If you know me at all, you know it takes a lot to get me riled up. But it takes even more to get thousands of pacifist monks to take to the streets in protest against their government. As grainy cell phone photos trickled through the government firewall, images of the army’s brutal, crushing response to a peaceful march shocked even our cynical world. It takes a lot to make me angry, but this made the cut, so I pulled out the most powerful weapon in the modern middle-class arsenal — I wrote a letter. It ran in the National Post and Globe and Mail on Sept. 29, 2007.
letter to the editor - National Post and Globe and Mail
February 7th, 2008 · 3 Comments
Tags: darn tootin' · do something · myanmar · news · opinion · politics · writing
3 responses so far ↓
1 The Buried Life // Feb 7, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Great letter Mark, good on your for taking your frustrations to the people. Keep pushing and change will come!
All the best,
Ben, Dave, Jonnie, and Duncan
The Buried Life
http://www.theburiedlife.com
2 B // Feb 8, 2008 at 12:28 am
Considering those “powers” will barely commit to military action when their own welfare is directly affected (and often not even then) it’s unfortunately unrealistic to expect them to take action in situations like these.
We operate under the false assumption that the formation of the UN post-WW2 somehow reflects an evolution of humanity. Effectively the “powers” have simply moved from active aggression for selfish reasons to apathy. Superficially it appears better (and serves as a placating illusion for the masses) because direct warfare is largely off the table. But apathy is far worse in many ways.
3 mark // Feb 8, 2008 at 12:49 pm
You’re right about the the apathy…
I used to really believe in the UN, until I read Romeo Dallaire’s “J’ai serré la main du diable,” about how he struggled to convince the world that his little UN force in Rwanda had neither the resources nor the political support to keep the 800,000 genocide victims alive. He says he still believes in the UN, but I’m afraid I don’t….
I guess you could say that the UN was meant to prevent war between states and not within them, but Sudan, Chad, Kenya, Myanmar and others show us that a conflict doesn’t have to be international to be devastating….
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