Radio War Nerd #271 — Burma's Ethnic Militias
Guest: Gabriel Ernst, journalist
Recorded: March 3, 2021
We discuss Myanmar's numerous ethnic militias & civil wars, some of which have been raging for over half a century, with guest "Gabriel Ernst" who has spent years researching and writing about the region.
First: taking up a commenter's challenge, we try to find a New York Times exposé on China's repression of Uyghurs that doesn't lead back to fundamentalist loon Adrian Zenz...
At 28:00 - we're joined by Gabriel Ernst to learn about Myanmar's numerous ethnic militias and breakaway regions.
Links:
Open Burma (openburma.org)
Din Deng (dindeng.com)
Din Deng on Twitter (@dindength)
Mutual Aid Myanmar (mutualaidmyanmar.org)
Maps:
*Myanmar states
*Myanmar ethnoliguistic map
*Myanmar topographical map
*Map of Myanmar insurgenies
Interlude music by Brendon Anderegg. Check out his group Mountains here.
Buy John Dolan's book "The War Nerd Iliad" and his audiobook "Pleasant Hell".
Total time: 2:22:58
Comments (34)
This might be new to some but our years of lead never got corrected, the one iq nazi crew is doing anything to ensure its hold on critical institutional power, their dinosaurus not bad people, but one teacher to many: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0d6I9bq_O8
I'm not a kremlin troll just watching the news and concluded navalny knew what he was getting into before Berlin.
Openburma.org is getting a 509 for me. Did it get taken down?
yeah i think it’s in bad shape for one reason or another
Adding $1 to my patreon support for every nerd who believes CIA propaganda in this thread
Everyone here seems to be talking about the Zenz stuff rather than Burma, so just wanted to say it was an interesting episode. I had no idea there was so many different groups and the scale is astounding.
Youghal is pronounced Yaw-hel afaik, wikipedia confirms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youghal although they say YAWL... which... no. Here is a youtube with folks from Cork https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRfHCiY7fGo so you can hear it. Figured you'd want to know cause anxiety, also hope you enjoy Ireland, failte!
How do you spell what sounds like the "wa" armies? Couldn't figure it out. There's too much to untangle here. I was hoping for a more "burmese civil wars for dummies" sort of episode. Good episode non the less.
It's just 'Wa'. A very wild story.
Always a delight to hear John try and describe the shape of geography
There is two genocides happening in the world today, none of them in China, one is Gaza and the other is Yemen.
In other words, one doesn’t need to demonstrate slavery or mass killing to prove that “genocide” is occurring, strictly speaking. At any rate I think it’s not exactly the right conversation to be having, personally
We knew before we talked about this that it would get us in trouble, but we've also lived through a series of imperial lies that have been disastrous for other countries but for our own country too. To take the most obvious example, the lead up to the invasion of Iraq featured endless heart-rending stories which were used to justify destroying Iraq. I remember very well that at the time, if you doubted any of these stories, it was because you were a traitor or had no heart. Later, people were sorry but that didn't do much good.
You should check out the work of University of Colorado’s Darren Byler on Xianjiang, who is not a Zenz-like wingnut. He uses the term “social re-engineering” rather than “genocide” to describe what’s happening to Uyghur society. He has shown that there is a deliberate campaign to reduce Uyghur birth rates, which he compares the American eugenics movement’s attacks on indigenous and black people. Again, he stops short of calling it genocide, and I’m fairly agnostic on the term, but it’s worth pointing out that deliberately attempting to reduce birth rates of an ethnic / religious minority does fit the UN’s definition of genocide
I did, and he didn't show anything close to what you claim. His work isn't independent of but builds on Dr. Zenz's. In his PhD dissertation he states the hundreds of thousands detained figure and he refers to Zenz. Sometimes later in his testimony to the Canadian House of Commons repeats this figure and adds that maybe the figure is really close to a million. We observe here the exact same inflation of numbers that happened with Zenz's. The alleged campaign to reduce Uyghur birth rates also not his original research, he accepts Zenz's without questions and goes from there. As opposed to Zenz he at least speaks Mandarin and Uyghur, I give you that. Still, he also doesn't present enough hard evidence to his claims to us to verdict China guilty on the charge of genocide. This a serious claim and demands much more serious evidence than we currently have. He also works at a Washington think-tank called Wilson Center which is funded by the US Congress and the Embassy of the UAE among others.
