A summary list of links, in no particular order, that I consult regularly and recommend for a variety of reasons. Hope you find something that interests you.
- Venerable UK daily The Guardian remains one of my basic ‘go to’s for daily news and views. No apologies offered – a home product of which to be proud – well a bit, anyway.
www.guardian.co.uk - Ex-UN news agency Irin News describes itself as ‘focusing on humanitarian stories in regions that are often forgotten, under-reported, misunderstood or ignored’. Very useful.
www.irinnews.org - UN website supplying global information and analysis to humanitarian organizations. Like Irin News, has a strong focus on Africa and Asia.
www.reliefweb.org - New York Review of Books. Premier US bi-weekly that’s always got more in it than you’ll ever manage to read. (Their website helps by limiting content available to non-subscribers). Reviews, essays, polemics and more. Essential reading.
www.nyrb.com - Conciliation Resources is an established UK-based NGO focused on supporting – and pioneering – practical alterna-tives to the violent resolution of conflicts around the world. Also thinks about what it’s doing and learning, as eviden-ced in some stimulating publications.
www.c-r.org - Pioneering Toronto-based foundation I first encountered when researching my paper on comparative approaches to minority participation and representation in democratic politics. The Maytree Foundation supports and documents best practices in the field of poverty and inequality reduction.
www.maytree.com - The Arab Network for the Study of Democracy’s site provides mostly insider analytical coverage of developments in the Arab region – in Arabic and, thankfully, in English.
www.ademocracy.com - These days I don’t generally follow South African developments as much as I used to. But if I want a considered take on what’s happening, The Mail & Guardian remains a good place to at least start.
www.mg.co.za - Published in Chennai, for me the Indian bi-weekly Frontline – sister publication to the daily The Hindu – really came into its own when I was researching and writing my first Sri Lanka tome. It rapidly became an essential reference point, as anyone who peruses the book’s footnotes will realize! Sadly (but perhaps inevitably) they’ve now introduced a paywall, but prices are still sufficiently low to make it worth considering taking out a subscription.
www.frontline.in - Forgive the plug for my own publishers. That not unimportant matter apart, Hurst also happen to oversee an amazing, and diverse, output of new, often critically acclaimed, books. Have a look at the latest catalogue, available on the website, and you’ll see what I mean.
www.hurstpublishers.com - I’ve been subscribing to the UK-based monthly Prospect ever since it first appeared in the mid-1990s. Hard to put a finger on exactly why, but probably to do with the fact that the most of its output is at the very least interesting, and at best a genuine perspective shifter. What does it cover? Here’s one summary: ‘British, European, and US politics, social issues, art, literature, cinema, science, the media, history, philosophy, and psychology’. In other words quite a lot.
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk - Now we get to the Sri Lankan links. Of a welter of online dailies, blogs etc. this is one I would pick out, chiefly on account of the fact that it both conducts a fair amount of investigative journalism – something that was both indispensable and potentially dangerous during the Rajapaksa era – and serves as a forum for serious, albeit frequently highly partisan, debate and discussion.
www.colombotelegraph.com - Over the years the business-orientated DailyFT has established itself as a leading forum of, often wide-ranging analysis and commentary – they publish my stuff from time to time so they can’t be that bad.
www.ft.lk - The editor of this epynonymously-titled blog, one of the grand old men of Sri Lankan journalism, has spent a large part of his working life in exile in Canada. His blog does an excellent job of picking out and reproducing some of the most interesting material on Sri Lankan affairs appearing in a wide range of sources, not all of them from the island itself.
www.dbsjeyaraj.com - Last but not least, a resounding round of trumpet blasts for Songlines, a monthly world music mag previously edited by an old friend. Not that that’s the reason for including it. If you’re interested in what’s going on in roots and traditional music around the globe – and fancy receiving a CD containing a selection of the choicest cuts from the latest releases – then this is the one for you. (It certainly is for me).
www.songlines.co.uk