transparency

Even non-fiction television creates simulations that only seem to be somewhat authentic, in the hyped up news stories about danger, venality and power. They try to trick us into seeing the truth rather than a mix of fact and falsehood.

Great episode

Thankyou SBS for putting the episode on the air, whilst it doesn't show all the complexities of burma it does highlight an ongoing case of human suffering and human rights violation occuring in the region. It would be good to see more follow up stories which could also show the struggle of non burman people search for freedom from fear.

Losing sight

While Mr Barnes's comment does sound very well researched, I fail to see the point in DVB receiving their funding from the CIA as opposed to anywhere else. They are an organisation that still needs to pay its employees and pay for its equipment. The fact that US is against the Junta is well known and therefore, it comes as no real surprise that they would fund DVB. But it doesn't take away from the fact these atrocities did occur. And the world needs to know. Good on you, SBS.

SPDC's moles are very funny

SPDC's moles are very funny. They think we don't know about them. Don't be so panic, but that day will surely come.

Burma VJ and the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) - Continued 2

While my heart goes out to all people suffering under any oppressive regime, I am also deeply cynical of the DVB as an arm of the CIA's propaganda department, the NED. The CIA has its own human right's abuses, a political agenda in Asia and desire to co-opt the left by infiltrating left wing groups in the name of human rights.

Burma VJ and the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) - Continued 1

In the Asia Times (Oct 17 2007) F William Engdahl writes that "The tragedy of Myanmar, whose land area is about the size of George W Bush's Texas, is that its population is being used as a human stage prop in a drama scripted in Washington by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the George Soros Open Society Institute, Freedom House and Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institution, a US intelligence asset used to spark "non-violent" regime change around the world on behalf of the US strategic agenda. Myanmar's "Saffron Revolution", like the Ukraine "Orange Revolution" or the Georgia "Rose Revolution" and the various color revolutions instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to the details of "hit-and-run" protests with "swarming" mobs of monks in saffron, Internet blogs, mobile SMS links between protest groups, well-organized protest cells which disperse and re-form."

Burma VJ and the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB)

Not everything is black and white it seems, even while talking about issues such as democracy movements. The Democratic Voice of Burma or DVB (while sounding very left leaning) receives substantial funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (http://burmaimc.infotage.net/ka/2005/05/156.shtml) Hernando Calvo Ospina in his article The CIA's Successors And Collaborators says "The NED's talent for channelling money, establishing NGOs, electoral manipulation and media brainwashing owed much to the long experience of the CIA, the State Department's foreign aid agency USAID, and members of the conservative elite associated with US foreign policy (including John Negroponte, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Francis Fukuyama)." Alan Weinstein, the NED's first President stated to The Washington Post: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA" (The Washington Post, 22 September 1991.)