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  Tribal Media Group (17 Sep 2011 14:06 GMT)

  Heavy rain threatens the poorest hill people in Tedim area. Many people's lives, houses, roads, hydro cannels, bridges are being devastated and destroyed, without warning by heavy rain and disaster. There have already been a serious of huge humanitarian catastrophes this year: earthquakes, floods.
  Villagers are refugees in their own villages who lost their houses. The incidence of such extreme natural disasters has been steadily rising year after year. Today more and more natural catastrophes are striking communities in the Hills and on an unprecedented scale.
  Tribal Media Group is now launching an urgent appeal to help protect the most vulnerable people. Your help is needed to enable it to respond rapidly and effectively any crisis at a moment's notice.
  Many people and the Horn of tribals are threatened by famine and hunger and the crops fail yet again. In the hardest hit areas, people have had to sell everything just to survive and almost everyone has lost their houses and crops.
  Tribal Media Group's greatest fear is that disaster will strike somewhere soon and it will simply not have the resources to help to ensure this does not happen.
  You may feel powerless to help , faced with such an overwhelming situation- but you can make a difference, by becoming a life saver with a standing of $5 for food aid. The vital funds raised by this project with enable Tribal Media Group to bring life saving emergency aid and ongoing support to communities cripple by disaster .
  It really is a very small price to pay for the difference it could make. Please don't delay every minute saved could be a life saved.
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  Tribal Media Group (14 Jul 2011 03:36 GMT)

  Build a better nation :
  Today, people want a better life for themselves and their families in Burma. They also want to live as free men and women deciding problems for themselves in a free country. They want to live in PEACE, not in War, ethnic conflicts. They want to feel safe in their homelands. They do not want to be hunger or sick or poor.
  They also want freedom.,free expression. They want want decide where will work, study and how they will work, learn and how they will spend their money and their professional skilled. They want the right to express their own ideas,opinions in speaking or writing.
  They want the right to learn in schools and colleges. Mos of all, they want to be self-governing , and not ruled by Junta militalia. They want to decide, through free elections, what kind of govt is fright for their country, and they want to be able to make changes in the govt it is necessary.
  Burma gained an independent in 1948, military army nationalized the country in 1962, hold the power till now instead of free election in 1990.
  The problem in Burma are not free to choose what they want to buy.They cannot own their land and people.
  It is not easy for Burma to better itself without the help of other countries.Burma needs capital, often in the form machines and factories.
  Burma is a land rich in natural resources. However, it had a few people and a little capital.
  They have not always freely elected the men in the govt and had not the right to speak and write freely.
  The law do not guard every one, rich and poor alike. These laws, rights, and freedoms have not made the people of Burma work hard for their country. This has not helped the country now.
  Today the nation's standard of living is the highest lowest in the world. The poor will have to fight to change this kind of govt.
  A few rich people control and use the great number of poor people and that the country belongs to big business.
  Change must come as the result of the will of most of the people but the rights of the others must be considered. Change must come in an orderly manner.
  In a real democracy, the govt serves rather than rules the people. A free people can build a successful of living and free govt. Times have changed, and today big business does not often use its power badly.
  There was scarcely any sense of political wrongs. The desire for political freedom was very weak and if did not go beyond getting higher appointments in the administration and some share in the shaping of the law of the land.
  Our faces have now turned to the starving, the naked, the patient and long suffering of 60 millions of our people in it we see a new potency, because we view them with an eye of love which we had never felt before and in the teeming, toiling, starving and naked population of Burma. We find possibilities, potentialities, germs that given rise to this new movement.
  We shall so work in the country, so combine the resources of the people so organize the forces of the nation, so develop the instinct of freedom in the community.
  Positive work will have to be done without positive training, no self-government will come to the boy cotter.
  Tribal Media Group
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  Himakas-Binuligay-Uswag (HBU) Association Inc. (21 Jun 2011 03:27 GMT)

  Dear co-NGO:
  
  We will be implementing one project which is called “Buy and sell of junk items: the net profit to be earned in support of buying school materials for Grade VI pupils in public schools in Cabatuan, Iloilo, Philippines.”
  
