Thread Killer?

suegha · June 24, 2006

I've been here in Pattaya almost four full weeks by now. My girlfriend says that she can get me a non-imm visa so I don't have to go back on Monday. She says it'll only cost 30,000 baht. After having searched this forum I've gathered it is not wise to give that much money to a TG. Can she use my ATM-card to withdraw that money if I give her my pincode? I don't have a workpermit. Do I need to get one before I give her my ATM-card? It's a Visa-card in case that should make a difference.

Er, has this been posted on the correct forum?

However, assuming it is, let's arrange to meet and you can give me all your money for safe keeping. (in a brown paper bag) That way your GF won't get her hands on it and I'll give it back to you when you need it.

rishi · July 7, 2006

... all the way down to page 4 ... ?

I don't think the threadkillers are the ones that make the last post ... The true threadkillers are the ones that ask the stupidiest questions ... Most prominent examples are those OP's, that leave you with only two choises: Ignore - or teach the OP how to use the search function.

kayo · July 7, 2006

I can get you a non imm for 100 million baht, just pass the paper bag to Suegha... (jesus, some people-----?

Whos gonna kill this thread, then?

rishi · July 7, 2006

Whos gonna kill this thread, then?

The one, who can ask the stupidiest question? (Thailand related, of course, so that some mod doesn't find an exuse to terminate).

kayo · July 7, 2006

Okay.... where can I find a BAR GIRL for free?

rishi · July 7, 2006

Oh, oh - not Thailand related. Get banned,.

suegha · July 8, 2006

Where can I find a taxi with it's meter running?

raro · July 9, 2006

Do they actually drill the holes into the ice cubes?

jbowman1993 · July 9, 2006

Childhood

Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in the Austrian village of Rohrau near the Hungarian border. His father was Matthias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother, the former Maria Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Neither parent could read music. However, Matthias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp. According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his childhood family was extremely musical, and frequently sang together and with their neighbors.

Haydn's parents were perceptive enough to notice that their son was musically talented and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain any serious musical training. It was for this reason that they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Franck, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Franck in his home to train as a musician. Haydn thus went off with Franck to Hainburg (ten miles away) and never again lived with his parents. At the time he was not quite six.

Life in the Franck household was not easy for Haydn, who later remembered being frequently hungry as well as constantly humiliated by the filthy state of his clothing. However, he did begin his musical training there, and soon was able to play both harpsichord and violin. The people of Hainburg were soon hearing him sing treble parts in the church choir.

There is reason to think that Haydn's singing impressed those who heard him, because two years later (1740), he was brought to the attention of Georg von Reutter, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who was touring the provinces looking for talented choirboys. Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and soon moved off to Vienna, where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister, the last four in the company of his younger brother Michael.

Like Franck before him, Reutter didn't always bother to make sure Haydn was properly fed. The young Haydn greatly looked forward to performances before aristocratic audiences, where the singers sometimes had the opportunity to satisfy their hunger by devouring the refreshments. Reutter also did little to further his choristers' musical education. However, St. Stephen's was at the time one of the leading, musical centers in Europe, where new music by leading composers was constantly being performed. Haydn was able to learn a great deal by osmosis simply by serving as a professional musician there.

[edit]

Struggles as a freelancer

In 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts. On a weak pretext, he was summarily dismissed from his job. He evidently spent one night homeless on a park bench, but was taken in by friends and began to pursue a career as a freelance musician. During this arduous period, which lasted ten years, Haydn worked many different jobs, including valet–accompanist for the Italian composer Nicolò Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition". He laboured to fill the gaps in his training, and eventually wrote his first string quartets and his first opera. During this time Haydn's professional reputation gradually increased.

[edit]

The years as Kapellmeister

Portrait by Ludwig Guttenbrunn, ca. 1770In 1759, or 1757 according to the New Grove Encyclopedia, Haydn received his first important position, that of Kapellmeister (music director) for Count Karl von Morzin. In this capacity, he directed the count's small orchestra, and for this ensemble wrote his first symphonies. Count Morzin soon suffered financial reverses that forced him to dismiss his musical establishment, but Haydn was quickly offered a similar job (1761) as assistant Kapellmeister to the Eszterházy family, one of the wealthiest and most important in the Austrian Empire. When the old Kapellmeister, Gregor Werner, died in 1766, Haydn was elevated to full Kapellmeister.

As a liveried servant of the Eszterházys, Haydn followed them as they moved among their three main residences: the family seat in Eisenstadt, their winter palace in Vienna, and Eszterháza, a grand new palace built in rural Hungary in the 1760s. Haydn had a huge range of responsibilities, including composition, running the orchestra, playing chamber music for and with his patrons, and eventually the mounting of operatic productions. Despite the backbreaking workload, Haydn considered himself fortunate to have his job. The Eszterházy princes (first Paul Anton, then most importantly Nikolaus I) were musical connoisseurs who appreciated his work and gave him the conditions needed for his artistic development, including daily access to his own small orchestra.

In 1760, with the security of a Kapellmeister position, Haydn married. He and his wife, the former Maria Anna Keller, did not get along, and they produced no children. Haydn may have had one or more children with Luigia Polzelli, a singer in the Eszterházy establishment with whom he carried on a long-term love affair, and to whom he often wrote on his travels.

During the nearly thirty years that Haydn worked in the Eszterházy household, he produced a flood of compositions, and his musical style became ever more developed. His popularity in the outside world also increased. Gradually, Haydn came to write as much for publication as for his employer, and several important works of this period, such as the Paris symphonies (1785–6) and the original orchestral version of The Seven Last Words of Christ (1786), were commissions from abroad.

Around 1781 Haydn established a friendship with Mozart, whose work he had already been influencing by example for many years. According to later testimony by Stephen Storace, the two composers occasionally played in string quartets together. Haydn was hugely impressed with Mozart's work, and in various ways tried to help the younger composer. During the years 1782 to 1785, Mozart wrote a set of string quartets thought to be inspired by Haydn's Opus 33 series. On completion he dedicated them to Haydn, a very unusual thing to do at a time when dedicatees were usually aristocrats. The extremely close 'brotherly' Mozart-Haydn connection may be an expression of Freemasonic sympathies as well: Mozart and Haydn were members of the same Masonic lodge. Mozart joined in 1784 in the middle of writing those string quartets subsequently dedicated to his Masonic brother Haydn. This lodge was a specifically Catholic rather than a deistic one.

In 1789, Haydn developed another friendship with Maria Anna von Genzinger (1750–93), the wife of Prince Nicolaus's personal physician in Vienna. Their relationship, documented in Haydn's letters, was evidently intense but platonic. The letters express Haydn's sense of loneliness and melancholy at his long isolation at Eszterháza. Genzinger's premature death in 1793 was a blow to Haydn, and his F minor variations for piano, Hob. XVII:6, which are unusual in Haydn's work for their tone of impassioned tragedy, may have been written as response to her death.

[edit]

The London journeys

In 1790, Prince Nikolaus died and was succeeded by a thoroughly unmusical prince who dismissed the entire musical establishment and put Haydn on a pension. Thus freed of his obligations, Haydn was able to accept a lucrative offer from Johann Peter Salomon, a German impresario, to visit England and conduct new symphonies with a large orchestra.

The visit (1791-2), along with a repeat visit (1794-5), was a huge success. Audiences flocked to Haydn's concerts, and he quickly achieved wealth and fame: one review called him "incomparable." Musically, the visits to England generated some of Haydn's best-known work, including the Surprise, Military, Drumroll, and London symphonies, the Rider quartet, and the Gypsy Rondo piano trio.

The only misstep in the venture was an opera, L'anima del filosofo, which Haydn was contracted to compose, and paid a substantial sum of money for. Only one aria was sung at the time, and 11 numbers were published; the entire opera was not performed until 1950.

[edit]

Final years in Vienna

Haydn actually considered becoming an English citizen and settling permanently, as composers such as Handel had before him, but decided on a different course. He returned to Vienna, had a large house built for himself, and turned to the composition of large religious works for chorus and orchestra. These include his two great oratorios The Creation and The Seasons and six masses for the Eszterházy family, which by this time was once again headed by a musically-inclined prince. Haydn also composed the last nine in his long series of string quartets, including the Emperor, Sunrise, and Fifths quartets. Despite his increasing age, Haydn looked to the future, exclaiming once in a letter, "how much remains to be done in this glorious art!"

In 1802, Haydn found that an illness from which he had been suffering for some time had increased greatly in severity to the point that he became physically unable to compose. This was doubtless very difficult for him because, as he acknowledged, the flow of fresh musical ideas waiting to be worked out as compositions did not cease. Haydn was well cared for by his servants, and he received many visitors and public honours during his last years, but they cannot have been very happy years for him. During his illness, Haydn often found solace by sitting at the piano and playing Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, which he had composed himself as a patriotic gesture in 1797. This melody later became used for the Austrian and German national anthems.

Haydn died in 1809 following an attack on Vienna by the French army under Napoleon. Among his last words was his attempt to calm and reassure his servants as cannon shots fell on the neighborhood.

[edit]

Character and appearance

Haydn was known among his contemporaries for his kindly, optimistic, and congenial personality. He had a robust sense of humour, evident in his love of practical jokes and often apparent in his music. He was particularly respected by the Eszterházy court musicians whom he supervised, as he maintained a cordial working atmosphere and effectively represented the musicians' interests with their employer; see Papa Haydn.

Haydn was a devout Catholic who often turned to his rosary when he had trouble composing, a practice that he usually found to be effective. When he finished a composition, he would write "Laus deo" ("praise be to God") or some similar expression at the end of the manuscript. His favorite hobbies were hunting and fishing.

Haydn was short in stature, perhaps as a result of having been underfed throughout most of his youth. Like many in his day, he was a survivor of smallpox and his face was pitted with the scars of this disease. He was not handsome, and was quite surprised when women flocked to him during his London visits.

About a dozen portraits of Haydn exist, although they disagree sufficiently that, other than what is noted above, we would have little idea what Haydn looked like were it not also for the existence of a lifelike wax bust and Haydn's death mask. Both are in the Haydnhaus in Vienna, a museum dedicated to the composer. All but one of the portraits show Haydn wearing the grey powdered wig fashionable for men in the 18th century, and from the one exception we learn that Haydn was bald in adulthood.

Portion of an original manuscript by Haydn, in the British Museum, from a biography of Haydn available from Project Gutenberg[edit]

Works

Haydn is often described as the "father" of the classical symphony and string quartet. In fact, the symphony was already a well-established form before Haydn began his compositional career, with distinguished examples by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach among others, but Haydn's symphonies are the earliest to remain in "standard" repertoire. His parenthood of the string quartet, however, is beyond doubt: he essentially invented this medium single-handedly. He also wrote many piano sonatas, piano trios, divertimentos and masses, which became the foundation for the Classical style in these compositional types. He also wrote other types of chamber music, as well as operas and concerti, although such compositions are now less known. Although other composers were prominent in the earlier Classical period, notably C.P.E. Bach in the field of the keyboard sonata (the harpsichord and clavichord were equally popular with the piano in this era) and J.C. Bach and Leopold Mozart in the symphony, Haydn was undoubtedly the strongest overall influence on musical style in this era.

The development of sonata form into a subtle and flexible mode of musical expression, which became the dominant force in Classical musical thought, owed most to Haydn and those who followed his ideas. His sense of formal inventiveness also lead him to integrate the fugue into the classical style and to enrich the rondo form with more cohesive tonal logic, (see sonata rondo form). Haydn was also the principal exponent of the double variation form, that is variations on two alternating themes, which are often major and minor mode versions of each other.

[edit]

Structure and character of the music

A central characteristic of Haydn's music is the development of larger structures out of very short, simple musical motifs, usually devised from standard accompanying figures. The music is often quite formally concentrated, and the important musical events of a movement can unfold rather quickly. Haydn's musical practice formed the basis of much of what was to follow in the development of tonality and musical form. He took genres such as the symphony, which were at the time shorter and subsidiary to more important vocal music, and slowly expanded their length, weight and complexity.

