Sep 28, 2007
Black Sky
They were chanting,
To the uncountable living beings living in uncountable universes to the east,
May they be free of danger,
May they be free of anger,
May they be free of sufferings, and
May their hearts be calm and peaceful.
-The Chant of Marching Monks. Rangoon. Friday, September 21, 2007.
.
Around 1:20 or 1:30pm, 
I heard someone saying that the police/army started shooting in the air. Someone from abroad messaged me on GTalk, and says he’s hearing reports of shooting. So I asked around to be sure, and went to look out. I saw the people still standing on groups, and the buses were still running. I heard that they were shooting in the air, so I told him back that. I messaged to someone who’s at work near Sule Pagoda Road, and he confirmed that they were shooting in the air. Also, reports of monks being hit by batons on Shwedagon Pagoda were already spreading on the net.
At 2:00pm, I heard that buses have stopped running on Sule Pagoda Road.
-+-+-
I was watching the news when it came on at 8:00pm. 
The first news that came was to report if anyone was forced to donate money and food to the protesters. Then, what came next was other unimportant news like planting jatroba curcus, and visiting factories and stuff. On at the end of the news, it was announced that during the clash on Sule Pagoda Road, 1 unidentified person was killed and 3 were injured because of the shooting, and that some police officers were injured. (Blog entry. Rangoon)
.
“Myanmar. Sept 27”
01. Mogwai - We’re No Here
Mr Beast (2006)
02. Thuja - Track 1
The Deer Lay Down Their Bones (1999)
03. Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions – Clear Day
Bavarian Fruit Bread (2001)
04. Elixirs - Tithenai (web)
Ceallian (2007)
05. Mary Lou Williams – Ode to Saint Cecilie [#]
Free Spirits (Steeplechase, 1975)
06. Tortoise - It’s All Around You
It’s All Around You (Thrill Jockey, 2004)
07. Explosions in the Sky – Greet Death
Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever (Temporary Residence, 2001)
08. The Album Leaf – Brennivin
Seal Beach EP (Better Looking, 2005)
09. The Third Eye Foundation – Push Off My Wire (Matt Elliott Vs Chris Morris)
I Poo Poo On Your Juju (Merge Records, 2001)
.
Note: About what happened in Burma. I have to make this list. There is something about the idea of certain form of peace expression in face of state violence. People determine to face guns and say no more. It’s manifestation of the subtle force of history and the people’s memory against raw form of state apparatus, troops standing with guns.
History always repeats itself until everybody learns they say. It’s karma.
I hope this list work, sort of gently brewing to paint melodies. It’s atmospheric, slow, but urging. I put my fav abstract ambient track at the end. cheers.
see also: SF reports
Image: Dust Mason, [1, 2], [Dust Mason]
forgot to note:
Mary Lou Williams, very underrated musician. check her out.
few clips from the ground in Rangoon.
more raw clips (no sound track or commentary)
BBC reports
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2_EKx2KZ9A
Internet is being cut off and all cell phone is down. (only phone is still working?)
Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Japanese reporters who was being shot. Captured in video camera.
I guess that internet and resistance could be powerful weapons
” I was beaten and verbally abused in detention. After a few days, the guards asked me, ‘Do you know that your name is all over the Internet?’ After that, I was treated better by the guards before being released. The appeals sent by Amnesty members definitely had an effect on my case.”
Rehab Abdel Bagi Mohamed Ali
http://www.amnesty.org/
BBC article on 1988 Burma protest, est. 3000 people were killed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7012158.stm
Breaking: Coup/Army Mutiny in Myanmar
The dissident website The Burma File in London is reporting news of an Army Mutiny and Political Coup with Than Shwe disposed by No. 2 General Maung Aye.
—–
Reports from Rangoon suggest soldiers are mutinying. It is unclear the numbers involved. Reports cite heavy shooting in the former Burmese capital.
The organisation Helfen ohne Grenzen (Help without Frontiers) is reporting that “Soldiers from the 66th LID (Light Infantry Divison) have turned their weapons against other government troops and possibly police in North Okkalappa township in Rangoon and are defending the protesters. At present unsure how many soldiers involved.”
http://www.newsdeskspecial.co.uk/burma/
http://www.newsdeskspecial.co.uk/2007/09/army-mutiny-rep.html#more
Police Clash with Protesters in Myanmar (Monks Protest)
Current Situation Inside Burma
September 28, 2007
Dear All,
Kindly forgive the brevity and the lack of formatting of the following email. I am now sending this information out as we are now receiving it. As many of you are now aware phone lines have been cut, mobile networks have been disabled, and Internet access has also been disabled. Information, therefore, is now very difficult to obtain and confirm. I therefore am unable to confirm any of that which follows, but my sources are adamant that this is the truth:
Soldiers from LID #66 have turned their weapons against other SPDC soldiers and possibly police in North Okkalappa township in Rangoon and are defending the protesters. At present unsure how many soldiers involved. Some reports cite “heavy shooting” in the area.
Other unconfirmed reports have stated that soldiers from LID #33 in Mandalay have refused orders to act against protesters. Some reports claim that many soldiers remained in their barracks. More recent reports now maintain that soldiers from LID #99 now being sent there to confront them.
Reports of approx. 10,000+ protesters gathering around the Traders Hotel in Rangoon.
Reports of 10,000+ protesters gathering at San Pya Market in Rangoon.
Further reports of approx. 50,000 protestors gathering at the Thein Gyi Market in Rangoon.
According to Mizzima, an unknown number of soldiers from Central Command and South East Command are presently on their way to Rangoon to reinforce SPDC army troops.
Also according to Mizzima, an unknown number of aircraft have been scrambled from “Matehtilar” airbase – probably a reference to Meiktila in Mandalay Division.
