New fiction out of Burma - "Burma on slow march to democracy."

Note by Dr. Zarni of LSE, posted here with his permission --

Date: Sunday, January 16, 2011, 8:45 AM

Dear Friends,

This is what passes for as obviously worthwhile reading on a research
email list - substance-less, distorted explanations, patronizing
fictional tale, which among other irredeemable flaws, has turned 30-40
percent of Burma's ethnic minority/nationality groups invisible. For
instance, Aung San's assassination in July 1947 was made to have a
linear link with the coup of 1962. The characterization of the
Burma's Independence Army (which evolved in various stages into
today's categorically oppressive, semi-colonial instrument of the
increasingly feudal ruling class) as a small elite army was as
fictional as one could get, unless postal clerks or high school
drop-outs or migrants or unemployed - many of whom came to form the
backbone of the Burma Army in its formative days -- were redefined
retrospectively as 'colonial Burma's 'elites'.

What a stupid argument to make that it is extraordinary the regime
allowed the mother-son (of two) reunion, or out-of-touch with the
reality that ASSK is just one of many citizens under dictatorial
rule!! Not that I am given into hero-worshipping and myths of
democratization by big leaders - but factually speaking, she is
IRREPLACEABLE - there was none before her and there will be no others
like her after she leaves this world. She would have been consigned
to oblivion or simply 'disappeared' as has many a dissidents, were she
just one of 50 million ordinary Burmese.

Too many factual errors or analytical or conceptual rubbish to go
through it argument by argument, or 'facts by facts'.

One of the tragedies of Burma is not simply that the country has been
- and will continue to be - treated as nothing more than what I call a
'brothel of resources and strategic asset', but the oppression,
poverty, and misery have been used as 'raw materials' by "drive-by
experts and accidental Burma watchers". All that that, that is
required is that you have the command of an international language,
preferably and most influentially, English and that you have a very
active imagination.

These days Burma experts and Burma watchers are a dime a dozen.
George Bernard Shaw unfairly denigrated teaching and teachers -
(dominated by females whose job description in his days included
scrubbing the floor of classrooms or not being seen in public with a
romantic male partner, among other sexually repressed Victorian and
sexist things) - when he said 'those who can't do anything teach'.

I would say if you didn't succeed at anything in life do Burma or do Myanmar!

Enjoy the reading!

zarni

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Here is another 'fiction' from the author of "The Lizard Cage".


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Date: Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 5:48 PM
Subject: [Burma-research:1045] FWD: Connelly, "Burma on slow march to democracy"


FWD: article by Karen Connelly, "Burma on slow march to democracy":
Acclaimed writer says Burma's junta key to country's future

http://www.calgaryherald.com/Burma+slow+march+democracy/4115296/story.html