Our Tigers won their first ever Test match against the West Indies. Just one request to the media – do not run huge headlines with extra large multi coloured fonts. Report objectively.
   It was a second string West Indies team! Tigers’ losing a lot of the matches in the past was unacceptable and unforgivable and it would have been the same had they lost to the ‘first class Test team’ of the West Indies. Anyway, Congrats to the Tigers – but don’t spoil it!
   Syed
   Old DOHS, Dhaka

The US Independence Day on July 4 is also an occasion to debunk some myths about America.  Americans say that their founding fathers fought a War of Independence against Britain because they thought ‘taxation without representation is tyranny.’ This is absolutely incorrect. The Stamp Duty of 1765, to defray some costs that Britian incurred for colonial defence, was never collected and later revoked and all 13 colonies had their own local legislatures.
   It may be recalled when on April 12, 1770, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, some Americans, who called themselves Sons of Liberty, were not happy. In most urban areas of America, obscure political hacks such as Sam Adams of Boston had achieved public renown for the first time in their lives by denouncing the threat of British tyranny from the moment of the Stamp act. No new dish of outrage from Britain meant lean days or bad home-cooking. The stature of politicians whose popularity depended upon British tyranny diminished inexorably.
   Then in 1773, Parliament passed a bill with American implications. In the course of regulating the affairs of the East India Company, the House of Commons made some provisions that made British tea cheaper and therefore, competitive with that smuggled into the colonies from Holland. Sam Adams and others interpreted cheap tea as the means to seduce the Sons of Liberty into subjugation. They saw in it a British design to undermine American liberty. Adams and his followers decided to ‘venture upon a desperate remedy’ to prevent the tea from being landed. On Dec. 16, 1773, 150 Sons of Liberty disguised as Indians boarded three ships in Boston harbour and ‘in a very little time,’ according to Sam Adams, ‘every one of the teas was immersed in the bay, without the least injury to private property.’
   Of course, the East India Company regarded their tea as private property of some value. In fact, by their accounting, 10,000 pound worth of private property had been wantonly and publicly destroyed, leading to a chain of events which ultimately triggered a full scale war. However, if Britain ignored Sam Adams and his ‘Boston Tea Party’ and did not impose martial law in Boston, Adams and his followers would have again lost their standing and like Canada, America would have evolved peacefully as an independent nation within the Commonwealth.
   Mahmood Elahi
   Ottawa, Canada

The glitch about the generation and distribution of power is nothing new in Bangladesh as the power sector is very much a part of the sick state of affairs where things like system losses and many other unfair practices are the names of the game. Of late we hear about wider participation of the private sector in generating power even though that may prove to be even costlier. As a matter of fact, power generation and distribution are the fundamentals of development of a country and therefore too important to be left primarily in the private hands.
   It is not understood as to why the policymakers rather avowedly shun the possibility of getting cheaper sources of energy. In these days of technology, when the countries like India, Pakistan, and many other countries of Asia are inclined to make more and more nuclear power plants to get cheaper electricity, there is no reason for us to slumber upon the matter any more. Like Pakistan, we may also approach China for necessary technological assistance. Our scientists and engineers are doing outstanding jobs in the advanced countries and they can do the same here also, provided they are given the proper impressions and incentives. All we need is a genuine vow and a vision and again these are dismally missing nowadays in Bangladesh.
   HA
   Dhaka