Last evening, at midnight local time, the National League for Democracy ceased to exist as a political party in Myanmar and became, instead, a social movement. Ironically, it may be more powerful in this incarnation, better able to effect change 30 years after its victory in the last election was stolen.

From the BBC:

Win Tin, 79, co-founded the NLD and has spent 19 years as a political prisoner in the country’s notorious Insein prison.

But he told the BBC he had no regrets about his party’s decision to boycott the elections – even though the NLD will cease to exist.

“These are terrible laws which we do not accept,” he said. “How can we accept it?”

The laws require parties to expel any member with a criminal conviction. Many NLD members, not least detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi, have been or still are political detainees.

The laws also nullify the NLD’s 1990 poll win.

“The laws are really untrue to us and oppressive and subjective,” he said.

“We decided as a party, as a whole [to boycott the election]. It it is a great moment for us, it is a great message to the military that our party is sound.”

He said the mood at the NLD’s headquarters in Rangoon was sad but defiant.

Some of the party faithful were in tears while others were singing and dancing, or giving speeches.

“One of the parents of a young man who is in jail came to the office to bring food for the people,” he said.

‘Can’t win’

The veteran leader said the NLD’s boycott – along with that of several parties representing Burma’s ethnic groups – would make it clear to the international community that the elections were “not legitimate and not credible”.

“[Even] if people vote for us, we cannot win, according to the law and the situation,” he said.

When the game is rigged, it’s time to change the game.

1149: Son serving in Afghanistan defends mother from disgusting attack by vile blogger Matt Naugle

0705: Demon Sheep II: The Fleecing of California

0643: Late Night Music Theatre: Jethro Tull at Isle of Wight 1970

Robert Reich writes:

Regardless of why it happened, it”s further evidence that the nation”s and the world”s capital markets have become a vast out-of-control casino in which fortunes can be made or lost in an instant – which would be fine except for the fact that most of us have put our life savings there. Pension funds, mutual funds, school endowments – the value of all of this depends on a mechanism that can lose a trillion dollars in minutes without anyone having a clear idea why. So much of the market now depends on computer programs and mathematical models that no one fully understands, so much trading is in the hands of a few people whose fat thumbs or momentary carelessness might sink the economy, so much of global wealth now depends on who can move their money quickest at the slightest provocation – that we are toying with financial disaster every day. The luck or foolishness of a few traders, and inside knowledge and information that some possess and others don”t, combined with ultra high-speed computers, put us all at the whim of a system whose risk is way out of proportion to any public benefits.

The financial reforms being considered on Capitol Hill are steps in the right direction. But the “systemic risk” now embedded in our capital markets is higher than ever, and will require far greater understanding and vigilance than now being considered.

And he’s not happy…

Eliot Spitzer writes:

Given the vast sums involved and the unusual nature of the Fed’s activities, especially in contrast to its historical (and more prosaic) role of controlling monetary policy, there have been calls for greater transparency at the Fed. One proposal, which varies in the details depending on who’s advancing it, would essentially extend the authority of the Government Accountability Office to cover the Fed. In essence, the GAO would be able to audit the Fed.

There are many reasons to require greater transparency at the Fed. One is its conflict-ridden governance structure. Another is the tangled web of contradictions surrounding the AIG bailout. Last, and most important, is that the Fed over the course of this crisis has demonstrated that its influence goes far beyond the issue of monetary policy.

In monetary policy-controlling the supply of money-the Fed is constrained by reasonably well-understood policy levers that have a macro impact, and its decisions are rather evident in short order. Now, in contrast, the Fed is engaging in fiscal policy-spending money-and in fact has become the single largest fiscal actor in the U.S. economy, dispensing hundreds of billions of dollars to private parties. In doing so, the Fed is picking winners and losers. Why Goldman but not Lehman? Why guarantee the debt of some companies but not others?

The Fed has enormous discretion in its decisions. It is entirely appropriate to demand that they be carried out with greater transparency and be subject to greater oversight.

Blessed are those who can give without remembering. And take without forgetting.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

The first person/third person choice. Of my series characters, all but Ehrengraf speak in the first person. p. 238

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

Two years after the event, Cyclone Nargis remains a present disaster for the people of Myanmar, specially those who lived and live in the Irrawaddy River delta. Emma Larkin (a pseudonym), author of Finding George Orwell In Burma, has written Everything Is Broken, about Nargis and the human and physical devastation.

From Publishers Weekly:

Emma Larkin, an American journalist writing under a pseudonym, reports on the unreported (and suppressed) story of the May 2008 cyclone Nargis, which devastated southwestern Burma, causing more than 100,000 deaths.

Larkin, who has been covering the country for the past 15 years, visited Burma immediately after the storm to collect testimonies of the cyclone survivors and the horrific destruction they witnessed. Many of their harrowing stories surpass the images of the 2004 tsunami and the Haiti earthquake in terms of utter hopelessness, partly because the government did little to nothing to help cyclone victims, initially refused international disaster aid, and willfully withheld information about survivors and their needs.

