A Letter to Burmese General Than Shwe

May 15th, 2009 – The South-East Asian country of Burma is administered by a military dictatorship that has refused to hold fair elections since their power grab in 1988. In fact, the leader of the only party that would oppose it, Aung San Suu Kyi of the National League for Democracy has once again been imprisoned based on fabricated charges. Without counting the possible next five years she will spend under house arrest, she has spent over half of the past two decades incarcerated at the hands of Burma’s fascist junta and their glorious leader, General Than Shwe. I doubt the good General would read this blog as is so I decided to blatantly address him in letterform.

My letter

O glorious General, we have been hearing in the news about your troubles with Mrs. Suu Kyi and her democrats. It must really be frustrating to have such dissidence when you worked so hard to stabilise your rule over Burma over the past 21 years. I mean, on top of Suu Kyi’s disciples demanding her release after the 2007 expiry of the maximum 5-year prison term you gave her and the Buddhist monks that violently protested last year, few countries on earth even recognise your administration. Seriously, you took power by military coup, lost 1990 elections to Suu Kyi’s party in a landslide yet ignored it, moved the country’s capital to a secret location and alienated most international organisation; some African countries have surely done as much and are still allowed in the United Nations, you really shouldn’t be singled out and punished like that.

I also understand that you plan on overturning the situation, holding free elections in 2010 and finally legitimising your claim to Burma in the eyes of international scoffers. Unfortunately, what will prevent Suu Kyi from running and winning again? I mean, you may be offering the omnipresent security and invasive censorship that the population needs to be safe but she’s offering insane things like public and private liberties, healthy international relationships, periodic elections and basically the right to choose.

Oh, ah, now I see. This week, there was a crazy American that swam across a lake to Suu Kyi’s house. He was arrested and then Suu Kyi was changed with breaching the terms of her house arrest. Pure genius, I see it now, you allowed this man to get there and now are going to sentence Suu Kyi to 5 more years, making her ineligible to run for elections next year. I salute your brilliant scheme General but next time you might opt for more subtlety, international attention seems to be catching on, especially the part where there are police officers and soldiers everywhere yet a man was able to enter the country and swim miles up to the supervised prison compound. At least your “electors” will never know about it, you effectively control all national media. What they don’t know can’t hurt them right?

I not only sympathise with your troubles but will also offer a friendly warning. You should know that, as has been proven time and time again, imprisoning political dissidents not only doesn’t stop their ideas, it amplifies them and makes things a whole lot worse.

Ring a bell?

For example, when the British gouvernment of India imprisoned Mahatma Gandhi for the first time in 1922, he came back stronger than ever, devising a new non-cooperation movement and united the hundreds of millions of Hindi and Muslim people in India. When they jailed him for a second sentence in 1942, he encouraged the Quit India non-violent sovereignty movement from prison, resulting in the non-cooperation of Indian elements withing the British army who were desperately needed and also in the final overthrow of the brave British masters in 1947.

Around the same time, Nelson Mandela was being tried for sabotage and sedition in South Africa. He actively fought against the state mandated racism called apartheid and never lost momentum or support despite spending 27 years in jail. For encouraging violent revolt against the white dominant caste, he was not only successful (in 1994) but was attributed a Nobel Peace prize for crying out loud. Could you imagine if Suu Kyi and her followers were actually fighting back? That’s not something we want to encourage now is it?

On to the ever-so-righteous United-States, they were not above incarcerating seditious elements of their population in the mid XXth century. Unfortunately, even they were not safe from the fermenting of revolutionary thought in prison. Malcolm X was jailed for inciting violence and racism against the dominant white race. While in prison, he converted to the fundamentalist “Nation of Islam” and became one of the most feared advocates for African-American rights in American history. And that’s the US, you should REALLY be careful.

Finally, it may not be the most tasteful example, but it definitely fits my model of imprisonment for dissidence - having some time to think - revolutionary movement is amplified and succeeds. Adolf Hitler gathered a few friends in 1923 and decided to overthrow the German gouvernment. It was a monumental failure and thus he was sent to jail. While there, he gained quite a following as he decried the “November criminals” who had surrendered Germany in WW1, the republican and democratic leaders that were now making the country weak and the international Jewry orchestrating all of this behind the scenes. I submit to you, General, that it was in prison that Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, the dogmatic document of the Nazi Party which would permit him to overthrow and assassinate all German officials in the 1920s and 30s.

