Mayor Of Kabul Says Get Out

Oh dear it seems that Hamid Karzai the Mayor of Kabul, since he can't travel outside of the city and has no base anywhere else in Afghanistan, has finally had it with U.S. and NATO forces fighting in Kandahar. Seems that the poor Mayor who is Pashtun and is running for re-election as the U.S. puppet President, is exerting some independence. Criticizing the very folks who are doing his fighting for him.

Afghan security at a seven-year low

Afghanistan demands 'timeline' for end of military intervention

His corrupt government of warlords, opium growers, and former Taliban, have made no inroads in developing real governance over the country. So facing the simple fact that Kandahar is the Pashtun stronghold, and Karzai is Pashtun, he is calling on us to all leave. Heck that's what the NDP and the left in Canada has been saying for the past two years.

Karzai says US, NATO created 'parallel' government

This is a phony war. The supposed development of a liberal capitalist economy, with liberal bourgoise enlightment ideals like education for women and girls, human rights, the end of torture and capital punishment, freedom of speech and religion, none of this exists in this failed Islamic State.

So what the heck are we there fighting for? Simply put so that this U.S. puppet the Mayor of Kabul can keep his job and keep his crony goverment in power sharing the spoils of war and international aid. And of course once again Karzai bleames others while the reality is that his is a corrupt regime.

Karzai fires prominent minister

'Nobody supports the Taliban, but people hate the government'

Mr. Karzai also blamed Afghanistan's endemic corruption in part on foreign contractors who "contract, then subcontract, and then another subcontract and then perhaps another subcontract." The process "means immense possibilities of major corruption."

The problems of Afghanistan are immense, at the heart of which lies the issue of trust. Time and again, in interviews with senior Western officials, I heard deep scepticism voiced about the ability of Karzai's government to use aid money wisely and effectively. As even the Afghan economics minister, Muhammed Jalil Shams, candidly admitted to me, for every $100 of Western aid given, only $40 finds its way to the intended projects. The rest disappears into the pockets of unscrupulous government officials. It is worth noting too that corruption surrounding the heroin trade, worth $3 billion a year, has further paralysed the government. A recent New York Times report identified the president's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, as a major beneficiary of the illegal trade. 'Corruption is the biggest problem facing Afghanistan,' Shams said. He went on to make the point that giving money to the Afghan government is still better than giving it to Western contractors to perform reconstruction jobs, when only 25 per cent of the money finds its way into the local Afghan community, but that is a tough argument to make to nervous aid donors and potential investors.

A recent survey conducted by the Asia Foundation is a good place to start. More than 6,500 Afghans were interviewed from all 34 of the country's provinces. It was the fourth public opinion poll conducted by the foundation since 2004, so it provides valuable perspective of the national mood of Afghans over time. Three quarters of those polled cite corruption as a major problem, especially at the highest levels of government. Fifty percent say it affects their daily lives. President Hamid Karzai's recent re-shuffling of his cabinet was intended to address this concern, which has undermined public confidence in his leadership.

Situation normal, all fouled up
Kabul businessman Nasrullah Rahmati rarely travels without a bodyguard but says his biggest security threat is not suicide bombers. "I have been robbed at gunpoint by our own police and I am more scared of them than I am of the Taliban," he said in his factory, where 250 workers make uniforms.
Afghanistan's politicians and government officials are as corrupt as the police, locals say, and a striking feature of Kabul is the "poppy palaces", mansions being built by strangely wealthy locals in a country that ranks behind only Somalia on the UN's list of the poorest and most dysfunctional countries. A British official working against the heroin trade jokes that the mansions are triumphs of "narchitecture". What is not so funny is the corrosive effect open corruption and poor governance have on the Afghan Government's legitimacy.
It seems to be conventional wisdom in Kabul that President Hamid Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai is an important drug dealer, a view many US officials privately share. Installed by the Americans, then endorsed in national elections, Hamid Karzai is likely to retain US support in elections due next year despite his ineffective rule. Karzai certainly has been a disappointment to the relatively few educated liberals in Afghanistan, who say he is not the champion of liberal democracy that he seems to many in the West. He has not championed women's rights with any great vigour and local journalist union officials say he warned them some time ago that his support for free speech did not extend to issues relating to the Islamic faith. When death sentences were pursued against two men for publishing unapproved translations of the Koran, the President offered only a muted response.


Despite all the vain glory announcements by those who support this war, and by our Government and military, we are not defending a liberal capitalist state, women still wear burkhas, child brides (female and male) are still traded amongst villagers, local patriarchs rule and dominate the culture, Islamic courts jail Christians as well as editors who speak out,
women are attacked for going to school, girls schools are burned, attacks on women have increased, opium production has increased, Pashtuns are fighting against our troops and will continue to as they see us as invaders.

