denuding the landscape for its bounty of expensive wood such as teak is another big income source for the junta.

every time you use it, weld the relief valve shut.

The motives for every action aren't political.

And "doesn't work" not only assumes a timeframe that Buddhists don't. It also assumes that any lashback to this will be unrelated.

If they were slaughtered but their slaughter causes a backlash that threatens a regime, that's not failure in their eyes. And that's the magnitude of their faith and their courage.

it can hardly be said that the prevailing culture had any value for it or was shamed by it:-)
but I digress. Good points, Shaula.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

Shaula. And I have nothing against the monks doing what the monks are doing. As you know, I'm reasonably well versed in Buddhism. Nonetheless I feel it needs to be pointed out that non-violence, whatever well it springs from, often does not achieve political goals against people who are willing to reply with violence.

And there is a political edge to what the monks are doing. They aren't just doing Buddhism, they're doing politics - same as is true of, say, the social gospel folks in the US during the late 19th and early 20th century. The politics flows from the religion, but I don't think it's reasonable to say it's /just/ religion. They do have political goals they want to achieve, they are not achieving them.

out, correct. I can find no attribution to Gandhi of that saying. My apologies. I'll correct the article. Can't say that changes my views of the effectiveness of passive resistance. Norway was a fairly marginal case and wouldn't have worked if the Nazis hadn't had other fish to fry at the time. Indeed, had the Nazis won the war I think it's safe to say Norwegians would have learned what happens to people who messed with the Reich. Had those ovens set up already, after all. It doesn't take killing too many before people get the message you're serious. Say publicly shoot one out of every ten schoolteachers in front of the children. Then do it again next week if they haven't started making changes. Maybe the Norwegians would hold up. But I doubt it.

None of which is to say that non-violence can't ever be effective. Of course it is sometimes. I suspect, however, Burma is not a place where it will be, unless it shames the Chinese into doing something. (The US has no say in this, Burma isn't in the US sphere.)

We all want to think these deaths aren't in vain.

Except in Shaula's sense that they are virtuous as actions, they are in vain. The ends they seek will not be found.

Hope I'm wrong on that. But good doesn't always win, the most deserving doesn't always get the prize, and the rich and powerful are mostly scum, because that's what it takes to get there.

And every once in a while, through the blood-mist laden air, a shining light stabs through. Maybe this'll be that time.

Doubt it. The last thing that came out of Pandora's box was the worst curse of all, and that people don't realize that is what makes it so bad.

thank you ian. if i over reacted, it's because i'm on my last nerve reading statements about nonviolence that repeat the worst of untrue myths about what it is and how it works (when it does "work").

for example your description of how the norwegian teachers could have been crushed... well, sure - but there are countervailing forces... how long could the german soldiers have killed the teachers (and in front of the children)? how long could the people have watched that happened w/o acting? the answers depend on many things - including the level of training and organization of the population. please note that nowhere do i claim that the good win or that the most deserving get the prize.

there is such a lack of understanding of nonviolent action - partly, i think, because people are so sure that they know what it is. and like al gore goes around saying (something like), "It's not what you don't know that gets you. It's what you know that just ain't so.” if you'd like to learn about the history, theory and practice of nonviolence (rather than the popular myths), i'd suggest starting with gene sharp's Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential. gene sharp writes about what is called "strategic nonviolence" (michael nagler is more "principled nonviolence").

... and i should say that i don't have any special knowledge about what is happening, or what the people are trying to achieve. for that reason, i'm hesitant, to say anything about their chances for their actions to have the affect they desire.... except this: are you so sure you know what ends they seek?

sure I understand how totalitarian thugs think, mainly.

I think Selise is asking about what ends the monks seek.

is that my prediction of how much democracy or freedom their actions will bring is based on how totalitarian thugs think.

I was once friends with the leader of a large meditation center. We discussed Buddhism. On the level of theory (not practice) she said I understood the basics of Buddhism very well. It's a major area of interest to me.

It's irrelevant here. I made a prediction not based on whether the monks are meeting religious goals by getting their heads crushed, but on whether any political goals will be achieved.

My judgement is that absent outside intervention, or the rise of internal armed opposition, it won't. Because the Junta doesn't care, and now that they have money coming in based on exports they don't need the support of most of the population, as long as they don't rebel effectively. All they need is slave labor to run the projects that bring in the hard Chinese cash. If regular Burmese are willing to have their heads crushed instead of working on slave labor projects - that will work. This probably won't.

I wish I could say otherwise. I admire the monks greatly. But I am not interested in letting my admiration for the monks or my sympathy for them or their religion make me think the odds of their actions/non-actions having significant political effect are all that significant. That's what I was commenting on, not on their religious practice.

All bets are off if soldiers revolt. But if they were going to do it soon, they'd have done it already. A large number of desertions and a regroup is possible, but that doesn't seem likely either.

are niggers and fags, huh, and I understand them sumbitches like the back of my hand.

'I was once friends with the leader of a large meditation center. We discussed Buddhism. On the level of theory (not practice) she said I understood the basics of Buddhism very well. It's a major area of interest to me.'

Look, these monks are a rough equivalent of Sandburg's People. You want them to rise above the strife. You want them to prevail absent political terms, for then there is peace.

The killing of them(and their faith) will be one of the most grievous acts of inhumanity of this century. It defies politics and sets the tone of the Chinese dominance of that area, one hopes not the world.

