From Glenn Greenwald:

Imagine if a group of leading American liberals met on foreign soil with — and expressed vocal support for — supporters of a terrorist group that had (a) a long history of hateful anti-American rhetoric, (b) an active role in both the takeover of a U.S. embassy and Saddam Hussein’s brutal 1991 repression of Iraqi Shiites, (c) extensive financial and military support from Saddam, (d) multiple acts of violence aimed at civilians, and (e) years of being designated a “Terrorist organization” by the U.S. under Presidents of both parties, a designation which is ongoing? The ensuing uproar and orgies of denunciation would be deafening.

But on December 23, a group of leading conservatives — including Rudy Giuliani and former Bush officials Michael Mukasey, Tom Ridge, and Fran Townsend — did exactly that. In Paris, of all places, they appeared at a forum organized by supporters of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq — a group declared by the U.S. since 1997 to be “terrorist organization” — and expressed wholesale support for that group. Worse — on foreign soil — they vehemently criticized their own country’s opposition to these Terrorists and specifically “demanded that Obama instead take the group off the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations and incorporate it into efforts to overturn the mullah-led government in Tehran.”

Will soon-to-be-former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stand on the floor and denounce these American-hating, terrorist-loving traitors?

Nah.

From my dad, of course…

A hooded robber burst into a Texas Bank and forced the tellers to load a sack full of cash. On his way out the door a brave Texas customer grabbed the hood and pulled it off revealing the robber’s face. The robber shot the customer without a moment’s hesitation. He then looked around the bank and noticed one of the tellers looking straight at him. The robber instantly shot him also.

Everyone else, by now very scared, looked intently down at the floor in silence. The robber yelled, “Well, did anyone else see my face?”

There are a few moments of utter silence, in which everyone was plainly afraid to speak. Then one old man tentatively raised his hand and said, “I think my wife may have caught a glimpse of you.”

MYANMAR/BURMA — Following World War II, much attention in the Western World focused on the Cold War and the nuclear struggle between the Capitalist and Communist Nations. While the stakes in that conflict were certainly monstrous, the ending of 19th century colonialism has had longer-term consequences in Africa, Asia and, to a lesser extent, South America as American and European nations distracted by restoring their war-torn economies, allowed former colonial possessions to achieve independence.

More often than not, the former colonies did not generally redistribute internal land holdings (India and Pakistan are notable exceptions) or allow their external borders to be redrawn. In the 21st century this is a continuing challenge as ethnic groups, forced into unity with others in artificial nations, seek independence. All nations are artificial. When is right to decoloinialize?

From Narinjara:

Around 30 Arakanese gathered to stage a protest in front of the UN building in New York, USA, on the anniversary of the fall of Arakanese sovereignty on 31 December, 2010, demanding that their land be decolonized by Burma.

Ko Hla Htay, who is an organizer of the event, said, “Arakan was a sovereign country until 1784, when the Burmese king invaded. Since then, our people have fallen in one colony after another. Even though Burma regained independence in 1948, our land is still a colony under Burmese rulers. Our people call it a hidden colony. Because of this, we came to in front of the UN building to demand decolonization of our land.”

Replying to Narinjara’s question about why they claim Arakan is a colony, he said, “We have no right to learn our own literature or history, nor any rights to preserve our cultural heritage ourselves. We have neither human rights nor nationality under the current military government, There is no self-determination for our people despite that we have our own land and our own nationality. The facts are enough to tell that the state of Arakan is now a colony in Burma.”

We fought our bloodiest war in history over the right of a nation to hold itself together. Were we right?

Do what you can to make this a good morning, Myanmar.

From my dad, of course…

The following is reads as if it were the philosophy of Charles Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip.

You don’t have to actually answer the questions. Just ponder on them.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant.
4 Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special!!
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

Easier?

The lesson: The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials,
the most money or the most awards. They simply are the ones who care the most .

‘Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Taken!

MYANMAR/BURMA — This.

From The Irrawaddy:

In May 2010, Human Rights Watch took leading portrait photographer Platon to the Thai-Burmese border to photograph former political prisoners, civil society leaders, ethnic minority group members, journalists and other people in exile from their country, Burma.

All of those in this portrait portfolio have experienced human rights abuses in Burma and sought refuge in Thailand. Instead of being demoralized and defeated, they have united and use their shared experiences to educate and work for a better future for all of Burma’s people. Although forced into exile, they have not been silenced.

Truly thousands of words in three small pages.

Do what you can to make this a good morning, Myanmar.

From my dad, of course…

Ole’s car was hit by a truck in an accident. In court, the trucking company’s lawyer was questioning Ole.

“Didn’t you say, sir, at the scene of the accident, ‘I’m fine?'” asked the lawyer.

Ole responded, “Vell, I’ll tell you vat happened. I had yust loaded my favorite mule, Bessie, into DA…”

“I didn’t ask for any details,” the lawyer interrupted. “Just answer the question. Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, ‘I’m fine?'”

Ole said, “Vell, I had yust got Bessie into DA trailer and I vas driving down DA road…”

The lawyer interrupted again and said, “Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question.”

By this time, the Judge was fairly interested in Ole’s answer and said to the lawyer, “I’d like to hear what he has to say about his favorite mule, Bessie.”

Ole thanked the Judge and proceeded. “Vell, as I vas saying, I had yust loaded Bessie, my favorite mule, into DA trailer and vas driving her down DA highvay ven dis huge semi-truck and trailer ran da stop sign and smacked my truck right in da side. I vas trown into one ditch and Bessie vas trown into da other. I vas hurting real bad and didn’t vant to move. However, I could hear Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape yust by her groans. Shortly after da accident da Highway Patrolman, he came to da scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning so he vent over to her”

“After he looked at her and saw her fatal condition he took out his gun and shot her right ‘tween da eyes. Den da Patrolman, he came across da road, gun still smoking, looked at me and said, ‘How are you feeling?’ Now vat da hell vould YOU say?”

MYANMAR/BURMA — After a 13-year absence, Aung Sang Suu Kyi has returned to the pages of the Mainichi Daily News with her monthly Letter From Burma.

The beginning of the year is a time for renewal, reinvigoration, resolutions and remembrance of things past.

I look back on 2010 and find that parts of the year were so little memorable as to have disappeared wholly into the lost wastes of time. How did I spend the first day of 2010? I cannot remember.

I can say, however, that it could not have been comfortable. Renovations to my house had been started in December 2009 and stopped a few weeks later by order of the municipal authorities.

While my lawyers worked to get the order reversed, I spent several months living in the midst of cardboard boxes, thick woven blankets wrapped around unidentifiable objects, assorted suitcases and leaning towers of books.

Looking up from my bed, which was wedged between a high bookshelf, odd tables and a number of lumpy bundles, I had a good view of a peeling chunk of ceiling that afforded me many moments of contemplation on the nature of decrepitude and decay.

While the weather was cool, the jam-packed room seemed cozy, and the urban jungle camp-style of existence could be seen as something of an adventure. As the weather got hotter and hotter, however, the romance wore off, particularly as the scaffolding that had been erected against the outside walls was in such a position that the windows of the bedroom could not be opened and large parts of the night were passed in sleepless swelter. I did not feel in the best of health.

The first quarter of 2010 was not just a period of physical discomfort, it was also one of intense mental activity. My lawyers would visit me on occasion to discuss the appeal that we had lodged against the sentence that had been meted out to me at the Insein Jail court the previous year.I found the whole legal process fascinating and learnt much from my highly experienced and able lawyers.

I felt immense pride in them and in the Legal Committee of the National League for Democracy that had been working hard since 1995 to uphold the rule of law and to defend the rights of prisoners of conscience in our country. As one of the lawyers, U Nyan Win, was a member of the Executive Committee of the NLD, I also learnt much of what was happening in the political world outside my house and was able to participate to some extent in the decision making process of the party.

This, in a year crucial to the political scene in Burma, posed intellectual challenges which, for me, were of far greater importance than health considerations.

Around the time of the Burmese New Year that falls in mid-April, the court decreed that the renovations to my house could be continued. Overnight, what had been an enclosure cut off from the sounds and movements of the world outside became a place of constant noise and action as workmen swarmed all over the place.

There was so much to be done. A major project was repairs to the roof. For some years I had spent the monsoon months moving my bed, bowls, basins and buckets around my bedroom like pieces in an intricate game of chess, trying to catch the leaks and to prevent the mattress (and myself, if I happened to be on it) from getting soaked. Now that the roof would be made sound.

I could look forward to the next rains with equanimity. In Burmese, a sound roof is a metaphor for security, a reflection of the notion that if all was well at the very top, all would be well throughout an edifice.

The repairs and renovations meant there would be greater physical convenience and comfort in the future. But much more important than the material considerations were the human contacts that were made possible.

Every day for about five months (the work on the house went on from April to September with a break of three weeks in-between), I was able to acquaint myself with the lives and concerns of our workmen, to acquire a better understanding of the difficulties with which the labor force of our country had to cope and to get a clearer idea of their hopes and aspirations.

Another consequence of the renovation project was frequent discussions with the Special Branch and other forces responsible for the security of the premises. The bringing in of men and materials had to be negotiated on an almost daily basis, and we found that obstacles could be smoothed out with reasoning and flexibility on both sides.

2010 was a year that brought many improvements to my house, but what it brought to our country, which is the home of all our people, is a much more serious tale, to be told another time.

I would like to end this, the first article I have written since my release, by expressing my deep appreciation of the support and friendship the Mainichi Shimbun has given me over two decades and by sharing with its readership an extract from a poem that had a special significance for my late husband and that I cherish for its abiding wisdom:

…yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.

–from The Salutation to the Dawn, based on a Vedic hymn.

Aung San Suu Kyi

Do what you can to make this a good morning, Myanmar.

Happy New Year to you all…

If I have too much fun this coming year, I may have to do some jail time.

Stay healthy and thanks for keeping me around.

Ralphy hugs.

From 1730 today until 1830 tomorrow, I will be off-line. There will be no new posts during this time, nor will I be checking email. Go for a walk. Have coffee with a friend. Read a book.

