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history only "says" one thing when you dont know about it.
anyway---there is a strange consequence of 24/7 tv coverage and the ability to present footage of demos and repression in realtime, which is that much that happens in the way of everyday brutality that spectators might encounter in real time (as opposed to 30 years ago, when this sort of thing would have been maybe the topic of newspaper articles written a day or two after the fact) seems to call for Responses from Someone simply because--well---you get to see the footage.
the burmese military junta is extremely brutal and has been for most of its-what 35 years?--in power. while the repression of these protests over the past 24 hours is deplorable, what is going on pales in comparison with
the systematic use of the military to maintain itself in power, a glimpse of which surfaced across the Unocal case of the laste 1980s and the symbolic problems created by keeping aung san suu kyi under house arrest for something like a decade.
so you might wonder why nothing has "been done" about the junta.
it's hard to say.
but you might look at the labels of your eddie bauer apparel for example, if you've purchased shirts from them over the past couple years, and see where they are made.
let's see: repressive military junta, no tolerance for opposition political or trade union, a decimated economy---->CHEAP LABOR----->hmm.
just a thought.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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