Human Rights

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Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The Buddhist Monks Rebellion

by Nanette

I’ve been posting bits about the situation in Burma on the Community/Member blog, but I really knew little about the overall situation, although I have, of course, heard of Aung San Suu Kyi and her house arrest and such. It wasn’t until I read this piece in the Guardian UK, though, that I realized that the monks and others who are protesting are in very much more dire danger than I first supposed.

I naively, I guess, thought that the military would be leery of killing the monks, or mass killings of civilians, when they know the world is watching. It seems not.

Yesterday, what everyone feared would happen in Burma, started happening. Police sent in to disperse thousands of demonstrators in the administrative capital Rangoon opened fire on the protesters. Reuters quoted hospital and monastery sources as saying two monks and a civilian died of gunshot wounds, as thousands of Buddhist monks and civilians defied warning shots, tear gas and baton charges. If the pattern of 1988 is to be repeated, these deaths could prove a grim foretaste of things to come. Then, it took weeks of similar nationwide protests before the insurrection was quelled by the massacre of 3,000 people.

I wasn’t aware of whatever happened in 1988, so I looked it up, finding this at Burma Watch (the number of people reported killed differ, but official counts and on the ground counts often do):

Finally in 1988, Burma erupted into a series of demonstrations and strikes protesting the existing extreme political oppression and economic hardships. The government initially responded with arrests, detentions, and excessive force resulting in some deaths.

The demonstrations of 1988 culminated in a massive nation-wide show of People Power on August 8 in which hundreds of thousands of people marched to demand a change in government. These peaceful demonstrations were violently crushed by army troops who fired relentlessly on the unarmed crowds in Rangoon and other cities killing more than 10,000 student, civilian and Buddhist monk protesters throughout the country. Thousands were arrested.

The Burma Watch link also gives much more background on the struggles of the country since gaining independence from the British colonialist rule.

Here is more from The Guardian, though, on the current situation and some of the ins and outs of Burma/Myanmar’s relations with leading nations:

Once again, most of the world looks on at the actions of a brutish military dictatorship who show no compunction about spilling blood. But not all the bystanders are impotent. China is the junta’s chief backer. Beijing has supplied the Burmese military with fighter aircraft, tanks, naval patrol boats, armoured personnel carriers, field artillery pieces ,small arms and ammunition - more than $2bn worth.

[...]

In return for Burma’s ample supplies of crude oil and natural gas, and in return too for access to the Indian Ocean, China has provided the junta with the diplomatic equivalent of missile defence.

What a curse it seems to be, for all but the elite of most countries, to have natural resources… especially oil and natural gas. Well, and diamonds, gold, other gems, and anything else.

Western efforts to stop the bloodshed are limited. One of the consequences of the Bush era, in which regime change is an explicit aim of foreign policy, is that the US and Britain have become tainted messengers of democratic values. Efforts to undermine hostile regimes - either militarily or covertly through funding - can create real difficulties for opposition movements in those countries. It it is now all too easy for despots to brand their domestic opponents as foreign lackeys. It is an argument that echoes from Iran to Zimbabwe.

[...]

Britain’s own investment relationship with Burma is far from clear.

[...]

None of this helps the brave monks and citizens of Rangoon, Mandalay and Sittwe. About 300 of them were carted off in unmarked police trucks yesterday to an uncertain fate. If the junta manages to avoid a Tiananmen Square-style massacre happening in public, it will have few qualms about what happens to its detainees in the secrecy of its jails.

[added] The Buddhist Channel… who knew? Lots of up to date information there on the current crisis - they are gathering information from many different sources - but it looks like it would also be very interesting reading in quieter times as well.

[added 9/27] Marisacat has pulled together more updates. Things are pretty bad… I don’t know whether to be happy to sad that I don’t have cable… or a TV at all, really. Assuming they are covering this story, that is, in between Britney updates.

[added 9/28 6:30 pm] How long can Burma keep the monks locked up? (my question). And what will happen once they are released?

