At what they call the Mecca of cricket, the crowds treat Sri Lankans with some ambivalence. "It was the salad that did it,'' they said about the failure of the Sri Lankan side in one of the county matches in the run up to the test series.
But, this is only cricket, and the salad days are over anyway in Europe. In France, the socialists lost out to Jean Marie Le Pen, who basically wants to chase all foreigners out. Maybe not quite physically; but he wants to do the moral equivalent of it.

In the Dutch elections too, the rightists gained a crucial advantage, even though the election there is said to have been skewed by the assassination of a far right candidate.

Not that one has got to do with another, but the brown-skins are treated to polite applause at Lords, while they are on the verge of getting chased out by the rabid right in France and certain other European enclaves. There is also the news that more US warships are refuelling every day at the Colombo harbour.

All this while the Norwegians are being joined by more Scandinavians - the Danes this time - to implement what's called a ceasefire agreement in the NorthEast. As if all this was not enough, CNN's Zain Vergee wants to know why the Sri Lankan President is raising the issue of the conscription of child soldiers "at this time, when there is an attempt to make peace with the LTTE.'' (!) It is the same CNN which hours later makes a big show of children's rights in the program Diplomatic License which highlights the recent UN conference on child rights, in which children were being made a grand show of by being made participants at a UN conference.
They say the world has changed since September 11, and that the mood is towards a global no-nonsense conservative consensus against terrorism and the dark 'axis of evil'. But, what all of it is doing in the end is making it even more difficult for those beige-suited British to cheer for the Sri Lankans at Lords.

This is how it happens. Europe is turning embarrassingly rightward, as a direct result of September 11. The current time in Europe is somewhat like that conservative teething period when the Americans were embarrassed about Ronald Reagan in the 80s. But, though Reagan was an embarrassment in post civil-rights America, at the end of Jimmy Carter and his brand of pacifism, America had come a full circle and was ready to be rightfully embarrassed by Ronald Reagan.
In the same way, Europe now feels the need to be embarrassed by those such as Le Pen. It is correct the Jaques Chirac has converted his obvious electoral victory over Le Pen into a case of triumphalsim. ( "We trounced the extremists.'') But of course, everyone knows the real upshot of the election was that Le Pen the racist Asian-hater became a front-runner. If Reagan could become President of America, after a few false starts, it won't be long perhaps before Le Pen captures power in France.

What it all amounts to of course is that the so called far-right wants Europe to be more overtly racist. Though psychologically Europe is still racist to the core, that sort of patronizing cricket-at-Lords kind of racism is to be put aside for some real wog-bashing give 'em hell kind of racism.'

This is of course the primitive collective gut reaction of the Western powers to September 11. September 11, seen through a racist prism means that there is going to be vast Caucasian consensus in which the people of colour are going to be seen as the "upstart other'' who need to be shown their place.

But in that almost staccato preamble to this piece, there was also, remember, the mention of US warships in Colombo which may have added to the confusion of that admittedly meandering beginning of this article. The US warships somehow fit into this jigsaw, because they represent the more sophisticated reaction of the big powers to the September 11 attack. This reaction is to outmanoeuver the terrorists, instead of taking it out on everybody who is not of the white race.

No matter how one cuts it then, there is very little that can be done to get away from the confusion that is now being sown in the West, post September 11. Even though it is an entirely different matter, the Norwegians are here in Sri Lanka of course, and their intervention is not of the Le Pen variety (crudely racist) or of the new American variety which is to fight terrorism no matter who the ally is.

In this way the Norwegians are an anachronism, but it seems we Sri Lankans are fated to be caught up with this anachronism. In a manner of speaking, the Norwegians are like those Establishment at Lords types who politely clap at the Sri Lankans. There was at least one news item (internationally) which said that the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers have "cut a deal about child soldiers in LTTE ranks.'' The Norwegians will politely clap at that deal the way they applaud a leg-glance or a hook shot at Lords. ( "These Sri Lankans are all very wristy players,'' they say.)

If Le Pen for instance had his way in France and the rest of Europe, they would not have even played cricket with Sri Lankans at Lords. The Norwegians are not like that - they play cricket with us - even if it is not cricket. September 11 may have changed some things but old paradigms die hard. Some revile all non-Caucasians for spawning terrorism, some want to ally with anybody, Caucasian or otherwise, who wants to fight it. But, as for the Norwegians they cut deals the old fashioned way. They want to teach Sri Lankans how to play ball with Prabhakaran - and who cares if it is not cricket?

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