Rebranding is something that big businesses do when they’re caught with their fingers in something they shouldn’t be touching. For example, Phillip Morris Inc. You and I know it as makers of cigarettes. Oh no! It is a division of Altiris Inc. (which also owned Kraft Foods at one time) and has a piece of SABMiller, who makes beer. Lots of Beer. And cigarettes. Which, if you think about it, is a natural pairing.
The name, Altiris, doesn’t actually tell you this. General Motors, you get an inkling of what the heck they do. Altiris is a made up, pleasant combination, of vowels and consonants.
Countries also rebrand. Yugoslavia was a rebranding of some or all of Serbia, Croatia, Slavonia, Vojvodina, Slovenia, Carniola, Dalmatia, Styria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A couple of the areas were not much bigger than your living room and had a full monarchy. Rebranding them made sense.
Ceylon rebranded in 1972. You know it as Sri Lanka. What used to be on the map as the Belgian Congo, changed its handle to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960
Then there is Burma. Having achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1948 they have changed the business cards a few times: Union of Burma, Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma, back to Union of Burma then in 1989 settled on Union of Myanmar.
Stuck in between Bangladesh, India, China, Tibet, Thailand and Laos, Burma has been a bit of everyone and everything at various times. The one person you might know from Burma was a former Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant.
Politically, the joint has been a mess. Democracy went out the window in 1962 when General Ne Win led a military coup d’etat and wobbled over in the direction of the Burmese Way to Socialism. By 1988 the economy had gone into the porcelain facility and pro-democracy forces staged a bit of an uprising. This got smacked down hard by General Saw Maung who formed another military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, declared martial law and managed to slaughter a few hundred pro-democracy protestors.
They rebranded as Myanmar in 1989.
By 1990, the government held free elections and, oddly enough, nobody wanted the military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), as their government. They voted for the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who scored 392 out of 489 seats. The SLORC, said "No effing way is that going to happen!" and annulled the election.
The SLORC, rebranded in 1997 as the State Peace and Development Council, (SPDC) hoped that nobody would notice, or count the bodies. Now, as the SPDC, the current head of Burma is Senior General Than Shwe, who is Chairman of the SPDC.
According Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the military junta has been doing what they always do: Terrorize the population. They use the classic tools: Forced labour, human trafficking, child labour, systematic rapes by the military, taking women as sex slaves and the usual shoot anyone else who complains, then kill their families.
Burma is also known as being very insular. Not because the people are insular; the military junta wants and is controlling everything in and out. The Internet is very closely monitored (much like China) and looking at the ‘wrong’ pages or sites can get your ass beat by the police, if you’re lucky, or you simply disappear, if you’re unlucky.
Foreign journalists invited in? Only if they agree to be shot and killed on arrival then have their dismembered bodies buried in an unmarked shallow grave in the jungle. Even FOXNews won’t go for that one, so there is a shortage of independent data on Burma.
Today, the Daily Mail is reporting that there might be thousands of bodies of Buddhist monks that have been tossed in the jungle. Military police have raided several monasteries and invited the monks to go for a truck ride that doesn’t end well for the monks. Democracy protestors who were, with the monks, agitating for open elections, have also been taken for one-way rides.
According to the Daily Mail, a former Intelligence Officer with the military junta, who dropped tools and ran for the border with Thailand yesterday, several hundred monks and several thousand protestors have disappeared. 20,000 military troops have been called out to ‘prevent demonstrations’ and keep order.
One report has several hundred monks kept in a sports stadium and university dorm rooms, under lock and key. Soldiers take them out for beatings, killings, then a bonfire. Not a good bonfire.
Which brings us back to rebranding. The name Myanmar is now tarnished as an insane military junta, where murder by the military is a day at the office. Beating Buddhist monks until the rivers run red with blood and bodies, is considered just Another Manic Monday. What name should Myanmar choose next?
I’m taking my cue from the CSI television series. As best I can tell, there is a CSI:Someplace for every major city in the US and probably spinoffs in Europe too. However, Baltimore has avoided the CSI: handle.
I respectfully suggest that the military junta rename their savage little corner of southeast Asia, as Baltimore. I’m not going to call it Myanmar. Hell on Earth is more like it.
RoadDave 