As I’m reading the news this evening that yet another bomber has detonated an explosive in Myanmar and murdered a man I wonder to what extent our notice of the event is a factor of our attention versus our attention being a factor in the decision to detonate the third bomb in less than a week. I’m so cynical.

From The Associated Press:

[A government official said] the explosion occurred about 65 miles north of Yangon in Pyinbonegyi. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information to the media.

The ruling junta blamed the recent bombings on an unspecified foreign organization and called on the public to report any sightings of terrorists, a state-run newspaper said Monday.

We have all become too jaded.

How do we fix that?

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations From Sufi Wisdom by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut.

“One day, Nasrudin was sitting drinking tea with a group of seekers. One of them (who believed he knew everything) stood up and said, My master taught me that humanity can never evolve as it must until the person who has not been wronged is as indignant about a wrong as the one who has been.

“The group gasped with admiration at what they thought to be the profundity of this statement. Then Nasrudin said, My master taught me that no one should become angry about anything until he is sure that what he believes to be a wrong is one – and not a blessing in disguise.” Nasrudin p. 127

Today, as I go about my tasks, I’ll think about: Stretch your thinking far into the future in long-range anticipatory planning. p. 50

Are the generals playing Chess and not Go? Myat Thu Pan thinks so. And I find that odd. During my forays in Asia in the ’70s, one of the efforts I made was to set aside my western perspective and to do my best to get the realities that the people in the countries I visited lived. Learning to play Go was one of those ways I did that.

From Mizzima News:

We need to look at the Burma chess board – the Burmese regime has got their Queen (Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy) imprisoned by their powerful Knights, China and Russia and also the Bishops i.e. ASEAN countries. The West and UN are quite impotent to push past these defences try as they may.

One needs to look at psychology of the generals especially Than Shwe. Most dictators are generally narcissistic and are psychopaths unfortunately who are blinded by power that they have achieved by their might not by merit. The current Burmese military regime is no exception and by their recent behaviour with their responses to the UN overture, Mr Petrie and ASSK they clearly fall into this category.

Is this just an example of yet another way Western influence has just messed up the East?

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Royal Navy Blue?

Alex Horton: After a year in Iraq, the days began to melt together. Notable firefights, deaths and strange happenings were the only vivid memories used to recall particular dates. June 12 was for us symbolic throughout the winter and early spring. It was the day the worn and battered would escape. The day that would mark a new beginning of our lives. The…

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, Robert Feinman, Peter Sayles and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

WAL-MART IS GOOD FOR YOU… RIGGHHTTT… Robert has already noted the research paper released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He”s right, we”ve addressed all this before. He”s also right that it”s exhausting having to uncover the same flackery again and again. Keep reading…

DO YOU SUPPOSE RIPER WATCHED THIS…? Keep watching…

WAL-MART DIDN”T SUCK TOO BAD… As Robert wrote yesterday, the Wall Street gnomes are throwing high fives and dancing little gnome jigs in celebration of Wal-Mart not sucking as badly as they thought it would. The moral of the story is that if you set the bar low enough, anything looks good. Keep reading…

WHEN ONLY WAL-MART IS HIRING… There are times when I think it would be nice to just forget that Wal-Mart and its big-box peers exist and just ignore the depressing news that results from the blight they spread across the United States and the rest of the world. Keep reading…

AT THE WALLY PLEX… There are sound stages on Hollywood”s back lots smaller than Bentonvile”s behemoths, so it”s no surprise that budding video talent has been sneaking cameras in at odd hours. And now for the midnight show at the Wally Plex featuring OSIDEGANGBUSTR. Keep reading…

NORTHCROSS CITIZENS LOSE IN COURT… In late November Judge Orlinda Naranjo told Responsible Growth for Northcross and Lincoln Property that she needed time to consider the briefs in a suit to stop the construction of a Wal-Mart in the Austin, Texas, suburb. Keep reading…

GO TO WAL-MART… GET STABBED… The headline is from our friend BBC American (thank you very much). I don”t normally care to write about Wal-Mart crime stories because I don”t think their significant. But when two assaults happen inside two Wal-Marts in one week, I get curious.
Keep reading…

IT WAS ALL ABOUT THE ELECTRONICS… We”ve written here about Wal-Mart”s end-of-year sales figures and how how it out performed analysts expectations (kind of like the New Hampshire primary). But a throw-away quote at end of an Akron Beacon Journal piece nails the story. Keep reading…

WATCHING THE WAL-MART/TESCO SCRAP… Is it possible for Wal-Mart to transform at least some corner of its reptilian brain to think more like a small furry mammal and less like the brontosaurus that it is? Maybe. But that is what it must do if its Marketside stores go head-to-head with Tesco”s Fresh & Easy. Keep reading…

WAL-MART: BULLISH OR BULLY IN BRAZIL…? I”ve read two interesting bits of Wal-Mart news out of Brazil this morning. The first is that the company is investing $693 there in 2008. The second is that the head of Wal-Mart Brazil is headed for Asia. It”s a nice promotion for Vicente Trius. Keep reading…

WAL-MART SETTLES BEFORE SUPREME COURT… Pam Huber and her legal team locked gazes with Wal-Mart and the company blinked. Jonathan first wrote about Huber a little more than a month ago as her case was about to receive its 30 minutes before the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Keep reading…

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.

