Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Other institutions should do the same; governments should boycott her country, Myanmar. I was in the vanguard of those denouncing Aung San Sui Kyi, the Nobel Peace Laureate, for her complicity in Myanmar’s genocide against the Rohingyas. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find any Western commentator who did so publicly before I did here:… Read more.
Government forces and militant Buddhists have persecuted Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar for years. So it’s hardly surprising that fleeing Rohingyas have now created a humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh. This rivals the notorious crisis Syrian refugees created in Europe. The first thing Rohingya villagers fleeing Myanmar notice when they get to Bangladesh, apart from the stench… Read more.
It seems the whole world is rubbernecking the “once-in-a-lifetime” floods that have tens of thousands of Texans fleeing their homes to seek temporary shelter in nearby venues. But it seems the whole world is turning a blind eye to the day-to-day atrocities that have tens of thousands of Rohingyas fleeing their homes to seek permanent… Read more.
Last month, Myanmar (aka Burma) took a very symbolic step along its long and garrisoned road towards democracy. That’s when members of its first democratically elected government took their seats in parliament. Burma embarked upon a democratic era on Monday as a new parliament sat for the first time, with democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi finally… Read more.
The only meaningful step President Thein Sein has taken towards democracy was to release Suu Kyi in 2010 from nearly 15 years of house arrest. But he has since co-opted this former ‘democracy icon’ into his political establishment – as leader of the loyal (i.e., powerless) opposition in parliament. And nothing demonstrates the extent to… Read more.
