There’s a lot of stuff going on about which I wish I knew enough to substantively blog, but in the meantime will have to wait until I can read someone with more specialist knowledge.
Will the serious crime charges against the Jena 6 be dropped to something more proportionate to what actually took place?
Will the grassroots movement in Egypt against FGM make headway against entrenched traditional attitudes?
Will the mass demonstrations in Myanmar end as badly as the last mass demonstrations did in 1988?
When President Bush vetoes both the House and the Senate resolutions overturning aspects of the Global Gag Rule policy, how many “pro-lifers” will either know or care that this policy directly increases the number of abortions that occur worldwide as contraceptive services also go unfunded?
Addendum: since I drafted this last night, the situation in Myanmar has moved from a mooted crackdown to an actual crackdown, and the first fatality/fatalities have been reported.
Will the mass demonstrations in Myanmar end as badly as the last mass demonstrations did in 1988?
Probably, yes. Perhaps if China, the Burmese junta’s main backers, make some sort of diplomatic intervention, it might not. But perhaps the military are too far gone for any sort of dialogue. They are ruthless, paranoid, and quite willing to crush their own population, including Bamars (as opposed to people in Shan, Karen, Mon, etc. regions who usually bear the brunt of state violence). The only way that revolution will be successful is if soldiers, or rather generals within the army, join with the people and monks, and turn against the ruling coterie.
The reason why demonstrations by monks and nuns are so significant is not just because they are esteemed members of Burmese society (its probably the best chance at education most will get), but because the Junta themselves have traded on a good relationship with the monastic establishment to legitimise themselves. Every day and night on television are images of military generals prostrating themselves before religious leaders. So when monks refuse to take their alms or meet with them, this is a serious loss of face, and credibility. It would also hurt their paranoid, ultra-superstitious mindset.
I’d add to that this hot topic.
Will the Heiner Affair take down Kevin Rudd?
More or less on topic: for those in the Sydney city, there’s a demonstration of support for the Burmese marchers, just uphill from the big fountain in Martin Place, TODAY at 12.30 (this Thursday the 27th).
Will the Heiner Affair take down Kevin Rudd?
Um, no.
To say the same thing another way, do they realise that there is a relationship of necessary conditionality between the incidence of pregnancy and the incidence of termination of pregnancy?
tigtog, is there a particular reason why you are using the name “Myanmar” for Burma? As I understand it, Myanmar is the name given to the country by the Military Junta. Anyone who believes that the country will one day be liberated and that democratic development will return should stick with “Burma” and not let the generals bury history under the jackboot.
What caused the collapse of the C?n Th? bridge that killed at least 60 people? That really upset my wife this morning.
(Suspicions of cause: carelessness, and possibly graft.)
I’m following the convention of using the terms that are currently officially recognised. If and when a liberation occurs and the country returns to the name “Burma” (or some other name that might be preferred) then I will use that one.
Burma is an English transliteration, by the way.
The junta has done many horrible things, but changing the official English version of their country’s name was an attempt to refer to a precolonial history, not burying history as you claim. Obviously the populace currently has more pressing concerns, but perhaps upon reflection they would actually prefer the name in English to more closely correspond to the name they use for their country amongst themselves, even if it was the junta that made the change.
Here’s an interesting article by a Burmese activist.
… who edits an online journal from Thailand.
It would be good to know what the democratic movement in Burma/Myanmar wants to call the place, so that we could do likewise as in the case of Zimbabwe when it was officially called Rhodesia.
The caveat being that we should be careful to avoid being conned the way some on the Left were in the 1980s by the Pan-Africanist Congress using the bogus name “Azania” for South Africa to try to give themselves cachet amongst Western lefties hypersensitive about symbolic correctness.
suz:
Thanks for posting the link to “The Irrawady” online. LP readers may be interested to subscribe online and read a daily email bulletin of news from Burma. It’s an opposition magazine, so its articles need sifting and weighing up, as much as we’d all do with MSM.
cheerio
Burma has little oil and and virtually no Muslims. The country will therefore be spared a redeeming visit by the Armed Forces of the United States. China is willing to deal with whichever regime can guarantee supply of Burma’s natural resources.
The country is the second largest producer of opium in the world, the proceeds of the black market in this trade wend their way by complex means into the off-shore bank accounts of the Junta leaders.
For the foreseeable future, Burma will be a country run by narco-capitalists, or it will be a failed state with the trappings of democracy paraded for PR purposes, Afghan-style, in the larger cities.
One wishes to see the bodies of Junta members hanging by their heels in various public squares. Sadly, we are unlikely to witness dangling dictators. Were this to happen, however, don’t expect a jungle Sweden to emerge from the social, economic and cultural mire that is Burma.
re. Myanmar/Burma. Yes, the military junta were responsible for the name change in 1989, but like much of what they do, it was a PR exercise. It was supposedly an attempt to reflect the ethnic diversity that I refered to in my first comment. ie. Burma (the territory of Upper and Lower Burma unified as part of British India) includes various non-’Burmese’ regions (which are the richest in terms of resources like teak, gas, and in terms of agriculture). In ethnic-geographical terms, Burma could just be seen as the central Burmese plains, not including other areas under Burmese jurisdiction such as Shan State. People I have spoken to do not seem too bothered, there’s more urgent things to worry about.
Katz:
Don’t slur Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi is as impressive as Nelson Mandela or Jose Ramos Horta, and deserved her Nobel Prize. You can’t predict the eventual outcome of Burmese freedom, neither can I.
I’d put a lot more faith in those brave Burmese marchers and their hopes for a bright future than you seem to. I imagine there may be some Thai involvement in opium trading and forest destruction, etc, in Burma (as in western Cambodia), don’t you think? Not all the “villains” are likely to be Burmese, I feel.
Did you hear that the Federal ALP Foreign Affairs spokesman wants the Myanmar junta leaders referred to the International Criminal Court = ICC in The Hague? (Australia was one of the strongest supporters in the planning stages of the ICC, and has ratified its establishment. This is to the credit of DFAT and its Minister, IMHO.
Paul Norton – good points about the naming issue.
I can see why expatriate activists differentiate themselves from the junta by preferring to use the old English-language name, and if they call themselves the Burma Liberation Front etc I’m not about to hypercorrect and call them the Myanmar Liberation Front. Names do matter.
