sbarrkum – Brown Pundits

Sri Kumari my Late Partner

YouTube link

This is a video of a Adivasi dance. I watch it often. One of my partners (late) looks like the tall woman on the left. The video

My partner Kumari of about 10 years passed before she got to 50. Diabetic complications

Her name Dona Chitrangani Sri Kumari
Sri Kumari another name for Kali.
Name was given because her parents made a vow at Muneshwaram Kovil to Kali get a child.

Her parents were killed by the LTTE when she was about 14 (1990 or so). When Kumari and I came here to this village, it was only then Kumari realized her parents had been killed by the LTTE nearby

Kumari was tall for a Sri Lankan woman, about 5’7″

Multi Racial Multi Cultural Family in Ceylon

Banner Image: Photo from around 1940.
Standing far left: My mother Peace born 1926 (same age as Queen Elizabeth II) Standing one but Last with Afro, Estelle. Father a Judge from Barbados via England (African Heritage). Mother Eurasian
Seated. In Saree Miss Gnana (History Teacher, Tamil), Next to her: Miss White, Eurasian

This is about the maternal side of the family. My grandparents were one of the first inter racial marriage in the Deep South. It is also about how a children of an inter racial marriage do not belong and forge an independence of thinking (my mother and myself as examples). Even more so growing up in a cosmopolitan segment of Sri Lankan society

Let us start from the beginning. My Grandmothers mother was an Irish Nanny. Hearsay and rumor confirmed by my DNA tests. The Irish Nanny had my grandmother with my GreatGrandFather and left Ceylon. My GreatGrandfather did not have children so my grandmother was adopted by her father. Inherited all the wealth which was considerable. GreatGrandFathers family (Tillekeratnes) had been Administrators under Dutch and British times and were Sinhalese in the Deep South. Possibly were Anglicans during British times.

Tillekeratne Family of Matara.
From Golden Book of India and Ceylon (1900) Roper Lethbridge

My Grandmother married a Jaffna Tamil (from the North), a surveyor posted to Galle in the Deep South. My grandmother built a house in Galle so that it was convenient for work. Her ancestral home was even more deeper in the South in Matara.

Galle Town proper was very small, probably about 25,000 pre WW2. Still small about 150,000 now (2025), However, Galle was very Cosmopolitan because of the Harbor. It was the Main Harbor till the Colombo breakwater was built. My mother (and her sisters) attended a Catholic Convent, which was cosmopolitan. (a school photo and some names attached).

My mother and I dont really identify with any community in Sr Lanka. However, very Sri Lankan Nationalist. My mother never spoke about her opinions. Many in Galle thought they were Eurasians but they were not part of the Eurasian (Burgher) community. Burghers were a Fun crowd, parties dancing and Drinking (including women). (I would have liked to be part of that community) My mothers family were quite austere, their idea of nice time was probably singing hymns and big meal afterward. A lot of imported stuff from what I recall as a 6 year old. Edam Cheese, hams, sausage, puddings and homemade ice cream in churn. We inherited the ice cream churn after my grandfather died. Eventually rusted and was no longer usable.

Old fashioned Ice Cream Churn.

Because we dont really “belong” to any community we dont have a need to behave as society demands. Mother would dress like a street sweeper, without footwear even to extent of going to nearby shops. On the flip side she would go to Colombo to get her dresses made. Wore platform shoes, high heels, pastel light shade dresses and sarees. (There were some in her wardrobe when we were children).

Mother in White Dress (left in image) on a Trip to Yala National when she was a teacher. Probably around 1952

Mother in Batticola just after marriage. Parents lived there for 5 years. I was conceived in Batticola just before they left. Born in my grandmothers house in Galle.