According to one journalist, SPDC have turned water cannons against crowds at Sule Pagoda. The report maintains that the water contained some type of chemical. awaiting further information.
Please circulate this information as widely as as quickly as possible.
Regards,
Jason
Research Director
Human Rights Documentation Unit
National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma
http://ethnicvoices.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2007/9/28/3258390.html
Hour by hour report here
http://mizzima.com/mizzimanews/News/2007/Sep/Today-demonstration.html
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar at Magnum
Nice list, and links. Hope they manage to take the bastards down this time around.
I think they will stick around for a while, they are propped up by gas export. Even if the revolution able to bring down the economy by national strike (which I think they will, since it’s the only logical step) It will take several months of coordinated move. It seems coordination is fairly weak inside Burma.
But, since they’ve killed monks, they are more than over. People will ignore them and they will lost legitimacy.
But who knows, I just hope it won’t turn into Laos/Cambodia. Now that’s totally screwed up.
—
update,
fairly predictable. They gonna have to invest ever more man power to watch everybody. And ultimately it will collapses upon itself on paranoia.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/09/30/myanmar_quiet_heavily_guarded/4976/
Myanmar quiet, heavily guarded
Vehicles in Yangon were stopped and searched for recording equipment Sunday as part of Myanmar’s military crackdown on dissent.
After nearly two weeks of protests that left at least 10 dead, a heavy military presence remained in Yangon and Mandalay as dissenting monks remained under arrest or locked in their monasteries, the BBC reported.
Military roadblocks and a search of all vehicles, including taxis, prevented dissenting civilians from regrouping in large numbers, the BBC reported.
——
btw, I am worry about the safety of that xanga blogger. She hasn’t posted in a few days.
——–
map of Rangoon here
http://wikimapia.org/#lat=16.79918&lon=96.151249&z=16&l=0&m=a&v=2
interview after the 1988 massacre.
There is a crack in the junta leadership. This ought to be interesting. SPecially if there is purge.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IJ02Ae01.html
General Than Shwe, the SPDC’s top general, personally gave the orders to the local commanders in Yangon to shoot into the crowd, a military source told Asia Times Online. “The two main commanders in Yangon have told their subordinates that the senior general directly ordered the attack last week,” he said. That shoot-to-kill policy has backfired on the junta, with international condemnation coming from the West as well as neighboring countries included in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member.
United Nations special envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari met with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Sunday and is reportedly now pressing to meet with both Than Shwe and Maung Aye. So far the SPDC leadership has declined to meet with the UN envoy, perhaps, some analysts speculate, precisely because the top two generals now view the next steps in dealing with the crisis differently.
There are unconfirmed reports that Than Shwe’s wife and one of his daughters, as well as his top business associate, Tay Za, flew out of the country on a Air Bagan flight to Singapore last week and have since traveled on to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Their apparent flight came against the backdrop of growing questions about troop loyalty due to orders to shoot at monks and the possibility that they could have broken rank and joined with the street protestors.
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1572232007
’6,000 held’ as Burma smashes revolution
BURMESE authorities are holding about 6,000 anti-government protesters at four sites, including the notorious Insein prison and a racecourse, a dissident group, the Democratic Voice of Burma, said yesterday.
DVB, which has continued to broadcast TV and radio into Burma from its Norwegian base in Oslo, added that at least 138 people were killed in last week’s protests.
“Our own estimate is about 6,000 people detained, not killed, but detained,” including about 2,400 monks, said DVB’s chief editor, Aye Chan Naing. He said they were being held in at least four places: the Insein prison; a pharmaceutical factory; a technical institute and a disused racecourse.
Ominously, it was reported many would be sent to prisons in the far north of the country.
Monks appear to be paying a heavy price for spearheading the demonstrations. An Asian diplomat said all the arrested monks were defrocked and made to wear civilian clothes. Some were likely to face long jail terms, the diplomat said.
Insein prison, near Rangoon, was built by the British during the colonial period. It is now the junta’s maximum security jail. One dissident who was held there has described it as the “darkest hell-hole in Burma”.
The junta has been forced to use other facilities to hold people simply because of the numbers it has picked up.
Burma: Thousands dead in massacre of the monks dumped in the jungle
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=484903
Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed.
The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”
Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand.
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/6491
A few resources linked from my regular daily blog stops You’ll have to scroll down a bit for some of them.
http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/
http://www.opendemocracy.net/editorial_tags/asia_pacific
http://www.burmadigest.info/
http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/
Also, forgot: http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/
(via bloodandtreasure above; I got mixed up; this is what I was thinking of with opendemocracy above, although that’s OK)
Boycott China Olympic.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071003/ts_nm/myanmar_new_dc_14
YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar’s junta arrested more people on Wednesday hours after the departure of a U.N. envoy who came to the country to try to end a ruthless crackdown on protests which sparked international outrage.
At least eight truckloads of prisoners were hauled out of downtown Yangon, the former Burma’s biggest city and center of last week’s monk-led protests against decades of military rule and deepening economic hardship, witnesses said.
In one house near the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest shrine in the devoutly Buddhist country and starting point for the rallies, only a 13-year-old girl remained. Her parents had been taken, she said.
“They warned us not to run away as they might be back,” she said after people from rows of shop houses were ordered onto the street in the middle of the night and many taken away.
Opps, sorry GG. I just saw your post with several links in spam filter pending mode. (yeah. the filter is ruthless. I hope I didn’t lost any of your post, cause I dumped several thousand spam without reading.)
[...] See also: Black Sky, Acc Wed. No.54 image: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], [1, 4], [1, 2] [...]
[...] Squashed, who provides music for several sites including this one, put together a music list to celebrate and commemorate the demonstrators. He also includes photos and commentary. [...]
juxtaposing that thuja track with this situation completely redefined it for me.