Burma's sad anniversary -- The Economist magazine

http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/asiaview/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11916590


Time dulls the shock a bit, but not much.

As one crazy young person who was trying to set up an interview for me asked "But you weren't there, how did you experience the day itself?"

As if one "has to be there" especially in this day and age of superb communications, and now the citizen journalist, in order to feel anything.

In fact, in the crises inside Burma when I was still there, I knew less because of the news censorship --

Some people in journalism really know nothing, chasing after the present moment, which of course is gone as soon as it is reached.

This young person understood nothing. She thought I was "all over the place" because she didn't realize that what I was trying to do was pull together experiences and lessons from the last twenty years.

Commentary, copyright Kyi May Kaung