chamsa

What about FREE NORTH KOREA!
 

Free the world. I'm telling you: we're all taken on a ride blindfolded...
 

I saw this first at Saudi Jeans.
I want to subscribe to it.

FREEDOM TO SAUDI ARABIA !!!

i saw it nowhere but i want very much to subscribe to it
 

actually i think shimon peres is on the way to free them ... i even blogged about it
 

Nobody FREEDOM TO SAUDI ARABIA !!!

why don't you put that up at Ahmed's comments section? :)

You know I think your postings on your blog are TOO long. Tat's why I am not commenting anymore (and the other reason is that you asked me to leave you alone) -
why are they so long?
 

first of all i dont know who is ahmed ...

second i dont really care for freedom in saudi arabia :D :D

just saw that some saudis are preoccupied with freedom in burma and i think it's funny ..

incidentally i remember a post by this jeans about how one day she met another saudi jeans that goes in the blogsphere under the name saudi eve ... while the saudi jeans was thrilled to meet another famous saudi blogger i was more excited by the fact that first her older brother had to drive her all the way to the place and then before he let her out of the car, he got out and walked around to ensure that there are no men around ...

i just imagine how she is sitting locked in her house, forbidden to leave unless accompanied by some male relative and fights boredom by blogging for freedom in burma :D :D

:D :D
 

uhm...... Nobody Ahmed = Saudie Jeans :D Not a 'she' but a 'he'.

Of course there are millions of issues in Saudia which need to be addressed by the locals there. The point is; in Burma the local are addressing these points and therefore need (international) support - When the time comes for the Saudi's I think they will expect nothing less than that, right?
 

mmm .. maybe i confuse something .. wait .. i'll check the blog
 

The only thing that would make a difference is if an external military force comes in. Absent that, no, there is nothing anyone outside of Burma can do.

What gets me is that often the same people who are “anti-war” are also the same people who go around saying we must do something about what is going on in Burma or Darfur or wherever. So I guess they are really just anti-war unless its an issue they support.

If you want to go about saying Free Burma or Save Darfur and go to protests regarding those situations it isn’t helping the people in those situations. It is just feeding your own ego. But of course that’s what’s important isn’t it. As long as it make you feel like a good person then whether it has any real effect isn’t relevant, right!
 

Anoniem What gets me is that often the same people who are “anti-war” are also the same people who go around saying we must do something about what is going on in Burma or Darfur or wherever. So I guess they are really just anti-war unless its an issue they support.

You know there is a difference between attack and defense?
 

you are right .. it was not saudi jeans .. ... so it may not apply to him ...
 

feel like starting 'Free Saudi Arabia' online campaign, tse ???

you know, if we'll be waiting for saudis to do it it may never happen :D :D

:D :D
 

there is a difference between darfur and burma, anoniem ... it's not clear who we should free in darfur as a total chaos reigns there .. in burma it's a political conflict, in darfur it's an ethnic mess ...
 

Nah, Nobody :D only the uprise of the local people itself (and the best method of approaching such problems within the acceptable mentality = read, acceptable tone of of voice) willl effective results. No 'outside power' can help if the 'locals' are not supporting change themselves.
 

ay, I agree with you on this one, Nobody. Darfur is a very delicate matter. Sometimes I got the feeling that 'north' (darfur itself) and 'south' (sudan) be better off separated all together.
 

tsedek

i dont know if you ever saw the map of sudan ... but it's like 50% of the country :D :D
 

the mess in darfur took off actually after bashir agreed to let the south hold a referendum on independence in 2011 ... by this logic they can as well convene everybody to decide about the best way to dismantle the country as they seem to have separatists in every single province
 

i mean ... darfur is not the north .. it's the west .. in the south they have another separatism but those are now virtually independent and if bashir keeps his word they will probably split in 2011
 

Ye. That's what I heard as well. In 2011 we might expect a new name of a new country on the world map.

still: this is about Burma, ya'habibi - what do you have to say on that?
 

this is sudan... blue is darfur, red is the south ... but they also have separatists in the center and elsewhere .. if bashir fails to win in darfur, the country may fall apart ...
 

still: this is about Burma, ya'habibi - what do you have to say on that?

that anoniem is probably right ... without force this regime won't go ...

also they have oil and gas and india and china and actually every country around them, the whole ASEAN block, are more interested in stable energy supplies than in regime change ... this is what 'silly bahraini girl' (hope i dont confuse blogs for yet another time) calls 'hard luck' :D :D

:D :D
 

Hmmm 'hard luck' :S

I,silly ideologist, still hope that one day the human perspective will 'victor' and money (because this is what this is all about) won't outplay that -in my eyes- superior goal.

