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Mizzima: A More Balanced Outlook

Subject: Mizzima: A More Balanced Outlook
From: mizzima@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2001 05:24:00

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A More Balanced Outlook

(the corporate-control led media will soon use the pictures of rubble to
seek increased police and military spending and greater state
intervention and surveillance powers?)

By: Kanbawza Win

Mizzima News (www.mizzima.com) October 6, 2001

A drunken American once met a Burmese on the street and
asked him, ?What ese are you.? Bewildered the Burmese replied, ?What do
you mean, sir?? the American replied, ?What I mean is, are you a
Chinese, a Vietnamese; a Burmese or a Japanese etc etc because you all
end in ese. So the Burmese replied ?I am Burmese, Sir. By the way, what
keys are you?? The American replied, ?What do you mean by keys? So the
Burmese replied, ?What I mean is, are you a monkey, a donkey or a
Yankee? This is a classic example of how an average American treats a
non-Caucasian and vice versa. A culture of arrogance and hatred coupled
with the habit of a bizarre new world where old rules of social
behaviour and morals have completely broken down. A fundamental belief
in the equality of all human beings seems to be extinct. The apex of it
is the sad episode at the World Trade Centre on September 11th.

It was mere savagery: jet loads of innocent human beings piloted into
buildings filled with other innocent human beings. We would like to
dismiss televised images of Palestinian expressions of joy while crowds
of people in some Muslim countries cheered as the World Trade Center
came crashing down and among them are Burmese generals who party at the
OSS recreation center in Rangoon and came out all smiling. It has been
rumored that some of Bin Laden cells operate in Burma, which the Junta,
as usual denied vigorously. It makes one feel sick inside and sometimes
one wonders, whether Samuel Huntington?s prediction of ?The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order? has come true. He
predicted that the conflicts between religious groups would be
impossible to manage because they were based on faith and dogma.

There is no such thing as a ?terrorist gene? in any homo sapiens. The
attackers and their supporters who are born normal were afflicted by
something that caused their metamorphosis from normal human beings
capable of gentleness and affection into desperate, maddened fiends with
nothing but murder in their hearts and minds. What was that? It was a
cry of despair. Their despair had reached its zenith and become so
desperate that they had no choice but to act.

Good-hearted people will mourn along with the Americans in dignity and
respect but the corporate-control led media will soon use the pictures
of rubble to seek increased police and military spending and greater
state intervention and surveillance powers. But what the media seldom
display is the picture of half a million children (according to the
Health Education Trust of London) who died in Iraq as a result of the
medieval embargo imposed by the US. Nobody says anything about 18,000
civilians killed in Israel?s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, not to mention
the Israeli occupation of Arab land and the dispossession of the
Palestinians with US backing and banking. From this aspect it would not
be totally wrong to say that Islamic people have been victims of US
fundamentalism whose power, in all forms-- military, strategic and
economic- is the greatest source of terrorism on earth. The media
coverage is exclusively through a self-righteous, one-way legal and
moral screen, projecting positive images of Western values and
innocence.

Because of it the Americans fail to realize the vehement hatred of the
Third World population. This was shown when a fallen GI was tied to a
car and driven along the streets of Somalia. Anti-Americanism is also
spawned by more general grievances. The US is a leading status quo power
of the world, shoring up grotesque dictators, especially supporting
right-wing rule and state terrorism. It promotes a global economic
system of vast inequality and incredible poverty. It displays arrogance
of power when it rejects and blocks international consensus on issues
ranging from environment to the rights of children, to land mines, to an
international criminal court, to racism to national missile defense and
on and on. A super power, indifferent to the world?s opinion and the
people?s plight, and apparently on the side of their tormentors, has
bred boundless hatred for their policies.

In defense of their power and privilege, known by the euphemisms
?free-market? and ?free-trade?, the injustices are legion, from the
illegal blockade of Cuba, to the murderous arms trade, to assaults on
fragile economies by institutions such as the World Trade Organization,
the World Bank and the IMF, which are little more than agents of the US
Treasury. It freely encourages the ?exploitation of man by man,?
especially the strongest over the weakest as it forces the poorest
nations to repay un-repayable debts.

One should also not forget that the Taliban is just one of the creations
of the American CIA that secretly supplied arms and fund them during 80s
when the Mujahideen were fighting against the Russians. Again, the
Taliban and bin Laden are not Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of
ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997 just as the
Burmese Junta does with the Burmese people. Bin Laden is a political
criminal with a plan. In this sense the people of Afghanistan are like
the Jews in the concentration camps, or what the Burmese people are
facing just now. It has nothing to do with this atrocity. The Afghans
were the victims of the perpetrators. The United Nations has estimated
that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with
no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has
been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered
with land-mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets.

