May 08, 2008
Letter Of The Day
From, coincidentally,
Mercer Island.
As I am sure you know, a destructive cyclone has hit the nation long known as Burma. According to
news reports, as many as a hundred thousand may have been killed. Many might have been saved if the
leftwing military dictatorship had been willing to warn the people. Even now, the military
rulers are blocking help from the outside.
Does any of this bother our letter writer? No. But this does:
Has anyone noticed? George Bush and his underlings, along with everyone at "fair and balanced" FOX News,
keep referring to Myanmar as "Burma" ["Aid slowly trickles into ravaged Myanmar," News, May 7].
What's the point?
Maybe Myanmar should refer to America as "the Colonies" ... ?
Man, it really is time for a change.
(Out of courtesy, I have omitted the letter writer's name, though you can find it easily enough at the
link.)
I hesitate to point this out, but the preference for Burma over Myanmar is shared by the leftist
San Francisco Chronicle
and the leftist
Washington Post.
More important, it is shared by the democratic opposition in Burma. Their broadest organization
calls itself the "National Council of the Union of Burma". So,
President Bush is on the side of the people of Burma — and the letter writer is on the side of the
cruel military dictatorship.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(If you know a good charity that is trying to help the people of Burma, please feel free to put in a plug for them here.)
Posted by Jim Miller at May 08, 2008
02:52 PM | Email This
1. It's good to know the liberals are concentrating on the larger, more pertinent aspect of this whole tragedy....like what's in a name.
I wonder what the good people of 'Constantinople' think about this tragedy in Burma?
2. That guy's an idiot, much like many of the rest of the letter writers to the Times and P-I. He must have missed where they frequently stated that Myanmar was "formerly known" as Burma. But you know, you have to build up that strawman before you knock it down.
3. Nothing worse than those feminazi, enviro, civil rights-obsessed, pro-gay, anti-torture leftwing dictatorships...
4. You mean civil rights like the Second Amendment? Or maybe the right to drive any damn vehicle I want or to choose whatever lightbulb that gives the best light? Or how about not having to buy ethanol blended gasoline or the freedom to have a fireplace or woodstove?
I have a feeling you mean civil rights for purple haired cross dressers, not for regular folk like me.
5. Yes, Elaine, right wing military dictatorships are renowned for their advocacy of citizen gun ownership and wide selection of consumer goods, and of course civil rights for regular folk like you.
6. Yeah, but those horrible right wing dictatorships have all wimped out after Hitler passed on. Not one of the more recent right wing dictatorships can hold a candle to the lefties for slaughtering mass numbers of human beings. Name just one.
7. What a crazy line of arguments: your dictators have murdered more people than our dictators.
What are we supposed to conclude from this type of dialogue?
8. Can you explain to me which are the right wing dictatorships, and which are left wing, IS?
9. Hey, a new troll. And he seems even more mindless than most of the others. Earth to nj, earth to nj. Do you have a brain? Over.....
10. The easy to reach conclusion, Uncle Witz, is keep your guns! Ask me another question, anything.
BTW, gotta agree with a left-winger here. I'd start to give a rat's ass about the place if it were named Burma. Myanmar, I mean WTF? And I don't like this Moombye shit either. It'll always be Bombay to me.
Sorry, call me old fashioned - we don't go telling the rest of the world what they should call Houston or Chicago.
11. Oh, yeah, hell of a post, Elaine!
But this was about Burma. I feel sorry for people in that world. No rule of law and property rights - pretty hard to make a civilized society.
12. Irrefutable logic, SH! Your superior intellect takes the day again!
13. Good luck with your gun Dave. My bet is you won't last too long out there on your front porch blazing away.
14. Longer than you and your family, Uncle.
15. Unkl witz will be cowering in his parents basement waving a white flag at the first sign of trouble....
16. # 16
Are you suggesting that Mr. Charlton Heston is a charlatan? Or maybe your name is really Dav.
17. Slate has a good
discussion of the name change and why some news organizations have accepted it, and some haven't.
And to some of you: Please stay on topic, and skip the insults.
18. I saw that too Jim and thought this guys remarks were pretty stupid.
The part that cracks me up is the numbers when it comes to the lost of life. Watching it jump from a few hundred then to many thousands overnight is hard to take in and frankly I think done to get your feelings going.
Were talking about an area that is still in the 1930's
So there is no way they could get a body count like that as fast as they keep saying.
19. Medic, Al Gore headed up the count. How can you doubt the numbers he is quoting?
20. "What a crazy line of arguments: your dictators have murdered more people than our dictators.
What are we supposed to conclude from this type of dialogue?"
