monks kickin @ss and takin names!

Yeah, following it here quietly as well. One wants to hope...

of course the US is noisily against the current regime because they're best buddies w/china (and possibly have vast natural gas reserves just off the coast)

Gotta love convenience. When do we invade?

Yeah, following it here quietly as well. One wants to hope...

-- Ned Raggett, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:00

yeah, me too

"India pledges 150 mln dlr investment in Myanmar as protests swell" - http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g7vegac7tzzHhkO9QHTGJt9Lal2g

wai to go india

not looking good, people :/

http://tracerhand.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/myanmar-crackdown-begins

what i find incredible is that india committed $15 MILLION of investment for offshore gas exploration (some unknown slice of which goes to the junta) - right at the height of the protests

even china has given hints that the junta needs to chill - india has said diddle e. squat

They've learned the lessons of American democracy well (ie, no need to worry about it much elsewhere if the hometown crowd is happy).

apparently india has been nervous for a long time about china's influence in myanmar; china has built naval facilities there that can handle more troops and boats than the entire myanmar army has at its disposal - so india sees "engagement" with the murderers who run the government as necessary, to create a buffer with china.

the junta has grown wary of its almost complete dependence on china (who was the only country to stand with it after the 1988 coup) so is trying to balance that by getting investment from russia, india and singapore; china's recent noises about democracy and restraint may have convinced them that these balancing moves were wise

even if all these countries suspended investment and enforced sanctions, though, there's still the enormous drug crop, controlled by the junta, naturally

would the thread started mind if a mod put Burma / Myanmar in the title. It seems kind of strange not having it there.

Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma. -- GEORGE W. BUSH

"The situation's made Jenny cry for three nights now. Her Buddha's gathering dust. I don't know what to tell her."

"I know. Susan and I just stare at each other over dinner. We're simply lost for words."

"Tyler re-named Jasper, 'Aung San Suu Kyi.'"

"That's a cute name for a lizard."

"Yeah. If it wasn't for the kids, I'd probably set myself on fire."

my latest, including links to some amazing pictures -

http://tracerhand.wordpress.com/2007/09/27/china-russia-refuses-condemn-junta

http://bp0.blogger.com/_63uOqYlI5Kk/RvujwzU0SJI/AAAAAAAAAg0/mnocjYVMdZY/s1600-h/3556.jpg

http://timesonline.typepad.com/times_tokyo_weblog/images/2007/09/24/img_7916.jpg

that thing looks dangerous

it's dangerous to the eternal souls of the military! it's an alms bowl, upside-down - a symbol of the monks' refusal to accept alms from anyone in the military or the families of the military; apparently giving alms to your local buddhist dudes is a requirement for reaching nirvana

i love the "300" sign behind the first guy

"300? fuck it, we got 100,000"

i have a bad feeling about this.

mostly i'm optimistic about india and china being "responsible" but this is some bullshit

responsible for their bottom line is about all they're responsible for

I've heard that the PRC feels like they're in bit of a pickle here, 'cause, though the junta is their client and they want a stable Burma, they don't want any bad press or disruption before their Olympics begin.

yeah the PRC's relationship with burma and the dprk is basically the asian iron curtain. except that last boondoggle in the pacific was so bad for the US we don't even have CIA boots on the ground pretending to help the rebels this time around

they also don't want 100,000 people taking over the government, and if things get too violent towards the monks, that could happen

latest news - nine dead

http://tracerhand.wordpress.com/2007/09/27/nine-dead-yangon

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20070927&t=2&i=1839033&w=&r=2007-09-27T153425Z_01_B588599_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2

Kenji Nagai of APF tries to take photographs as he lies injured after police and military officials fired upon and then charged at protesters in Yangon's city centre September 27, 2007. Kenji, 52, a Japanese photographer, was shot by soldiers as they fired to disperse the crowd. Kenji later died.

fuck

i don't get how china has poured millions of dollars' worth of arms into this country and the military is using bamboo shields and wearing flipflops

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/09/27/world/27myanmar.600.jpg
flip flops don't stay on

I bet the Burmese have mixed emotions about shooting Japanese.