Great discussion of the Zenz bullshit. Can you guys link the articles to NYT you discussed?
I think Mark is referring to this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/world/asia/china-xinjiang-uighur-court.html "The authorities are also pursuing an expansive and troubling campaign to drastically reduce the birthrate among minority groups in Xinjiang using forced sterilization and abortions, according to an investigation by The Associated Press and Adrian Zenz, a German researcher." The AP article linked in the NYT is here: https://apnews.com/article/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c It's not an investigation at all. It's a summary of a preprint of zenz's report. From the AP: "The hundreds of millions of dollars the government pours into birth control has transformed Xinjiang from one of China’s fastest-growing regions to among its slowest in just a few years, according to new research obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication by China scholar Adrian Zenz"
Cancelling my subscription unless John and Mark issue an apology to Dr. Zenz, Mike Pompeo and all the Uyghurs forced into doing tai chi. I live in Louisiana, speak no mandarin and have never been to China but I will not have my views invalidated by CCP puppets like Mark Ames and Carl Zha
Agreed. I was born in the United States but moved to Taiwan, even though I don't know any Chinese languages and don't even know what Chinese people look like, because my country of birth did not hate Red China enough. I unhesitatingly believe all anti-communist propaganda in the newspapers I scavenge every morning out of the dumpster I live in and I will not have literal mind-controlled puppets of Stalin and Mao like Carl Zha question anything I hear, ever.
I had no idea there were Bolsonarista trolls on here before
Bolsonaristas are one of the biggest factions in right-wing Twitter. They're Trump's last suicide commandos.
Great ep don't mind the haters
just outta curiosity where do the opening guitar chords for your show come from?
Just want to know why John and Kathrine move so much.
Great ep
Does anyone know where someone could download these 400 Chinese government documents that the “Xinjiang Papers” NYT report is talking about? A few of them are shown in the article itself, but many of the claims made in the article are not accompanied by sources. Searching on google I could only find this website: https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/read-the-china-cables-documents/ which seems to only provide 6 documents (and, interestingly enough, says right off the bat that their authenticity was confirmed by a Defense Corp guy and... Dr. Zenz) Not saying I doubt the documents’ authenticity exactly, I just have a little trouble trusting the New York Times to provide an accurate interpretation of their contents.
Lmao I will outright say I doubt the documents' authenticity, and I have no doubt about the spin the media will put on the documents 'revelations'.
Incredible job with the maps in this one guys!
Thanks for setting the lib-media-believers straight on Zenz and China. Interestingly, NED tweeted about funding seperatism in the region for two decades. A UN Resolution of global south nations:https://undocs.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/HRC/41/G/17 "We express our firm opposition to relevant countries’ practice of politicizing human rights issues, by naming and shaming, and publicly exerting pressures on other countries. We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights by adhering to the people-centered development philosophy and protecting and promoting human rights through development. We also appreciate China’s contributions to the international human rights cause." Organization of Islamic Cooperation praises Chinese handling of Xinjiang:https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250 "Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China."
Weird how you take your own audience criticizing your line that “all” of the evidence for extreme measures in Xinjiang trace to one guy when they don’t as some outside force telling you “what you’re not supposed to talk about.” The claim is wrong, people said it was wrong, the people saying that were not government censors or w/e. Appreciate John’s walk back to “most” of the claims in this episode, closer to the truth!
I also appreciate the comparative honesty of shifting from “all claims are zenz” to “most articles contain zenz among other evidence”
I didn't take any offence at your last episode, wouldn't worry too much about it
Youghal is pronounced like Y'all not You'll. I hope this information gets to you before you speak to the locals lol
I discovered the other day after hearing John pronounce Boolavogue that logainm.ie has sound files where you can hear place names pronounced.