that the LTTE tried to recruit children as it was about to collapse.

The TNA, or any other like-minded group here or abroad, never urged the LTTE to give up civilian shields and stop recruiting children, though they realised Prabhakaran could no longer change the outcome of the war. Norway, and those who still believed in a negotiated ‘settlement’ in a bid to prevent the annihilation of the group, desperately tried to convince Prabhakaran to give up civilian shields.

A note, dated February 16, 2009, sent to Basil Rajapaksa, by Norwegian Ambassador Tore Hattrem, expressed concern over the fate of those who had been trapped in the Vanni east. Hattrem’s note to Basil Rajapaksa revealed Norway’s serious concern over the LTTE’s refusal to release the civilians.

The following is the Norwegian note, headlined ‘Offer/Proposal to the LTTE’, personally signed by Ambassador Hattrem: “I refer to our telephone conversation today. The proposal to the LTTE on how to release the civilian population, now trapped in the LTTE controlled area, has been transmitted to the LTTE through several channels. So far, there has been, regrettably, no response from the LTTE and it doesn’t seem to be likely that the LTTE will agree with this in the near future.”

In the aftermath of the Anandapuram debacle in the first week of April, 2009, the LTTE lost its fighting capacity to a large extent. The loss of over 600 cadres marked the collapse of the organisation’s conventional fighting capacity.

The LTTE sought an arrangement in which it could retain its remaining weapons and start rebuilding the group again. President Rajapaksa emphasised that only an unconditional surrender could save the group’s remaining cadre. The President refused to recognise an area under the LTTE’s control. The CFA, signed by Wickremesinghe and Prabhakaran, in February, 2002, recognised a vast area under the LTTE control. The CFA gave unparalleled recognition to the terrorist group and that was exploited by them to the hilt.

NPP’s dilemma

During his controversial May Day address this year, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared that only the armed forces and police could carry arms. Dissanayake warned that no one else could retain weapons.

President Dissanayake’s declaration is of pivotal importance as the armed forces and police twice crushed JVP-led insurgencies, in 1971 and 1987-1990. Dissanayake is the leader of the JVP and the NPP, two political parties recognised by the Election Commission.

Dissanayake, who is also the Minister of Defence and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, caused controversy last year when the government announced that the President wouldn’t attend the 16th annual war heroes’ commemoration ceremony at War Heroes’ Memorial, in Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte.

That announcement triggered massive backlash. The government rescinded its earlier decision. Having received an unprecedented endorsement from the northern and eastern electorates, both at presidential and parliamentary polls in September and November, 2024, respectively, President Dissanayake seemed to have been somewhat reluctant to join the national celebration.

Yahapalana leaders President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe succumbed to Tamil Diaspora and Western pressures to do away with the 2016 annual armed forces Victory Day parade. That treacherous move followed them betraying the war-winning armed forces at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in October, 2015.

They co-sponsored accountability resolution, introduced by the US in terms of an understanding with the LTTE’s sidekick. Sirisena and Wickremesinghe forgot that the TNA recognised the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil speaking people, in 2001, thereby setting the stage for Eelam War IV. Sampanthan’s outfit, the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK)-led TNA, showed its true colours when it joined the UNP-JVP led initiative to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa. Having accused the war-winning Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka, of unpardonable war crimes, the TNA, along with the UNP-JVP combine, backed Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election. The South rejected Fonseka and he lost the race by a staggering 1.8 mn votes which late JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe foolishly called a computer ‘jilmart’, a newly coined word of our fake Marxists. Fonseka’s indefensible declaration, in the run-up to the 2010 presidential election that the celebrated 58 Division executed surrendered LTTE cadres, didn’t do him any good. President Rajapaksa never explained why the US’ unofficial contradiction of Fonseka’s claim was never used cleverly to counter unsubstantiated war crimes allegations, along with Lord Naseby disclosures made in October, 2017.

Sri Lanka’s failure to properly defend the armed forces is nothing but an insult to them. They saved the country from the JVP twice, and Indian trained over half a dozen terrorist groups, finally bringing the largest and the deadliest of them, the LTTE, down to its knees, on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon.

The armed forces shouldn’t hesitate to remember their glorious victory over terrorism. Since the change of government in September, 2024, the armed forces refrained from at least mentioning their battlefield achievements. At the last Independence Day, the armed forces shockingly mentioned their role in the Ditwah cyclone recovery efforts as their main achievement, to please the political masters, who themselves have been lackeys of the West, while outwardly professing to be Marxists, the latter line they have already conveniently dropped for all purposes. The armed forces shouldn’t play NPP politics but explain the situation to the current dispensation. The failure on the part of armed forces to erase their proud achievements against terrorism, out of their press releases/narratives, look rather stupid.

