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Parliamentary democracy has little trouble gaining the support of liberal intelligentsias. But they are not sufficient to sustain it. Substantial numbers of ruthless, rich, energetic and competitive people from all over the country must also be willing to invest in the system.

Not sufficient

Benedict Anderson. “Murder and progress in modern Siam.” New Left Review 181, no. 2 (1990): 33-48.

Free Trade is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is Free Trade.

Free Trade

Sir John Bowring, representative of Queen Victoria, 1855.

The quotation is drawn from Charles R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800, London 1965, p. 249.

Benedict Anderson. "Murder and progress in modern Siam." New Left Review 181, no. 2 (1990): 33-48.

I would like to ask the political parties how they are going to rule the country. The 1947 and 1974 Constitutions have become null and void. The country will be in disorder if the country is ruled without a Constitution. The situation will be more confused if another `1988 disturbances' break out. We do not want the situation that will necessitate the Tatmadaw's taking over of State power again.

How they are going to rule

SLORC Vice Chairman Gen. Than Shwe, speaking in Sittway on Jan. 21, 1991

http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs3/BPS91-01.pdf

Music is a world within itself With a language we all understand With an equal opportunity For all to sing, dance and clap their hands But just because a record has a groove Don’t make it in the groove But you can tell right away at letter A When the people start to move

A world within itself

‘Sir Duke’, Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life (1976)

Many talk about it. Few have been there. Opium blooms under the title; My own stomach asks for it. Wanting to build a stupa each time you see a hilltop Must be the side effect of Buddhist chauvinism. Parochialism lives here, So does cordite smell, in cherry blossoms. Like a waterfall that cannot curb its own speed, We’ve flown into ourselves. If you know nothing of a river’s highs and lows You should not blame the rapid Salween. In private She keeps quiet. In public She keeps quiet too. She doesn’t know the Burmese word for “virgin”. When asked, Was it a Burmese soldier? She simply sobbed & Nodded. They arrive at school With no shoes With no legs Where are the land mines To be held accountable? Peace rests on a peace of paper, You know no peace? We know no peace. လူပြော သူပြော များတယ် လူသူ အရောက်အပေါက် နည်းတယ်။ ငါ့ဝမ်းပူဆာ မနေသာဆိုတဲ့ခေါင်းစဉ်အောက် ဘိန်းပန်းကလေးတွေ လှချင်တိုင်းလှနေတယ်။ တောင်မြင့်မြင့် မြင်တိုင်း ဘုရားတည်ချင်တဲ့စိတ်က မဟာလူမျိုးကြီးဝါဒရဲ့ ဘေးထွက်ဆိုးကျိုးပဲ။ ဒေသစွဲ လူမျိုးစွဲက ချယ်ရီတွေ ယမ်းနံ့စွဲသလို စွဲတယ် ရေတံခွန်လို ကိုယ့်အရှိန်ကို မထိမ်းနိုင်ဘူး စီးတယ်။ အနိမ့်အမြင့်သဘောကို မစောကြောဘဲ သံလွင်ကို ရေစီးကြမ်းတယ်လို့ အပြစ်ဆိုမှာလား…။ ကွယ်ရာမှာလည်း အသံမထွက်ရဲဘူး ရှေ့မှာလည်း အသံမထွက်ရဲဘူး အပျိုစင်ဆိုတဲ့စကားလုံး ဗမာလို မပြောတတ်တော့ အပျိုစင်ဘဝကို ဗမာစစ်သားက ဖျက်စီးသွားတာလား ဆိုတော့ ရှိုက်သံတစ်ဝက်နဲ့ခေါင်းတစ်ချက် ငြိမ့်တယ်။ ကျောင်းလာတာ ဖိနပ်လည်း မပါဘူး ခြေထောက်လည်း မပါဘူး လက်ညိုးထိုးပြစရာ မြေမြှပ်မိုင်းကဘယ်မှာ…။ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးက စာချုပ်ပေါ်မှာပဲ ရှိတော့မပေါ့ နင်တို့ မငြိမ်းလို့ ငါတို့ မငြိမ်းတာ…။

Stream Gauge for Peace

Lynn Moe Swe 19.12.2015 Translated by ko ko thett

ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးရေချိန်

လင်းမိုးစွေ ၁၉.၁၂.၂၀၁၅

I sincerely believe that a subjective experience can be understood by others; and it would give me no pleasure to announce that the black problem is my problem and mine alone and that it is up to me to study it…Physically and affectively. I have not wished to be objective. Besides, that would be dishonest: It is not possible for me to be objective.

