Hope the best, but prepare for the worst"

"Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst"

This is the message from Aung San Suu Kyi to her party members and the public. In reality, public had been facing the worst ever since 1962; there is no more to loose. Everyone is now waiting for the last change!!!

Latest news from Yangon!!

"Internet, freedom of express"

There is not much to say about Burma's situation except the country is under the complete control of the military rulers again. Not a single chance of freedom of express, many news indicated in these recent months after the uprising.

My sister who went to the new capital, the so called Nay Pyi Daw, said," Spies are everywhere, they deliberately following us to listen our conversation". She continued telling me about how should be careful when she opens my emails in the internet cafes. "There are many spies both inside and outside of internet cafes, I cannot open my email regularly anymore".

Irrawaddy just published a news that one blogger was arrested. But I did not see anything related to the politic, so far, in his website.

Yangon Mayor's Corruption

This is from ko Htike website. sorry for not asking his permission.

Yangon Mayor's Corruption

Whenever Yangon Mayor (Brig-Gen- Aung Thein Lin) go to Nay Pyi Taw , Assistant Chief Engineers,Executive Engineer and A/E need to pay Kyats 100,000(About US $ 100) each for his travel expences the total of about Kyats 20 lakh (About US $ 2000)in one trip.

Last year when Mayor's wife attended in private hospital to get operation CE,A/CE,EE,A/E had to support (Kyats 5 million)as fund for his wife's hospital expenditure.

That is a real story which YCDC (Yangon City Development Comittee)'s senior staff's has been suffering that virus since that guy became Mayor.

Stealth, Rambo, and the Lady

After “Rambo,” the “Lady”—Hollywood Discovers Burma [Commentary]
By Yeni
January 25, 2008

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The fourth in a series of war veteran “Rambo” films, featuring Hollywood's mega-star Sylvester Stallone as a 61-year-old who heads into the Burmese jungle to rescue abducted Western missionaries, has its world premiere on Friday.

Many Burmese democracy activists believe this is a good time to release the film, four months after the September pro-democracy protests in Burma and the subsequent vicious military crackdown made international headlines.

Although the character of Rambo is essentially apolitical and not known as a subject of intellectual interest, many Burmese will watch the movie, which is expected to direct wide attention again to the Burma issue.

Burmese inside the country will be looking for clandestine copies of the film. Burmese youngsters are bound too enjoy the movie and will be emulating Rambo and his feats.

Several Hollywood celebrities have recently shown interest in the Burma crisis and helped increase awareness of the situation. Burma is now a hot Hollywood property, figuring for the second time in less than two years in action movies with Burmese settings. In the first, “Stealth”, a fictitious air raid is made on a terrorist cell in Rangoon.

Rambo deserves thanks for attracting world attention to Burma's current plight under the cruel oppression of the military junta. But while the film remains true to Hollywood tradition and has a happy ending, the reality in Burma has so such outcome.

Meanwhile, the leading US entertainment magazine, Variety, recently reported that the life of Burmese democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi will be the subject of a new movie, titled “The Lady.”

Giuseppe Tornatore, director of the Oscar-winning Italian film “Nuovo cinema Paradiso,” plans to make “The Lady” with Japanese producer Naofumi Okamoto. Production is set to begin later this year.

According to the Variety report, “The Lady” will cover the period from Suu Kyi’s return to Burma in 1988, when she was 43, to the present day, and Okamoto is to produce the US $30 million project alongside Avi Arad, Steven Paul and Benedict Carver of Los Angeles-based Crystal Sky Pictures, which will finance the film.

Arad, best known for movies based on Marvel Comics superheroes such as Spider-Man and X-Men, told Variety: "At first I thought it wasn't my kind of movie, but then I realized it was. To me, Suu Kyi was like a character from 'X-Men,' except she's a real hero, not an imaginary one. She didn't need to do what she did, and she gave up a lot to do it."

