Slashdot Mirror
Bloggers Who Risked All In Burma
An anonymous reader sends us to the UK's TimesOnline for a story about dissident Burmese bloggers, who, with the Internet shut down in the country, are no longer posting live stories. Some of them are on the run and fearing for their lives. "Internet geeks share a common style, and Ko Latt and his four friends would not be out of place in cyber cafes across the world. They have the skinny arms and the long hair, the dark T-shirts and the jokey nicknames. But few such figures have ever taken the risks that they have in the past few weeks, or achieved so much in a noble and dangerous cause. Since last month Ko Latt, 28, his friends Arca, Eye, Sun and Superman, and scores of others like them have been the third pillar of Burma's Saffron Revolution."
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
Indeed. Eerily ironic, no?
This travesty in Burma is a good chance for all of us living in luxury to get a little much-needed perspective on what real censorship looks like.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Have the usual suspects, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and Google, been turning over information about these people? Remember this as you help put "intelligence" into the internet there at home. There is no free speech without anonymity. When push comes to shove, tyrants murder people like you and me.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Some people talk about civil liberties while others risk their lives for them.
Commendable, and I wish them well.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
While debates go on about the balance between security and freedom, this helps put things into perspective.
This is what real repression and censorship looks like. And there are countries standing behind Myanmar preventing economic pressure to be brought to bear.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Burma falls within China's sphere of influence. China was supposedly preaching restraint to Burma, but in the shadow of the 1989 Tianamen Massacre of China it beggars belief that they'd really do this. Only way to force China to act against Burma and North Korea is to Threaten to Boycott the Beijing Olympics.
It'd leave egg all over the Chinese Governments Face. This is the only thing they are scared of.
Each day that passes I am reminded the disgusting state of our society. Thank God for the internet and its ability to deliver raw information. I turn on the TV and all I see is useless reality TV portraying the lives of rich kids and their "complex" love lives or news about Britney Spears. Mean while, stories about potentially thousands of protesters being killed go barely mentioned. Being killed for wanting the very thing the most powerful government in the world allegedly spent the last 4 years fighting for! Where is the outrage? Where is the day after day coverage the way we saw Ana Nicole Smith's death be covered? Why does our society care more about some washed up singer losing custody of her kids than thousands of peaceful anonymous demonstrators getting killed?
[alk]
Could you put Your Life on the line for an idea? I like to believe that I could, but if it really came down to hitting submit, or seeing my lady, family, etc again, would I hesitate? Would I do it? God, I hope I never have to find out. I can't explain how much thinking about people dealing with this makes me want to help them. I won't insult you by saying I salute you, it is not nearly enough..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Having just perused the comments on the poll, I would like to propose a deliberately-designed Slashdot meme to honor IT workers or aficionados whose work puts them in direct, physical danger. It probably wouldn't save any lives, but it might be a way to express solidarity with those whose work makes a real difference. Even symbolic gestures take on importance if despots and dictators know that the whole world really is watching.
I don't have any ideas beyond this in mind, but if ever there was a cauldron of collaborative creativity, it's the comments on Slashdot.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Oppose the censorship that is inflicted upon us NOW so we will not have to face a situation similar to their's TOMORROW.
Bitch loudly and fight for even the smallest of your Freedoms because there ARE people who want to take them away from you.
You can't have a decent revolution without at least one fax with a line to the outside world. The internet is just the next logical step.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Did you not know?
Look at how tightly any images of dead soldiers, soldier coffins, body bags, etc are restricted. If that's not real and clear censorship imposed by the government, then what is? Or do some people believe that censorship happens only when the police/army come knocking on your door because of something you said?
So you're advocating a "mess with other people's affairs" approach if it falls in your "sphere of influence" and you "don't like (tm)" the situation there?
Frankly, I'd prefer a China that doesn't (unilaterally) mess with other people's affairs, especially not militarily as certain other ambitious countries seem to love to do.
This is not about supporting the military junta. The point is that regime change when brought from within (once it succeeds) is simply far more stable than regime change involving foreign powers. The last century has taught us this lesson time and again.
So what is your great plan anyway? Would you like to have China march in, kick out the baddies and secure the country? And then what? Somehow build a political infrastructure out of nothing? Plant some democracy seeds here and there and let the country flourish?
Sorry, if my post sounds aggressive; but I get kind of pissed off when I see people spouting almost the same rhetoric like on the run-up to the Iraq war, oblivious of the history and culture of that country and thus leading to the mayhem Iraq is in right now - with dozens of people still dying violently every single day, a destroyed infrastructure, a destroyed society and not a ray of light on the horizon after more than four years of war.
I'd support a downfall of that evil regime just as well, but it can only succeed if it comes from within like e.g. French Revolution (which eventually succeeded and inspired all the other European countries to democratize too). It can even work without the people going overboard as Gandhi has shown.
The Athenians were the ones who stood for democracy! Spartans were more similar to what we would nowadays call a fascist state. They thought themselves as superior to other humans including other Greeks, thus unlike Athenians they had no problem enslaving fellow countrymen. The Spartans centered their culture around strength and unity. The Athenians differed from them in that they did not see their people as superior, but their society, emphasizing philosophy and democratic principles.
Eventually Athenian democracy triumphed over the Spartan warrior society; ironically only to be subdued by (very un-democratic) Alexander the Great.
You might want to read up on history, why not here for example. Interesting, that so many people like to equate the US to the ancient Spartans - somewhat telling.
As opposed to the peaceful and harmless corporations, who only kill on the quiet? Any concentration of power, whether public or private, needs to be carefully watched. Thomas Jefferson warned us about this, as did James Madison, Adam Smith, and Thomas Paine.
And Dwight Eisenhower.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Ask the families - if you can find one who is willing to go along with whatever death fetish you have in mind.
The reason generally photography is not allowed is out of respect for the families, who are allowed to do as they wish once the body has been brought back. There was for example an award winning photojournaism column in the Rocky Mountain News some time ago that showed a weeping widow draped over the husbands coffin.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"They have the skinny arms and the long hair, the dark T-shirts and the jokey nicknames. But few such figures have ever taken the risks that they have in the past few weeks, or achieved so much in a noble and dangerous cause."
I could just read this is "but few _persons_ have ever taken the risk..." because unfortunately that's always been true throughout history (and I'm not saying I would do any better).
But I actually think the author wants to convey the feeling that somehow skinny, long-haired youngsters that like to sit behind a computer are not hero material. So what do heroes look like? The perfectly groomed playboys we know from US cinema?
Gimme a break. History again shows us that most "heroes" are just people like you and me that "just do what they had to do" because they felt it was the only right option (and most probably didn't even think there _were_ any options to choose from).