[A-List] Myanmar

[Patrick Bond]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar>
As for me, I am most interested in knowing what is it that goes on in 
Myanmar (not Burma).

PB: And why don't you make your an effort, comrade Nestor. There's lots to 
marvel at on the Irrawaddy newspaper website and various other solidarity 
URLs. I'm offline as I write so can't point you, but I know you can find 
your way.

But let's start with 8/8/88, as seminal a date for the Burmese as June 16 
1976 is for us in South Africa. My brother-in-law, who was doing his MD 
internship at the main Rangoon hospital, was nearly killed - as thousands of 
protesters were - when, like your Argentine generals or Pinochet, the 
Myanmar junta let loose its bullets on the masses. Even treating the wounded 
was considered such a threat that the army fired indiscriminately on 
healthworkers that day.

Then in 1990 the National League for Democracy won 80% of the vote in an 
election but the Myanmar junta refused to recognise it. Is that Western 
propaganda, a figment of Aung San Suu Kyi's hyperactive imagination? Was the 
2004 massacre of her followers, when she was touring the northern part of 
the country, another myth? None of this made it across your radar screen?

The Burmese liberation movement has lots of problems, among which your lack 
of awareness - especially given the close parallels to your *own* 
experience, Nestor - is but a tiny reflection of the larger tragedy. Today 
morons like Bono capture the limelight for Red credit card gimmicks, while 
durable struggles like those of the Burmese masses are lost after the Nobel 
Prize camera flashes subside.

But I expect much from you, Nestor. Where is your South-South instinct? In 
terms of oppressing its own people, the Myanmar junta is the most vicious 
ruling crew on earth today.

My mother was born in colonial Burma so I'm particularly interested. We have 
a small and strong SA-Burma solidarity committee, which remains mortified 
that the only government which gave diplomatic recognition to the fascist 
Myanmar generals was South Africa, in May 1994. Pretoria has played a 
constructive engagement game with a variety of nasty regimes (in part to 
sell arms), even giving Suharto the country's highest-ranking medal in 
December 1997, a couple of months before the masses sent him packing. Which 
leads to this bit of silliness:

NG: In the same way, I would not accept the talk about Venezuelan imperialsm 
or --South African imperialism!  Even "sub"-imperialism. On this, too, 
Patrick and yours truly differ and there is no means to put us in agreement.

PB: Nestor, who has *ever* said anything about Vz imperialism? What kind of 
stupid distraction is that? As for SA subimperialism, ok dear comrade, just 
put that lovely head of yours deep into the sand then, you are *alone* on 
the left now not to express concern about the compradors running SA - and 
India and Brazil after the WTO sell-out - undermining struggles against 
global capital. I am especially annoyed because yesterday in New York, the 
SA government filed a friend of the court brief against the Jubilee and 
Khulumani movements, who are struggling for reparations against Barclays 
Bank. A couple of hours ago I found myself debating - for a Dartmouth 
seminar - a jerk from Davos who works at the highest level at Barclays. 
Pretoria so desperately wants Barclays to screw SA bank customers that it 
has specifically attacked Jubilee SA for their critique of Barclay's 
apartheid profits.

If you'd like to respond to evidence along these lines I'll be sending you 
offlist some of the facts of SA subimperialism. I remember so fondly our 
lovely beef-heavy lunch in Buenos Aires four months ago, Nestor, and cringe 
at how I failed to dissuade you from an exhausted Third Worldist nationalism 
that is *such* an anachronism in these debates.


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