The New York Times seems to think that the protest has been contained and that the military junta of Burma/Myanmar (I really do not know which name to use) is in the process of winning this - and they may be, I have no idea - but are they planning on never releasing the monks?

BANGKOK, Sept. 28 — Myanmar’s armed forces appeared to have succeeded today in sealing tens of thousands of protesting monks inside their monasteries, but they continued to attack bands of civilian demonstrators who challenged them in the streets of the main city, Yangon.

[...]

Diplomats said there was no way to estimate the numbers of dead and wounded in Yangon or other cities, but they said it was certainly far higher than the number the junta has reported.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, said today that he believed the loss of life was “far greater” than is being reported, and Bob Davis, Australia’s ambassador to Myanmar, said that based on unconfirmed reports, he was certain that the death toll was “several multiples of the 10 acknowledged by the authorities.”

Myanmar is mostly sealed to the outside world. Human rights and exile groups with contacts inside the country said they had fewer incidents to report on Friday, and this was at least in part because of an apparent government clampdown on Internet and telephone communications.

Some are losing hope… not surprisingly: (Guardian UK)

“Today was the first day I went to the protests on my own. All my friends were too scared to go out on the streets after being gassed and shot at over the last few days. I woke up feeling more depressed and less optimistic than I have all week, but I felt it was my duty to carry on protesting. I was frightened, but aren’t we all? If everybody hid indoors, nothing will ever change, and we will never be able to draw attention to the hopeless situation our country is facing. I need to stand and be counted.

[...]

On the first day, I felt very excited. We went to the Shwedagon pagoda, Burma’s most sacred shine, where we saw 60,000 monks and quite a few ordinary members of the public. [...]

But my optimism faded on Thursday when we arrived to find the pagoda and nearby monastery deserted. It was then we learned the monks had been rounded up during a dawn raid and taken away by the military.

I am rapidly losing hope. After such a joyful beginning, I now don’t believe that we will be able to change anything.”

Others are not so sure that, with the world watching, things may not be different this time: (Guardian UK)

The last time Burmese soldiers fired on their own people there were few witnesses, and those who were there had no way of telling the story.

Two decades and a technological revolution later, the protesters challenging the government are ready to risk their lives so the world can hear their story. Armed with mobile phone cameras, they have become the eyes of the “saffron revolution”.

No foreign TV crews have been able to enter the country and networks such as the BBC and CNN have been forced to report from neighbouring Thailand. From the point of view of television, the situation is the same as it was in 1988, when the massacre of nearly 3,000 people went unreported by most TV news programmes.

Today, the regime has calculated that it can again win the propaganda battle if it controls the traditional media. It is wrong. The military had forgotten about the internet and the mobile phone, two weapons with which the protesters have managed to grab the world’s attention.

[...]

“I’m scared that if we stop sending photos and video the world will forget about us,” says Lynn, who writes and sends low-resolution photos to dissident groups abroad.

The Burmese people know they need to keep international attention on them if they want to succeed. For days they have risked their lives to stand in for the hundreds of journalists banned from Burma by a government that has much to hide.

via Chris Clarke, Avaaz.org has a letter campaign targeted to the Chinese government (which has the most influence on the military junta in Burma). The are trying to reach 250,000 signatures and they don’t have much farther to go.

bfp has a collection of stories and articles, some from those on the ground.

Lenin, at Lenin’s Tomb, takes a look at some of the motivations behind Western government and media’s reporting and support of the Burma rebellion (while they ignore “protests in Thailand against the US-supported putsch [which] have been repressed even more violently").

daily kos article by koNko on unconfirmed stories of a military coup.

Since Internet service was cut by the Junta yesterday I have been monitoring dissident sites, Chinese sources and Western MSM.

Unconfirmed rumors of escalated violence against Buddhist monks by the army overnight are likely to be true but apparently many solders refused to attached religious leaders and an insurrection ensured.

