BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?

Subject: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 07 - 07:38 AM

from the Washington Post;

Letter to Burma
The world's senior statesmen call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007; Page A14


IT'S A REMARKABLE list: 59 former presidents and prime ministers, from countries ranging from Mongolia to Chile and from Argentina to Zambia. They are Hindus and Muslims, Catholics and Buddhists, socialists and right-wingers.

What could possibly unite them? Dismay that Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel peace laureate and fighter for democracy, remains under house arrest in her Southeast Asian homeland of Burma (also known as Myanmar). The 59 signed a letter, released yesterday by Norway's former prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, calling for her freedom. "Aung San Suu Kyi is not calling for revolution in Burma, but rather peaceful, nonviolent dialogue," the former leaders noted. They urged Burma's "senior general," Than Shwe, to take her up on the offer.

Indeed, Aung San Suu Kyi has been amazingly consistent in her support of nonviolence and democracy through nearly two decades of provocation and oppression from Burma's dictators. In 1990, her National League for Democracy won more than four out of every five parliamentary seats in a free election, but the junta imprisoned many of the winners and refused to cede power. Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for 11 of the subsequent 17 years and in solitary confinement since 2003. The corrupt regime meanwhile has driven its resource-rich nation of 50 million people deeper and deeper into poverty. It has burned 3,000 villages in campaigns of ethnic cleansing; used rape and forced child labor to decimate ethnic groups on its enemy list; and forced 1 million refugees into neighboring countries.

Not long ago a majority of the U.N. Security Council voted to deplore such tactics in a resolution that was vetoed (not surprisingly) by China and Russia and opposed (more surprisingly) by South Africa. No former leader from those three countries signed the letter. But three U.S. ex-presidents did: Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. And it's a mark of Burma's growing isolation that the signatories included so many respected leaders from Asian countries that until recently argued against any form of pressure: Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos of the Philippines, not to mention leaders from India, Pakistan, Thailand and more. Gen. Than Shwe should read his mail carefully today.

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: GUEST,redhorse at work
Date: 15 May 07 - 08:17 AM

yet another tedious bb cut-and-paste

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 May 07 - 08:32 AM

But a very cogent one redhorse, the woman has been treat abominably, and we should all stand up and be counted in our protest against her inhuman treatment.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 May 07 - 12:19 PM

Dictators are not swayed by any opinions other than their own.

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 May 07 - 03:11 PM

But the people who finance them and cost up to them can possibly be influenced by the thought that there might be a price to be paid for doing that sort of stuff in lost contracts and loss of sales and so forth. And politicians can be warned of the consequences domestically of playing footsie with butchers and tyrants. That's where this kind of thing can help.

The paradox is that some of the good guys in this instance aren't actually all that much better than the Burmese generals. But as Oscar Wilde put it, hypocrisy is the tribute paid by vice to virtue.

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: mrdux
Date: 15 May 07 - 04:44 PM

McG of H --

The quote is apt but the correct source is:

"Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue." ("L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.")

        – François, Duc de La Rochefocauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims, 218 (1678)

michael

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 May 07 - 04:58 PM

In short? Yes. It can sway them to violence, as you will discover if you voice your opinion in a dictatorship.

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 07 - 05:05 PM

Here are seven opinions that would sway the SOB.

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 May 07 - 05:24 PM

Now why would China and Russia veto that Security Council resolution? What stake do they have in indirectly protecting the dictatorship in Myanmar?

I'm asking simply because I don't know...not because I have any axe to grind about it. (Thought I'd better mention that...)

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 May 07 - 05:25 PM

They vote against them because they can basically.
G

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 07 - 05:30 PM

Security Council resolutions are meant to deal with situations in which inetrnational peace is threatened. Since the situation in Myanmar is internal . . . . The same bullshit excuse is used with regard to some African countries where people are horribly repressed/starved/shot for the helluvit, and it gives an easy out for people and countries that just don't care.

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 May 07 - 05:33 PM

Hmm. Yes, I can see that the Chinese would be sticklers on such a technicality. They are nervous about setting precedents in regards to places like Tibet...

But it puzzles me that the Russians would have blocked that one.

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 May 07 - 05:45 PM

I should have checked that. Any good quote tends to get attributed to Oscar. Still the chances are he recycled this one anyway. (And "hommage" probably more naturally becomes "tribute" in English rather than "homage".)

As the old joke goes "I wish I'd said that!" "You will. Oscar, you will."
.............................
Military intervention against human rights abuses very rarely works out well. Ironically, one of the few occasions when one such intervention was quite effective was when Vietnam moved against the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia - and it got severely punished by the USA for its pains.

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 May 07 - 05:54 PM

Yes, I regard the Vietnamese invasion of Pol Pot's Cambodia is one of the very few truly justified actions of that sort in modern times. They did the whole world a favor by bringing down that regime. The countries which most vigorously condemned and punished Vietnam for doing it were the USA and Red China.

That is ironical, to say the least, and it amply demonstrates the ruthless, self-serving cynicism that underlies international politics.

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 07 - 05:59 PM

International politics is about money. Nothing more, nothing less.

Subject: RE: BS: Burma- Can opinion sway dictators?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 May 07 - 06:18 PM

Yup. You got it.