Entries from October 2007

October 25, 2007

Progress?

Aung San Suu Kyi and Aung Kyi met at a government guesthouse today.
Aung San Suu Kyi met with Aung Kyi, the government official assigned to be the government liaison. The New York Times has two articles: “Opposition Leader Meets Burmese Official” and “In Myanmar, Fear Is Ever Present” and two slideshows (here and here) worth [...]

October 10, 2007

The Burmese monkhood’s political power

Monks hit the streets of Rangoon in protest. Photo by ogglog.
I’ve been busy this past week with homework, studying (I have a midterm in a week-and-a-half, unfortunately) and other commitments. In my spare time, I’ve been going to the Young Research Library, which has a number of interesting Burmese books, written in both English and [...]

October 4, 2007

Free Burma!

“Free Burma” to me stands for freedom to speak, think, and act on one’s accordance and the freedom to live and work as one pleases. As in the words of Aung San Suu Kyi,
“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”

October 2, 2007

Yellow journalism: all hype and no substance

Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai laying dead on a street in Rangoon.
A reader has just e-mailed me the following post from LAist, a blog specializing on Los Angeles, my hometown. The post “U.S. Media Blames Santa Monica College Professor for Burma Web Blackout,” describes the unfair sensationalizing of an innocent professor at a local community college [...]

October 1, 2007

Name troubles

It seems that I need to explain something to readers of this blog, especially since I have been contacted by the BBC World Service for an interview as Aung Htin Kyaw.
I have been blogging for the past year under my Burmese name “Aung Htin Kyaw,” which is neither official and is primarily used by my [...]