Separately, a Coup appears to have been organized by General Maung and the army is reported to be guarding the house of dissident Aung San Suu Kyi.

Irony. Or something.

I’ll probably update and edit this post from time to time. 

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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Come Back! We Hate YOU, But We Love Your Money!

by Nanette

Intended consequences of anti-immigrant legislation enacted by various towns… but some are not liking it so much. A case of hater’s remorse, maybe?

Towns Rethink Laws Against Illegal Immigrants (NYTimes)

RIVERSIDE, N.J., Sept. 25 — A little more than a year ago, the Township Committee in this faded factory town became the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone who employed or rented to an illegal immigrant.

Within months, hundreds, if not thousands, of recent immigrants from Brazil and other Latin American countries had fled. The noise, crowding and traffic that had accompanied their arrival over the past decade abated.

The law had worked. Perhaps, some said, too well.

With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.

Meanwhile, the town was hit with two lawsuits challenging the law. Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town’s already tight budget. Suddenly, many people — including some who originally favored the law — started having second thoughts.

So last week, the town rescinded the ordinance, joining a small but growing list of municipalities nationwide that have begun rethinking such laws as their legal and economic consequences have become clearer.

“I don’t think people knew there would be such an economic burden,” said Mayor George Conard, who voted for the original ordinance. “A lot of people did not look three years out.”

Can’t forget to add in the genius factor....

Rival advocacy groups in the immigration debate turned this otherwise sleepy town into a litmus test for their causes. As the television cameras rolled, Riverside was branded, in turns, a racist enclave and a town fighting for American values.

Some residents who backed the ban last year were reluctant to discuss their stance now, though they uniformly blamed outsiders for misrepresenting their motives. By and large, they said the ordinance was a success because it drove out illegal immigrants, even if it hurt the town’s economy.

“It changed the face of Riverside a little bit,” said Charles Hilton, the former mayor who pushed for the ordinance. (He was voted out of office last fall but said it was not because he had supported the law.)

“The business district is fairly vacant now, but it’s not the legitimate businesses that are gone,” he said. “It’s all the ones that were supporting the illegal immigrants, or, as I like to call them, the criminal aliens.” (emphasis mine)

I can’t imagine why they voted him out of office. Then again, I can’t imagine why they voted him in.

Posted by Nanette on 09/25 at 07:02 PM
Civil Rights • Coalitions • I'm old and crabby and I have a pen • HumanRights • Immigration •
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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Abundance, Scarcity and The Milky Way

by Nanette

The words are evocative in themselves.

Scarcity. Small, spare, quickly ended, hoarding sound and movement - the final syllables almost blending together in their rush to get out and get it over with.

Abundance. Full and round, rising and falling, this one needs your participation, to the extent that you are able, to the very end - where you must give it that last push and actively disengage in order to let it go.

And then there is Theriomorph. Which is also fun to both say and visualize, but she does much more than play with words. She has taken the two concepts above and expanded on them as models for living and/or operating, in a thought provoking four part series posted at Chris Clarke’s, where she was guest blogging the past few days.

It’s actually a five part series, in my mind, because until I read the post that began it all, the series itself was a little confusing for me. I could understand very well what she was saying, but, for some reason - most likely unfamiliarity with the writer herself - until I knew why she was saying it, it was difficult for me to know how to respond.

Anyway, first off here is her series - none of the posts are very long, so it’s quick reading, but they are full, so much thinking:

The post that kicked off the request for the series:
speaking of disappearing peoples, and language (and alliances)

The series.
Part I: Abundance
Part II: Real World Application of Abundance is all About Cookies
Part III: When Abundance Goes Wrong
Part IV: Relinquishing Scarcity, Offering Abundance

I love talking about this stuff and attempting to figure out how these concepts, and ones like them, can work on a practical, wide-spread basis on the left. I’m not really going to talk about that, though, or directly about Theriomorph’s series at all -I don’t think, anyway.

