The virus that wouldn't die

In her routine, the stand-up comedian and actor, Sarah Silverman had a valid observation: She said that she is a product of her upbringing.  Her liberal activism is not a surprise, she said, given that she grew up with progressive Jewish parents.

You are perhaps nodding in agreement.

What about the children who grew up with parents who taught them to hate?  It is not difficult to imagine that there are adults who hate pick-your-group, and these adults have kids.  They are not going to teach their kids to love everybody when they are filled with hate for some "wrong" kind of people, right?  (Here's a lengthy essay on one such real life person, if you are interested.)

modi, putin, trump, duterte, and the like (all men?) have mainstreamed hate.  What previously was said and done only behind closed doors and in secret is now openly said and done.  Unlike the small pox or polio virus, hate apparently cannot be completely eliminated, and it keeps coming back to cause epidemics over and over again.  And, in the process, the hate virus infects even people who were brought up by parents who taught their children well.

Over the past few years, it seems that Muslims have displaced Blacks as the most hated group.  It is just bizarre that the hate virus goes after new targets if attacking the old targets do not produce the virulence that was once possible.  It does not matter to the religious that their messiah preached about love, and not about hate.  We humans are messed up.

Even the Buddha's name cannot stop his followers, it seems.  Yes, I am referring to the crazy hate-filled Buddhist monks leading the war against Muslims in Myanmar.  I first blogged about this back in April 2013.   Imagine that!

In 2014, I wrote that it is practically game over when even Buddhists commit genocide.  In 2015, I was shocked that even the Dalai Lama could not get the attention of the Myanmar politicians; they didn't care for what the respected religious leader had to say.

Earlier this year, before the fascist's official swearing-in, I wrote that we should stop saying "never again" given how much we have stood by witnessing the Myanmar genocide.  Should we be surprised then that the rest of the world has gone on with its business of hating immigrants, Muslims, Blacks, gays, trans, ...

Is hate, or evil,  a permanent feature of the human condition?  Or, "As the American clergyman William Sloane Coffin put it: “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, and nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”"

Peace is War. Slavery is Freedom. Strength is Ignorance.

The Nobel Peace Prize has never been without controversies.  Take the case of Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, for instance:

Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was murdered in January 1948.

Gandhi was not recognized for the phenomenally peaceful methods he preached and practiced.

Up to 1960, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded almost exclusively to Europeans and Americans. In retrospect, the horizon of the Norwegian Nobel Committee may seem too narrow.

"In retrospect" the Committee ought to feel awful about handing the prize to Barack Obama too, as I have often blogged about!

A few months ago, I blogged about another Nobel Peace Prize recipient behaving in ways that were anything but about peace.  "What a shame!" I commented about Aung San Suu Kyi's silence over the systematic campaign against the country's Rohingya.  She intentionally even shut off the strong advice from two other Peace Prize honorees: the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu.

In his column, Nicholas Kristof writes about the wily politician that Aung San Suu Kyi is:

She is now a politician, and oppressing a minority like the Rohingya is popular with mostly Buddhist voters.

Oh, wow, what a surprise!  How awful a politician is she?

Aung San Suu Kyi avoids even saying “Rohingya.”

Kristof writes:

Aung San Suu Kyi is also inheriting the worst ethnic cleansing you’ve never heard of, Myanmar’s destruction of a Muslim minority called the Rohingya.
A recent Yale study suggested that the abuse of the more than one million Rohingya may amount to genocide; at the least, a confidential United Nations report to the Security Council says it may constitute “crimes against humanity under international criminal law.”
Yet Aung San Suu Kyi seems to plan to continue this Myanmar version of apartheid.

Of course, I agree with Kristof when he concludes:

Defenders of Myanmar and of Aung San Suu Kyi note that the country has many problems; they see the Rohingya as one misfortune in a nation with a vast swath of misfortunes. The priorities, as they see them, are economic development, democracy and an end to the country’s many local conflicts, and they protest that it’s myopic to focus on the problems of one ethnic group in a nation so full of challenges.
Yet to me, there is something particularly horrifying about a government deliberately targeting an ethnic group for destruction, locking its members in concentration camps and denying them livelihood, education and health care. When kids are dying in concentration camps, after being confined there because of their ethnicity, that’s not just one more problem of global poverty. It’s a crime against humanity, and addressing it is the responsibility of all humanity.