  If this may be in line with your project activities and mission, we would be very glad to have a bit of your support, or some endorsements to your networks and contacts in lieu of any funding support we can request from your organization acknowledging also that you may be sourcing out funds similarly being an operating NGO.
  
  The rationale behind our planned project activity:
  
  Used soda plastic bottles, tin cans, iron rods, aluminum & other usable items are scattering around.
  Poor pupils in a number of public schools in Cabatuan, Iloilo, Philippines can't have complete school materials like notebook, paper, pen, pencil, crayons, bags and other school supplies needed for schooling.
  
  The pupils & primarily their parents leading them, will engage in the collection of used items for recycling; or buy those items from community households and sell them at a higher price to trading shops.
  
  A US$100 operating fund will be enough to support each Grade/Class in one public school to carry-out this project with the teacher-in-charged facilitating, pupils' parents directly involved.
  
  Net profit gained from this activity will be used in buying school materials, if some excess in buying food, during the school year.
  
  Funds raised in tranches of US$100 will support one Grade/Class in one public school; more will be served subject to funding availability.
  
  Your financial support in any amount could be easily coursed through at our fundraising community at this link http://www.ammado.com/community/121460
  
  Thanking you in advance.
  
  HBU Inc.’s Team
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  Tribal Media Group (06 Jan 2011 00:52 GMT)

  Thank you for your direct donations.
  We appreciate your gift. “Really, that’s just the beginning.”
  You are our patrons.
  You are never forgotten.
  Be continue to support us.
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  Song Za Kam (29 Dec 2010 05:44 GMT)

  Wishing you a very HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR 2012
  
  YOU are especially important. We were just discussing why it is so crucial for an organization to ask why people are getting involved. One of our team members shares her experience with volunteering and loosing some of her connection with the charity when there is no interest in why she is there.;
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  Tribal Media Group (07 Nov 2010 09:41 GMT)

  Global justice and community radio
  31 10 2010
  
  Just reading that the AMARC World Congress is one of the activities of the World Social Forum for 2010, and so focuses on being interactive and participatory in WSF style.
  
  WSF being an event that started in 2001 in Brazil as a key part of the antiglobalisation or global justice movement. It usually runs at the same time as the World Economic Forum, with an intent to show that there are different ways of addressing the world’s economic problems. This year is the tenth anniversary of the WSF, and instead of one event there are lots of events globally.
  
  Here’s what Marcelo Solervicens, the Secretary-general of AMARC International says in the leadup to the conference:
  
  AMARC 10 conference finds the world-wide community radio movement at a crossroads. On the one hand, it has become a world movement and there is increased recognition of the role of community radio in development, good governance and as a specific broadcast sector besides commercial or public broadcast. In this perspective it is very important that this conference is taking place in South America, the cradle of the community radio movement.
  
  On the other hand the challenges are enormous, in terms of establishing enabliing environmnets for CR in many countries, where legislation does not yet recognise CR as such; challenges from the transition to digital radio, challenges in terms of technical, financial or social sustainabiliity, directly related to legislation, but also to lack of cross regional experience sharing, or training to ameliorate quality of content and pertinance of programming, problems of gender equality in some regions.
  
  The conference will be tackling some of these and other challenges so that there will be a La Plat Declaration fixing the orientation of the movement and a strategic plan for the next four years that will result in further reinforcement of the contribution of CR in fulfilling its mission to combat poverty, exclusion and voiceless-ness and to promote social justice and sustainable, democratic and participatory human development.
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  Tribal Media Group (07 Nov 2010 09:40 GMT)

  Global justice and community radio
  31 10 2010
  
  Just reading that the AMARC World Congress is one of the activities of the World Social Forum for 2010, and so focuses on being interactive and participatory in WSF style.
  