Strangely enough, this series, combined with two posts of Chris’… one just a photo and a comment on it, and the other about caring for elderly relatives, as well as (yet another) asinine post by a major feminist blogger all got me thinking about abundance and scarcity, of course, and feminism, being considered part of a class, actually having class… and my mom.

You see, one reason Theriomorph’s series both fascinated and puzzled me is my mom has lived her life under the abundance model.

Willful generosity. Stubborn openness. Determined curiosity. Genuine graciousness. Honesty and kindness is equal measure.
The idea, I suppose, is as simple as not only behaving, but actually feeling, like welcome guests at each other’s tables, all the time. Hosting and visiting both, in every interaction.

Yes. Like that.

I should give a little background. 

Continue Reading Abundance, Scarcity and The Milky Way

Posted by Nanette on 09/11 at 08:51 PM
Civil Rights • Coalitions • HumanRights • Index Card • Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish • Women •
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Thursday, August 30, 2007

Myths, Monsters and Contradictions

by Nanette

An assortment of things I’ve read over the past few months have come together - somewhat - in my mind to form related, if still rather disconnected and contradictory, thoughts. I hope that by the time I’ve finished laying out the parts I’ll have figured out how to fit all the pieces together. Or you will have, at any rate.

This is likely to be a bit long. Brace yourselves.

Via Alas, a Blog comes this fascinating children's book review at American Indians in Children's Literature. We are allowed a peek at what is normally a closely held and secret sacred Cherokee story - which, even now I am sure we are only getting a small flavor of. From what I can tell, this review of Gail Haley's Two Bad Boys is written by Gayle Ross. Here are a few highlights:

Let me first say two things. I don’t tell this story publicly. It’s part of the long creation story that is told in ceremony every year at Green Corn time. An elder once told me that the Earth needs to hear these stories, but how, when and to whom they are told must be respected.

The second thing is that, in order to tell a good story, you have to know that the story is alive. You have to make it comfortable in your interior landscape. Most Native stories that find themselves wandering around in the psyches of non-Native storytellers and writers would be in a place as foreign to them as Mars would be to the average Earth-dweller. That’s where you’d find something like Two Bad Boys.

Gail Haley’s retelling of our sacred story about Kanati and Selu mirrors the Christian myth about Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and how work came into the world.

[...]

But Two Bad Boys is not, in any way, at all, “a very old Cherokee tale,” nor is it, in any way, at all, what our story is about. There are layers and layers of meaning in this most sacred story that are contained in essential elements that Haley did away with in order to make it a “children’s story.” The entire process of eliminating what makes the story sacred is what makes Haley’s version a desecration. Two Bad Boys is the cultural equivalent of retelling the Easter Story and leaving out the crucifixion. It’s that insensitive.

[ed: read the rest of the review for the Ms. Ross' version of the actual story.]

I'm sure Ms. Haley is a wonderful storyteller. She appears to have won a few awards and lots of acclaim ... I have nothing bad or good to say about her, having never heard of her before this, so any stray thoughts I have as a result of reading this review are not really about her or her work - or Ms. Ross, for that matter.

For some reason, though, this telling brings to mind a favorite saying of mine: a line from ebogjonson in reference to something completely unrelated to this - or is it? - about "dangerously wild and crafty memes that have been laughing at intent and virtue for over 140 years [...] that tend to slip out of a user's grasp almost immediately, so deliberately handling them constitutes a form of willful recklessness."

--------

I hadn't heard of La Vendida before reading about her at brownfemipower's a few months ago. As she says, the story around La Vendida is a bit complicated, and "to discuss La Vendida, you have to start with La Malinche". So she does:

La Malinche (known as Malinche, Malintzin, or Dona Marina), refers to a native woman in Mexico during the time of colonization. As the story goes, she slept with Cortez eventually acting as an extremely effective interpreter and it is rumored she even went into battle with Cortez, her knowledge of the various tribes serving as an essential tool in Cortez’s victories.