Tracer, Burma is notoriously poor.

"It turns out we read it wrong: All these years it said 'Celibrate.' CELIBRATE!"

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article3001605.ece

A sad but good article from an ex-pat.

i know michael - but china has poured zillions into its "military"

Internet is completely cut off (official explanation: an undersea cable is broken) and the numbers of dead are 10 x what's been said, apparently, according to a Belgian newspaper that quotes an Australian newspaper (but no links yet)

Holy shit, the picture of the Japanese photographer...unreal

There's a warm place in hell for the Burmese military.

i don't get how china has poured millions of dollars' worth of arms into this country and the military is using bamboo shields and wearing flipflops

bamboo shields are all you need if you are just decking unarmed people.

this is not going to end well

bamboo shields are all you need if you are just decking unarmed people.

-- The Real Dirty Vicar, Friday, 28 September 2007 17:19 (Friday, 28 September 2007 17:19)

OTM :(

this is not going to end well

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 28 September 2007 17:23 (Friday, 28 September 2007 17:23)

And yet it started so well...

Because I don't watch television a lot of world events lack the kind of emotional impact for me that they have for many others, so I am not going "OMG they are killing teh monks" as much as some people, though obviously I would rather they did not kill the monks. What I am pondering is why large crowds of unarmed people in the streets can make some regimes (eg Czechoslovakia, the DDR) collapse, while in others they just lead to lots of people being killed and the regime remaining in place. Do you reckon this is down to the nature of the regime, the nature of the society, or something to do with precise tactics by the protestors? I mean, in the DDR the regime gave orders to its security personnel to carry out mass arrests and to start shooting protestors, but the security personnel just gave up. Why are the Burmese military not giving up?

Why are the Burmese military not giving up, even though it is obvious that everyone hates them? That's my question, really.

Czechoslovakia and the DDR had different neighbors, didn't they?.

What I am pondering is why large crowds of unarmed people in the streets can make some regimes (eg Czechoslovakia, the DDR) collapse, while in others they just lead to lots of people being killed and the regime remaining in place.

and in others - the UK, the US, etc. - they just lead to absolutely nothing at all.

a lot of it has to do with the regimes not figuring out how non-violent protest dynamics work. if the general public and the world at large actually SEE non-violent protestors being handled violently, the regime automatically has ceded the moral high ground and is subject to all kinds of pressures both external and internal. The way to defuse non-violent protests and still maintain the status quo is to just take them for granted as a normal function and otherwise ignore them. Non-violent protestors only real effective tactic is to goad their opponent into violence - otherwise the tactics amount to nothing.

(note that western democracies figured this out a long time ago and this is why protests there don't amount to shit. If there's violence, the gov't makes sure to publicly show that its the protestors that instigated it - either by damaging property or by attacking cops, etc. - and that the authorities were therefore just responding appropriately)

SMC - your analysis does not really work. China was able to violently suppress people in full view of everyone, and nothing happened. While in the DDR the cops gave in after barely cracking any heads.

In East Germany, the protesters made a really big deal of NOT goading the authorities into violence, with "No violence" being a consistent slogan all through the heroic phase of the change.

China's kind of a unique animal... One might also note that there were never any actual images of troops shooting people disseminated to the public during Tiananmen Square - that happened under a total media blackout. I certainly never saw any at the time. There was the picture of the guy in front of the tank and that was about the extent of it.

kickin @ss

which is why China can just deny charges about Tianenmen Square with a straight face - there's no "evidence"

x-post

the DDR the cops gave in after barely cracking any heads.

In East Germany, the protesters made a really big deal of NOT goading the authorities into violence, with "No violence" being a consistent slogan all through the heroic phase of the change.

DDR cops knew if they got violent it would only escalate and destabilize the regime further - Russia had its own hands full and could not/would not support a crackdown, the rest of Europe would be up in arms, etc. There were also all sorts of other pressures (economic, primarily) driving the collapse - it wasn't just the result of a bunch of large non-violent protestors marching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LymH0aPenBM

i wouldn't expect china to be meddling here. if they saw the situation becoming something that they wouldn't be able to control, maybe. but the burmese will successfully put down this little thing and get back to business. china will interfere if it looks like there gang will run into trouble.