I just wonder how important the Burma/Myanmar naming controversy in another language is to the majority of people in Burma/Myanmar who aren’t expatriate activists.
I wonder if those in a previous thread who referred to Pilger and his talk of socialism as an anachronism and a dinosaur will also notice that the current rebellion in Myanmar was sparked not by lofty notions of democracy but by the very class based issue of a rise in the price of fuel? If they do then perhaps they’ll also be aware of the 73,000 American autoworkers out on strike at General Motors plants that is costing the company $100 million a day and the 20, 000 or so, mostly unionised, protesters against WorkChoices in Melbourne yesterday?
But I guess not, ‘cos like, Marx and ideas of class struggle are like, so old hat…
Being correct about the future of Burma makes a nice change for me from being correct about the future of Iraq.
A slur is a slur only if it is incorrect.
I admire Aung San Suu Kyi immensely for her patient suffering. The fact remains, however, that there is nothing even vaguely resembling the ANC in Burma.
Burma is run via a complex system of clientage. Burmese human rights activists have few friends beyond the cities. And unless and until cracks appear in the unity of the Armed Forces of Burma, Burmese activists have few resources to confront a brutal regime.
When different units in the Burmese Armed Forces start shooting at each other I’ll start entertaining the possibility that the Junta will fall.
However, it is likely that the outcome of such an armed conflict would be the replacement of one Junta by another.
I suspect the answer to the question about whether this uprising in Burma will be a reprise of 1988 is: it depends on what plans the monks have in place to respond to the violent crackdown.
Studies of nonviolent revolutions shows this is the key to success. Some movements have been able to use the violence of the state against itself (in a process referred to as political jiu-jitsu by Gene Sharp, and backfire by Brian Martin). Others have collapsed in the wake of violence.
The fact that this campaign is being led by monks gives hope that the violence might backfire in this case. But they will need to have planned for it, and worked out innovative tactics for responding to it.
Katz, you don’t know what you’re talking about! This “Burma has no oil” meme gives me the shits, when the opposite is true.
Burma is no Iraq, but it has plenty of oil, and shitloads of natural gas.
This is precisely why the regime is still in power, and China and Russia particularly are reluctant to impose sanctions, or anything (+ lumber in China’s case).
I don’t think it’s as simple as that, Chav, and to reduce the unrest to economics doesn’t make any sense of the centrality of the monks’ participation. I’m fairly ignorant of Burma but I know a little bit about Spain and Latin America, where ecclesiastical radicalism has been very important in bringing down regimes. Let’s hope the Burmese have similar successes.
…I do await the contributions, furthermore, of the last superpower crew, supporting the rights of Burmese to cheaper air fares through competition.
As I said, tigtog, I think people have more important things to worry about, like feeding themselves. Names do matter, but I don’t think the issue is comparable with Rhodesia, as the term Burma is not being erased because of its colonial connotations (the Burmese kingdom based at Bagan was always called that). Rather it was a move by the junta following the 1988 massacres to try and project an image of unification over its diverse territories, many of which had already been fighting separatist wars for years.
Two other points: Katz is right about the importance of drugs, and alongside hard wood and gas these constitute the country’s main resources. All are located outside the central Burmese plains, which would be lost to Burma if the country ever broke up.
Second: I wonder how Australia’s anti-terrorism laws apply to Burma? Presumably fighting for the Karen or Shan against the tyrannical Burmese government is no better than fighting for the Tamil Tigers or the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan …
Even worse – by protesting against fuel prices, they might be accused of a ‘secondary boycott’…
I think Chav’s point above was more about political economy than ‘economics’, namely, the notion that an analysis of class issues could still be relevant to a revolt led my monks. My Latin American friends assure me that Marxists worked with Catholic priests in El Salvador, for instance.
Laughed. Out. Loud.
Perhaps, although I’m not sure to what degree the living standard of the Monks is related to those of the average Burmese. Obviously the yearning for democratic ideals is an important part of the struggle, but I also think that class and democracy are linked and quite clearly in this case. The less democracy there is the less the ability of the Burmese masses to defend themselves against whatever austerity measures the ruling clique wishes to impose.
Go Aussie Go!
“…I do await the contributions, furthermore, of the last superpower crew, supporting the rights of Burmese to cheaper air fares through competition.”
ROFLOLZ!!!1!
What’s up with the poor dears anyway? Busy campaigning for JWH?
Here’s TalkLeft on the Jena 6. In summary: why don’t MSM journalists actually get out there and establish the facts of what happened?
Happy Revolutionary, can you expand on why you found my comment ‘even worse’?
Yes indeed, as they did in many other Sth. American countries, and certainly it was the lower clergy rather than the bishops who were the most active (though there were liberation theologists ranking everywhere). I just wanted to dispute the idea that the Burmese were protesting primarily as an economic class.
Glad to be of pseudo-service.
The Australian government’s commitment to freedom and democracy in Burma…
Burma may have lots of oil and gas – but I don’t think it’s going to deliver much of either under the current regime. Pipelines are extremely vulnerable to insurgencies – very long and flammable. Additionally, since Burma is at the bottom of the corruption leagues (tied with Somalia), it’s not an attractive destination for business.
Learn some facts.
#37 Denmark: 1,230,000,000 barrels
#38 Romania: 1,055,000,000 barrels
#39 Mauritania: 1,000,000,000 barrels
#40 Burma: 1,000,000,000 barrels
#41 Trinidad and Tobago: 990,000,000 barrels
#42 Vietnam: 600,000,000 barrels
#43 Uzbekistan: 600,000,000 barrels
#44 Azerbaijan: 589,000,000 barrels
#45 Italy: 586,600,000 barrels
Burma ranks 40th among such oil giants as Romania and Italy.
There used to be much oil in Burma. It was exploited by the British-owned Burmah Oil.
Bilko, I was being sarcastic about the secondary boycott.
If Australia is providing ‘counter-terrorism’ trainng to the Burmese regime, then yes, the monks could be considered seditious terrorists by Australian standards.
On the other hand, this blogger suggested that a post-revolutionary might be suscepitble to neoliberal economic influences. In this case, there is little reason for Western regimes (such as the UK, US, and Australia) not to support a regime change. Going further, the above countries could even score a few moral brownie points by claiming a hand in ‘deomcracy building’ if they helped the Burmese democracy movement.
