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Radio War Nerd EP #101 — Rohingya, Myanmar & The Empire (Patreon)

Published:
2017-09-14 13:39:41
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

Guest: Kayleigh Long, journalist

The War Nerd digs into the grim history and politics of Mynamar with local journalist Kayleigh Long, to try to make better sense of the Rohingya crisis. The story we're being told is that Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi isn't the peaceful Buddhist that the West made her out to be, and the Rohingya mass expulsions suddenly just happened without context. We look into the brutal British legacy in Burma (Myanmar), the history of ethnic tensions in the part of the Empire where today Rakhine death squads are expelling Rohingya, the mirror Chittagong Hills Tract conflict story ignored by our media, and the CIA-backed Chinese Nationalist KMT army that spent years in northeast Burma running a heroin narco-state ...

Afterwards, the War Nerd and Ames take more RWN subscriber call-in questions...

Maps:

* Rakhine (Arakan) state ethnic map:

* Myanmar ethnic map

Works cited:

"Shooting An Elephant" by George Orwell 

"Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma" by Mary Callahan

"Another Man's War: The Story of a Burma Boy in Britain's Forgotten Army" by Barnaby Phillips 

Total time: 2:04:44

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

Files

Comments

Avery

I wonder how much of the prejudice against Burmese came from a perception of Buddhism as a useless, degenerate religion, compared to Hinduism. I can imagine a British colonial feeling vaguely intrigued and entranced by the sight of a fakir or guru doing austerities in the street -- a judgment that still persists today -- while being simply annoyed that Buddhist monks hang around chatting with people in the street instead of doing the religious works they're "supposed to be" doing -- another judgment that still persists today, particularly among Westerners in Southeast Asia and Western converts to Buddhism.

Jon_dog

The Iain M. Banks book that Jon refers to is called Use of Weapons, the chairmaker is just a character within that book.

michiganpizza

who composed the background music ~1:28:00?

grey

John, I went to amazon.ca and don't see a kindle version of your upcoming Iliad book. The days of printed books are over. Please correct this. Otherwise I'll have to enjoy your book miserably by actually turning pages and carrying it on me as oppose to reading it anywhere via my smartphone. Failure to comply might result in an uprising by your war nerd fans who will annoy the ever living shit out of you. (Asymmetrically of course)

Factory Troll

Not so fast there, don’t forget us in the sullen inland majority who never got the memo about the days of printed books being over and still sag around with solid paperbacks, for which we are being openly loathed by snotty urban elites. We see absolutely no problem with a print-only publication. Indeed, watching the uppity kindle-techies wallow in the misery of carrying an actual book in which they have to turn the actual pages they used to laugh at, is the revenge we have been dreaming of for generations. Besides, everyone know that these cosmopolitan kids would never have the guts to stage a real uprising, all that might happen is that they pull up their smartphones to express how annoyed they are, to the great delight of us spiteful bastards who might respond by 5-staring your book on amazon, buy an extra gift-sample and unconditionally preorder your next publication (which of course we would unconditionally preorder anyway).

Avery

It is against the Ten Commandments to read the Iliad as an ebook. Ideally, it should be read aloud from a scroll of papyrus, but a paper book is permissible for us fallen sinners.

grey

It is false for John to say its a 'modern version' while not making it available for the glorious people's masses. Even the 10 commandments were written on and accessed from a tablet.

Avery

Hahaha, touché

I can't believe I paid good money for this...

The Lathe of Heaven and The Left Hand of Darkness are two different books by Urusla Le Guin. The Lathe of Heaven is about a man whose dreams alter the nature and history of reality, who is manipulated by his therapist to try and make their world a better place, with fairly disastrous results. The Left Hand of Darkness is about an emissary to the planet "Winter," where people have only one sex and one gender.