Mano Singham tells us:

I have praised Glenn Greenwald before but today’s article on the WikiLeaks releases and the response of the major American media is absolutely brilliant in its analysis. It is an absolute must-read.

Yes it is.

MYANMAR/BURMA — Robert Kelley is a recently retired director of the International Atomic Energy Agency in nuclear non-proliferation efforts. He is not optimistic about Myanmar remaining a non-nuclear nation, yet he notes, and I agree with, the fact that Myanmar, like North Korea, lacks the level of technological sophistication necessary to produce nuclear weapons by itself.

Myanmar is not, however, by itself.

From The Irrawaddy:

The good news is that the technology is far too complex for Burma to master easily. The photos and information provided by the defector show a dysfunctional program. It has made terrible technology choices and the quality of the workmanship we can observe is primitive.

If Burma stays on this course there is a good possibility the program will never succeed, although we must remember, however, that the photographs and descriptions available for examination come from a single source.

It is possible there are other areas where the program is better managed and more advanced. Nonetheless from what we can see, there is no immediate threat to Burma’s neighbors.

Yet should another country step in to assist Burma with knowledge, equipment and nuclear materials this could rapidly change. Pakistani nuclear scientists reportedly fled to Burma in 2001, and North Korea, closely allied with the Burmese regime, provides it with conventional weaponry. North Korea has detonated two nuclear devices of its own. It is suspected of sharing this technology.

And that’s the bad news: there is every reason to be alarmed by reports that a state, regardless of its technical limits, may be toying with the development of nuclear weapons. The die has long been cast: nuclear arms merchants and their suppliers are a chilling aspect of nuclear proliferation. The nuclear weapons dreams of despots cannot be readily dismissed. What they may themselves be unable to produce they can purchase.

The only bright spot in all this is that even the craziest despot know that to use a nuclear device is to commit political and national suicide. Depending upon where the weapons is detonated, one, or more, of the long-standing members of the nuclear club would be able to take the mad dog out.

There would be no niceties in such a situation.

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

MYANMAR/BURMA — China couldn’t care less about the people of Myanmar beyound that point where those people further the communist nation’s Indian Ocean aspirations and support its ever growing fossil fuel addiction.

When China’s ambassador to the United Nations spoke with the staff of the U.N.’s secretary general and told them that as a permanent voting member of the U.N.’s security council China was concerned that intenational efforts to form a war crimes commission to investigate Myanmar would endanger that nation’s fragile political transition, I can only image the painfully surpressed laughter in the room.

From The Washington Post:

China, meanwhile, has forcefully urged European and Asian countries and the U.N. leadership to oppose the measure on the grounds that it could undermine Burma’s fragile political transition, according to diplomats and human rights advocates. Just days after the United States signaled support for the war crimes commission, China’s U.N. ambassador, Li Baodong, paid a confidential visit to Ban’s chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, to make his opposition clear: The U.S. proposal, he said, was dangerous and counterproductive, and should not be allowed to proceed, three U.N.-based sources familiar with the exchange told The Post.

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

MYANMAR/BURMA — I might wish that it would not be the case, but I have no faith in the State Peace and Development Council’s (aka Myanmar’s military dictators) ability to not resort to overwhelming force if faced with any protest between now and the 7 November election.

From The Irrawaddy:

The Burmese junta tightened security around downtown Rangoon on Saturday amid reports that monks and activists planned to gather at the city’s famous Shwedagon Pagoda to protest next month’s election, according to local sources.

“Since this morning, riot police trucks have been going around the city and security forces are on standby near Shwedagon Pagoda and at monasteries near Rangoon General Hospital in Pazundaung Township,” said a source in Rangoon.

Saturday marked the end of the Buddhist Lent, a major event on Burma’s religious calendar, so temples and pagodas around the country were crowded as normal. But the authorities in Rangoon were on high alert after monks and activists reportedly issued a statement recently saying they would organize protests against the Nov.7 election.