Toyota & Honda’s non-unionised plants in the southern states must have worked double shifts to take advantage of that. The UAW is doing its best to make itself extinct. My only problem with that is that they’ll probably take down an efficient Holden with them.
As for the WorkChoice protestors, I remember the exact same people protesting the WorkCover changes 15 years ago. Accomplishment: zero – and there were ten times as many of them. It’s no achievment to get union workers to take a day off work and frolic in the city.
Sure, my misunderstanding. I was trying point out the deficiencies of outlawing resistance movements as terrorists. This is particularly relavent for Australia as many Australians have provided material or monetary assistance to anti-Burmese militias. But as the Aussie government is already providing the Burmese state with the training to put such movements down, we know which side they’re on, so why don’t they just go the rest of the way and outlaw the Karen National Union, the Shan State Army and the Kachin Independence Army as terrorist organisations?
Indeed, by constantly capitulating to GM management’s demands and refusing to properly plan a prolonged strike, the UAW leadership is doing its best to make itself extinct.
.
You do!? What were their names?
(sigh) My comment was a response to various conservative tools and liberal chuckleheads that class was irrelevant today. Whether various class inspired struggles win or not is another question…
The old leftist three-step:
1. Left plays no role in initiating something, asleep at the wheel when the balloon goes up.
2. From a distance, frames event in a self-serving way.
3. So framed, issue becomes leftist issue! Move in, bully long-serving activists, take credit, move on.
I can still remember the uprisings in eastern Europe of ’89 being described as leftist. I was doing Politics at the time and it made my head hurt.
“Will the serious crime charges against the Jena 6 be dropped to something more proportionate to what actually took place?”
What ‘actually took place’ is that six people stomped an unconscious person. And some of the stompers had previous assault raps. Why do you think that is not “serious”? What is your idea of “proportion”? Why do you assume that righteousness is on the same side as your opinion?
Wish I hadn’t followed your Jena 6 link, tigtog. It reminded me of the thoroughly depressing case of Nicole Ann Dupure. Some days I wonder just what the hell it is with the US legal system.
So Andrew E, the current uprising in Burma wasn’t sparked by a protest at an increase in the price of fuel and nothing to do with the issue of class..?
Take a box or two of Panadol and lie down…
Craig, never give up on the dream of a career in stand-up, mate.
Chav, I’m sure we had a discussion about this on another thread, but you’d be aware of Marx’ distinction between a class of itself and a class for itself. There may well be economic aspects to the protests in Burma (though I strongly suspect they’re not the only relevant aspects unless one is an economic determinist) but that does not make them issues of “class” in the absence of class consciousness. I also very much doubt that a Marxist analysis of class formation in Burma would find any “working class” at all in the Marxist sense. Presumably primary production and the informal economy are the basis for the incomes of most people. I don’t think that this analysis is all that useful, except to demonstrate that from a Marxist point of view, you’re barking up the wrong tree!
All things are relative FDB. If all of GM was as efficient as Holden it would be in much better shape.
Your pharmacological advice is as sound as your politics, chav.
j_p_z, it may just be that from an Australian perspective a serious assault which does not cause lasting injury would not attract a sentence of 20 plus years in prison. On the facts, as I have read them from tigtog’s links, (and I appreciate they may not be the full facts) even if the victim had died the charge in Australia would most likely be manslaughter and the sentence, even taking into account previous assault convictions, would likely be no more than about 12 years. Even if the assault had killed him and they were convicted of murder the sentence would not likely be as much as twenty years.
By Australian standards I think that the charge brought and the sentences in contemplation are shockingly disproportionate. But then different countries have different standards.
Well put Greg.
In j_p_z’s defence, he might have been caught up in the whole issue of comparing how the white kids were treated for their violent attacks, which seems to be the angle most of the US commentators are coming from. I guess they’ve become accustomed to ludicrous sentencing and can only see it in (racially) relative terms.
On their own merits, the charges look like overkill to us mild-mannered soft-on-crime provincials.
“I can still remember the uprisings in eastern Europe of ‘89 being described as leftist. I was doing Politics at the time and it made my head hurt.”
I think that for a couple of centuries now the term ‘left’ has been used to cover democratic, liberal, anti-authoritarian activism. I certainly wouldn’t have described the ’89 uprisings as ‘right-wing’, although I think the highly conservative, reactionary nomenklatura ruling classes in those countries may well deserve that description. Poland’s Solidarity was after all a militant trade union with some pretty socialist sounding policies in its platform.
The Burmese situation underlines the fact that it is economic issues as opposed to purely moral ones (price of fuel) that really get people moving in the first place. It looks like the fuel protests have spilled over into protests that are resolutely targeted at the ruling regime with the involvement of the clergy as the only remaining independent organized force in Burma.
From what I’ve read about the Jena 6 the sentence was totally disproportionate. There was a high school fight which happen every day in every town, but the charges were for attempted murder. That would be ridiculous anyway, and typical of the different standards of justice that work for black and white in the old confederacy, but what makes it even more insulting to the black community is the fact that the fight was provoked by some racist white students hanging nooses on a tree – personally I think any moron cracker in an old south KKK town who does something like that is asking for a ‘stomping’ and I wouldn’t feel a bit sorry for them.
Katz @ 11.34am
I sincerely hope your predictions for Burma remain unfulfilled. Why on Earth do you think that a precondition for a successful overthrow of this Burmese junta is the existence of “an organisation like the ANC”? Heavens to Betsy.
“Velvet revolution” in Prague, 1989. Romanian dictator tossed out in 1989 (no sign of an ANC…), Ferdinand Marcos – sudden departuure after alleged electoral fraud, 1986. Moscow putsch in 1991 collapses (where was the ANC that time?). East German regime eventually shamed into resignation, 1989.
The ghosts of Tienanmen Square will taunt us: mass demonstrations don’t always achieve their aims… but each country is different. You seem so sure of yourself, Katz. Do you have some inside knowledge you’ve not divulged to us?