Idiot Sighting No. 1

We had to have the garage door repaired. The repairman told us that one of our problems was that we did not have a “large” enough motor on the opener. I thought for a minute, and said that we had the largest one Sears made at that time, a 1/2 horsepower. He shook his head and said, “Lady, you need a 1/4 horsepower.” I responded that 1/2 was larger than 1/4. He said, “NO, it’s not.” Four is larger than two..” We haven’t used that repair service since.

More than 300 years into the Age of Reason a disturbingly large number of human continue to cling to superstitions like lucky numbers and unlucky dates. Our own obsession with Y2K is proof enough of that. In Asia, eight is particularly favored. And so the Chinese are investing great energy in the moment marked by a string of eights.

From The International Herald Tribune:

China has been striving to make certain that Aug. 8, 2008, the start of this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing, will be an auspicious date. The Communist authorities have even set the start of their gala for 8 p.m. on 8/8/08.

The numerological coincidence of China’s Olympic gala and Burma’s mournful memory will serve a positive purpose if it reminds the world of Burma’s agony in the two decades since Aug. 8, 1988 and of the shameful symbiosis between China’s government and the Burmese junta. Beijing has been the principal arms seller and commercial partner of the generals in Burma, and the threat of a Chinese veto in the UN Security Council shields the junta from an international arms embargo.

How should I, how should we all, commemorate this moment?

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations From Sufi Wisdom by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut.

“Rabia said, The sincere person forgets the wound of any blow in the vision of the Lord. Why should this strike anyone as absurd? Didn”t the Egyptian women forget they were cutting their own hands as they gazed, stupefied, at Joseph”s beauty? Rabia p. 124

Today, as I go about my tasks, I’ll think about: Wishing is fishing without a hook. p. 49

Sometimes the fewer words I, or my fellow bloggers, write the better. From the blogger posting at The Rosebush comes this compact burst of blogger poetry: So I”d only been back in Burma about 3 hours, was sitting outside having some ice-cream and heard a bomb go off just down the road. Welcome back George. Indeed.

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Is this the most beautiful bookstore in the world?

GOOD NIGHT MYANMAR…

LTC Robert Bateman: I thought I might lighten the mood with a fairly current observation from my world. It is an observation that puzzled me at first. I think I have a handle on it now. I recently noticed a change that took place between 2004 and the present. There is, you see, a lot more hugging going on nowadays where I work. I work in the Pentagon…

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.

1. Most Blues begin with: “Woke up this morning…”

21. I don’t care how well off you are. If you own a computer, it must only function as a table for certain items. Ripple Wine, Red Man chew, or ‘leavins’ from the dumpster behind your local “Chickin ‘n’ Biskits.” Oh, and don’t forget to flat your thirds and sevenths.

I’m of two minds on tourists and Myanmar. If you’re one of those people who stays at four-star hotels, buys expensive meals and looks to bring back costly gifts, then you’re probably not going to help many people in Myanmar. But if you’re like me and prefer stay in small places, eat locally and buy traditional crafts, you’re money is needed.

From The Guardian:

From their shopfront theatre in Mandalay, the Moustache Brothers tell bad jokes in barely comprehensible English about Burma’s backward-looking generals and every few years they get flung into jail for it.

There are three in the troupe – actually two brothers and their cousin – and each evening they wait for the tourists to turn up and justify their performance of slapstick, dance and strangled humour about the army looking after itself while the rest of Burma goes to the dogs.

[Snip]

The Moustache Brothers have been part of the tourist trail since two of its members, Par Par Lay and Lu Zaw, were released from seven years in labour camps for bringing humour to what everyone in Burma knows: the system is so riddled with corruption you cannot tell the difference between a thief and a government worker.

[Snip]

This has left the troupe in agreement with the junta on one thing at least: that a tourist boycott of Burma is a mistake. The military wants foreigners to keep coming because they provide a kind of legitimacy as well as hard currency. That is a good reason not to go. But ordinary Burmese say tourism provides many with the means to feed their families.

The key, though, is to stay away from organised tours that funnel visitors into hotels and on to trips run by the regime’s lackeys.

Curly, Larry and Moe need our help.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations From Sufi Wisdom by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut.

I am just like those in hell-fire:
Their skin is roasted to a crisp
But they go on making for misery
Fresh skin

– Qushayri p. 123