If there is money to be made for defending rogue states (take Burma, Israel or Saudi Arabia), some Western hacks will line up for the job. Pro Publica explains just one: Earlier this month, a group of three young Bahrainis arrived in Washington to talk about reform in the small Persian Gulf nation, which has…
Showing all posts tagged Burma
Liberation for everybody (except Palestinians)
What a wonderfully mature way to support the Palestinians under occupation. Sigh: The Greens candidate tipped to take the once-safe Labor seat of Marrickville from the Deputy Premier, Carmel Tebbutt, in the state election has been targeted in a mural over her council’s decision to boycott Israel. Marrickville Council’s support for the global Boycott, Divestment…
Al Jazeera’s Listening Post on Egypt’s revolution
The biggest story in the world right now is the ramifications of the Egyptian uprisings. Al-Jazeera English has been a beacon of reporting and insights over the last weeks (and indeed, leaves every other global news network for dead because it understands the world isn’t simply about what London or Washington thinks or wants). I…
What’s hundreds of thousands dead to a Murdoch columnist?
Earlier this week we were reminded of the Australian Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan years ago dismissing the Burmese “dissident” Aung San Suu Kyi. Sheridan is back at it today (thanks to Scott Burchill): For nearly 20 years, good hearted Indonesians have been telling the Burmese to study the New Order regime that prevailed in Indonesia…
Murdoch man dismissed Aung San Suu Kyi as simply a “dissident”
A helpful historical reminder from Scott Burchill: … It is wrong to assign a power of policy veto over the West to one favoured dissident, as appeared to happen in the 1990s with Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi. [The Australian’s Foreign Editor] Greg Sheridan, Asian Values, Western Dreams (Allen & Unwin, St Leonards 1999), p.315.…
Where do oil companies pay a price for their criminality?
The culpability of BP in the Gulf of Mexico is clear. But further afield we find other major oil companies behaving very badly: To the list of Big Oil companies with p.r. problems add two more: Chevron and French energy giant Total. In a report published on Monday, the NGO EarthRights International accuses the firms…
The power of endurance in Burma
We will not forget: As Aung San Suu Kyi prepares to celebrate her 65th birthday tomorrow, confined in the house in which she has spent most of the past two decades, a confidante of the Burmese opposition leader has made a simple but passionate appeal to those in the West to use their freedom to…
Voices of dissent deep inside Myanmar
The underground political group Generation Wave (GW) are documenting the brutality inside Burma: GW itself was formed after the “Saffron Revolution” in September 2007 when rising fuel prices provoked thousands of monks to take to the streets in protest. Civilians joined the movement, but the military junta cracked down, leaving hundreds dead and thousands imprisoned.…
Hearing the Burmese cries for freedom
Brutality in Burma has been occurring for decades. A friend recently spent time in the country and has published this powerful story in the New York Times about the fledging democracy movement there: U Win Tin, Myanmar’s longest-serving political prisoner, was tormented, tortured and beaten by his captors in the notorious Insein Prison for nearly…