Haydn's compositional practice was rooted in a study of the modal counterpoint of Fux, and the tonal homophonic styles which had become more and more popular, particularly the work of Gluck and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Of the latter Haydn wrote, "without him, we know nothing". He believed in the importance of melody, especially one which could be broken down into smaller parts easily subject to contrapuntal combination. In this regard he anticipated Beethoven.

Haydn's work became central to what was later described as sonata form, and his work was central to taking the binary schematic of what was then called a "melodie". It was a form divided into sections, joined by important moments in the harmony which signalled the change. One of Haydn's important innovations (adopted by Mozart and Beethoven) was to make the moment of transition the focus of tremendous creativity. Instead of using stock devices to make the transition, Haydn would often find inventive ways to make the move between two expected keys.

Later musical theorists would codify the formal organization in the following way:

Introduction: If present in an extended form, a slower section in the dominant, often with material not directly related to the main themes, which would then rapidly transition to the

Exposition: Presentation of thematic material, including a progression of tonality away from the home key. Unlike Mozart and Beethoven, Haydn often wrote expositions where the music that establishes the new key is similar or identical to the opening theme: this is called monothematic sonata form.

Development: The thematic material is led through a rapidly-shifting sequence of keys, transformed, fragmented, or combined with new material. If not present, the work is termed a "sonatina". Haydn's developments tend to be longer and more elaborate than those of Mozart, for example.

Recapitulation: Return to the home key, where the material of the exposition is re-presented. Haydn, unlike Mozart and Beethoven, often rearranges the order of themes compared to the exposition: he also frequently omits passages that appeared in the exposition (particularly in the monothematic case) and adds codas.

Coda: After the close of the recapitulation on the tonic, there may be an additional section which works through more of the possibilities of the thematic material.

During this period the written music was structured by tonality, and the sections of a work of the Classical era were marked by tonal cadences. The most important transitions between sections were from the exposition to the development and from the development to the recapitulation. Haydn focused on creating witty and often dramatic ways to effect these transitions, by delaying them, or by making them so subtle that it takes some time before it is established that the transition has occurred. Perhaps paradoxically, one of the ways in which Haydn achieved this was by reducing the range of devices used in harmonic transitions, so that he could explore and develop the possibilities of those he regarded as most interesting.

Perhaps this is why, more than any other composer, Haydn's music is known for its humour. The most famous example is the sudden loud chord in the slow movement of his Surprise symphony, No. 94; Haydn's many other musical jokes include the fake endings in the quartets Op. 33 No. 2 and Op. 50 No. 3, and the remarkable rhythmic illusion placed in the trio section of Op. 50 No. 1.

Haydn's compositional practice influenced both Mozart and Beethoven. Beethoven began his career writing rather discursive, loosely organized sonata expositions; but with the onset of his "Middle period", he revived and intensified Haydn's practice, joining the musical structure to tight small motifs, often by gradually reshaping both the work and the motifs so that they fit quite carefully.

The emotional content of Haydn's music cannot accurately be summarised in words, but one may attempt an approximate description. Much of the music was written to please and delight a prince, and its emotional tone is correspondingly upbeat; this tone also reflects, perhaps, Haydn's fundamentally healthy and well-balanced personality. Occasional minor-key works, often deadly serious in character, form striking exceptions to the general rule. Haydn's fast movements tend to be rhythmically propulsive and often impart a great sense of energy, especially in the finales. Some characteristic examples of Haydn's "rollicking" finale type are found in the "London" symphony No. 104, the string quartet Op. 50 No. 1, and the piano trio Hob XV: 27. Haydn's early slow movements are usually not too slow in tempo, relaxed, and reflective. Later on, the emotional range of the slow movements increases, notably in the deeply felt slow movements of the quartets Op. 76 Nos. 3 and 5, Symphony No. 102, and piano trio Hob XV: 23. The minuets tend to have a strong downbeat and a clearly popular character. Late in his career, perhaps inspired by the young Beethoven (who was briefly his student), Haydn began to write scherzi instead of minuets, with a much faster tempo, felt as one beat to the measure.

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Evolution of Haydn's style

Haydn's early work dates from a period in which the compositional style of the High Baroque (seen in Bach and Handel) had gone out of fashion. This was a period of exploration and uncertainty, and Haydn, born 18 years before the death of Bach, was himself one of the musical explorers of this time. An older contemporary whose work Haydn acknowledged as an important influence was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Tracing Haydn's work over the five decades in which it was produced (roughly, 1749 to 1802), one finds a gradual but ever increasing complexity and musical sophistication, which developed as Haydn learned from his own experience and that of his colleagues. Several important landmarks have been observed in the evolution of Haydn's musical style.

In the late 1760s and early 1770s Haydn entered a stylistic period known as "Sturm und Drang" (storm and stress). This term is taken from a literary movement of about the same time, though some scholars believe that Haydn was unaware of this literary development and that the change in his compositional style was entirely of his own making. The musical language of this period is similar to what went before, but it is deployed in work that is more intensely expressive, especially in the works written in minor keys. Some of the most famous compositions of this period are the "Farewell" Symphony No. 45, the Piano Sonata in C minor (Hob. XVI/20, L. 33), and the six string quartets of Op. 20 (the "Sun" quartets), all dating from 1772. It was also around this time that Haydn became interested in writing fugues in the Baroque style, and three of the Op. 20 quartets end with such fugues.

Following the climax of the "Sturm und Drang", Haydn returned to a lighter, more overtly entertaining style. There are no quartets from this period, and the symphonies take on new features: the first movements now sometimes contain slow introductions, and the scoring often includes trumpets and timpani. These changes are often related to a major shift in Haydn's professional duties, which moved him away from "pure" music and toward the production of comic operas. Several of the operas, such as Il Mondo della luna (The World of the Moon), were Haydn's own work; these are seldom performed today. Haydn sometimes recycled their overtures as symphony movements, which helped him continue his career as a symphonist during this hectic decade.

In 1779, an important change in Haydn's contract permitted him to publish his compositions without prior authorization from his employer. This may have encouraged Haydn to rekindle his career as a composer of "pure" music. The change made itself felt most dramatically in 1781, when Haydn published the six string quartets of Opus 33, announcing (in a letter to potential purchasers) that they were written in "a completely new and special way". Charles Rosen has argued that this assertion on Haydn's part was not just sales talk, but meant quite seriously; and he points out a number of important advances in Haydn's compositional technique that appear in these quartets, advances that mark the advent of the Classical style in full flower. These include a fluid form of phrasing, in which each motif emerges from the previous one without interruption, the practice of letting accompanying material evolve into melodic material, and a kind of "Classical counterpoint" in which each instrumental part maintains its own integrity. These traits continue in the many quartets that Haydn wrote after Opus 33.

In the 1790s, stimulated by his England journeys, Haydn developed what Rosen calls his "popular style", a way of composition that, with unprecedented success, created music having great popular appeal but retaining a learned and rigorous musical structure. An important element of the popular style was the frequent use of folk or folk-like material, as discussed in the article Haydn and folk music. Haydn took care to deploy this material in appropriate locations, such as the endings of sonata expositions or the opening themes of finales. In such locations, the folk material serves as an element of stability, helping to anchor the larger structure. Haydn's popular style can be heard in virtually all of his later work, including the twelve London symphonies, the late quartets and piano trios, and the two late oratorios.

The return to Vienna in 1795 marked the last turning point in Haydn's career. Although his musical style evolved little, his intentions as a composer changed. While he had been a servant, and later a busy entrepreneur, Haydn wrote his works quickly and in profusion, with frequent deadlines. As a rich man, Haydn now felt he had the privilege of taking his time and writing for posterity. This is reflected in the subject matter of The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), which address such weighty topics as the meaning of life and the purpose of humankind, and represent an attempt to render the sublime in music. Haydn's new intentions also meant that he was willing to spend much time on a single work: both oratorios took him over a year to complete. Haydn once remarked that he had worked on The Creation so long because he wanted it to last.

The change in Haydn's approach was important in the history of music, as other composers soon were following his lead. Notably, Beethoven adopted the practice of taking his time and aiming high. As composers were gradually liberated from dependence on the aristocracy, Haydn's late mode of work became the norm in Classical composition.

[edit]

Catalogues

Some of Haydn's works are referred to by opus numbers, but Hob or Hoboken numbers, after Anthony van Hoboken's 1957 classification, are also frequently used.

[edit]

Notes

^ Although he is still often called "Franz Joseph Haydn", the name "Franz" was not used in the composer's lifetime. Scholars, along with an increasing number of music publishers and recording companies, now use the historically more accurate form of his name, rendered in English as "Joseph Haydn".

Die Thread Die

Patsycat · July 9, 2006

What's going on?

percy2 · July 9, 2006

Are you a thread killer? Many times I find a thread and I respond to it, only to find that I am the last person to respond to it, and it was very active before I got there. Bad timing perhaps?
Okay, so I wonder what about my post, is that is what it was, killed the thread. Got me thinking, how do you kill a thread? So, for those who kill threads on purpose and those like me who do it by mistake, what are the best ways to kill a thread?

Sorry if some one else said this already I didn't wade through all 17 pages.

But TB your a thread killer with over 4000 posts its got to be pretty frightening for the owners of the site

Cheers

suegha · July 10, 2006

Nice try by jbowman 1993! But it'll take more than that!

rishi · July 10, 2006

Childhood
Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in the Austrian village of Rohrau near the Hungarian border. His father was Matthias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother, the former Maria Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Neither parent could read music. However, Matthias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp. According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his childhood family was extremely musical, and frequently sang together and with their neighbors.

Haydn's parents were perceptive enough to notice that their son was musically talented and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain any serious musical training. It was for this reason that they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Franck, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Franck in his home to train as a musician. Haydn thus went off with Franck to Hainburg (ten miles away) and never again lived with his parents. At the time he was not quite six.

Life in the Franck household was not easy for Haydn, who later remembered being frequently hungry as well as constantly humiliated by the filthy state of his clothing. However, he did begin his musical training there, and soon was able to play both harpsichord and violin. The people of Hainburg were soon hearing him sing treble parts in the church choir.

There is reason to think that Haydn's singing impressed those who heard him, because two years later (1740), he was brought to the attention of Georg von Reutter, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who was touring the provinces looking for talented choirboys. Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and soon moved off to Vienna, where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister, the last four in the company of his younger brother Michael.

Like Franck before him, Reutter didn't always bother to make sure Haydn was properly fed. The young Haydn greatly looked forward to performances before aristocratic audiences, where the singers sometimes had the opportunity to satisfy their hunger by devouring the refreshments. Reutter also did little to further his choristers' musical education. However, St. Stephen's was at the time one of the leading, musical centers in Europe, where new music by leading composers was constantly being performed. Haydn was able to learn a great deal by osmosis simply by serving as a professional musician there.

[edit]

Struggles as a freelancer

In 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts. On a weak pretext, he was summarily dismissed from his job. He evidently spent one night homeless on a park bench, but was taken in by friends and began to pursue a career as a freelance musician. During this arduous period, which lasted ten years, Haydn worked many different jobs, including valet–accompanist for the Italian composer Nicolò Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition". He laboured to fill the gaps in his training, and eventually wrote his first string quartets and his first opera. During this time Haydn's professional reputation gradually increased.

[edit]

The years as Kapellmeister

Portrait by Ludwig Guttenbrunn, ca. 1770In 1759, or 1757 according to the New Grove Encyclopedia, Haydn received his first important position, that of Kapellmeister (music director) for Count Karl von Morzin. In this capacity, he directed the count's small orchestra, and for this ensemble wrote his first symphonies. Count Morzin soon suffered financial reverses that forced him to dismiss his musical establishment, but Haydn was quickly offered a similar job (1761) as assistant Kapellmeister to the Eszterházy family, one of the wealthiest and most important in the Austrian Empire. When the old Kapellmeister, Gregor Werner, died in 1766, Haydn was elevated to full Kapellmeister.

As a liveried servant of the Eszterházys, Haydn followed them as they moved among their three main residences: the family seat in Eisenstadt, their winter palace in Vienna, and Eszterháza, a grand new palace built in rural Hungary in the 1760s. Haydn had a huge range of responsibilities, including composition, running the orchestra, playing chamber music for and with his patrons, and eventually the mounting of operatic productions. Despite the backbreaking workload, Haydn considered himself fortunate to have his job. The Eszterházy princes (first Paul Anton, then most importantly Nikolaus I) were musical connoisseurs who appreciated his work and gave him the conditions needed for his artistic development, including daily access to his own small orchestra.

