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Burma: the gold rush has begun

THE push for democracy in Burma by the West has been going on for just one reason: resources.

Burma has gold, copper, tungsten, timber and oil in abundant quantities. All these years, the political situation and tight economic sanctions have not permitted exploration by Western companies. But now oil companies in the US are straining at the leash and waiting anxiously for the change to fly into Rangoon.

The Americans have already lifted some sanctions on Rangoon even though the only move towards a less rigid form of government has been an election in which the National League for Democracy was allowed to contest 45 of 664 seats.
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Three years on, Sri Lanka still bleeds

A MONTH and two weeks from now, it will be three years since Sri Lanka won its war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, effectively ending the campaign for a separate state for Tamils in Sri Lanka.

But there has been no movement on achieving a political solution to put the minority Tamils at ease. Instead, the triumphalism that has pervaded the country has seen the government act in a manner that can only serve to remind the Tamils that during the days when the Tigers were in the ascendant they were at least not marginalised in the way they are right now.

The Tigers had ensured that the north of the country was more or less completely occupied by Tamils. Now, the army is everywhere in the north and Sinhalese people are being resettled in large numbers to change the population mix. And, to rub it in, there are signs in many places that are only in Sinhala, a language that Tamils, cut off from the rest of the country for decades, cannot even speak.
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Journalism of the very best kind

CHANNEL 4 has done journalism proud, with a follow-up to its documentary on the war in Sri Lanka.

Last year, in June, the television network screened a documentary titled Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields which provided powerful evidence of war crimes by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers during the civil war which ended in May 2009.

The follow-up, titled Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished, screened on the night of March 14 in London; it is available on YouTube and is a powerful reminder that in a day and age when journalism is often referred to as a dying profession, good investigative reports are worth more than their weight in gold.
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And this really has nothing to do with race. Really.

MAJAK Daw is a Sudanese migrant to Australia. People know about him because he is the first African to play Australian rules football. A member of the junior string of the North Melbourne football club — Werribee — Majak’s recruitment resulted in a good deal of positive publicity for the senior club that is not especially well-known for performing well on the field.

North Melbourne last won the AFL senior championship in 1999 when it had in its ranks a man considered the best Australian rules player ever – Wayne Carey. Since then the team has turned in indifferent performances year in and year out.

The degree of publicity Majak received grew even more when he was racially abused during a game in 2011. Newspaper and TV coverage was sympathetic to the young man who has seen his share of war in Sudan before he came to Australia.
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One-day cricket has become just another tamasha

AFTER more than 20 years, I finally went to the stadium to watch a one-day international, between India and Australia. I will never do so again.

In 1989, I watched Pakistan defeat India at Sharjah in a one-day tie; apart from the headache of sitting at ground-level and swallowing copious amounts of dust, the cricket was watchable. There were no distractions in the area I sat.

But the entire thing has now degenerated into farce. Louts of both sexes who seem intent on cramming themselves full of lager constitute a sizeable part of the crowd. There were Indians in large numbers, all equally loutish, and outdoing even the Nazis in jingoism.
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Not embarrassed? India’s excuses don’t really convince anyone

PREDICTABLY, India has been whitewashed by Australia in the four-Test series. This is the second such loss abroad in the space of six months; in between, India managed to beat the West Indies at home 1-0, with two Tests drawn. In that three-Test series, India was twice outscored in the first innings by what cannot be regarded as anything other than a weak Windies outfit.

After the loss, the Indian team has been at pains to emphasise that it is not “embarrassed” by being hammered in this manner. It boasts two of the three highest run-scorers in Test cricket in its ranks, but, no, it is not embarrassed. It was the top Test nation as recently as May last year, but falling to a rebuilding Australian team — which lost a Test to New Zealand before India arrived — is not embarrassing.
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India gets a thrashing in Australia

THE Indian cricket team is licking its wounds after having suffered a third straight loss in the Test series against Australia, the latest inside three days. On the surface, there appears to be more to the plight of the Indian team than just its lack of ability.

The players do not appear to be united and one wonders if a change of captain will make a difference. That fact can be tested in Adelaide as the captain, M.S. Dhoni, has been suspended for slow over-rates and Virender Sehwag, who is said to be at loggerheads with Dhoni, will be taking over.
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Some myths about the Australia-India Test series

EVER since the Indian cricket team was two months away from its current tour of Australia, the media and the PR people have been boosting it as being based on some kind of “traditional” rivalry. This is just one of the many myths that was being spread about this tour in an attempt to draw crowds.

There is no such traditional rivalry. Australian teams have been historically reluctant to tour India, because of the conditions. Indian teams have been similarly reluctant to tour Australia because of the one-sided umpiring. (A good example of this was seen in 1999 when Sachin Tendulkar was given out lbw in the second innings for a duck after a ball from Glenn McGrath hit him on the helmet!

The umpire was none other than the corpulent Darryl Hair, the same man who tried to extort money from the ICC after he was embroiled in a row after making Pakistan forfeit a Test in England.)
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Australian cricket continues on its old, merry path

EARLIER this year, after England sealed a resounding 3-1 win in the Ashes Test series, Australian cricket authorities, apparently all shaken up, launched an inquiry to find out why the team had been beaten, and so comprehensively too.

This was the third time that Tasmania’s Ricky Ponting had led the national team to a loss in the Ashes series; Ponting lost twice in England, in 2005 and 2009. The Ashes is the series that matters most to Australia as England is historically the enemy.

When the inquiry reported back and recommended sweeping changes, there was hope that things would look different this summer. Of course, the captain had to go – of that there was little doubt. But despite a lot of talk, much promise of change, one finds that with the summer cricket season nearly a third over, things are pretty much the same.
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Why I don’t feel threatened by racist Americans

[Before you read this, go here. Read the post, and the comments. Then come back and you will understand why this item has this particular heading.]

IN TIMES of economic gloom, the people in any country tend to blame the outsider for the malaise that is eating into their vitals, spoiling the good times and generally ensuring that an air of gloom hangs over proceedings.

When things turn particularly bad, people tend to even turn to lynching the outsider. In the US of A, 46 million people are living below the poverty line (nearly 15 per cent of the population if one goes by the last census figure of a population of 307,006,550) and the economy is shot to pieces. In this climate, the foreigner becomes an easy target.
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