I honour the brave monks and their allies.
the marching monks of Rangoon, Mandalay, … :
“It is a far, far better thing they do, than I have ever done…”
[adapting from Charles Dickens, a MSM novelist on the French Revolution]
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/21/158237
Thanks to Amy Goodman for her work in bringing the case of the Jena 6 to international attention.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL peaceful demonstration in Melbourne, called at short notice, THIS AFTERNOON (Thursday 27th Sept.)
Parliament House steps, Spring Street 5.15pm – 6.30pm
see
http://www.amnesty.org.au
Not necessary at all. But you were the one who drew a parallel with Nelson Mandela, who was, as you may recall, head of the ANC.
But in Burma, as everywhere else, there needs to be a vanguard movement and organisation to carry on a prolonged struggle. Given the resources available to the junta, this will be a prolonged struggle. In most parts of Eastern Europe, for example, parts of the Communist Party rose up against other parts. Is it coincidence that Putin was high up in the old KGB? I think not.
It is possible that in Burma some part of the Armed Forces will remove the current Junta. Just don’t hold your breath in expectation of the coming of democracy.
Why am I so sure of myself? Track record, old son.
No, I don’t have any inside info. I just read the outside info accurately.
I will go along to the Melbourne demo but I don’t really see what it is trying to achieve. I suppose it shows solidarity with the protesters in Burma and expats in Australia. But the Burmese junta have never listened to anything anyone outside says. Maybe a demand that the Australians stop training Burmese troops would be good …
Katz:
“vanguard movement and organisation” – ah, the old ‘vanguard’ eh? Yup, it worked in some countries, but it has NOT always been a precondition for overthrowing a dictatorship, IMHO. I instance the Gdansk Shipyards, 1980. Call that a “vanguard movement”? How many were with Lech Walesa at the start? 20? 10? 50? Hardly a ‘vanguard movement’ like the ANC. But within a few days a revolutionary organisation had sprung into being, across a whole nation.
Manila in 1986: millions in the streets.
“There is more in the world than is encompassed by your philosophy”, Katz. At least that’s my opinion and hope.
Perhaps in 1830 Europeans thought the French Method was the only path to revolution, then by 1919 there was the Bolshevik template to copy. By 2007, there are so many ‘case studies’, both successful and unsuccessful, to consider.
The “vanguard movement” is one path, but is flawed from the democratic/human rights perspective IMHO, if it automatically involves such elements as “democratic centralism”, secrecy (a la Khmer Rouge), secret alliances with neighbouring rulers (a la Khmer Rouge, Bolsheviks), stringing up dictators without fair trials (a la Romania), re-education camps for vanquished officials (a la Vietnam), compulsory atheism imposed in a believing society (examples include Poland, PR China), etc.
I could be wrong, but my observations of Aung San Suu Kyi lead me to believe that her huge national movement (which you so belittle) is unlikely to fall into any of the above murderous and inhumane behaviour.
I honour the marching monks.
j_p_z:
Dec 1: white student Justin Sloan assaults black student Robert Bailey after a disagreement at a party and is charged with misdemeanour battery and given probation. Robert Bailey does not attend ER for treatment.
Dec 2: white adult Matt Windham pulls a shotgun out of his car to confront Bailey and other black students. When they wrestle the gun away from him, and leave without assaulting him, they are charged with robbery/theft while Windham is charged with nothing.
Dec 4: 6 black students, including Mychal Bell, assault white student Justin Barker and are charged, as adults rather than juveniles, with attempted second degree murder and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. Justin Barker did attend the ER briefly for injuries listed as a periorbital bruise and abrasions. If he was stomped, where are the broken ribs and multiple haematomas? Just lucky? With 6 attackers?
Not that aiming some kicks at a person on the ground isn’t bad, but it’s a long way from stomping. The eyewitness testimony on this is conflicting on matters as simple as what clothes people were wearing, let alone anything like stomping versus vicious kicking versus contemptuous gesture kicking.
Like most people commenting on this, I have no problem with the Jena 6 being tried as juveniles for committing battery. It’s the ramping up of those charges that I have a problem with. The charges of attempted murder (later dropped), aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit battery seem to be just a ploy to try juveniles as adults, because lesser charges wouldn’t swing that.
And how does an actual adult, Matt Windham, not get charged with anything at all for waving a gun around in the street? If he could get to his car to get the gun, he could have just driven away from the unarmed youths.
Uh, yeah, it does. Unless of course you refuse to believe there is an objective reality that operates outside the subjective wishes of individuals?
I don’t at all see why a class has to conscious of itself and its capabilities for it to exist. In fact, what are you saying man!? That was one of Marx’s first observations and one of the things that distinguishes it from liberalism!
Well, unless the majority involved in primary production are peasant farmers tilling their own plots then there would very much be a working class in Burma in a ‘Marxist sense’. Agricultural workers in large firms, miners and forestry workers would be included in this. If we had more precise information…
Good point AndrewE, take five packets instead…
Katz:
the parallel I meant (with Mandela and Ramos Horta) was intended more along these lines:
Mandela: imprisoned for 27 (?) years but led a freedom movement
Ramos Horta: exiled for 24 (?) years but very influential in keeping the East Timor issue in focus internationally
Aung San Suu Kyi: elected PM, but held in prison or under house arrest for most of 19 (?) years
Personally, it’s not her “suffering” I admire, it’s her strength, intelligence, delicacy, and determination.
You may recall that near the end of the apartheid regime, Nelson Mandela was offerred his own freedom. He refused to walk out of his cell until all the Africans were granted their freedom too. That’s Ghandian in its majesty. That’s the kind of person Aung San Suu Kyi is, too. I’m scarcely fit to WRITE about such a woman, such a leader.
Peace & freedom!
I honour the monks.
No more than any other demo really. After two hundred years the demo’s power to manifest popular will and force change has gone. Fun while it lasted for some, but its moment has passed. As I’ve said, do your wanking in private.
That’s funny, I’m sure there were mass demo’s during the collapse of Stalinism, the Poll tax campaign which saw the end of Thatcher, the downfall of the Milosevic regime in Serbia, the abdication of five Argentinian presidents in a few weeks and you can add Burma to that far from exhaustive list if the regime is toppled.
It’s like gays thinking everyone else is gay – they just haven’t realised it yet.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Johannesburg and Cape Town (and hundreds of other places) from 1976 onwards?
Gdansk 1981?
Manila 1986?
Dresden and Berlin 1989?
Bucharest 1989?