Let me help you out there smart guy - Let's take a look at where support for the most prolific engines of human suffering and genocide received their support from in America. Does the name Walter Duranty have any meaning to you? If not consider this:In 1932 the Pulitzer Board awarded Walter Duranty its prize. It's an achievement that the New York Times still celebrates. The gray lady is pleased to publish its storied Pulitzer roster in a full-page advertisement each year, and, clearly, it finds the name of Duranty as one that is still fit to print. His name is near the top of the list, an accident of chronology, but there it is, Duranty, Times man, denier of the Ukrainian genocide — proudly paraded for all to see. Interestingly, the list of prizewinners posted on the New York Times Company's website is more forthcoming: Against Duranty's name, it is noted that "other writers in the Times and elsewhere have discredited this coverage."
http://www.nationalreview.com/stuttaford/stuttaford050703.asp
This is just a good place to start, every damnable one of those despicable regimes from Hitler to Pol Pot had more support from the self described progressives, to include academia and the New York Times editorial page thanthey ever got from ANY faction that is considered mainstream and conservative. So why don't you put that in you pipe and smoke it - moron.
21. Thanks Swatter. I should have checked first.
By the way, did you see the NOAA report. We set another record for cool weather.
So could you call Al Bore and ask him what in the heck is going on? LOL
22. Were the American brown shirts progressive, JDH? How about the supporters of S. African apartheid? Pinochet? Suharto? Saddam Hussein? And can you help me understand what, in substance, separates the right wing dictatorships from the left wing ones, aside from meaningless slogans?
23. What you are asking me to do is educate you. Take some responsibility and do it yourself. As a place to start, you might consider perhaps looking into Kumon, they now have a reading program, to help with your reading comprehension. Were the American brownshirts mainstream?
http://www.kumon.com/default.asp?language=USA
24. No, JDH, just trying to get you to pull your head out of whatever orifice you've got it wedged into. No clue how popular the brownshirts were. Wasn't Jack Metcalf's father one?
That fact is that there is little difference in how military dictatorships treat their citizens. Whether they claim to be left-wing or right-wing, they are all pro-torture, pro-military, anti-environment, and anti-civil rights, and support for any of them has always been a mistake.
25. NJ...
Hmmm lets see. it's the dem party who loved/liked Castro, Lenin, Stalin, Hugo and on & on.
Your brownshirt statement is pretty weak.
26. My head is frequently wedged into a book when I am not at work or doing yard work or something in my shop. Don't have a TV, they get on my nerves. You might try reading some time, it allows you to spend time with some of the greatest thinkers the world has ever known. Be warned, it takes effort and it might interfere with American Idle and whatever other sources form your world view through.
27. Didn't I just say that support of any of these regimes is a mistake, AM/V? Do you agree? You conveniently left out Saddam, S. Africa, and the rest of the list that goes on and on, of course, and the fact that any D support for communist regimes has not approached the level of R support for funneling money and weapons to the "right-wing" regimes. The underlying point, which you also haven't addressed, is the absurdity of calling Burma left-wing. I've pointed out the right-wing traits of all military dictatorships, but you still haven't differentiated in any way left-wing dictatorships from right-wing ones in how they treat their citizens.
28. I will go on record as saying that militarism of all aspects of government is fascist and the support for fascism in the United States has been primarily (by a wide margin) from the self described "progressives." Go away son, your bothering, I say your bothering me.
29. Wow. USA Today must be part of the schtoopid Bush crowd, too.
U.N. says it will resume food aid flights to Burma
I don't know what's worse - the guy who wrote the letter or the fact the Times thought it was worth publishing.
30. Wise choice to avoid the substance of the question, JDH. I would hate for you to have to peek out from the Ann Coulter box that you inhabit.
31. I bet they'd even be more troubled if we carpet bombed the military junta into oblivion so we could prevent the largest mass extermination since WWII.
32. Really and truly the issue of importance is what can I do politically to affect the rise of state-ism, actually fascism (which really is identity-ism) in it's application. Identity-ism with race, color or any other intrinsic identifier as opposed to an identity that is based upon externalities that are based upon differences in philosophy. I really identify with people who have weighed the arguments and looked at the effects of differing political philosophies and made a judgment based upon what has proven to uplift humanity. Skewer me based upon my pragmatic approach and hold me accountable to how my approach has fallen short of the ideal, I can accept that if you allow me the same courtesy - but don't try and bait me into justifying policies that did not confront real and immediate injustice by embracing alternatives that were more likely to perpetuate or aggravate the situation. Look buster, shifting injustice to another group without uplifting anybody isn't progress. Think Rhodesia for example, everyone is equally closer to living in a hell on earth - is that progress? So now white Rhodesians are suffering too, but the suffering amongst the average African has been exacerbated by a takeover of central control (by the supposedly "well meaning."
Get f'n lost - until you can give me an example of where demand economies were likely to replace any thing else and the "right" had their thumb in place holding political reform down.
Go away kid, your bothering, I say your bothering me.