You would think it would be easier to just kill Aung San Suu Kyi but unfortunately, if she dies of anything except ripe old age, no matter how “accidental”, it will immediately be determined to be your doing and your people WILL overthrow you. You should try something crazy like including her and her democratic party into your own gouvernment. I know what you’re thinking but it WOULD work. She could be your vice-president, you extend some civil liberties and some olive branches internationally and voilà. You would be an elected and legitimate leader of Burma without having the ever-pending threat of revolution or civil war.

Think about it, I’m just saying.

Good luck.

(Pictured: Don't kid yourself, Gandhi was a bad-ass - If you're not careful, this little Asian lady will be your end.)

End.

(PS: I would include a picture of you although no one has ever been allowed to photograph you. Bummer.)

Dijongate

May 8th, 2009 –President Obama and Vice-President Biden went out this week to grab a bite at a Washington deli. Why it took two of MSNBC’s senior correspondents to cover the event is beyond comprehension. Why and how Fox News used the “event” as fodder to fuel the next two days of "news" is even more insane (or have we come to expect it from this “news” source). In fact, Fox came up with the term "Dijongate" to refer to President Obama's choice of condiments, good stuff.

Indeed, the President ordered a burger topped with mustard, “or do you have any hot mustard or Dijon" he rivetingly asked. The first problem here is that Fox News pundit Sean Hannity accused MSNBC of a cover-up as the two commentators spoke over Obama’s request for the devil’s mustard (surely offering a gripping history of world leaders and their favourite foods). I offer to Mr. Hannity that they were speaking over this mustard order because IT WAS A MAN ORDERING CONDIMENTS FOR A BURGER! For crying out loud, Hannity reeks of paranoia and I suspect the smelt it, dealt it axiom applies: it sounds like something a republican administration would have done, therefore... The second problem with “Dijongate” is that it is French, a people they do not like, and it is upper class, making president Obama an elitist liar that doesn’t really care about the working classes.

All of this, please keep in mind, because the president ordered a particular condiment sold at fast food chains across America. It’s as if the right-wing media desperately want attention since they lost their ally in the White House and have become complacent and jingoistic with their media coverage (jingoism – a terrific term meaning extreme patriotism and bias, aggressively promoting one’s country as better than anything else). At least, that is what I originally thought. Then, I remembered a few more examples during the Bush era and even a long time ago in the Woodrow Wilson era. It seems the conservatives are not above elevating mundane minutiae into national threats and consequently responding with the grossest and most ridiculous of overreactions.

That'll show them

As a recent example that we may all remember, in 2003, certain republicans in the US congress had enough of France opposing an invasion of Iraq. A simple “screw the French” could have sufficed as an inappropriate reaction from elected officials, but no, they went much, much further. They passed a congressional motion to have all gouvernmental cafeterias rename French fries and French toast as “freedom fries” and “freedom toast”. And yes, it was utterly ridiculous. In a relatively ignored yet truly hilarious response from Washington DC’s French embassy, the media were told “someone should tell them French fries are actually from Belgium". Conversely, over 75% of Dijon mustard produced on the planet is from Canada...

Further back, with the World War I hatred and fear of all things German, Britain and the US had already begun this tradition of a petty naming war. German biscuits in the UK were changed to “empire biscuits” which they remain today. The aristocratic family Battenberg and the royal house of Saxe-Coburg Gotha were also respectively changed to Mountbatten and Windsor (Oh yes, Queen Victoria, and therefore all the royal houses of Europe, are German). In the United States, the same lack of imagination as in 2003 brought about “liberty cabbage” instead of sauerkraut and “liberty measles” oddly needed to be “jingoed”, stealing them away from their preferred term “German measles”.

To nuance my historical argument, there certainly is a difference in context here. When it first happened, millions were dying at war. Then in 2003, September 11^th was not far behind, two wars were being fought in the Middle-East and most brown people were potentially just about to rape you. In 2009, with a nice juicy recession and some sexy bird flu to talk about, there was a news director somewhere that thought “Dijongate” was a valid and newsworthy story. It must be true what they say, TV will rot your brain, especially if you work in it.

It may seem innocuous and inoffensive but jingoism of the sort easily leads to discrimination and racism. The Hutu broadcasters of Rwanda were guilty of the same national and racial complacency in 1994. Historians now singularly point the finger at that radio station for provoking the 800,000 deaths that ensued.

Finally, jingoism leads to ultranationalism. To end with an oversimplification and overreaction on this particular blog medium that I own and direct, I boldly claim that it is people like Sean Hannity that elected Hitler in 1932 (Oh yes, Hitler was elected).

(Note: I have invented and own the copyright on the verb “jingoed”)

(Pictured: Hitler allegedly invaded France because of the lack of German mustard varieties (citation needed) - Obama loves a spicy burger.)

End.