According to local journalists, there were unconfirmed reports that at least two monks had been detained at Shwedagon Pagoda.

“Monks and other people started gathering around Shwedagon at about 11 am. Witnesses told us that two monks were taken into custody by government agents. Maybe they were detained briefly,” said a reporter for a local private journal.

“They were handing out pamphlets that said they don’t not accept the election or the new flag that the government introduced a couple of days ago,” he added.

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

This should be the first, second and third question out of every voter’s (and journalist’s) mouth when speaking wtih any politician who has signed the Republican party’s Pledge to America.

MYANMAR/BURMA — While millions continue struggle to recover from the 2008 devistation of Cyclone Nargis, Cyclone Giri, a category 4 storm with winds greater than Nargis, has slammed into the coast of Myanmar.

From The Irrawaddy:

Around 100 villages on Ramree Island, as well as the island’s major town of Kyakpyu, have suffered severe damage after Cyclone Giri hit the Arakan coast on Friday with winds of up to 160 km (100 miles) per hour and waves as high as 3.6 meters (12 feet), according to local sources.

There are still no confirmed reports of casualties, although sources in the area said that dozens of villagers and fisherman are believed to have gone missing since the storm reached its peak at around 3 pm yesterday.

Local residents also said that there was an urgent need for food, water and shelter after the storm left hundreds of homes destroyed by flood waters or falling trees.

Power lines and telephone poles have also been badly damaged by the storm, making it difficult for many residents to get outside assistance.

“The whole town of Kyaukpyu has been hit hard,” a local resident told The Irrawaddy on Saturday. “There are fallen trees everywhere, and many houses right on the coast have been swept away. All the shops are closed, so there’s nowhere to buy food or drinking water.”

Is this yet another price humanity pays for the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels and the reckless abuse of Nature?

In other news, I refuse to type The Republic Of The Union Of Myanmar all the time.

Says Win Tin, Member, National League for Democracy: “It could be because of the astrology…”

Enough said.

Make this morning a good morning, Myanmar.

Update @ 0921, 24 October: I’ve added the second of three after photos. The photo remaining will be the pieces that actually go into my cabinets for daily use.]

This weekend’s Going Up From Egypt Project is to empty out my my nine kitchen cabinets and three drawers. What you see in the photo above are all the plates, platters, bowls, saucers, cups, glasses, pitchers, carafes and more that I own. I’ve put them all on my dining room table and now the three-sort (keep, donate or store) begins.

I’ve already decided that the Midnight Sun Phalzgraf in the foreground is going to a charity flea market and that the glassware, with only three or four exceptions will go there as well.

I’m keeping the Apollo Stoneware from Atelier Sone that I bought in Japan more than 30 years ago but I’ll be putting most of the pieces in storage.

Tomorrow I’ll take a picture of what I’ve decided to keep so that you can see the results.

*Going Up From Egypt

As a veteran of too many improve yourself books, I’ve noticed universal themes that must all go back to a shaman sitting in front of his cave exhorting the members of his tribe to really excel at killing antelopes by being the hunter they want to be. I’ve long understand the concept that we become who we think we are and the by changing our self-image we can change how others view us.

Can I become the next Michael Jordon? No. There is a vast gray area between fantasy and reality, but reality itself, at least as far as we perceive the world to be, is mutable.

To that end Lawrence Block is embarking on leading me through the process as it regards being a writer. In chapter 11 of Write For Your Life — “As A Writer Thinketh” Block writes:

What you think is what you get.

Does this sound like something you may have heard before?

Well, of course it is. The first time I wrote on this subject, in an article with Writer’s Digest featured on the cover of the April ’84 issue (“Overcoming the Ultimate Writer’s Block”), I discussed this proposition at some length. I drew more mail with that article than with anything I’d ever done for WD, almost all of it gratifyingly favorable.