MYANMAR/BURMA — I was very much prepared to not like Philip Bowring’s editorial in yesterday’ New York Times where he calls, reasonably I’m afraid to admit, for the end of sanctions on Myanmar. What Bowring, a journalist with extensive experience in Asia, misses is that the problem is not that we are imposing sanctions on Myanmar (and other nations in the world) but rather, as Amartya Sen intelligently writes, that the sanctions we are imposing are ineffective at best and either ignorant or criminal at worst.

Bowing writes:

It is time the West ended it sanctions against Myanmar, whether or not the opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Burmese exile groups agree. This is not to imply that the recent elections were anything other than rigged, or deny that the regime remains ruthless, corrupt and incompetent. But sanctions are neither in the interests of the West nor of the majority of Burmese for whom livelihood issues are the dominant concern.

Short of an attempt at a people power revolution, which most likely would be greeted by the military with the same brutality as in 1988 and 2007, a strategy of persistence and patience is the only way forward.

It is clear that sanctions have not only failed to achieve their aims, they could well have made the situation worse by increasing the anti-Western paranoia of the military leader Than Shwe, providing the regime with a useful enemy, and increasing the influence of neighboring states, notably China, which have scant regard for democracy or are driven entirely by commercial interests.

The failure of sanctions has underscored the decline of Western influence in this region. Travel sanctions against the families of Burmese generals have deprived them of Western education and contacts. Trade sanctions, which may have had some initial impact, are now easily avoided. The lack of foreign investment — other than in resources — is more the result of economic mismanagement than of sanctions.

The reason I wanted to not like Bowring’s Op-Ed piece was because I falsely made the leap that he wanted to open Myanmar to business for business sake. That is not the case.

He concludes:

Do not imagine that engagement will be anything other than a slow and frustrating process. Significant progress on the constitutional front is unlikely until social and economic issues have been addressed. But Myanmar is just as capable of fundamental reform as were Indonesia and Vietnam.

Engagement does not mean keeping quiet about human rights abuses. The more contact Myanmar has with the outside world — the more businessmen, academics, artists, politicians, journalists and tourists who visit — the stronger will be the impetus for change.

Coco Cola and Levi’s brought down communism in the former Soviet Union. The oligarchy that has replaced the Politburo is far from perfect, but it is a baby step down the correct path. Perhaps the same can be done for Myanmar.

What do you think?

Do what you can to make this a good morning, Myanmar.

The response I most often give to my students when they ask, “Why do I have to learn this stuff, it’s boring!” is “Do you want to be played?”

They of course respond, “No!” and I go on to tell them that if they don’t this stuff (most commonly maths, but other subjects like literature and history) those who do will play them and they’ll never even know that they’re being played.

My strategy is far from fool proof, students assume that their common sense or native intelligence will protect them from the players (this is itself a fallacy promulgated by the players of all types), but in the absence of a superior tool, I keep using this one.

A corollary to the importance of knowing stuff is the importance of knowing the difference between good stuff and bad stuff.

Carl Sagan is one of my personal heroes and his The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is one of the Eighteen Books That Have Shaped My World. In that book he provides his Baloney Detection Kit and it has served me well.

This video from Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, provides a variation on Sagan’s list.

I’m going to make copies of this URL to pass out to my students in a package of study helps that keep in my tool box.

0720: The letter i

From my dad, of course…

I took my wife to a restaurant. The waiter, for some reason, took my order first.

“I’ll have the strip steak, medium rare, please.”

He said, “Aren’t you worried about the mad cow?”

“Nah, she can order for herself.”

And then the fight started…

MYANMAR/BURMA — The list of 10 actions the world can take to benefit the People of Myanmar created by Amartya Sen, an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, contains no less than four items — nos. 9, 8, 7 and 6 — that directly address the central point of William Boot’s Burma 2011: Asian Friends Will Fill Junta Pockets.

Boot writes in The Irrawaddy:

The New Year seems likely to bring more foreign trade, more tourists and more lopsided development for Burma, with much of the financial benefits filling the bank accounts of junta leaders and their business cronies.

These are the predictions of a number of expert observers who have been looking into their crystal balls at what 2011 offers the military run country.

The first quarter of 2011 will see continuing hesitation from both the United States and the European Union on the future of economic sanctions following the November elections and freeing from house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, while Asian neighbors will step up a business-as-usual policy.

China and Thailand will remain the biggest foreign investors, with an intensification of gas, oil and hydroelectric dam projects.

Probably the biggest single new business development will be the start of a major port-industrial complex in and around Tavoy (Dawei) on Burma’s deep southeast coast. The Thai-led multibillion dollar project will likely see additional investment commitments from South Korean and Japanese firms.

“The new political facade of an elected parliament and the privatization of some state-owned enterprises to military-friendly business tycoons will bring a veneer of change for the better, but the wealth will remain largely in the same hands,” said a trade official at a Western embassy in Bangkok, speaking on condition of anonymity.

As Sen suggests, the world needs to starve out the dictators without starving the people. What Sen misses is that we won’t do this because when you really examine the business deals, it is impossible to distinguish between their business people and our business people.

Do what you can to make this a good morning, Myanmar.

1233: Why the other line moves faster