Once the regime began to allow aid into the country, weeks after the disaster, it siphoned off funds to fill its own coffers. With indefatigable shoe-leather journalism – she visits decimated villages one by one, even while hampered by her tenuous visa status and the government’s suppression of free speech and the free press – Larkin reconstructs what happened in the aftermath of cyclone Nargis and indicts the insulated regime for creating a desperately untenable situation for its people.”

I’m reading the book now and will write more later, but for now I’d like to comment on how American, indeed Western Journalism, with its limited news holes present a distorted picture of disasters around the world. Suffering is suffering, regardless of where it takes place.

There is so very much that we have no awareness of.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

I read in the New York Times Friday that plans are being formulated to redo Progressive Field.

The Cleveland Indians, who opened Progressive Field in 1994 (it was Jacobs Field then), are among the 10 teams looking at ways to revive their parks, said Earl Santee, a senior principal at Populous, the architectural firm that designed Camden Yards, PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Coors Field and other retro stadiums.

Who knew?

A Gateway official says, however, that there is no big redo coming. Further, at this point, both teams leasing sports facilities are responsible for capital improvements.

But don”t you know that it is coming: We need a new stadium! The Indians might leave town! What we”ve heard before we will hear again. Continue Reading »

Paul Vitello writes:

“Most Jews have mixed feelings about Israel,” said Rabbi Tamara Kolton of the Birmingham Temple, a secular humanistic congregation in Farmington Hills. “They support Israel, but it”s complicated. Until now, you never heard from those people. You heard only from the organized ones, the ones who are 100 percent certain: ‘we”re right, they”re wrong.””

In the 2008 election, 78 percent of Jewish voters supported Mr. Obama, and surveys have suggested that most continue to back his policies.

In a survey taken after the diplomatic skirmish of March, the American Jewish Committee – the heart of the traditional mainstream – found little change in the level of Jewish support for Mr. Obama”s handling of relations with Israel. The survey found that 55 percent approved of his handling of Israeli relations, compared with 54 percent last year. (His disapproval rating rose five points, to 37 percent.)

Question: is there an anti-gay, christianist out there who isn’t a deeply closeted homosexual? No. Really. Is there?

A euphemism is born.

From the Miami New Times:

The pictures on the Rentboy.com profile show a shirtless young man with delicate features, guileless eyes, and sun-kissed, hairless skin. The profile touts his “smooth, sweet, tight ass” and “perfectly built 8 inch cock (uncut)” and explains he is “sensual,” “wild,” and “up for anything” – as long you ask first. And as long as you pay. On April 13, the “rent boy” (whom we’ll call Lucien) arrived at Miami International Airport on Iberian Airlines Flight 6123, after a ten-day, fully subsidized trip to Europe. He was soon followed out of customs by an old man with an atavistic mustache and a desperate blond comb-over, pushing an overburdened baggage cart.

That man was George Alan Rekers, of North Miami – the callboy’s client and, as it happens, one of America’s most prominent anti-gay activists. Rekers, a Baptist minister who is a leading scholar for the Christian right, left the terminal with his gay escort, looking a bit discomfited when a picture of the two was snapped with a hot-pink digital camera.

Reached by New Times before a trip to Bermuda, Rekers said he learned Lucien was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. “I had surgery,” Rekers said, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.” (Medical problems didn’t stop him from pushing the tottering baggage cart through MIA.)

Yet Rekers wouldn’t deny he met his slender, blond escort at Rentboy.com – which features homepage images of men in bondage and grainy videos of crotch-rubbing twinks – and Lucien confirmed it.

So, besides being a closeted homosexual, just who is George Alan Rekers?

For decades, George Alan Rekers has been a general in the culture wars, though his work has often been behind the scenes. In 1983, he and James Dobson, America’s best-known homophobe, formed the Family Research Council, a D.C.-based, rabidly Christian, and vehemently anti-gay lobbying group that has become a standard-bearer of the nation’s extreme right wing. Its annual Values Summit is considered a litmus test for Republican presidential hopefuls, and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter have spoken there. (The Family Research Council would not comment about Rekers’s Euro-trip.)

He has also influenced American government, serving in advisory roles with Congress, the White House, and the Department of Health and Human Services and testifying as a state’s witness in favor of Florida’s gay adoption ban. A former research fellow at Harvard University and a distinguished professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina, Rekers has published papers and books by the hundreds, with titles like Who Am I? Lord and Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality.

“While he keeps a low public profile, his fingerprints are on almost every anti-gay effort to demean and dehumanize LGBT people,” says Wayne Besen, a gay rights advocate in New York City and the executive director of Truth Wins Out, which investigates the anti-gay movement. “His work is ubiquitously cited by lobby groups that work to deny equality to LGBT Americans. Rekers has caused a great deal of harm to gay and lesbian individuals.”