Strict Islamic rules creep their way back into Afghans' lives

In Afghanistan, Islamists' influence widens

UN rights chief condemns Afghan executions

Women lose in deal made with devil

Afghan justice: 'They should die'

The perils of treating women in Afghanistan

Food Crisis, Poverty Spur Child Marriages, Grim Realities for Girls

A woman's lot
Violence and other abuse of Afghan women is enough to make you wonder what we're there fighting for, reports Paul McGeough from Kabul.
International human rights officials in Kabul are privately explosive about what they see as a marked slide in human rights generally, but for women in particular - especially in light of demands by officials that they must play the glad game. "Can't be all doom and gloom," a senior foreign official regularly exhorts his frustrated staff. Amid the many mistakes in Afghanistan, there have been two constants. One is the Western obsession with winning a war while forgetting the welfare of the Afghan people - particularly women. The other is reducing the equation to a simplistic contest between the "good" President Hamid Karzai and the "bad" Taliban. For women, this pincers grip has knocked their rights to the bottom of the agenda. "Karzai operates like a mafia crook. His regime is corrupt, brutal and repressive and it is based on the President's umpteen deals with the devil - fundamentalists, warlords and criminals," a senior human rights figure told me privately this week. "But Karzai never acts alone. His regime was supposed to be different to the Taliban… and the Australian and the French and all the other governments [still] back him."
Karzai lurches from one crooked or corrupt power base to the next - one day pardoning brutal rapists and saying nothing about it; the next celebrating the execution of small-time criminals while the Mr Bigs of the criminal and political worlds are untouchable.


The Pashtun are delibertely identified by the Western forces and their media as Taliban, when in fact they are not. But they are fighting us as Karzai well knows, which is why he has called for peace talks and has called for U.S. and NATO forces to stop doing reconstruction, invading villagers homes and demanding a time line for so called victory over the Taliban. Which will never happen. Because the Taliban do not exist, who we are fighting are the Pashtun peoples of Southern Afghanistan.

Opium war impasse
About 250 of them had come to hear Governor Asadullah Hamdam's arguments about why they should give up growing opium poppies which, for many, were their primary source of income.
Then one elder from the village of Sorkh Murgab stood up and said what many of the farmers must have been thinking.
"The people don't have jobs," he said, according to notes taken by US government field officer Eric Bone during the November 26 meeting last year.
"The (Government) promised projects but we haven't seen them," the elder said. "The (Government tells us) there is not enough security to do projects. In the daytime the ISAF (the International Security Assistance Force, comprising Australian and Dutch troops) is around but at night the Taliban come and force us to cultivate poppy. We have the poorest region, who can we listen to?"
Another elder stood up and joined the fray. "Assistance in the past two years has only been to the provincial administration, not to us. The people have not received assistance ... when people don't have jobs they go to the Taliban."
These exchanges, contained in a series of confidential documents written by anti-narcotic officials in Tarin Kowt and obtained by The Australian, reveal the magnitude of the task faced by Australia and the West in seeking to kill Afghanistan's opium trade, which reaps more than $4billion a year, almost half of Afghanistan's total income.


Karzai offers Taliban leader 'protection' for peace

Afghan president wishes he could down US planes

Britain 'bribes Afghans to fight Taleban'
Divided tribes make it hard to find elders who will helpTHE tribes in Helmand province have been heavily fractured by decades of fighting, and balance of power is now inextricably linked to the drugs trade.

An Interview About Afghani Women's Rights and Rebuilding in the Face of Politics
Homemakers Magazine editor-in-chief Kathy Ullyott reveals the complex situation the progress of women's rights are in the face of the presence of Western countries, Afghani politics, and nation rebuilding. This is the first of a three-part interview.
SD: Yes, exactly, the period of jihad against the Soviet Union, which we know was covertly backed by the U.S., the civil war, the emergence of the Taliban who were essentially let loose by Pakistan to make their way north…
KU: It’s very complicated, and that’s something else I discovered, and I still don’t think I’ve answered your question – as you say, it’s a big thing and impossible to get a handle on, some I realized there while talking to people. Here we think of the Taliban as some opposing force, but there the Taliban is really just the most organized of the many insurgent groups with different interests. Some of them are the Taliban, but others are warlords in a certain area, in a very ancient and tribal culture going back hundreds of years. Some of these are very vicious rivalries spanning loyalties. The Taliban tend to claim responsibility for any attacks, but that’s just PR. A lot of attacks have nothing to do with the Taliban. It’s really a very amorphous thing and very difficult to fight. And I’m not a military expert by any stretch of the imagination. But it makes the whole question very complex…
SD: People don’t realize the extent of the power of the warlords or how far it extends into rural areas…
KU: Totally – into the rural areas and into the government as well. The women I spoke to, the MP, and Horia…one of the greatest frustrations of the people there is that the government itself is so corrupt. And we’ve seen reports of that. That’s one of the things making progress so difficult. And of the things that created so much pessimism in the intervening years is that people within the country expected that (the ousting of the Taliban) was going to be a big change and that life was going to get better. And they are continuing to see that these warlords exercise great control over the government. The opium trade is one such situation. They (citizens) know that there are ‘bad guys’ still in power, the police force is still horribly corrupt, yet they had hoped-with the involvement of NATO – that the more developed world was going to help them get rid of this stuff. But it’s much harder than they expected.

We are not battling Islam we are battling a medival patriarchical fuedal culture which we are trying to transform into a liberal capitalist democracy. We are failing just like the Russians and before them the British.

