John Francis Lee – why are you always so quick to defend against the charges that the red shirts are anti-monarchy? In my opinion, that’s one of the best things they’ve got going for them. That’s what takes it beyond tit-for-tat battles between different groups of elites and on to questions of radical structural reform.
In reality, the facade has cracked and the shackles have been removed. I haven’t met a red shirt yet who isn’t either a republican or someone that believes that the monarchy needs to be significantly reformed, its workings made transparent & its legitimacy open for debate. Even many non-red shirts that I’ve engaged on this topic recently believe that the time is up for the monarchy, at least in its current formulation. The game is almost up, but the ultra-royalists will keep playing the same movie reel over & over again, showing the same old scenes, like a simulacrum of times past, the good old days, when people actually believed in all this hocus pocus… Haven’t the peasants have spoken already though? “The Emperor has no clothes!”
Anyway, that aside, I’m guessing that Nirmal spoke to Jaran and Adisorn, hardly just “two people”, as you put it, John.
If you crimminalise dissent you are effectively forcing people underground. Once that happens the potential for violence increases many fold. Good luck Thailand.
thanks to Nirmal for what seems to be a realistic summary
judging by the strenuous, panicked even, efforts of the military, government and media to suppress the redshirts and their messages it seems they probably believe this summary to be true
I have to agree with Tom Hoy. Abhisit should have rejected the power deal and stood for principle. If he had done so, he might have been rewarded in the polls.
However, that is not what happened.
Now he has, like Thaksin before him, embraced the dirty politics and the mafia provincial bosses to a brokered power deal.
Sadly, it is the people who suffer from the outrage. At least under Thaksin, they got the 30 Baht health scheme as part of the deal.
Given the ongoing debate about whether ASSK’s freedom will be sustained, was just wondering if we have sidelined how she would move on in terms of her relations with the international community.
This is taking into consideration that in general, she has never shown greater support for international aid/support for the Burmese. And there may be traces where she is for isolating Burma and making the country self sufficient.
Perhaps I am being very pessimistic, but would The Lady’s release truly help the Burmese in their cry for international aid?
Up to 90 per cent of the red shirts may now be anti-monarchy, they said.
But with its core leaders in jail or scattered and in hiding, the movement remains in search of a strategy and credible alternative leaders, they acknowledged.
This is my assessment too, on both counts.
Regarding the first, prior to the March rally, I wouldn’t say that anti-monarchy sentiment among the Red Shirt masses was very high. It was there; faintly, flickeringly. But now, in the past few months since the crackdown, . . . .
This is unprecedented, not even the post-“6 Tula” (1976) atmosphere could match the scale of what is happening now.
‘So-called backroom negotiations between the two sides (Thaksin and the establishment) are over,’ one of the leaders said, adding that there was no more potential for talks.
As far as I can gather, this is not quite the case. The ‘backroom negotiation’ or what is known in public as “reconciliation” (“р╕Ыр╕гр╕нр╕Зр╕Фр╕нр╕З”) isn’t quite dead yet; only there’s no real progress or ‘breakthrough’, since the ‘establishment’, which, to my mind holds a upperhand, had show no sign of wanting to make any substantial concessions, even to issue such as release of Red leaders, not to mention more serious issue of the future status of Thaksin himself.
Hla Oo,
I have a couple of questions about these memoirs that perhaps you can shed some light on:
(1) What is the motivation for the publication of these memoirs? Are they being written under their own steam or are they being encouraged by the tatmadaw?
(2) Who is the intended market (general populace / Tatmadaw)?
(3) How are they received in said market? Perhaps more specifically, what would the general reaction be from the army chiefs about their publication, or are they generally not very controversial?
(4) What kind of censorship (if any) would be undertaken?
(5) Any chance of Khin Nyint taking time out from his detention and penning one of these books?
Did you actually ever read the article or just barge in without bothering? It’s worth spending a minute to click on the link and see before attacking ASSK. Notice the italics?