In 1760, with the security of a Kapellmeister position, Haydn married. He and his wife, the former Maria Anna Keller, did not get along, and they produced no children. Haydn may have had one or more children with Luigia Polzelli, a singer in the Eszterházy establishment with whom he carried on a long-term love affair, and to whom he often wrote on his travels.

During the nearly thirty years that Haydn worked in the Eszterházy household, he produced a flood of compositions, and his musical style became ever more developed. His popularity in the outside world also increased. Gradually, Haydn came to write as much for publication as for his employer, and several important works of this period, such as the Paris symphonies (1785–6) and the original orchestral version of The Seven Last Words of Christ (1786), were commissions from abroad.

Around 1781 Haydn established a friendship with Mozart, whose work he had already been influencing by example for many years. According to later testimony by Stephen Storace, the two composers occasionally played in string quartets together. Haydn was hugely impressed with Mozart's work, and in various ways tried to help the younger composer. During the years 1782 to 1785, Mozart wrote a set of string quartets thought to be inspired by Haydn's Opus 33 series. On completion he dedicated them to Haydn, a very unusual thing to do at a time when dedicatees were usually aristocrats. The extremely close 'brotherly' Mozart-Haydn connection may be an expression of Freemasonic sympathies as well: Mozart and Haydn were members of the same Masonic lodge. Mozart joined in 1784 in the middle of writing those string quartets subsequently dedicated to his Masonic brother Haydn. This lodge was a specifically Catholic rather than a deistic one.

In 1789, Haydn developed another friendship with Maria Anna von Genzinger (1750–93), the wife of Prince Nicolaus's personal physician in Vienna. Their relationship, documented in Haydn's letters, was evidently intense but platonic. The letters express Haydn's sense of loneliness and melancholy at his long isolation at Eszterháza. Genzinger's premature death in 1793 was a blow to Haydn, and his F minor variations for piano, Hob. XVII:6, which are unusual in Haydn's work for their tone of impassioned tragedy, may have been written as response to her death.

[edit]

The London journeys

In 1790, Prince Nikolaus died and was succeeded by a thoroughly unmusical prince who dismissed the entire musical establishment and put Haydn on a pension. Thus freed of his obligations, Haydn was able to accept a lucrative offer from Johann Peter Salomon, a German impresario, to visit England and conduct new symphonies with a large orchestra.

The visit (1791-2), along with a repeat visit (1794-5), was a huge success. Audiences flocked to Haydn's concerts, and he quickly achieved wealth and fame: one review called him "incomparable." Musically, the visits to England generated some of Haydn's best-known work, including the Surprise, Military, Drumroll, and London symphonies, the Rider quartet, and the Gypsy Rondo piano trio.

The only misstep in the venture was an opera, L'anima del filosofo, which Haydn was contracted to compose, and paid a substantial sum of money for. Only one aria was sung at the time, and 11 numbers were published; the entire opera was not performed until 1950.

[edit]

Final years in Vienna

Haydn actually considered becoming an English citizen and settling permanently, as composers such as Handel had before him, but decided on a different course. He returned to Vienna, had a large house built for himself, and turned to the composition of large religious works for chorus and orchestra. These include his two great oratorios The Creation and The Seasons and six masses for the Eszterházy family, which by this time was once again headed by a musically-inclined prince. Haydn also composed the last nine in his long series of string quartets, including the Emperor, Sunrise, and Fifths quartets. Despite his increasing age, Haydn looked to the future, exclaiming once in a letter, "how much remains to be done in this glorious art!"

In 1802, Haydn found that an illness from which he had been suffering for some time had increased greatly in severity to the point that he became physically unable to compose. This was doubtless very difficult for him because, as he acknowledged, the flow of fresh musical ideas waiting to be worked out as compositions did not cease. Haydn was well cared for by his servants, and he received many visitors and public honours during his last years, but they cannot have been very happy years for him. During his illness, Haydn often found solace by sitting at the piano and playing Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, which he had composed himself as a patriotic gesture in 1797. This melody later became used for the Austrian and German national anthems.

Haydn died in 1809 following an attack on Vienna by the French army under Napoleon. Among his last words was his attempt to calm and reassure his servants as cannon shots fell on the neighborhood.

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Character and appearance

Haydn was known among his contemporaries for his kindly, optimistic, and congenial personality. He had a robust sense of humour, evident in his love of practical jokes and often apparent in his music. He was particularly respected by the Eszterházy court musicians whom he supervised, as he maintained a cordial working atmosphere and effectively represented the musicians' interests with their employer; see Papa Haydn.

Haydn was a devout Catholic who often turned to his rosary when he had trouble composing, a practice that he usually found to be effective. When he finished a composition, he would write "Laus deo" ("praise be to God") or some similar expression at the end of the manuscript. His favorite hobbies were hunting and fishing.

Haydn was short in stature, perhaps as a result of having been underfed throughout most of his youth. Like many in his day, he was a survivor of smallpox and his face was pitted with the scars of this disease. He was not handsome, and was quite surprised when women flocked to him during his London visits.

About a dozen portraits of Haydn exist, although they disagree sufficiently that, other than what is noted above, we would have little idea what Haydn looked like were it not also for the existence of a lifelike wax bust and Haydn's death mask. Both are in the Haydnhaus in Vienna, a museum dedicated to the composer. All but one of the portraits show Haydn wearing the grey powdered wig fashionable for men in the 18th century, and from the one exception we learn that Haydn was bald in adulthood.

Portion of an original manuscript by Haydn, in the British Museum, from a biography of Haydn available from Project Gutenberg[edit]

Works

Haydn is often described as the "father" of the classical symphony and string quartet. In fact, the symphony was already a well-established form before Haydn began his compositional career, with distinguished examples by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach among others, but Haydn's symphonies are the earliest to remain in "standard" repertoire. His parenthood of the string quartet, however, is beyond doubt: he essentially invented this medium single-handedly. He also wrote many piano sonatas, piano trios, divertimentos and masses, which became the foundation for the Classical style in these compositional types. He also wrote other types of chamber music, as well as operas and concerti, although such compositions are now less known. Although other composers were prominent in the earlier Classical period, notably C.P.E. Bach in the field of the keyboard sonata (the harpsichord and clavichord were equally popular with the piano in this era) and J.C. Bach and Leopold Mozart in the symphony, Haydn was undoubtedly the strongest overall influence on musical style in this era.

The development of sonata form into a subtle and flexible mode of musical expression, which became the dominant force in Classical musical thought, owed most to Haydn and those who followed his ideas. His sense of formal inventiveness also lead him to integrate the fugue into the classical style and to enrich the rondo form with more cohesive tonal logic, (see sonata rondo form). Haydn was also the principal exponent of the double variation form, that is variations on two alternating themes, which are often major and minor mode versions of each other.

[edit]

Structure and character of the music

A central characteristic of Haydn's music is the development of larger structures out of very short, simple musical motifs, usually devised from standard accompanying figures. The music is often quite formally concentrated, and the important musical events of a movement can unfold rather quickly. Haydn's musical practice formed the basis of much of what was to follow in the development of tonality and musical form. He took genres such as the symphony, which were at the time shorter and subsidiary to more important vocal music, and slowly expanded their length, weight and complexity.

Haydn's compositional practice was rooted in a study of the modal counterpoint of Fux, and the tonal homophonic styles which had become more and more popular, particularly the work of Gluck and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Of the latter Haydn wrote, "without him, we know nothing". He believed in the importance of melody, especially one which could be broken down into smaller parts easily subject to contrapuntal combination. In this regard he anticipated Beethoven.

Haydn's work became central to what was later described as sonata form, and his work was central to taking the binary schematic of what was then called a "melodie". It was a form divided into sections, joined by important moments in the harmony which signalled the change. One of Haydn's important innovations (adopted by Mozart and Beethoven) was to make the moment of transition the focus of tremendous creativity. Instead of using stock devices to make the transition, Haydn would often find inventive ways to make the move between two expected keys.

Later musical theorists would codify the formal organization in the following way:

Introduction: If present in an extended form, a slower section in the dominant, often with material not directly related to the main themes, which would then rapidly transition to the

Exposition: Presentation of thematic material, including a progression of tonality away from the home key. Unlike Mozart and Beethoven, Haydn often wrote expositions where the music that establishes the new key is similar or identical to the opening theme: this is called monothematic sonata form.

Development: The thematic material is led through a rapidly-shifting sequence of keys, transformed, fragmented, or combined with new material. If not present, the work is termed a "sonatina". Haydn's developments tend to be longer and more elaborate than those of Mozart, for example.

Recapitulation: Return to the home key, where the material of the exposition is re-presented. Haydn, unlike Mozart and Beethoven, often rearranges the order of themes compared to the exposition: he also frequently omits passages that appeared in the exposition (particularly in the monothematic case) and adds codas.

Coda: After the close of the recapitulation on the tonic, there may be an additional section which works through more of the possibilities of the thematic material.

During this period the written music was structured by tonality, and the sections of a work of the Classical era were marked by tonal cadences. The most important transitions between sections were from the exposition to the development and from the development to the recapitulation. Haydn focused on creating witty and often dramatic ways to effect these transitions, by delaying them, or by making them so subtle that it takes some time before it is established that the transition has occurred. Perhaps paradoxically, one of the ways in which Haydn achieved this was by reducing the range of devices used in harmonic transitions, so that he could explore and develop the possibilities of those he regarded as most interesting.

Perhaps this is why, more than any other composer, Haydn's music is known for its humour. The most famous example is the sudden loud chord in the slow movement of his Surprise symphony, No. 94; Haydn's many other musical jokes include the fake endings in the quartets Op. 33 No. 2 and Op. 50 No. 3, and the remarkable rhythmic illusion placed in the trio section of Op. 50 No. 1.

Haydn's compositional practice influenced both Mozart and Beethoven. Beethoven began his career writing rather discursive, loosely organized sonata expositions; but with the onset of his "Middle period", he revived and intensified Haydn's practice, joining the musical structure to tight small motifs, often by gradually reshaping both the work and the motifs so that they fit quite carefully.

The emotional content of Haydn's music cannot accurately be summarised in words, but one may attempt an approximate description. Much of the music was written to please and delight a prince, and its emotional tone is correspondingly upbeat; this tone also reflects, perhaps, Haydn's fundamentally healthy and well-balanced personality. Occasional minor-key works, often deadly serious in character, form striking exceptions to the general rule. Haydn's fast movements tend to be rhythmically propulsive and often impart a great sense of energy, especially in the finales. Some characteristic examples of Haydn's "rollicking" finale type are found in the "London" symphony No. 104, the string quartet Op. 50 No. 1, and the piano trio Hob XV: 27. Haydn's early slow movements are usually not too slow in tempo, relaxed, and reflective. Later on, the emotional range of the slow movements increases, notably in the deeply felt slow movements of the quartets Op. 76 Nos. 3 and 5, Symphony No. 102, and piano trio Hob XV: 23. The minuets tend to have a strong downbeat and a clearly popular character. Late in his career, perhaps inspired by the young Beethoven (who was briefly his student), Haydn began to write scherzi instead of minuets, with a much faster tempo, felt as one beat to the measure.

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Evolution of Haydn's style

Haydn's early work dates from a period in which the compositional style of the High Baroque (seen in Bach and Handel) had gone out of fashion. This was a period of exploration and uncertainty, and Haydn, born 18 years before the death of Bach, was himself one of the musical explorers of this time. An older contemporary whose work Haydn acknowledged as an important influence was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Tracing Haydn's work over the five decades in which it was produced (roughly, 1749 to 1802), one finds a gradual but ever increasing complexity and musical sophistication, which developed as Haydn learned from his own experience and that of his colleagues. Several important landmarks have been observed in the evolution of Haydn's musical style.

In the late 1760s and early 1770s Haydn entered a stylistic period known as "Sturm und Drang" (storm and stress). This term is taken from a literary movement of about the same time, though some scholars believe that Haydn was unaware of this literary development and that the change in his compositional style was entirely of his own making. The musical language of this period is similar to what went before, but it is deployed in work that is more intensely expressive, especially in the works written in minor keys. Some of the most famous compositions of this period are the "Farewell" Symphony No. 45, the Piano Sonata in C minor (Hob. XVI/20, L. 33), and the six string quartets of Op. 20 (the "Sun" quartets), all dating from 1772. It was also around this time that Haydn became interested in writing fugues in the Baroque style, and three of the Op. 20 quartets end with such fugues.

Following the climax of the "Sturm und Drang", Haydn returned to a lighter, more overtly entertaining style. There are no quartets from this period, and the symphonies take on new features: the first movements now sometimes contain slow introductions, and the scoring often includes trumpets and timpani. These changes are often related to a major shift in Haydn's professional duties, which moved him away from "pure" music and toward the production of comic operas. Several of the operas, such as Il Mondo della luna (The World of the Moon), were Haydn's own work; these are seldom performed today. Haydn sometimes recycled their overtures as symphony movements, which helped him continue his career as a symphonist during this hectic decade.

In 1779, an important change in Haydn's contract permitted him to publish his compositions without prior authorization from his employer. This may have encouraged Haydn to rekindle his career as a composer of "pure" music. The change made itself felt most dramatically in 1781, when Haydn published the six string quartets of Opus 33, announcing (in a letter to potential purchasers) that they were written in "a completely new and special way". Charles Rosen has argued that this assertion on Haydn's part was not just sales talk, but meant quite seriously; and he points out a number of important advances in Haydn's compositional technique that appear in these quartets, advances that mark the advent of the Classical style in full flower. These include a fluid form of phrasing, in which each motif emerges from the previous one without interruption, the practice of letting accompanying material evolve into melodic material, and a kind of "Classical counterpoint" in which each instrumental part maintains its own integrity. These traits continue in the many quartets that Haydn wrote after Opus 33.

In the 1790s, stimulated by his England journeys, Haydn developed what Rosen calls his "popular style", a way of composition that, with unprecedented success, created music having great popular appeal but retaining a learned and rigorous musical structure. An important element of the popular style was the frequent use of folk or folk-like material, as discussed in the article Haydn and folk music. Haydn took care to deploy this material in appropriate locations, such as the endings of sonata expositions or the opening themes of finales. In such locations, the folk material serves as an element of stability, helping to anchor the larger structure. Haydn's popular style can be heard in virtually all of his later work, including the twelve London symphonies, the late quartets and piano trios, and the two late oratorios.

The return to Vienna in 1795 marked the last turning point in Haydn's career. Although his musical style evolved little, his intentions as a composer changed. While he had been a servant, and later a busy entrepreneur, Haydn wrote his works quickly and in profusion, with frequent deadlines. As a rich man, Haydn now felt he had the privilege of taking his time and writing for posterity. This is reflected in the subject matter of The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), which address such weighty topics as the meaning of life and the purpose of humankind, and represent an attempt to render the sublime in music. Haydn's new intentions also meant that he was willing to spend much time on a single work: both oratorios took him over a year to complete. Haydn once remarked that he had worked on The Creation so long because he wanted it to last.

The change in Haydn's approach was important in the history of music, as other composers soon were following his lead. Notably, Beethoven adopted the practice of taking his time and aiming high. As composers were gradually liberated from dependence on the aristocracy, Haydn's late mode of work became the norm in Classical composition.

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Catalogues

Some of Haydn's works are referred to by opus numbers, but Hob or Hoboken numbers, after Anthony van Hoboken's 1957 classification, are also frequently used.

[edit]

Notes

^ Although he is still often called "Franz Joseph Haydn", the name "Franz" was not used in the composer's lifetime. Scholars, along with an increasing number of music publishers and recording companies, now use the historically more accurate form of his name, rendered in English as "Joseph Haydn".

Die Thread Die

... that kind of trick was already tried on page one (with a more catching issue, IMHO) --- it didnt succeed then, so why should it succeed now?

Edited July 10, 2006 by rishi

kayo · July 10, 2006

Would you all just f.cuk off and DIE! Especially this thread.....

rishi · July 10, 2006

... has anyone ever tried to click the "Report" button that appears underneath each post? ... Well, the mods probably wouldn't close the thread after one report, but imagine their patience after the 475'th report?

raro · July 11, 2006

closing doesn't count...it has to die by itself due to a lack of interest by the readers...

thaibebop · July 11, 2006

[sNIP SNIP SNIP]
Die Thread Die

Cool a Classical music lover.

kayo · July 11, 2006

closing doesn't count...it has to die by itself due to a lack of interest by the readers...

Well...I´ve tried not being interested in this thread, but evrytime I express non interest, somebody else comes online and posts....

suegha · July 11, 2006

... has anyone ever tried to click the "Report" button that appears underneath each post? ... Well, the mods probably wouldn't close the thread after one report, but imagine their patience after the 475'th report?

Interesting idea rishi...

raro · July 12, 2006

[sNIP SNIP SNIP]

Die Thread Die

Cool a Classical music lover.

Yeah, and quoting lengthy posts might be a good way scaring off other readers who may become posters afterwards...

Tippaporn · July 12, 2006

Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die.

Calling Dr. Kevorkian . . . calling Dr. Kevorkian.

suegha · July 12, 2006

Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die.
Calling Dr. Kevorkian . . . calling Dr. Kevorkian.

Hmnnn...

kayo · August 15, 2006

Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die.

Calling Dr. Kevorkian . . . calling Dr. Kevorkian.

Hmnnn...

I guess these were the ones that killed this thread, over a month ago now....

thaibebop · August 15, 2006

I should have named this thread the Zombie thread.

jdinasia · August 15, 2006

It is all about having THE LAST WORD

(I think I have recently killed 2 threads by not needing to .... have ....

THE LAST WORD)

thaibebop · August 15, 2006

It is all about having THE LAST WORD
(I think I have recently killed 2 threads by not needing to .... have ....

THE LAST WORD)

The point here was NOT to have the last word.

suegha · August 15, 2006

It is all about having THE LAST WORD

(I think I have recently killed 2 threads by not needing to .... have ....

THE LAST WORD)

The point here was NOT to have the last word.

Isn't is funny how threads sort of become merged, even though they are in different forums?

OR

Isn't it funny how some posters miss the point?

thaibebop · August 16, 2006

It is all about having THE LAST WORD

(I think I have recently killed 2 threads by not needing to .... have ....

THE LAST WORD)

The point here was NOT to have the last word.

Isn't is funny how threads sort of become merged, even though they are in different forums?

OR

Isn't it funny how some posters miss the point?

Funny HAHA funny or Funny ironic funny?

lamphun · August 16, 2006

[sNIP SNIP SNIP]

Die Thread Die

Cool a Classical music lover.

Yeah, and quoting lengthy posts might be a good way scaring off other readers who may become posters afterwards...

Is that possible ? Let's me refer you to a post taken from a very badly written book.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=76531

Drugs and Cultural Survival in the Golden Triangle

Nations, countries, are artificial, boundaries more wishful thinking on the part of moneyed power-mongers than dividing, restricting realities; one must learn of important regional neighbors to understand any specific place. China without knowledge of Mongolia or Russia would be a confusing picture which Confucianism certainly can’t explain; examining Spain without acknowledging Islamic influences from North Africa would be like looking at a Hollywood-movie wild-west town false-front. Many think the USA is its own thing, dominating Canada and Mexico but hardly influenced by them, but that’s less than silly.

Unfortunately, there is little morality in big business or international politics. Governments protect business and wealth, usually little more than feigning concern with public welfare; even disease and education are poorly managed. Governments seldom encourage indigenous self-sufficiency, close-to-nature and/or obdurately traditional; only occasionally are governments far-sighted. Power doesn’t like to share, so certain essential vitality doesn’t come to it. And indeed, the meek remain when power is gone (although always, new replacement powers come along).

With the financial backing of the Dutch government, writer Guy Horton says he’s documented slave labor, systematic rape, conscription of child soldiers, massacres and deliberate destruction of villages, food sources and medical services, along the Myanmar side of the Thai frontier and most especially in Shan and Karen States. He presented evidence meeting the standards of international law in a 600-page report, “Dying Alive: A Legal Assessment of Human Rights Violations in Burma” (2005). “Typically,” Horton said, “the army will move into a village, confiscate anything of value, slaughter the animals, and destroy the cooking pots and looms. The village is burned and usually mined. The inhabitants are relocated to a new site, usually with inadequate food and water, where they’re forced into labor schemes such as road-building. In the long run, many just can’t survive.” Horton also ran across numerous Burmese army defectors. International reaction remains lame.

Sanctions against Iraq before the second U.S. invasion caused as much death as Saddam Hussein and both recent USA vs Iraq wars – deaths mostly of babies, at that. Israel, perhaps more hypocritical for being a state more based on religion, gladly offers Myanmar dangerous weapons while bemoaning Palestinian barbarity. Thailand has used its weapons successfully only on its own people (excepting Thai airmen of WWI fighting in France; some served in Korea, and well over 10,000 in Vietnam, but Thailand has been a laudably peaceable neighbor – whilst in the few clashes it has had, not militarily dazzling), yet because media is owned by businessmen doing business with other businessmen who are often in government, the need to purchase more powerful and larger quantities of weapons isn’t questioned (also, now one doesn’t need an external enemy; there are always ‘terrorists’). International Law has become less meaningful since the USA became the sole ‘Superpower’ (international bully) - in the mode of Japan’s Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, soon to be espoused by China. The world’s largest, and perhaps shakiest, democracy, India refuses to impose sanctions on Myanmar; China, with few pretensions to morality, is a major Myanmar trading partner; so also are Thailand, Korea and Singapore. Japanese invested heavily until they found funds brought in had to stay, but their government still gives aid. Sanctions in Iraq didn’t work, and Myanmar is considered ‘isolated’ (like North Korea), but without the considerable (and indefensible) support from other countries (and mega-corps), the (literal) rape of Myanmar by its rulers could not continue. It’s estimated the military regime has inflicted over 10,000 violent deaths every year since 1988.

The supposed cultural hegemony which Thailand advertises and Myanmar’s Burmese warlords try to ‘promote’ begs acknowledgement of refugees, overtly racist acts common at almost all levels, and Islamic discontent. While many Muslims and tribal people are well adjusted and even well integrated, there are substantial numbers who are not. The problem seems to rest primarily on insidious greed and economic colonialism: self-reliant/self-sufficient farmers (or herders, or hunter-gatherers for that matter) just don’t pay much tax, or much provide for, or pander to, power! Something artificial and destructive is being imposed – in the name of progress. The volatile situation in Thailand’s south, where Yawi-speaking people of close cultural similarity to their Malay neighbors have been treated like second-class citizens and are now subject to separatist or government-inspired violence, gets major (albeit misguided) attention, while a potentially more dangerous circumstance festers to the north. Both situations seem to give possible justification for unneeded indulgence in giant military purchases (big toys for big boys).

When Britain annexed the Shan States in 1887, colonialists pushed opium production, producing it under license in Kokang, Loimaw and the Wa States (where it was already grown for local consumption): making about 40 tons per year up to 1950, when arrival of Kuomintang (KMT) troops beaten by Communists caused increased production. A famous quote by KMT General Tuan Shi-Wen goes: “To fight [communists] you must have an army and an army must have guns, and to buy guns you must have money. In these mountains the only money is opium.” A CIA website says leading producers of opium are hill-tribe people of Southeast Asia who “live under very primitive conditions with no electricity and no running water. They are very poor - opium is their currency, and it is sold or traded for basic necessities like food, clothing, and utensils. Opium is also used locally as a substitute for modern medicines because few medical supplies are available in these remote areas.” Well, that’s changed - amphetamines have become “ya kai”, medicine you sell, among people north of the Thai border.