Tariq Ali talks tough
The West doesn’t totally appreciate one simple factor: that the Afghan people do not like being occupied by foreign powers,” he said. “Most people don’t like being occupied by foreign powers.” Ali argued that Hamid Karzai’s legitimacy is complicated due to Karzai’s construction on prime Kabul property. He added that a New York Times report links his brother to drug smuggling (Karzai has denied the charges).

Retired general looks back on Russia's Afghan war
Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times
THE GENERAL'S VIEW: Retired Lt. Gen. Ruslan Aushev says the key to U.S. success would be to help set up a sovereign government. Moscow and Washington have made the same mistakes in their conflicts there, says Ruslan Aushev. He offers advice for the U.S. as it enters the eighth year of war.We said, "Afghans, you are living according to the Soviet way of life, where religion is separated from the state, mullahs should be expelled, religion is the opiate of the people. You'll be living in collective farms. You will have pioneer camps, Comsomol [youth] organizations, and so on and so forth." The Soviet way of life in a country that still lives in the Dark Ages!And what did you say? You said, "We are giving you democracy." They cannot even translate the term properly. Under us there was a lot of corruption, and today there's a lot of corruption. Neither under you nor under us did an ordinary person get anything

There has been massive internal displacement, especially in the south as a result of the insurgency - which has intensified since 2006. The number of people being killed in the Afghan conflict has soared in recent years as violence has returned to levels not seen since the Taleban were driven from power in 2001.
The UN says that from January to August 2008 1,445 civilians were killed - a rise of 39% on the same period for 2007. Most deaths were attributed to the Taleban but the number of civilians killed by pro-government forces - the majority in air strikes - also rose sharply. Afghan and foreign forces say hundreds of militants have also been killed - it is impossible to verify precise numbers. Military fatalities among foreign and Afghan forces have also soared.

A number of analysts also say the United States and the broad coalition of international actors in Afghanistan will have to vastly improve reconstruction efforts that have failed to resolve severe problems since the Taliban's ouster in 2001. Drought, poverty, and persistent unemployment (World Factbook) in one of the world's poorest countries now mix with a resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda as chief concerns for the international community. Aid organizations are warning food shortages and early snows could leave as many as eight million Afghans starving this winter (IRIN) -- 30 percent of the population. Some observers now say famine will outpace violence as Afghanistan's top crisis in coming months. "Whatever the effect of insurgent violence on the UN-mandated mission in Afghanistan," the London-based Royal United Services Institute said in an October briefing, "it is widespread hunger and malnutrition that will place a greater obstacle in its progress."


SEE:
Afghanistan the UNwinnable war
Afghanistan A Failed State


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Gay Old Communists

I found this terrific graphic at one of my anarchist pal's blogs; Kehlkopfmikrofon . It visually reveals the sinister link between the Gay Agenda and the Communist Agenda to undermine faith, family and the American way. Say it ain't so.

Russians in love.

"Thank you comrade for rescuing me from Nazism."





















And don't forget them commies were once America's friends during WWII.



















Which of course was an embarrassment at the end of the war so they created a witch hunt to purge commies from America.

After all as we all know in Uncle Joe's Russia then and still today, just like in Bonapartist Iran, there are no gays just happy peasants and the Glorious Soldiers of the Red Army.

Just like there were no Gay men or women in America until they were discovered after WWII.

Before Joseph McCarthy began his witch hunt began against commies in the U.S. State department he began with a witch hunt on homosexuals.

And of course homosexuals did not exist in America before they were publicly outed post WWII by McCarthy's HUAC. Because his witch hunt began before Kinsey published his studies on American Sexuality.

In fact thanks to HUAC's witch hunts the commies were some of the folks who then were active in creating the first Male Homosexual Society to fight for their rights; The Mattachine Society.

Like dear departed Harry Hay. Who was not only a communist but a Wobbly and a Pagan.

You can't hardly separate homosexuals from subversives ... A man of low morality is a menace to the government, whatever he is, and they are all tied up together. —Senator Wherry in New York Post, 1950 It may come as a surprise that the gay movement not only began in the 1950s, but that its founders were former communists and radicals. Harry Hay, who wrote the first call for a gay movement in 1948, had been a party member for 20 years, active in labor organizing and cultural work. The fact that these organizers had already spent most of their lives outside the mainstream no doubt prepared them for the risks involved in forming a gay organization. The modern gay movement in America began in Los Angeles, a city that symbolized the mobile, affluent lifestyle of Americans after the War. The Mattachine Foundation (to be distinguished from the post-1953 Mattachine Society) was formed in the winter of 1950 by a group of seven gay men gathered together by Hay. The name refers to the medieval Mattachines, troupes of men who traveled from village to village, taking up the cause of social justice in their ballads and dramas. By sharing and analyzing their personal experience as gay men, the Mattachine founders radically redefined the meaning of being gay and devised a comprehensive program for cultural and political liberation.

In 1951, Mattachine began sponsoring discussion groups. Years before women's “consciousness-raising groups,” Mattachine provided lesbians and gay men a similar opportunity to share openly, for the first time, their feelings and experiences.

So in effect the so called 'Gay Agenda' would never had come about if it weren't for Americas Uncle Joe, and his rabid anti-commie aide, Roy Cohn who was gay. Proving again that homophobia is created by self hate and denial. The Right Wing created the modern gay movement thanks to their need to repress freedom. Ironic eh?