Because of her role during colonization, Malinche has come to represent very negative qualities. There is no written recored of what type of sexual relationship Cortez and Malinche engaged in. She started off as a slave to Cortez (thus implying her sexual submissiveness), but eventually was partnered with him (some say they were married, others say she was a mistress) and bore him a son (thus implying her sexual autonomy).

Lots, lots more there, where she delves deeply into the significance of La Malinche and La Vendida to present day Mexico and those of Mexican descent, nationalism, feminism, machismo and much more. A wonderful article, well worth reading - but it's actually a conversation in the comments of this post that calls out to me to be included in whatever picture I am attempting to paint here.

My question to brownfemipower (bfp):

Continue Reading Myths, Monsters and Contradictions

Posted by Nanette on 08/30 at 01:17 PM
Civil Rights • Coalitions • Feminism • HumanRights • Racism • Society • Women •
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Monday, August 27, 2007

All Done at Feministe - And I Survived!

by Nanette

Not that that was in any doubt, of course.

I only posted a couple of things, besides my introductory post - both of which I also posted here.

I didn’t make too big of a splash, but that’s okay. One of my fears was that I was going to be the one to blow up the blog - it seems at least one of the guest bloggers does it every other rotation, starting with Roy, who was a guest blogger the first week. But, thankfully, it wasn’t me… one of my guest co-bloggers, Ren, of Renegade Evolution, stepped up to the plate and took that on, in this thread - 588 comments! (I still have no real idea what the whole thing was all about).

There was a good conversation in my Benefit of the Doubt post at feministe, which I didn’t really join in that much, for one reason or another. Stress at being in an unfamiliar place among unfamiliar people for an entire week (this can really send us introverts for a loop), plus also, because it was a guest posting gig, I felt like a guest host (I even called it that in an email to Jill of feministe), and so refrained from injecting myself or my opinions into the conversation too much. Also, and I hate to admit it, for some reason I had a really had time finding my posts again. Sigh, I’m such a Bad Blogger.

Still, as a result of that thread I have started a religion called IlykaPele-a —celebrating the goddess of fire, lightning, dance and ferocious advocacy.  (I added the a because I am not exactly appropriating the Hawaiian goddess of similar name.)

[edit] There was also a good conversation on the post about skinny people way back when, both at feministe and Maat’s Feather. I learned, or was reminded, that for the shows (Soul Train and others) staffers went out into the crowds and actually choose people to come in, I guess to establish a “look”. Anyway, it’s explained better here.

I have some links.

The Ladies of La Patrona: Humanity’s Hope

As Central American migrants cling to rickety old trains with the hopes of making it North they are exploited by police, corrupt officials, and gang members.  But a small town on the outskirts of Cordoba in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, offers a welcome respite. The Ladies of La Patrona, who have very little means, give all that they can to the migrants passing on the trains. Why? Just because it’s right.

Radical Knowledge: Where are all the bloggers of color?

This question makes the rounds in blogland oh, every three or four months. Invariably, a white blogger is the one doing the asking and a whole slew of white folks are speculating about the answer.

I don’t usually make a point of paying attention to those conversations. Knowing that I’m a blogger and I’m right here, makes it really hard for me to pay attention to all the garbage that usually gets spewed out (i.e. they’re too poor to blog, they don’t care about blogging, they aren’t educated enough to blog, they don’t have the time to blog etc). But this time I read such interesting commentary from different bloggers of color, I was inspired to try to unravel some of my own thoughts about the “where are they” conversations.

On Myths and Monsters

When it comes down to it, those are the things that run the machine. These caricatures and invented mythologies are what NEED to be spun around humans when you justify not treating them with any sort of consideration or respect.

R. Mildred… in lolcat

No quotes. It’s mostly all visual and, of course, hilarious.

Posted by Nanette on 08/27 at 04:35 PM
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Thursday, August 16, 2007

Kudos to CARE?”

by Nanette

“CARE, one of the world’s biggest charities, is walking away from some $45 million a year in federal financing, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but also may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.”