Suu Kyi is, of course, a living heroine. That is why it will be interesting to see who will play her in the movie and how the Italian director and his film team will portray Burma's democracy icon and present her—and her beloved people's—struggle against the military dictatorship.

Arad told Variety that the movie is intended to reach the broadest possible audience. "It's a love story and a political thriller. If it's not commercially successful, we will have missed the mark."

Who knows? The film could rival the highly successful film on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, who led the nonviolent resistance movement against British colonial rule in India during the first half of the 20th century.

Britney, maybe, is not Crazy as People Thought

Britney, maybe, is not Crazy as People Thought

In an interview accompanied by her personal paparazzi Adnan Ghalib, Britney told The Spoof.com, "Aung San Suu Kyi has long been estranged from her own two children through her involuntary detention and house arrest, I now believes that this was a sign and that she, Paris and I have a special connection. I also shaved my head last year and attacked a car with an umbrella, I saw the monks in Burma carrying umbrellas during their demonstartions last year and I need to act upon this synchronicity, first we'll visit Rangoon and then travel to Yangon." When it was pointed out to Britney that they were alternative names for the same place she paused before replying "You mean like Paris Hilton and Paris Hilton."

When asked their reasons for attending Burma during its "Thingyan" festival in April, Britney replied "We heard that its a really good piss up and we wouldn't want to miss that, Paris is going to join me there after her trip to Rwanda."

Staff at the Burmese Embassy in Washington DC would not comment on whether Britney or Paris Hilton would be granted visas.

With their antics a little more synchronicity they might both end up in the Insein Jail.

Security Alert

I copied this from Ko Moe Thee.

Security Alert

We heard SPDC is secretly negotiating with Chinese and Thai phone companies to trace the signals of phones inside Burma. They are giving them lucrative contracts in return for providing SPDC the location of the signals. Anybody using the phones originated by Thai or Chinese phone companies should be careful.

Use only when necessary and use the phone only 1-2 minutes ( I do not know the exact time SPDC needs to trace a call). They are also trying hack gmail accounts. So, change your password frequently.
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ဖုန္းကို အခ်ိန္တုိေျပာပါ။ဖုန္းသုံးေနတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာပဲ ဘက္ထရီတပ္သုံးပါ။ ျပီးရင္ ဘက္ထရီတုံးကို ခ်က္ျခင္း ျဖဳတ္ပစ္လုိက္ပါ။တယ္လီဖုန္းတုိင္းဟာ ငါးစကၠန္႔မွာတၾကိမ္က် သူဘယ္မွာရိွေနတယ္ဆုိတာကို ျဂိဳလ္တုကေနတဆင့္ ဖုန္းcompanyကို သတင္းပို႔ပါတယ္။ Suggestion from - Mait.

Statement on all terrorist act!!

"The Statement on Bomb Attack"

Within last two days, there were at least three bomb explosions in three different cities in Burma. The bomb attacks are rare terrorists acts in peaceful Burma. Most of the time, no party claimed responsible for such act.

In 2005, there were bomb attacks at three places in Yangon, the capital. Many innocent people died and injured in those attacks.

All terrorist act must be denounced as this does not bring any benefit to the public. If this is believed to be done by government itself, they would pay a big price later. Public should be alert and avoid the crowded area.

Critical Thinking for Critical Time

The meeting of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and government representative U Aung Kyi was confirmed on the 11th of January. Even if the government did not mean much for this meeting, we would like to welcome all the attempts and steps made for national reconciliation.

Let's say we should forget about everything in the past and just move forward ahead for our 60 millions people.

The hope and the attempts to get help from neighboring countries or the west world from both sides, the opposition and the government leaders, should be dropped as well. In reality, nobody would give any help without own interest, either they want to influence politically or financially.

