So I have been an absent blogger for the past week or so… despite a slew of important events that obviously are in dire need of comment from my end… As an excuse for this I will use 2 very important but pathetic factors… first is the vicious cold that attacked me in the middle of perfectly fine autumn weather… rendering my brain, and hence blogging ability, utmost useless… second is the sudden internet crash that brought all my important, life sustaining activities to a halt on Thursday evening… In retribution for this unacceptable mishap, I have cancelled my subscription to HBO (deemed worthless anyway by the conclusion of Sopranos a few months ago)…
Anyway… about the most important news event of the past week… and for me, probably the last year at least – the unrest in Burma… or as the media decided to call it – the Saffron revolution… a cute & modern name by the way… given that we had purple, orange and cedar revolutions in the past couple of years… and that’s not even counting the coup in the all-important republic of Kyrgyzstan, who name/ colour I have already forgotten…
With this in mind… I’d like to also ask for a moment or two of silence to the most idiotic and absurd of all tyrants/ dictators… who just happened to drop dead just a few short months ago… Yes… the wise and ageless seer of Turkmenistan –
Turkmenbashi himself... many a despot in human history has mercilessly murdered friend and foe alike… many a dictator has led his country into humiliating ruin… many a tyrant has lived in lavish palaces while his people starved… nothing out of the ordinary here… but to have the gall to rename the calendar in his own honour… now that’s priceless…
Anyway… the events in Burma… in the last week I think a lot of us went from very excited, to hopeful to dejected… the popular uprising, the saffron revolution, looked great and promising… especially for the media… but end of all ends, at this point at least, looks like it ended up nowhere… or to be exact – with a lot of people hurt or worse… and little actual results to show for it (that’s if we don’t count the cover of the Economist as a result)…
now of course I might be an undue pessimist here… and given the fact that the situation in the country is truly humiliating… for anyone and everyone involved… some good might come out of this… for after all… the powers supporting the junta – Russia/ India/ China really don’t want a public relations nightmare with the West over this… and I am sure somewhere in the bottom of their hearts, even the evil generals running the country might have a soft spot for actually doing something positive and not having their historical legacy be a giant blemish on Burmese long and storied history…
But fact of the matter is that change for Burma must come from the exact same source as the problem – the military… all of monk & citizen protests, all of international sanctions and condemnations will do very little good… until something within the military itself gives… and by this I mean independent of what some crabby old general says or orders, someone still must execute… and as we saw last week, when the average soldier is willing to follow orders, no matter what the popular opinion on the street is… the results will be quite negative… for after all soldiers have guns and average people do not…
So what must happen? Well if we take a look at the history of the Russian revolutions… in very broad and simplistic manner… what was the difference between the revolution of 1905 and
October 1917? In the former, the street stood up in outrage – i.e. the proletariat masses… while both the army and the peasantry did not budge… Result – a bloody putdown…. October 1917 – all major classes of the population, starting with proletariat and liberal intelligentsia all the way through peasantry and the armed forces were deeply unhappy with the situation at hand – a horrific & pointless war (WWI) and economic ruin at home… Hence, when the revolution was launched, not only was it driven by the working class & liberal intellectuals (as is the case in Burma), but also by the very soldiers who were suppose to protect the ‘home regime’… And as a matter of fact, the whole success of the communists during the Russian revolution and subsequent civil war hinged on the fact that they were able to recruit the best and the brightest of the army to their side… And this I have so far not seen in Burma… for all the popular protests… for all the newspaper headlines… and revolting pictures of massacre and murder… there has not been one mention of the Burmese army ‘crossing over’…
And once again… to stick to the Russian angle… if we even go to the Moscow coup attempt of 1992 or the Orange revolution in Ukraine… what was the difference… in the former – it was the fact that general Lebed (now long gone) disobeyed a direct order and put his tanks in front of the Parliament on the side of the ‘democractic’ government… and that in Ukraine, when Kuchma ordered a forceful dispersion of the protesters camped out in Kiev’s main square, the head of the Kiev military district told him to go f*&cjk himself and walked out…
