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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."
From what I hear, countries such as China are preventing sanctions. The other option is to invade.
Except for saying "pretty please don't supress your own people."
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
In Repressive Burma, its not just your connection that dies.
;).
Anyway, most of the soldiers doing the killing are probably the usual "just following orders" type, you have to find a way to switch their mode to: "WTF am I doing, I'm being the bad guy now!".
Given the similarity in thinking of most of these sorts, if you find the right trigger I bet they'd all switch about the same time. The big bad bosses will still have their cadre of loyalists, but their power would be greatly diminished.
Just make sure there's a decent transition plan otherwise you'd be swapping for another bad one
So why isn't the media screaming bloody murder about that fact itself? The answer is obvious. If people cared, we would see attention focused on the issue, instead of being relegated to a blurb on page 12. Spice Girls concerts are considered to be more important than the lives of thousands of people living in a 3rd world shithole-that's the honest ethical viewpoint of our society.
Moron. Your American government has supported many brutal dictators over the years, and currently support an Iraqi regime which is actively killing Sunnis in cold blood. What Myanmar does is their own business. We only trade with them. We don't practice imperialism like you American punks.
China could do that, but it would be tantamount to economic suicide for them. You see, we are China's biggest importer. If we stop buying Chinese goods because we can't afford to anymore, they'd be stuck with trillions of dollars worth of worthless trinkets. Not to mention, the yuan is heavily pegged to the US dollar, so as falls the USD, so falls the CY. They could stop the hemorrhaging by pegging the yuan to the Euro, or by floating it on the FOREX markets, but neither of those would happen overnight. In the meantime, their burgeoning middle class would quickly revert to peasant status, along with the other 1.2 billion Chinese. I seriously doubt China would risk all that for Burma (though they almost certainly would if we got serious on Tibet, or put up a fight to keep them out of Taiwan).
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
To any skilled people reading and maybe remembering this
http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/2000/08/01/www.myanmar.com/mirror.html
Bloggers and other cyber activists within Burma risk their lives by publishing any information counter to the government line, but they still do it because they believe that freedom of expression is worth that sacrifice.
You don't have to make such a sacrifice, but if you have computer skills, can breach firewalls, routers and web site security then you could greatly assist the people of Burma. By taking down official Burmese government propaganda and posting pictures, information about the protests, information about the lies of the Burmese junta, and news of the huge support being offered by the rest of the world - preferably in Burmese - then you could help free the people from this terrible regime.
If the information is removed, do it again - automate the attacks, do whatever you can to ensure that the Burmese can see the truth about their government.
You may have hacked for fun, or personal gain in the past - now you have a chance to hack for freedom.
Regime sites:
http://www.myanmar.com/
http://www.myanmar.com/news/index.html
http://www.mrtv3.net.mm/ (blocked from external access)
http://www.mofa.gov.mm/ (blocked from external access)
http://www.moha.gov.mm/ (blocked from external access)
http://www.mpt.net.mm/ (blocked from external access)
http://www.myanmar-information.net/
http://www.myanmar.com/myanmartimes/
http://www.mnped.gov.mm/ (blocked from external access)
http://www.myanmar.com/newspaper/kyaymon/index.html
http://www.myanmar.com/newspaper/nlm/index.html
It used to be that everyone understood that we could say what we wanted to in this country, but the circle of allowable statements and actions gets smaller and smaller every day.
As does the circle of "free speech areas" where we can say them.
"... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances" has now been circumscribed to damned near wangling an invitation to don a suit and tie and testify at a congressional inquiry. Peacefully assembling on the street and silently carrying a sign to be read by the commander-in-thief is, I guess, considered non-peaceful.
The locals prefer Myanmar as well. Burma is a colonial name derived from a particular race living in a region of Myanmar / Burma, where in fact there are numerous.
Not even close! Only a dozen or so Burmese have been killed? You would have to add four or five zeros to that number in Israel, where some of the worst repression in the world is happening right now.
And yes, there is a country standing behind Israel preventing economic pressure from being applied.
How about we don't go deliberately pissing off a nation with enough cash reserves (1.33 trillion) to bankrupt us overnight (assuming it's a trading day - on the weekend, they would have to wait a couple days).
How effective will this tactic really be? Keep in mind that if China does that it'll be out more than half a year of GDP right at the start. And most of that debt is in the form of bonds to the US government. If it comes to a choice between bankruptcy and defaulting on debt to a hostile power, I'm sure the choice will be easy for the US. Also, I doubt other countries are going to be pleased by these sorts of little games. They will after all harm much more than just the US. Expect long term trade problems from this, especially if it is coupled with the seizure of foreign assets in China.
What the hell are you talking about? The difference is that with real bullets you cant tell people what happened afterwards. With rubber bullets its all going to be on a blog later.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
The interesting thing about this troll is the tension between the liberal guilt in the first paragraph and the libertarian bile in the second.
A fine Tuesday entry, all around.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Perhaps. Or perhaps photos of American draped coffins are not shown because of some of the very powerful images of coffins circa the Vietnam war.
What makes you think that their level of poverty is any worse than the level of poverty in the ghettos of America or the UK?
How often have you been in shitholes over here? Probably never because they're not so tourist friendly and if you're white, there's probably going to be a problem. How do you think "garbage picking beggars" is any worse than having to sell crack where you have to worry about being shot or thrown in jail? Is it because American have television sets?
How do you define your poverty and oppression in VietNam, Laos, or Calcutta? How is that different from the class and race problems here?
Next time you're over there, spend time with the people that you make such judgments on. Not just walking through their streets buying tourist goods, and then back to your hotel.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle