Friday, July 19, 2024
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
Art News--Joan Snyder, Sikander--boom in South Asian Art--beheaded sculpture Univ of Houston--
https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/joan-snyder-icons-art-in-america-1234712094/
My article from 2007--
Author WHESPosted on September 23, 2007March 30, 2016Categories Opinions
Burma–growing darker daily
(September 11, 2007) On August 15th the Burmese government raised the price of fuel 500%. This sparked a series of peaceful demonstrations all over the country, beginning with demonstrations in Rangoon, now called Yangon, the former capital of the country. They have since spread to Pakokku and Mandalay in Northern Burma. In Pakokku, Budhhist monks took some army officers hostage for a few hours, and in Mandalay, where traditionally monks have been highly politicized and aware, it is reported that the army has units surrounding the city in readiness for an inevitable clampdown.
Dr. Alfred Oehlers, now a security analyst based in Hawaii, points out that Burma is a diesel-dependent country that lacks refining capacity. He says that fuel is heavily subsidized, and the government has probably signed away natural gas and raw petroleum exports in barter agreements for refined fuel that don’t bring in cash. It has to import fuel at high spot prices, Oehlers says.
So it is in a bind — finding new gas reserves, some reportedly huge, but still unable to import fuel from earnings from the energy sector. The fuel price hike will put the Burmese people under even greater strain. They have spent decades adjusting to whatever policies the junta decrees off the top of its head. When things come to the unbearable crisis level people have taken to the streets, most notably in 1988, and as they already have this time. In response to this exorbitant price hike, smugglers immediately attempted to smuggle in diesel from Malaysia, but the Malaysian authorities intercepted a reported $147,000 worth of diesel oil, hidden in a Burmese ship.
In 1988, the general consensus among Burmese citizens and Burma watchers alike was that the military government came within a hair’s breadth of losing power. But it managed to regain its control by the use of massive force and by an increasingly ratcheted up control, which remains in force to this day.
The difference between 1988 and now is that now, due to the internet and citizen journalism, it is much more difficult for the junta to hide its human rights abuses. The outside world is much more aware of the Burmese situation, the National League for Democracy is still an important force for change in Burma, exile groups are much more galvanized, and the gap between the power holders and everyone else is much wider than it ever was before.
News reports generally ignore or gloss over structurally-ingrained problems in the Burmese political economy. The truth of the matter is that Burma has been a command economy and a military dictatorship since General Ne Win’s coup in 1962. In 1974 it had its first sham constitution. The economy is still largely state-controlled, despite a much touted “opening up” after the government clamped down on the mass pro-democracy demonstrations of 1988.
To placate the population, the junta privatized somewhat, without giving up its major monopolies.
The main effect of this so-called opening up was to raise the stakes higher in governmental and military corruption. What can be called pariah capitalists or oligarchs have appeared in the Burmese economy, such as the businessman Tay Za, whom Oehlers suggests might be one the chief beneficiaries of the privatization of the fuel sector. A few years ago there was a run on the banks, which were mainly money laundering facilities for the drug lords, or Ponzi schemes in which many honest people lost their life savings.
The pervasiveness of official corruption — as we say in Burmese, the house leaks starting from the roof — became apparent in late 2004, when Lt. Col. Khin Nyunt was deposed and placed under house arrest, allegedly for deals with the Wa drug cartels in Northern Burma. This is not to say that those who won in the internal power struggle or purge are not corrupt. They may be more so, since they are still in power.
On May 30th 2003, Aung San Suu Kyi’s entourage was attacked by government-sponsored thugs near Depayin and she has been under house arrest since, following the previous periods of house arrest which, cumulatively, amounts to thirteen years of official captivity. Khin Nyunt was supposed to be “the moderate” according to some pundits, but since he himself is under arrest too, there is no real likelihood that the on-going stalemate will be resolved through dialogue.
It’s very sad that the brave amazing people of Burma have to take their lives in their hands to go out on the streets to protest peacefully. Among the arrested now are the famous 1988 leader, Min Ko Naing (Conquerer of Kings). Other notable leaders who are in hiding include Su Su Nway, who has reportedly run out of medication for the heart ailment from which she suffers, and a husband and wife team who had been free only for one year before they re-started their activism. Their infant daughter is now being looked after by her grandmother.
For the last 14 years the junta has been dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on a document it calls a constitution, in a process it calls the “National Convention.” Now it has ratified its statement and there are no surprises for anyone. The ugly new flag shows one big star, clearly symbolizing the military’s intention to remain dominant.
A boot crushing everyone underneath it would be a more apt symbol.
Sham effort to place blame for the price hike on concerned citizens
In a disturbing new development, a report supposedly written by an advisory group of Rangoon-based economists and scientists recommended the price hike to cover higher budget expenditures by the military government. It was leaked to exile groups and the Burmese media outside the country. However, Dr. Maung Myint, a prominent Burmese economist and a member of the group, denied the authenticity of the report in a letter to The Irrawaddy, a Thailand based dissident magazine.
