polite_gandalf wrote on Apr 23^rd, 2014 at 5:59pm:


This generation born in Burma, perhaps. The last generation born in Bangladesh, following its War of Independence in 1971.

The generation before that born in East Pakistan, following partition in 1947.

And the generation before that born in the British colony of India. Before that, a succession of dynasties and kingdoms going back 2000 years.

Burma, or Myanmar, is equally up for dibs. Burma is a collection of ethnic tribes, held together by the agreements of warlords and various occupiers from the Japs to the British. The current occupiers, the SLORC generals, are existentially held together by various wars with the Shan and Karen peoples, and even the anti-Communist Chinese guerrillas, the Kuomintang.

The SLORC, paradoxically, are now allied with Communist China. Go figure. They were once funded by the CIA to do the exact opposite.

The entire region, from the Salween River in the Golden Triangle to the Indian Eastern frontier, is run by tribes, warlords and a handful of generals. Much of it is lawless. Most of it is inaccessable to tourists. Myanmar is only now opening its borders - its Thai land borders in November, 2013.

There are few patriots in these parts. Hardly anyone gets a passport, and elections are a joke. Religion and ethnicity is all anyone there has.

As some here call them - brown people, rubbish people, the tinted races.

Stop the boats indeed.

Is this reverse dhimmitude? muslims have in the past and do in the present, perpetrate atrocities against non muslims and other muslims they disagree with.

Or perhaps, as in the case of muslims who committed the most inhumane, cruelest barbarities possible against innocent men, women and children during the Armenian Genocide, it's all just an unfortunate clash of civilizations, as our local muslim described it, with not a peep out of his apologists and supporters.