Your obsession with the West vis-a-vis ASSK is truly pathological, worse than Hla Oo or even Myanmar Patriots (Idiot).
The UMP battalions that deserted in 1949-50 were mainly the Karen UMPs from former British Burma Military Police. The rest were later re-badged as Regular Infantry Battalions. The army battalion I served in Myitkyinar was a such re-badged UMP battalion.
Like UMPs the Sitwundan and Pyusawhti were basically absorbed into the regular army so that their Socialist political masters wouldn’t be able to use them as their own pocket armies anymore.
Even some Karkweye were also absorbed into the army. And hundreds of thousands of old Pyithusit under BSPP rule were reinvented as USDA.
The same pattern can be seen in the army’s current efforts to reorganize the ethnic peace armys as the BGF battalions. As with other paramilitary organizations before them DKBA, KIA, SSA etc are resisting it now.
BTW you should read Mary Callahan’s excellent book about these paramilitary organizations in Burma to get a better big picture.
Myanmar is set up for this Present vicious form of governance from the very beginning! Until we see this big picture and begin to take note of these responsible factors and address them accordingly nit picking factual errors of no significance does no service. SPDC as a form of governance is a tragic result of Burmese History. Not until everyone address Myanmar quagmire accordingly to its History this vicious cycle will continue.
Plan B. You have explained our Burma in just four short sentences.
Burmese civil war now is like the Spanish Civil War 70 odd years ago. Like the Franco’s Fascist Army Than Shwe’s Burmese Army is definitely wrong from a moral sense. But the human history doesn’t always follow the high moral standards of a human society.
Like in Spain our Burma will eventually have a morally-right democratic society in time. But how long that time is I do not know and I don’t even dare to guess.
Survival is the primary goal of any state. Statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power, which imposes intellectual discipline of rational order into the subject matter of their national security policy. The goal of survival usually guards against two major fallacies: the concern with motives and the concern with ideological differences.
Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Kampuchea, Vietnam, and China all see the importance of Tavoy (Dewei) deep-sea port, which will be constructed by the reputable Italian-Thai engineering firm. A corollary to that statement is that “state officials pursue a certain policy because they are under pressure to solve already-identified problem.”
This geo-strategic move is similar to Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games’ Opening Ceremony. Fascinating!
the staff of Thai Embassy take time to give it, menacing them and creating many big problems to the students to pay regularly the rent of houses or to buy food
If you are one of these students I would suggest writing to both the Thai and English language newspapers in Bangkok. I’m sure the Thai foreign ministry wouldn’t like the embarrassment of being seen to be ripping off scholarship students.
~400 k of soldiers.
Even with a conservative estimate of 3-5 adult dependents/soldier there is an easy 1.6-2.0 mil that SPDC can absolutely count on not to change.
That is not counting other bureaucracies such as USDA and asserted paramilitary groups that depend on SPDC rule! Even if you estimate conservatively 10 mil with most having access to guns that do not wish to see SPDC fail you will know what kind of support SPDC can count on.
aiontay
If you have ever read assertions of “training and organizing of the Tamadaw” proven to optimize control from previous articles here @ New Mandala, not so far fetch Ko Hla Oo claim that SPDC is the way it is because of the past 2┬║ to the legacy of the 30 comrades which Aung San and Ne Win were both a part of and responsible for.
Ko Hla Oo has taken full poetic advantages in his articles, over all it make no different to the proven fact that:
“Myanmar is set up for this Present vicious form of governance from the very beginning!”
Until we see this big picture and begin to take note of these responsible factors and address them accordingly nit picking factual errors of no significance does no service.
SPDC as a form of governance is a tragic result of Burmese History. Not until everyone address Myanmar quagmire accordingly to its History this vicious cycle will continue.
More and more former Tatmadaw officers are publishing memoirs, and in November the National Library of Australia catalogued a number of new titles from ex-soldiers turned aspiring writers.