Also in the news

- The Pope hilariously lectures Muslim leaders on the misuse of Religion for political gain.

- Vladimir Putin can sing - and can perhaps do much more we don't know about.

- Women of Kenya have gone on a sex strike to raise rape awareness - confused and horny, some men are suing them.

PANIC!

April 30th, 2009 – Great Scott! A new strand of porcine influenza has stricken at the demographic and economic heart of Latin America and is rapidly spreading across the globe. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has thus assigned a five out of six to this public health threat, creating widespread fear and panic amongst the media-hungry masses. The dangerous disease, fatal even, is now effectively a level shy of full on pandemic such as the medieval Black plague, 19th century Smallpox or 20th century Polio and AIDS.

Thusly, I encourage all my readers from Vancouver to Minsk and Johannesburg to Hanoi to raid their local Wal-Mart in search of canned food, bottled water, face masks, latex gloves, batteries a portable toilet and a few gallons of anti-bacterial soap. Setting up a fortress of hygiene in your basement/nuclear fallout shelter/local underground parking for the next two years should be simple enough. I will establish why I am so sure that the pandemic of global proportions will subside in two years but first, let us take a look at our epic killer as portrayed by the media.

“Global pandemic”, “No one is safe”, “No cure or Vaccine”, “Run for the hills”, “Revenge of the Pork”, “Al Gore says I told you so” and “Worst than SARS, bird flu and West Nile virus combined” have been the headlines flooding our television sets and newsstands this week and I got some more news for you: it’s far from being over. If you remember what a fuss North America makes every year about West-Nile virus, you wouldn’t suspect that the mild disease only kills a handful of frail and/or elderly people every year. As for Bird Flu, we heard about it for years even though less than a thousand people died from it in South-East Asia and less than 50 in the Americas. I do not wish to belittle the death of 1000 South-East Asians, I am just putting into perspective that the media do not even remember the tsunami of 2004 that killed hundreds of thousands of the same people. To be blunt, a disease is more sexy because it is invisible and can potentially be everywhere at any time; it is fear. To be blunter, that disease is a million times sexier if it affects people with white skin. To prove a point and to inform those of you that don’t know, there still is no cure for AIDS. There are antiretrovirals available to us in the industrialised world that have greatly diminished the number of victims but millions are infected and dying in Africa = old and boring news.

Pig Vs. Human

Let us take a look at this disease; it is only prudent seeing as CNN won’t stop pestering me about proper hygiene when coughing and even the newspaper I work for has a daily update about where the disease has struck and when it will potentially get to a location near me, resulting in a painful and messy death. Porcine influenza or “Swine flu” boasts a misleading title associating it with pigs. It could simply be called the flu since it biologically and chemically IS the flu. The difference here, as with the old bird flu, is that they represent a distinct strand of the virus that mainly affects the animal they are named for. In very rare cases, the disease can be passed on to humans and even more rarely, it can be transmitted between humans. For the current “pandemic” of swine flu, there has been a minor mutation that allows its free transmission between humans, spreading as the regular flu does. This is the important point: the symptoms are mostly the same. Runny nose, congested sinuses, coughing, feeling weak, headaches, a slower immune system and a small chance of it progressing to pneumonia, sinusitis and other manageable infections will occur when you have the flu, human or otherwise. The second important point, if you really think about it, is that I am probably the first one to tell you what the symptoms of swine flu are. You see if the BBC News Service comes out and tells you that a lot of people are getting the flu in Mexico, there is no real story there. If they use words like “pandemic”, conceal the true risks of the disease, polish it up as a shiny new dangerous ailment and then tell you it is inching it’s way closer to your home, sneeze-by-sneeze they have found the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

That being said, porcine, avian and the good-old regular flu are no laughing matters. Thousands upon thousands of people die every year from their complications, mostly young infants, the elderly and immunocompromised people. It could even be called a pandemic but instead we accept this disease as an inevitable occurrence that strengthens our immune system and then we go on with our lives. I cannot accuse the media of doing their jobs excessively; I accuse them of hiding certain facts to focus on the more sensational aspects of their selling point (just like the make millions quick infomercials that spend 30 minutes telling you how much money each of these pretty people won with the advertised “method” or “system” but never tell you how). They will get some shiny awards in journalism and the rest of the world will panic unduly for something that is, for all intents and purposes, banal.

Now, to conclude with a historical link and to leave you feeling confused and ambiguous about this article, I present you with one of the deadliest pandemics of human history.

