David Brenner

Best café in Thailand!

Eye on rare earths, Trump handing Myanmar to China - Asia Times The US Treasury Department’s decision to lift sanctions on allies of Myanmar’s military junta last Friday (July 25) marks a stark reversal of decades-long

"The idea that the US could gain a meaningful foothold in #Myanmar’s rare earth sector is not just naïve; it is nonsensical. Worse, it risks playing directly into China’s hands," writes @davidbrenner.bsky.social asiatimes.com/2025/07/eye-...

Thanks for sharing, Hunter!

Yea thanks, I mentioned the congressional Burma Act cosplay 😅

Thanks, it’s just the latest episode of Trump’s war on Myanmar but certainly the most absurd!

Sediment-Trapping Weirs: Why Community Consultation and Comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Must Come First | Heinrich Böll Foundation | Southeast Asia A transboundary Kok River in Northern Thailand has been a source of livelihood of thousands in riverine communities. Recently, it has faced rising levels of heavy metal contamination, likely from susp...

A transboundary Kok River in Northern Thailand has been a source of livelihood of thousands in riverine communities. Recently, it has faced rising levels of heavy metal contamination, likely from suspected unregulated rare earth mining upstream in Myanmar. bit.ly/3ITFa4q

So much for keeping the US out of wars abroad.

Producing knowledge in/of/for Myanmar’s borderlands - Tea Circle The authors reflect on the politics of producing borderland knowledge in Myanmar after the coup.

1/ 📖 For Tea Circle, we reflect on the politics of producing knowledge in/of/for Myanmar’s borderlands after the 2021 coup.

With co-authors: Anders K. Moeller, Radka Antalikova, Dan Seng Lawn, Peter Suante - each involved in non-state research/education work.
🔗 teacirclemyanmar.com/education/pr...

The Real Reasons for the Thai-Cambodia Conflict While long-standing border disputes explain some of the current violence between Thailand and Cambodia, the conflict’s escalation is primarily driven by Thai elites’ drive to consolidate military and…

banishing Thaksin's chaos 'for good' in military's checkmate of dangerous civilians, via @joshkurlantzick.bsky.social: "The conflict has allowed the military to stoke nationalism, and the leaked phone call, amidst this spike of nationalism, got rid of Paetongtarn..." www.cfr.org/blog/real-re...

A hello kitty themed tuk-tuk with a plushies, a hello kitty branded roof in pink has a sign in back that says in thai. “Stop harming Cambodian workers. They don't know anything about this. If you want to show off how cool you are, go live at the border instead. Don't pick on people who can't fight back. That's not cool at all, you bastards.'"

Don't think this has made it here but a tuk-tuk driver in bangkok (who has a hello kitty themed tuk-tuk) had a great sign criticising attacks & harassment against Cambodian migrant workers.

Photo credit & sign translation @summerpanadd.bsky.social

(Translation of sign in next post)

Former senior UN relief official Jan Eliasson has dismissed these air drops as an "ineffective sideshow". But of course, they're not aimed at stopping the genocide. Nothing Starmer does is aimed at stopping the genocide. Its aimed at managing the domestic politics of his complicity in the genocide.

I got a soft spot for this event cause I got to meet someone who I never thought I would get to meet at the 1st one. An artist whose work I've loved for ages.

What a moral abyss! It also shows how little the current US administration even understands the situation in relation to its own narrow self-interest in Myanmar’s rare-earth metal. As if these mines are still controlled by the junta or its allies 🤦‍♂️

Fantastic work! Great to see this published

New article published in @risjnl.bsky.social critiques the oft-repeated idea that 'we' are living in Age of Anxiety. I ask: who is the 'we'? A planetary we? Or an insecure (but provincial) Western-liberal subject?
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

University students feel ‘anxious, confused and distrustful’ about AI in the classroom and among their peers Whether students and faculty are actively using AI or not, it is having significant interpersonal, emotional effects on learning and trust in the classroom.

That ChatGPT has deteriorated relationships between students and tutors has become abundantly clear. This study shows how it also affects trust between students. This is sad. One of the best parts of my studies were the friendships I built with classmates.

theconversation.com/university-s...

