kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
So sanctions and some kind of mass walk-in from Thailand then.
Suu Kyi to face trial over that american twat
- Thread starter isitme
- Start date
A few ideas have now been mentioned. Another one that comes to mind is to send in some skilled assassins into the country disguised as tourists and let them do their work. Economic hitmen do their job without too much trouble, it would be like a kind of opposite role for the assassin.
I know many burmese were very happy to see the outside world taking an interest last year when the monks were being killed and when they yet again attempted a peaceful overthrow of the regime. Something similar could be set up in many nations amongst concerned citizens, but without the catalyst of overt oppression. I'm sure technology could be used in ways that would baffle the idiots in charge.
Look, humanity is very creative when it needs to be, and highly skilled at doing things it's motivated to do. It's just that most people really don't know just how bad a life the burmese people suffer from.
Fuck off you sarcastic cunt. Pester me on other threads. Leave this one alone, or can't you see my reasons for inviting you to do this??
krtek a houby
Saoirse don Phalaistín!
"What it does say though is that humans have shown themselves to have extremely limited ability in looking after their brothers and sisters at the hands of oppressors, unless those oppressors have something the global police want. Then action is easy.
It's a dark stain on our species, but there again, there's evidence of that wherever you look in this largely mad world"
It's a dark stain on our species, but there again, there's evidence of that wherever you look in this largely mad world"
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
I'm just summarising your post for confirmation that's what you're saying, nothing more, which is what I asked in the first place. And I'll post wherever I please, quite frankly.
FWIW, a decapitation strike of the kind you proposed earlier in the thread and here:
Wouldn't work unless there's absolutely no succession planning in the Burmese military. You'd probably have an interregnum period where no one was actually 'in charge' which would provide a short window for change, but that's it.
Dillinger4
Es gibt Zeit
Fela:
You advocate reform of the UN in order to solve the problem of Burma. You have said a lot of things about the US/uk and what you see as 'the west' as the main problem, but would you agree that it is China/India and other states that are playing a massive part sustaining the dictatorship in Burma?
How would you solve that?
For what its worth, I don't think simply killing the generals would solve the problems in Burma. There are quite a few of them, and a whole military structure underneath them. I think there are a lot of cultural issues in Burma that make it much easier for the dictatorship to exist.
I did a lot of campaign sort of stuff for Burma last year when it all happened. One of the pictures of the monks marching down the street, with the people of Rangoon surrounding them, holding hands to create a protective human chain around them, is one of the most inspriational I have seen.
But I don't know how I feel about millitary intervention, especially if it was solely based on western values of opening up the country for 'western liberal democracy' and commercialization. We need to leave behind all those colonial ideas. It is in the interests of China for things to remain as they are, as Burma remains under their influence as long as the generals are in control. Any change of government means a change of allegiance. Same goes for India. At the moment they have almost exclusive access to Burma.
Knowing all the things I know about Burma (and I am no expert), I tend to take the view of what I imagine to be the Burmese people, of a non-violent passive resistance. It has not worked so far, and maybe it wont without some kind of intervention. But I think I would rather see it happen like this than to turn Burma into a warzone, creating a vacuum of power, with all the factionalism that would come with that, for it to turn into just another westernised country. Whatever happens, it needs to be a legal transition based on the will of the people themselves.
As Ghandi said 'Tyrants always fall, always'. I don't know if I have anything more than that. I don't have any big international solutions. I don't know at all.
You advocate reform of the UN in order to solve the problem of Burma. You have said a lot of things about the US/uk and what you see as 'the west' as the main problem, but would you agree that it is China/India and other states that are playing a massive part sustaining the dictatorship in Burma?
How would you solve that?
For what its worth, I don't think simply killing the generals would solve the problems in Burma. There are quite a few of them, and a whole military structure underneath them. I think there are a lot of cultural issues in Burma that make it much easier for the dictatorship to exist.
I did a lot of campaign sort of stuff for Burma last year when it all happened. One of the pictures of the monks marching down the street, with the people of Rangoon surrounding them, holding hands to create a protective human chain around them, is one of the most inspriational I have seen.
But I don't know how I feel about millitary intervention, especially if it was solely based on western values of opening up the country for 'western liberal democracy' and commercialization. We need to leave behind all those colonial ideas. It is in the interests of China for things to remain as they are, as Burma remains under their influence as long as the generals are in control. Any change of government means a change of allegiance. Same goes for India. At the moment they have almost exclusive access to Burma.
Knowing all the things I know about Burma (and I am no expert), I tend to take the view of what I imagine to be the Burmese people, of a non-violent passive resistance. It has not worked so far, and maybe it wont without some kind of intervention. But I think I would rather see it happen like this than to turn Burma into a warzone, creating a vacuum of power, with all the factionalism that would come with that, for it to turn into just another westernised country. Whatever happens, it needs to be a legal transition based on the will of the people themselves.