You don't think european en american countries should do something?
 

the US, i think, tried to organize sanctions... but china has a veto right ... the ASEAN block also objects to 'western cultural imperialism' and imposing western political system on everybody in the world ... you know, we have to protect indigenous cultures .. otherwise the diversity will be gone ...

also the idea of imposing sanctions on one of the poorest countries in asia whose populations is frequently starving is also a sort of ... not very sound ...

technically speaking the only thing the west, actually the US, can do is to send marines there ... but after iraq ??? though these people are not arabs ... they are more peaceful and restrained ...
 

another thing that comes to my mind is for the anti war camp to dispatch their human shields to burma so that those try their luck in holding the ground while fired upon by live ammunition ... but as anoniem rightly noticed unless US enters the scene, as it was during the invasion of iraq, human shields will stay at home ... the anti war camp is usually pretty good in mobilizing human shields for dictators ... but its not that good in providing human shields for pro democracy demonstrators :D :D
 

Heh.

Burma's buggered. Nobody (not you, dude :) ) cares about Burma. They only stand a chance if they get a Gandhi, and even then the junta might just run them all over with tanks and wait for a couple of years until they breed back the losses.

And why on Earth should USA or anyone else intervene military in Burma? It's not like they're a threat to world peace... it's just another dictatorship, and at least they don't have any leaders who must prop their ego by trying to destroy Israel or launching missiles at Japan.
 

"And why on Earth should USA or anyone else intervene military in Burma? It's not like they're a threat to world peace... it's just another dictatorship, and at least they don't have any leaders who must prop their ego by trying to destroy Israel or launching missiles at Japan."

Absolutely. It isn't in America's interests to intervene so as an American I would never call for that. And I can't think of any other country who would see it in their interests and would have the capacity to intervene militarily either.

But I stand by what I said. The only thing that would make a difference is if an external military force comes in. Absent that, no, there is nothing anyone outside of Burma can do.

So since there is no external military force to come in, the people of Burma are out of luck. It is indeed an unfair world isn't it.

But go ahead with your silly little protest. It will make you feel better about yourself. You can come out of it smug in your own commitment to human rights regardless of the fact that your little protest will not do one thing for the people of Burma.

As for me, well I have enough problems in front of me in my country to worry about Burma.
 

Raccoon - And why on Earth should USA or anyone else intervene military in Burma?

Not the U.S. - the World!

LOOK, why. . .


:(
 

Tse -

Again we come up against the remarkable differences in our way of thought. I am talking about the Two Cultures of the West.

That movie is not a REASON for an invasion. And when you say the World... what exactly do you mean? US Marines and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard fighting together? Janjaweed, Hizballah and Peshmerga in a combined offensive with IDF providing support?

Are you serious?
 

As an American I am strongly against US troops being sent to places where our national interests are not at stake.

I would be totally against sending our troops into Burma!
 

Than what are the U.S. national interests in Iraq, even the last eskimo in Alaska knows it is not about weapons of mass destruction.
 

It makes a great launching base to get at Iran.
 

In order to make in your words "a great launching base to get to Iran"
you do not have a problem with the thousands of casualities on the side of the U.S. and us allies and the population?
 

Flappie said...

Than what are the U.S. national interests in Iraq, even the last eskimo in Alaska knows it is not about weapons of mass destruction.

you are actually wrong about ... maybe the last eskimo knows it but many people do explain the war, among other reasons, by the intelligence failure
 

Surely you haven't forgotten what a danger Saddam was.

He may or may not have had WMD (I think he moved them before we came in) but he was giving support to terrorists.

He publicly stated that he was going to give money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

No, attacking Iraq has always been just one front in this whole war against Terror. One campaign as it were. We are at least going to have to go after Iran and perhaps even Syria before this war is over.
 

If Saddam Hussein was such a big threat than why did George Bush not push further in the first Gulf War and save all the people in the delta.

Remember us to be a strong supporter of Saddam Hussein during the Iran - Iraq war and of further in the past, Iran's Shah Reza Palevi who with the help of his Savak destroyed the opposition.



The War On Terror, my nose, a lot of NATO-allies have been misguided into this conflict by the U.S. under cover/smokescreen
of the existance of these weapons of mass destruction.

Be realistic, if Burma and North Korea would have been further away
from the border of China and if these countries would have had large amounts of oil you may tell me where the U.S. would have been by now.

The U.S allways has been a strong supporter of oppressive regimes, Batista, Pinochet, Somoza, Papa Doc, Noriega, a sniff of El Savador, Oliver North, Agent Orange over Vietnam
and all other great things we will read/hear about in the future.
 