This does not mean that the American crimes justify terrorism nor are we
being callous at a time when the Americans are mourning. The September
11th. episode is absolutely unacceptable, but at the same time we need
to stress that terrorist targeting civilians is unpardonable. Obviously
we don?t want the Americans to copy the methods of the Burmese Junta, by
killing innocent civilian but we need to understand the terrain that
breeds terrorism and the terrorists. The Third World population that
survives in the degrading conditions and daily poverty, the refugee
camps where the youths stay idle, not only in the Middle East and Africa
but also in the Thailand-Burma border area, are fertile grounds for
terrorism. The attacks on the Burmese embassy in Bangkok and the
Ratchburi hospital by Burmese students about two years are just some of
the signs and who can say whether more may be coming. The message we
would like to give is that by reducing injustice can help eliminate the
seeds of pain and suffering that nurtures the terrorist impulse and
support for them.

Let us not fret about the annals of history reporting that the mightiest
super power that has the whole arsenal of atomic and sophisticated
weapons at its disposal was stunned by box cutters. So many people were
killed with so many economies being destroyed by so few a people. In
Burmese we would say ?Ko Chin Sa? literally translated is to put oneself
in other people?s place. The 1988 Burmese pro-democracy demonstration
took place in front of the American embassy in Rangoon where the Burmese
army unleashed its fire power killing altogether some 20,000 people in
Burma?s six major cities a figure almost four times higher than of the
World Trade Centre and yet the US did not lift a finger help people of
Burma. Now, after the September11th episode the Americans will have some
idea of ?Ko Chin Sa? and one hope that they will respond positively to
the despair and listen to the cries of the suffering of other people. We
see that President?s Bush speech of ?War between Freedom and Fear? is
similar to what Daw Aung San Suu Kyi?s ?Freedom from Fear? which she
passionately wrote.

No one will forget that the US has earned its standard of living via
hard work, innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, promotes freedom of
religion, speech, vote and assembly being a big brother if not a big
policeman championing Western values and protecting democracy. The point
we are driving at is that they must be more magnanimous and have a big
heart. The security of the US if not the world lies in its re-engaging
with the people of the world, especially with those it has grievously
harmed. As a great country, possessing an admirable constitution that
protects the life and liberty of its citizens, it must extend its
definition of humanity to cover all peoples of the world. It must
respect international treaties such as those on greenhouse gases and
biological weapons, stop trying to force a new Cold War, pay its UN dues
and cease the aggrandizement of wealth in the name of globalization. We
are calling on the extraordinary American courage and wisdom to pause
for a moment and reflect upon its role as the leader of the world. Its
indifference of the suffering of Third World countries and, of course,
the insolence of its current President because the world is ready to
follow the US lead.