Moscow 1991?
Bangkok 1993?
Jakarta 1998?
These events never happened? Governments did not fall? Systems did not change?
Ambigulous, I think we’re on the same side in terms of wanting to support and believe in nonviolent democratic revolutions.
That said, I think your Solidarity example supports the earlier ref. to the ANC – Solidarity spent another 9 years bringing down the Communist Party!
Also, the overthrow of Marcos was not some spontaneous uprising. It was the result of decades of dangerous and difficult grassroots work by trade unionists and church folk (including, well before the end, the hierarchy of the Catholics).
I think Katz was trying to say that Burma does not, from his reading, have the network of civil society groups that provide the platform for a sustained campaign against a violent regime. My own reading is that he may be a little pessimistic in this, but we will see.
Meantime, the Australian government COULD be doing more, despite what Lord Downer says. And that’s actually what the protests today and tonight are partly about – demanding our own government do what it can to support the protestors (like not training the military in counter-terror ops that will be in use this week against demonstrators).
Oh, and the ANC was actually less important in the later stages of the anti-apartheid campaign than most realise, because it was the international face (so that’s who we heard about). Not saying they weren’t hugely important, but the economic boycotts, which were vital, were led by the UDF, with much of the leg work done by the trade unions and churches (them again!).
Yours in hope for a democratic Burma,
Justin
Thanks Juz, GregM
I’m now puzzled by two different statements quoted by “The Age” online this afternoon:
1. … Alexander Downer said Australia would not follow the US move in imposing economic sanctions [on Burma/Myanmar] because they “would have absolutely no impact”.
2. … John Howard has announced targeted Australian financial sanctions agaionst members of Burma’s military regime…. “Our objective remains to maximise the pressure on the regime while avoiding harm to the Burmese people”.
As they used to opine in “Private Eye” magazine [London], ‘shurely shome mishtake??’
Yeah Greg, unless your structure of government is on its knees you may as well stay at home (and no, the demise of the Howard government does not mean the system of government is on its knees.
1976-92: a long wait. May as well go and do something productive, build your skills so that you can help the new system come about (and by ‘skills’ I do not mean whaddawewant whendawewannit). No demo in Australia since Eureka has mattered a damn.
See? Demos are for wankers.
GregM
Solidarnosc vs ANC: yes, another nine years from Gdansk to the collapse of the regime in Poland, but
i) when these movements start (or these street protests) there is no way of predicting how quickly the regime will crumble, is there? Katz knows, but I most assuredly don’t.
Nine years in Poland, was it 6 months in East Germany? 2 years or more to bring down the Shah in Teheran? 19 years and counting in Burma. 4 days in Romania, 8 years and counting in People’s China. You can never tell, but Katz is certain.
I suppose my main point is that ‘nonviolent protest’ takes many forms, leads to regime change in some countries (but not in others), and since EVERY case is different in approximately 15 ways, I can’t see how anyone can be sure they know the “one true path”.
But Katz seems to know. Lucky Katz!
I honour the monks of Burma.
AndrewE -
are you calling the monks who marched in Rangoon, Mandalay etc, onanists?
Piffle!
Juz
Apartheid’s slow decline: yes, ANC, PAC, UDF, dozens of movements and parties; Soweto uprising, Sharpeville massacre, pass laws, jailing of activists, international condemnation; trade unions, churches, international solidarity groups, economic boycotts, US Congress, UN, Commonwelth of Nations, etc. etc.
But I’m not clear why you distinguish between the ANC and UDF. My impression was they were extremely close. Am I mistaken?
Greg M/ FDB: I don’t understand at all what bearing Australian manslaughter law has on assault charges in Louisiana. Why do you think your opinion on this matter has anything like competence? Would you like to know my opinion about the Haneef case? Would you care, at all, if I told you? In point of fact my opinion about what to do with Haneef has about as much standing as my opinion about whether or not he requires kidney surgery. And since I am neither an Australian legal professional nor a kidney surgeon, it ain’t a heck of a whole lot.
tigtog: same thing, basically, but with funny-tasting gravy in a boat on the side. This is a public matter under the consideration of competent and fully accountable legal authorities, with full public scrutiny and disclosure. Why do you imagine that you have been cued from On High to start singing “We Shall Overcome” out of key? Have you ever lived in Louisiana? Do you know any of the fine-point details of the actual cases of the actual persons involved? Or is it simply because some of the people involved are, oh no!, black? Do you really think that in this day and age, (and in another country, no less!) equal protection under the law should still be administered with wacky three-D glasses like you get at a drive-in?
There’s nothing here that’s going on in evil secrecy; the courts are doing that crazy stuff that courts do, and already a few legal decisions have been reversed, in the normal manner that things get reversed when a higher court looks into a lower one’s bidnis. I too thought that charging these people as adults seemed a little unusual, but then I do not live in Louisiana and I don’t have access to all the records or the precedents, and at the end of the day, I don’t know at all how these professionals should do their jobs, any more than they know how to do mine.
One way or t’other, Al Sharpton and Jesse Inc. have once again just set the serious political interests of American black folks back another couple of notches, the way they usually do. Hey, what’s that sound I hear in the distance? Probably just Barack Obama, privately putting his fucking fist through the nearest wall, if he has a single brain cell left in his head.
j-p-z
aw gee, cain’t we jes’ talk awhile, mouth off fer a bit, ain’t that what this here InterSpout is fer?
Hehehe…Chav has managed to engineer a split in the Rightists ranks and now has them arguing over the efficacy of street protests!
(swoon)
Is there no limits to his power!?
j_p_z, whew – now THAT’S an unhinged, defensive and self-defeating rant if ever I heard one.
Seems I was giving you too much credit.
If you think we should only comment on things we personally have some form of juristiction over then, well, WTF are you doing here commenting on my comments? You’re not the boss of me.
Ambigulous, they cooperated but were distinct. UDF was the umbrella group for all the civic orgs, churches, unions and student activist groups.