From The New York Times

Do read the article, I can’t put enough of it here to give the full flavor and the personal stories are especially worth hearing about.

CARE’s decision is focused on the practice of selling tons of often heavily subsidized American farm products in African countries that in some cases, it says, compete with the crops of struggling local farmers.

The charity says it will phase out its use of the practice by 2009. But it has already deeply divided the world of food aid and has spurred growing criticism of the practice as Congress considers a new farm bill.

“If someone wants to help you, they shouldn’t do it by destroying the very thing that they’re trying to promote,” said George Odo, a CARE official who grew disillusioned with the practice while supervising the sale of American wheat and vegetable oil in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.

Under the system, the United States government buys the goods from American agribusinesses, ships them overseas, mostly on American-flagged carriers, and then donates them to the aid groups as an indirect form of financing. The groups sell the products on the market in poor countries and use the money to finance their antipoverty programs. It amounts to about $180 million a year.

I don’t even pretend to be an expert, but even at a casual glance this seems like an extremely poor way of doing things. There is disagreement, though, of course.

The Christian charity World Vision and 14 other groups, which call themselves the Alliance for Food Aid, say that CARE is mistaken; they say the system works because it keeps hard currency in poor countries, can help prevent food price spikes in those countries and does not hurt their farmers. Not least, they argue, it also pays for their antipoverty programs.

But some people active in trying to help Africa’s farmers are critical of the practice. Former President Jimmy Carter, whose Atlanta-based Carter Center uses private money to help African farmers be more productive, said in an interview that it was a flawed system that had survived partly because the charities that received money from it defended it.

[...]

CARE’s idea is that a profitable business is more likely than a charitable venture to survive when foreign aid runs out.

“What’s happened to humanitarian organizations over the years is that a lot of us have become contractors on behalf of the government,” said Mr. Odo of CARE. “That’s sad but true. It compromised our ability to speak up when things went wrong.”

I’ve been ambivalent about the practices of charitable organizations and human rights organizations for a while now, for a few reasons. And while I still am not an expert and I’m still a bit ambivalent, I think my first thought was the correct one.

Kudos to CARE.

Posted by Nanette on 08/16 at 03:20 AM
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Thursday, July 26, 2007

“Women Born Women”…

by Nanette

Thinking out loud, coming to terms with terms… on my own terms. 

I mentioned in the post below that I was currently involved in a conversation about “women born women only” spaces and how some exclude trans women.

I was thinking that I would one day write a post about why I rejected any sort of policy of exclusion like that, and was pretty much convinced that I had thought things through enough to do so - still I had a sense of discomfort when recalling the conversation but I couldn’t identify the source. It finally came to me this morning. When I was taking a shower, actually - I do some of my best thinking there!

Various parts of the conversations, points presented by others, points presented by me, were rattling around in my head ... women born women only, transpeople, transphobia, protected spaces, women born women, civil rights, human rights, women born women, acceptance, life experiences, women born women.... and there, finally, I had my “Duh!” moment.

At times, in order to clarify my thinking or beliefs, it works best for me to just pare things down to essentials, otherwise I get caught up in all the little eddies and ripples swirling around, following this or that diversion - and I miss the center point that all of this is moving out from. For me, it all comes down to one thing.

Either I believe that women who are trans are women, or I do not. If I believe that women who are trans* are women, then there are no separate categories of ‘women born women’ and ‘transwomen’, as each would have been born women, just in different ways. This also means no separate levels of access, no separate levels of personhood, no separate levels of human dignity. 

I’ll not use that term again unless it is with scare quotes and is in direct reply or relation to what someone is saying.

(And, of course, many others have figured all this out long ago, but my brain is sometimes puny and non-absorbent, but as I say… I’m slow, but I get there.)

[edited slightly]

Posted by Nanette on 07/26 at 09:10 AM
Civil Rights • Feminism • HumanRights • ShameOnUs • Women •
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