Another big issue was she traveled alone, without chaperones since an older teenager. I think she just couldn’t deal with the slow pace of Sri Lankans. One gets the impression that she was some kind dress up person. Anything but, workaholic like her father and mother. Mothers father died at 84 getting ready to go to work surveying. Most Stories told by Katrina Hamy who was about my mothers age. I think mother liked her more than her sisters, some of whom were big time gossips. Apparently even as a young teenager would come home and help in cleaning, toilets, drains washing up. Hated cooking but was a reluctant good cook when we were children. We did not have “help” as my mother didnt approve of “help”

Anecdote told by Katrna Hamy
Mother was the youngest in the family. Somewhere in her teens she took it upon herself to supervise some coconut properties that belonged to my Grandmother. She would get up at 4:00am and take the first train (5am night Mail). She was supposed to go with a chaperone. Mother does not wait for anyone. Once she is ready she leaves. The walk to the train station (about a mile) is dark and lonely. As she was walking there was a man following her. Mother probably heard the footsteps and turned and walked back to the man and he just ran. Probably thought my mother was Mohini a female demon who dresses in white.

Mother family
Seated: Sanford BeeBee (Jaffna Tamil), 2nd from Right Lilian Edith Tillekeratne (Half Sinhalese, Half Irish. note: No Jewellery). The two westerners are Mr and Mrs Graves. Missionaries
Seated on Ground. Peace BeeBee (my mother), next to her Katrina Hamy

Parents Wedding Photo Galle, 1953
LR: Ms Anthin (Swedish Missionaries daughter), Sunethra neighbor and family friend, Sinhalese, AC Barr-Kumarakulasinghe (Jaffna Tamil), Peace Beebee (mother), Wilson Allegacone (fathers nephew, Tamil), Lal Liyanage (mothers nephew, Sinhalese)

Grandmothers House in Galle

*For those who think this is boast. End of the line for my male Paternal line (about two males who carry the surname in Malaysia). The same for my grandmothers fathers line. The last in the male line was a classmate. As the Buddha says everything is Impermanent

Marvin Gaye

Roman Palestine and the Crusades

I am quite familiar with History of England and Europe since even before my teens. That was because my father had beautifully illustrated school History text books from England. Plus many historical novels eg Walter Scotts The Talisman which is set in Palestine during the Crusades. I read them all many times over as nothing better to do as no TV then in SL till 1977.

Let us start with the historical Jewish Diaspora. Historical as verified from sources other than the Bible. The Romans controlled the middle east around 1 BC. (Think Julius Caesar and Cleopatra an Egyptian Queen of Greek Origin)

To quote
Asia Minor after the Macedonian Wars (214–148 B.C.). In 63 B.C. The defeat of the Carthaginians gave Rome almost complete control of the Mediterranean. Romans conquered most of Asia Minor in 188 B.C., Syria and Palestine in 64 and 63 B.C.

In 70 C.E. (a few years after the purported passing of Jesus Christ the Romans Destroyed the Judaism Temple in Jerusalem. Apparently this ended the ability to make animal sacrifices to God (Yahweh). Plus the Roman persecution of the Jews and Judaism led to their disperal from Palestine, i.e. the Diaspora

Note: There is no evidence of a Kingdom or Country called Israel in any of the Historical or Pre-historical records of the Babylonians and Assyrians. There was region called Palestine (Palaistinê, Παλαιστῑ́νη) since at least since the Greek times. The word Israel became considered “Fact” when Europe became Christian and the Bible an accepted source of fact given by the Divine. The Jews became notable and rich because they were money lenders. Christians (and Muslims) are forbidden to lend money on interest (usury). Think Merchant of Venice and Shylock the Jew

Continue reading Roman Palestine and the Crusades

Netanyahu Depicts Grim Economic Future for Israel, Need to Become an Autarky, “Super Sparta” Due to Isolation; Are There More Meanings?

A must read.
Excerpts

Larry Wilkerson, who both regularly reads Israel press and has many contact, has repeatedly said Israel has taken such serious economic and societal damage that he predicts it will no longer exist in ten years.

The fact that the next day, a UN commission of inquiry released a report finding that Israel has engaged in four of five genocidal activities as defined by relevant law puts even more pressure on the ethnosupremacist state.

Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Palantir, IBM and HP are named in a groundbreaking UN report for their role in automating apartheid and accelerating genocide.

Tech companies and weapons manufacturers are the most complicit enablers of Israel’s economy. Escalate BDS pressure against them and send a clear message: No tech for apartheid and genocide.

GOLDMAN SACHS YOU CAN’T HIDE!

Goldman Sachs is the biggest holder of Israeli bonds and a key investor in the weapons companies making the bombs Israel drops on Gaza. Continue reading Netanyahu Depicts Grim Economic Future for Israel, Need to Become an Autarky, “Super Sparta” Due to Isolation; Are There More Meanings?

Nepal Newar and Sinhala Quasi-Historical Myths

Now that Nepal is in the news, a post on similar mythical origins of Sri Lankans and the Newar community in Nepal. The post was a result of my Uni Batch mate Sunil Koswatte’s link to a Journal article “The Horse-King and the Merchant Siṃhala, (Z006) By Naomi Appleton.

The Journal article by Naomi Appleton says that
Abstract of the Abstract

The Siṃhala story continues this narrative to include the chief merchant, Siṃhala, being followed home by a demoness, who tries to get him back before seducing and eating the king.
i)This paper examines political and quasi-historical narrative of the invasion of Sri Lanka by the Sinhalese;
ii)Newar Traders warning of the dangers of travelling to Tibet.

Note: The Nepal Newars are the 8th largest ethnic group in Nepal and about 4.6% of the population

Continue reading Nepal Newar and Sinhala Quasi-Historical Myths

Why does the West get Immigrants and not Indigenous

A post as a result of discussion I had with a classmate, now an Aussie for about 30 years

Classmate: As for Australia and need for immigrants…. insufficient labor supply for the growing economy!

My reply::Plenty of Labor, the Indigenous Aborigines.
Why are they (First Aussies) not being educated, Racism ??

Classmate: Barr…you are clearly unaware of the reality..there is no simple solution to the barriers faced by Aborigines in integrating into the Australian economy.

My long reply, the crux of this Post
There are parallels of why Immigrants are preferred over Aus Aborigines and why the Brits got Indentured South Indian Labor for the Estates in Ceylon (Same as why Immigrants are preferred over African Americans in US too)

Indenture Estate Labor in Ceylon was essentially undocumented, i.e. not given any legal status (Residency ) or even Birth not recorded, The reason was simple, residency or similar would have meant Ceylon Labor Laws would have been applicable. Ceylon Labor Laws were pretty decent and reasonable for those times. So it was easier to control undocumented South Indian Labor. Sinhalese were notorious for NOT being docile and prone to Litigation. Just keep in mind only a select few Ceylonese got a decent education. Universal literacy (and Life Expectancy) only happened after Independence. Tamil were more prone to violent crime, but among themselves. Oppressed rarely fight the oppressor in this caste the high caste Tamils.

Continue reading Why does the West get Immigrants and not Indigenous

How US Unemployment Numbers are Created

Many of us take numbers like Unemployment as Gods Truth.

First the last paragraphs of a CNN piece on Unemployment numbers
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/01/business/trump-job-report-number-fire

For example, the BLS posted a notice in June stating it stopped collecting data for its Consumer Price Index in three cities (Lincoln, Nebraska; Buffalo, New York; and Provo, Utah) and increased “imputations” for certain items (a statistical technique that, when boiled down to very rough terms, essentially means more educated guesses).

That worried Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. In testimony before Congress in June, Powell said he believed the BLS data to be accurate, but he was upset about what could become a trend.

“I wouldn’t say that I’m concerned about the data today, although there has been a very mild degradation of the scope of the surveys,” Powell said at the time, in response to a question about survey data quality. “But I would say the direction of travel is something I’m concerned about.”

