Prabhakaran - Things Will Get Worse Before They Get Even Worse

"Velupillai Prabhakaran Shot Dead!"

I was at the canteen getting a little caffeine when the TV caught my eye, as of course it did others'. Prabhakaran dead? That's as big an act as any, in this little stage we call south Asia. He'd been a pest - nah, too mild, a freakin' plague, a one-man all-star show of death and destruction for too many years. Far too many. Been a long time since I'd wished he was dead, since first I read an account of how children were made into soldiers to support his guerrilla army.

He's dead, now.

Funny how few problems that solves.

Y'see, Prabhakaran was never the problem. He was the symptom.

Yeah, he was responsible for a large number of deaths. Yeah, he had against him every sort of charge imaginable to man.

Doesn't change the facts.

I sometimes wonder why this corner of the world is so divided, so f**king ossified into molds cast centuries ago by dead religions -- but of course that's true for every other part of the world, too. Look at... hell, look anywhere. We as a species have achieved so much that's it's become necessary for us to kill ourselves at an astounding rate, I think; since nobody else has the power to, these days. Maybe this is how the 'saurs felt, who can say?

Sri Lanka has been a cesspit for racial conflicts for a long time. The Tamils have been subjugated, discriminated against. And, as always (look at history), idiocy had triumphed.

Tamil Eelam. I wonder what Tamil for death is.

So the LTTE is dead. No doubt the Sri Lankan govt. will offer some platitudes about rescuing the Tamils from themselves (they're already calling the biggest hostage rescue operation in history, didn't you hear? 173,000 hostages rescued at last count!).

Yeah, we hear. We hear all right.

Had I any faith left, I would've hoped that they'd actually dosomething to lessen the burdens on the average Lankan Tamil. But of course I don't, and of course they won't. We'll get a lot of refugees (again), and the little leaders will keep on screaming, "Eelam, Eelam' (listening, Viko?).

Because, when everything's said and done, a vote is a vote is a vote.

And people call me cynic.