According to Wikipedia:
Relationship with the ANC
Early in its life, the UDF adopted the Freedom Charter, a statement of the aims for a free South Africa and basis for a democratic constitution. The strong relationship between the African National Congress (ANC) and the UDF was based on this shared mission statement. Throughout its existence, the UDF demanded the release of imprisoned ANC leaders, as well as other political prisoners. However, the UDF was never formally attached to the ANC, and did not participate in the armed struggle. The UDF also suggested resisting all changes whites presented.
j_p_z, you actually sought tigtog’s opinion, and this site being one where private correspondence does not occur but where its commenters are at liberty to comment on anyone else’s post, therefore you invited mine and FDB’s when you wrote:
You may not like our opinion. You may, and apparently strongly do, disagree with it. You may even think that it is not a competent opinion, but since your comment solicited it you should respect that it was given and not criticize us for giving it.
When you write:
the same is true of your opinion on the Jena 6, unless of course you are an American legal professional, which from your previous posts I have never seen you make the claim to be.
But that’s the glory of freedom speech though, isn’t it? You can have and express an opinion on just about anything without having any qualifications at all.
The implicit racial hatred in these couple of sentence. while not unsurprising on past form of its author, still takes one’s breath away.
So what we have here, to spell it out, is the plural “they” to encompass all African Americans who are doing “what they usually do” and, then, the linking of this inherent, attributed behaviour of an entire section of the US population, based on their race, with the imagined actions of a single, prominent African American politican, Barack Obama, and the argument that this man would feel personally responsible, or accountable, for the actions of all other Black Americans and that if he is doesn’t he has not “a single brain cell left in his head”.
I can’t imagine what your purpose in writing such repugnant, stupid drivel could possibly be, jpz.
Here’s a useful slogan for the neo-vaudeville ‘freedom marchers’ in Jena…
“FREE THE JENA 6!” followed by,
“Oh, wait, on re-consideration, Jail the Jena 6 — but just jail them on different terms than they would have been jailed heretofore…”
Sets my heart ablaze. How ’bout you?
FDB: “now THAT’S an unhinged, defensive and self-defeating rant if ever I heard one.”
Why, though? What, seriously, is the zany part, for you?
“If you think we should only comment on things we personally have some form of juristiction over then, well, WTF are you doing here commenting on my comments? You’re not the boss of me.”
Well obviously (I think), people should be able to say whatever they like, wherever they like. But as a simple matter of course, their credibility is affected to a greater or lesser degree, if they opine loudly about things on which they have no serious technical standing (like, say, my literally incompetent opinions about who needs kidney surgery, and when).
You’re quite right that I’m not the boss of anybody. (Really, literally, I’m not!) But if somebody screams “injustice!” then it sort of matters, doesn’t it, whose justice and injustice they’re talking about, and on what terms. Doesn’t it? “Justice” is a notoriously slippery word. I wouldn’t want to be tried for anything in an Iranian court, don’t know about you. To avoid civil wars, we often treat justice as a technical matter in our agreed-upon systems, whether that’s metaphysical “justice” or not. (JAMES JOYCE: “Whether these things be good or ill, Old Nobodaddy will tell us Doomsday leet.”) In this lifetime, and in this case, we’re talking about the justice of Louisiana state law, duly subject to all the scrutiny and public accountability that a free society provides. The details of the cases matter, and I’m not competent to be the judge of them; neither, I suggest with respect, are you, several thousand miles and a separate national jurisdiction away. Why is that unhinged?
Again I ask, to you and various others (and without trying to foreclose honest discussion): why do you presume, from such a distance, that because the defendants are black and a victim is white, that you carry a banner for justice that supercedes the normative processes of legal justice as we understand it in our actual lives?
This is from the latest AP report on the thing:
“Critics accuse local officials of prosecuting blacks more harshly than whites. They note that no charges were filed against three white teens suspended from the high school for allegedly hanging nooses in a tree on campus….”
Explain to me please how allegedly hanging a noose on a tree –which after all is a speech act, comparable to burning a flag, if you will — should be prosecuted (note that it’s not even a crime) “more harshly” than kicking and stomping an unconscious person who has been beaten to the floor by an assailant with a previous record for violent assault. Do you comprehend the intellectual problems here? Do you comprehend the problems that will be caused in the future by failing to note the blurring of definitions today? Do you see how it will just bite you in the ass yourselves, some day? Have you never read what Confucius had to say about “the rectification of names”?
“There’s that white motha__er that was running his mouth!”
– statement heard by witnesses prior to the attack on Barker.
Why do you not demand that the defendants also be charged with hate crimes and civil rights violations? Is it because you believe that white people don’t have civil rights, or can’t be the victims of hate crimes? Is it because you believe that the law is a weapon, to be used by one group against another? If there are racists in this case, then who in fact are they? What happened to that lovely multiculturalism I heard so much about?
jinmaro, I don’t agree with much that j_p_z has written on this thread, but I reckon you’ve misread him. It seems clear that the ‘they’ in his comment is a reference to ‘Al Sharpton and Jesse Inc.’ rather than African Americans as a whole.
BBB
Greg M: Your points are fair and indeed excellent, and I need to make clearer distinctions in order to address them. Whether I manage it successfully is for others to judge.
“You may not like our opinion. You may, and apparently strongly do, disagree with it. You may even think that it is not a competent opinion, but since your comment solicited it you should respect that it was given and not criticize us for giving it.
…the same is true of your opinion on the Jena 6, unless of course you are an American legal professional, which from your previous posts I have never seen you make the claim to be. But that’s the glory of freedom speech though, isn’t it?”
You’re quite right, I am duty-bound to respect other peoples’ opinions (and in fact I do, as I hope to make clearer). You’re also right that I’m not a legal professional, American or otherwise. There’s an unusual sort of lacuna that exists in the idea of the law in a free society: in that, while it’s a highly technical profession that most laypersons don’t understand in its minutiae, yet its day-to-day conduct still has a vital bearing on the maintenance of a free society, and it’s the right and the prerogative of citizens to keep a vigilant eye on it, even though they’re laypersons. I invite anyone here who actually is a legal professional to offer their insights on that problem, which I don’t profess to have mastered. (For instance, the same thing isn’t true about being an airplane pilot: there’s a right way and a wrong way to fly airplanes, and that’s just the way it is, and my rights as a citizen are far less directly encroached on by competent aeronautics than they are by choices in jurisprudence.)