I believe the report was a fake and an attempt to make scapegoats of the academics. It betrayed a poor and mechanistic “understanding” of “bringing prices in line with the world market.” It did some rudimentary arithmetic and said the budget deficit, caused by the government’s raising salaries of civil servants, could be covered by raising fuel prices. It did not go into the inflationary affects of this increase in money supply at all. The Burmese government has been continuously printing money to cover its expenditures since 1962.
It was a sort of watered down version of the IMF/World Bank 4 step program of privatization, market based pricing, free trade and capital market liberalization that has been criticized by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, formerly chief economist at the World Bank. Allowing prices to float to market levels as per IMF/World Bank recommendations also caused demonstrations in Indonesia in 1998.
Prospects for outside pressure on the regime
A recent Washington Post editorial criticized Secretary General Ban Ki- moon and the U.N. for lack of action; U.N. Special Envoy Mr. Gambari wrote a rather unconvincing reply. At the White House, Mrs. Laura Bush condemned the Burmese junta for its latest abuses. At the APEC Summit in Sydney, President Bush urged leaders of other nations to join him in pressuring China and India to press the Burmese junta for political and economic reform.
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said China did not interfere in the affairs of other nations. The Indian representative did not comment.
On the whole, the current Bush administration, including Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, has paid scant attention to Asia. But now it is clear that the United States and China are linked together inextricably by enormously large trade ties. China’s huge trade surplus is invested in U.S. treasury bills, and it could crash the U.S. government if it were to withdraw its investment. Moreover, its balance of payments surplus in its trade account is growing daily.
The United States is a consumer economy, and the U.S. consumer drives China’s exports to the USA. There is concern in Asia that the downturn in the U.S. economy will affect Asia. Since 1988, overland trade between Burma and China has been booming. Not all of it appears in the official trade figures. Burma is a virtual economic colony of China, and also of Thailand. Overland trade with India is also substantial. A major highway connecting Burma with India is under construction. At the same time, India has toned down its rhetoric with regard to Burma and is on friendlier terms with China.
It could not be a better time for all these countries to step up the pressure on the Burmese junta. .
They could take their lead from the Canadian Friends of Burma, which last month sponsored a conference in Ottawa on how to exert influence on China. Several groups have started to demonstrate in front of Chinese embassies.
The Burmese case is a no-brainer. If things are to change meaningfully, these and other forms of pressure will need to mount.
Kyi May Kaung is a University of Pennsylvania-trained Burma specialist who taught at the Institute for Economics in Rangoon for 20 years. She is an analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus. This article was first published in FPIF and may be viewed at http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4532 .
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
Monday, July 15, 2024
Recent gathering--poem
This is really the superwoman club
look around you
while men pretend
to be
head honchos.
No less an anthropologist than Geofrey Gorer said
"Burmese men are like peacocks."
Aung San suu Kyi said, "The women are the real men."
I can hear the men screaming
but I won't hear you.
Kyi May Kaung
America.
17-15-2024
Maud Gonne--from wikipedia.
My collages and why I make them--
I don't want to be stereotyped as someone who does only one form of art and most of all I hate being called a "Burma expert."
My Ph.D. was on systems--specifically authoritarian systems --like USSR/Russia, China, Burma--
nnot a description of Burma. On why these systems fail, as we are seeing now in case of Burma.Myanmar. But collages are just collages--collections-- kyi may kaung : cut & paste https://pansuriya.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/kyi-may-kaung-cut-and-paste/ kmk 7-15-2024
repubs now blame female Secret Service agents for being "too short"--trump assn attempt.
repubs now blaming female Secret Service agents for being--"too short"
https://www.aol.com/news/critics-blame-dei-trump-shooting-091112363.html
Why don't they just carry shields like Alexander's soldiers, that open like umbrellas??
Bullet proof tents?
So easy to blame women.
They're everywhere, right?
kmk
7-15-2024
Thursday, July 11, 2024
Burmese hyperinflation--"selfish banks"
https://www.irrawaddy.com/business/myanmar-banks-restrict-cash-withdrawals-as-financial-crisis-intensifies.html
Aung Lin Dwe is relative of Dr Kyaw Thet--with his wife Mary, close to Ne Win in 1950-62.
I met him in Chiangmai--c. 2006,at a non-profit workers' trainee course. At that time he spoke excitedly about "the constitution"--
rest of mostly bad news--check Irrawaddy, Mizzima.com,Al Jazeera etc.
km
7-11-2024
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
Monday, July 08, 2024
Thursday, July 04, 2024
quote from Brian Wei--Irrawaddy--revved up junta killing machine
Myanmar’s current military junta is by far the most homicidal in the country’s history, newly released data confirms.
In the three years and five months since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup, 1,853 people who were detained by the junta, including children, died while in the custody of its personnel, a report by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a research and advocacy group, notes.
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It found that a rising number of the deaths were the result of bullets and that the unarmed prisoners who were shot dead were said by their captors to be attempting to escape.
The number of people dying while in the current junta’s custody is seven times higher than the number who died in custody under successive regimes during the 22 years after the 1988 uprising, which was about 250 in total. Most of them died from lack of healthcare and sickening prison conditions.