And this leads to my next question… is the ‘absolute’ removal of the generals in the best interests of Burma as a whole? On that I am not so sure… for while there are practically no positives to these baboons being in power, there is one distinct thing they do bring to the table – order and stability… for we must remember that the country in question is not a uniform entity like say Portugal (I was going to say Belgium… but just remembered that its trying to split itself in half)…. And that burma is full of various ethnicities and nationalities… most of whom have centuries long hatred of each other and would probably like nothing more than to go slit their neighbor’s throat, Balkan style… and much like Marshall Tito did in post WWII Yugoslavia… the generals are probably deserving of some credit in keeping at least this part of the Burmese equation under relative control…
Now if the generals were all of a sudden yanked from their palaces… Saddam Hussein style… would there really be anyone in place to control various ethnic tensions and movements? For remember, there have been at least a dozen of these nationalistic revolts going on around Burma in the last decade or two (like say Karen National Liberation Army)… For lets be students of history here and remember how much we all hated evil old Saddam, and how we really wanted him deposed… and how nobody (outside my grandfather) ever mentioned the fact that without Saddam, and the Republican guard, and the secret police, the good people of Iraq would all of a sudden lose their minds and start killing each other in ever more liberal and creative fashion…
So with this in mind… As much as I want to say down with the generals and the evil dictatorship and in with freedom and liberty… I am really starting to think that slow and steady might be the best way to do it… Think Chinese version of communist capitalism… granted in a lot of ways its not inspiring… but it sure as hell beats the Russian ‘lets go capitalist overnight’ experiment of the early nineties…. So a meaningful solution would be perhaps for the generals, in kind response to the current mess and of course to the 2008 Olympics in china, to start slowly and steadily relinquishing control… not all at once, mind you… but slowly and steadily… liberalizing the press… allowing free, uncorrupted enterprise… inviting foreign investment… while giving themselves a chance to bow out with grace and good face… while building mighty pagodas in the plains of Bagan to make up for all the world of sins they have committed in the last 50 years….
Anyway… about the most important news event of the past week… and for me, probably the last year at least – the unrest in Burma… or as the media decided to call it – the Saffron revolution… a cute & modern name by the way… given that we had purple, orange and cedar revolutions in the past couple of years… and that’s not even counting the coup in the all-important republic of Kyrgyzstan, who name/ colour I have already forgotten…
With this in mind… I’d like to also ask for a moment or two of silence to the most idiotic and absurd of all tyrants/ dictators… who just happened to drop dead just a few short months ago… Yes… the wise and ageless seer of Turkmenistan –
Turkmenbashi himself... many a despot in human history has mercilessly murdered friend and foe alike… many a dictator has led his country into humiliating ruin… many a tyrant has lived in lavish palaces while his people starved… nothing out of the ordinary here… but to have the gall to rename the calendar in his own honour… now that’s priceless…Anyway… the events in Burma… in the last week I think a lot of us went from very excited, to hopeful to dejected… the popular uprising, the saffron revolution, looked great and promising… especially for the media… but end of all ends, at this point at least, looks like it ended up nowhere… or to be exact – with a lot of people hurt or worse… and little actual results to show for it (that’s if we don’t count the cover of the Economist as a result)…
now of course I might be an undue pessimist here… and given the fact that the situation in the country is truly humiliating… for anyone and everyone involved… some good might come out of this… for after all… the powers supporting the junta – Russia/ India/ China really don’t want a public relations nightmare with the West over this… and I am sure somewhere in the bottom of their hearts, even the evil generals running the country might have a soft spot for actually doing something positive and not having their historical legacy be a giant blemish on Burmese long and storied history…
