Scratch the skin of a saint, claimed George Orwell, and you are bound to find a sinner with an extensive resume. Such resumes are evaluated in these modern times by accolades, awards, and summits. The Noble Peace Prize tends to be crowning affirmation that somewhere along the line, you sufficiently fouled up to merit it.
The world vowed never again after the Holocaust, never again after Bosnia, never again after Rwanda and yet in Myanmar it seems that here we are again. Over the last week, violence and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Myanmar’s army have forced nearly 40,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee the Rakhine State to neighboring Bangladesh, where around 400,000 Rohingyas already live in squalor.
A heroin epidemic is on fire all across America. Heroin deaths shot up from 1,779 in 2001 to 10,574 in 2014 as Afghan opium poppy fields metastasized from 7,600 hectares in 2001 (when the War in Afghanistan began) to 224,000 hectares currently.
The Taliban outlawed opium in Afghanistan in 2000 and within a year it was all but gone, demonstrating that Afghan opium can be eradicated quickly for any administration that chooses to do so. Afghanistan is, by far, the number one source globally of both opium and heroin.
At what point do we cry foul when we witness the abuse of a political dissident, one who dares to take on mighty vested interests?
Artificial mass migration as imperial policy has a long history. To illustrate this, we will cite a few historical examples. According to Bulgarian historian A, Eminov, civil wars in the Balkans in the 13th and 14th centuries led to significant population decline, which greatly facilitated colonisation of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire.
Writing in the New York Times in an article entitled “Myanmar Generals Set the Stage for Their Own Exit”, Thomas Fuller expressed his and the media’s failure to recognize the total fraud that is Burmese democracy.
“The official results are still being tabulated,” he wrote, “but all signs, so far, point to that rarest of things: an authoritarian government peacefully giving up power after what outside election monitors have deemed a credible vote.”
I don’t really know, I don’t understand how it feels: to live in a rich European country, which is rich mainly because it has been directly plundering many poor nations around the world. Or it has been plundering by association, through its membership in some extremist organization like NATO. To live there, refusing to acknowledge why it is rich, how it became rich.
Palaces, theatres, railroads, hospitals and parks in that rich country are built on broken skeletons and restless specters, on lakes of blood and shameless theft.
“Nope, nope, nope,” was Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott’s answer to the question whether his country will take in any of the nearly 8,000 Rohingya refugees stranded at sea.
Abbott’s logic is as pitiless as his decision to abandon the world’s most persecuted minority in their darkest hour. “Don’t think that getting on a leaky boat at the behest of a people smuggler is going to do you or your family any good,” he said.
Myanmar’s military rulers have wised up since 1990. After Aung San Suu Kyi was elected in a landslide victory the military rulers quickly discovered that Democracy threatened control over their self-interests. They promptly placed Suu Kyi under house arrest and returned to their business as usual. Prior to Suu Kyi’s release in 2010 Burma’s dictatorship announced its new Constitution.
Recently the Burmese government told the United States to mind its own business and not interfere with its political maneuverings amending the Burmese constitution. In exchange, the Burmese government told the United States it will do likewise and not interfere with constitutional and political issues in the United States. Fair is fair, after all.