Physically and affectively

Fanon, F. (2001) Black Skin. White Masks, Pluto Press, 63-4.

I saw folk die of hunger in Cape Verde and I saw folk die from flogging in Guiné (with beatings, kicks, forced labour), you understand? This is the entire reason for my revolt.

The entire reason

Cabral, A., M. Wolfers, et al. (1980). Unity and struggle : speeches and writings. London, Heinemann Educational. 41.

No eulogy could detail his sacrifices and achievements. To say that he gave up home and family riches is to tell only part of the story. A thousand other deeds will hold us forever in his debt. But mainly he gave us the benefit of his rage. It was his terrible anger that shocked us out of our deep sleep of submission and resignation. He reminded us who we were and what we owed to ourselves.

Benefit of his rage

Wendy Law-Yone, The Coffin Tree, pp. 153

The life we lead here in this remote and unaided corner of the earth inflicts on the strongest of us all manner of hardship and disease.

This remote and unaided corner

Wendy Law-Yone, The Coffin Tree, pp. 152

And though I could not completely insulate myself from the epidemic of woes, I was protected by the kind of apathy induced by long war movies in which the excess of noise, violence, and death cauterizes the senses and makes it all meaningless.

All meaningless

Wendy Law-Yone, The Coffin Tree, pp. 31

Listen: my father speaks Urdu, language of dancing peacocks, rosewater fountains- even its curses are beautiful. He speaks Hindi, suave and melodic, earthy Punjabi, salty-rich as saag paneer, coastal Swahili laced with Arabic. He speaks Gujarati, solid ancestral pride. Five languages, five different worlds. Yet English shrinks him down before white men who think their flat, cold spiky words make the only reality.

The only reality

Patel, Shailja. Migritude. Kaya Press, 2010.

We must make allowance for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart.

Point of resistance

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York, 1990), 1: 101.

Historians are to nationalists what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroine addicts: we supply the raw material for the market

Raw material

Hobsbawm, E. (1992) ‘Ethnicity and nationalism in Europe today’. Anthropology Today.

What western community did was they gave us furniture so far and television, but we still don’t have a roof to live under. They gave us the furniture, because they want the garden.

They want the garden

Hkanhpa Sadan, General secretary of the Kachin National Council

‘The Changing Face of Myanmar’, Frontline Club, London

http://www.frontlineclub.com/the-changing-face-of-myanmar/

#burmaelection

Indeed, the aim of most slaves was to secure a niche within the dominant society, improve that position over time and, if granted non-slave status, to assume a new ethnicity. Individual slaves therefore sought to forge linkages not with other slaves but with slave holders who alone could ameliorate their conditions and station. Central to this process was acculturation.

Not with other slaves

Campbell, Gwyn “Introduction: Slavery and other forms of Unfree Labour in the Indian Ocean World” in Campbell, Gwyn. 2003. Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia. Routledge, pp. xxi.

It is probably the case that the majority of the exploited population in every major capitalist social formation today remains subject in one way or another to reformist or capitalist ideology.

Subject in one way or another

Anderson, Perry, “The antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,” New Left Review (1977).

Just as gold as a material substratum of paper is itself a convention that needs acceptance as a medium of exchange, so repression as a guarantor of ideology itself depends on the assent of those who are trained to exercise it. Given this critical proviso, however, the ‘fundamental’ resort of bourgeois class power, beneath the ‘preponderant’ cusp of culture in a parliamentary system, remains coercion.

Guarantor of ideology

Anderson, Perry, “The antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,” New Left Review (1977).

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