Articles by Zarni
We found 322 results.
Crisis Thinkers or Thinkers in Crisis?
Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Oct 2011
Last Friday [23 Sep 2011], the International Crisis Group’s Myanmar: Major Reform Underway made me sit up and read. But once I got past the title I realized the report suffers from multiple shortcomings so fundamental to comprehending Burma’s/Myanmar’s crises – note the plural here – that it lacked a credible basis either for exile excitement or any serious international policy discussions. Here is a shortlist of ICG’s intellectual sins.
→ read full articleThey Talk the Talk, But Baulk at the Walk
Dr Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Aug 2011
Twenty three years since Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the then freshly minted popular dissident, began her impassioned calls for a resolution to the country’s long-standing problems through dialogue, we seem to have been conditioned like a Pavlovian four-limbed creature.
→ read full articleBurma: Ethnic Conflicts are the Generals’ Golden Goose
Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND MEDIA SERVICE,
27 Jun 2011
Maintaining a contrived state of internal conflict with ethnic groups provides Burmese military with an excuse to hold onto power to prevent disintegration.
→ read full articleMeritocracy: A Myth?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Apr 2011
If you are anti-imperialist, ‘Third Worldist’ type – like I unapologetically am – it may warm your heart to know that historically Oxford produced the highest number of folks who gave the rest of the world ‘the British Empire’, which among other things grew opium in India for export to China – as a brilliant economic policy to address the Raj’s trade deficit. (Cambridge was the runner up). Often our own Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is talked about as ‘Oxford-educated’ as if her Oxford education turned her into who she is and what she is made of. As a matter of fact, it was/is her (self-acknowledged) awareness of her parents’ exemplary lives as citizens that was/is her source of inspiration.
→ read full articleThe Intellectual Crisis of Reporting On Burma by the International Crisis Group
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2011
When European Union policymakers will meet to review the EU Common Policy on Burma, on 12 April, they will be wise to discard the International Crisis Group’s (ICG) recent call for the unconditional embrace of the country’s military dictatorship… The ICG analysts seem to have chosen only evidence that agrees with a pro-trade, pro-aid policy stance, while critically lacking both conceptual and historical understanding of how dictatorships change.
→ read full articleExperts Help to Rebrand Burma’s Failed Dictatorship
Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Mar 2011
Every time Burma’s military dictatorship is framed as “new,” it is being rebranded, to use the lingo of corporate advertising. The spoils of the positive public relations are shared as it were between the experts and their organizations that prostitute themselves by spinning for their neo-liberal governmental patrons and corporate “donors” in the West and Burma’s despotic regime, the former’s actual and potential business partner.
→ read full articleAnti-Sanctions Chorus Out of Tune
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jan 2011
The emerging anti-sanctions lobby should be understood for what it is – the bald promotion of Western strategic and corporate interests. Ending sanctions now will only further entrench military rule, giving it a veneer of normalcy and acceptability, at the expense of Myanmar’s long-suffering people and the country’s equitable economic development.
→ read full articleWhen Pixels, Bytes and VJs Unite
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Dec 2010
Everyone could hear the collective gasp that filled the auditorium – and no one would forget – the very moment when the first signal transporting Aung San Suu Kyi’s animated face to a large screen in London arrived last week.
→ read full articleBurma Needs Inter-Ethnic and Inter-Class Solidarity
Dr Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Dec 2010
The world knows plenty about Aung San Suu Kyi and what she represents. But it knows almost nothing about the generals beyond their international pariah status.
→ read full articleWhat Does Aung San Suu Kyi’s Release Mean for Burma?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Nov 2010
Since the release of a single dissident Aung San Suu Kyi – while holding 2,100 of her fellow dissidents behind bars who are serving up to 90 years imprisonment – the loud calls for lifting sanctions are repeated by some well-known supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi such as East Timor’s Jose Ramos-Horta, as if pouring more foreign direct investment in Burma’s gas and oil sector and increasing trade with the country’s kleptocratic, dysfunctional State would automatically translate into public welfare.
