The trouble with Burma (audio)

TheWorld.org, PRI, Public Radio Int'l (audio); Wisdom Quarterly

Dictator Gen. Than Shwe crushed Buddhist "troublemakers" with backing from China until US Sec'y of State Hillary Clinton started coming by and acting like the highest bidder.

 

The monks rose up for the Saffron Revolution

RANGOON, Burma - Myanmar is emerging from decades of repression and international isolation. The one-time military government has enacted democratic reforms, and the U.S. and others have responded by suspending sanctions. 

Now the country also known as Burma is viewed as a promising frontier economy. But there’s a downside. A rush of foreign investment could imperil Yangon’s collection of colonial-era buildings, an emblem of a time when the city was a cosmopolitan hub in the English empire.

 

The generals who ruled [and renamed Burma] Myanmar since the 1960s isolated the country and drove its economy into the ground. Being stuck in time has been a curse for Myanmar’s people, among the poorest in Asia. But it’s also had the unforeseen effect of preserving hundreds of ornate buildings from the 19th and early 20th century. More

Burma's Pagan or Bagan, an ancient city of thousands of pagodas and shrines (Wiki commons)

   

What was the "Saffron Revolution"?

Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Burma's Saffron Revolution (Amnesty Seattle)

An explosive situation in Burma was fueled in 2007 by crushing price hikes for basics opposed by 35,000 Buddhist monks and their supporters, who defied the military dictatorship. Rising prices for essentials set off protests. A junta of generals warned peaceful demonstrators as they staged days of anti-government protests. Military leaders reacted by imposing a nighttime curfew and banned gatherings of more than five people. The country's hard-line military rulers soon resorted to extreme force to stop the biggest anti-government demonstrations Burma had seen in nearly two decades, led by the country's Theravada Buddhist monks. Soldiers in full battle gear were deployed throughout the country's largest city, Rangoon, setting the stage for a showdown with a determined pro-democracy movement previously led by "The Lady," Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who rather than being allowed allowed to rule was deposed in a military coup immediately after democratic election and kept under house arrest for years.

• Burma's Lady wastes no time after being freed
• Burmese hold many expectations for Suu Kyi 
• Taung Byone Fest celebrated by Burma’s LGBT
• Burma to excavate World War II fighter planes
• Burma won't allow Muslims to open OIC office
• Myanmar's ruling party re-elects president as chief
• What a 2nd term might mean for Obama’s Asia policy
• FIRST HAND: An American Traveling in Burma
• SoCal Burmese welcome democracy leader Suu Kyi to LA

Burma’s "Frontier" Investor

Burma is going through some rapid transitions. In just the last year, the country’s military dictators have freed Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and allowed [rigged] elections [that keep them in control] to be held. Now the country is opening up to foreign business as well. [Enter Hillary Clinton and other suitors.]

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They Call It Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain (film)

Wisdom Quarterly; Photosynthesis Prod; NewYorkerFilms; VOA

  

The Saffron Revolution 2007-2012 (R.A.)

This is the story of the most Buddhist country in the world (with 89% of the population as adherents), Burma. 

  

The military coup that took place a half century ago led to the creation of an Orwellian nightmare -- a police state ruled by General Than Shwe and an elite junta of criminal military men, who changed the name of the country to "Myanmar" as they embezzled its wealth, enslaved its people, and aligned with corrupt totalitarian China over corrupt democratic India. 

  

FREE BURMA from police state oppression: Saffron Revolution (gawker.com)

Orwell, who was a colonial British subject born in Burma, wrote 1984 in 1948 with Burma and England in mind.

Told with stunning footage that was shot clandestinely over a two-year period by filmmaker Robert H. Lieberman, the film provides an astonishing and intimate look inside at what has become one of the most isolated countries on the planet. Lieberman lifts the curtain on the everyday life of the people in what was once the Golden Land now held hostage by a brutal and superstitious military regime for 48 years.

Aung San Suu Kyi freedom mural (AFP)

A revealing interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner Lady Aung San Suu Kyi conducted just after her most recent release from house arrest is interwoven with extensive interviews and interactions with Burmese people from all around this incredibly diverse Southeast Asian nation.

  

Burma is the home of the modern emphasis on insight meditation (vipassana) in Buddhist practice thanks to its extraordinary monastic system that has produced such luminaries and scholars as Mahasi Sayadaw and the accomplished Pa Auk Sayadaw.

(Kaye Lin) Burma is going through a transition, reform Associate Producer Harold Dinkins says makes this film more relevant than ever before because the film portrays many sociological aspects in the country from health and education issues to the problem of child labor. It is now screening in select theaters across America.

  

The film, culled from over 120 hours of striking images, is an impressionistic journey that leads viewers across the vastness of Burma. It traces the history of Burma from its beginnings in the ancient city of Pagan (Bagan), through colonial times, the rule of Daw Suu Kyi's father, Aung San, recent uprisings by Theravada Buddhist monks called the Saffron Revolution after the color of their robes, the devastating Cyclone Nargis that killed 150,000 people, up to the present day.

Buddhist monk faces off with police (dvb.no)

During Lieberman's time in Burma he shot video constantly, even though it was forbidden and a risky thing to do in a totalitarian state, which could have led to him being thrown irretrievably into Insein Prison. Now this rare footage forms an unexpected and deeply expressive portrait of a place the world now calls "Myanmar."

Actor Ellen Page explains who dictator Than Shwe  is to Burma

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