Pres. Obama gets cozy with dictators

A. Nguyen, Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS)

(Wisdom Quarterly/USCampaignforBurma.com)

   

Unlike the Lady, the dictator (BurmaDigest.info)

RANGOON, Burma (Naypyidaw, Myanmar) - While Pres. Obama tours Buddhist Southeast Asia, he is seeing some of the worst atrocities wrought since Hitler, Bush, and Idi Amin ruled parts of the world. Today he is in Cambodia where in the US War on Vietnam-era, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge unleashed violence on innocent Buddhists on a scale we can hardly imagine. Not since the US war machine mercilessly and maliciously (not to mention secretly and illegally) bombed Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and anywhere else US munitions could be expended to justify buying more in the self-sufficient industrial-war machine we call the MIC. ("Never again," we said, but we weren't looking ahead to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and take your pick: Somalia, Yemen, Libya...).

• Why it's a big deal Obama uses Myanmar instead of Burma 
• History repeats: Burma dictatorship REBRANDS itself
• Than Shwe, Dictator of Burma, is no hero

Who heads up the military junta the Burmese president belongs to?

Burma or Bust

Matt Spetalnick and Jeff Mason, Reuters.com

Aging Lady Aung San Suu Kyi, jailed and under house arrest for 15 years after her election and the subsequent coup, is kissed by future world leader B.S. Obama (blogs.ft.com)

  

YANGON - Barack Obama became the first American president to visit Burma on Monday [local time], using a six-hour trip to balance U.S. praise for the [military-dictatorship's puppet] government's progress in shaking off [obvious signs of ongoing] military rule with pressure to complete the process of [an appearance of full] democratic reform.

  

Obama, greeted by enthusiastic crowds in the former capital, Yangon [Rangoon], met President Thein Sein [who is the face of Gen. Than Shwe's military junta now holed up in the new capital Naypyidaw]. [Pres. Thein Sein is] a former junta member who has spearheaded [read whitewashed] reforms since taking office in March 2011. [Obama also met with] opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi [, whom he hosted in September in Washington, DC when he awarded her a medal].
  

"I shared with President Thein Sein our belief that the process of reform that he is taking is one that will move this country forward," Obama told reporters, with Thein Sein at his side.
  

"I recognize that this is just the first steps on what will be a long journey, but we think that a process of democratic reform and economic reform here in Myanmar... can lead to incredible development opportunities here," Obama said, using the country name preferred by the government and former junta, rather than Burma, which is used in the United States. More

Burma's military junta still in power after coup that followed democratic elections (AFP)

 
Why?

Why? (simonmainwaring.com)

Why is Obama bothering with one of the world's poorest and most totalitarian countries in the world? Money. The military-industrial complex needs resources, and it also needs to keep them from China. China has been propping up Burma (which the dictatorship renamed Myanmar) and promoting its human rights abuses as a means of ruling. China bought raw resources and offered political protection to the military junta, which is led with an iron fist by General Than Shwe who has a highly placed Chinese relative.

But isn't this good news -- first the Lady Suu Kyi is released from jail, then she is elected to a minor office, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits, and now the leader of the free (market) world comes to give his blessing on the proceedings? No, it is not good news. Nothing is changing; it is only going underground. The country will still be ruled by a small super-rich military junta. But now their will is transmitted and legitimized through the artifice of a "democratic process." It's just like America!

Previously, the people knew things were rotten and authoritarian. Now they can drink and distract themselves into accepting the comforting belief that they elect their leaders, that the leaders do the will of the people or at least what's best for the people, and that all is well. What should one prefer, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or George Orwell's nightmare premonition of a New World Order led by a brutal oligarchy?

Hooray that Aung San Suu Kyi is free! We've been keeping her in our hearts for years constantly calling attention to her plight when readers really couldn't be bothered. She is perhaps the second most prominent Buddhist in the world. She is our heroine. That does not save the ethnic minorities in Burma, the Muslim Rohingya, the shaman Karen, the rebels, the National League for Democracy, and anyone labelled a "dissident" for any reason at all.

Why? It is because IT IS DANGEROUS TO BE RIGHT WHEN YOUR GOVERNMENT IS WRONG.

• Burma's "former" dictator co-opts Obama's forward slogan

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Buddhist artifacts in Maldives destroyed

OnIslam.net; Wisdom Quarterly

Few realize that the diving paradise known as the Maldives, most of which is at or close to sea level and doomed to destruction as the planet warms due to manmade and natural causes, used to be Buddhist.

  
Now some entity or agency has brought about a coup and is trying to create international outrage by destroying priceless Buddhist art and history. What kind Company or clandestine service would do such a thing? Surely not the CIA, who created the Taliban to make war for the military-industrial complex possible in Afghanistan. So we do not know who it was, but we do know it was not the CIA.

• VIDEO: Formerly Buddhist Maldives in turmoil
• Buddhism in the Maldives

The Maldives are sinking

MALE, Maldive Islands - The destruction of several historical priceless Buddhist artifacts exhibited at the Maldives National Museum has alarmed Maldivians, provoking warnings of a possible rise of Islamic extremism and Taliban-style intolerance in the holiday paradise.

"They have effectively erased all evidence of our Buddhist past," a senior museum official, who asked for anonymity, told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Sunday, February 12, at the now shuttered building in the capital Male.

 

"We lost all our 12th century statues. They were made of coral stone and limestone. They are very brittle and there is no way we can restore them," he explained.

Last Tuesday, Maldives' first democratically-elected president Mohamed Nasheed resigned following three weeks of protests that were joined by a police mutiny.

During the coup that ousted President Nasheed, scenes of violence resulted in the wanton destruction of historical treasures.

The destruction occurred when a handful of men stormed the Chinese-built museum and destroyed its display of priceless artifacts from the nation's pre-Islamic era.

The incident echoed the 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban, damaging the nation's image. More 

 

Why is someone destroying Maldivian statues?

The Buddhist Blog

Similar to the [CIA-created] Taliban’s destruction of priceless Buddhist and historic artifacts in 2001, an Islamic extremist group has vandalized and destroyed precious Buddhist and Hindu statues in the Maldives. This kind of destruction is derived from extremist beliefs, which are almost always rooted in fear of anything different. Any extreme (whether liberal or conservative) is dangerous because when we believe that we alone are good, then we're more likely to justify intolerance, destruction, and killing. Destroying an ancient statue is tragic, but statues crumble with time anyway. Intolerance, however, quickly destroys happiness, lives, families, countries, and planets. More

• Muslim Maldives president quits after mutiny
• Maldivians rally for Islamic law
• Maldives slams UN on adultery penalty
• Maldives bows to protests, bans spas
• Afghanistan reclaims history piece by piece

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