We are now at very important time to think of our people, our young generation and the future of the country. If the government really care about the sovereignty of the state, why won't they start the meaningful step right now? Aung San Suu Kyi and the majority of the public would probably not reject if the government give some percentages of power to share with them right now. As soon as they reach some agreements, everything would be opened up and most of problem would be solved. Both sides need courageous decisions and hopefully they would make a meaningful steps very soon.

Sixty years after independence, Myanmar remembers in secret

Sixty years after independence, Myanmar remembers in secret

by Hla Hla Htay

YANGON (AFP) - Pausing in front of the fence around Yangon's main park, a man points through the iron bars to show his two young children the statue inside.

"This is Myanmar's independence leader General Aung San. He was a very honourable man," he said.

The children gazed at the 10-foot (three-meter) statue and started to ask a question when their father hushed them.

"I will tell you all about him once we get home," he said.

Although Kandawgyi Park is one of the most popular public spaces in Myanmar's main city of Yangon, almost no one takes the path that leads by the statue or reads the inscription, "General Aung San, the leading star of the Union."

The man credited with winning Myanmar's independence from Britain, 60 years ago on January 4, is now most famous overseas for being the father of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi -- the Nobel peace prize winner who has spent 12 years under house arrest for her efforts to end decades of military dictatorship.

She is so despised by the ruling junta that few are willing to speak publicly about her father, even though Aung San is revered as a hero for leading the battle against British colonisers and Japanese occupiers during World War II.

He is also remembered for uniting the nation's many ethnic groups in the struggle for independence, which Aung San never lived to see.

He was assassinated at the age of 32, along with eight of his top lieutenants in July 1947, in a plot blamed on a rival politician who is now seen as a national traitor.

Even the military leadership remembers Aung San's sacrifice on the anniversary of their deaths, which is called Martyrs' Day.

But since his daughter achieved prominence during a 1988 pro-democracy uprising, few people are willing to mention Aung San in public for fear of angering the junta and its ubiquitous informers.

"We never forget our independence leader. He's always in our hearts and minds. People just dare not to show their love openly because they don't want any problems," Khin, a 30-year-old company staffer, told AFP.

"He had very high hopes for our country's future. I'll tell my infant daughter about him and his struggles for our country's independence," she added.

For those old enough to remember independence, the upcoming anniversary brings a certain sense of loss at what might have been had Aung San survived to lead the new nation.

Mya Mya, a retired government officer, was only 11 when Burma became a country that was seen as far more developed than most of its neighbours.

Sixty years later, the nation now known as Myanmar is among the poorest in the world, hobbled after 45 years of military dictatorship and disastrous economic policies.

"We all love Aung San like a father. That's why we were so hurt when he died," Mya Mya said, her eyes watering at the memory of his death.

"I don't understand politics, but I often wonder what might have happened if he had lived to see independence," she added.

Aung San had succeeded in cobbling together an alliance with Myanmar's ethnic minorities, many of whom had seen independence as an opportunity to win their own sovereign homelands.

After his death, that alliance quickly fell apart and the nation was wracked by a score of armed insurgencies across the country.

The military used the rebellions as a pretext to seize control over the government in 1962, and has ruled with an iron fist ever since.

Aung San Suu Kyi has emerged as the leader of peaceful resistance to military rule. Although she was only two when her father was killed, her stature has been built in large part because of the similarities the public sees in them.

She led her National League for Democracy (NLD) party to victory in elections in 1990, although the junta has never recognised the result.

When Buddhist monks led protests against the government in September, their movement was galvanised by a single, brief appearance by Aung San Suu Kyi to greet them at the gate of the home where she is detained.

Many here see her leadership as a continuation of her father's, although the junta has tried to diminish both their roles while building up its own image through relentless propaganda extolling the virtues of the military.

In the privacy of their homes, many families are quietly passing along their own unfiltered history of independence.

"I love General Aung San unconditionally, because my teacher taught us he was the father of our independence from Britain," said Pyi Sone, an eight-year-old boy.