When Daniel Lak said he was leaving Kathmandu for Miami, I opened a bottle of Kingfisher at this fortuitous turn of events. Finally, I could see an end to endless negativism and fashionable America-bashing or some diatribe on globalisation. I hoped he would quietly fade away to oblivion in Miami. Instead, I awoke in horror to yet another one of Lak's incoherent columns about the oppressed even as he kicks back in the Miami sun. The story is the same: America bad, everyone else good (particularly the "oppressed others"); donors bad, beer good (I can't disagree here); security forces bad, Maoists semi-bad. And, oh, here is Lak in Churchillian form: "The solution to democracy is more democracy." Must I drive down to Miami and have a beer with this man to straighten him out?

P Rana,
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