So, the State Peace and Developmet Council (aka, Myanmar’s military dictators)has pissed in President Barack Hussein Obama’s rice bowl. What happens next will have more to do with political captial and foreign policy triage than with human rights and war crimes. What are the good guys to do?

From The Washington Post:

The government [of Myanmar] promulgated rules that make clear that an election planned for this year will be worse than meaningless. That had always been the fear, given laws that guaranteed the military a decisive role in parliament, no matter who won the election. But the new rules make it official: Burma’s leading democratic party and its leader, Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, will not be permitted to take part.

Burma (called Myanmar by its rulers) is a unique case, because the opposition has legitimacy that cannot be denied. Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of the country’s independence hero, led the National League for Democracy to a landslide victory the only time reasonably fair elections have been permitted, in 1990, even though she was under house arrest. No transition to civilian rule is plausible unless she and other legitimate stakeholders are allowed to play a role.

A State Department spokesman said that the new law “makes a mockery of the democratic process and ensures that the upcoming elections will be devoid of credibility.” The question now is how the administration will respond. It needs to pursue financial sanctions that target Burma’s ruling generals and their corruptly amassed wealth. It needs to rally the European Union and Burma’s enablers, such as Singapore, to take similar actions. And it needs to take more seriously the security challenge posed by the regime’s intensifying wars against minority nationalities and the resulting refugee crises.

Secretary Clinton? Any thoughts?

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 video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

I only recently made the acquaintance in print of one William Trevor, a short-story writer of uncommon excellence whose work I recommend to you without reservation. p. 160

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

The document itself does not yet appear to be available online (I’ll keep looking for it) but As a result of his recent visit to Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, called for an international inquiry into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the ruling junta.

From Reuters:

“According to consistent reports, the possibility exists that some of these human rights violations may entail categories of crimes against humanity or war crimes under the terms of the statute of the International Criminal Court,” Ojea Quintana said in a 30-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Activist groups welcomed his recommendation, calling it unprecedented since the United Nations established a mandate to look into human rights violations in Myanmar in 1992.

Violations included mass arrests of dissidents, deaths and torture of detainees, lack of freedom of assembly, religion and expression, and forced labour, according to the Argentine lawyer who made his third trip to Myanmar last month.

As Myanmar had failed to investigate the abuses, “U.N. institutions may consider the possibility to establish a commission of inquiry with a specific fact-finding mandate to address the question of international crimes,” he said.

Could the generals be tried in absentia at The Hague?

Roldo Bartimole writes:

You may have noticed in the Plain Dealer this morning that the City of Cleveland will refinance $65 million in bonds for Browns Stadium. You also likely noticed that the interest rate will be going up. Taxpayers get ready.

Because of the poor fiscal state of the city, Moody”s rating service lowered the rating it gives the city. That means that the city will be paying more interest on all its borrowings. It has borrowed heavily to build the Browns Stadium for its nine or ten games a year. But worry not; Randy Lerner will not have to pay a penny more. Cleveland and Cuyahoga County taxpayers, via the sin tax, will pay.

You may not have noticed that Forbes magazine ranked the people richest in the world. Listed down the line were three recognizable names – all Lerners, all worth $1 billion. That includes Randy, owner of the Browns.

Randy Lerner won”t be paying any of the interest on the $65 million in bonds. The taxpayers of Cleveland will pay that. A gift to the Lerner family. They surely need it in these tough times.

I”ve told readers previously (and wish the Plain Dealer might be a bit aggressive here) what a great deal Randy Lerner gets from the Cleveland taxpayers. He gets contributions too from the city”s school children. That”s because the stadium, which he rents for $250,000 a year – a rate that never goes up in his 30 year lease – is tax exempt forever.

The city – to rent to Lerner for $250,000 a year – does has to pay taxes on the stadium land, however. The taxes annually are more than $400,000 a year. That”s on a market value (2009 figure) of more than $15 million.

A $15 million plot of land and a $300 million plus stadium for the Lerner family. How can you go wrong?

Billionaire Lerner and the Browns do not pay a penny in property taxes. About 60 percent of property taxes would go to the Cleveland schools. But who cares about them.

Listed on the Forbes richest people are Randy, Nancy and Norma, Randy”s mom.

The city, as of last May when I checked, faced financing costs on the Browns Stadium of $160,000,000 more. The city had already paid $102,823,948, according to the city”s finance department figures.

The taxpayers of Cuyahoga County, via the sin taxes, have contributed as of February $63,088,767.

Randy gets help from everywhere in northeast Ohio.

So you see it”s kinda tough to serve some of these billionaires.

Here is the link to a previous article on the Lerners.

I wish for once the Plain Dealer will tell the story of how much the Browns have cost us and the city of Cleveland, and its school children. Please, Plain Dealer.

Tim Russo writes:

Even if I assume this process to be what its defenders incompetently claim it to be, here”s the thing. There will be an election. After that election, it will simply not matter what Eugene Kramer secretly advises on “legislative authority questions”, whether or not Joanne Gross was trained in public records retention, whether or not Tim Reynolds” company in another county has any involvement, whether or not a PR firm is hired to sell this giant reeking pile of dung, whether or not the “recommendations” of this farce of a transition are written on antique parchment with a quill pen, or on the toilet paper they deserve to be written on.

I understand where Tim is with this — we had a conversation before Tuesday night’s Socrates Café at The Loop in Tremont — but these people aren’t doing what they’re doing out of the goodness of their hearts. There is a money trail here that leads back to taxes collected from the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County.

