20 May 2009

Burma doesn't have to be an example of "the more things change..."

"It was sad, was the general opinion, but what can one do!"

"Diplomats set to meet with Suu Kyi"
"Burma had allowed diplomats from all 30 foreign embassies to observe the trial on Wednesday but the move was for one day only, the diplomat said." - RTE News

"I discovered with horror that the people who where gathered here to build a better, nobler, more beautiful (and so on) world, stank of the old and rotten one. They were the same statesmen and diplomats who had forced the world into its present lethargy, pompous representatives of sovereign states. The same old methods. The same holy traditions and noble intrigues. The same beautiful, sanctimonious speeches."

It's been years since this.

"I beg of you, how could the mighty nations of the world who have inscribed on their banners the rights of man, democracy and other rights and freedoms, intervene in the sovereign internal affairs of another country?"
"They did not want to realise that our world had become one and indivisible."
NOTE: All the italicized quotations are by B.N. Jubal, from The Smile of Herschale Handle, Currawong Publishing Co., Sydney, 1947. Jubal was a new Australian, having escaped from Austria.

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