One dissenting letter, however, said in essence, “This is nothing new.” Well, no fooling. Whoever said it was? The notion that our thoughts produce our reality is a lot older than I am. My correspondent cited Coué, the Frenchman who came over here in the 1920’s and had half the country chanting “Everyday in every way I am getting better and better.” The principle antedates Coué. It may well be as old as time, or at least as old as thought.

Henry Ford (who may or may not be older than Coué, you could look it up) said, “If a man thinks he can or cannot perform a task, he’s right.” And the author of the Book of Proverbs put it this way: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

I especially like that last because it so completely embodies the precept I’m trying to get across. As a man thinketh, not just in the conscious portion of his mind, but throughout his being, in his heart—so is he.

It’s not terribly difficult to grasp the idea that thought and writing ought to be somehow connected. After all, writing is quite obviously more a mental activity than a physical one. You don’t write better by hitting the typewriter keys harder. You write better by thinking of the right words and putting them down in the right order. It doesn’t take great strength to do this, or exceptional hand-eye coordination, or blinding speed. The skills involved are mental skills.

Of course, that can work against us as easily as for us and Block dives into the dark side in the next chapter, “The Power Of Negative Thinking,” where he begins with a few examples of negative thoughts.

My writing will hurt other people. It’s not safe to let people know who I really am. People will hate me if they know what I’m really like. It’s not safe for me to succeed. I don’t deserve to succeed. It’s not safe for me to express myself.

Sweeping negative statements like these are what we call personal laws. Your personal law is the most significant negative belief you have about yourself, and we call it that because it’s personal, individually designed with you in mind, and because it’s a law in that you march in obedience to it.

(Now might be a good time for you to take a breath.) I want to stress two things right now about your personal law.

1. IT’S NOT TRUE. It’s a lie you’ve made up to tell yourself.

2. IT OPERATES AS IF IT WERE TRUE. You make it come true by struggling to disprove it while sabotaging your own best efforts at every turn. p. 117

I’m going to give you the start of a sentence. Read it, think about it, close your eyes, ponder it, take a breath—and then open your eyes and write down the rest of the sentence.

Ready? Here’s the sentence:

“THE WORST THING ABOUT MY WRITING IS—”

Now take a breath and write down what comes to mind. Let’s try it again. I’ll say the same thing a little differently, and what you write down may be the same phrase or it may be a different one.

Here we go: “MY MOST NEGATIVE THOUGHT ABOUT MYSELF AS A WRITER IS—” Take a breath and write down the thought.

And, from a slightly different angle: “MY BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO WRITING SUCCESS IS—” Take a breath and complete the sentence.

And, finally: “THE VERY WORST THING I CAN SAY ABOUT MY WRITING IS—” Take a breath and write it down.

Now take a look at what you’ve got written down. You should have four brief sentences of the sort listed at the beginning of the chapter. Read them over to yourself and try to find the most basic one, the strongest one, the one that carries the most emotional charge with it. One of them may seem to be the foundation from which the others sprout. Pick that underlying sentence and circle it.

That’s your personal law.

Not surprisingly, this was the most difficult exercise so far and I’m thinking they’re going to get more so.

Here’s how I responded:

The worst thing about my writing is that it brings me attention.

The most negative thought about myself as a writer is that I’m a fraud.

My biggest obstacle to writing success is that I’ll be exposed.

The very worst thing I can say about my writing is that it is dishonest.

Number three — The most negative thought about myself as a writer is that I’m a fraud — is the one that kicked me in the gut. That’s a hell of a personal law.

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 — Short quiz. Question No. 1: What are the Prospects for Democracy and Rights in Burma After the Election? Question No. 2: Why would anyone spend thousands (tens of thousands?) of dollars organizing a high level conference with Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen as a speaker to consider question No. 1?

My answer to question No. 1 is zero; and my answer to question No. 2 is that the Johns Hopkins Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Human Rights Watch have way too much money, are clueless about events in Myanmar or are incapable of arriving at creative and effective ways to address the sham election scheduled in Myanmar in less than three weeks.

