GOD SAVE THE QUEEN BBC…
1911 by Jeff Hess
When one man refused to eat, an empire crumpled. Even the Iron Maiden trembled when the men in H Block resolved to die slowly for their rights as free men. How will the world respond when 4,000 monks, stripped and shackled, exiled to far jungles, take the only stand left to them? From the BBC:
About 4,000 monks have been rounded up in the past week as the military government has tried to stamp out pro-democracy protests.
They are being held at a disused race course and a technical college.
Sources from a government-sponsored militia said they would soon be moved away from Rangoon.
The monks have been disrobed and shackled, the sources told BBC radio’s Burmese service. There are reports that the monks are refusing to eat.
And those reports are still coming, despite the best efforts of the Junta.
…the military junta has tried to block news of the unrest filtering out. Troops are stopping young men on the streets and in cars, searching for cameras that may be used to smuggle out images.
Most internet links are still down and mobile phone networks disrupted.
Official media has been warning Burmese people against co-operating with or using foreign news outlets.
A TV message on Monday referred to the BBC, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia as “assassins on air.”
George Orwell once wrote a book about Burma, but I think the Junta is more likely to have been studying 1984.
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 
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: 
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. 