Midweek Review

A Novel, a Movie and a Play

Published

3 days ago

2026/05/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

Drawing a Thread through Loss and Creativity in Shakespeare’s Life

William Shakespeare [1556-1616] is generally regarded as the greatest playwright and poet in the English language. Notwithstanding the universal appeal and the timelessness of his work, very little is known about his inner-self. Despite his profound understanding of the human condition, evident in his remarkable works of drama and poetry, the origin of his psychological insights – formed long before formal theories of the mind emerged – remain unknown, often loosely ascribed to an innate gift. The thematic and philosophical dimensions of his work are often said to be influenced by the classics of the ‘ancient world’ such as Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

The bestselling novel, Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell is a confluence of fact and fiction. The award-winning movie, by the same name, is an adaptation of the novel, its screenplay co-written by Maggie O’Farrell and Chloe Zhao, the director. The central theme of the novel and the movie is the devastating impact of the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, in 1596, at an early age of eleven, and the sensitive portrayal of the grieving process of the family, inviting the audience to reflect on the proposition that Shakespeare channelled his personal grief into writing Hamlet, the play, four years later.

Mourning and melancholy take centre stage in Hamlet prompting a probable link between William Shakespeare’s own emotional world and his artistic imagination. Interestingly, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were used interchangeably during the Elizabethan era, adding weight to the speculation.

The movie matches the imaginative and descriptive brilliance of the novel. The narrative unfolds against the backdrop of Stratford-upon-Avon and its environs and its inhabitants of Elizabethan England, finally shifting to London and the Globe Theatre. The film won eight nominations at the 98^th Academy Awards, including best picture, best director for Zhao, and best actress for Jessie Buckley, who immortalises Anne Hathaway, [‘Agnes’] Shakespeare’s wife, through whom the real face of family grief is portrayed. Shakespeare [nameless] remains ‘silent’ and virtually ‘back-stage’ in London preoccupied with the playhouse, the players and the plays.

Many Shakespeare scholars have speculated about a probable link between the death of Hamnet Shakespeare and the writing of Hamlet, his Magnum Opus:

“No one can say for certain how the death of Shakespeare’s son affected him, but it is hard not to notice that in the years following Hamnet’s death Shakespeare wrote a play obsessed with fathers and sons, grief, and the persistence of the dead.” [James Shapiro]

“Hamnet’s death must have been a devastating blow…..and the shadow of that loss may well lie behind the profound meditations on mortality in Hamlet.” [Park Honan]

“The death of Hamnet is the most plausible personal event to have touched Shakespeare deeply in these years, and it is tempting to hear an echo of that loss in the grief that permeates Hamlet.” [Germaine Greer]

That echo is clearly heard in Act 4, scene 5 in Hamlet:

He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone;

At his head a grass-green turf,

At his heels a stone.

Yet, in the play, a son loses his father, and the circumstance of the loss is different. Hamlet mourns the sudden death of his father, king Hamlet, he idolised. The young prince is faced with a complex emotional challenge as the late king’s brother, Claudius, usurper to the throne, marries the widowed queen, denying the young prince of his lawful right to sovereignty. The process of mourning is weighed down by the profound significance of the personal loss to the prince and being bereft of any trusting relationships to share his grief – mourning turning to melancholy.

Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, Hamlet, has gained unremitting interest of audiences, universally over four hundred years, and has been open to divergent appraisal. Any commentary on the play without an exploration of the psyche of its protagonist, prince Hamlet, would be as the popular cliché goes, ‘like Hamlet without the prince of Denmark!’ Hamlet is the longest of all Shakespearean plays, with the least amount of action, but with the most amount of spoken word, mainly by prince Hamlet, which includes his soliloquies [solo locution: self-discourse] that opens the door to his inner self, inviting in by Hamlet himself: “pluck out the heart of my mystery”.

In the first of his soliloquies, Hamlet reveals his affliction with melancholy. He describes the world as worthless, wishes he is dead, contemplates suicide but regrets that God does not sanction such self-destruction. “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt/ Thaw and resolve itself into dew/ O, that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His cannon ‘gainst self-slaughter. O, God, God/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!’

