Devin Hewage

Former radio guy, now glorified strawberry salesman.

All views expressed here are personal & retweets are not endorsements.

[Verité Research @VeriteResearch]

The @WHO recommends tax on a cigarette to be at 75% of price .

Sri Lanka currently stands at 66.8%.

The gap is worth Rs. 17.3 billion in foregone revenue this year alone.

That's 2.4 times the cost of paying maternity leave benefits in the private sector. 1.3 times the country's nutrition budget. 1.2 times the disaster management ministry's allocation.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

The lack of news on Gaza isn’t because the genocide is over.

It’s because Israel slaughtered the journalists and Western media pretends there’s a ceasefire.

[Yolani Fernando @yolanifernando]

This does feel very convenient for LPBOA to have these allegations against SLTB. Hope someone without a vested interest can look into these claims. Because it just looks like a special interest group delegitimising a reform that will hurt them. The usual story in Lanka.

[Daniel Alphonsus @danielalphonsus]

If you want to read @ExaminerLK and can’t afford to, the Samaraweera’s are donating a hundred subscriptions in @MangalaLK’s memory. Sign-up link 👇

[Ethics Eye @EthicsEye]

LGBTQIA+ identity is often highlighted in stories about harm but rarely in positive or everyday contexts. Over time, this selective visibility can create a misleading association between identity and negative events. Where identity is relevant, report it accurately, with context.

[courtneybonneauimages @cbonneauimages]

In case anyone is confused about what this is:

This illegal Israeli occupation map includes the sea, coincidentally where Lebanon’s gas and oil fields are.

This is and always has been a land and resources grab.

[Read Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) @JPHilllllll]

Inconceivably evil.

[Asela Waidyalankara @aselawaid]

Flagrant PDPA violations continue as DPA implementation delays persist. ⬇️

(Source: Reddit - r/srilanka)

[Umesh Moramudali @UmeshMoramudali]

Aswasuma is a good scheme. It has issues in selection criteria, data collection etc and those should be fixed. But a good social protection scheme should exist to protect the poor and vulnerable during a crisis. Increase of such allowance is the correct thing to do.

[Estelle Vasudevan @Estelle_Vasude1]

Everybody has plenty to say about corruption and misuse of resources, until there's a fuel shortage and you know someone who knows someone who can get you more than your quota of fuel 😉

[Namini Wijedasa @nimilamalee]

The world is seriously preparing for a fuel shortage (regardless of whether or not it happens). But apart from a gentle "use less" message, it's business as usual in #SriLanka. No shame in issuing a stronger message. It's not a political defeat.

[The Examiner @ExaminerLK]

Issue #18: the case for low-rises in Colombo + low-quality coal 🧵

[Philippe Lazzarini @UNLazzarini]

Contrary to reports in the media, the Israeli Government does not own or have rights to the property that houses @UNRWA's Sheikh Jarrah compound in East Jerusalem.

The Israeli Government's claims are false & illegal. There has never been a transfer of property.

UNRWA has leased the land from the Government of Jordan since 1952. It is now being seized in blatant breach of international law.

The International Court of Justice & @UN General Assembly have determined that Israel's presence in East Jerusalem is illegal & must end as rapidly as possible.

Israel has no sovereign rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory & the application of its laws there is unlawful.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Here we go, the rightwing media now laying the ground work for an attack on Mexico.

This is what manufacturing consent looks like.

[Ben Crew @BenjaminCrew1]

Guy who is friends with the protagonists of a Final Destination movie but not directly involved in the plot: "That's right, boss, my 8th funeral this month. He fell into the sea lion enclosure at the zoo after being hit by a runaway ice cream cart. Yes, I know I used all my PTO."

[John B. Holbein @JohnHolbein1]

These authors wanted to know whether people who were wrongly convicted—but later exonerated—face discrimination in hiring.

So they ran an experiment.

They sent 16,000 job applications to entry-level jobs on @indeed across five major U.S. metro areas.

They randomized whether applicants had:
-No criminal record
-A guilty conviction
-A wrongful conviction, but later exonerated via DNA

Then they tracked employer callbacks and interview requests.

They found that:

Applicants who were wrongly convicted received significantly fewer callbacks than applicants with no criminal record.

Wrongly convicted applicants were treated no better than guilty applicants.

This penalty held even when applicants explicitly stated they were exonerated by DNA evidence.

Bottom line:
Being innocent doesn’t protect you from labor-market discrimination once you’ve been convicted.

As the authors put it:
“Our findings demonstrate that people who are wrongly convicted and exonerated face discrimination when attempting to secure employment.”

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

The "marketing genius" was not the person who called it a blockade.

The marketing genius was the one who convinced you to call a 63-year economic siege an "embargo" and pretend it is normal trade.

"Cuba trades with 160 countries" sounds impressive until you ask two simple questions:

Under what conditions?

And at what cost?

Cuba can technically trade with many countries.

But every bank, insurer, and shipping company in that chain knows that if they touch Cuba in the wrong way, Washington can fine them billions, cut their access to the dollar, or blacklist them.

That is not a free market.

That is a gun under the table.

When the biggest financial system on earth tells the world "you are free to trade with Cuba, but if you do, you might lose access to us," that is not an embargo in the polite textbook sense.

That is an extraterritorial blockade enforced through banks instead of battleships.

Even your own numbers betray the story.

Yes, the U.S. sells food to Cuba.

But on what terms?

Cash up front.

No credit.

No normal financing.

No ability to sell freely into the U.S. market in return.

So Cuba is forced to buy limited food from the same country that banned it from using the dollar system, throttled its shipping, scared off investors, and blocked it from international loans.

Then people like you hold up that coerced, one-way dependence as proof that there is no blockade.

If I forbid you from having a bank account, threaten anyone who lends to you, fine anyone who hires you, and then sell you groceries only if you pay in cash at my store, I do not get to say:

"See? He shops at many places. No one is blocking him."

The word "blockade" for Cuba is not a trick.

It is the lived reality of a small island that has to route every transaction through a maze of fear built in Washington.

You can quote trade stats all day.

They do not change the basic fact:

When one country claims the right to punish the entire world for trading normally with you, that is not an embargo.

That is a blockade with a better publicist.

[Human Rights Watch @hrw]

The US has reached a grim milestone — over 100 killings from strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.

These are extrajudicial killings, plain and simple.