Burma Shave
Democracy rang freedoms bell.
out of it orange hornets fell
from the indus to the neva, kura irawaddy and potomac
what rids the meddlesome monk please tell?
Burma Shave. It may be more apparent than real but there seems to have been a certain retreat from democracy recently. A season of flourishing counter Orange revolutions. Behind this lie the examples of Russia where Mr. Putin is working hard to render irrelevant to the state both office and election. Also China, recently completing a political caucus, which was no more than a grand celebration of the principle of one party rule and autocratic capitalism. Egypt last year showed that it was well satisfied to keep political prisoners in jail even when Secretary Rice came by trailing the rent remains of the administrations freedom agenda behind her. In the America's where, typically, left-leaning despots (mind you, not right-leaning despots) listen to disapproval from Washington with the attentiveness of a runner taking a lead off first base from a fastballer; Hugo Chavez is reshaping Venezuela into a dictatorship of the proletariat with casual indifference. In another of these precursor examples Iran earlier this year had a minor round of civil disturbance but significantly involving fuel costs. I hesitate to mention Iran a society nearly completely locked down to start with
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran launches anti-vice crackdown. This brings us to the retrenchment in Burma, Georgia, and Pakistan in ascending order of alarm for U S interests
Pakistan Strife Threatens Anti-Insurgent Plan - washingtonpost.com. In Burma again it was a realignment of government price subsidies, particularly energy costs that lead to action and the junta's studied reaction
Myanmar junta trashes U.N.'s talks offer | International | Reuters. The situations in Pakistan and Georgia which had somewhat open public spheres seem more complex
PakistanÕs General Anarchy - New York Times if not less dangerous to life and liberty
The sad lessons of Georgia's violent counterrevolution. - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine. It seems natural to ask if anything links this new autocratism. We see leaders of some states responding to a waning US interest in an ill-conceived program of democracy promotion. We see programs of economic reform. Markets without political degrees of freedom. These are still managed societies where elites determine winners and losers In the realm of wealth, and the related prizes of access to clean air and water, healthcare and housing. Here is only creation of further ranks of privileged (analogous in part to the west's expanded middle class). It is an explicitly class based solution requiring a suppression of the masses who fall outside the threshold of privilege. There is a consumption of resources by this police state process, and the culture of entitlement above it. If the promotion of liberty and individual decision was the banner of the west. I would say there was a unseemly bastardization of democracy by those into whose hands the banner has fallen. Those would-be leaders, the neoconservatives, and those who championed them albeit from behind and at distance. Cheney Wolfowitz Rumsfeld Feith Rice Hadley Bolton and all those in their attendant circles were none of them as smart as they thought they were. They suffered from ignorance of what they sought to affect. The mass social engineering project they tried to engender in the middle east. The nature of the people they sought to inflict it on, who were never more than objects they projected upon. The thing they sought to inflict; the institutions of developed gesellshaft culture. Which seems not to have been more that a transplantable magick to them. The nature of their ignorance leads back to their education; primary secondary and post secondary. A procession of myth and ideology. A social promotion of fools. This was combined with ignorance of their own transparency. They were less aware less honest and more transparent in their designs and desires than they understood. They fooled only themselves. Democracy propagates best by example. There is in this a necessary letting go. We believe our wealth, our efficiency, the order of our laws; That these are a piece of our faith and (occidental) fairness. Rather than of provident circumstance and hard process. We may not, in fact, know more about ourselves than others. Our course should be to choose the good for ourselves and let others do the same. Universal democracy is the fulfillment of our best interest against more specific and direct self interest which can only seek to diminish choice. Given this there is something disconcerting about one facet of the Presidents sense of humorm his fascination with despotism. He said once 'I don't mind dictatorships as long as I'm the dictator', and more recently in this exchange Reporter: Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment, he said recently that next year, when he has to step down according to the constitution, as the president, he may become prime minister; in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition there ...
Bush: I've been planning that myself.
Bush Quips He Might Stay in Power (Threat Level Plays Along) | Threat Level from Wired.com It is not that much of a stretch to see this lending meaning to this government's penchant for secrecy and surveillance. Their dislike of neutral advisory boards in either science or policy. Hierarchical and politicized government. The radical dimminuization of the public sphere. There is no ideology of the common man and the common dream here. Only a concentrating belief in wealth and power, in privileged dreams. When Musharraf and others like him look across the oceans
U.S. Strategy for Pakistan Looks More Fragile - New York Times they know that in the end
Pakistan's Bhutto under house arrest ahead of planned march | AFP.com all that is desired from them is order and allegiance.
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