The great influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 was shadowed and intensified simultaneously by a period of great war in Europe although it was truly global. From inner Siberia to the South Pacific, the disease was similar to the common cold yet added a very strong propensity towards pneumonia and death. Over 50 million died worldwide although upwards of 25% of the world population was infected. Modern medicine was still no match for the disease and all responses rather revolved around spraying things, quarantines and campaigns against public spitting (things that could still work and that may be proposed soon across the world). Its origin is probably American yet the Americans blamed the Spanish…for kicks. This is why today; we may hear this disease and this episode referred to as “the Spanish Flu”. Its biology, its method of spreading and its incredible virulence remains unknown; what we do know is that it was porcine influenza, a simple mutation of swine flu.

(Pictured: Doctors sent to "help" victims of the medieval plague wore long-nosed masks containing fresh herbs; it was thought that smells carried diseases - A theory about how swine flu spreads to humans)

End.

A Fine Line...

April 21st, 2009 – Former astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell has boldly announced that UFOs exist, Aliens are constantly visiting us and the ‘gouvernment’ has been concealing all these facts for many years. Furthermore, it all started in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, where he coincidentally grew up. This astounding affirmation was made in honour of earth day (a gross misunderstanding of what that day is supposed to celebrate) and begs the follow-up question : just how more credible is this person when compared to the regular crazies?

I certainly wish to be fair to Dr. Mitchell; I do believe he is an extremely smart person, a great scientist and somewhat of a hero but a man is more than one thing he participated in, he is the sum of his wasted endeavours and crazy ramblings. Born in 1930, he was an incredible man who obtained a bachelor of science degree in industrial management, another Bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering and a Doctor of science degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT. He did this all within 10 years and while in the United-States Navy no less. He achieved immortality in 1971 when he left earth abord Apollo 14 and became the sixth man of 12 to ever walk on the moon. He retired from the Navy and NASA shortly after and then we began learning about the darkness behing the genius.

Firstly, he admitted during an interview that he attempted ESP communication with earth friends during his space mission, recording the unsuccessful data. Later, he wrote a book entitled ‘The Way of the Explorer’ in which he claimed that high-ranking officials in the US Army and eye-witnesses on site (none of which are named) personally told him about the Roswell crash of a space saucer and the recovery of several beings from another planet. Finally, he claimes that a young Vancouver boy named Adam Dreamhealer faith-healed his renal cancer in the early 2000s. The important thing to take away from this is that he personally has never seen any evidence of any paranormal phenomena and therefore, astronaut or not, he has no more credibility in this field than the other crazies. A further realisation to take away from this is that Dr. Edgar Mitchell seems to be bat-s*** crazy.

To be somewhat impartial, but rational, I must expose the events of Roswell, what the US gouvernment has said and admitted and what the crazies have deduced in return. It was July 1947 when the Air Field in Roswell, New Mexico, annouced they recovered a crashed ‘flying disk’. A later conference specified that the disc was a common weather balloon and pictures and samples passed out to the media confirmed this. At this point, the crazies may bring up the famous testimony of farmer William Brazel whom recovered some of the crash site, proving it was alien. Indeed, he found ‘rubber strips, tinfoil, and rather tough paper and sticks.’ Even more strange and outworldly, the next day he found ‘more patches of tinfoil and rubber.’ Finally, we were not alone in the universe, others have travelled hundreds of lightyears, defying the known laws of physic themselves and they did it with materials from Home Depot. Brazel’s account is actually true, there exists military record of his find and pictures including him and the contraption that he rebuilt from the debris. It was balloon-shaped, metallic-coloured and boasted a consipicuous absence of alien blood.


Sarcasm aside (if I must), there was a military cover-up. In 1997, a declassified report announced that the crashed craft in 1947 was a balloon but it was in fact part of a secret project called ‘Mogul’. This balloon was meant to detect sound-waves caused by Soviet atomic testing. Considering the US had used such a weapon in 1945, the USSR didn’t have it yet and the whole world had just come out of war, this is an extremely plausible explanation. On the other hand, crazies claim the existance of a massive cover-up in which the evidence of thousands of UFOs has been hidden for 60 years. To support this outlandish claim (pun intended), they seem to have no concrete evidence whatsoever that EVER showed up in the hands of the media. Take a moment to slowly understand that such a thing was not possible in the 80s and 90s, nevermind up until 2009 with internet technology and social networking sites.

Given these circumstances, big gouvernment and their plausible deniability wins whereas the crazies and their speculation lose. To close the matter, I will use Dr. Mitchell’s own words against him. He claimed that witnesses in Roswell came to him with their story because « they wanted to tell somebody reliable ». He was such a person, an eminent scientist and astronaut. Well, NASA represents hundreds of such people and declared today, following Mitchell’s announcement, ‘NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover-up about alien life on this planet or anywhere else – period.’

