Recounts, #Myanmar and a World moving cautiously

(Damn, I’ve been trying to put together an essay on how Russia is holding Syria’s feet to the fire in order to establish its dominance in the Middle East but Reality keeps intruding. Anyway, bowing to the inevitable…)

Let’s backtrack a little to last month’s post. In an interesting twist, Pizzagate came out right on the heels of my criticism of Satanism. Do I believe that Pizzagate is real? Yes. Am I attempting to downplay the horrendous abuse that children have endured? No. As far as I can see, paedophilia is being used for blackmail purposes and as payment for goods or services rendered. Satanism is the third purpose. My post was specifically about how little sense Satanism itself makes, but this in no way is meant to trivialise the horrors attached to those who have been snared in its web. That the perpetrators are mentally deranged goes without saying…as is their belief system.

Moving along, we now have the Recount, spearheaded by Jill Stein. I had considered Green Party candidates to be independent, but it seems that I was wrong. August was only four months ago, where Jill Stein called Hillary incompetent (video) and clearly stated that “Hillary Clinton is the queen of corruption” (also video).

A little more than a hundred days later, and Stein is suddenly calling for a recount in the pivotal states that handed Donald Trump the presidency and, furthermore, is using the “The Russians did it!” card as justification. (Please see Scott Creighton’s excellent analysis of this canard for more details.)

Conservatives are using Stein’s tweets to conclude that the Recount is Stein’s way of shoring up the Greens’ war chest:

Why would Hillary Clinton—who conceded the election to Donald Trump—want #Recount2016? You cannot be on-again, off-again about democracy.
 — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016
Why would Hillary Clinton—who holds "public" and "private" positions—want to engage in something as transparent as #Recount2016?
 — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016

but I think it’s more a way of trying to distance herself from the idea that she’s doing Clinton’s bidding. Maybe she’s been promised a Cabinet position if she helps out? Head of the EPA? I suppose we’ll find out if Clinton grabs the throne. Regardless of who’s right, however, it’s obvious to all observers that the Recount cannot possibly matter to Stein’s electoral chances. After all, she roughly scored an error margin’s worth of votes in the election. So why is she doing this? Cui bono, indeed.

But what is truly frightening to those of us outside the United States is how much of the US population backed, and continues to back, Clinton, first at the election and second with pumping millions of dollars Stein’s way. Is it really true that Hillary Clinton dominated the popular vote because she’s a woman and “it’s time” for a female President? Do USians want another shooting war that badly, that they’re willing to overlook the overt criminality of their favourite presidential candidate? To the rest of the world, the population of the United States seemed to have tipped over into insanity. We can’t think of any other reason why Clinton commands such loyalty.

In the meantime, all the rest of us can do is cross our fingers that The Donald remains as President and carry on. And in this way, we come to Myanmar.

The violence against the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar by the Buddhist majority is an old story. As far back as the very beginning of 2014, the United Nations was calling for an inquiry into Rohingya deaths. And this request came two years after this:

At least 200 people were killed in fierce clashes between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine state in 2012.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims remain displaced in the wake of that violence, many still living in camps.

Four years of genocide against the Rohingya. And the Muslim world has said nothing. Till this past week, when the headline on Malaysia’s English-language The Star newspaper blared: “Solidarity for the Rohingya people” on its Sunday front page :

Muslims gathered at Masjid Negara in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday to condemn the violence that broke out in the Rakhine state in Myanmar where many Rohingya people were reportedly killed and their homes razed.

After four years of silence, news is suddenly exploding about the plight of the Myanmar Muslims: “Last shred of hope for the Rohingya people”, “Turn up the pressure on Myanmar”, “Let’s give the Rohingya some respite from the horrors”, “Asean must act on plight of Rohingyas”. And, true to form, the radicals have already started coming out of the woodwork: “Indonesia arrests militant planning bomb strike on Myanmar embassy”  which says that:

[A]nger has been mounting in the Muslim-majority nations in Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, over a crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, leading to demonstrations in several cities, including Jakarta.

Really? Anger is only “mounting”, four years after confirmed massacres took place? What has changed? Why now? And the obvious answer is: Trump.

ms-_magazine_cover_-_winter_2012

In order to understand that point, we need to look at State Counsellor of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi (“Barred by the military-drafted Constitution from serving as president, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi holds the posts of state counselor and foreign minister, among others [my emphasis], but she is the country’s de facto leader” (New York Times)). If I were in a particularly cynical mood, I could say that, by definition, anyone who wins a Nobel Peace Prize is immediately suspect. One needs only look at previous recipients, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Shimon Peres, the Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Barack Obama and the entire European Union (LOL) to see what I mean. Suu Kyi won the prize in 1991.