1. This History Thread is about the military history of the Karen people of Burma (Myanmar.) Karen people have fought one of the longest-running resistance wars, spanning decades & have made recent gains vs Myanmar coup regime. #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar

""Frankly, we have imported antisemitism with the big numbers of migrants we have within the last 10 years." German Chancellor Friedrich Merz blamed the rise in antisemitism on migrants, calling it a "terrible challenge" for the country."

If you stop thinking that Germany's response to anything Israel is about Holocaust guilt and instead about rewriting German history, you'd understand German politics better. 🧵

Floods in Kachin State capital displace 1,000 residents; Brotherhood Alliance extends post-quake ceasefire to June 30 - DVB Floods in Kachin State capital displace 1,000 residents  Aid workers in the Kachin State capital of Myitkyina told DVB that nearly 1,000 residents in the township have fled their homes over the last f...

Aid workers in the Kachin State capital of Myitkyina told DVB that nearly 1,000 residents in the township have fled their homes over the last five days due to flooding since May 30.
Read more in today's Daily Briefing: english.dvb.no/floods-in-ka...

Very much looking forward to @mybisa.bsky.social conference in Brighton next year 👇👇👇

China also doesn’t call the shots. Beijing has undoubtedly increased pressure. Yet, it still struggles to keep pace with a dynamic situation that is anything but to its liking.

The weekend is almost here #MilkTeaAlliance & it's a busy one. Here is our upcoming events 🧵

To start with a recommendation @altsean.bsky.social latest book "Burma Women's Voices from the Revolution" is out in PDF, 40 short pieces from a wider cross section of women of Myanmar
(links in quoted)
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If this desperate plea doesn’t quite convince you to risk getting detained for a trip to Ohio… consider joining us in Brighton for BISA 2026 instead. Tough choice 😉

More desperate by the day.. I wonder what the Thais make of this 🤔

Arakan Army begins recruitment drive by placing travel ban on youth in Rakhine State - DVB The Arakan Army (AA) issued a directive on Thursday prohibiting men aged 18 to 45 and women aged 18 to 25, who are eligible to serve in its forces, from leaving Arakan State “until the emergency perio...

The Arakan Army (AA) issued a directive on Thursday prohibiting men aged 18 to 45 and women aged 18 to 25, who are eligible to serve in its forces, from leaving Rakhine State “until the emergency period ends" english.dvb.no/arakan-army-...

#WhatsHappeningInMyanmar
#RakhineState

24 May, Sat All day Taipei: "The 2nd Hong Kong Human Rights Art Exhibition" (Day 54/90) All day Vancouver: "Compassionate Light: Stories of Tibet by Pema Tseden" (Day 9/14) All day London, UK: Exhibition "Ways of Remembering" (Day 8/10) All day Bangkok: Exhibition Democratic jungle: The invisible struggles of the workers who power our world" (Day 1/28) All day KL, Malaysia: Exhibition: "Ruang Khas: the chronology of Balamurugan's Death" (Day 1/2) 7 – 10am KL, Malaysia: Panel "Strengthening Fair trial and ending torture in Malaysia & ASEAN region" 9am – 1pm UK: "Walk For IDPs" 10am – 6pm London, UK "Ways of Remembering" Global archivists sharing 10 – 11:30am Book Launch and Discussion “Connecting Through Comics in Southeast Asia” SEA Junction, Room 407-8, BACC 2 – 5pm London: "Food Fair & Cultural show" for Kachin IDPs 2 – 4pm Webinar: "The Fall of Suharto: Power, Accountability, and the Human Rights Legacy of the New Order 5 – 7pm Brighton, UK: Play "Time and Time Again" (1 of 2) 10pm – 12am Free burma action committee - san francisco weekly protest! This week at the Chinese Consulate office 25 May, Sun All day Taipei: "The 2nd Hong Kong Human Rights Art Exhibition" (Day 55/90) All day Vancouver: "Compassionate Light: Stories of Tibet by Pema Tseden" (Day 10/14) All day London, UK: Exhibition "Ways of Remembering" (Day 9/10) All day Bangkok: Exhibition Democratic jungle: The invisible struggles of the workers who power our world" (Day 2/28) All day KL, Malaysia: Exhibition: "Ruang Khas: the chronology of Balamurugan's Death" (Day 2/2) 11:15am – 1pm Paris: Solidarity Screening: Two Short Films Supporting Burma "Together" & "Wide awake" 1 – 3pm Chiang Mai: "Queer Feminist: Public Art Performance Voices of the Body, Art, and Resistance" 6 – 8pm London, UK "Ways of Remembering" Zine workshop 9 – 11pm Brighton, UK: Play "Time and Time Again" (2 of 2) 10pm – 12am Vancouver: "Democracy walk"

There are 18 events in the calendar this weekend: 4 exhibitions, 2 film events, 2 fundraisers, 2 play performances. 1 workshop, 1 protest, 1 art performance, 1 walk, 1 book launch & 3 talks.