Cohn confers with Senator McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy Hearings

In 1952 Joseph McCarthy appointed Roy Cohn as the chief counsel to the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. Cohn had been recommended by Edgar Hoover, who had been impressed by his involvement in the prosecution of the Rosenburgs. Soon after Cohn was appointed, he recruited his best friend, David Schine, to become his chief consultant.

For some time opponents of McCarthy had been accumulating evidence concerning his homosexual relationships. Rumours began to circulate that Cohn and David Schine were having a sexual relationship. Although well-known by political journalists, it did not become public until Hank Greenspun published an article in the Las Vagas Sun in 25th October, 1952.

And of course these folks who fought for Gay Rights in those dark days coincidentally came from the Left Coast, home to the Beats and the rising Youth Culture that would create a new American 'Counter Culture' in the Sixties. Influenced as they were by Kinsey and the rediscovery of earlier American Radicalism that the post war social amnesia of the Witch Hunts had failed to suppress.

The Daughters of Bilitis /bɪ’li:tis/ (DOB), considered to be the first lesbian rights organization in the United States, was formed in San Francisco, California in 1955. The group was conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were considered illegal and thus subject to raids and police harassment. It lasted for fourteen years and became a tool of education for lesbians, gay men, researchers, and mental health professionals.

As the DOB gained members, their focus shifted to providing support to women who were afraid to come out, by educating them about their rights and their history. Historian Lillian Faderman declared, "Its very establishment in the midst of witch-hunts and police harassment was an act of courage, since members always had to fear that they were under attack, not because of what they did, but merely because of who they were."

Daughters of Bilitis (D.O.B.) was founded in San Francisco, California in 1955. The name of the group comes from the book Song of Bilitis by French author Pierre Louy, which contains love poems between women. In 1955, the group only had eight members. In the years to come, the group grew considerably. D.O.B. provided a place for lesbians to meet outside the bars, documented their lives, and promoted civil rights. One of their most significant achievements was a national newsletter for lesbians, titled The Ladder. They soon started other U.S. chapters, and even one in Australia. D.O.B. held their first national convention in San Francisco in 1960.

For a time, Daughters of Bilitis and The Mattachine Society joined together in "Common Cause". Some women even wrote for Mattachine's ONE Magazine. As the women's movement began to grow in the U.S., it became apparent that the men of Mattachine showed little desire to champion women's issues. At the same time, the women's movement was not particularly welcoming. The National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) was afraid that lesbian involvement would only bring further hostility from the media and a male dominated world. They called lesbians "the lavender menace" and sought to eject them from the movement.

Revisionist history continues today in America in Tom Brokaw's new book on the Sixties that overlooks the importance of the Mattachine Society and the Lesbian; Daughters of Bilitis Society and the rise of the Gay Rights Movement. .

BOOM! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today shares Brokaw's perspectives and personal accounts of 1960s issues including Vietnam and the civil rights movement.

One glaring Boomer-era omission, however, was the gay rights movement. Brokaw, on a recent CNN appearance, says that the gay rights movement "came later," and he didn't intend to slight the movement by not including it.

While the impact of the movement was marked notably in the late 1960s by the Stonewall riots, its momentum and progress were due in no small part to the work of Dr. Frank Kameny, who has written a letter to Brokaw and representatives of Random House Publishing Group.

"I write with no little indignation at the total absence of any slightest allusion to the gay movement for civil equality in your book 'Boom! Voices of the Sixties'. Your book simply deletes the momentous events of that decade which led to the vastly altered and improved status of gays in our culture today."

Ralph, a man approaching his eighties and one of my regulars at the Café, had a good chuckle when I told him about my research for this story. He said "I can answer that easily. The way we met in the old days was the three B’s: Balconies, Bushes and Baths; those are all gone now." Ralph stumbled into the gay scene in the ’50s by accident; he loved watching movies, especially John Wayne westerns. He was surprised by the number of people that would congregate in the dark balconies of the theaters. Then, when someone sat right next to him in an empty row he caught on. After that, Ralph became an avid moviegoer since that was the easiest way for him to meet other men.

Camille, in his 80s, spoke about the baths in New York City. He has a fondness for that era in the mid-’60s because "it provided a sanctuary where we could truly be ourselves. It was more than a place for sex, it was our entire social outlet. We could talk openly there but we couldn’t associate with one another in the real world. It was also a pure time, before AIDS entered the gay scene and changed everything."

Some men, especially those who grew up in rural areas, also spoke about "the bushes." Tom, a colleague in the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus, described growing up queer in Ohio in the early sixties as "not fun and very lonely." He heard rumors about the city park and that became the only means he could connect with other gay men. He said it was very dangerous and he was assaulted there once.

Clearly not all men met through sexual encounters back then. Some, like Jim, 74, sought out a socio-political gathering of gay men known as the Mattachine Society. He felt that finding the courage to attend that meeting was the only way to meet other men like himself.

The next generation of men I spoke with, the men who came out in the ’70s and ’80s, had new means available: personal ads and the bars. Although gay bars have been in existence for ages, people felt safer to venture out and frequent them, given the end of police raids thanks to Stonewall and the emerging gay rights movement.