How many actually know that these numbers are model generated. At BLS (US Bureau of Labor Statistics) they use a version of the Birth and Death model. This is a model initially built to model Population Dynamics and other related Biological Processes (i). It is also used in Finance to Build Credit Curves which are used to Price Credit Default Swaps (CDS)

As I have worked a little bit on Credit Curves and CDS 15-20 years ago ((2005-2010) can add a little more detail. One samples the number of companies created, credit rating down grades, out of business etc. Then the Birth and Death model is used to get a broader picture and the Credit Curves created by numerical and statistical models.

There are other methods too, such as using the Prices of CDS at different maturities (end date). Then using numerical models to generate the forward curve (i.e. the credit regime in the next few years)

So now we realize that what we think is an absolute value of a Unemployment or Bond Price is really a kind of guesstimate laundered through numerical models. What about the Bond Price or a Stock Price someone pays. Is that an absolute VALUE. Again the issue is that what was the mental or other analysis that went into that Price offer. Could it have been erroneous. eg. A dear friend and classmate participated in the Sri Lankan mob protests (Aragalaya) in 2022. One of his reasons was that the economy fell because of “unprecedented reductions of taxes resulting loss of revenue of 30%”. Erroneous thinking as it was 7% reduction in VAT taxes on transactions for goods and servicing. The reduction excluded VAT on Financial Services. It is an arithmetic impossibility to have 7% reduction in taxes to cause loss of revenue by 30%.

Anyway back to US Unemployment Model and excerpts from description

Difficulty in capturing information from business birth and death units is not unique to the CES program; virtually all current business surveys face these limitations. CES adjusts for these limitations explicitly, using a statistical modeling technique in conjunction with the sample for estimating employment for private-sector industries. Without the net birth–death model-based adjustment, the CES nonfarm payroll employment estimates would be considerably less accurate.

You can read the steps in using data and creating the Unemployment figures here.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/ces/calculation.htm#business-births-and-deaths

The BIG TAKE home, be it Unemployment Numbers or Bond Price, these are GUESSTIMATES laundered thru numerical and statistical models. Worse these are not indicative at inflexion times of economic change. i.e. Economic growth in the process of change to Economic Downturn or vice versa

Reference
(i) Novozhilov, A 2006: Biological applications of the theory of birth-and-death processes
In this review, we discuss applications of the theory of birth-and-death processes to problems in biology, primarily, those of evolutionary genomics. The mathematical principles of the theory of these processes are briefly described. Birth-and-death processes, with some straightforward additions such as innovation, are a simple, natural and formal framework for modeling a vast variety of biological processes such as population dynamics, speciation, genome evolution, including growth of paralogous gene families and horizontal gene transfer and somatic evolution of cancers

Satyajit Das: Middle East Trajectories – Implications for the Region and Energy Markets

This excerpts of the above titled article. Full article at
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/06/satyajit-das-middle-east-trajectories-implications-for-the-region-and-energy-markets.html

A little intro

When I first got hired to a small Wall Street startup I had low opinion of Traders and the like. Had to change my mind in a month or two. It was impressive to see how successful Traders could reduce different information from politics to medicine into one common Denominator: MONEY. This was the holy grail that Enron was pursuing, to have different markets, eg Water and Weather Futures to Credit Defauls Swaps all in one Porrfolio and integrated Pricing and Risk Management. Got wined and dined by Enron but was woefully lacking in knowledge.

Anyway was never interested in Finance etc, so was somewhat clueless. The Traders gave me a grounding, but to get a more formal background worked my way thru about 30% of Risk Management and Financial Derivatives: A Guide to the Mathematics by Satyajit Das. Been impressed by him ever since. So when he writes I read very carefully

Later was very disillusioned, Wall Street as it was full of schemes to scam the middle classes and poor out of their money directly or indirectly. The best example being Sub Prime Mortgages which led to Financial Crash in 2008 (Quite hypocritical of me because I made some decent moolah as well, even though a very small minion)
——————-

Some excerpts
Complacent financial markets and policymakers are playing out a theatre of the absurd based on little detail and propaganda– as the old trope states truth is the first casualty of war.