The thing is Flappie that the U.S. might have openly been a strong supporter of such regimes but Europe has always profited from the 'fruits' resulting of this support - so, to be blunt, Europe better shuts up because to let others do your dirty game is worse than doing it yourself.
 

Could you give some examples how we Europeans let the others do the dirty work.
It will be me a pleasure to tell my collegues, ranger and marine your opinion about us European loosers.
 

Just look at all the (trade) agreements between the U.S. and Europe.
 

The War On Terror, my nose, a lot of NATO-allies have been misguided into this conflict by the U.S. under cover/smokescreen
of the existance of these weapons of mass destruction.

that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destructions was widely believed by many intelligence services because of the games he played with the UN inspectors ..

The U.S allways has been a strong supporter of oppressive regimes, Batista, Pinochet, Somoza, Papa Doc, Noriega, a sniff of El Savador, Oliver North, Agent Orange over Vietnam
and all other great things we will read/hear about in the future.

the US was not necessarily always a supporter of oppressive regimes ... many of the cold war alliances were driven by the necessity to fight the communists ...

many dictatorships the US supported during the post war were actually progressive ones .. pinochet is a good example .. nor the opponents of these regimes were any democrats... in fact they were much worse .. salvadar allende or north vietnam is another good example of it ...

and in general, you live in the continent that owes it all to the US ... the US saved europe not even twice, three times - twice from the germans and once from the comminists .. never mind marshall plan ... i have not noticed that europe was such a particularly peaceful or prosperous place before the US came there ... just say thank you and be grateful ...
 

That is a marginal one, you have to give better examples to show how we Europeans in your own words "let the other's do our dirty game"
 

Salvador Allende might not have been a saint but he unlike your progressive Pinochet did not have a habbit of trowing people out of helicopters or inflicting other personal nightmares.
 

what do you say flappie ... and marxist revolutionaries who supported him were strictly vegetarians and never read marxist doctrine about violence as a midwife of historical progress ... and teams dispatched to the countryside to carry our land reform the style of soviet collectivization relied only on nice nice talk and persuasion ...

never mind that by the end of allende's rule not only they continued harassing the population but they started shooting each other
 

to have your economy florish because of your deals with the US shows 'marginal' accomplicement? wow.
 

The question was to give some more examples of us Europeans LET THE OTHERS do our dirty work.
You both do have a problem I see, like dogs chasing their own tail.
Unlike capitalism there is nothing wrong with communism, the problem is leaders and pencilpushers who go for personal gain.
Too you both should calm down while writing, it is rather disturbing for me to see all those mistakes.
 

Too you both should calm down while writing, it is rather disturbing for me to see all those mistakes.
Uhuh :D :D :D


Anyways if you can't see it there is nothing I can do to make you see it cause it is as clear as can be and to profit from ("rogue") 'relations' the U.S.'s got through tying economic deals with them and profiting from those everybody will acknowledge as 'proof' - except probably you.

;-)
 

flappie

europe and its dirty work you discuss with tsedek .. neither i and tsedek are a team .. we agree on nothing ..

Unlike capitalism there is nothing wrong with communism, the problem is leaders and pencilpushers who go for personal gain.

unlike you i lived through communism .. not only this i had to study it because marxist indoctrination was compulsory in russia ... i dont think that i ever encountered more violent and immoral ideology than marxism which in fact pretends to be a science .. it's soaked with violence ... the fact that communists and their mutations killed more people than died in ww2 is a natural result of it ..

you should feel eternally grateful for living in a capitalist democracy and that there exists such a country as the US that three times was around when shit hit the fan ...you need to spend a few years in some communist paradise .. then you will quickly learn to appreciate what you have
 

Well Nobody this must be your lucky day, http://totalobscurity.typepad.com/
flagorama/
is the site to get the goodies to show your patriotism.
 

dunno flappie what's wrong with you, but you just never get it right .. i am not american .. i am israeli
 

Thank you for helping. FREE Burma!!!

Bush slammed the UN and the rulers of Myanmar in his UN speech last week. The only country that has any influence over Myanmar is China, and they can't and won't push too hard. There is too much Oil & Gas there that they need.

The UN must do something, but they never use military force to fight.
That is a huge problem.

Illegal drug and ruby fortunes are a BIG part of this too.

absurd thought -
God of the Universe wants
complete narco states

criminals in power
loving the corrupt drug war


absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
shoot peaceful protesters

calling for democracy
which you must never allow


absurd thought -
God of the Universe thinks
keep trying communism

you can never KILL too much
pursuing Utopia...


http://free-burma.org/

http://absurdthoughtsaboutgod.blogspot.com/

:)
.
 