Don't know why they had to put bad mood music to a horrible scene like that..

either by damaging property or by attacking cops, etc. - and that the authorities were therefore just responding appropriately

What's the famous quote from Louis-Phillippe where he ruefully notes that the Republic had far fewer qualms about gunning down insurgents in Paris than his monarchy had had? I think what you're missing is that in a democracy the government claims legitimacy from the ballot box. They got the most votes from the people who bothered to vote. For most people if the choice is the imperfections and corruptions of democracy or the imperfections and corruptions of anarchy, they'll take the imperfect stability over the threat of mayhem. Unfortunately, taken too far, that impulse creates a huge amount of inertia to overcome where military or other unaccountable governments are concerned.

fair point.

yes perhaps this thread title was ill-considered.

the monks have much less presence now -- their leaders have been arrested and their monasteries have been sacked -- and in the absence of their example the protests are turning uglier; stone-throwing, etc. which is of course a totally understandable reaction to being fired upon, but plays to the junta's strength, the only one it's got

it was althusser who articulated the diff between the repressive state apparatus(es) and the ideological state apparatus(es) -- the latter of which is really effective, because instead of whackin people over the head when they get out of line, you cut off dissident thinking at the root so they never get out of line in the first place. myanmar's "government" is clearly still stuck in old-skool rsa mode -- it is too late to cut off thought at the root

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070928/ap_on_go_ot/myanmar_satellites

stuff like this is unprecedented and should def. help bring pressure to bear on the junta - in a world where everything is under surveillance even gov't repression can't be hidden

"stuff like this is unprecedented and should def. help bring pressure to bear on the junta"

thousands were slaughtered in the 1988 protests. nothing happened. their democratically elected prime minister continues to be held prisoner after 20 years. what will be different now? maybe if they kill enough Japanese journalists something will happen.

http://www.geocities.com/gury4u/suukyi1.jpg

I'm being hopeful about the power of the internet/images

sorry

There were also all sorts of other pressures (economic, primarily) driving the collapse - it wasn't just the result of a bunch of large non-violent protestors marching.

but Burma's economy is wrecked as well. The DDR would not have fallen without the demonstrations, even if it needed the other factors. It might not have fallen as cleanly if the demonstrations had been more violent, as a security apparatus that fears personal extermination is more likely to fight to the end.

I hope to steal a leaf from Tracer Hand by posting on my blog about how regimes fall and then posting a link to it here. gotta pimp my blog.

Yeah, Shakey, in '90 I was hopeful that a fantastically beautiful, remarkably principled, and democratically elected PM would convince the junta to keep its promise and transition to civilian rule, too.

"The White House urged "all civilized nations" to pressure Myanmar's leaders to end the crackdown. "They don't want the world to see what is going on there," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said."

what he failed to add was: "and we don't want people to see it either. we are already too busy ignoring Africa."

hey I've got a great idea, why don't we invade and overthrow the ruling government and impose democratic ref - oh wait

we can't even help the countries we are actively fucking up - er - "helping", so, you know, the u.s. is gonna sit this one out. plus, India and China have the biggest stake in Myanmar and they aren't gonna do anything. it's small stuff to them.

"But analysts said it was unlikely that countries with major investments in Myanmar, such as China and India, would agree to take any punitive measures. The experts also noted that the junta has long ignored criticism of its tough handling of dissidents.

Defiant of international condemnation, the military regime turned its troops loose on demonstrators Wednesday. Although the crackdown raised fears of a repeat of a 1988 democracy uprising that saw some 3,000 protesters slain, the junta appeared relatively restrained so far."

no bigs. whatevs. it's all good.

god this sucks.

pimp it, DV!!

Monks killed in their thousands and being incinerated alive!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/30/wburma530.xml

er... >:-( , obv.

pimp it, DV!!

eh, need to write it first.

Worst pimping ever...