Most prominent one of these officer-writers had passed away on 5th November. Lt. Col Maung Maung Oo (a) Tin Than Oo (DSA) aged 57 died of chronic liver cirrhosis at the Army Base Hospital in Mingaladon.
He wrote many books and later became a famous (or infamous) director for directing a grand army propaganda film called “Blossoming Lotus at Dawn” involving all famous 68 film stars of Burmese film industry. The film basically portrayed the slanted-army-version of Modern Burmese History.
He was an outspoken officer and gave many interviews to the media. This link is the last interview he did with the Mizzima News Media on 3rd August 2010.
He served in the same battalion on the Chinese Border I served as a boy soldier in 1973-74. He was only 2 years older than me and he was a young platoon commander in our battalion at our battalion forward command base at the fortified bases on Htaw Gaw hills near Chinese border just beyond Waimaw-Chibwe vehicular-road .
I was in Second Company and he was in the Fourth or the Fifth (Weapon Company), I can’t recall now. He arrived at our battalion in early 1975 as his first posting just after I deserted the army in late 1974 . He was a wide-eyed second-lieutenant just out of DSA and he was immediately wounded, not seriously, I think.
Causality was extremely high and we were so short of men our platoon had only two sections (just about 15 or 16 men). The whole company had only one officer, an old Kachin Captain. The company was basically run by the sergeant majors.
Tin Than Oo was really lucky to survive there as most new officers were killed within months or even weeks in our battalion. One new officer in our company from OTS lasted only two weeks. We were hit by CPB’s recoiless fire and we could only find body parts and sent back home only his right hand with OTS ring still attached as a body-substitute for a proper burial back in Rangoon’s military cemetry.
The three way battles between army and KIA and CPB were raging in that area for the whole 1974 and 75. According to his memoirs two mid months in 1975 alone saw at least 5000 dead from all three sides.
I didn’t really know him well. Only when he became famous as writer Tin Than Oo (Sit-Tekkatho) and started writing about the Battles of Htaw Gaw Hills I started knowing him.
He might have got the liver cirrhosis the same way as I got it by a battle wound and drinking excessive amount of quinine-laced-army rum the only abundant army-ration on the freezing front line of Kachin State.
I frankly don’t know the answers to your questions. I don’t know what effect sanctions have had, for good or bad, on either the junta or the citizens. But that was not my point.
My point was that Suu Kyi’s release is not, by itself, a reason for improved relations with the junta. There may be other reasons, but her release is not a step in the right direction or in any direction. The junta has not changed.
“Typically, she said she was ”already focused on the other 2100 political prisoners” in Burmese jails”
Since when? Pray tell us.
Min Ko Naing as an example of the most vulnerable.
Was high lighting him and others to the world ever one of her priority?
To support DASSK тЙа To supporting Myanmar citizenry.
In DASSK vs SPDC
The West ,in support,have used useless careless sanctions to encourage DASSK fantasy and pretended to have punished SPDC.
All the time denies the inevitable opposite outcome of making SPDC more intransigent than ever.
Neither denying the useless careless sanction that hurt the citizenry more nor claiming to support DASSK make West and its supporters self righteous approach “SINLESS”.
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War and politics, in Burmese
Dear Paul
“Is it possible to post a table of contents for the Major Tint Wai Aye book?”
As requested: Title page, TOC 1, TOC 2, TOC 3
Regards
Nick
How hardline have the redshirts become?
John Francis Lee – why are you always so quick to defend against the charges that the red shirts are anti-monarchy? In my opinion, that’s one of the best things they’ve got going for them. That’s what takes it beyond tit-for-tat battles between different groups of elites and on to questions of radical structural reform.