*reads through comments*

*chortles at the very idea of Tsedek and Nobody agreeing on something*

*laughs at Flappie's attack on Capitalism and defence of Communism*

My family, Flappie, left the crumbling Soviet Union when I was five years old. My parents talk about their political indoctrination classes sometimes, which were with them from kindergarten to the very last year at Uni. In fact, their last year at Uni was mostly political indoctrination, but their generation grew up to be so suspicious and cynical, that it took them years to believe in anything at all after leaving that system.

My late grandfather? A pro-democracy activist. I have his collection of medals and somewhat amusing Pravda newspaper clippings.

Communism? The system that forced Atheism on people, and then destroyed the lives of anyone who remained a believer? Communism, the system that destroyed private property, and turned the state into a great system of gearworks oiled with blood? Communism, the system that destroyed personal freedom, independent thought, privacy, and any semblance of a balanced political system?

Communism, the system that has systematically killed, enslaved, imprisoned, tortured, and beat into submission anyone who disagreed with Communism?

You know, great-grandad was lucky back in the good old days. He got sent to a gulag instead of being shot! Good for him, eh? Came back a broken shell after fifteen years of forced labour, in conditions you'd best not ponder too much.

Communism, that pathetic evolution of the French Revolution's Cult of Reason, which had its own share of victims? Churches burned one after another, and a city razed, its populace torn apart by grape-shot cannon fire, executed for resisting the New Way. Oh yes, how I love fanatical revolutionaries.

Well then, pardon me as I spit on Communism, and its brutal and dehumanizing teachings. Me, with the WWII veterans praying by my side at the synagogue, some with the maiming they got *after* the war evident on them. Do you know what a desk drawer can do to a hand? Or a hammer? And what endless beatings can do to a man's back? I shake such a man's hand in greeting every week, a man whose right hand is a barely-mobile claw. A very strong-willed man, I might add.

I saw Capitalism. And I saw Communism. Human organ camps in China, live experimens in Chemical weaponry in North Korea, the prisons in Castro's Heaven, and the cruel jokes of releasing political prisoners, with their families, along with convicted murderers and rapists, making sure both groups board the same raft. Nice man, that Fidel.

Millions dead in the Soviet Union. Dozens of millions, maybe over a hundred million, dead in China. Vietnam's cleansings... The list is endless.

Communism... A blight, that's all it ever was. So many sacrificed for impossible dreams... Impossible lies.
 

Thanks Uspace - a great link I found at your blog that will I HOPE show Flappie what the U.S. ISN'T doing that Europe (in this case Britain) DOES:

Blood Rubies Financing Burmese Junta

I quote:
Rubies from Burma are among the most sought after in the world and experts claim the military junta makes tens of millions of pounds each year from the lucrative trade. While America has banned all imports from Burma, the gems continue to be sold in Britain despite government claims that it "discourages" trade between the countries.

Gottit, Flappie?

RK yeah, that must be a first, that Nobody and I agree on. As you will notice miracles still happen LOL.
Of course a person having been born and living in a comfortable 'capitalistic' country can NEVER know the horrids of communism. It is always so easy to stand on the side and judge. Easy, but FAR OFF.
 

Anyone pining for Communism deserves it.

Flappie - may you live in a Communist state. Try North Korea.
 

I don't think Flappie will react anymore LOL. It's one thing to discuss - it's another to be proven wrong and having to admit so :D
 

for those of us wndering why its called burma and not myanmar (as i always thought it to be called)

wikipedia tells us that:

The name “Myanmar” is derived from the local short-form name Myanma Naingngandaw.[5] In Burmese, the name Myanma (or Mranma Prañ) has been used since the 13th century.[6] Its etymology remains unclear.

In 1989, the military junta officially changed the English version of the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar, along with changes to the English versions of many place names in the country, such as its former capital city from Rangoon to Yangon (which does represent its pronunciation more accurately). This decision has, however, not received legislative approval in Burma[5]. The official name of the country in the Burmese language, Myanma, was never changed. Within the Burmese language, Myanma is the written, literary name of the country, while Bama or Bamar (from which “Burma” derives) is the oral, colloquial name. In spoken Burmese, the distinction is less clear than the English transliteration suggests.

i always wonder - how much are we different to english missionaries in africa when we try to change the regime of another country..
 

you, lirun, are no different from english missionaries in africa ... as to us, if you noticed, we are no fans of regime changes
 

lirun your article confused me. I ALWAYS thought that the junta had changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar - and therefore I do not address that country as Myanmar (of which I never heard anyway, only of Burma until recently) - because they're an illegal dictatorship junta.
 

