Xinjiang unrest

Last year, Tibetan uprisings in Lhasa. Now, Uighur riots in Xinjiang. Quite obviously, pretending that racial tension doesn't exist isn't working.

The reasons why the Tibetans & Uighurs are angry are obvious: mass migration of Han into ethnic areas & them reaping bulk of benefits from economic development, suppression of culture & religious worship, Han control of political power, massive military presence & discrimination by the majority Han.

Unfortunately, by covering up the resentment and not addressing its root causes in the name of short term stability, the Chinese authorities are simply accumulating more long term hatred.

What the Chinese government should do is quite clear:

1. Get rid of the above root causes fueling Uighur dissatisfaction. When it concerns benefits and local political power, at least give the Uighurs an equal share of it.

2. Allow minorities more political posts with real power, not just symbolic NPC seats.

3. Increase Han understanding and acceptance of Uighur and Tibetan culture and practices. This can be easily done through national campaigns and patriotic education, both which China has much success with.

The future looks grim if we look at the former Soviet Union, which had similar but more brutal policies; these caused the many ethnic conflicts that sprung up right after the Soviet breakup. If the Chinese authorities continue on like this, Tibet and Xinjiang could one day become China's Chechnyas.

Iranian post election blues

The world watches as the election saga drags on in Iran.

If anything, it destroys whatever moral authority that the authorities might claim to have and makes it look something like the Myanmar junta. The authorities could have at least saved their credibility by recounting the votes, but their refusal to recount destroys most of their credibility.

But even then, it is difficult to say who would win even if this was truly an absolutely fair contest. The reformers have the support of the more liberal urbanites, while Ahmadinejad and the conservatives have the backing of the more conservative rural people.

Now the question is, what is Iran going to end up in? There have been 3 possible outcomes for this kind of revolution in the last 50 years:

- Military coup, like what happened in 1979
- A long standing urbanite vs rural tension like what is going on in Thailand
- The regime becomes a Stalinist kind of state.

Neither is going to happen anytime soon, but given another 10-20 years this could well happen.

The presence of a nuclear program, tension with Israel and the US only adds to the complications. The prospect for military conflict looms in the background. Who knows, the regime might even try playing brinkmanship to distract the populace from the political troubles.

How then? Nobody knows for sure. Naturally the international community hopes that someone with better priorities (economy > nukes) comes up, but from the looks of it not anytime soon.

Iranian elections

Now we have Mir Hossan Mousavi, said to be a reformist, vs Ahmadinejad, a ideologist. There are another 2, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezhaei, the ex IRGC chief, but these seem to be minor players.

From a Western and perhaps international standpoint, hopefully Mousavi or Karroubi wins and the ideologist rhetoric, belligerent stand and nuclear weaponeering will be reduced, and the economy will improve. As for China and Russia, its not immediately clear who they would support.

The problem is, nobody knows who is going to be elected, especially if the 2 major contenders, Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, have different power bases. Also, Mousavi and Karroubi don't exactly love the West either, as seen by their track record while in power.

The question of corruption also hangs over the election. With corruption being quite rampant in Iran, its not unlikely that someone's going to try to rig the election too.

Let's also not forget that the supreme leader, Al Khamanei isn't elected and isn't answerable to anyone.

So far, the international community has been shooting itself in the foot by using sanctions which affect everyone and not just the regime. This, in addition with historical hatred going back to colonisation and the Shah, means that Iranian attitudes towards the West may well be hostile.

Will international hopes then be justified that Iran's belligerent stance is going to decrease? Hard to say.

Sri Lanka - after the LTTE

The 26 year war with the LTTE is finally over, after government forces stormed the last strip of land that the LTTE was holding.

With this, Sri Lanka is now back at the square one before the LTTE came into play. It is imperative that this does not turn into another vicious cycle where another LTTE sort of group comes into power and armed conflict rages again.

The ball is now in the Sinhalese court. They have the stop the discrimination against the minority Tamils that started the whole saga half a century back, and the first and easiest way would be ending instituitionalised discrimination - imposing meritocracy would be the best method forward.

If anything, President Mahinda would have to lead the way, and this certainly means a great change from his normally hardline stance.

Hopefully, he can pull it off well. Sri Lankans of all races have suffered tremendously from this unecessary war, and nobody wants it to happen again.

Sri Lanka & the LTTE

Now the Tigers have been pushed back onto a small strip of land. No matter all their advanced weaponry and asymmetric tactics, these are generally useless once an enemy is sufficiently pissed off and determined enough to fight.

It is impossible to get your way all the time, and unfortunately Prabkharan & the LTTE leadership failed to realise that. They could have probably gotten an autonomous state if they had negotiated and /or played the media like nationalist anti-colonialist groups did in the 60s, but of course now all such debate is academic.

Neither is the Sri Lankan government playing their cards that well. They should have allowed the UN into the theatre to provide aid - this would enhance their international legitimacy as well as allow stories of atrocities of the Tigers to find their way into international media, which would disgrace the Tigers & at least disillusion some of their international supporters.

Hopefully, this unnecessary conflict can end soon.

Swine flu

Maybe the Jews and Muslims were right about pigs being unclean. Pigs have been long known as places where viruses can intermingle and 'blend' to produce new mutant strains - and maybe God and Muhammad knew something that we didn't.

Clearly, our farming methods have to improve. Keeping large numbers of living organisms together in overcrowded conditions is ideal for disease transmission; that has happened in just about every pandemic from the Black Death to the Hong Kong flu.

Overpopulation might just well be the other problem.

Swimming

My swimming competition ended yesterday, marking the end of 2 years of trying to swim competitively. As far as I’m concerned, competing is simply a motivation to work smarter and train harder – hoping for medals is unrealistic, having joined at such a late age.

Technique and water confidence aside, the real takeaway is in the life lessons learned. Usually, competitive sport is supposed to inculcate the determination to train and the resourcefulness to train smarter – and I’ve definitely learnt quite a lot in this respect. But as a relative outsider, I see swimming in a rather different way from the others.

Most competitive swimmers that I know started young – in primary school or earlier. Most of them come from relatively well off backgrounds and have extensive parental support – such as being fetched to and fro from trainings, as often as 6 days a week.

While a small percentage are serious and determined – and these tend to be the ones winning the medals – many seem to lack the motivation to train harder or smarter. To them, they have lost the desire to win and training has simply turned into a routine: they just do whatever the coach tells them to do and then go home after that.

At the same time, there are others who didn’t have the opportunity to swim when young who join, even if they have no chance of winning. Usually these people are from poor backgrounds, but on a whole their motivation level is much, much higher than those who started young.

After all, swimming is just another activity that one can do: This pattern of a small group of enthusiasts and the rest just going through the motions or being there for the bragging rights is, after all, common to almost any other activity.

If anything, this pattern challenges the notion that the best way to raise kids is “starting early” by loading them with all manner of stuff: it may actually hurt them by decreasing their “hunger” – essentially the motivation to learn.