In reality, the facade has cracked and the shackles have been removed. I haven’t met a red shirt yet who isn’t either a republican or someone that believes that the monarchy needs to be significantly reformed, its workings made transparent & its legitimacy open for debate. Even many non-red shirts that I’ve engaged on this topic recently believe that the time is up for the monarchy, at least in its current formulation. The game is almost up, but the ultra-royalists will keep playing the same movie reel over & over again, showing the same old scenes, like a simulacrum of times past, the good old days, when people actually believed in all this hocus pocus… Haven’t the peasants have spoken already though? “The Emperor has no clothes!”
Anyway, that aside, I’m guessing that Nirmal spoke to Jaran and Adisorn, hardly just “two people”, as you put it, John.
How hardline have the redshirts become?
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
How hardline have the redshirts become?
If you crimminalise dissent you are effectively forcing people underground. Once that happens the potential for violence increases many fold. Good luck Thailand.
How hardline have the redshirts become?
He talks to two people who he won’t name who mouth the same line as the Abhishit/Prayuth Regime and you guys print it as the gospel truth.
The Red Shirts are…
You’re no different from the Bangkok Post, voluntary Ministers of Dis-Information.
Burma commentary, with more to come
Dear Hla Oo,
So basically you admit they were really the military all along, and not genuine grass roots organizations. Like I said, astroturf.
How hardline have the redshirts become?
thanks to Nirmal for what seems to be a realistic summary
judging by the strenuous, panicked even, efforts of the military, government and media to suppress the redshirts and their messages it seems they probably believe this summary to be true
Abhisit on sufficiency and corruption
I have to agree with Tom Hoy. Abhisit should have rejected the power deal and stood for principle. If he had done so, he might have been rewarded in the polls.
However, that is not what happened.
Now he has, like Thaksin before him, embraced the dirty politics and the mafia provincial bosses to a brokered power deal.
Sadly, it is the people who suffer from the outrage. At least under Thaksin, they got the 30 Baht health scheme as part of the deal.
Aung San Suu Kyi released
Given the ongoing debate about whether ASSK’s freedom will be sustained, was just wondering if we have sidelined how she would move on in terms of her relations with the international community.
This is taking into consideration that in general, she has never shown greater support for international aid/support for the Burmese. And there may be traces where she is for isolating Burma and making the country self sufficient.
Perhaps I am being very pessimistic, but would The Lady’s release truly help the Burmese in their cry for international aid?
How hardline have the redshirts become?
Up to 90 per cent of the red shirts may now be anti-monarchy, they said.
But with its core leaders in jail or scattered and in hiding, the movement remains in search of a strategy and credible alternative leaders, they acknowledged.
This is my assessment too, on both counts.
Regarding the first, prior to the March rally, I wouldn’t say that anti-monarchy sentiment among the Red Shirt masses was very high. It was there; faintly, flickeringly. But now, in the past few months since the crackdown, . . . .
This is unprecedented, not even the post-“6 Tula” (1976) atmosphere could match the scale of what is happening now.
‘So-called backroom negotiations between the two sides (Thaksin and the establishment) are over,’ one of the leaders said, adding that there was no more potential for talks.
As far as I can gather, this is not quite the case. The ‘backroom negotiation’ or what is known in public as “reconciliation” (“р╕Ыр╕гр╕нр╕Зр╕Фр╕нр╕З”) isn’t quite dead yet; only there’s no real progress or ‘breakthrough’, since the ‘establishment’, which, to my mind holds a upperhand, had show no sign of wanting to make any substantial concessions, even to issue such as release of Red leaders, not to mention more serious issue of the future status of Thaksin himself.
War and politics, in Burmese
Hla Oo,
I have a couple of questions about these memoirs that perhaps you can shed some light on:
(1) What is the motivation for the publication of these memoirs? Are they being written under their own steam or are they being encouraged by the tatmadaw?
(2) Who is the intended market (general populace / Tatmadaw)?
(3) How are they received in said market? Perhaps more specifically, what would the general reaction be from the army chiefs about their publication, or are they generally not very controversial?
(4) What kind of censorship (if any) would be undertaken?
(5) Any chance of Khin Nyint taking time out from his detention and penning one of these books?