In 1962 the ‘Burmese Way to Socialism’ of General Ne Win ruined private business outside the black market (which expanded); manufactured goods remained available only from trade of opium and heroin for Thai products. Daw AungSan SuuKyi returned in 1988; rallies against despotism erupted; the junta ordered demonstrators fired on, killing thousands. In reasonably fair elections (1990), the National League for Democracy won 82% of seats in the national assembly - support for Daw SuuKyi was overwhelming, except within the military and in Shan State, which voted for Shans. SuuKyi’s father, independence hero Aung San, persuaded independent ethnic leaders to accept his negotiation for terms ending British colonial rule by promising choice for secession, after ten years, to the Shan, Karen and Kachin. Then he was assassinated, just before independence, and his promises became void. SuuKyi is English educated; her husband (now deceased) was English, her children are in England. This English influence worries Myanmar’s generals, who suspect English complicity in the assassination. As with many things in Myanmar, the military’s intentions in holding an election remain hard to comprehend, but it seems they failed to take Daw SuuKyi’s great charisma into account.

Power shortages plague Myanmar, with power off late at night and frequent all-day outages in many parts of the country. Infrastructure is substandard, most gasoline is purchased on the black market (from the military), and the currency worthless not only outside the country but many places in it as well. Than Shwe (pronounced “shoo-ee”), Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, which took over government as SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Committee) 16 years before making this outrageous proclamation, says, “The Tatmadaw {armed forces, pronounced tah-mah-doe} will systematically hand over state power to the public, the original owner.” Sure. Burma may be about to implode the way the communistic Eastern European regimes did, but the populace is cowed, demoralized, terrified.

Way underdeveloped, but frequently charming and picturesque, like a place somehow out of another time, Burma is potentially rich. The hospitality industry barely achieves a low standard, education and healthcare are abysmal, but Burmese culture thrives, magnificently free of commercial globalization. This will change though, as deforestation is proceeding faster even than in the Amazon. Thaithe jungles are gone; landslides cover roads, houses, people… rainfall and river levels are down, cement has become regarded as a positive aesthetic, and as things get hotter, the potential for virulent disease spreads. SLORC acknowledged over 400,000 HIV-positive people in Myanmar in 1996 – more realistically it’s over a million and possibly 4% of population (in 2003 over 2% of military recruits were). The highest rates of HIV infection in both China and India are along their Myanmar borders.

Burma has about 135 ethnic groups (over twice as many as China). Besides Myanmars or Burmans, there are Kachin, Karenni (Kayan), Karen, Chin, Arakanese, Mon and Shan, for which States have been named, related tribes, tribes of Tibetan or Mongoloid origin, including Mizo, Lahu, and Palaung, and the indigenous Naga and Wa. Most maintain their own armies for protection from the Burmese Tatmadaw. Other armed forces include descendent remnants of the KMT and Burmese Communist Party, an ‘All-Burma Students Democratic Front’, totally mercantile drug-trade protection organizations and armed bandits (in the last few decades, several hundred groups). The total number of rebel armies was once 26; most accepted cease-fire with the government, in hopes of development-help or other economic gains. Non-governmental armed, trained and organized are about 125,000 (some merely boys), but figures for insurgent fighters are lower as they exclude commercial armies. The Shan, largest of Burma’s ethnic minorities, once comprised a third of the country’s population (now about 48 million); 10% of Shan men may be HIV positive, and many Shan have fled to Thailand. With little else available to them, they’re reliant on traditional herbal understandings, and often have but unreliable access to even that form of help. The potential for survival of Shan culture, and that of other minority cultures in Myanmar, is becoming as ify as in/with next-door Thailand, under globalization.

The Yangon junta’s Tatmadaw has expanded to 350,000 soldiers, despite no imminent external threat. For a couple decades, almost half of Myanmar government monies have gone to the violent, terrorizing Tatmadaw, but moral is low, with little civilian support outside families dependent on army money. Still, conflicting politics, lack of geographic commonalty, historic animosities, communication difficulties, religious differences, and incompatible financial support bases make rebel unification, or victory, unlikely. In addition to Buddhist, Moslem and Christian rivalries, there are animistic and charismatic cults, and feuding clans. The Karen and Mon are anti-narcotic, but sometimes provoke each other. Internal strife led to the fall (after almost 40 years) of the Karen headquarters at Mannerplaw (not far from the Thai town Mae Sam Laep, on the Salween River) - Buddhist soldiers were dissatisfied with Christian leadership.

China sold the SLORC junta F-7 fighter-bombers (copies of the Soviet MiG21) and two frigates (to be fitted with surface-to-surface missiles), in return asking for a naval base, or at least refueling rights for submarine and aircraft carriers, in the Bay of Bengal, on Coco Island in the Indian Ocean and at Zedetkyi Kyun (St Matthew’s Island) off Tenasserim, close to the Straits of Malacca. They got the refueling rights. Growing influence of large oil and gas companies, some of which China is buying into if not trying to buy outright (Unocal), could add to Chinese political pressure in the area. SLORC didn’t rig the ‘election’ (not that it mattered…), yet spends more on ‘defense’ than any other country in the Asia-Pacific region. Its air force has helicopters, fighters, ground attack, transport and training aircraft, mostly from China, but even Israel is happy to sell to the less-than-questionable despots. In 2003 North Korean technicians installed surface-to-surface missiles on Burma Navy vessels. India sold Myanmar eighty 75mm howitzers (mountain guns) in 2003. Russia, eight MiG-29B-12 combat aircraft and two MiG-29UB trainers; its Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom) is contracted to construct a nuclear reactor. North Korea shows ready willingness to help with matters nuclear, too. China gives special “friendship prices” for arms, and overlooks payment deadlines. Myanmar exports gas, gems, timber, agricultural produce and other natural resources, yet cannot get along without drug money. Trade sanctions imposed after the 1990 election fiasco exacerbated this dependency: Tatmadaw units in tribal areas operate under a self-support policy, and so rely on drug trade. Opium spread to places which prior to 1962 had had little or none: Karenni (Kayah), Kachin and Chin States, plus Mandalay, Sagaing and Magwe divisions of Burma Proper. But amphetamines are now the bigger earner.

The USA plays typically hypocritical games in the region: it trys to keep Taiwan defended while pumping investment into China, its main currency supporter, with whom it has a trade deficit of over $100 billion a year. China has shored up the dollar with bond purchases of about a trillion dollars. It utilized American policies and trade to grow, while acquiring US-made jet engines for warplanes it sold Myanmar. Peasant uprisings in China take ever more violent turns, with rural communities becoming less credulous and submissive, and abandoning hope of economic trickledown… Burmese know their government doesn’t help them (for them, government always has always been oppressive, but many accept a necessity for unresponsive authority), while Thais, Chinese and even Americans (yes, Mexicans and Canadians, surely) are learning how dangerously – even to their small lives – power corrupts…

A decade ago the largest insurgent force in Southeast Asia was the Mong T’ai Army (MTA), headed by Zao Khunsa (referred to in media usually as Khun Sa, originally Chan Cheefu or Zhang Qifu, hereditary Loimaw headman). He made America’s “Most Wanted” list, ‘though he’s never been to America: a Brooklyn, New York court indicted him on heroin trafficking (narcotics racketeering) charges. Prosperous KhunSa now lives in a Inya Lake villa in Yangon…

Brief background: Lo Hsing-han/Law Sit Han, a major warlord/drug-lord, started in the early 1960s as a gofer, assisting notorious Olive Yang, camouflage-fatigue wearing, gun-toting daughter of Kokang State’s last royalty. Lo got command of a ‘KKY’ junta-sanctioned militia, and while KhunSa was in jail (from late ’69 to ’74), he worked with KMT General Li Mi (of the KMT 3rd Army or 93rd Division - I find it reported both ways), sending opium to Thailand. Olive Yang’s infamous brother (General) Jimmy Yang managed the ChiangMai Rincome Hotel in 1969 and ’70; the Yangs have retired, but Lo, although old, remains important. In February 1993, General Khin Nyunt (long head of Burmese Intelligence but now under house arrest) assured him safe-smuggling of heroin from Kokang to the Thai border at Tachilek. Tachilek has the only airport in Burma within walking distance of another country; flights from Rangoon or Mandalay still bring Burmese officers with parcels of bank notes which get carried over the Mai Sai bridge, Tachilek’s link to international banking. Mae Sai, Thailand’s northernmost point, is an ultimate in proverbial border towns; the area’s Shan, Tatmadaw, Wa and Thai soldiers have frequently clashed; all of these and more rake untaxed income from dodgy dealings, but who should judge? Golden Triangle drug barons are hardly less moral than Europeans who “settled” the American West, the CIA or many Americans working prisons… Now frequently used for Thai-visa extension purposes, the border was only opened to tourists in fall, 1994. Although non-Thai visitors weren’t allowed beyond the town itself, I went to take a look. It seemed poor but light-hearted; I saw kids playing on stilts, and small roadside gambling hovels. There were antiques and handicrafts, but nothing distantly approximating what was available in Mae Sot (on the western border Salween River). The only well-organized business I noticed was the Mae Sai gem market. Burmese currency, kyat, was not then, nor is now, used in Tachilek; only Thai baht. It was rumored, then discounted in the Thai press, that the Wa had opened a gambling casino in Tachilek; Paradise Casino and Resort, just east at the Golden Triangle River Confluence, in operation several years now, is Thai owned. Tachilek reportedly had as many as 14 heroin refineries in the past; now it has a Tatmadaw base and a busy market with a plethora of cheap Chinese goods, some jungle products and carved teak, and pirated CDs and DVDs. On my first visit, I was amazed to see a man in fatigue jacket which instead of a name above the pocket, said “It takes balls to rule the world.” Of many postcards I sent out from there, none arrived.

Lo (or Law) Hsing-han has moved to Yangon to live with a son doing active business with Singaporians, but is reported to still own poppy fields in the Tang-yang area. In 1973 he led the largest of the opium militias and formed a coalition with most of the Shan rebel groups. He sent a proposal to the US government inviting American experts to Shan State to plan poppy eradication, and buy the current crop for US$12 million. Shortly after the proposal reached the DEA in Bangkok, a Thai helicopter came to take Lo for negotiations. Once away from his army, he was arrested, deported to Burma and sentenced to death - later commuted to eight years in jail. The DEA suppressed the proposals. Khun Sa, freed after supporters kidnapped two Russian doctors and got Thai General Kriangsak Chomanan (soon to be prime minister) to negotiate his release, revived the proposals. He invited members of a US Congressional committee on narcotics to visit his base at Ban Hin Taek, Chiangrai Province, Thailand. US officials did visit, but President Carter’s administration preferred to start an $80 million gift program (over 14 years), to the junta.

For a decade Khun Sa had about 4 thousand armed men: the Shan United Army (SUA). The DEA planted tracking devices up the asses of opium caravan mules, but the Burmese, given precise coordinates, intercepted nary a convoy. In January 1982, Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanan had Thai troops launch an attack on Khun Sa at Hin Taek (which subsequently became Ban Thoed Thai); after three days, the SUA scattered. Khun Sa and remnant troops drove some KMT and Lahu soldiers out of borderland Doi Lang, and temporarily settled there, but a Chinese officer who later become SUA chief of staff proposed something better: setting up headquarters at Ho Mong, across the border from sparsely populated MaeHongSon, Thailand, and practically inaccessible from anywhere else. A road from Thailand was put in, and troops rallied back. In 1985, 10,000 soldiers of the Shan United Revolutionary Army under Col. YawdSerk joined to form the Mong T’ai Army (MTA), which in 1993 had its first sustained, concentrated attack from the Tatmadaw. The situation looked serious, so Khun Sa adopted a more fervently nationalist posture. On December 13, 1993, he declared an independent Shan State. More soldiers joined; the MTA grew to 25,000. The DEA commenced “Operation Tiger Trap” in 1994; Thai authorities arrested 11 Khun Sa associates and sealed the border, cutting off not just drug and weapons flow but also easy access to rice and other essential supplies. By then, HoMong had grown to 20,000 and even had facilities for overseas phone calls (Christopher Cox of the Boston Herald says 10,000 people, but he also says Chiang Saen means “trumpeting elephant” and that “Sun Yat-sen overthrew the Manchu empire”). Surely well over a hundred journalists, photographers, NGO staffers and adventurers traveled to the Thai/Myanmar border to see Khun Sa, as did Chris Cox, and as also did I (earlier than Cox, who wrote Chasing the Dragon, 1996 Henry Holt and Co., about his visit).