My major quarrels in this case are in the fact that it has been massively mis-reported and under-reported (w/r/t the actual facts); that individual facts have been deliberately misconstrued and from a legal standpoint mis-connected in order to create an irrelevant daisy-chain for a preferred narrative (for instance, the non-violent speech-act appearance of nooses on a tree does not necessarily co-relate with an actual violent physical assault many months later, esp. when some of the assailants have a prior history of assault); and that an almost vaudevillean mantle of civil-rights ‘righteousness’ has been pre-emptively assumed by certain interested parties, in consonance with well-documented past behaviors, and sometimes in flagrant denial of the known and ‘legal’ facts of the case. When I spoke earlier about mistrusting people’s ‘competence’ in this ‘jurisdiction,’ I wasn’t (I hope it’s now clear) trying to pre-empt their right to speak about it. Of course they can speak about it in whatever way they see fit. I was questioning their claim to pre-emptive righteousness based on an under-reported and extralegal version of the facts, given the knotty problems of the above. It would thus be very natural to misunderstand my intent, and I apologize and take responsibility for the confusion.
BBB – thanks for that clarification.
jinmaro, you have a right to your own viewpoint, but I believe you are misreading my words with something that approaches a malicious intent to misconstrue what I’m saying. I don’t mind that you disagree, but please do me the courtesy of trying to understand what I write, and please don’t instantly attribute “hateful” intent to it. It’s an intellectual position. I am not involved in the case. I don’t live in Louisiana. I don’t have a material interest. Some day you could possibly find yourself in a situation where there are stubborn, ornery, contrarian people like me making arguments on your side, against all popular approval and common consent, and it may help you, much to your chagrin.
Yes, you are right BBB, I did misread in that instance.
However, it doesn’t change much of the substance of what I wrote about jpz’s arguments and the other completely related points made.
And if jpz does have some interest in seeing an improvement in the legal, economic, social situation of African Americans, which are gloibally well-known and understood, particularly post Hurricane Katrina, a situation which he says have been so stymied by these two men, I’m all ears as to what his different strategies might be.
But, first, jpz would have to explain why he would think that three African American men have such overweening power in determining the fate of 40 million other African Americans or have some bearing on the circumstances surrounding the case of the Jena 6.
jpz, there is no such thing as a purely intellectual position and in any case, call it female intuition or whatever the hell you like, but there is a lot of emotion in your writing, always.
From what I hear the guy brought it on himself for his extreme racist taunts.
Err, dude! Have a squizzy at Capital volume one.
“All history is the history of class conflict” in the Communist Manifesto needs a big qualification, as Marx himself realised.
If he were around today, I’m sure the way he’d analyse Burma would be much closer to the much more finegrained analysis in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.
Please don’t mistake Marxism for vulgar Leninism. It doesn’t do anyone any favours, even those who are sympathetic to a bit of the old class analysis (as I am)!
Juz
From what I can make out, the UDF was a classic “umbrella” = alliance = front organisation for the (banned) ANC. Somewhat akin to Sinn Fein vis a vis the IRA I suspect. Perhaps near the end, most anti-apartheid groups in South Africa threw in their lot with the ANC and the SA Communist Party, feeling the UDF was the best path forward?
On topics I know a little about, I find Wikipedia sometimes sadly lacking. But maybe its entry on the UDF is more accurate than my recollections.
Mark @ 1.24pm
Thanks for pointing out that the existence of price-rise-protests does not necessarily point to class conflict.
Otherwise, every dispute in the arena of finance, cash, food, fuel, wages would be about “class” and in that case the term would be so broad as to lose any analytic power, si? Cruder than Lenin… Cruder than Mao… Could that be how Chav thinks?
Apparently practically everyone is a ‘Rightist’ in his eyes, so maybe he IS of that ilk. Pity. I must go back to the family archives and check for any fourth cousin Kulaks.
tigtog, jinmaro, others in the Jena discussion –
Sorry to keep banging on about this, but it occurs to me that there’s an important dimension to what I think about all this, that wasn’t articulated before, because in a sense it stands outside of the arguments I was making. Nonetheless it’s sort of important to bring up, because I don’t think it could be readily inferred from what I was saying before.
Which is that I don’t have any desire for a vindictive or harshly punitive outcome for the actual people involved in the case. I’m not eager to see heads on pikes, or the book thrown at anybody, and in fact I think that anyone getting long jail terms for this offense would be unjust, personally destructive, and not in society’s interest. In general I’m in big disagreement with the way our justice system hands out prison terms, so there are certain sorts of false dichotomies presented by the available real-world choices in the case. The best solution all around would be one that isn’t on the table.
My main interest in the thing is in how it is viewed by different people, the assumptions they make, the ways in which it has become a political football, and what the implications of that are for how politics and social life are conducted around these sorts of matters. So there’s a sense in which, in real-world terms, I’m in a kind of odd agreement with you: if the only actual choice is between a “serious” charge that has an egregious and unjust result, and an intellectually incorrect (let’s say for the moment) lesser charge that will bring a more lenient (and thus more humanly appropriate) outcome, then the serious charge should not be preferred, I’d say. So in that sense you’re right, because those are the options that are available.
Thankfully we’re none of us in a position that will decide any of these people’s fates, they are not wanting for advocates, and the thing will run its course no matter what I say about it. Which is why I feel at liberty to discuss it from what I consider a strictly intellectual viewpoint, to see what sort of meanings the case as a phenomenon can yield, and how much validity a given meaning might have.
Silkworm, nobody brings assault on themselves. Taunts might well provoke the impulse in others to attack, but anyone who acts on that impulse has chosen to act, they are not compelled to do so. Even if it was just a high school scuffle that has been blown up out of all proportion (and I am open to, although far from convinced by, the possibility that it was more), speech never justifies violence.
That’s a separate issue from the repellent tendency to try juveniles as adults on inflated charges.
Edited to add: I’m still far from convinced that someone released from ER with one periorbital bruise and some abrasions was stomped by anybody.
Seurat demonstrated how points of colour could be combined to create an intelligible picture. His pctures consist of many thousands of dots.
To most of the world, Jena consists of only several dots.
A tree that meant something to white students.
A request from a black student about access to the tree.
An off-hand consent from a teacher that to the world seemed self-evident: of course any student can stand wherever he wants.
Some nooses, possibly connoting white students’ rage that their privileged access to this tree had been violated.
A serious assault by blacks on a white student reputed have been associated with the noose episode.