Thanks and regards
Ramos-Horta on Burma sanctions
plan B,
Did you actually ever read the article or just barge in without bothering? It’s worth spending a minute to click on the link and see before attacking ASSK. Notice the italics?
Your obsession with the West vis-a-vis ASSK is truly pathological, worse than Hla Oo or even Myanmar Patriots (Idiot).
Burma commentary, with more to come
Dear Aiontay,
The UMP battalions that deserted in 1949-50 were mainly the Karen UMPs from former British Burma Military Police. The rest were later re-badged as Regular Infantry Battalions. The army battalion I served in Myitkyinar was a such re-badged UMP battalion.
Like UMPs the Sitwundan and Pyusawhti were basically absorbed into the regular army so that their Socialist political masters wouldn’t be able to use them as their own pocket armies anymore.
Even some Karkweye were also absorbed into the army. And hundreds of thousands of old Pyithusit under BSPP rule were reinvented as USDA.
The same pattern can be seen in the army’s current efforts to reorganize the ethnic peace armys as the BGF battalions. As with other paramilitary organizations before them DKBA, KIA, SSA etc are resisting it now.
BTW you should read Mary Callahan’s excellent book about these paramilitary organizations in Burma to get a better big picture.
Burma commentary, with more to come
Myanmar is set up for this Present vicious form of governance from the very beginning! Until we see this big picture and begin to take note of these responsible factors and address them accordingly nit picking factual errors of no significance does no service. SPDC as a form of governance is a tragic result of Burmese History. Not until everyone address Myanmar quagmire accordingly to its History this vicious cycle will continue.
Plan B. You have explained our Burma in just four short sentences.
Burmese civil war now is like the Spanish Civil War 70 odd years ago. Like the Franco’s Fascist Army Than Shwe’s Burmese Army is definitely wrong from a moral sense. But the human history doesn’t always follow the high moral standards of a human society.
Like in Spain our Burma will eventually have a morally-right democratic society in time. But how long that time is I do not know and I don’t even dare to guess.
Ramos-Horta on Burma sanctions
Survival is the primary goal of any state. Statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power, which imposes intellectual discipline of rational order into the subject matter of their national security policy. The goal of survival usually guards against two major fallacies: the concern with motives and the concern with ideological differences.
Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Kampuchea, Vietnam, and China all see the importance of Tavoy (Dewei) deep-sea port, which will be constructed by the reputable Italian-Thai engineering firm. A corollary to that statement is that “state officials pursue a certain policy because they are under pressure to solve already-identified problem.”
This geo-strategic move is similar to Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games’ Opening Ceremony. Fascinating!
Abhisit on sufficiency and corruption
P. Ceriale – 33
the staff of Thai Embassy take time to give it, menacing them and creating many big problems to the students to pay regularly the rent of houses or to buy food
If you are one of these students I would suggest writing to both the Thai and English language newspapers in Bangkok. I’m sure the Thai foreign ministry wouldn’t like the embarrassment of being seen to be ripping off scholarship students.
Burma commentary, with more to come
Let’s do the math:
~400 k of soldiers.
Even with a conservative estimate of 3-5 adult dependents/soldier there is an easy 1.6-2.0 mil that SPDC can absolutely count on not to change.
That is not counting other bureaucracies such as USDA and asserted paramilitary groups that depend on SPDC rule! Even if you estimate conservatively 10 mil with most having access to guns that do not wish to see SPDC fail you will know what kind of support SPDC can count on.
aiontay
If you have ever read assertions of “training and organizing of the Tamadaw” proven to optimize control from previous articles here @ New Mandala, not so far fetch Ko Hla Oo claim that SPDC is the way it is because of the past 2┬║ to the legacy of the 30 comrades which Aung San and Ne Win were both a part of and responsible for.
Ko Hla Oo has taken full poetic advantages in his articles, over all it make no different to the proven fact that:
“Myanmar is set up for this Present vicious form of governance from the very beginning!”
