Here’s Jeff Alworth, no longer avoiding writing about Burma:
I have avoided writing about Burma because … well, because I really don’t have anything substantive to add to the discussion. How do you comment on a train wreck?
anthropologi.info calls attention to the suffering of the Muslim minority in Myanmar:
Burma’s protesters may have been silenced, but we must continue to support them, writes Brendan Barber in The Guardian. But maybe we should not focus too much upon the courage of the monks. Muslims in Burma are persecuted, not only by the military, even by the ‘peaceful’ monks according anthropologist Gabriele Marranci. . .
Shanghaiist.com thinks it’s wrong to blame China:
So in the meanwhile, it’s become kind of fashionable to blame Beijing for the mess in “Myanmar”. Sure, Russia and India have gotten some of the blame for failing to rein in Burma’s ruthless junta. ASEAN has also been put to shame for its impotence in handling Burma, and even Singapore’s conservative Straits Times (subscription required) has begun to wonder aloud if it’s not the right time to suspend Burma’s membership in ASEAN, admitting that the “1997 Asean decision to admit Myanmar under the current military leadership without any conditionality was a mistake”.
Far Outliers decries drive-by blogging and blind partisanship:
I’ve posted a good bit about Burma since starting to blog almost four years ago, but I’ve been hesitant to post much now because I feel we are all little more than drive-by rubberneckers, turning our heads toward Burma just long enough to catch a glimpse of yet another passing segment in the endless video of disaster news that no one can really do much about—apart from finding a way to pin the blame on one’s favorite ideological demons, of course. Every disaster is good for blind partisans.
Dusty of Leftwingnutjob:
I have been watching the unrest in Burma..also known as Myanmar, for almost two weeks now. I have seen things I never thought I would see happening in living color. I watched the murder of a Japanese journalist named Kenji Nagai who was holding nothing but a video camera when a Burmese soldier gunned him down at point blank range.
and the Moderate Voice on the Nuns who portested alongside the monks:
In the last week, Buddhist nuns, who in Burma are called Keepers of Virtue, amongst other honored titles, shyly left their shelters and joined with Buddhist monks to protest Senior General Than Schwe’s policies that have purposely bankrupted Burma so he could float in diamonds and rubies while the people drowned in poverty.
The protesters may have been silenced, but the junta doesn’t control the rest of the world. – Philip Ryan, Web Editor