The End
SeeDubya from JunkYardBlog discusses the Orwellian Machine that the advocates of freedom in Burma encountered. He pronounces the uprising is over. Period.
As Ace knows and as I said yesterday, the Burmese demonstrations were doomed. The only price the Burmese regime will pay for its apparent murder of thousands of Buddhist monks is mocking and ill will from the global intelligentsia. The Burmese tyrants knew that, too, and that's why they did it.
If there's anything good that may come from the monks' stand, it's that some of that anger is landing on Burma's patrons in Beijing. Which reminds me of a certain picture. Remember this guy? (Ed. Note: SeeDubya has this picture inserted there.)
Yeah, he's probably dead or in hiding. And (thanks to Google) you'll have a tough time even finding that picture from the Chinese internet.* It's like the whole 1989 thing never even happened. And that's how 2007 is going to be in Burma. They're a little cruder about it, but inside Burma those pictures of dead monks are going to disappear, just like the inconvenient monks themselves, and just like those who took those inconvenient pictures.
Totalitarian governments can do this sort of thing pretty well. It's not perfect; there are little holes and gaps, and it's not up to the standard set forth in 1984, but they're working on it. Governments like the PRC and Burma's regime spend a lot of money to jam, filter, suppress, and torture sources of opposition to their rule, because they know that this technology–surveillance, blocking, and brutality–the Orwell Machine–is what keeps them in power.
Democracies talk. Tyrannies act. Then some democracies make trade deals with those who act - by crushing peaceful monk's skulls. Question for the left: still going to hold Europe up as an example of enlightenment? Still going to say that the US needs to be more like Europe?
(Incidentally, wireservice reports about Burma are drying up rapidly.)
World news | Gaius Monday, 1 October , 2007
By Maggie, Tuesday, 2 October , 2007 @ 3:35 pm
On a related note, Drudge is posting this story:
Stallone and Crew Saw Myanmar Aftermath
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071001/D8S0LED00.html
Filming was obviously done prior to the recent uprisings and murders and violence. Stalone also wants it known his new John Rambo movie is aimed at the cruel military there, and NOT the Burmese people.