But fact of the matter is that change for Burma must come from the exact same source as the problem – the military… all of monk & citizen protests, all of international sanctions and condemnations will do very little good… until something within the military itself gives… and by this I mean independent of what some crabby old general says or orders, someone still must execute… and as we saw last week, when the average soldier is willing to follow orders, no matter what the popular opinion on the street is… the results will be quite negative… for after all soldiers have guns and average people do not…
So what must happen? Well if we take a look at the history of the Russian revolutions… in very broad and simplistic manner… what was the difference between the revolution of 1905 and
October 1917? In the former, the street stood up in outrage – i.e. the proletariat masses… while both the army and the peasantry did not budge… Result – a bloody putdown…. October 1917 – all major classes of the population, starting with proletariat and liberal intelligentsia all the way through peasantry and the armed forces were deeply unhappy with the situation at hand – a horrific & pointless war (WWI) and economic ruin at home… Hence, when the revolution was launched, not only was it driven by the working class & liberal intellectuals (as is the case in Burma), but also by the very soldiers who were suppose to protect the ‘home regime’… And as a matter of fact, the whole success of the communists during the Russian revolution and subsequent civil war hinged on the fact that they were able to recruit the best and the brightest of the army to their side… And this I have so far not seen in Burma… for all the popular protests… for all the newspaper headlines… and revolting pictures of massacre and murder… there has not been one mention of the Burmese army ‘crossing over’…And once again… to stick to the Russian angle… if we even go to the Moscow coup attempt of 1992 or the Orange revolution in Ukraine… what was the difference… in the former – it was the fact that general Lebed (now long gone) disobeyed a direct order and put his tanks in front of the Parliament on the side of the ‘democractic’ government… and that in Ukraine, when Kuchma ordered a forceful dispersion of the protesters camped out in Kiev’s main square, the head of the Kiev military district told him to go f*&cjk himself and walked out…
And this leads to my next question… is the ‘absolute’ removal of the generals in the best interests of Burma as a whole? On that I am not so sure… for while there are practically no positives to these baboons being in power, there is one distinct thing they do bring to the table – order and stability… for we must remember that the country in question is not a uniform entity like say Portugal (I was going to say Belgium… but just remembered that its trying to split itself in half)…. And that burma is full of various ethnicities and nationalities… most of whom have centuries long hatred of each other and would probably like nothing more than to go slit their neighbor’s throat, Balkan style… and much like Marshall Tito did in post WWII Yugoslavia… the generals are probably deserving of some credit in keeping at least this part of the Burmese equation under relative control…
Now if the generals were all of a sudden yanked from their palaces… Saddam Hussein style… would there really be anyone in place to control various ethnic tensions and movements? For remember, there have been at least a dozen of these nationalistic revolts going on around Burma in the last decade or two (like say Karen National Liberation Army)… For lets be students of history here and remember how much we all hated evil old Saddam, and how we really wanted him deposed… and how nobody (outside my grandfather) ever mentioned the fact that without Saddam, and the Republican guard, and the secret police, the good people of Iraq would all of a sudden lose their minds and start killing each other in ever more liberal and creative fashion…
So with this in mind… As much as I want to say down with the generals and the evil dictatorship and in with freedom and liberty… I am really starting to think that slow and steady might be the best way to do it… Think Chinese version of communist capitalism… granted in a lot of ways its not inspiring… but it sure as hell beats the Russian ‘lets go capitalist overnight’ experiment of the early nineties…. So a meaningful solution would be perhaps for the generals, in kind response to the current mess and of course to the 2008 Olympics in china, to start slowly and steadily relinquishing control… not all at once, mind you… but slowly and steadily… liberalizing the press… allowing free, uncorrupted enterprise… inviting foreign investment… while giving themselves a chance to bow out with grace and good face… while building mighty pagodas in the plains of Bagan to make up for all the world of sins they have committed in the last 50 years….
1 comment:
I hate to say this - but sometimes you really do talk a lot of sense...
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