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<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
A More Balanced Outlook
(the corporate-control led media will soon use the pictures of rubble
to seek increased police and military spending and greater state intervention
and surveillance powers?)
By: Kanbawza Win
Mizzima News <a href="http://www.mizzima.com";>(www.mizzima.com)
</a>October
6, 2001
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A drunken American once met a Burmese on the street and asked him, ?What
ese are you.? Bewildered the Burmese replied, ?What do you mean,
sir?? the American replied, ?What I mean is, are you a Chinese,
a Vietnamese; a Burmese or a Japanese&nbsp; etc etc because you all end
in ese. So the Burmese replied ?I am Burmese, Sir. By the
way, what keys are you?? The American replied, ?What do you
mean by keys? So the Burmese replied, ?What I mean is, are you
a monkey, a donkey or a Yankee? This is a classic example of how
an average American treats a non-Caucasian and vice versa. A culture of
arrogance and hatred coupled with the habit of a bizarre new world where
old rules of social behaviour and morals have completely broken down. A
fundamental belief in the equality of all human beings seems to be extinct.
The apex of it is the sad episode at the World Trade Centre on September
11th.
It was mere savagery: jet loads of innocent human beings
piloted into buildings filled with other innocent human beings. We would
like to dismiss televised images of Palestinian expressions of joy while
crowds of people in some Muslim countries cheered as the World Trade Center
came crashing down and among them are Burmese generals who party at the
OSS recreation center in Rangoon and came out all smiling. It has been
rumored that some of Bin Laden cells operate in Burma, which the Junta,
as usual denied vigorously. It makes one feel sick inside and sometimes
one wonders, whether Samuel Huntington?s prediction of ?The Clash
of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order? has come true.
He predicted that the conflicts between religious groups would be impossible
to manage because they were based on faith and dogma.
There is no such thing as a ?terrorist gene? in any homo
sapiens. The attackers and their supporters who are born normal were afflicted
by something that caused their metamorphosis from normal human beings capable
of gentleness and affection into desperate, maddened fiends with nothing
but murder in their hearts and minds. What was that? It was a cry of despair.
Their despair had reached its zenith and become so desperate that they
had no choice but to act.
Good-hearted people will mourn along with the Americans
in dignity and respect but the corporate-control led media will soon use
the pictures of rubble to seek increased police and military spending and
greater state intervention and surveillance powers. But what the media
seldom display is the picture of half a million children (according to
the Health Education Trust of London) who died in Iraq as a result of the
medieval embargo imposed by the US. Nobody says anything about 18,000 civilians
killed in Israel?s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, not to mention the Israeli
occupation of Arab land and the dispossession of the Palestinians with
US backing and banking. From this aspect it would&nbsp; not be totally
wrong to say that Islamic people have been victims of US fundamentalism
whose&nbsp; power, in all forms-- military, strategic and economic- is
the greatest source&nbsp; of&nbsp; terrorism on earth. The media coverage
is exclusively through a self-righteous, one-way legal and moral screen,
projecting positive images of Western values and innocence.
Because of it the Americans fail to realize the vehement
hatred of the Third World population. This was shown when a fallen GI was
tied to a car and driven along the streets of Somalia. Anti-Americanism
is also spawned by more general grievances. The US is a leading status
quo power of the world, shoring up grotesque dictators, especially supporting
right-wing rule and state terrorism. It promotes a global economic system
of vast inequality and incredible poverty. It displays arrogance of power
when it rejects and blocks international consensus on issues ranging from
environment to the rights of children, to land mines, to an international
criminal court, to racism to national missile defense and on and on. A
super power, indifferent to the world?s opinion and the people?s plight,
and apparently on the side of their tormentors, has bred boundless hatred
for their policies.
In defense of their power and privilege, known by the
euphemisms&nbsp; ?free-market? and ?free-trade?, the injustices are legion,
from the illegal blockade of Cuba, to the murderous arms trade, to assaults
on fragile economies by institutions such as the World Trade Organization,
the World Bank and the IMF, which are little more than agents of the US
Treasury. It freely encourages the ?exploitation of man by man,?
especially the strongest over the weakest as it forces the poorest nations
to repay un-repayable debts.
One should also not forget that the Taliban is just one
of the creations of the American CIA that secretly supplied arms and fund
them during 80s when the Mujahideen were fighting against the Russians.
Again, the Taliban and bin Laden are not Afghanistan. The Taliban are a
cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997 just as the
Burmese Junta does with the Burmese people. Bin Laden is a political criminal
with a plan. In this sense the people of Afghanistan are like the Jews
in the concentration camps, or what the Burmese people are facing just
now. It has nothing to do with this atrocity. The Afghans were the victims
of the perpetrators. The United Nations has estimated that there are 500,000
disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There
are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive
in mass graves. The soil is littered with land-mines, the farms were all
destroyed by the Soviets.
This does not mean that the American crimes justify terrorism
nor are we being callous at a time when the Americans are mourning. The
September 11th. episode is absolutely unacceptable, but at the same time
we need to stress that terrorist targeting civilians is unpardonable. Obviously
we don?t want the Americans to copy the methods of the Burmese Junta, by
killing innocent civilian but we need to understand the terrain that breeds
terrorism and the terrorists. The Third World population
that survives in the degrading conditions and daily poverty, the refugee
camps where the youths stay idle, not only in the Middle East and Africa
but also in the Thailand-Burma border area, are fertile grounds for terrorism.
The attacks on the Burmese embassy in Bangkok and the Ratchburi hospital
by Burmese students about two years are just some of the signs and who
can say whether more may be coming. The message we would like to give is
that by reducing injustice can help eliminate the seeds of pain and suffering
that nurtures the terrorist impulse and support for them.
Let us not fret about the annals of history reporting
that the mightiest super power that has the whole arsenal of atomic and
sophisticated weapons at its disposal was stunned by box cutters. So many
people were killed with so many economies being destroyed by so few a people.
In Burmese we would say ?Ko Chin Sa? literally translated is to
put oneself in other people?s place. The 1988 Burmese pro-democracy demonstration
took place in front of the American embassy in Rangoon where the Burmese
army unleashed its fire power killing altogether some 20,000 people in
Burma?s six major cities a figure almost four times higher than of the
World Trade Centre and yet the US did not lift a finger help people of
Burma. Now, after the September11th episode the Americans will have some
idea of ?Ko Chin Sa? and one hope that they will respond positively
to the despair and listen to the cries of the suffering of other people.
We see that President?s Bush speech of ?War between Freedom and Fear?
is similar to what Daw Aung San Suu Kyi?s ?Freedom from Fear? which
she passionately wrote.
No one will forget that the US has earned its standard
of living via hard work, innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, promotes freedom
of religion, speech, vote and assembly being a big brother if not a big
policeman championing Western values and protecting democracy. The point
we are driving at is that they must be more magnanimous and have a big
heart. The security of the US if not the world lies in its re-engaging
with the people of the world, especially with those it has grievously harmed.
As a great country, possessing an admirable constitution that protects
the life and liberty of its citizens, it must extend its definition of
humanity to cover all peoples of the world. It must respect international
treaties such as those on greenhouse gases and biological weapons, stop
trying to force a new Cold War, pay its UN dues and cease the aggrandizement
of wealth in the name of globalization. We are calling on the extraordinary
American courage and wisdom to pause for a moment and reflect upon its
role as the leader of the world. Its indifference of the suffering of Third
World countries and, of course, the insolence of its current President
because the world is ready to follow the US lead.
&nbsp;</html>

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