Strip her of the Nobel, I say.

Kill the Buddha!

Four years ago, I stopped at Thailand on the way to India.  I was not ready for the heat and the humidity that  seemed to suck every bit of energy from my body.  But, hey, it goes with the territory and there was no point complaining about it.

So, I was off walking about like I always do.  And then went on a package tour to Ayutthaya and its environs.  I lost track of the number of bottles of water I had during that one-day trip and, yet, much to my surprise and worry, I wasn't peeing a whole lot either.

The history and the architecture were all wonderful and educational, confirming Ayutthaya's status as a UNESCO World Heritage site.  My grandmothers would have been happy that I at least went to this Ayutthaya, if not to the original Ayodhya itself.

It was, however, very troubling when I saw a headless Buddha.

Even more troubling it was to see a row of headless Buddha statues:

The destruction resulted from the Burmese invasion more than three centuries ago.  The Thai-Burma rivalry and wars was nothing new--history is full of neighbors warring with each other.  But, why destroy the statues of the Buddha?  It is not that the invading Burmese were fighting a religious war with the Thais to at least justify the destruction of the Buddha statues.  The Burma/China warriors and kings were Buddhists too!

I suppose this is also a long-running thread in history--to kill, even when the religion's founder might have been crystal clear about the primacy of peace and non-violence.  It is perhaps a surprise, therefore, that quite a few weren't damaged at all, and we have to be thankful for that and count our blessings!  (All these were later affected by the massive floods two years ago.)

In the contemporary Western world, far removed from the Buddhist populations, and based on an understanding of the Buddha as a peace-promoter, we walk around with highly caricatured images of regular people in those cultures as peaceful and meditative and pensive and everything else.  But, the closer we look, the more they come across as everybody else.

Overlay on all these the British Raj and its notorious policies of divide and rule.  And then remove the Raj and replace it with anti-democratic military rulers.  Then, remove the military rulers and suddenly allow for people to express their feelings.  Not any peaceful Buddhist scenario that is now unfolding in Burma:

mobs of Buddhist bigots and extreme Rakhine nationalists exercised their newly gained freedoms by marching through town past the charred remains of Rohingya houses and mosques. They screamed hatred at Muslims and denounced countries such as Turkey that want to aid the helpless refugees. Buddhist monks, heroes of the 2007 “saffron revolution” that tried to unseat the old military regime, egg on the crowds and help organise the protests. 

Buddhist monks help organize the protests against Muslims?  The followers of the Buddha did that?

ethnic Burman Buddhists have always resented the descendants of Indian Muslims who arrived on the coat-tails of the British in the 19th century to take all the best jobs and, to their mind, swamp the local cultures. ... The 2.5m people of Indian origin who remain are stigmatised and vulnerable; most have no citizenship. In this sense the Buddhist mobs are finishing off what the Burman chauvinist generals started in the 1960s. 

Are we talking about the same Buddha anymore?

(BTW, there are also Burmese refugees living in India. That is a separate story!)

The irony gets even more bitter:

This is the looking-glass world of the new Myanmar. Now it is only the once-reviled army that stands between minority Muslims and the bloodlust of Buddhist chauvinists.

How terrible!

These are the kinds of contexts when I really have to question Steven Pinker's thesis that we live in a lot more peaceful world now.

Update:
The WSJ reports:

A fire at a mosque in downtown Yangon that killed 13 schoolchildren Tuesday fueled fears among Myanmar's minority Muslim population that they had been targeted, though officials quickly insisted that the blaze had been caused by an accidental electrical short-circuit.  ...
The latest fire broke out around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, witnesses said, at a downtown mosque minutes away from offices, hotels and restaurants frequented by international businesspeople and tourists. The two-story complex includes a school and a dormitory that housed about 70 children, many of them orphans, who were asleep. Most escaped safely, according to state media reports, except for the 13—age 12 to 16 years old—who died of smoke inhalation.  Hundreds of Muslims clustered uneasily as firefighters battled the flames, expressing fears that arson had caused the fire. Such rumors persisted throughout the day

Is Obama in Burma or in Myanmar?

