Michael Colin Cooke

Michael Colin Cooke is a retired public servant and trade union activist who has a lifelong interest in South Asian history, politics and culture. He has served as an election monitor in Sri Lanka. He has also penned when the occasion demanded a number of articles and film reviews.

September 9, 2026

Editor's Choice/Geopolitics

Why Tamil Nadu Keeps Killing Its Own Projects

The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government has announced the cancellation of a series of projects initiated by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which governed Tamil Nadu from 2021 to 2026. Among them

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI’s Mathematical Breakthrough Triggers a Battle Over Credit and Ethics

OpenAI has claimed to have solved one of the most celebrated problems in the history of mathematics: the “existence and smoothness” problem of the Navier–Stokes equations, one of seven Millennium Problems identified by the Clay Mathematics Institute, each carrying a

September 9, 2026

Anthropic Researcher Resigns, Warning AI Race Could ‘Gamble With Our Lives’

Artificial Intelligence

A young researcher at Anthropic, Jacob Coxon, has resigned from the company, warning that the race to develop increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems is

Germany’s Far-Right Surge Tests, But Does Not Upend, Democracy

Geopolitics

The German Embassy in Colombo has sought to clarify Germany’s political situation following news of a surge for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD)

Parallels in Conflicts: The facts on the ground — Part 4

March 12, 2024

Sri Lanka Guardian Essays

Click here to read Part 3 of this series This deflection flies in the face of the facts. As Reuters reported in the first six weeks of the war, hospital morgues sent

Sri Lanka, Palatines Parallels: What is missing from the discourse — Part 3

March 4, 2024

Human Rights

In the Manichean universe of the Zionists and the Lankan state their actions are beyond reproach, but the actions of the oppressed are unjust and immoral. They make no allowance for the

The fantasy of the colonist defence — Part 2

February 25, 2024

Columns

Click here to read Part 01 of this series Faced with a growing body of evidence of mass killings of civilians, the Lankan and the Israeli governments, as mentioned have fallen back

Parallel Struggles: Sri Lanka & Palestine — Part 1

February 19, 2024

Columns/Human Rights

Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the wealth of others – the empires and their native overseers. In colonial

The Lesson Not Learnt: From “Operation Shock and Awe” to AUKUS

April 8, 2023

Australia/Diplomacy/India/United Kingdom/United States

The United States of America (US) must be one of the most incompetent, brutal and arrogant imperial powers in history. For Its hubris and gradual decline, the only counterpart is the Spanish