  WSF being an event that started in 2001 in Brazil as a key part of the antiglobalisation or global justice movement. It usually runs at the same time as the World Economic Forum, with an intent to show that there are different ways of addressing the world’s economic problems. This year is the tenth anniversary of the WSF, and instead of one event there are lots of events globally.
  
  Here’s what Marcelo Solervicens, the Secretary-general of AMARC International says in the leadup to the conference:
  
  AMARC 10 conference finds the world-wide community radio movement at a crossroads. On the one hand, it has become a world movement and there is increased recognition of the role of community radio in development, good governance and as a specific broadcast sector besides commercial or public broadcast. In this perspective it is very important that this conference is taking place in South America, the cradle of the community radio movement.
  
  On the other hand the challenges are enormous, in terms of establishing enabliing environmnets for CR in many countries, where legislation does not yet recognise CR as such; challenges from the transition to digital radio, challenges in terms of technical, financial or social sustainabiliity, directly related to legislation, but also to lack of cross regional experience sharing, or training to ameliorate quality of content and pertinance of programming, problems of gender equality in some regions.
  
  The conference will be tackling some of these and other challenges so that there will be a La Plat Declaration fixing the orientation of the movement and a strategic plan for the next four years that will result in further reinforcement of the contribution of CR in fulfilling its mission to combat poverty, exclusion and voiceless-ness and to promote social justice and sustainable, democratic and participatory human development.
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  Tribal Media Group (04 Nov 2010 12:45 GMT)

  As we approach the elections and I get out talking to ordinary people about their voting intentions, I am often met by two apparently illogical statements. The first is that there is a strong sense that the regime's proxy party, the USDP, will win the elections; the second is that none of my contacts have met anyone who will willingly vote for the USDP.
  
  The solution to this apparent contradiction is obvious. People here believe that the vote will somehow be fixed, just as the result of the constituitional referendum was widely alleged to have been in 2008. The only thing they are not sure about is how this will be done.
  
  There is no shortage of ways a system that exerts such rigid control over the election process could manipulate the vote.
  
  I have heard many reports that soldiers and public servants have been ordered to vote for the USDP. Advance voting, where voters' intentions are taken ahead of the poll (often on their behalf rather than directly), was rife in 2008 and may well be happening again now.
  
  I have first-hand accounts of people who have been warned by local officials that if they don't vote for the USDP there will be trouble for them and their families.
  
  People are hearing rumours that ballot papers will be numbered and traceable back to individual voters. The USDP has gone on a major recruitment drive this year and several of my contacts have told me that as people sign on the dotted line for this "offer they can't refuse", their vote is automatically cast for the USDP.
  
  A local bicycle taxi driver was detained and questioned for hours by police last Thursday night simply because he had accepted a leaflet offered to him by a genuine opposition party candidate. There are other similar reports of abuses too numerous to list here.
  
  I wrote in an earlier post about the different streams of opinion among voters – basically, those who will make their protests clear by abstention and those who will do so by casting a vote for anyone but the USDP. The problem is that in a number of rural constituencies, voters wishing to vote for an opposition candidate have no one else to vote for.
  
  Because the election laws have made it so difficult for opposition parties to put up candidates, in some constituencies the USDP will be running unopposed; in many others, the only alternative will be the National Unity Party (NUP), which was the proxy party of General Ne Win's regime in 1990. It was trounced by Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD party.
  
  People remain suspicious of the NUP's claims to be a broadly pro-regime but nevertheless genuine alternative to the USDP, but it is true to say that I have spoken to a lot of people who say that if the NUP is the only alternative on offer, they will vote for them simply to register their protest against the USDP.
  
  It is truly extraordinary situation where a party that seems to be so universally disliked by so many voters is still seen as certain to win.
  
  According to people I talk to, in 1990 the then regime fixed the electoral arrangements in advance to such an extent that they believed they could allow a free and fair process on the day and still come out comfortably on top. It was a huge miscalculation. People came out in droves and voted against the regime's party and in favour of the NLD.
  