First the news:

Officially, President Obama visited "Burma" on Monday -- but at one point he also cited the name used by the nation's military junta, "Myanmar."

Talk about covering both the bases!

When talking with the military government, the President went with "Myanmar" and when talking with the leader of the opposition, who was under house-arrest for years, Aung San Suu Kyi, Obama referred to "Burma."

What is the big deal?  It is, in the words of the Vice President, a "big fucking deal" :)

I wrote about this in an opinion column back in September 2007, and I noted there:

By referring to the country as Myanmar, are they then loading the story in favor of the junta?  If we are sympathetic to democracy and Suu Kyi, then should we insist on Burma as the correct usage?

Looks like the professor-in-chief split the Solomonic baby!

In the same column, I wrote, quoting Shakespeare's “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” 

Perhaps the bad actors in Burma and other places will soon have their exits, and the good ones will quickly step in and put a halt to the geopolitical tragedies that are hidden behind names.  And, maybe before long Rangoon will, once again, become a favorite destination for Indians, and the rest of the world.

Back in 2007, I would not have placed any money on the bets that Aung San Suu Kyi would be allowed to travel, or that the American President would visit Burma.  We can only hope that the mad military men would soon exit the Burmese stage.

Until then, it will be only Burma to me, even if the President toggles between the two names.

Beyond Iraq and Iran: global hotspots are even hotter

Tunnel vision can be worse than no vision at all. Yes, we ought to focus on our Iraq problem. But, here is a listing--not complete by any means--of other globally important and urgent issues:

• Pakistan: I have blogged a lot about this. The country is getting more and more unstable. Latest reports are that the coalition government, which forced Musharraf out, is on the brink of collapsing--not good news by any measure. Zardari, the candidate to replace Musharraf, says that the Taliban has the upper hand in the war, and that Pakistan and the world are losing the war on terror. Duh! Like this was not obvious all along?
• Afghanistan: Karzai is losing even the little bit of control he had over the country's security. Not only are American (101 this year alone) and foreign troops dying in large numbers because of the Taliban, the US is making things worse by accidentally killing civilians--the latest one involved 76 civilians according to one report. "The U.S. is now losing the war against the Taliban," Anthony Cordesman, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a report Thursday (AP)
• Georgia: Need I write about this? Really?
• Zimbabwe: The discussions to share power are at an impasse. Meanwhile, inflation is at a never-before-in-history 11.2 million percent. To give us a perspective, we in America are concerned that prices rose by 0.7 percent last month!
• Sudan/Darfur: I agree with comments that this is the only case of well-documented genocide, and yet the rest of the world cannot mobilize for any action. In fact, we continue to ask questions such as "Is Darfur Genocide? It's not yet clear"
• Israel/Palestine: Need I write about this? Really?
• Lebanon: Despite all the Israeli and American attempts to rid Hizbollah, and Iran's influence there, well, Lebanon is pretty much Hizbollah country now. According to AFP, "The moment the Lebanese government confers legitimacy on Hezbollah, it must understand that the entire Lebanese state will be a target in the same way that all of Israel is a target for Hezbollah," Environment Minister Gideon Ezra said on Wednesday. To which, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Sunday to destroy Israel if it carries out threats to hit Lebanon should the government give greater legitimacy to the Shiite militant group.
• Sri Lanka: This AFP report says it all: Strife-torn Sri Lanka is bracing for intense and bloody battles as security forces close in on the political capital of the Tamil Tiger rebels, according to military analysts.
• Burma: George Packer's article on Burma is a must read to understand the horrible state the country and the people have been reduced to by the cold and heartless military junta.
• Tibet, and minorities in China: Need I write about this? Really?

More later