→ read full articleMyanmar Election Was ‘Categorically Anti-Democratic’
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Nov 2010
The constitution also stipulates the commander-in-chief will be above the law, and that the president must have substantial “national security experience”, something which only military officers can claim. Twenty five per cent of parliamentary seats are reserved for the military and any constitutional amendment must have more than 75 per cent of votes, making reform virtually impossible unless, of course, the generals acquiesce. The parliament is required to meet only once a year.
→ read full articleCivil Society and Its Pragmatically Grateful Children (A POEM)
Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Nov 2010
A gift to Burmese voters
→ read full articleWhy Soldiers Don’t Rebel in Than Shwe’s Burma
Dr Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Oct 2010
Besides seeing the generals’ Burma as a world-class disaster of rights abuses and poverty, one fruitful way to understand it would be to view it as a country that is subject to a military-led process of “re-feudalization” of the soldiering class, which is reshaping the country along precolonial feudal lines with adverse domestic and regional consequences.
→ read full articleThe Generals’ Election
Maung Zarni – Himal Southasian,
4 Oct 2010
In the run-up to Burma’s fraught polls, some of the junta’s leading cheerleaders are Western governments who are bending over backwards to justify their stance.
→ read full articleUnderstanding Burma’s Military Reshuffle
Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Sep 2010
A lot seems to be happening lately in the world of senior and junior generals in Burma. The reports of the recent military reshuffle involving dozens of senior regime officials cannot be understood fully without taking into account a number of developments both at home and abroad.
→ read full articleBurma: Six Reasons to Welcome US Support for War Crimes Probe
Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
On 24 Aug, the United States officially confirmed that it is “exploring how best to proceed” on the initiative to push for “a properly structured international commission of inquiry that would examine allegations of serious violations of international law in Burma”.
→ read full articleSome of the Last Words of Rachel Corrie to Her Mother
Submitted by Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
This was sent by a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer who was on one of the Turkish vessels boarded by Israeli commandos off Gaza.
→ read full articleThe Thinker: Neighbors Like These
Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Aug 2010
Once again India has rolled out the red carpet for Burma’s aging despot Than Shwe, whose sleep has reportedly been disrupted by his deep-seated fears of being hauled to The Hague for his alleged crimes against humanity.
→ read full articleBye Bye Democracy! Hello Army-State!
Dr. Zarni – The Irrawaddi, Burma,
17 May 2010
Veiled and well-founded skepticism marked the US reaction to the Burmese military government’s announcement last week that “Prime Minister” Gen Thein Sein and 22 other military officers had resigned from their posts in order to contest the general “election”.
→ read full articleCHASING CHANGE IN BURMA
Dr Zarni,
9 Jan 2010
“Change” has been the most important buzzword in the world of Burma ever since the “8.8.88” events which brought down the flimsy bamboo fence of Gen Ne Win’s “Burmese Way to Socialism.” And yet, generally speaking, most activists and analysts who make Burma change Doe-A-Yay or “Our Business” have failed to either affect the process […]
→ read full articleSTIGLITZ AND THE MASTER OF PUPPETS
Dr Zarni – Democratic Voice of Burma,
10 Dec 2009
The long list of dignitaries with whom Burma’s junta chief has played ‘engagement’ attests to his masterfully strategic use of iconic figures for public relations purposes. Stiglitz may be next. How exciting that Joseph Stilglitz, the high priest of post-Washington Consensus globalization, will be traveling to Rangoon next week to give Senior General Than Shwe’s […]
→ read full articleCONFRONTING THE DEMONS
Dr. Zarni – The Irrawaddi, Burma,
6 Dec 2009
Since independence we Bama have been living a collective lie that is both hegemonic and myopically nationalistic. The supposedly linear progression of Burma or Myanmar, save the colonial interlude of 120 years, from a Buddhist kingdom originating in Pagan to today’s modern nation-state is a complete fallacy, devoid of any empirical evidence. The "we" here […]
→ read full article