All events can be found in the calendar here:
calendar.google.com/calendar/emb...
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Myanmar nationals deported by US being held in notorious junta detention centre The detainees are among 20 people handed over to the regime by the Trump administration since last month

Well tis the weekend #MilkTeaAlliance & it's a busy one, here is a 🧵of the upcoming events.

No country should be sending people back to Myanmar!
People deported by the US were handed to the Junta & have been detained in a centre known for abuse, sexual violence & torture.
Absolutely horrific
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မေလ၂၄ရက်နေ့ ၊ UK LKBC ရန်ပုံငွေပွဲ! ယူကေမှာရှိတဲ့ညီအစ်ကိုမောင်နှမများအားလုံးမင်္ဂလာပါ။ လန်ဒန်ကချင်နှစ်ချင်းအသင်းတော်(LKBC) ကနေ ဦးဆောင်ကျင်းပမယ့် မေလ ၂၄ ရက်နေ့ ရန်ပုံငွေပွဲကို လာရောက်ပါဝင်ဆင်နွှဲဖို့ အားလုံးကို နွေးထွေးစွာဖိတ်ခေါ်ပါတယ်။ဒီပွဲက ရရှိလာတဲ့ ရန်ပုံငွေတွေကို အသင်းတော်တည်ဆောက်ရေးလုပ်ငန်းများအတွက်သာမက အထူးသဖြင့် မြန်မာပြည်တွင်းမှာ စစ်ဘေးကြောင့် အိုးအိမ်စွန့်ခွါ ထွက်ပြေးတိမ်းရှောင်နေရတဲ့ ပြည်သူများနဲ့ အခြားသောအခက်အခဲများစွာ ကြုံတွေ့နေရတဲ့ ညီအစ်ကို မောင်နှမများထံ ပေးပို့လှူဒါန်းသွားမှာဖြစ်ပါတယ် ။ ဒီရန်ပုံငွေပွဲမှာ ကလေးငယ်တွေ နဲ့ ယူကေရောက် ကချင်လူငယ်များက ရိုးရာယဉ်ကျေးမှုအကအလှများ၊ သီချင်းသီဆိုဖျော်ဖြေမှုများနဲ့ တင်ဆက်သွားမှာဖြစ်ပြီး ၊ ကချင်တိုင်းရင်းသားတွေရဲ့ လက်ရာမြောက် အရသာရှိလှတဲ့ ရိုးရာအစားအစာမျိုးစုံကိုလဲ မြည်းစမ်းသုံးဆောင်နိုင်မှာဖြစ်ပါတယ် ။ ဒါ့အပြင် စိတ်လှုပ်ရှားစရာကောင်းတဲ့ ကံစမ်းမဲလက်မှတ်တွေလဲပါဝင်မှာဖြစ်လို့ ကံစမ်းနိုင်မယ့် အခွင့်အရေးတွေလဲရှိနေပါတယ်။ အတူတကွ ပါဝင်လှူဒါန်းရင်း၊ အစားအသောက်များသုံးဆောင်ရင်း၊ ဖျော်ဖြေတင်ဆက်မှုများခံစားရင်း အတူတကွဆုံဆည်းနိုင်ဖို့ အားလုံးကိုနွေးထွေးစွာ ဖိတ်ခေါ်လိုက်ပါတယ်။ Date: 24/05/2025 ( SATURDAY) Time: 2:00PM TO 5:00 PM Address: FELTHAM ASSEMBLY HALL, HOUNSLOW RD, FELTHAM. TW14 9DN

New event
📆24th May
🕑2pm UK Time

London Kachin Baptist Church host "Food Fair & Cultural show" to fundraise for rebuilding & to support IDPs in Kachin state, Myanmar.

details:
www.facebook.com/events/12286...

Much looking forward to meeting old friends at a fundraiser event organized by the Kachin diaspora in London tomorrow. Already got part of the menu leaked 😋😋😋 everyone welcome!