There it is, case closed, get back to work.

(Pictured: These 1947 newspaper headlines didn't cause trouble until 1978; fiction writers began the hysteria and lined their pockets - Dr. Edgar Mitchell -- Oh, and while we're at it, Bigfoot is a man in a suit and the Loch Ness Monster is a piece of wood and playdoh.)

End.

(Disclaimer : I do not confirm or deny that I have received a cheque for writing this blog from the Internet special ops branch of NASA’s interstellar denial division)

Democratising Easter

This Sunday, April 12^th will see the worldwide celebration of Easter. Much more than an exclusively religious ceremony, Easter is one of the only such holidays that is observed by the faithful and seculars alike, and this, in almost every nation on earth. That being said, what are we celebrating every year at Easter? We know about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and about the chocolate-egg delivering bunnies but what has common-knowledge lost throughout the centuries to leave us with such of a logical gap.

Today, in the traditional sense, Easter is a Jewish and Christian observation of the end of Lent, a forty day fasting period leading to the death of the saviour/prophet Jesus and his resurrection and ascension to heaven three days later. Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Monday accompany the Easter Sunday celebration and host a variety of liturgical activities. Lighting of candles, chanting, readings from the Bible and a vigil for Christ mark the gist of the strictly religious aspect of Easter around the world as has been established over 17 centuries ago.

The early Hebrew Passover celebration commemorated certain events of the Bible long before Christ but following His crucifixion around 30-36 AD, the festival (called Pesach) would inextricably be associated with Jesus, the Last Supper, the Eucharist, the Crucifixion and Resurrection. It was finally at the first dogmatic meeting of the Christian church at the city of Nicaea in 325 AD that leaders of the Church decided Easter’s annual position. It had to be a Sunday, the holiest of days, and would continue to be established by the Hebrew lunar calendar. Consequentially, our calendar now establishes it every year as the first Sunday after the first full moon following the first day of Spring (anywhere between March 22 and April 25).

Syncretism

In the following centuries, as Christian missionaries and military campaigns diffused cultural traditions across old frontiers, the festival of Easter was not only adopted but modified and made particular to brand new cultures. They call “syncretism” the concept of merging aspects of two religions to create a brand new one and that is exactly what then happened to our Christian/Pagan Easter. Early in Anglo-Saxon Britain for example, a spring festival celebrating rebirth and fertility was held annually in honour of their goddess Eostre (equivalent of Greco-Roman Diana or Persephone). She symbolised spring and the dawn (rebirth of the rising sun every day in the East) that is why the English and Germanic-speaking worlds use the derived words “Easter” or “Ostern” whereas almost all other western languages derive from Hebrew (Pâques in French, Pascua in Italian, Paskar in Icelandic or Paskha in Russian). Further syncretism occurred when we incorporated the Scandinavian goddess Freya of flora and fauna to the festival and thus we retain Freya’s symbol, the bunny (specifically the hare) associated with Easter, as well as the Easter feast observed by all. Eventually, Eastern Europe augmented this now rich celebration with their traditional Slavic egg decoration. These pieces of art and symbols of spring fertility remain today as the intricately-ornate painted eggs of Bulgaria or the Czech republic and even the luxurious Faberge eggs of Russia but the entire world has adopted this cultural art once a year by decorating eggs or simply buying the deliciously colourful and chocolate ones.

Finally, the process of syncretism continues to this day as we discover new regional Easter traditions that may one day travel to every corner of the world. In Bermuda, symbolising the ascension of Jesus, young children build intricate kites and fly them only once a year on Easter Sunday. Mexican and German schoolchildren and businessmen have 2-3 weeks of vacation to reflect on the final times of Jesus. North Americans have invented the Easter-egg hunt and are the global champions of the “chocolate” facet of it all. In Africa, certain communities weave colourful clothing and celebrate through traditional dancing and a communal feast of fresh produce. In Scandinavia, children dress as witches (ancient symbol of Freya) and collect candy door-to-door. To finish the demonstration and to illustrate the wide variety of Easter regionalisms, Slovakia and the Czech Republic observe the holy day by having their men publicly whip or spank the women. This symbolic and painless tradition is supposed to guarantee health and beauty for the women during the coming year.

In conclusion, some purists claim that Easter has been corrupted over the centuries but I believe that through a long process of syncretism in religious doctrine, cultural tradition and regional practices, Easter has become a democratic and universal celebration with a specific and powerful meaning for all walks of life, none being excluded.

(Pictured: Ukranian Easter eggs - The lesser-known creepy Easter bunny)

End.