Please don't exoticise me! ;-) Instead, here are other pictures plucked off the Internet, dating to 2007, from Marina Beach in Madras:
http://kevinclogstoun.blogspot.com/2007/05/marina-beach-chennai-india_28.html http://kevinclogstoun.blogspot.com/2007/05/marina-beach-chennai-india_1618.html http://kevinclogstoun.blogspot.com/2007/05/marina-beach-chennai-india_1554.html http://kevinclogstoun.blogspot.com/2007/05/marina-beach-chennai-india_8104.html http://kevinclogstoun.blogspot.com/2007/05/marina-beach-chennai-india_4716.html
To you and me, that might seem like people enjoying themselves, happy and free. But that would be because we are exoticising them. In truth, these are the faces of people pining (but not for a better outcome in terms of health, mortality, literacy, freedom from Western -- IMF, WB, etc -- diktats and so on), for better swimwear. ;-)
All of the above is written in jest, aimed only at Doug, but without malice. I know very well that he has no intention to trivialise the concerns of other people, as clothing choices. My only beef with him is the natural implication of the kind of analysis he chooses (which is kind of what I caricature above).
So, Michael S, I have been reading your responses to Michael Pollak, but I am not sure I understand your take on the change of voting pattern in Kordestan. If the data in the Chatham House report is accurate, it makes the results highly suspicious absent ground- shifting events, it seems to me.
I am way, way over quota and am grateful to Doug for the indulgence. I will take some punches from Dennis in silence for the next 9 hours.
--ravi