  It is hard to imagine that the regime's current manifestation will make the same mistake. And indeed, the way the opposition parties have been restricted means that, according to the figures I have seen, they have been able to run candidates only in some 38% of seats. Against this background, majority opinion here is that by hook or by crook the USDP will come out on top.
  
  Such an outcome would only serve to deepen people's distrust of their rulers and their sense of frustration and helplessness.
  
  
  Tuesday 2 November - Aung San Suu Kyi's possible release attracts as much interest as the polls
  
  As elections near, people ask me whether she is relevant to Burmese politics after so long. The answer is yes.
  
  The focus is on Burma not just because of the elections scheduled for Sunday, but also because of the possibility of Aung San Suu Kyi being released six days later.
  
  I have been doing a large number of media briefings in recent days and the questions have been split pretty evenly between the elections and the possible release on 13 November.
  
  Two of the questions I am most frequently asked are: what I think she will do if she is released and, secondly, whether she can have any relevance in Burma after so long under house arrest?
  
  The first is difficult to answer. It depends to a major extent on whether the regime places restrictions on her.
  
  Her lawyer told me recently that when she was released in 1995 she was not allowed to travel outside Rangoon. On release from a further period of house arrest in 2002, she was allowed to travel outside Rangoon, but only once prior authorisation had been sought from the regime.
  
  Her colleagues at the National League for Democracy tell me that this time, as before, Aung San Suu Kyi wants to travel the country and reconnect with the Burmese public. I imagine she will also be inundated with requests for meetings with foreign diplomats (including this one) and visiting politicians.
  
  As for her relevance, all the evidence points to a regime that still fears that she is very relevant.
  
  They have kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 15 of the past 21 years. Both the constitution and the election laws included specific provisions which seemed designed to prevent her from running for election or holding high office.
  
  And she remains hugely important to the Burmese people. For them she represents hope of a better future and a figure embodying the unity that is so absent from present day Burma. She already had a special status as the daughter of the father of the country's independence movement.
  
  But her bravery and dedication to the democratic cause in 1988 and beyond gave her a significant following in her own right. People have enormous admiration for the way she has remained dignified, committed and principled in the face of everything the regime has thrown at her since the 1990 elections in which her party won by a landslide.
  
  Last Friday, I drove down University Avenue where Aung San Suu Kyi lives. Part of the road is open to traffic, but you soon meet a crude wood and barbed wire barrier, the first of two which prevent anyone getting to her house. A couple of bored looking guards cast wary eyes at my car with its diplomatic number plates as we approached. They needn't have worried. I had a meeting elsewhere. The only time I have been allowed to meet her was last October in a session rigidly structured by the regime.
  
  You can't see the house from that roadblock, but you can see it very clearly from the opposite bank of Rangoon's Inya lake at a distance of some 500 metres. But that's about as close as most people can get to a woman who for years has embodied the Burmese people's defiance against the regime that controls the country.
  
  Since she was last placed under house arrest in 2002, the authorities have sought to control her completely, denying her the chance to communicate in any way with the people who gave her party an overwhelming mandate in 1990 and the younger generation that has emerged since.
  
  How will the regime try to control her now? Delay her release? Attach a string of conditions, in defiance of all the calls by the international community for her freedom to be unconditional?
  
  Release her only to re-arrest her shortly afterwards "for her own safety", because of the crowds of people who will undoubtedly flock to see her?
  
  All are possible. But if you want to know what Aung San Suu Kyi means to people, I don't think you need look much further than the title of one of her books, Freedom from Fear. She represents an alternative vision of how life in Burma could be. In which freedom from fear would be a central element and a radical change from the current position.
  
  For most people here that would be a pretty good start.
  
