So quit complaining that the Bush administration is violating your human rights. it isn't.

Instead, turn your shrill rhetoric to where it belongs -- the real oppressive dictators of the world.

You know, like in Burma.

It was about as simple and uncomplicated as shooting demonstrators in the streets. Embarrassed by smuggled video and photographs that showed their people rising up against them, the generals who run Myanmar simply switched off the Internet.

Until Friday television screens and newspapers abroad were flooded with scenes of tens of thousands of red-robed monks in the streets and of chaos and violence as the junta stamped out the biggest popular uprising there in two decades.

But then the images, text messages and postings stopped, shut down by generals who belatedly grasped the power of the Internet to jeopardize their crackdown.

“Finally they realized that this was their biggest enemy, and they took it down,” said Aung Zaw, editor of an exile magazine based in Thailand called The Irrawaddy, whose Web site has been a leading source of information in recent weeks. The site has been attacked by a virus whose timing raises the possibility that the military government has a few skilled hackers in its ranks.

The efficiency of this latest, technological, crackdown raises the question whether the vaunted role of the Internet in undermining repression can stand up to a determined and ruthless government — or whether Myanmar, already isolated from the world, can ride out a prolonged shutdown more easily than most countries.

OpenNet Initiative, which tracks Internet censorship, has documented signs that in recent years several governments — including those of Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — have closed off Internet access, or at least opposition Web sites, during periods preceding elections or times of intense protests.

You folks are free to spout your ignorant, ill-informed criticism of the American government with no censorship and no oppression -- indeed, you are aided by the very government that you claim oppresses you and violates your rights. Burma, on the other hand, is the face of oppression in the world, along with Darfur and other repressive, murderous regimes (sort of like Iraq used to be). Focus there, not here, and your words might seem to be more than simply self-indulgent whimperings by self-centered losers.

Oh, and I have to ask -- where are the human shields to protect the people of Burma? Or do they only get deployed to protect the enemies of America?

Posted by: Greg at 10:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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