Hamlet’s anguish is expressed as: ‘This goodly frame, the earth’ is no more than a ‘Sterile promontory’; ‘this majestical roof fretted with golden fire’; the heavens, ‘a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours’; and man, ‘the paragon of animals’, a quintessence of dust’, his mind ‘an unweeded garden/ That grows to seed.’ – Hamlet’s melancholic thought with depressive and nihilistic content expressed in philosophical terms.

But his anguish is best depicted in his fourth soliloquy [Act 3, Scene1] arguably, the most quoted piece of verse in all Shakespeare: ‘To be, or not to be’ – about life and death. He questions, ‘whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or take arms against a sea of troubles/ and by opposing, end them’. What happens after death? Is it a peaceful sleep or nightmare? Do we end our miseries by putting ourselves to the ‘quietus’ with a dagger, and enter that ‘undiscovered country’ from which ‘no traveller returns’, or put up with our problems? ‘Conscience makes cowards of us all’ and make us procrastinate.

In his soliloquies Hamlet reveals his affliction with melancholy. He wishes that his body would melt away, describes the world as worthless and contemplates suicide – negative cognitions about the self, the environment and the future, characteristic of severe mood disturbance – but regrets that God does not sanction such self-destruction.

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Grief is a universal human experience following loss, characterised by sadness, at times mixed with anger and guilt, and frequently transient in nature. Depending on the perceived significance [‘meaningfulness’] of the loss and the absence of a sharing or confiding relationship, grief may become prolonged, with a potential to become pathological.

In a seminal paper published in 1917, Sigmund Freud [1856 – 1939], argued that there are two different responses to loss – ‘Mourning and Melancholia’. His contribution remains the basis for understanding unconscious grief in psychoanalytic thought.

Freud describes mourning as a natural way to respond to losing something or someone significant. It is a transitory process, potentially transforming, albeit painful. In mourning the loss of a loved one, the bereaved gradually withdraws the emotional energy – ‘libido’ – from ‘the lost object’, and the emotional investment is redirected to an ‘alternate object’ or pursuit. Throughout this process the ‘self’ remains intact, allowing the person to heal by integrating the loss into life. In psychology, this process in which a person unconsciously redirects unacceptable or distressing impulses into socially acceptable or constructive activities is called sublimation – a concept introduced by Sigmund Freud and later developed further by his daughter Anna Freud. Instead of expressing the impulse directly, the energy behind it is transformed into something positive or productive – an ‘ego defence’.

On the other hand, Freud described melancholia as a persistent state that stays within the ‘unconscious’ – the repressed aspect of the mind, while the person feels trapped in unresolved emotions which jeopardises their mental and physical well-being.

Shakespeare lost a child, the only son, Hamnet, still in his formative years. The playwright had no option but to leave his family in his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, and return to London after burying his son to continue his work at the playhouse. The significance of the loss to the father would, no doubt, have been profound, as the Greek historian Herodotus fittingly proclaimed, “No one that has lost a child knows what it is to lose a child”.

In the novel, and as depicted in the movie, Agnes [Anne Hathaway] travels to London to meet her husband. Unknown to him she stands with the audience at the Globe Theatre to watch Hamlet, the play, while Shakespeare remains backstage. As O’Farrell poignantly writes in her novel, “Hamlet, here on this stage, is two people, the young man alive, and the father dead. He is both alive and dead. Her husband [Shakespeare] has brought him back to life, in the only way he can”. “She stretches out a hand as if to acknowledge them, as if to feel the air between the three of them, as if to pierce the boundary between audience and players, between real life and play”.

Many literary scholars speculate that Shakespeare in mourning gave voice to his grief through Hamlet, the play’s introspective protagonist, who takes to the stage with melancholic expression. There are others who dispute this view, arguing that Hamlet is a product of his creative genius that transcends any autobiographical explanation. While Hamnet, the novel, and its film adaptation do not assert a direct historical link, they suggest an association between the playwright’s personal loss and his artistic creation. The notion that Shakespeare sublimated his grief into creating the iconic stage work remains suggestive, yet unprovable, but reveals an important ‘therapeutic strategy’ [sublimation] in dealing with loss. Nevertheless, through Hamlet, he gives enduring expression to a universal human condition – grief – that resonates across time.

Moreover, from an aesthetic point of view, a work of art can truly be called Art – whether encountered on the page, the screen, or the stage – when it invites reflection or evokes emotion. The thread that runs through the novel, the movie and the play tend to reinforce that notion.

By Dr. Siri Galhenage, Psychiatrist [Retd]
sirigalhenage@gmail.com