  
  Monday 1 November - Burmese people's dream of an accountable Government remains distant
  
  In under a week, national elections will be held in Burma for the first time in 20 years. After so many years of military rule this should have been a huge event. But instead Sunday's poll will represent another missed opportunity as Burma's rulers again demonstrate that they put their own interests well ahead of the public interest.
  
  The elections will fail pretty well every objective test of being free, fair and inclusive. The list of flaws is long, but the most obvious one is surely that 25% of the members of the new parliament must be military nominees.
  
  But in addition to this, the regime has locked up over 2,100 of its political opponents, including of course Aung San Suu Kyi, and used its election laws to effectively prevent her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), from standing.
  
  Those democratic opposition parties that have chosen to participate must operate under the most difficult conditions. The Union Electoral Commission which is responsible for nearly all aspects of the election process is nominally independent. But its actions have demonstrated that it is anything but.
  
  At a recent briefing for diplomats in the capital, Naypyitaw, for example, an election commission official facing a difficult question told his astounded audience that he would need to get instructions from the home ministry. It seems that even the pretence of independence has been abandoned.
  
  The combined effect of all these flaws is to tilt the electoral playing field almost vertically in favour of the regime. Its proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development party (USDP), has been given unlimited financial resources and vastly preferential coverage in the tightly controlled state media. Genuine opposition parties have been handicapped by the restrictive electoral conditions and lack of resources. The largest national opposition party has only been able to field candidates in around 160 of the 1,163 seats being contested.
  
  Against this background it is hardly surprising that the atmosphere on the ground is flat. In 1990 there was energy and excitement across the country as the elections approached (even though these were expected to be rigged as well). A casual visitor to Rangoon today would see few clues that an election was about to take place.
  
  The mood among election watchers is mixed. Many are resigned to witnessing a cosmetic process delivering exactly the result wanted by the regime. Others argue that even if some democratic opposition parties do manage to gain a foothold in the new parliament, the regime will ensure that the parliament is nothing but a charade.
  
  Many in this group feel that to vote would imply legitimacy for a process to which they fundamentally object. Others, however, are defiant. They also see the election for what it is: a flawed process delivering a regime approved outcome.
  
  But they are determined to go to the polls and vote for the democratic opposition parties who are standing against the USDP simply to register their defiance, rather than in any hope of a surprise result on the day. And, they argue, the law of unintended consequences might apply as the regime finds that this process, however carefully they try to control it, spins off in unpredictable directions.
  
  For most ordinary Burmese, eking out a precarious living on their paddy fields, these flawed elections will do little or nothing to address their most pressing needs. They live in a country where at least a third of the people live below the poverty line, where making enough money to feed themselves and their families is a daily struggle. They want some hope that their children could have a decent education, proper healthcare and some prospect of a better life.
  
  The regime's dreadful record on the economy matches its record on democracy and human rights. It is based on an apparent disregard for the general population's welfare, demonstrated by its chronic underfunding of public services such as health and education while money is poured into the defence budget and private bank accounts.
  
  A truly accountable government could help to change this. But with the current military leadership looking set to retain its grip on power in a civilian guise, the hope of better political and economic future remains a distant dream.
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  Tribal Media Group (02 Nov 2010 00:51 GMT)

  Burma today;Poll 2010
  Foreign journalists and observers have been barred from attending the election, the first in two decades in the former British colony and widely dismissed as an elaborate stunt to cement the military's 48-year grip on power.
  
  Internet services in Myanmar have been sporadic and mostly unavailable for the past seven days, which activists believe is an attempt to restrict coverage and discussion of the election.
  
  State media in Myanmar is tightly controlled and serves as the mouthpiece for the reclusive generals. Some foreign news organisations are permitted to hire local journalists vetted by the government.
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  Tribal Media Group (01 Nov 2010 12:14 GMT)

  International leaders should think more deeply. Supporting these elections
  is not supporting gradual progress to democracy; rather it is a message to
  the suffering people of Burma that international support is given to the
  military regime and their friends to continue to do what they will. A
  different message must be sent.