The cutting down of the tree.
Heavy penalties imposed on the assailants.
Organised protest led by the leading figures in black politics.
Seurat used so many dots it was impossible for the viewer to come to any conclusion about the subject of his pictures other than what he wanted the viewer to see.
When we view the picture of Jena we all bring millions of our own dots, whether we live in Australia or in NYC. This is because we all think we know so much about American culture and American history. And in a semi-formal, ragbag of facts sense, to our shame, we Australians possibly know more American history than Australian history.
Japerz may well be correct when he observes that the court proceedings in question are simply justice as usual in Louisiana and that these proceedings are being conducted according to the accepted canons of Louisiana jurisprudence.
According to this view, adolescents are locked up for lengthy periods of time on a daily basis, without exciting the slightest notice or protest. This may well be the case in Louisiana.
Yet, in the present case, the response has been different. The world knows about the Jena Six. It would appear to me that many protesting folks have agreed that this picture made up of so few dots is as clear and as unambiguous as a Seurat painting.
Have these protestors always resented Louisiana jurisprudence? If so, why aren’t they turning up outside courthouses on a daily basis?
Is the protestors’ identification of the Jena case as being different from other examples of Louisiana jurisprudence reasonable? What do these folks think they know about Louisiana jurisprudence? How long have equal laws, applied equally been a feature of Louisiana jurisprudence? How confident ought they be that the Jena Six trial was just an unfortunate glitch of no significance in an era of equal access to justice?
These protesters have brought a bag full of dots to help them flesh out their picture.
Other folk in America insist that these are the wrong dots. And here, try ours!
Is it surprising that these two bags of dots don’t fit in the same picture?
Is it surprising that it is easy to predict who claims ownership of each of these bags of dots?
To me the most disturbing aspect of the story is the decision of the authorities to cut down the tree. It was a gesture fraught with guilt and denial.
Strange fruit.
A ruling class…SLORC and their business cronies….impose an austerity measure…a rise in the price of fuel…on the mass of the impoverished population…how…on…earth…is this not about class conflict!? Godamn I bet even Hayek and Thomas Friedman would agree with me!
Ambigulous, I’m not an expert on the intricacies of alliances in anti-apartheid Sth Africa, but I think you are incorrect on the UDF and ANC. The Wiki entry certainly accorded with my general memory of things – UDF was a mulitracial, NGO umbrella organisation that was partly established due to frustration with the armed struggle of the ANC at the time. The ANC, to the best of my knowledge, was never a member of the UDF (although as you imply, there was probably lots of cross-membership!)
I think towards the end the movement was the other way around actually – the ANC saw that the nonviolent campaign was becoming more effective and thus embraced it – partly due to the influence of a recently-converted Mandela.
But the ANC also did most of the international solidarity work, so for those of us in Oz, the two were necessarily conflated.
There are lots of analyses with conflicting interpretations of events though, so someone could credibly quote alternative sources that disagree with the above. I’m mostly reliant on the recent work of Kurt Shock in a 2006 book called “Unarmed Insurrections” (which looks at 4 successful and 2 unsuccessful cases of unarmed insurrections, including SA and Burma).
sorry, that should be Kurt Schock
Quite (and nice reference).
Is the idea that removing the tree will remove the racial tension? Laughable.
That it will erase memory of what has occurred? Ditto.
That the white kids, bereft of shelter from the harsh Louisiana sun, will join their erstwhile foes in one big happy brown family?
Good work, Juz + thanks for the book suggestion.
I didn’t realise the ANC dragged its heels on nonviolence. I had ignorantly thought they were running a “two-track” tactic for two decades: armed raids across borders into SA, a little sabotage here and there; with simultaneous internal efforts for mass (peaceful) mobilisation, underground nonviolent networking, subversion from within.
I exclude Winnie and her little, personal gang.
There’s always the potential for conflict between the ‘exiles’ (e.g. ANC in London, Mozambique etc) and the poor bastards actually within reach of police batons & wosre, inside the country.
Yours for freedom in Burma
I think you’re right about the two track stuff. But one of the key theories of strategic nonviolent conflict is that protestor violence totally undermines the nonviolent work (think about anti-capitalist protests as an example of this at work). The ANC took up violence in response to perceived incapacity of nonviolence to work in the 50s (I think), which may have been true at the time. But in the 80s they figured out that NV was the better game from a strategic point of view, and violence declined while NV tactics increased.
As I understand it, the 1985 boycott in Port Elizabeth is seen by many as the key turning point, when people realised what a carefully planned boycott could achieve.
Who needs to train SLORC to crush dissent when you can do it at home!
j_p_z, as you are a man of a literary bent see if you can get hold of a book called Krumnagel by Peter Ustinov. It is the tale of a small town US cop who is given a trip to England by the grateful citizens of his town and who then falls foul of English law. In a comedy of errors Krumnagel and the English police investigating his case misunderstand each others’ intentions and motives and the presumptions of the legal systems under which they operate, culminating in Krumnagel, an innocent man, going to gaol even though the English investigators did all that they could to avoid this happening.
As Australia follows England in its concept of the rule of law the book will give you some some insight into the comment I made above to which you took exception (and I do acknowledge your later gracious comments) and Australian expectations of due process, summarised to me once by a Police Prosecutor who said “Our job is to prosecute, not to persecute”. Notwithstanding that your country shares the Common Law with us your expectations of how it should be applied is in many ways very different from ours.
The book was published in 1971, had some modest success, and is now out of print but you may be able to find a copy in a second-hand bookshop or online.
Alternatively, jpz, since you don’t strike us thinking Antipodeans as a sanctimonious. forelock tugging dope, we could rather refer you to the redoubtable US General Joseph Stilwell, who in 1945 dismissed the entire British nation as “pig-fuckers”. “Vinegar Joe” was his affectionate nickname amongst Yanks. He also referred to Mountbatten, Britain’s last liberal viceroy, as a “childish pisspot”. One knows what he meant.
Keep off the sauce, jinmaro. It won’t do you any good.
Mychal Bell, the last remaining member of the Jena 6 in prison, has now been released on bail and the prosecutor has announced that he will not seek adult charges. Bell will be tried as a juvenile, along with the others, for the alleged assault at the school.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6954805,00.html