{"id":1380,"date":"2007-10-02T04:30:16","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T09:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1380"},"modified":"2007-10-02T04:30:16","modified_gmt":"2007-10-02T09:30:16","slug":"the-sword-is-mightier-than-the-pen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1380","title":{"rendered":"The Sword Is Mightier Than The Pen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edwin Bulwer-Lytton<\/a> – the man who gave us the line “it was a dark and stormy night – also lent another classic line to the English language’s stockpile of quotations; he penned “The pen is mightier than the sword<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Of course, he never had to bet his life on it.<\/p>\n

I’m always astounded at the naivete of so many – too many – “peace” activists; their brains marinaded in a generation of “Give Peace a Chance” and legends of non-violence resistance and civil disobedience and Martin Luther King and Gandhi (who, need it be said, flourished under liberal democracies <\/em>that were fundamentally friendly to change), and spoiled rotten by the largely-peaceful fall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact,\u00a0too many think that “sending messages” and symbolic actions are all it takes to put a dictator in his\/her place.<\/p>\n

Sadly, it’s untrue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The boot, it would seem, is right back on the throat of the Burmese people.<\/p>\n

[Swedish diplomat] Liselotte Agerlid, who is now in Thailand, said that the Burmese people now face possibly decades of repression. “The Burma revolt is over,” she added.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The military regime won and a new generation has been violently repressed and violently denied democracy. The people in the street were young people, monks and civilians who were not participating during the 1988 revolt.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Now the military has cracked down the revolt, and the result may very well be that the regime will enjoy another 20 years of silence, ruling by fear.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mrs Agerlid said Rangoon is heavily guarded by soldiers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There are extremely high numbers of soldiers in Rangoon’s streets,” she added. “Anyone can see it is absolutely impossible for any demonstration to gather, or for anyone to do anything.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“People are scared and the general assessment is that the fight is over. We were informed from one of the largest embassies in Burma that 40 monks in the Insein prison were beaten to death today and subsequently burned.”<\/p>\n

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The diplomat also said that three monasteries were raided yesterday afternoon and are now totally abandoned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, Virginia, sometimes dictators don’t <\/em>listen to reason.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the village eats the children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edwin Bulwer-Lytton – the man who gave us the line “it was a dark and stormy night – also lent another classic line to the English language’s stockpile of quotations; he penned “The pen is mightier than the sword“. Of course, he never had to bet his life on it. I’m always astounded at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}