As Ghandi said 'Tyrants always fall, always'. I don't know if I have anything more than that. I don't have any big international solutions. I don't know at all.
purves grundy
ambient clown remix
There is a legitimate government-in-waiting, elected in 1990. Almost two decades without power certainly entails a loss of legitimacy to which most in the National League for Democracy are aware of - fresh elections would be necessary v quickly. They're also aware that the military will have to be involved to at least some degree for the foreseeable future to make a government work. And there are significant players within the military top brass who would be willing to do this, to jump ship, if the circumstances were right.
To be fair, I don't think an arms embargo - possibly the most effective and realistic ways of initiating relatively hands-off change within the country imo - would require a world government. Just (and yeah, it's a big 'just') massive lobbying of the the main suppliers of weapons such as China, Russia and Israel (yes, despite the fervent US opposition to the junta, Israel have regular high level contact with the Bumrese military).
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
You don't need advanced weapons to repress a population. Farm tools and the will to use them indiscriminately is more than enough.
purves grundy
ambient clown remix
The problem is not passivity. The opposition are anything but passive. Effective non-violent resistance is never passive, but it does need to be organised. The junta have been very effective in stopping all routes for this organisation.
Besides, there are brutal ethnic wars going on in many parts of the country, non-passive in the extreme, and in all of them the Burmese military has the ethnic resistance groups on the run.
Dillinger4
Es gibt Zeit
I always forget about the ethnic stuff. One of the groups being severely repressed are the karens (?), right?
Mate, i'm not really advocating anything in particular here. I got caught up replying to people between the hypothetical and the possible, and mentioned some possibilities, but not my particular ideas of solving the problems (I have said more than once that military intervention is not my answer, and it couldn't be, i can't stand the concept).
I have said on this thread and for many years now the only solution of any practical merit lies within burma, but if the burmese people can perceive moral support from outside their country, at least it can help with their psyche in solving their problems. And that can only be helped along by some decent international journos doing their groundwork. I mentioned two names earlier.
I will always go on about US and UK, for their crimes on the world stage, but often i will in fact blame the five member InSecurity Council, which as you know includes china, for many of the world's problems. I also blame thailand in this context over burma.
Your point about killing the generals is a very valid one, and underlines the complexity of the issues going on in burma, which cannot easily be unravelled through using western thought processes.
As for the colonial ideas being left behind, i'd guess that the previous colonialists, ie britain, helped cause the mentality in the current crop of generals who have run the country since independence. Independence from britain yes, but most ex-colonial countries never really get their proper independence from our country (or the other colonialists) - legacies through education, law, culture, and power structures, for example often live on, at the expense of the common people.
I have frequently shared your 'i don't know at all' reaction. I agree though, the solution, a proper one, should really be found internally, but it won't hurt if western and non-western citizens - NOT politicians - can give their moral support.
I often think of thailand as being similar in culture and everyday living, except the people here were lucky enough to have never been colonised by a western power, and therefore do not have these all-powerful 'guardians' of the nation state. I think some of them would like to be though! The art of compromise has often saved the day here. I teach more than a few burmese, and they really are quite similar to the thais in many ways.
So, as usual, i prefer the bottom-up solution, rather than the top-down power-heavy one, where power replaces power.
It's just that when you see firsthand the shit that goes on, it can take an emotional toll. It did many years ago when i first started to learn of such things in the world, but you soon learn to disattach yourself from such emotional reactions or the pent up anger and angst at the injustices going on would make one quite ill really.
The karen also live in thailand. And china i think.
If i recall, the groups are encouraged to be at war with each other.
It is the ethnic stuff though that sends so many burmese spilling over the border into thailand. Where i live there is a significant number of burmese who are employed on low rates of pay, unsurprisingly.
Politicians are the ones with the power though - some politicians working hard to put pressure on Burma is probably going to get a lot more done than 100 million people joining 'Support the Burmese People' Facebook groups or whatever.
Do you mean the generals? That argument kind of falls apart when you consider that Thailand was ruled by dodgy military governments for much of the 20th century and the Thai military even today isn't exactly squeamish about seizing power when it feels like it.
Longest civil war in the world. They lost their permanent bases in the early 90s and have since been fighting a lot of defensive battles protecting IDP camps inside Eastern burma and up to and including the Thai border region.
There have also been cross-border rocket attacks into UN-affiliated refugee camps in Thailand (such as Mae La in Tak state).
The armed Karen (the Karen National Union being the ethnic nationalist political movement, and the armed wing the KNLA) were split along religious lines, with a disaffected Buddhist faction coalescing into the DBKA (Democratic Buddhist Karen Army). The latter now act as a proxy force for the SPDC in return for logging (and jade?) concessions.
purves grundy
ambient clown remix
One of them, yeah, and the fighting there is as interminable as it is brutal. There were something like two dozen civil wars going on in Burma at one time, with the Burma army fighting Karen, Mons, Rakhines, Wa, Shan, Kachin, Pa-O and numerous other peoples from the 125-odd ethnicities that make up the non-Bamar population.