So you want to cast what they are doing above the affray in which they are horrendously caught. If the UN means anything at all, it should do something of consequence here.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

I wondered if you would take the cheap shot. Also, if you would mistake prediction for preference.

The UN won't do squat unless China wants it to (and US business interests). Because there's money to be made. And as long as those business interests continue to operate, the regime doesn't need the monks approval, because it has foreign currency and thus only needs enough of the population to cooperate as slave labor. They don't have the leverage they once had.

Prediction is not the same as preference. You make the same mistake as all the pro-war yahoos did "you predict the war will fail, you must want it to."

No. It's a prediction.

"I wondered if you would take the cheap shot."

The old SDS would have run you out for that comment.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

what's the old SDS? :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society

There was a version of them in Toronto at one point when I was up at UT.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

All bets are off if soldiers revolt.

if the monks (and their allies) were attempting to use nonviolence to overthrow the current regime (*), then getting the soldiers to withdraw their support (or even better, change sides) would probably be one of the top three elements of their strategy.

i should really write a diary or two and try to explain what nonviolent action is and how it can work (please note, i wrote "can work" NOT "does work"). actually, someone more knowledgable than me should write the diaries... but absent that, i may give it a try. especially as ian has written an excellent post, "The Hope In Weakness (Morality II)" (and zimbardo's book was even mentioned in the comments).... which introduces ideas, i think, critical to an understanding of nonviolence.

(*) standard disclaimer - i don't know what the monks are doing or why. my comments here are about nonviolence in general.

I do not see what the argument could be about here. These poor monks went to their doom as monks, as the faithful. Not as non-violent strategists. Do not appropriate their deaths for your own ideological purpose. Their deaths are their own and their people’s.

As to the strategy of non-violence, if you’ve ever been in a real fight, it depends on the particular fight, who is watching, who can be caught off guard and how, etc., what you do in it.

No professor from Berkeley is going to tell me how to fight mine.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

i'm not making any claims about what the monks are (or are not) doing.... since i don't know. but, when i see mis-statements about nonviolence, especially those that repeat common false myths, i'm going to respond in order to set the record straight (even though i'm no expert).

and by all means, fight your battles as your conscience dictates. as will i (i'm no pacifist absolutist). in no way was i suggesting otherwise. no prof from berkeley or anywhere else can tell us what is right for us to do... but nagler might be able to teach us other things. for example, nagler says the monk's actions may be part of a more of a strategic and organized resistance than has been reported. of course, i don't know if this is true... but i'm guessing neither do you.

are a kind of conscience that does not typically take sides in things like this.

From a Der Spiegel article

"Local residents who lined the monks' protest routes are accustomed to seeing the clergy play a role in shaping Burmese politics. In the days of the monarchy, in the 19th century, they performed a mediating function between the government and the people, taking up positions on both sides. They would typically defend the king when he reached decisions they saw as necessary but unpopular, such as tax increases, but they would obstruct him if they felt that he was abusing his power. Buddhist monks have consistently been a powerful force in the Burmese state.

In the early 1930s, Burma's British colonial rulers also got a taste of the power of the Buddhist clergy, when monks staunchly defended their faith and tradition, even in the face of guns and violence.

Only once in Burma's more recent history, at the beginning of the period of military rule under General Ne Win, which lasted from 1962 to 1988, did the government manage to quell the monks' influence. The general declared religion a private matter, imposed secular laws on the clergy, raided Buddhist monasteries and arrested leading monks.

But the government eventually abandoned its repressive policies against the clergy in the face of growing popular outrage, and the monks remained a political force. If need be, they would refuse to accept alms from soldiers and their families, thereby depriving them of a reliable means of accumulating merit for their next life after reincarnation.

Refusal of alms, or "pattam nikkujana kamma," is one of the monks' most powerful weapons against the regime. "It takes away a sense of legitimacy, and it is sort of the ultimate or the only, in a sense, weapon or leverage that monks have against the government," Penelope Edwards, a professor of South and Southeast Asian studies at the University of California, Berkeley, told the US government Web site USINFO. "It's an ultimate sanction, actually."

But when the monks used the approach this time, the generals refused to give in. On the day before the bloodbaths began, Religious Affairs Minister Thura Myint Maung knelt before the monks' leaders and lowered his head to the ground, a gesture of respect for the clergy. But then he declared war on the monks, making it clear that the regime would show no mercy."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,508874-2,00.html

The monks have been a neutralizing force in the past. Here, finally their conscience has been rejected. The junta will try to take out the soul of Burma now.

Why should they care, they've sold themselves to the Chinese.

Your man Nagler has his own soap box, so he tries to fold the moral and religious authority of the monks into a movement with front and second lines. It may be one now for the time being, just for self preservation, but that is not how the monks appear to have gotten into it.

Prior they were mediators.

The junta and the Chinese will eventually rule like Ozymandias.

http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/672/

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

that it matters. Nothing wrong with what they did. They're monks. They did what their beliefs mandate. I just don't think it's going to be effective.

Sometimes there really aren't good answers - if they were willing to die, and to risk the systematic destruction of Buddhism in Burma, then what they did has at least a small chance of success. But I think it's very small.

Or to put it another way. I don't have a better plan of action for them. What I'm saying is "I don't think this one, politically speaking, will work."