Despite this million-dollar payout, Suu Kyi didn’t live to the hype. She has said…well, nothing about the plight of the Rohingya people. In fact, according to an editorial from the New York Times:

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi — Myanmar’s leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate — does not want to call them Rohingya, the name they use, because nationalist Buddhists want to perpetuate the myth that they are “Bengalis” who don’t belong in Myanmar. She has also asked the United States ambassador not to use the term.

even as the New York Times bends backwards to give a “balanced” view by excusing her silence:

There are many possible reasons Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi…might be reluctant to publicly embrace the Rohingya cause. It has been barely a month since she became leader of Myanmar’s first democratically elected government since 1962…and she no doubt fears antagonizing the Buddhist nationalists… Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi may fear that publicly calling these people by their name would upset the national reconciliation process, as a Foreign Ministry official said [remember that she’s also Foreign Minister], or worse: that it would rekindle the terrible violence that erupted in 2012 between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in western Rakhine State.

So there you go. Even with winning the Nobel Peace Prize, don’t think you need any high ideals or principles. Just roll with the flow and that should be good enough. It’s worked for everyone else, right?

Western media has been gushing over Suu Kyi for years, and why not? She studied at the Methodist English High School and University of Oxford, worked for the United Nations, and married a British historian who poked China in the eye by setting up the Tibetan and Himalayan Studies centre at Oxford (the man’s name is Michael Aris and he was also the private tutor for the Kingdom of Bhutan royal family, a nation that, interestingly, forcibly expelled part of its undesirable population in the 1990s ).

Wikipedia breathlessly tells us that:

During her time under house arrest, Suu Kyi devoted herself to Buddhist meditation practices and to studying Buddhist thought. This deeper interest in Buddhism is reflected in her writings as more emphasis is put on love and compassion.

Although under house arrest, Suu Kyi was granted permission to leave Burma under the condition that she never return. Rather than abandon her people, Suu Kyi submitted to house arrest and decided to sacrifice a life with her husband and her two young sons, in order to stand by her people: “As a mother, the greater sacrifice was giving up my sons, but I was always aware of the fact that others had given up more than me. I never forget that my colleagues who are in prison suffer not only physically, but mentally for their families who have no security outside- in the larger prison of Burma under authoritarian rule.” Her loyalty to the people of Burma and her solidarity with those imprisoned for their pro-democratic acts have earned her deep respect among the Burmese people.

Well, love and compassion as long as it’s to Buddhists, right? Oh, and Westerners.

donald_trump_rnc_july_2016

With her connections to Britain and the very embodiment of British soft power projection, and her upbringing as the child of influential politicians, it’s obvious that Suu Kyi has always been a creature of Western powers, which explains why she’s been lionised so. The same applies to Mahatma Ghandi.

And so finally we come to Trump. It has been obvious to the entire world that Trump doesn’t really care much for the rest of the world. (We couldn’t be happier, to be honest.) He has no time for the European TTIP, which means he also has no time for the Asian TPPA. He wouldn’t mind pulling out of NATO. In fact, his focus appears to be on purely domestic issues. And this, unfortunately(?), leaves previously untouchable Western tools (such as Suu Kyi) in a vulnerable position.

Suddenly, with the United States set to look inward, previously protected characters are beginning to feel what it’s like when the deflector shields are down. And this is why it’s taken four long years for the Rohingya to get any kind of recognition from the Muslim nations of south-east Asia.

The moves from the Rest of the World are still a bit cautious, a bit tentative when intruding on what was previously USA territory. Many things may happen between now and the 20th of January, which is when a president is usually inaugurated. The Recount thing may work, Trump may get assassinated, Obama may declare a state of emergency for some reason and suspend the Constitution, so it’s not an all-out cavorting of the mice while the cat’s sauntered to a different house.

But it’s looking…promising. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally see some justice. But there’s fifty-one days between now and Trump’s inauguration, and he’s still a flip-flopping loon at the best of times, so things may still come unstuck. But we have to begin somewhere. So, baby steps and maybe in the fullness of time, they’ll become confident strides. My fingers are crossed.

UPDATE: Scott (Creighton) is on the ball and one of his latest posts is unmissable. See here for his update, and if you aren’t already following his blog, why not? Be sure to help him out if you can; he’s in a tough financial spot…much worse than me.

This article © Kaz Augustin, 2016

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