Wednesday, July 03, 2024
Sunday, June 30, 2024
Saturday, June 29, 2024
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
The Great Migration--from wiki
The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of six million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1910 and 1970.[1] It was substantially caused by poor economic and social conditions due to prevalent racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern states where Jim Crow laws were upheld.[2][3] In particular, continued lynchings motivated a portion of the migrants, as African Americans searched for social reprieve. The historic change brought by the migration was amplified because the migrants, for the most part, moved to the then-largest cities in the United States (New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.) at a time when those cities had a central cultural, social, political, and economic influence over the United States; there, African-Americans established culturally influential communities of their own.[4] According to Isabel Wilkerson, despite the loss of leaving their homes in the South, and the barriers faced by the migrants in their new homes, the migration was an act of individual and collective agency, which changed the course of American history, a "declaration of independence" written by their actions.[5]
From the earliest U.S. population statistics in 1780 until 1910, more than 90% of the African American population lived in the American South,[6][7][8] making up the majority of the population in three Southern states, namely Louisiana (until about 1890[9]), South Carolina (until the 1920s[10]), and Mississippi (until the 1930s[11]). But by the end of the Great Migration, just over half of the African-American population lived in the South, while a little less than half lived in the North and West.[12] Moreover, the African-American population had become highly urbanized. In 1900, only one-fifth of African Americans in the South were living in urban areas.[13] By 1960, half of the African Americans in the South lived in urban areas,[13] and by 1970, more than 80% of African Americans nationwide lived in cities.[14] In 1991, Nicholas Lemann wrote:
The Great Migration was one of the largest and most rapid mass internal movements in history—perhaps the greatest not caused by the immediate threat of execution or starvation. In sheer numbers, it outranks the migration of any other ethnic group—Italians or Irish or Jews or Poles—to the United States. For Black people, the migration meant leaving what had always been their economic and social base in America and finding a new one.[15]
James Baldwin--from wiki--
Baldwin wrote comparatively little about events at school.[29] At five years old, Baldwin began school at Public School 24 (P.S. 24) on 128th Street in Harlem.[29] The principal of the school was Gertrude E. Ayer, the first Black principal in the city, who recognized Baldwin's precocity and encouraged him in his research and writing pursuits,[30] as did some of his teachers, who recognized he had a brilliant mind.[31] Ayer stated that James Baldwin got his writing talent from his mother, whose notes to school were greatly admired by the teachers, and that her son also learned to write like an angel, albeit an avenging one.[3
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Friday, June 21, 2024
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Monday, June 17, 2024
Sunday, June 16, 2024
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Friday, June 14, 2024
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Titian masterpiece goes on block for 32 m
https://www.aol.com/news/titian-masterpiece-once-found-london-154226348.html
Titian is noted for his bronzey-red color as in the women's hair.
6-13-2024
Fiction and non-fiction prizes --
https://www.aol.com/naomi-klein-wins-first-women-185640666.html
American author VV Ganeshananthan picked up the Women's Prize for Fiction for her second novel, Brotherless Night, which depicts a family fractured by the Sri Lankan civil war.
The winners were announced at a ceremony in central London on Thursday evening.
*
Here it comes--the other shoe-drops-nervy junta boss, alleged assassination attempt-- 6 patrol boats fr China
https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/nervy-myanmar-junta-boss-orders-alert-as-alleged-assassination-plot-foiled.html
Wednesday, June 12, 2024
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Microplastics found in human sperm, blood etc.
Microplastic pollution has been found in all human semen samples tested in a study, and researchers say further research on the potential harm to reproduction is “imperative”.1 day ago
Microplastics found in every human semen sample tested in ...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/10/microplastics-found-in-every-human-semen-sample-tested-in-chinese-study
Monday, June 10, 2024
Sungpang Bum in Sagaing Region
Sangpang Bum is one of the highest mountains of the Northern Triangle of Burma. It is located in the Sagaing Region, Burma. With a height of 2,692 m and a prominence of 1,655 m, Sangpang Bum is one of the ultra prominent peaks of Southeast Asia.
Sangpang Bum - Wikipedia
Sunday, June 09, 2024
From Myanmar Now--You shld look at MN now and then--different from Irrawaddy--in style and coverage--maybe deeper analysis
from Myanmar Now--Tin Oo funeral + IDPs return Kachin State--many photos
Losses in Rakhine State will deal devastating economic blow to Myanmar junta
Saturday, June 08, 2024
My stories +panel from Himal Southasia
Beast
Kyi May Kaung
It is a hot day. Flies buzz around my ears.I am lying on a hot rock, swatting at the flies with my paws.
https://www.himalmag.com/culture/fiction-fest-beast
Present and future of Southasian fiction II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB1bW9NEzIM
Black belt
Kyi May Kaung
The phone call was frantic and not clear. It sounded as if the cell phone's batteries were failing. My friend's...
Friday, June 07, 2024
Thursday, June 06, 2024
Wednesday, June 05, 2024
Sunday, June 02, 2024
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