Until we see this big picture and begin to take note of these responsible factors and address them accordingly nit picking factual errors of no significance does no service.
SPDC as a form of governance is a tragic result of Burmese History. Not until everyone address Myanmar quagmire accordingly to its History this vicious cycle will continue.
War and politics, in Burmese
More and more former Tatmadaw officers are publishing memoirs, and in November the National Library of Australia catalogued a number of new titles from ex-soldiers turned aspiring writers.
Most prominent one of these officer-writers had passed away on 5th November. Lt. Col Maung Maung Oo (a) Tin Than Oo (DSA) aged 57 died of chronic liver cirrhosis at the Army Base Hospital in Mingaladon.
He wrote many books and later became a famous (or infamous) director for directing a grand army propaganda film called “Blossoming Lotus at Dawn” involving all famous 68 film stars of Burmese film industry. The film basically portrayed the slanted-army-version of Modern Burmese History.
He was an outspoken officer and gave many interviews to the media. This link is the last interview he did with the Mizzima News Media on 3rd August 2010.
http://www.mizzimaburmese.com/interview/5799-2010-08-03-12-55-32.html
He served in the same battalion on the Chinese Border I served as a boy soldier in 1973-74. He was only 2 years older than me and he was a young platoon commander in our battalion at our battalion forward command base at the fortified bases on Htaw Gaw hills near Chinese border just beyond Waimaw-Chibwe vehicular-road .
I was in Second Company and he was in the Fourth or the Fifth (Weapon Company), I can’t recall now. He arrived at our battalion in early 1975 as his first posting just after I deserted the army in late 1974 . He was a wide-eyed second-lieutenant just out of DSA and he was immediately wounded, not seriously, I think.
Causality was extremely high and we were so short of men our platoon had only two sections (just about 15 or 16 men). The whole company had only one officer, an old Kachin Captain. The company was basically run by the sergeant majors.
Tin Than Oo was really lucky to survive there as most new officers were killed within months or even weeks in our battalion. One new officer in our company from OTS lasted only two weeks. We were hit by CPB’s recoiless fire and we could only find body parts and sent back home only his right hand with OTS ring still attached as a body-substitute for a proper burial back in Rangoon’s military cemetry.
The three way battles between army and KIA and CPB were raging in that area for the whole 1974 and 75. According to his memoirs two mid months in 1975 alone saw at least 5000 dead from all three sides.
I didn’t really know him well. Only when he became famous as writer Tin Than Oo (Sit-Tekkatho) and started writing about the Battles of Htaw Gaw Hills I started knowing him.
He might have got the liver cirrhosis the same way as I got it by a battle wound and drinking excessive amount of quinine-laced-army rum the only abundant army-ration on the freezing front line of Kachin State.
May he rest in peace!
Ramos-Horta on Burma sanctions
plan B:
I frankly don’t know the answers to your questions. I don’t know what effect sanctions have had, for good or bad, on either the junta or the citizens. But that was not my point.
My point was that Suu Kyi’s release is not, by itself, a reason for improved relations with the junta. There may be other reasons, but her release is not a step in the right direction or in any direction. The junta has not changed.
Ramos-Horta on Burma sanctions
Ko Moe Aung
Concerning Daw Aung San Suu Kyi:
“Typically, she said she was ”already focused on the other 2100 political prisoners” in Burmese jails”
Since when? Pray tell us.
Min Ko Naing as an example of the most vulnerable.
Was high lighting him and others to the world ever one of her priority?
To support DASSK тЙа To supporting Myanmar citizenry.
In DASSK vs SPDC
The West ,in support,have used useless careless sanctions to encourage DASSK fantasy and pretended to have punished SPDC.
All the time denies the inevitable opposite outcome of making SPDC more intransigent than ever.
Neither denying the useless careless sanction that hurt the citizenry more nor claiming to support DASSK make West and its supporters self righteous approach “SINLESS”.