BBC interviews of Doris Lessing --

Why do people stop (writing?)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/lessingd1.shtml

Love letter to Kenya --

http://www.wildriverreview.com/spotlight_kenyaloveletter.php

Famed Three Pagodas Pass on Burma-Thai Border

http://www.thai-blogs.com/index.php?blog=5&title=the_three_pagoda_pass&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Rambo in Burma --

http://www.metroactive.com/metro/01.30.08/film-rambo-0805.html

Of interest -- U.S. policy towards Burma in next administration?

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/global.php?id=1386416

I am against war in any circumstances -- I am just posting this for informational purposes. I have no idea if the claims made here are true or not.

Only time will tell.

As regards all other postings too, my posting them on this blog does not necessarily mean I agree with everything others write.

Kyi May Kaung

Misguided, ugly and plain bad "restorations" in 11th century Bagan in Burma --

http://www.rebound88.net/gp/gen/general-buddha.html

She should not have donated her $20

My upcoming art show "Splash, Drip, Pour" in Ubud, Bali.

I am going to have an art show in Ubud, Bali (place where famous anthropologist Margaret Meade went) -- titled "Splash, Drip, Pour,"

at Mandala Desa and perhaps Dragon Fly Restaurant, first week of March.

U.S. housing crisis --

http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/29/real_estate/foreclosure_filings_2007/index.htm?postversion=2008012905

Cold blast greets Year of the Rat in China --

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2739036,prtpage-1.cms

China plans rail link to central Asia for oil --

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2739036,prtpage-1.cms

Game Theory Application -- interesting suggestion

to treat Burmese monks' crisis of 2007 as a 2 player game.

This writer/scholar is the only one so far who has seen the 2007 crisis as a call for systemic change --

as he says "the latest straw that broke the camel's back."

http://transborderdisaster.blogspot.com/2008/01/2007-myanmar-standoff.html

Kyi May Kaung

Fatal miscalculation: Saddam faked having WMD --

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/27/saddam.cbs/index.html

Saddam Hussein faked having weapons of mass destruction, which the U.S. used as basis for launching second Iraq war --

special agent who spoke with Saddam on 60 Minutes.

Two Burmese monks arrive in Bangladesh after almost 2 months of travel

http://myamarnews.blogspot.com/2008/01/young-monk-leader-and-colleague-arrive.html

Poetry of the Argentinian disappeared --

http://www.mercurynews.com/books/ci_8093140?nclick_check=1

They could as well have been written by Chileans, Burmese or others living under dictatorships.

Indonesian dictator Suharto dies at 86

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/world/asia/28suharto.html?th&emc=th

Suharto dies at age 86 --

only needs to die once but may have caused deaths of 1/2 to 1 million Indonesians.

Burma is amping up the arrests and telling Gambari "Don't come till April."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/world/asia/27burma.html?ref=world

Weight loss story --

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/diet.fitness/01/25/weightloss.heather.davis/index.html

77 year old Burmese journalist and political prisoner 18 years in prison and still counting --

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iqUclVFX_rCTdnD6n4oZ1-JC4PBQ

Is this civilized behavior?

After the hernia operation, he most likely will be back in prison -- !!!!!

New Rambo movie --

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/features/20080125_No_more_Mr__Nice_Guy.html

Some think it's overdone,

but as a writer and someone who has studied Burma as a political scientist and an economist for decades, I think Stallone is only compacting all that has really happened into one character and one film.

I haven't seen the film yet, but even if it were a horrid film, it would still be informative about the Burmese military regime. After all, the things Stallone depicts have really been very well documented, also for decades.

It's not that Stallone is more violent. The whole world is more violent and so is even so called "normal" TV fare. So long as there's a reason for the depiction of violence.

After all, if you don't like it, don't want to hear about Burma or don't believe it, you can watch Jane Austen on Masterpiece Theatre. Don't get me wrong, I like Jane Austen stories. Everything just has a different time, place, style and purpose.

Stallone makes action movies. The genre pits bad guys against good guys. That's all.

So does Harry Potter etc etc -- that is the focus of much of art and literature.

Copyright Kyi May Kaung

Review of Lisa DiLillo's Tongues don't have Bones -- featuring poetry by Kyi May Kaung in Shout Magazine

DOCUMENTARY WORK:





Tongues Don’t Have Bones: A Journey into Burma (30:00) 2001
Videomaker Lisa DiLillo's documentary, “Tongues Don¹t Have Bones”, tells of Burma in the throes of a long-running stranglehold courtesy of one brutal military regime. “Tongues” sounds no blaring wake-up call. It's not by-the-book, not on-the nose. Instead, DiLillo works with a specific pool of key words and images, letting them flow, collide and even tear at one another to reveal tumult in a nation under siege.

To get at what's real, “Tongues” focuses on that which can't be subjugated. Social indictments sprout from the small, personal anecdotes of student leaders. The savaging of national character unfolds in the words of noted poet Kyi May Kaung, now a producer with Radio Free Asia. The horrors of “freedom lost” find voice in Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner and repeated recipient of Burmese house arrest. Yet most irrepressible are “Tongues” images of Burmese rivers. The water providing life is the same water choked with the blood of civilian casualties, water that DiLillo uses as a constant mirror of all the regime would like hidden. --by Art Jones, Shout Magazine