From The Irrawaddy:

In his keynote address, Sen said the military junta is not serious in making any meaningful changes in Burma.

“Nothing perhaps is more important right now as the day of the phony electoral event approaches than global public discussion of the real nature of the forthcoming electoral fraud,” Sen said. “The expressions of pious hope that things can change after the election are totally contrary to reasoned analysis about what’s going on in Burma.”

The conference, titled “A Return to Civilian Rule? The Prospects for Democracy and Rights in Burma After the Election,” was organized jointly by the Johns Hopkins Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Human Rights Watch.

Sen said international pressure on Burma to move towards democracy and protection of human rights could come only from three of its neighbors—China, India and Thailand. “There is real need for insisting that concrete steps be taken by the government right now,” said Sen, who said that he spent some years of his childhood in Mandalay where his father was a visiting professor.

He said India and Thailand have not played their part in defense of real democracy in Burma.

Referring to the calls for establishing a UN Commission of Inquiry on Burma to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity, he said it is time to set up a commission.

Sen was in particularly critical of his own country – India.

“I have to say that as a loyal Indian citizen, it breaks my heart to see the prime minister of my democratic country—and one of the most humane and sympathetic political leaders in the world—to engage in welcoming the butchers from Myanmar [Burma] and to be photographed in a state of cordial proximity,” he said.

Until the world makes it impossible, or at least unprofitable, to do business in and with Myanmar, any discussion of democracy and civil rights will remain impossible there.

Make this morning a good morning, Myanmar.

The following exercise from Lawrence Block’s Write For Your life is about “Looking At The Writer In The Mirror.”

Success is a word that means different things to different people. The way we use it at WFYL, success means getting what you want as a writer. One thing we certainly don’t do is make any judgment of what you should want, and what ought to constitute success for you.

Some of us want fame and critical recognition. Some of us want to make a lot of money. Some of us want to write in such a way as to influence people. Some of us are more interested in using writing to get in touch with our inner selves, and some employ it to gain entrance to the world of the imagination.

Whatever you want, that’s fine. Success for you is whatever success means to you. Sometimes we shortchange ourselves by telling ourselves we want less than we really do want. Other times we beat ourselves up for failing to achieve levels of success we never really aspired to in the first place. We’ll look at these points later on when we talk about goals in another chapter. For now, we’ll do a process designed to help you become more aware of what you like about yourself as a writer, and what you’d like to change.

Turn to a clean sheet in your notebook and head it Some things I like about myself as a writer.

What I like about myself as a writer…

What I like about myself as a writer is that my writing is fast paced.

What I like about myself as a writer is that I write page turners.

What I like about myself as a writer is that I have a good bull shit detector.

What I like about myself as a writer is that my dialogs read true.

What I like about myself as a writer is that readers praise me when they’re finished.

What I like about myself as a writer is that my writing makes me interesting.

What I like about myself as a writer is the high I get when the work is good.

What I like about myself as a writer is that the work is good even when I think it isn’t.

What I like about myself as a writer is that I get to pretend a lot.

What I like about myself as a writer is how my characters speak to me.

Block continues:

Now for the second half of the process. Turn to a fresh sheet of paper and write this heading:

Some things I would like to change about myself as a writer:

Try to be as spontaneous as you possibly can, letting your thoughts flow onto the page without screening or censoring them. Don’t hold back for fear that listing a change you’d like to make in your writing self will mean that you’ll have to feel bad about yourself if you don’t make the change tomorrow.

What I would like to change about myself as a writer..

I would like to write more.

I would like to support myself with my writing.

I would like to write books that move people.

I would like to write books that change people’s lives.

I would like to write books that will out live me.

I would like to write books that are True.

I would like to be interviewed for my writing.

I would like to write a book that makes the New York Times best seller list.

I would like to be courageous about my writing.