Khun Sa offered to eradicate Shan opium/heroin supply in return for security and stability for his people, who were violently threatened by the Burmese. The price would have been a tiny fraction of the “street value” of the product, or American tax dollars spent on surveillance, interdiction, incarceration, rehabilitation, hospitalization, etc. “Persuade the government of Burma to return to the legal constitution of Burma, because the drug trade can only flourish in a state of anarchy”, he asked. Thirty years later, the anarchy, and drug trade, still flourish. The Shan request for help with crop substitution, schools, hospitals, and infrastructure met little response, but captivated my interest. I decided to see if I could do anything to help.

My Trip to HoMong

After attracting Khun Sa aide Khernsai Jaiyen’s attention through newspaper letters-to-the-editor supportive of Khun Sa’s independence posturing, and a trip to Khun Sa’s office in MaeHongSon (I just flew up, then asked a motorcycle taxi driver to take me there, using my not-yet very good Bangkok Thai), I received an invitation to visit Ho Mong, and even a piece of paper to serve as provisional passport.

MaeHongSon wasn’t yet a vast urban wasteland of excess cement – most houses were still of wood, and many were very beautiful. There were five 5-star hotels without customers, and many two dollar a night backpacker guest-houses (much more convivial and entertaining places than expensive hotels). Interesting regional delicacies like deep-fried bird were common, and standard fare available along a short row of places oriented to backpackers. There was an upstairs dance-hall, dime (B10) a dance; my next-door neighbor at the guest-house I found to be of the taxi-dancers! The pace of life was slow, modern vulgarity had begun encroaching, but much serene magnificence truly charmed. Vegetation was thick, mornings cool, almost cold, and nowhere did anything feel intimidating, except perhaps the 5-star hotels. No one seemed shy about Khun Sa having an office there, at all, but neither were they going to discuss the trucks with huge teak trunks loaded on, standing along the road outside of that office, despite official logging ban.

I met Kernsai there, at the office, and was told where to catch a ride early in the morning. I did so, and after an hour and a half trip, found myself at a small Chinese village of low brick houses. There I mounted a mule bred for the difficult job of traversing rugged mountainous terrain. The mule’s caretaker led us along a mountain stream for a couple hours, crossing it, back and forth, many, many times. Along the first few miles of the path were impressive water-works, earth constructed runnels carrying water from a creek to fields lower down. It was nice and easy, breezy and beautiful for a while, then for a second I thought the horse was going out from under me, down a cliff-side. We quickly descended 8 or 10 feet while progressing on perhaps hardly a yard. The creek fell to 60 feet below us sometimes; the trail was seldom level. It was often so steep that the mules used long holes a foot or more deep, sometimes 40 or more in close rows, doing a kind of high-step.

We frequently went up, way up high slopes, the porter-guide-muleteer after a while pulling in front to help the mule, and my spine going almost parallel with that of my mount. When the slopes became too extreme we began using switchbacks, some 10 or 15 yards long, others reversing quite quickly. The horse sweated profusely, horseflies buzzing about its eyes. I tried with little success to swat them away with my quart (crop). We saw no-one for over five hours, until after resting on a level area we reached after topping three previous ridges. They were gorgeous to look back upon, but we were soon engulfed again in trees. We then encountered two men bearing ancient long-barrel rifles, and acting as if they were hunting. An hour later we met another man, at a very refreshing small waterfall.

Parties of international journalists, whom we saw evidence of in their trash leavings (Tablerone chocolate boxes given free on international flights, cigarette packs, pop cans), were said to have done the route in eight hours. I’d hoped to do it in less, and did, but to little advantage. My guide hobbled the horse outside a small dusty village, then left me in a room that resembled a small barracks, outside of which were tunnels into a hillside. I was exhausted and not unhappy to rest while waiting for a vehicle. I fell asleep, and someone woke me, offering to share smoke of some #4. I wanted to see it, but politely declined to partake. He took out a small vial of white powder and a cigarette, unrolled the cigarette and mixed in powder, rolled it back up, partook, then nodded off. Shortly after, I was directed to a pickup, which took me to the headquarters of Khun Sa’s administration, where I was given a room at the VIP quarters. I’ve no idea how things would have gone had I been narcoticized.

A treaty had just been negotiated with elders of the Lisu tribe, and I was invited to the celebratory dance at Khun Sa’s residence. I was fed first, and had time to pour ladles of cold water over myself in my room’s private bath (equipped with an electric light), and to put on decent clothes. I was soon holding hands between two beautifully bedecked Lisu maidens, with green-uniformed but unarmed soldiers to either side, dancing in a circle that soon included Khun Sa. He sang out enjoyable verses of voluble song, but I understood nary a word. I forgot my tired feet and legs, and tried my best to follow along in dance with my fellows. Khun Sa made what was clearly a jest, and people laughed. A European crew went about with TV cameras and bright lights, recording the event.

My host Khernsai Jaiyen, the aid to Khun Sa most quoted in English-language newspapers, used his self-taught English fluently, and I found his manner friendly and intelligent. He introduced me to several other English speakers, including two gentlemen of Shan descent purportedly based with the UN in New York. We were served candy and “whiskey” (which should really be called rum), after the dancing stopped. My new friends and I considered visiting HoMong’s karaoke lounge, but chose instead to visit the drinking stall of a woman who had a bit of English. There we had Carlsberg beer, tasty Shan/T’ai food, and a pretty good time. The electricity in Ho Mong, however, went off at ten, and I had to prepare for bed by candlelight.

Early in the next day’s dawning I was shown around a bit after breakfasting with the UN guys, at a charming outdoor market. I was saw a lake, schools, a church, garment factory, printing department, pharmacies, a new neighborhood and road construction. Half a year after his declaration of independence, Khun Sa’s efforts in Ho Mong showed results: he’d established mushroom and silkworm farms, pineapple plantations, textile and garment production, a hydroelectric dam, a jewelry factory and a gem emporium. In the pleasant main market and well-stocked stores, dry-goods were mostly Thai, and only Thai money was used. Schools and medical facilities were readily in evidence, and two small hotels. There were no door-locks, nor need of, as there was virtually no crime. Rugged terrain, logistics insufficiencies (especially in transportation), and strained political relationships limit economic potential, but the Mong T’ai capitol Ho Mong (a mileor so from Mong Mai, more readily identifiable on maps, ‘though sometimes as Mong Mau - about 50 kilometers due north of MaeHongSon City, but over twice that far in actuality, due to the mountains) had thousands of new pre-formed reed-mat houses creating dozens of neighborhoods along the main road through a long mountain valley. Women mostly wore modern clothing; men and boys uniforms.

Kernsai explained that Khun Sa wanted me to become his “Propaganda Minister” for which I would be given room and board; would I care to review his troops with him in the morning? I didn’t think so. Unfortunately it quickly seemed I had little time left… I chose to walk back, rather than wait for another rough ride on a mule.

Walking took the same amount of time, and brought me closer to things. I still had a guide; he could hardly believe how slow I was, and at one point reached into an almost invisible hole in the ground and pulled out a colorful bird. This he put in a pocket for a while, then took out and flung into the air. It flew off making joyful noises, and I knew the difficult walk had been the right choice. But it left me tired immensely, and with sores on my feet still visible two months later. Arriving in the little brick town where I could catch a ride, just before dark, I made it to MaeHonSon in time to be informed at the airline office that I should report for standby very early in the morning. I was very lucky I did so, as no subsequent flights were able to leave for the nest two days, due to fog.

I’d gone to offer some ideas for alternate income sourcing and possibly support in crop-substitution programs, and remain hopeful of helping provide viable substitutes for dependency on drug production for people in Shan State, through use of solar and wind power, and 12-volt pumping systems. I also had ideas for Angora rabbits… and it interests me to use this situation as a case example helpful in elucidating many problems in present political and economic frameworks and realities. Too much is ignored or wishfully swept temporarily out of sight, only to fester until erupting into danger to society at large. The absence of much available information on this situation is but one symptom of the problem; organized crime and drug-use epidemics are others. As important, of course, are general human rights, respect for nature and tradition, and awareness of history and resultant responsibilities. My hopes of encouraging profitable handicrafts production have come to little; dreams of promoting wind-energy utilization and water-storage have come to even less. There clearly needs to be a total paradigm shift of people in general, before we lose our heritage, and future.

When well entrenched and popular, the MTA had heavy artillery and surface-to-air heat-seeking Stinger missiles, and SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles (made in USA). Traditionally Shan, Kachin, Pa-0, Palaung and Lahu accept cultural pluralism as a fact of life, despite occasional necessity for violence. Farmers not protected by a local army then, as now, ran high risk of being press-ganged into work as porters &/or land-mine detectors for the Tatmadaw, without pay, even in food, and forced into situations of extreme danger without protective gear, acting against the interests of their own people. Thousands of porters have died and thousands more become severely mutilated while engaged in this work, supposedly for the good of their nation.

The main enemy was soon to change, though, from Khun Sa to neighbors not far from his original base-town of Lashio: the ‘wild’, or ‘red’ Wa. Some of these Wa can still remember ancestors who were headhunters, living inaccessibly in small villages surrounded by impenetrably thick thorn strands. For two decades most Wa were Communist Party supporters; then they became capitalistic poppy cultivators and now protect the manufacture of amphetamines. The Wa fought against Khun Sa’s Mong Tai Army until his surrender, and now are avowed supporters of the junta, while using Chinese money and acting under the orders of Chinese advisers. They want back lands Shans ‘civilized’ 850 years ago…

These Wa kept Burma separate from China; the rugged Wa ‘states’, located in the far northeast of Shan State, are the poorest territory in Burma, indeed, Wa farmers are among the world’s poorest peoples. Wa have fought lowlanders for centuries, vehemently. China had no problem absorbing all of Yunnan, with its many tribal peoples, and many Chinese passed on through into Shan State, but the Wa Hills remained frontier. Until just recently, there were few roads in the area (none paved), no educational system and no medical clinics. Only 10% had electricity. After Aung San’s assassination, the Burmese Communist Party (BCP) revolted; its most successful recruiting was among the traditionally warlike Wa. In March, 1989 the BCP collapsed; the leaders fled to China. The United Wa State Party (UWSP) and United Wa State Army (UWSA) requisitioned BCP uniforms, arms, ammunition and soldiers, and merged with a smaller non-communist Wa army, soon having 20,000 troops with additional militia. They quickly struck a cease-fire deal with the junta, so kept all weapons and, free to run its region as a semi-autonomous state, expanded trade in heroin – remember, the Wa hills were once legal opium-growing territory. Starting in 1993, they added methamphetamines.

Dreams of an independent Shan State were shattered by a mutiny in June 1995 (at least for the time; it keeps, quixotically, popping up again, chauvinistic in the sense of hopeless). The MTA’s officer-training school’s second in command, Kan Yot [Gun Yod or Kan Ywet], revolted. He and 200 soldiers, incensed at despotism and racial discrimination by those with Chinese blood, left. 1500 MTA soldiers went to negotiate with the mutineers, hardly 10% returned. Rumors of Khun Sa’s ill-health were becoming believed (there were so many, so absurd rumors before, such as the killing of a barber for a bad hair-cut, that they often weren’t taken seriously); weariness was showing in his face. When the Wa launched their winter ‘95 offensive, desertions caused outpost after outpost to fall; some claim the central headquarters would have also, within days, if surrender hadn’t brought in the Tatmadaw - but that’s conjecture. Khun Sa’s surrender caught most observers by surprise, and it’s clear not all weapons were turned over – Stinger and SAM-7 missiles widely believed to be there weren’t. One version of the story has Khun Sa calling a session of the Shan parliament to make a surprise announcement of immediate retirement; it seems he betrayed those who hadn’t betrayed him torevengo those who had, demonstrating the correctness of their suspicions (and meanwhile destroying the Shan cause). However it went, Khun Sa moved to Yangon New Years Day 1996, renounced his Shan name and took a Burmese one. According to the ‘New Light of Myanmar’, 1,894 recruits and 138 heavy arms were handed over to the Tatmadaw on 12 January 1996, and on 14 January, 9,749 MTA soldiers surrendered with 6,004 heavy and small weapons, 197 HoMong-made launchers, 13,452 (or 24,452) grenades, 10,346 (or 18,346) mines and 7,407 (or 17,027) heavy arms rounds on 14 January. 9,749 MTA soldiers surrendered, or maybe ‘over’ 4000 surrendered, in return for 50,000 sacks of rice. Khun Sa was given a commercial bus concession from Rangoon to Shan State, a casino at Myawaddy (near the old Karen National Union headquarters at Mannerplaw, which has become a notorious ‘yaba’ – meth - transit point) and more; the junta steadfastly refuses a US offer of $2 million for his extradition. The USWA took over many of the border strongholds: “They have real capabilities and a growing infrastructure,” Shan Herald Agency for News (S.H.A.N..) quoted a diplomat. “This has the appearance of an emerging state.” In Mong Yawn valley north of ChiangMai’s Mae Ai district, the Wa have built roads, dams, an electricity-generating plant, underground fuel tanks, military compounds, schools, a hospital and modern town, employing 6,000 Thai laborers – with the only money they have, drug money.