Even today America hides the truth about the history of the Gay Rights movement because it is not just the history of the counter culture but reveals that mass movements are the direct result of the Right Wing Political Agenda to suppress freedom. This is the dialectic in action. As Michael Focualt points out in his History of Sexuality; suppress human rights around sexuality and you create movements for human rights for sexual freedom.

Foucault argues that we generally read the history of sexuality since the 18th century in terms of what Foucault calls the "repressive hypothesis." The repressive hypothesis supposes that since the rise of the bourgeoisie, any expenditure of energy on purely pleasurable activities has been frowned upon. As a result, sex has been treated as a private, practical affair that only properly takes place between a husband and a wife. Sex outside these confines is not simply prohibited, but repressed. That is, there is not simply an effort to prevent extra-marital sex, but also an effort to make it unspeakable and unthinkable. Discourse on sexuality is confined to marriage.

That repression is something the right wing in Canada, America, Israel, Russia and Iran share in common to this day. And the fight for freedom is always counter to that agenda. Which is why the fight for gay rights is the fight for human rights.

The history of the world is none other than
the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
-George Hegel, 1821

SEE

War On Satan the Sodomite

Out Of The Hogwarts Broom Closet

Ezra Says Gay Bashers Are Muslims

Outing BP

Procreation To Save The White Race

Marx on Bigamy

Polygamy is NOT Polyamoury

The Sanctity of Marriage Debate

Whose Family Values?

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
witch hunt, Joseph McCarthy, Harry Hay, Mattachine Society, HUAC, gay rights, the sixties, Russia, Daughters of Bilitis, homosexual agenda, communist agenda, gay, homosexuality, Tom Brokaw

Burma's Blood Rubies

More than 90 per cent of the world's rubies come from Burma

SEE:

Tokenism

Canada's Not So White Knight In Burma

Burma Watch

Blogs Left and Right Unite

Blogging Burma

Myanmar Ghost Dance

No Reincarnation Without Permission

The Road Out of Mandalay

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
saffron revolution gems, Buddhist,, Myanmar, Burma,, rubies,, mining,

Blogs Left and Right Unite

Over Burma and the Saffron Revolution.

On those rare occasions something happens in the world of realpolitik that despite our differences the left and right in the Canadian political blogosphere unite over. In this case it's the peaceful protests in Burma and the Junta's over the top might is right response.

Our shared belief in the 'liberal' values of freedom, liberty,democracy, and human rights are affronted by the actions of these tin pot tyrants and call for our protests in solidarity.

Blogging Tories Comment:

The Monks' revolution
Daimnation!
2007-09-26 06:52:52

Jack’s Newswatch

Burma death toll may be ‘far greater’ than reported:

Dr Roy's Thoughts: Free Burma!!!!!

GayandRight

Silent About Burma

The military dictatorship in Burma must be overthrown...a comment from Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic.

Progressive Bloggers Comment.

BURMA:WATCHING BURMA:ANOTHER SOURCE OF INFORMATION:

BURMA'S SAFFRON REVOLUTION!!!! HOORAY!!!

'Support The Monks' Protest in Burma' - Facebook Group Growing Massively

Soldiers fire into crowds of protesters in Burma - Now is the time for Canada to stand up and support the protestors!

Canadian Demonstrators Protest Violence Against Monks and Civilians In Burma

Unfortunately there is a dirth of comment from the right on Burma.

Guess they had a busy week interpreting Harpers public political pontifications in the Big Apple, and reading the entrails from a week of bleeding internal Liberal Party Ides of August, etu brute and dealing with Afghanistan President Karzai's new pals; The Taliban.

Progressive Bloggers have way more comments, two pages worth. Way more than from the right who claim to be the patrons of freedom and liberty.



SEE:

Blogging Burma

Myanmar Ghost Dance

No Reincarnation Without Permission

The Road Out of Mandalay

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
saffron revolution Junta, Buddhist,, Myanmar, Burma,, resistance,, blogging burma,, insurgency

Blogging Burma

Here are some live updates provided by bloggers in contact with Burma/Myanmar and an interesting post on Chinese bloggers who are talking about the Saffron revolution occurring there.

UPDATE FROM INSIDE MYANMAR…

Killing kind compassionate beings

China: Bloggers side with Burmese monks

Some good news has come out of Burma.

Soldiers Back Down in Mandalay

Letter 'reveals dissent in Burmese army'
by Matthew Weaver and Mark Tra, The Guardian (UK), September 27, 2007
Yangon, Myanmar -- Some Burmese troops have declared their support for the Buddhist monks who have led mass protests in the first apparent sign of disaffection in the army, exiled Burmese sources said today

And the Buddhist Channel is covering all news stories on what is happening in the country as the military junta shuts down all communications, internet and cell phone connections with the outside world.

To enforce their regime of censorship they have killed a journalist. Sends a message.

At least 10 people have been killed in two days of violence in the country's largest cities, including a Japanese cameraman who was shot when soldiers with automatic rifles fired into crowds demanding an end to 45 years of military rule.

Thu 27 Sep 2007
Inside Burma

From Ko Htike Blog

Dear All,

I sadly announce that the Burmese military junta has cut off the internet connection throughout the country. I therefore would not be able to feed in pictures of the brutality by the brutal Burmese military junta.