I would like to heal myself with my writing.

Continuing my exercises from Lawrence Block’s Write For Your Life, Block next asks readers to consider how they might continuously replenish their personal stock of experiences. This is similar to the concept of the Artist’s Date – taking your inner-artist out for fun on a regular basis – that Julie Cameron writes about in her The Artist’s Way. Block explains the process this way:

A danger some writers face is that their bank account of experience will become depleted over time, that they will draw on it in their writing without adding to it in their lives.

Some writers plunge into new worlds with the specific intention of transmuting their experiences directly into their work. Somerset Maugham went to the East in search of plots; Alec Waugh made a similar pilgrimage to the Caribbean. James Jones, unable to write freshly about anything but a long-dead war, threw himself into scuba diving so that he could write a novel with that for a background. (It didn’t work too well; he was only able to reclaim the power of his early fiction when he returned yet again to the subject of World War Two.)

Some of us find ourselves holding back in an effort to avoid this depletion of experience. There is occasionally a richness in a first novel which is not to be found in an author’s subsequent books. Some first novelists throw in everything on hand, giving the reader enough plot and character and background and incident for half a dozen books. As time passes, writers increasingly tend to write more and more about less and less.

What conservation measures can we employ? How can we avoid disturbing the ecological balance of our experiential landscape?

The answer, of course, is that as we continue to live we continue to put experience in the bank. We can make these bank deposits count for more by paying attention to the richness of our lives as they unfold, and also by purposefully opening ourselves up to new experience.

Actions I can take to add to my bank of experience:

Go to poetry events.

Join the Cleveland Bonsai Society.

Take an advanced watercolor painting class.

Visit every art show in Cuyahoga County this summer.

Read all of Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy and Hemingway.

Pursue a self-made PhD.

Learn Calculus and to read poetry in Hebrew.

Go to the House of Swing on open mike (Thursday?) nights.

Learn to make Sushi.

Explore a blog/video/artist collaboration with Ralph Solonitz.

All of these seem tame to me. There are no crazy experiences on here, no standing at the end of the runway as a 747 comes in. Crazy is more appropriate for teens and twenty-somethings, but I think there are still ways to push my personal envelope that I haven’t considered. While I have continued to accumulate a variety of experiences in the years since I last consciously took my inner-artist out, they are not the same. I’m going to invest in some crazy.

Block concludes:

A key purpose of this second list you just made is to help effect an attitudinal change. If you regard everything you do as the groundwork for writing you may do at some later date, you may be inclined to pay a little more attention to your life while you’re busy living it. At the same time, you may be encouraged to choose the road not taken, to explore the unfamiliar, to pick the alternative which extends your experience.

In college I used to refer to this as living with a writer’s senses. I’ve gotten away from the practice. I intend to return.

In my fantasy life I have done what great writers I admire have done: traveled, found the odd and the exotic, become lost in great love, braved danger and walked in the shoes of people I’ve never met.

I’ve striven with small success, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, “to live deliberately. To live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” In his seventh chapter – “Experience Past And Future” – Block asks seminar participants to consider all of their life experiences and write them down as a way of accessing the sources of our writing. He writes:

Got your notebook handy? It’s time for us to do a process. We do this at Write For Your Life in the same mode as the fear process; you pick a partner, turn your chair to face your partner’s chair, select an A and a B, and do the process in that fashion. It works perfectly well as a written process. Turn to a clean sheet of paper and write this at the top of it: Some things I can draw upon in my writing: And then start making a list.

Do this process yourself now, and write down everything that comes to mind without letting your internal censoring mechanism screen anything out. Don’t stop to judge whether you could draw anything useful from something that comes to mind, or whether you would actually want to write about it. Similarly, don’t worry what anyone would think of what you’re listing. Nobody’s going to read your list; you can throw it away as soon as you’ve finished doing this process.

Some experiences I can draw upon in my writing:

My life in the Navy and travels in the Western Pacific and Indian oceans.