A settlement built in 2000 by southern Wa boss Wei HseuhKang (Wei Xuegang), about 6 km from the border opposite Chiang Rai Province, reportedly has shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles (ones Khun Sa got from Cambodia and mujahadeen?). Plans to enlarge Mong Yawn - population around 10,000 early in 2004 - to about 120,000, involve a shifting Wa southward: part of a mysterious plan for ending opium cultivation by forced depopulation instead of crop substitution. Perhaps it’s really about allowing (unassimilatable) Wa from Yunnan to move into evacuated old Wa areas. Settlers on both sides of the Thai border are planting hundreds of thousands of fruit trees, but Mong Yawn can’t support even another 50,000 people through just agriculture and livestock breeding.

“The Burmese are playing with fire,” S.H.A.N. quotes a Western analyst. “By diversifying their forces and territory, the Wa are gaining strength and influence.” Many Wa leaders are actually ethnic Chinese; north of the Wa “States” is Kokang State, where most people are ethnic Chinese. The enmity between the Burmese government and Wa has resulted in a mini-arms race, and it’s doubtful the ethnic minorities will ever feel, or be, secure without having their own military capability. The UWSA has become one of the world’s largest drug-trafficking organizations, well able to procure powerful munitions. The US Justice Department indicted eight senior Wa officials in January 2005 (in absentia), on narcotics charges, but is really little threat to them. By forcing impoverished people to migrate, the UWSA has greatly increased its influence in Shan State, particularly in areas new to it where the Shan State Army (S.S.A., successor to the MTA) also operates – mostly along the Thai border.

Complicating the picture are proposals from international business consortiums and the Asian Development Bank, for new roads and infrastructure arrangements to make a “growth quadrangle” expanding the “Golden Triangle” of Burma, Thailand and Laos, to include Yunnan, China. This big area has many people with common ethnic backgrounds: Shans, Dai/Zhouang, Laotians, Lawa and Yi/Lolo hill-tribes. The proposals mean to boost tourism, encourage economic imperialism, and facilitate repressive political control. “The formation of the Golden Rectangle is inevitable because of the geo-economic advance of China toward the south,” Thai political scientist Sukhumbhand Paribatra told the Bangkok Post. “One has to be very careful, because this advance will be linked to the region’s powerful local Chinese communities.” Kunming officials have expressed hope that Bangladesh and China will work together: “Yunnan is China’s southwest province... and we want to develop a framework to enhance economic cooperation between China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India,” Shi Minghui, deputy director general of the Foreign Affairs Office of Yunnan, was quoted as saying. China’s relations with Bangladesh bear major politico-economic implications; China has begun using the Bay of Bengal for military purposes, and wants to access it overland to increase commerce from land-locked Yunnan. Meanwhile, overcrowded Bangladesh poses a refugee problem – regular flooding dislocates its citizens, but more refugees come in – particularly Rohingya, Islamic people from Myanmar’s Arakan State – than leave. That that could change surely conserns Indian authorities.

Myanmar’s SPDC has initiated more “War on Drugs,” baning opium. Over a wuarter of Kokang’s population left; rigid enforcement keeps half the remaining poor, with food security only six months a year. Some try eating tree bark, as in North Korea. Throughout Shan State, 350,000 households, about two million people, are losing their primary source of earnings, indeed, 70 percent of cash income, because opium is now prohibited. People are withdrawing children from school and passing up health services, selling off livestock, land and daughters. “The reversed sequencing of first forcing farmers out of poppy cultivation before ensuring other income opportunities is a grave mistake,” warned Martin Jelsma of the Transnational Institute (TNI, an international network of activist-scholars based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands). “Aggressive drug control efforts against farmers and small-scale opium traders, and forced eradication operations in particular, will have a negative impact on prospects for peace and democracy in both countries.” Alternative livelihood programs should have been in place before eradication, as reductions in income will result in malnutrition and poor health. But about a hundred drug refineries remain, and a fully successful ban seems unlikely. Raids on refineries carried out in a “War on Drugs” target only smaller players. Control of all aspects of the huge business is now in the hands of a few major players, most prominent among them, the USWA.

Some refineries in northern areas or UWSA areas close to the Thai border have been relocated, to ‘safer’ areas. According to S.H.A.N., a “raid by UWSA on a heroin refinery being run by a local Lahu militia in western Mongton on March 30, 2003, is a clear example of a small player being ousted out. The refinery in Mongjawd had been set up by Kya Nu, leader of a militia group numbering only about 30-40 men. After the raid, Kya Nu was arrested and jailed in Kengtung, and his militia disbanded. The raid was publicized by the SPDC in the state-run press, as an example of UWSA cooperation in drug eradication efforts. Yet the reality is that the UWSA has now simply monopolized the drug trade in Mongjawd, and has since set up new refineries in the same area.” SPDC is a newer acronym for what once was SLORC; military personnel remain involved in all aspects of the drug trade. The junta condones such involvement as a means of subsidizing army costs at field level.

Roads now link Mae Sai with Jinghong, Yunnan, and thus Kunming, through Sipsongpanna (the “twelve kingdoms” or 12,000 rice fields legendary birthplace of the T’ai race). Soon there should be easy passage through Laos, and someday maybe even northern Burma; so far most roads in Northern Burma and Laos are barely passable for 4-wheel drive vehicles, but serious commercialization of the region appears imminent. Burma’s northernmost state, Kachin, bordering Tibet in the foothills of the Himalayas, is one of the world’s most mineral-rich areas, with gold and high-quality jade. Opium production was substandard, and is no longer attempted. Kachin State remains poor and sparsely populated, with some rugged sub-Himalayan areas labeled ‘uninhabited.’ Still, teak and other hardwoods flow from those mountainous areas through Thailand to Japan, alarming rainforest preservationists. Thai prime-minister Taksin Shinawatra (pronounced Sin-awat or Chin-awat) spoke of developing ski resorts there, with flights from Chiang Mai.

Along the north-south Thai-Burma border, some Karen and Mon remain insurgent, with just a bit of international media attention and a little outside aid, but the possibility of their cultural survival seems as much in question as that of the Shan and small hill-tribes. An extremely controversial natural-gas pipeline (Yadana, Kanchanaburi, Unocal) was put in to supply a questionable Thai electricity-generating factory, disrupting much; Baptist and other fundamental Christian Church organizations, non-governmental relief organizations and global mega-corp business interests (Big Pharma, carbonated beverages, electronics) also have on-going, questionable, impact. Perhaps in all as disruptively exploitative are the many international tourists who go to “undeveloped” hill-tribe villages to photograph “long-necked women” (from the small Padaung tribe, perhaps one born under a full moon, whatever, one with many brass rings covering the neck and depressing the collar-bone). Such tourism seldom benefits the ethnic people, especially financially. What little they might gain they are certain to soon lose. Exploitation and manipulation by the rich and influential in the area involves little governmental interference. Now many long-neck villages (human zoos) are reachable by car, and advertised.

For over 20 years refineries in Shan State produced half the world’s supply of heroin, whihch was the area’s primary hard currency earner. The product traveled through China and/or Thailand, as documented by Alfred McCoy in “The Politics of Heroin” (1972, Harper & Row), often in the care of Chiu Chau (Teh Chiu) dialect speakers whose ancestors came from Swatow, the port of Kwantung in SE China. The Teh Chiu are said to have arrived in Hong Kong via Shanghai, and to be a dominant part of Thai politics. They’re scattered around the world, and suspected of extensive ‘Triad’ (secret society) involvement. Ethnic Yunnanese Muslim Panthays, called by the Thai “Haw”, are also blamed (but poorly identified, except as expatriate Yunnanese), and one runs across mention of new “triads” like 14K, competing strongly with the legendary Chinese secret societies. However supplied, illegal heroin remains available virtually worldwide, flowing not only from the Golden Triangle, but equally from Afghanistan (and especially the Pakistani border area). It also comes from Laos, Lebanon, Columbia, Mexico, Sudan, and recently, southern ex-Soviet states (“-istans”). It’s questionable why American law enforcement thought capture of Khun Sa might have any impact on narcotic availability or price. It’s also questionable why crop substitution or eradication is deemed necessary, as there is important medical utility, and even internationally sanctioned narcotic production - in India, Iran, Turkey, and Tasmania, Australia. Poppy seeds are used as food, on buns and bagels. In Burma they’re widely used for one of the country’s delicacies, Bein Mon (pancake made of rice flour, palm sugar, coconut chips and peanuts, garnished with poppy seeds), and are traded openly. With use of a bit of intelligent imagination, alternative income sources could be found: ganja/cannibis seeds also have great value, and are easily transported, but are irrationally suppressed. Drugs burned in public displays are suspected of adulteration by addition of food poppy, gum, sap and pods emptied of seeds; no-one can investigate thoroughly. Lashio officials were quoted as saying that as soon as foreign guests and reporters left, national security officials doused the fire and retrieved residue for the next round of bonfires – it’s all a farce, all about control.

In the 1970s, the Burmese opium crop was 250 to 400 tons per annum. It rose from 350 tons in 1985 to 1,280 tons in 1988, and in ‘89, was 2,000 tons, maybe more. For the ‘90s, US State Department figures show between 2,000 and 2,500 tons a year. DEA estimates for year 2000 were about 1,200 tons. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) put Burma’s 2003-2004 output at 370 tons, down from 2002’s 800 plus, due to bad weather. In peak year 1993, Laos produced 210 tons of opium. In response to Rangoon officials’ claim that opium output had dropped in 2001 to 865 tons from 1,065 tons in 2000, noted Shan scholar Dr. Chao Tzang Yawnghwe commented that official figures were “arbitrary.” Population, especially AIDS, statistics vary a lot, and government, like bureaucracy, is more self-protecting than altruistic. S.H.A.N. reports Dai officials in Yunnan’s Dehong Autonomous Prefecture, opposite northern Shan State, questioning the annual output figures given by the UN and US, which have been shrinking each year. “What we are seeing here in Mongmao (Ruili) is a rise not only in trafficking but also addictions,” it quotes a drug enforcement source who posits more than 3,000 users in Ruili’s Zegang neighborhood alone, at least 10% of them female. “If there is really a drop in the production then the logical question is from where are we getting all the dope?” Chinese authorities are also displeased by Myanmar’s failure to hand over 24 of 34 drug fugitives who took refuge there.

Specialists from the USA have provided satellite and other intelligence about opium convoys, yet narcotics seizures have never reached 1 percent. During the period of most intensive US aid, ’85-‘88 - opium fields were sprayed with 2.4-D herbicide, from planes given by the USA - but estimated opium yield doubled. US aid was typically ineffective in achieving what it was purportedly intended to do. Khun Sa’s surrender didn’t lower heroin production, but the SPDC claimed it incinerated 625 kilos of opium, 759 kilos of heroin and 3 million methamphetamine pills, 2000 kilos (over 2 tons) of drugs, on June 26, 2005: Yangon’s 19th propagandistic destruction of narcotics (in one they bulldozed bottles of ‘Krakingdaeng’ Thai energy drink).