Caution is warranted. There is no certainty that Iran’s nuclear capabilities have been destroyed or significantly degraded. The fate of Iran’s highly enriched Uranium is unknown. Iran, which has extensive nuclear expertise despite the targeted killings of its scientists, has not indicated abandonment of its programs.

In effect, Iran is being forced to choose between becoming Libya (where Colonel Gaddafi gave up his nuclear ambition and was removed then murdered) or North Korea.

Its campaign against the abandoned Palestinians and attacks on Lebanon and Syria have not ceased. The Iranian action was in part to distract the world’s attention from its continuing genocidal atrocities. These will come back into focus.

Despite its undoubted military capabilities, the Islamic Republic will have noted that the Jewish state is not invulnerable to its missiles and needed extensive US support and intervention in the “12-day war”.

Oil Matters
Western focus on the Middle East is because of Israel, to expiate its own Holocaust guilt, and energy

Currently the world consumes around 100 million barrels of oil daily (around 50 percent for transport and 20 percent for petrochemicals). While energy intensity (usually measured as the tonnes of oil needed to create $1,000 of GDP) has declined from 0.12 in 1975 to 0.05 in 2022, no significant decline in demand is forecast due to limited alternatives for heavy transportation and as a chemical feedstock. Natural gas is around 23 percent of the world’s total energy consumption and provides a quarter of global electricity.

Saudi Arabia’s objectives remain unchanged: generate revenue at necessary levels, maintain its market share as low prices make US shale oil and gas uncompetitive and accelerate use of a potentially stranded resource.

The ruling dynasties can be displaced at the whim of the West. Given the volatile foreign policies of the US and its allies including their short-lived and disastrous backing of the ill-fated Arab Spring, this possibility is non-trivial. As Hosni Mubarak discovered, US support for its ‘allies’ exists until it doesn’t. Subsequently, the Muslim Brotherhood found that Western belief in democracy was highly selective.

In a curious twist which would have been unwelcome in Israel, following the announcement of the ceasefire, President Trump announced that China would be allowed to buy oil from Iran, reversing a policy of sanctioning Chinese refineries for these purchases.

While they may not acknowledge the reality, failure to act strategically now undermines the ruling dynasties of the Gulf states and Jordan. They become little more than rich puppets who serve their American, Israeli and allied masters and whose policies are chosen for them. Their standing and wealth is dependent on a dwindling finite resource with an uncertain future.

For many, MAGA has morphed into MIGA – Make Israel Great Again. The US appears to have been coerced into intervening on behalf of the Jewish state. One X denizen tweeted that “America so deindustrialized we don’t even manufacture our own consent”.

Conflict, most worthwhile military strategists agree, is like opening a door into a dark room where no one knows what is hidden in the darkness. The only certainty is that a new most likely tragic and violent chapter in the history of the region is under way.

The US, Israel and its allies would do well to remember Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue which records Athens’ conquest of Melos. The Melians unsuccessfully resisted suffering horrific losses. Athens believed that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”. They believed that they could act with impunity because their power was complete. Less than three years later Athens suffered a military disaster in Sicily from which they never recovered.

US Economics and Theory of Collapse

A Theory of Collapse (After a US Economic Synopsis)

Note: Italicized comments are from another Brown Pundits contributor

Unless the US falls hopelessly behind in tech, they are “built” to retain a perpetual competitive edge.

I don’t think you’ve looked closely enough at the economic fundamentals. Off the top of my head:

National Debt: $30+ trillion
Interest on Debt: $1 trillion
Budget Deficit (2024): $1.8 trillion
Trade Deficit: $140.5 billion (heavy reliance on imports)
Defense Budget: $1 trillion

Moody’s recently downgraded US debt from Aaa to Aa1, citing worsening risk indicators. This downgrade was hard to avoid—US sovereign CDS spreads are now wider than those of China and Greece, suggesting higher default risk. Continue reading US Economics and Theory of Collapse