My attempts to reconnect with my Mother.

My mother’s death.

My marriage and divorce.

Leaving Marietta and my brief returns for visits.

My college years and the parties at 325 East State Street.

Teaching students with their individual challenges, triumphs and failures.

Growing up in a single-parent household.

Living with a step-mother that is eight years older than myself.

Rising to editor in a large publishing house.

Participating in and leading discussions for Socrates Café.

Serving as an instructor at the Ohio Military Academy.

Serving as a D battery track commander in 2/174 ADA.

Being bullied in High School.

Watching Joanne leave Fort Collins.

Writing a novel.

My sexual attractions, triumphs, fantasies, rejections and disasters.

Living with a dyslexia.

Living with a lazy eye.

Frustrations with power and the assholes who wield it.

Being 30-seconds from launching a live missile against the Iranians in the Gulf of Oman.

Going up from Egypt.

Meditation.

My spiritual wanderings.

My Walkabout.

Learning to paint with watercolors.

Living with a Zen perspective.

Living alone.

Working on political campaigns.

Blogging.

Mentoring.

Being an environmental activist.

Writing about Myanmar.

Writing about Walmart.

Writing.

Learning to fence.

Reading and the escape it delivers.

Building a library.

Working with Autistic children and young adults.

Exploring the fantasy worlds of the Internet.

My years crewing on racing sailboats on Lake Erie.

Bouldering and rock climbing in the Rockies.

Snorkeling in the Pacific.

I’ve experienced a lot in my 55 years on this planet, yet I think of my life as far from extraordinary. There are no Nobels or genius awards, no high political office (or low political office), no New York Times bestsellers (yet), no great loves or tragedies but I’ve broken hearts and had my heart broken enough to know that neither it permanent or truly life threatening. I’ve not cruised Las Vegas in a drug-induced mania or trekked to the top of any great mountains. I’ve not sipped Absinthe in a Paris café or hunted lions in the African veld. I’ve not uncovered lost Troy or opened the Ark of the Covenant. I’ve not discovered the Grand Unification Theory or the cure for the common cold.

I have lived. And loved. And hated. And lost. And lived some more, growing older in the way we all do, glad for the experience because the alternative is yet unsatisfying.

In the meantime I have more to write about than I could set down in a dozen lives and that is Block’s point after all.

My guide comes from Ernest Hemingway who sought to write what was true.

I like that.

View the making of Mahler’s Adagio…

MYANMAR/BURMA — On the grand scale of oppression and suffering in Myanmar, news that Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi wants to get a Twitter account if she is released from house arrest when her current term is up on 13 November is laughably minuscule. Yet, I find the announcement and the gravity is has been given disturbing. While I understand the efficacy of communicating in 140-character bursts with people whose thumbs have gone all Popeye from texting, I shiver at the horrible reduction in understanding of complex issues that must result.

From the Associated Press:

The 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, entered her latest period of detention in May 2003 before the Twitter era started.

Her detention expires on November 13, prompting speculation she will be freed though there has been no such official announcement from the ruling military junta.

The country’s first election in 20 years will take place days earlier on November 7, timing that analysts say was designed to keep the opposition leader locked away for the polls.

“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s current wish is to sign up on Twitter when she is released,” said her lawyer Nyan Win, who has visited her twice in the past week.

“She told me she wants to use Twitter to get in touch with the younger generation inside and outside the country.”

“She wishes to be able to tweet every day and keep in touch,” he said.

I cannot help but believe that this will end badly.

Make this morning a good morning, Myanmar.

Dan Moulthrop at Civic Commons just tweeted:

Dan Moulthrop Just posted our first job requests to Mechanical Turk. http://bit.ly/cs94Jy It’s a brave new world of globally enabled local engagement.

I replied:

Shalom Dan, Are you really outsourcing NEO jobs? Is there no one in NEO who can do what you want? B’shalom, Jeff

What do you people think?