Increasingly Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition party leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate held under house arrest in Myanmar since 1995, has become the single symbol of any solution in Myanmar. Yesterday United Nations Envoy Ibrahim Gambari said her release was requirement for any acceptable solution. England and France agree.

From a joint OpEd piece written by France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and Great Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown in The International Herald Tribune:

Just two months ago, the world was shocked and outraged by the violent repression of peaceful demonstrations that took place in Burma. The images may have vanished from our screens, but we cannot and will not forget the plight of the Burmese people.

The huge demonstrations and protests over recent months have shown that the Burmese people have been pushed beyond breaking point by the regime.

Brown and Sarkozy quickly move to the issue of Aung San Suu Kyi.

We welcome the positive and conciliatory statement issued on Nov. 9 by Aung San Suu Kyi, holder of the Nobel Peace Prize and figurehead of the Burmese opposition. She signaled her desire to begin soon a meaningful and time-bound dialogue with the Burmese regime. She also emphasized the need for a growing role of the UN in Burma and underlined the need to engage with other political forces including Burma’s ethnic nationalities. Those are welcome steps.

The goal must be genuine reconciliation and political transition. Nobody imagines that this process will be quick or simple. Burma is a complex mixture of ethnicity, religion and culture. The process will need to be broadly-based and inclusive, taking careful account of the need to build a lasting stability that includes Burma’s key political and ethnic groups.

So many players, so little freedom.

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 Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the border between science and spirituality by John Horgan.

“We will never attain what the Tibetan scholar Robert Thurman calls the Buddhaverse, a world in which we are all enlightened. Drama is more important than resolution. Life is, and must always be, a struggle.” p. 172

Today, as I go about my tasks, I’ll think about Selections from One-Hundred-One Time Management Goals:

17. Chain myself to my desk until my highest A is done.

24. Use my support staff to reinforce my vital priorities.

The movement to boycott Total/Chevron, the largest oil companies with the largest investment in Myanmar is steadily moving to lower and lower levels as individual investors question how their stock-invested funds may be supporting the military dictators of that country. Blogger Grayee details how difficult it can be to make change.

I found out last night at the Tower Hamlets Council Pension Investment Panel, that one of our fund managers have £2.3 million invested in Total (the 2nd highest holding in that particular fund) and £1.3 million in Chevron (7th biggest holding).

Awareness of investment is the easiest part.

I asked the Global Equities fund manager after he gave his presentation to the Council investment panel (who are quasi-pension trustees) about the financial risk of sanctions, boycotts, criminal prosecutions and the reputational risk of investing pension money in Burma. Surely, the pension fund was facing a financial risk of continuing to invest in Burma?

They actively invest in companies where they think the fundamentals are sound but where due to “market sentiment” the price of a company is lower than they should be.

And then there is the moral bankruptcy of the contrarians to combat.

So we may have this crazy, crazy situation where some investors think that now is the time invest in Burma because many investors are pulling out on political sentiment rather than economic fundamentals

Personally, I think since it is now accepted that owners of capital in modern day democracies won’t make money out of trading in opium then equally they should not think it is acceptable to make money out of Burma.

Of course, here in the United States, no one has any idea how big the illegal drug market may be; but we do know that it has plenty of under-the-table investors.

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

1940 Journologger

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 Household hacker.

Adrian B.: Every Operation, every war, has its defining moment. The point at which most motivating factors intersect; the epitome of what is at stake is expressed in one clash, or battle. In the Civil War that battle might have been Gettysburg, and Lincoln”s emotion-charged Gettysburg Address, still memorized by eighth graders everywhere. The…

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.

Here in the United States, where we actually think it is possible to be an African — a native of an entire continent — we have a hard time wrapping our heads around the idea of a small country like Myanmar being home to seven distinct ethnic groups, each with its own aspirations; each with its own agenda.

Enter Myanmar’s Ethnic Nationalities Council.

In a nation where ethnic minorities constitute 40 per cent of the population and occupy 60 per cent of the land, democracy can only be a starting point, says a delegation of Myanmar’s Ethnic Nationalities Council. The ENC represents the seven ethnic States of the Union of Burma, Arakan, Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Mon and Shan, and its members include all groups within each state.

And we thought the former Yugoslavia was tough.

According to ENC General Secretary Dr. Lian H Sakhong, Myanmar has large proportion of ethnic minorities, several of whom have taken up armed struggle against the junta. The ENC is a collective of armed groups, political parties and civil society members. While we want democracy, we also want our communities have rights of self-determination. There are political parties in Myanmar that share their ideology and objectives with us, but we have no formal links with them, partly because that could jeopardise their position in the country.

[Snip]

The struggle, as we see it, is at two levels- the first, for democracy – for individual rights, and second, for the collective rights of the ethnic communities. From 1948 to 1962, Burma was democracy, but at that time also we had an armed struggle. This is related to constitutional problems. We want a federal system, as opposed to unitary system.

[Snip]

Democracy won”t happen unless the military agrees to it; after all they”re the ones holding the power. The recent protests didn”t assume the magnitude of 1988, when there was a countrywide uprising that gripped the country for 6 months.

No military government that I know of has ever peacefully handed over power. The question then becomes, what is the lever necessary to move the generals?

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 Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the border between science and spirituality by John Horgan.

“We have all these observations that consciousness can operate without the body.” [Huh? JH] “But we still teach that consciousness somehow comes out of the brain.” Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof. p. 166

Today, as I go about my tasks, I’ll think about Selections from One-Hundred-One Time Management Goals:

10. Prepare a priortized daily action list each day.

15. Have my A1 on my desk in front of me in the morning.

A blogger tagged Xxoozero was obviously tired of all the Chuck Norris posts on the Web and decided to define his own kiss-ass hero. He picked the only real Man In Black, Johnny Cash. My favorite on the list in No. 8, but no’s 7, 3 and 2 are really good too. Hat tip to I See Invisible People for the find.

Reason 10. Johnny is the only man in history to decline painkillers after a double bypass heart surgery. He knew he liked drugs too god damn much and wouldn”t stop. That shows power over an addiction previously not seen before. Kicking a ninja’s ass is easy compared to kicking a drug’s ass.

Reason 1. Only one man who has ever lived has been bad enough to be called “The Man In Black” and it wasn”t Chuck Norris.

If there is such a place as Heaven, then Johnny, June and the Carter family are having a hell of a good time playing together again.

The United States is not a safe country for refugees, the Federal Court said Thursday as it ruled that Canada will no longer have the right to turn back asylum seekers at the border.

In the surprise judgment, the court found that Safe Third Country Agreement breaches the rights of asylum seekers under the United Nation Refugee Convention or the Convention Against Torture. The Canadian High Court

Political prisoners are a problem. Specially when the prisoners are essentially the people who defeated you in an election. This is the conundrum facing the military dictators of Myanmar. The United Nations to your country wants you to turn lose you most dangerous foe. What to do? What to do?

From the Associated Press:

Myanmar’s ruling military junta must release detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi if it is serious about making the democratic reforms demanded by the international community, a UN envoy said Friday.

“Now we are saying very clearly that if Aung San Suu Kyi is to become part of the solution and a partner in dialogue, then it is very essential that she should be released from detention,” Gambari told reporters.

Does Gambari really think the generals want Suu Kyi to be a part of the solution?

Also: Time for serious dialogue.

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

2041 starting a group
1925 OH GOP joined by Wall Street, legal… in female extinction woes…
1112 Evel Knievel, RIP

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 Defying Demographics.