Many of the ethnic armies still exist but have signed ceasefires in return for large shares in concessions for those at the top, as kropotkin points out re the DKBA. Some of the most significant ceasefire agreements are now in danger of unravelling, as the military tries to persuade them into a new role as border force guards under Burmese command.
Now if the ethnic armies could unite...
For much of that century i wasn't alive, so your point is invalid if it's in reply to what you quoted me on. I"m talking about the last 20 years when i've been here, and my knowledge of what more recently had preceded my coming here. I can't possibly be held to account for not talking about more historical times. And what i said remains the case. There was no argument with what i said, nor can there be now that i've further described the context, so there is nothing to fall apart.
The thai military seized power two times in my time here, so that was in 1991 and a couple of years ago or so. Although two times too many, for a nation with a real history of coups, just two in two decades shows improvement to me for the nation's health, compared the times you seem to be referring to.
In a functioning democracy, if enough citizens make it apparent to their MP, to the government, to the powers that be, then action is taken by the leaders in order to help secure their next vote. I don't understand why you make the assumption that these 100 million people should be doing anything with facebook.
I was envisaging a more standard kind of action that a democracy encourages. The people go to the politicians and make them do what they want. It happens. It's happened a couple of times in my time. Their votes depend on us. But we hardly ever speak. But we can...
Doesn't your talking about Burma's colonial history and Thailand's lack thereof count as talking about more historical times?
I don't think you can say it's all the fault of the colonial era that Burma's got nationalistic strongmen in charge when Thailand's thrown up plenty of the same times - Surit Thanarat in particular, the military man who worked with Bhumibol to elevate the king to his current god-like status, would have been right at home among Burma's current leadership.
After some strong diplomatic efforts, a US senator has won the release of...the Mormon twat whose fault all this is!
I think they should have let Burma keep the fucker, seven years hard labor might have gotten some sense into him.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/15/senator.visits.myanmar/
I think they should have let Burma keep the fucker, seven years hard labor might have gotten some sense into him.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/15/senator.visits.myanmar/
purves grundy
ambient clown remix
The backroom goings-on to get him out are intriguing. The UN Sec Gen has to beg and plead to get a meeting with ASSK and Than Shwe, this senator seemed to have no probs. The visit had been planned for a while though.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16569
Anyway, yet another foreign 'activist' gets off lightly. There was that Tory twat Mawdsley around 2000 (though at least he served more than a year of his sentence), some leaflet droppers a couple of years back, and plenty of others who visit the NLD office while on holiday. Unless you're so deluded you think dropping in on ASSK is a good idea, the worst that happens is that you get kicked out of the country, or barred from reentry.
Not saying they shouldn't do these things, but they always fail to realise that the Burmese who might be implicated in any way suffer incalculably worse consequences. It simply isn't the way to get results here.
purves grundy
ambient clown remix
The general consensus of people I've talked to this morning is that it's all been wrapped up so neatly, in terms of ASSK's detention and Yettaw's almost instant release, that it has to be one very well orchestrated conspiracy.
And although I'm no Jazzz, it does lead me to wonder...
And although I'm no Jazzz, it does lead me to wonder...
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
Have to agree. I can't see why they put out an effort for that idiot. He should have been left to take the consequences of his actions.
Hello YW!
But are you really agreeing with yossarian?? Seven years hard labour for a man who swims across a lake to see one of the worlds finest bravest women? That's agreeing with the despotic regime's view of punishment and ethics!!
If seven years hard labour is to be given to anyone, give it to the heartless bastards that have hijacked the country. And then triple it.
I feel sure the regime made him do it anyway.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
I'm not certain the regime made him do it, mainly because there are weirdos out there who actually are as stupid and naive as this guy. Sad, but true. Let's face it the regime would have found another excuse (or none at all) to do what they wanted.
Stupidity of that calibre should be a crime. Seven years is a bit harsh, but they should have at least made him sweat it a little before they hauled his dumb ass home.
But, yes, I'd agree that the regime is the ultimate bad guy here.
purves grundy
ambient clown remix
The junta don't want him to sweat it because he's done them a massive favour; for the Americans, he's an American citizen and they have to be seen to do their utmost. It's also led to something resembling a rapprochement in Burma-US relations - coincidence? What know you of Senator Webb?
How wittingly Yettaw did his thing is something that I hope will become clearer in the coming weeks but it appears that, as thought, the Burmese authorities knew full well what was going on:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/213129
Sadly the interview doesn't reveal much more than that. We shall see...
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
He didn't learn a fucking thing. Can we send him back until he does? 
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/08/27/yettaw.myanmar.suu.kyi/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/08/27/yettaw.myanmar.suu.kyi/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn
teamB_macro
New Member
This whole thing baffles me to no end. It's funny, sad, unbelievable, weird all at one time.
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