Will any of these people return the money they get when the county council (and I agree with Tim on this) is sworn in, perfunctorily glances at the mounds of paperwork generated by these people before tossing it all in the recycling bin and announces that it is time to get to work?

I don’t think so.

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 video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

I began to suspect that plot was the least important component of a story, that the only real question was whether the writer could write. p. 159

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

Sanctions against Japan. in part, engendered that nation’s attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor in 1941, but with that rare exception, I’m not aware that any international sanctions against a sovereign nation have ever resulted in meaningful changes by oppressive governments, but have rather resulted in even more oppression.

News from Reuters, however, suggests that sanctions against Myanmar, while not directly encouraging a change in thinking by the nation’s military dictators, may be responsible for worker unrest.

Western sanctions that have decimated Myanmar’s once-thriving garment sector have led to a rare spate of strikes that have unnerved its military rulers, fearful of civil unrest in the run-up to long-awaited elections.

Four South Korean-owned factories were brought to a halt for several days last week and another on Monday by sit-in protests by more than 3,000 workers demanding better working conditions and higher pay, demands owners say they cannot meet.

They were among 20 garment factories in the commercial capital, Yangon, that have suffered strikes since Feb. 8.

“We are doing our best to help the workers and management negotiate and reach an agreement,” a senior Labour Ministry official told Reuters.

“The security measures imposed around the factories are not meant to suppress the strikes but just to contain them so that there will not be any infiltration from outside and the strike will not grow into civil unrest,” he added.

Strikes and other forms of protests are rare in Myanmar, where small demonstrations over increases in fuel and cooking gas prices in 2007 mushroomed into countrywide marches by Buddhist monks, sparking a crackdown in which at least 31 people died.

Analysts and diplomats say the government appears to be especially sensitive to the risk of unrest with elections scheduled for this year under the a seven-step “roadmap to democracy” drawn up by the junta.

When a country’s people have no margin in their survival needs, the smallest push may be enough.

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.

BEING THE SENATOR FROM WALMART IS TOUGH… Senator Blanche Lincoln (D- Arkansas -Walmart) officially has a primary battle for her seat in the United States Senate. Everyone expected that the Republicans would pour cash into the Fall battle, but a primary is a whole different department. Keep reading…

KUDOS TO WALMART… I have no doubt that there are six different way from Sunday to be cynical about Walmart”s role, through it”s Chilean subsidiary Lider Hipermart, in the recovery actions following the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunamis that devastated Chile. Keep reading…

WALMART MOMS… MEET WALMART HIPPIES… Walmart has long since passed into the realm of icon by virtue of its shear size and like McDonald”s which must live with culturual phrases like McJobs, Walmart can do little when others take its name in vain. The lastest coinage is Walmart Hippies. Keep reading…

ARE WALMART SHOPPERS TAPPED-OUT…? The theory runs that formerly up-market shoppers were spending what little money they had in the Great Recession at Walmart. When the money is gone, however, it”s gone and if MasterCard is declined, even Walmart won”t sell you the gallon jar of dill pickles. Keep reading…

HE WILL NOT BE MOVED…! No, the W on his chest does not stand for Walmart, although if you look back through the archives of John Backderf”s cartoons you”ll see that he features the relationship between White Middle Class Suburban Man and Walmart quite a bit. Keep reading…

THE OTHER SHOE DROPS ON DETROIT SCHOOLS… Of course we all remember the stories out of Detroit about how Walmart was working with the school system to help train students to get jobs at Walmart. The incredulity flowed like water and at least one local journalist dug in. Keep reading…

WE STILL DON”T NEED NO STINKING RECEIPTS… Our readers have ample evidence as to how I feel about the whole “May I see your receipt please,” bit of theater at Walmart (or any big-box retailer) but I have a really hard time figuring out how Walmart could enforce a life-time ban from all its stores. Keep reading…

A WALMART HIPPIE AND PROUD OF IT… Last week I wrote about David Brooks New York Times piece titled The Wal-Mart Hippies. Not surprisingly, Brooks upset some of those Walmart Hippies and at least one of them has a blog and he”s not afraid to use it. Run Sarah run! Keep reading…

SUPPLY AND COMMAND, NOT DEMAND… The writings of Norman Lichtenstein are no mystery to readers of The Writing On The Wal, but I have to say I loved this title: How Southern Backwardness Made Wal-Mart Executives Love High Tech and Low Wages. Keep reading…

Last night, 9 March, our Socrates Café met at The Loop Coffee House on West 11th street in Tremont.

The question we pulled from the jar was:

What are the current reasons for social events such as Bar Mitzvahs, baby showers, house warming parties, etc.?

As usual, the discussion ranged far and wide but settled on three points:

That the social events are consumerist, a way for people to acquire stuff;

That they are a vehicle to allow far-spread social groups to come together face-to-face; and finally

That the events are power structures imposed by organizations to exploit and maintain control systems in a community.

Last evening I was firmly in the first camp, it”s all about the stuff, but this morning I”m leaning also toward the third suggestion that life-cycle events – births, rights-of passage, marriages, births of children and death are exploited by both religious and commerce organizations as a way to benefit those organizations.

What do you think?

If you’ve had a morning-after thought, or if you missed our gathering and would like to throw in your two-cents worth, please enter the conversation and leave a comment here.

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 video excursion I present: From My Dad.