Goodbye Ananda
As of April 1st evening, Ananda, Ooredoo, and other broadband internet networks that are 4G based have joined Sim2Fly in heaven. RIP.
Tags: censorship, internet, coup
An ode to Sim2Fly
Alas, my beloved Sim2Fly
Your days come to an end
I bought you for a handsome some
Second-hand from a not-close friend
The nights of information
And extra chatting time
The speediness of roaming data
Brought memories sublime
In an age of throttled packets
And blocked IP-addys
You let me close my VPN
To browse the web at ease
And when the nation's LTE
Was gagged and bound one day
You were always there beside me
To give another way
Another way to tell my folks
That I've survived the night
A way to douse myself in YouTube
When the loud booms gave me fright
But all good things must soon pass
And I knew this day might come
It started with a throttle
And ended with a mum
Indeed, I doubt it a hard task
To disable Ooredoo's tower
I was suprised we got this far
And took until this hour
So, now we're limited to broadband
And nothing in-between
It seems there's no workaround yet
At least, not one I've seen
But this is a minor setback
We'll figure something out
After all, we jumped on this bandwagon
For more than just pure clout
Indeed, we seek to find a channel
To broadcast our hurt voices
At this point all they can do
Is try to limit our choices
So, go on, brick my SIM
It's not stopped me before
But you'll have to do a lot more than that
To win this civil war.
-- Tyler Davis, 31 March 2021
Tags: censorship, internet, Gen-Z
Let's talk about social punishment
I'm not entirely sure whether or not I agree with this notion of social punishment. It's not that I fear for my own reputation nor that I have something in particular worth hiding. I just don't know if retaliating against the preceived elite is overly beneficial. On the one hand, they are indeed benefitting in one way or another from their relatives' past dealings (often corrupt). But are they "sinful" as well in any of this?
Luckily, there seems to be a workflow. The individual is observed (usually through social media) and the court of public opinion determines whether the individual has said anything worthy enough of being "passed over" Deuteronomy style. Such as,
- Have they publicly supported CDM?
- Have the publicly denounced the misdeeds of their ancestors?
- Have they publicly denounced the military coup?
etc.
These private individuals, however, are between a rock and a hard place. Many, not wanting to dishonor their parents following the traditional ဘုရား တရား သံဃာ မိဘ ဆရာ (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, Parents, Teachers) teaching that one must always respect these five "gems," especially parents, since they gave you life. In their Buddhist mindset, this is almost an impossible thing to do.
We Westerners and some westernized Burmese people would denounce their family in a heartbeat if they disagreed with some atrocities. I doubt that these "crony kids" would easily be able to do the same.
Nonetheless, there are certain Facebook pages and websites, which I won't link here, that can lead a visitor to a wall of photos with names, known addresses, known affiliates, etc. of these targeted individuals. One thing I worry about is that the creators of such pages may be unmasked one day. Most Burmese people are using a freely available VPN app called "1.1.1.1," which is not private and not entirely secure, in terms of the user knowing exactly what happens to their data. If the data were intercepted, the creators of these pages could face lifetime in jail or perhaps even the death penalty. It goes to show, however, how the Burmese people will use whatever means they have to try to win this fight.
Tags: social-punishment, CDM, coup, internet, security