I will also try my best to feed in their demonic appetite of fear and paranoia by posting any pictures that I receive though other means (Journos!! please don’t ask me what other means would be??). I will continue to live with the motto that “if there is a will there is a way”.

We probably need to lobby the Chinese government or UN envoy to Burma to ask the junta to switch on the Internet. Please!

Good idea here is an online petition with over 166,000 signatures!!!

To Chinese President Hu Jintao and the UN Security Council:

We stand alongside the citizens of Burma in their peaceful protests. We urge you to oppose a violent crackdown on the demonstrators, and to support genuine reconciliation and democracy in Burma. We pledge to hold you accountable for any further bloodshed.

And of course its all about oil.

Democracy, democracy, no it is oil, oil in Myanmar

Myanmar is one of the world's oldest oil producers, exporting its first barrel in 1853. Rangoon Oil Company, the first foreign oil company to drill in the country, was created in 1871. Between 1886 and 1963, the country's oil industry was dominated by Burmah Oil Company (BOC), which discovered the Ychaugyaung field in 1887 and the Chauk field in 1902. Both are still in production.

China is Burma's biggest oil and gas partner. But Burma also has partners in oil and gas with France (Total), South Korea (Daewoo), India, Thailand in partnership with Oman and Malaysia. And with Unocal, the American company China wanted to buy, and who once had Hamid Karzai as a director.

We noted two years ago that oil deals were lubricating the India-Burma rapprochement, which resulted in a brutal crackdown on ethnic guerillas seeking independence from India, who had theretofore been using Burmese territory as a staging area.

The US firm Unocal recently had its own interests in construction of a pipeline across Burma to Thailand. In 2004, Unocal settled in a case brought under the US Alien Tort Claims Act charging the company was complicit with forced labor and other rights abuses by the Burmese regime. (Radio Free Asia, Dec. 18, 2004) In 2005, Unocal's French partner Total agreed to compensate victims to the tune of 6 million euros ($7.2 million), paid into a fund for humanitarian projects. (EarthRights International, Nov. 29, 2005) The Yadana pipeline is functioning today—and being protested by global ecologists for its impacts on the sensitive rainforest regions it cuts through. (Qatar Gulf Times, Sept. 4, 2007)

But now that Burma is integrating with India—which is, in turn, seeking a new gas pipeline with Iran—the Rangoon junta has manifestly outlived its usefulness to the US elites.

Protests should be aimed at these countries and their companies as well.

In 2007, nine foreign oil companies (Myanmar Petroleum Resources Ltd, Focus Energy Ltd, Westburne, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, China National Petrochemical Corporation, Sinopec, Essar, Goldpetrol and a representative of the Kalmik republic) are involved in 16 onshore blocks to explore new areas (EP blocks), to enhance recovery from existing fields (IOR blocks), to reactivate fields where production has been suspended (RFS blocks) and to produce (PSCs).

For the offshore area, Total, Petronas Carigali Myanmar, Daewoo, PTT-EP, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, China National Petrochemical Corporation, Essar, Gail and Rimbunam (Malaysia) are exploring and/or developing 29 blocks

Maybe George Bush could lecture his allies on their principles.

South Korea's Daewoo International Corp (047050.KS: Quote), which leads a multi-billion dollar energy project in Myanmar, will not alter its investments there following a violent government crackdown on protests, the company said on Friday.

Daewoo operates Myanmar's large A-1 and A-3 natural gas fields, South Korea's largest overseas energy project, which hold 4.53-7.74 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of recoverable reserves.

"We have gas fields under production and three other fields under exploration, which are all long-time investments. They can't be easily changed because of domestic issues," said Cho Sang-hyun, spokesman for Daewoo International.

"Politics is politics. Economics is economics."

In December, South Korean prosecutors charged 14 defense industry executives, including some from Daewoo International, with illegally exporting to Myanmar equipment and technology for making tens of thousands of artillery rounds.

Unlike Daewoo, Total is already aware of its vulnerable position as it has a whole website devoted to its Burma operations. About how important it is that they invest in Burma so as to improve human rights in the country.

Despite international condemnation of the Myanmarese government, competition for oil and gas will likely limit pressure on it from China and others in the region.

"A humanitarian catastrophe might shift Chinese behavior, but right now Beijing probably believes that access to Burma's energy potential and its strategic location still outweigh the political costs," said Roberto M. Herrera-Lim, an Asia analyst at the Eurasia Group in Washington.

Total and Unocal (now Chevron) made headlines in 1996 when Myanmarese nationals brought a case against Unocal for human-rights violations related to the Yadana Project, in the Gulf of Martaban. Cases were also brought against Total.

Both companies maintain interests in Myanmar.

"Total's decision to stay in Myanmar, unlike a number of Western companies that have withdrawn, was a deliberate choice, but it does not signal approval of any regime. Rather, it expresses the Group's deep-seated belief that economic development and human-rights progress go hand in hand," stated Total on the company Web site.

Complicating interests further, the Yadana Project now provides Thailand with one-third of its gas, according to Herrera-Lim. And gas, in turn, fires the plants that generate approximately 70 percent of Thailand's electricity.