they used to have two names for the country ... myanmar in their language and burma in english ... the junta changed the way they referred to their country in english, say in official documents published in english ...

according to wikipedia ordinary burmese themselves call their country burma, this is how the country is known in the west ... myanmar is used in the written, literary language ...

anyway, you can be sure, that both names are only approximations of the original names as this language has a very different pronunciation that cannot be reproduced by english transliteration
 

you can guess how much english transliteration fails to represent their language from this:

The official name of the country in the Burmese language, Myanma, was never changed. Within the Burmese language, Myanma is the written, literary name of the country, while Bama or Bamar (from which “Burma” derives) is the oral, colloquial name. In spoken Burmese, the distinction is less clear than the English transliteration suggests.

which means that what's transliterated by burma and myanmar in english is not very different in spoken burmese
 

So, what's the conclusion? To address them in English as Myanmar?
I feel bad doing that, as if I cheat on the Burmese people LOL.
 

dunno .. check how they refer to their country on opposition sites .. anyway it's pretty much the same as wikipedia claims ...

in fact the idea is quite clear ... b,p,m is basically the same group of consonants .. at least for russians .. and probably for burmese too .. you keep your lips in exactly the same position.. you only modulate the sound when you expel the air ... with time 'm' moved to become 'b'

'n' and 'm' in 'nm' merged with the 'm' taking over the 'n' ... so you get instead of 'myanm' 'bam' or 'byam' ...

the language apparently went through the process of vigorous phonetic simplification of merging consonants, eliminating diphthongs and other complexities.. given that they now say either bamar or bama the final 'r' is also on the way out .... so myanmar turned into bama in spoken burmese ..

the british apparently caught them in the middle of the process when there was a difference between the first 'a' which is 'ya' in myanmar and the second 'a' ... not sure what this 'y' is doing anyway but probably it had an impact on the first 'a' .. this is why the british transliterated it by 'ur' ...

i dont know how myanmar is pronounced when burmese read their classic books but wikipedia says that they actually read it in a way pretty similar to bama in their spoken language ...
 

the british have simply transliterated the name the way the burnmese say it, while the junta changed it to the way they write it
 

in fact the idea is quite clear ... b,p,m is basically the same group of consonants .. at least for russians .. and probably for burmese too .. you keep your lips in exactly the same position.. you only modulate the sound when you expel the air ... with time 'm' moved to become 'b'

LOL, I'd like to see you demonstrate that to me :D :D

I got the picture. the difference probably is only in the written transliteration. what i wonder then is if they write both Burma and Maynmar - the same in Burmese....
 

dunno what i should demonstrate ... 'b' 'p' and 'm' in russian are done by using lips only ... in burmese apparently too ...

they write burma in their english documents, myanmar in their written language ... the language has been apparently so impacted by the phonetic revolution of spoken burmese that even if they say what's written as myanmar in their books, what comes out is not very different from the colloquial 'bama' ... much like in french ...
 

you should not worry so much about names i think .. they probably dont mind this stuff so much ... the burmese were largely spared pleasures of western civilization ... they have yet to develop this hobby of incessant pointless and idle moralizing .. liruns haven't yet got there
 

You are probably right about that last remark.
Silly really.
 

I mean: not that last sentence of course about Lirun but about moralizing chit-chat and the seriousness in Burma.

But it also is so that everybody (I think) gets so frustrated to read about so much injustice and in effect cannot do anything, so wants to do the miniscule minimum as to show they oppose the junta with silly things like names..
 

actually after checking wikipedia i found another article according to which most of my guesses were a crap .. regarding the possible connection between bama and myanmar, they say:

The colloquial name Bama is supposed to have originated from the name Myanma by shortening of the first syllable (loss of nasal "an", reduced to non-nasal "a", and loss of "y" glide), and then by transformation of "m" into "b". This sound change from "m" to "b" is frequent in colloquial Burmese, and occurs in many other words. Although Bama may be a later transformation of the name Myanma, both names have been in use alongside each other for centuries.

Source

in view of what they write here i absolve myself completely from the need to demonstrate to you that 'b','p' and 'm' are actually the same sound and can mutate into one another ...

basically they say that after the independence the country was indeed called bama and that the military junta later changed its official name into myanma .. apparently nobody really minds it as they used both names alongside each other for centuries .. the opposition indeed favors burma over myanmar but not too much given that on many sites they use 'burma/myanmar' or 'myanmar/burma' to refer to their country ...