Rekers is a board member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, an organization that systematically attempts to turn gay people straight. And the Huffington Post recently singled out Rekers as a member of the American College of Pediatricians – an official-sounding outfit in Gainesville that purveys lurid, youth-directed literature accusing gays of en masse coprophilia. (In an email, the college’s Lisa Hawkins wrote, “ACPeds feels privileged to have a scholar of Dr. Rekers’ stature affiliated with our organization. I am sure you will find Prof. Rekers to be an immaculate clinician/scholar, and a warm human being.”)

What a sweetheart.

Frustration is trying to find your glasses without your glasses.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Remember what you wrote. p. 238

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

US assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Kurt Campbell visited Myanmar last November. He met with senior Burmese officials detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and leaders of Burma’s ethnic minorities. He would like to repeat that experience. Myanmar’s military dictators are not quite so accommodating.

From The Irrawaddy:

During his keynote dinner speech at an international media conference in Hong Kong convened by the East-West Center and the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong on April 26, Campbell said the US is committed to re-engage in Asia, foster a few new friendships and take a long-term view on relations with China in its approach to the Asia Pacific region.

He reaffirmed US recognition of Asia’s strategic and economic importance at the conference and pointed to the fact that the US has sent an ambassador to the 10-member Association of
Southeast Asian Nations as an important signal of America’s commitment to the region.

Speaking about Burma, he mentioned the coming election, human rights violations and nuclear proliferation, saying it has been “tough sledding” since the US opened a “strategic dialogue” with the repressive regime in Burma.

In a recent interview, Campbell told The Irrawaddy that dialogue is not a reward and he expressed deep disappointment with the regime’s election law.

I don’t know if the policy establishing that dialogue is not a reward is directly from President Barack Hussein Obama or not (I suspect it is), but it signals a clear shift of our foreign policy for the good.

I got my first post-election email from Democratic Party Senate Candidate Lee Fisher a few minutes ago. I saw the subject line and my jaw hit the floor. I think Rob Portman can just take a long vacation.

It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

WHAT ISN”T BEING SAID…? Do Costco, Dominick”s, Ikea, Jewel and Target know something about Chicago that Walmart doesn”t? No. Does Walmart know something about Chicago that it isn”t talking about? I think so. Jump ahead five years after all the ribbons are cut. Keep reading…

ABOUT THOSE GOOD JOBS AT WALMART… Earlier today I wrote a longish reply to Tom Mannis” questions on the net improvement of Walmart hiring people in a community. In part, my reply concerned the quality of the jobs at a Walmart. Progress Illinois helps me to make the point this morning. Keep reading…

ABOUT CARING FOR ALL THOSE CHILDREN…? I was educated in southeastern Ohio in a school district that had no property taxes because the big factories along the Ohio River carried the load. Our school buildings were modern and well equipped. We had good text books and excellent teachers. Keep reading…

WALMART FOOL OF MOTLEY… I enjoyed listening to the brothers David and Tom Gardner on my local public radio station during their six-year run on NPR and was sorry to see them go. The brother”s empire has expanded and Walmart, not surprisingly, comes up from time to time. Keep reading…

WALMART”S NEW THEME SONG…? Walmart Russia is one of those stories that seems to drag on like winter on the steppes. The Mendeleyev Journal believes that Walmart”s offices in the Northern Tower of the Moskva-City business district heralds real movement. Cue the Volga boatmen. Keep reading…

NO NEGOTIATIONS WITH TERRORISTS… Taking such a stand is one way to ensure that you don”t have to face any rational positions offered by a group whose stance you have chosen to not accept. Until now, I”ve understood that Walmart”s attitude toward organized labor was similar, if not identical. Keep reading…

OOPS… I was really looking forward to reading USWeapon”s take on Dukes vs. Walmart, but alas, the story has been pulled by the author because of around 20 spam comments an hour (we at The Writing on the Wal deal with that many in a minute, Akismet is awesome). Keep reading…

WALMART LIES… WORKER CALLS BULL SHIT…! Walmart has not learned the lesson that that every politician ignores at their peril: it isn”t nice to fool with people who belong to AARP. A greeter fired, he suspected, because at $12 hour he was a wage liability to the store. Keep reading…

JUST HOW MUCH HAS WALMART PAID OUT…? Not a week goes by that I don”t read about Walmart settling some lawsuit or another for millions of dollars. Add the settlements to what it costs the company to maintain its crack legal team (which seems to lose a lot) and I”m beginning to wonder. Keep reading…

HELL FREEZES OVER… The last time I saw the above phrase used it was in reference to the Eagles reunion tour in 1994. While I have no quote from anyone at Walmart, I think events in Chicago this week qualify in spades. Walmart sat down with union officials. Keep reading…

My wife and I had words, but I didn’t get to use mine.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Don”t presume the reader has read the previous volumes. You want to make things fully comprehensible for the new reader without boring the jaw teeth out of your longtime fans. For my own part, I”ve grown tired of hearing again how Meyer Meyer got his name and lost all his hair; every Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel tell s me the story over again. My own readers may be every bit as tired reading about how a bullet of Scudder”s ricocheted to kill Estrellita Rivera and plunge my hero into the Slough of Despond. A delicate balance indeed. p. 238

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.