Like the human rights of this foreign worker from Singapore who was attacked by Burmese military forces.

Below is an actual of what had happen yesterday on 27/9/07.

I am a Singaporean working in Myanmar for the past 11 years. I was on my way to office( near Thuwana area) at around 4 to 4.30pm when the riot police block the road near "Super one, ILBC area". I stop my car with my wife and walk out. suddenly riot police and soldiers drove the truck around the corner and start firing shots at the crowd. we quickly ran to the side and squat down near the wall.

The soldiers came down and start to shoot at us. I was shot twice but i did not know what hit me. My both leg were bruised. the soldiers and police kicked us and the rest of the crowds into the drain and shouted that they would kill us if we look at them.

We were forced to stay in the drain for 15 mins and gather by the into a group.
A commander came and gather his troops and drove off to Tamwe direction.
After that ,i looked at my injures and and found injures on my left and right legs.
My wife found the "40mm riot control munnition" empty cartridge that the soldiers shoot at me.

I would like the embassy and media to know the actions of this army.
We are just ordinary citizen going to work and they just shot at us for no reason.
Imagine what they would do to the protesters!

I would like the Singapore government would make a strong stand against this violence crack down on the monks and people.

attached is the photo of my injures .
I have been attended by a private doctor on my injures.
The doctor said i was very lucky that the shot missed the groin area.

Another blogger from Singapore writes; The World Is Responding ... ... At Last

The current protest movement needs to be put in context. It first arose from public protests over increased prices, and from a long term assault being made by the Military City on the Hill against the people of Burma.

Shoot on Sight
The Ongoing Military Junta Offensive Against Civilians in Eastern Burma

Background: Since August 19, 2007 there has been a series of peaceful protests across Burma as monks, activists and ordinary citizens challenge misrule and repression.

Meanwhile, in eastern Burma, a 45-year catastrophe has reached one of its worst moments, as the country's military junta escalates its attacks against the area's ethnic minorities. The government's efforts to assert control over ethnic border areas have emptied over 3,000 villages in a decade, an average of almost one village each day over the past ten years. The forces of Burma's military junta, the State Peace & Development Council (SPDC), are mortaring villages, looting and burning homes to the ground, and destroying crops in an effort to obliterate the livelihoods of rural communities. Burmese soldiers are ordered to shoot civilians on sight.

JUNTA IN THE JUNGLE

Myanmar's secretive military government has allowed foreign journalists into its new capital of Naypyitaw, which is being built from scratch in the jungle.

The military leadership moved Myanmar's capital (more...) upcountry to a construction site in a jungle town of Naypyitaw, 385 kilometers (240 miles) north of Yangon, in late 2005. Government employees were given no warning and were expected to relocate with their families immediately.

The reasons for the sudden move are not clear. Some say the military was paranoid after the United States invaded Iraq, while others blame astrological forecasts. Another theory is the junta is following the example of former Burmese kings who liked to move capitals to mark a new era.

The jungle city now has half a dozen hotels, which were fully booked by diplomats and other people attending the ceremony. Access to the city is still limited -- there are only three flights a week from Yangon, while the journey by car takes seven hours along a two-lane highway.

Western journalists reported Myanmar's new seat of government to be eerily quiet, with dusty hills dominating the horizon and few people on the city's eight-lane highways.

"It's bizarre," a senior Western diplomat in Yangon, who asked not to be identified, told DER SPIEGEL last year (more...). "It wasn't designed to be a workable city. It was designed to isolate. ... This is a country that's trying to close itself in."

Myanmar's generals build their 'Xanadu' By Larry Jagan BANGKOK - For months Yangon has been rife with rumors that the country's military rulers were planning to retreat to the hills in central Myanmar for fear of a foreign invasion from the sea. But according to the blueprints for the new military complex, it is actually going to replace the inland port city of Yangon, with its famed shimmering pagodas, as the country's capital. "This is typical of [military ruler] Than Shwe's pretensions to be the new Burmese monarch. Like the Burmese kings who ruled before him he is building a new palace-capital for posterity," said Thailand-based senior Myanmar analyst Win Min. But according to diplomats and government officials in Yangon, the real reason for the relocation inland to Pyinmana, 400 kilometers to the north, is for safety from possible outside intervention.

SEE:

Myanmar Ghost Dance

No Reincarnation Without Permission

The Road Out of Mandalay

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saffron revolution Junta, Buddhist,, Myanmar, Burma,, resistance,, insurgency

No Reincarnation Without Permission

Perhaps they are afraid of Chairman Mao....

China Says Tibetans Need Permission To Reincarnate

“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1.

...returning as Chairman Meow.

One thing I did learn from His Holiness was that everything experiences reincarnation. Animals, insects, and other creatures also can be reincarnated as something else. I had thought that reincarnation was only towards human beings but I was wrong. In fact, it turns out that being an animal is one of the lowest forms of life you could come back as. I can see where that is coming from, it just never occurred to me that coming back as a dog or cat would be really that bad.
As humans, if we live a good life, we will be rewarded in our next life, but if not we will be punished; we would come back as an animal maybe? But fear not, because animals have just as much of a chance in being rewarded in their next life. Say you are a cat. You could be a really good cat, treat others kindly and live a very peaceful life, and you could be reincarnated as a human, which is a step up from being a cat.

