Burma: How Things Are
October 22nd, 2007
By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
This is a picture of Than Schwe’s latest publicity stunt in Burma, posting in public places, photographs of his innocent victims in chains and often beaten. Each prisoner is forced to hold a sign admitting to their crimes against Than Schwe. They were rounded up for as little as clapping as the monks and nuns marched, for as little as giving food to the holy people. One grim young couple who were arrested, appear to be holding their little child close in their arms. Arresting innocent people and babies. Beating people up. Murder in broad daylight.
Yes, Than Schwe, this is bound to bring you and your family and all who support you, the further dishonor from the world powers that you so deeply seek. Consider it a fait d’accompli. By your own choices, you are disgraced in the eyes of the civilized world.
Over these past weeks, I’ve sent notes by email to all my correspondents and other sources I could find within or near Burma.
In the past 14 days, Silence. Silence now from most all of them.
This is one of my notes sent, and the answer I received today.
Please, do you have any news of the monks and nuns in Burma in the last
week? I write for The Moderate Voice newsblog and have written
several pieces on Burma in the last two weeks. We all fear for the
holy people and those who have supported them. If there is any way
we can help, please let us know. We are in the US. With kindest
regards, this feels like a message in a bottle, Dr. C. Estes
We are sorry but we cannot have any further information.
The brevity of the communiqué, the lack of reference to the question, the word ‘cannot’ is pure code to my ears. This source which was once viable, is now reduced to a sweet politeness that says everything in subtext. My sense tells me this brief wording seems too much like, “Excuse our bloodshed, we are being beaten and killed today.”
Given Than Schwe’s absurdist propaganda released two weeks ago, “reporting” to the world as though we are all mentally defective morons, that he ordered raids of monasteries and there found American flags with Nazi swastikas marked on them, masses of pornography … that Than Schwe thought we would find his diseased 1950s ideas of American outrage to be in any way viable in 2007, is pathetic.
Compared to Than Shwe’s worldwide reputation now as a public assaulter and murderer of innocent holy people, families, elders and the young… by contrast, the Silence coming from the people of Burma seems like a language of its own… ‘the people’s Silence,’ an eloquent language that is true to their hopes and fears, a rarity in a Burma where twenty foot tall lies are daily propped up by little 5 foot-nothing Than Schwe.
There’s a saying in the family of humankind Than Schwe, that the larger the lie, the more easily it topples of its own weight.
Allen Ginsberg, American poet and Buddhist, was also eloquent about dictators like Than Schwe: In a work he called “Wichita Vortex Sutra…”
… war is language,
language abused
for Advertisement,
language used
like magic for power on the planet:
Black Magic language,
formulas for reality —
Communism is a 9 letter word
used by inferior magicians with
the wrong alchemical formula for transforming earth into gold
– funky warlocks operating on guesswork,
handmedown mandrake terminology
that never worked…
…Sorcerer’s Apprentices who lost control
of the simplest broomstick in the world:
Language
© 1966 Copyright, Allen Ginsberg, All Rights Reserved. Wichita Vortex Sutra. New Directions
_____________
CODA
As per the older woman in the foreground of the photo. Don’t ever underestimate old women. They know what’s going on before most anyone else does. The dear child with her, is her reason for ‘reading the air…’ just in case refuge is suddenly needed.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Torture, Human Rights, Burma, Hypocrisy, Than Shwe, Death, Family, Civil Liberties, Mass Murder, Children, Teachers, Endangered Species. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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