“The junta’s token attempts at crop substitution, often with international assistance, have also failed miserably, due to poor planning, coercive implementation and complete disregard for the welfare of local populations. Under the so-called “New Destiny” project launched in April 2002, farmers in many townships have been forced to plant a new strain of rice from China, which has failed in each locality,” according to S.H.A.N. Opium takes only three months and is a cash crop. Nothing else yet compares, as “ya ba” doesn’t require farmers. Constant terror, atrocities and warfare make opium cultivation still the only choice for many.

Early last century, Shan were selling opium to the Yunnanese, who transported it down the Yangtze and sold it to the French. The Shan were then divided into 34 small principalities, but had no concept of rigid border demarcation. Warlords demanded to receive ‘taxation’ on all that passed by (as Khun Sa says is all he did), and thus discouraged much farming of food for market. Trade was ruined to the point where salt became expensive and goiter a widespread problem. Without the drug business, the consumer economy of Burma might grind to a halt, as much of the little for sale is funded through it. Shan people wish to enter the modern world with the respect and the dignity merited by capable and industrious people, which indeed they are, but commerce in narcotics hasn’t helped much, except insofar as it kept at bay, for awhile, Burmese military madness. The Maynmar ‘government’ has, unintentionally or not, limited big business concerns that eventually may present an even more disruptive danger to Burma’s various peoples and cultures. Modern infrastructure can be doubly dangerous in this area, tending as it does to bring governmental repression and corporate exploitation. A direct relationship clearly exists between poverty and the narcotics problem, but Khun Sa’s aide Khernsai Jaiyen expressed no interest in the parallels with problems in South America, or in contacts there, when I asked. Shan State may never be able to have more impact on the world beyond it than it had through narcotics, and it’s unclear how much outside people should feel obliged to become involved in internal Shan State affairs. But with drug addiction a problem of increasing magnitude, especially due to AIDS, it can easily seem to be a problem of either influencing the situation, or being influenced by it.

The emerging situation

Most refineries in the eastern Shan area are controlled by Wei HseuhKang, wanted by both Thai and United States law enforcement. In 2003 he moved from near Monghsat to a northern area of Tangyan, given to him in 2001 by then SPDC Secretary-1 Khin Nyunt (the supposed master-spy elevated to Prime Minister then put under house arrest, who proposed turning Ho Mong into a tourist attraction – an idea sure to be revived). Wei’s refineries in Mong Ton and Monghsat are run by Yunnan Chinese, Chao Ching and Li Hsen. His brothers Wei HsuehLong and Wei HsuehYing (also Yunnanese) fled to the Wa States when Communists took over China, and were connected to the KMT-CIA spy network along the Burma-China border until the 1970s. Wei HsuehKang served as Khun Sa’s treasurer at Ban Hin Taek (now Thoed Thai) just south of the Thai-Burmese border (in Chiangrai). After 1989, the Wei brothers linked up with Wa president Bao Youxiang’s United Wa State Army (UWSA), but remained little known until named by a New York court, among eight senior Wa leaders indicted on charges of smuggling heroin and amphetamine to the USA. Xiao Minliang, Vice Chairman to Bao Youxiang, Ai Lone, Chief of Staff of the United Wa State Army, Zhao Wenxing, deputy Chief of Staff, Li Chengwu, a Kokang-Chinese hard-liner against Yangon serving as Bao’s military adviser, Vice-chairman Bo Lakham, who knows little Burmese but headed the Wa delegation to two sessions of the National Convention, are reported by S.H.A.N. as top cadre. These people are worrisome to both Yangon and Beijing, as they speak of themselves as a government. Wa’s don’t want to be Chinese anymore than they want to be Burmese, or under either’s authority. Important Chinese business communities in Mandalay and Yangon are growing rapidly; both Than Shwe and USWA are dependent on Chinese arms, and neither can stay isolated and intrangent much longer, regardless.

Methamphetamines, “yaba” (“crazy pills”) in Thai, are “ya kai” in Shan, according to S.H.A.N. translatable as “hard-working pills”. In many rural communities, people use the drug openly if they want to stay up to help at a ceremony or temple festival, or if they want extra “energy” for work in the fields. There have been no public campaigns about the dangers of the drug, and in Shan State, no social stigma for those who use it. In the past few years, it’s become common for polite hosts in Shan State to offer visitors methamphetamines, with the traditional tea. This isn’t weird: varieties of drugs are accepted socially everywhere, and natural kinds are used pleasantly and successfully, within appropriate social context.

Amphetamines are dangerous, but are known to have been used in moderation (doctors in the USA prescribed them freely when I was young, and many people took no more than their doctor recommended). Nasu Lahu-na (my wife) remembers when most people along the border were engaged in the drug trade: there were many rivalries, there was much pride, gossip and back-stabbing. She says people would burn with urges for revenge, and report rivals to police… Once somebody caught their favorite enemy out alone on a jungle path, cut his head off and hung it up. Nasu’s father forbade her to go out there, but she couldn’t resist, and snuck a look. There was easy money to be made, but it wasn’t, isn’t, a good trade. The Thai Ministry of Health estimated 2,650,000 meth addicts in 2001 (4.3% of population total and 91% of the total addict population); mornings on the way to work I’d see herds of thin post-adolescents with brightly colored hair standing around filling-station lots, after the discos closed at 7 a.m. Even today, entertainment places for Thai youth close later than tourist-oriented venues, with no explanation forthcoming.

Around Kengtung, farm hands sometimes now get paid in meth pills instead of money. In 1994, a group of Thai dealers approached Khun Sa, but he spoke against meth: ‘Heroin is okay’, he reasoned, ‘our main customers are across the ocean. But, with yaba, we only have Thais for customers. If we start producing it, we’ll come face to face with Thailand. That’ll make our position more difficult.’ His uncle Khun Hseng (Chang Ping-yuan) was won over by the Thais, though, and soon yaba produced in HoMong was of top quality. Drug producers in Shan State tried expanding into Extasy, but their chemists haven’t made a popular product (maybe good chemists don’t want to live in back woods). Wa and Kokang leaders could only abandon heroin by establishing labs and markets for meth; which they liked for not needing to worry about weather. Labs can be moved, and farmers engaged in other production give a more stable economic base. Opium may make a temporary disappearing act, but other drugs are entering the market (‘date rape’ drugs have certainly made a name for themselves). The yaba market proved large and lucrative until Taksin’s Drug Wars, but customers remain in the Bangkok area, in India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, China and Korea – amphetamines reach the populace of many of Myanmar’s armaments suppliers and other enablers. The Thai “War on Drugs” which started in 2003 with the murder - in just a couple of months - of thousands of possible small-timers (with minimal subsequent investigation, at best), has made Shan State traffickers avoid the northern Thai border, and sell only to long-term, well-trusted Thai contacts. Thai newspapers still regularly report busts, but trafficking drugs into China has become preferable to down through Lashio and Mandalay to Moulmein, Kanchanaburi and Bangkok (though that still happens), due to increased bribe costs. Beijing replaced paramilitary police with five regular army regiments, to patrol the northern Shan-China border. Endemic corruption among local law enforcement officers in border towns has contributed to the problem, in particular at Zegao and Ruili, opposite Muse, but many fewer Chinese officials currently enjoy the high-life in the gambling town of MongLa (on the border), than did just a few years ago. Taksin’s ‘War on Drugs’ forced drug operators to reroute their products, but a Chinese attitude that it’s better to die than be poor, means there are many eager replacement traffickers available. The 25 March, 2005 Bangkok Post reported 1.14 million addicts in China, equally divided between heroin and methamphetamine (quoting Yang Fengrui, spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security, as saying, “he situation has begun to deteriorate.”). The Wa have long been a Chinese ally, Shan State’s becoming Wa State, Beijing’s ruled by eager, perhaps desperate, expansionists.

Many Wa have recently relocated, or been relocated, to areas just north of the Thai/Myanmar border. Perhaps as many as 150,000 of these Wa are currently in the limbo of displaced people; tens of thousands of these were born in China and many of the new settlers are Han Chinese. One report says 300,000 people have been relocated to cut off support for the SSA-South. Certainly, many Shans and Lahu have been evicted to space for arriving Wa, but as the government in Yangon has cultivated good relations with China and Thailand, this has not resulted in a new ‘refugee crisis’. The Wa region along the Chinese border has passed another deadline to become drug-free; how else are they to survive? What crop substitution projects and possibilities are there? What can be done towards sustainable community-based development and strengthening civil society to enable farmers to participate in decision-making processes about their future? Poppy cultivators escape enforcement measures; like when a balloon is squeezed, air just pushes out elsewhere – and many people have hidden poppy seeds.

An Akha displaced from just south of Mong Hsat by Wa newcomers asserted that Chinese were easily distinguishable from Wa: “There were some Chinese with them (the Wa settlers). They set up shops and sold various food items. They also made whiskey to sell from corn. I also saw some Chinese soldiers and officers with the Wa Army. They wore Wa uniforms, but they were whiter-skinned than the Wa, so it was easy to tell them apart. They spoke no language other than Chinese.” A report from the Mong Karn, east of Mong Hsat, mentions that among 300 new Wa households moving into Mong Karn village, were 30 Chinese households. New Chinese are particularly concentrated at Ban Hoong, south of Mong Hsat. There, about 1000 Chinese are help conduct Wei Hsiao Kang’s military and economic affairs.

The Wa area on the Chinese border is now pressured to become drug-free, but how are poor ex-cultivators to replace their lost income? What crop substitution projects and possibilities are there? Will there be reliable markets for the substitute crops? What can be done towards sustainable community-based development and strengthening civil society to enable farmers to participate in decision-making processes about their future?

In the Panghsang area, rubber, tea and oranges are being grown extensively. Gem and zinc mining are expanding, as is cigarette production. Expanded road infrastructure and consequent growth in trucking has led to Chinese marrying love-for-hire, and more cultivation of corn, sesame, soybeans, peanuts, fruit and cabbages. Success in alternatives depends largely on China. Thailand doesn’t impose tariffs on import of fruits grown under the UWSA control, to help the Wa renounce so much that is counter-productive in their way of life, but farmers remain with little voice in decision-making processes affecting their livelihoods. Both opium prices and wages rose at least 50% between 2003 and 2005; seasoned observers expect little else to change, but even right on the border, in April 1006, both opium and amphetamines are hard to find.

The Shan Human Rights Foundation estimated Shan refugees denied refugee status, but arrived in Thailand from 1996 to 2002, at over 230,000. Sunai Phasuk, a Thai academic and consultant for Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, “These people are not just fleeing war, but also forced labor, executions, mass relocations and systematic rape;” and Thailand is “violating international law” for denying basic humanitarian assistance to the Shan. A recent report by the New York-based NGO also documents the murder, rape, enslavement and brutal displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians during the Burmese army’s long-running assault on Karen insurgents; some 650,000 people, says HRW, have been made homeless in eastern Burma alone. It is pointless to discuss whether Karen or Shan suffer more, but Mon I met in Rangoon, and even Burmese I met in Pagan, also told horror stories of murder, mayhem and suppression by “governmental authorities.”

The UN World Food Program is supplying rice and cereal grains to Wa and Kokang ex-poppy farmers, particularly in Kokang, Panghsang and Lashio and to some of the other many needy in the potentially wealthy country, but also reports inflation. A million ‘Internally Displaced Persons’, 42% in eastern areas and on the run from “scorched earth” policiesHuman Rights Watch calls ethnic cleansing… 140,000+ arein refugee camps along the western Thai border, many for 20 years now. Political reform and better economic management are more needed than charity; Burma lacks intelligent logistics, not rice.

Yangon isn’t the capital anymore (although Than Shwe doesn’t stay in the mysterious new place), and neither is there really a junta now. Than Shwe has become “father of the country”, and wants control of the Chinese border, for which purpose divisions among the frequently-feuding Wa would come in handy. China’s stake in the relocation program is unclear, but it has provided much towards the huge costs of Wa relocations to the southern border of Shan

jbowman1993 · August 16, 2006

Good Read. Thanks

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