Sacred Cat of Burma Legend

The legend also has it that when a priest dies, his soul was transmigrated into the body of the cat and upon the cats' death the priest's soul's transition into heaven had been accomplished - and according to Major Russell Gordon "But woe also to he who brings about the end of one of these marvelous beasts, even if he did not mean to. He will suffer the most cruel torments until the soul he has upset is appeased."

Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do

Research Shows That a Certain Cat Parasite Affects Our Behavior and Mood

Kevin Lafferty is a smart, cautious, thoughtful scientist who doesn't hate cats, but he has put forth a provocative theory that suggests that a clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale.

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways.

Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.

Lafferty argues in a research paper published Aug. 2 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biology, that aggregate personality types, or what cultures tend to be like, fit neatly with the effects that the parasite produces in individuals.

So that led to a basic question:

Can a common cat parasite account for part -- even if only a very small part -- of the cultural differences seen around the world?

If humans wiped themselves out, where would that leave religion ...

In the paws of Buddhist cats.
Cameron Davie, Springwood

Of course the real reason for the ban is that the Chinese have their own pretender to the Tibetan Throne in place.

The youngest political prisoner

By Benjamin Kang Lim

Reuters
Sunday, April 23, 2006; 11:32 PM

A Tibetan youth considered by rights groups to be the world's youngest political prisoner turns 17 on Tuesday, 11 years after disappearing from public view when he was named the Himalayan region's second-ranking religious figure.

The whereabouts of Gendun Choekyi Nyima -- who human rights watchdogs say has been living under house arrest since Tibet's exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, appointed him the 11th Panchen Lama -- is one of China's most zealously guarded state secrets.

A Canadian official pressed for access to Nyima during a visit to Tibet this month, but it fell on deaf ears.

Chinese officials parroted their assertion that Nyima was "safe and comfortable and wishes to maintain his privacy," said the Canadian, who requested anonymity.

The Dalai Lama's unilateral announcement embarrassed and enraged China's atheist Communists, who dropped Nyima's name from a shortlist of candidates and endorsed Gyaltsen Norbu as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989.

While Nyima languished in limbo, Norbu has studied Buddhism for years and made his debut on the world stage this month at China's first international religious forum since 1949.

"China made a huge gamble in 1995 when it decided to appoint its own Panchen Lama. It seems this has failed completely so far," said Robbie Barnett, a Tibetologist at Columbia University.

Party hardliners have sought to undermine the Dalai Lama's influence in Tibet and appear to be dragging their feet on reconciliation in the hope that the headache would disappear after the 70-year-old Dalai Lama dies.

By sticking firmly to its Panchen Lama choice, China may have deprived itself of having a say in the next Dalai Lama.

"China has lost a great opportunity to control the selection and training of the next Dalai Lama," Wang Lixiong, author of two books on Tibet that are banned in China, told Reuters.

Tibetan tradition calls for the Dalai and Panchen lamas to approve each other's reincarnations.

New Legal Measures Assert Unprecedented Control Over Tibetan Buddhist Reincarnation

The Chinese government State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) issued legal measures on July 18, 2007, that if fully implemented could transform Tibetan Buddhism as it exists in China into a less substantial, more completely state-managed institution, and further isolate Tibetan Buddhist communities from their counterparts outside China. The "Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism" (MMR) (Web site of the SARA (in Chinese), 18 July 07) take effect on September 1. The MMR (ICT translation) would empower the Chinese Communist Party and government to gradually reshape Tibetan Buddhism by controlling one of the religion’s most unique and important features—lineages of teachers that Tibetan Buddhists believe are reincarnations and that can span centuries. As elderly reincarnations pass away, the measures authorize government officials to decide whether or not a reincarnation is eligible to reincarnate, and if one is permitted, the government will supervise the search for the subsequent reincarnation, as well as religious education and training.

The MMR substantially expands the geographical reach of government oversight of reincarnation because the measures will be effective throughout China, not just in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where less than half of China's Tibetan Buddhists live (according to official census data, 2.43 million of the 5.42 million Tibetans in China were located in the TAR). Once the measures take effect, they will apply to every reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist teacher who is recognized and seated in a monastery. Until now, the Chinese government has intervened only in the selection and installation of exceptionally important Tibetan Buddhist teachers. Most famously, China's State Council in 1995 installed a boy, Gyaltsen Norbu, as the 11th Panchen Lama after declaring the Dalai Lama’s recognition of Gedun Choekyi Nyima as the Panchen Lama to be "illegal and invalid." The government has approved only 30 Tibetan Buddhist reincarnations in the TAR in the period following 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled to India and the Party instituted "democratic reforms," according to a May 2004 State Council White Paper on "Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet," (Xinhua, 23 May 04). Since it is unlikely that any of the approvals occurred until the early 1980s, when the government began to allow Tibetans (and other Chinese citizens) to resume religious activity, the number of government-approved reincarnations in the TAR appears to have averaged less than two per year.

SEE:

Same Old Olympics

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Buddha, Tibet, reincarnation, China, human rights, Dali Lama, Buddhist,