Letter from Burma

This letter has been sent to me -- and to others -- by a Burmese gentleman. Anyone who is currently or was ever a citizen of the Third World will attest to its essential truth.

Before I go to bed tonight, I will pray hard to Lord Buddha that I will wake up as a Japanese in the morning. All my life, I have been a Burmese and I have always thought that all the human lives have equal values in this world after reading “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. It was a rude awakening for me and I only realized it in the last few days.

Matter of fact, I just learned that a Japanese life is worth more than thousands of Burmese lives. It is evident from the reaction of the Japanese government after a Japanese journalist was killed in Rangoon. The Japanese government has long been aware of the fact that Burmese people go through these abuses at junta’s hand everyday. Summary executions, forced labor, forced relocation, forced conscription of child soldiers and many other atrocities. But Japanese government has been indifferent in their policy of engaging with the military junta and supporting them.

Suddenly, even the Deputy Foreign Minister is going to Burma for an investigation for the death of the Japanese journalist. Please don’t misunderstand me, myself along with all the Burmese appreciate the efforts of Nagai San to expose the living hell that the Burmese live day in day out, to the outside world. Our condolences go to his family. It is sad that an innocent Japanese life had to be lost because the government of Japan had ignored all the facts for decades knowingly.

I will also pray for all the other Burmese to wake up as Japanese tomorrow. Lord Buddha please have mercy on all of us Burmese and let us wake up as Japanese tomorrow.

Zaw Tun

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I thought I should compose a reply.

The hard truth is that no one is going to save you. The UN Declaration of Human Rights is only as good as the Burmese people can make it. Nobody at Turtle Bay will so much as cross the street to enforce it. That the Japanese foreign ministry has taken an momentary interest in Burma is nice, but make no mistake, their focus will be on the fate of the dead Japanese journalist. You will be part of the scenery.

It was to avoid this fate -- the fate of counting for nothing -- that people formed real countries with real governments. In order to protect themselves: "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them ... to secure these rights ... among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ... governments are instituted among Men." And thus are the Japanese protected by the Government of Japan, Americans by the United States, Australians by the Commonwealth of Australia and so on. Otherwise they would be as you are, under the mocking protection of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, that is to say, the butt of a cruel joke.

For historical reasons all too well known to you, Burma currently has no real government. Oh, like many other Third World states it has a head of government, a bureaucracy and their excellencies the ambassadors; it has generals and field marshals, with ranks more exalted the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and more medals than Audie Murphy. They have the complete panoply of sovereign majesty; everything but legitimacy derived from the consent of the governed. You have not given the generals who rule your country consent; and yet they govern.

Better yet your rulers are recognized by foreigners even though you know them not. Recognized by the United Nations and ASEAN. Your rulers are loved by other governments in proportion to the degree with which these governments resemble your own. Governments of the Third World have a vested interest in keeping the standards low. You the Burmese must always be worthless so that the citizens of other Third World countries can be equally valueless. The United Nations is a club where tyrants can confer legitimacy upon each other and cover every outrage on the globe with bureaucratic oblivion. This legitimacy is called "national dignity" and the bureacratic smokescreen which accompanies it is called "international law".

You are alone. Still you have yourselves. Whatever sham your government has become you the Burmese are men. Aid may come to you but it would be unwise to count on it. You have nothing but your own manhood to rely upon. On it rests your slender chances for freedom. Upon it depends your dignity. From it shall spring the law. Not international law, drafted over petit fours and coffee in Brussels but law that springs from you. By the consent of the governed.

You will be lonely, but there is no help for it. I would be dishonest if I said that the road to freedom was anything else but long, wearying and full of pain. But I know that is the road that you long to take. "Death and sorrow will be the companions of your journey, hardship your garment, constancy and valor your only shield." That is the path which you will embark upon, because as men you can do no other.

I have no strength of my own to give you and will only say this: may the Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord Buddha guide you. And lead you to your home.

Australians Versus Taliban in 4 Hour Battle

The Australian Defense Forces report a four hour battle with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

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In their heaviest fighting to date, Australian soldiers with the Reconstruction Task Force (RTF) in Afghanistan have successfully repelled a prolonged attack by approximately 50 Taliban extremists.

Infantry Platoon Commander Lieutenant Glenn Neilson said the Taliban had established strong firing positions and were reinforced with more fighters as the attack progressed.

“We were engaged with some very accurate fire from a range of about 300m and there were a lot of bullets coming our way. Making use of all the weapons at our disposal, including the Australian Light Armoured Vehicle (ASLAV) and Bushmaster Infantry Mobility Vehicle (IMV), we held our ground.”

The soldiers were also able to employ Dutch F16 fighter aircraft and Apache helicopters. Afghan National Army troops that were trained by Australian Forces in Oruzgan participated in the patrol and performed admirably.

“Together we neutralised the positions that were causing us trouble,” Lieutenant Neilson said.

Another Australian platoon supported the movement of RTF troops by providing essential covering fire as soldiers moved across hazardous open ground.

The Taliban are known to have suffered heavy casualties during the incident, but the ADF will not discuss specific details. There were no civilian casualties resulting from this incident. No Australian soldiers were wounded, nor was there any damage to Australian vehicles.

Some video footage is apparently going to be made available. So somebody had a camera going too.

Who Controls the Present, Controls the Past, Who Controls the Past Controls the Future

The ghost of Stalin is alive and well in modern day Europe. The British Culture Secretary, James Purnell, is being criticized after it emerged that his image had been digitally inserted in a group photograph a short time after he had railed against news media for fauxtography.

James Purnell found himself in an embarrassing situation over the disclosure just two weeks after he warned broadcasters of the danger of losing the trust of viewers. The controversy centred on a photocall at Tameside general hospital, Greater Manchester, to mark the start of work on a new unit. Mr Purnell was among four local MPs invited to the event, but he arrived after the photograph been taken and the other MPs had left.

He was photographed in the same position and his image was added into the earlier shot. The picture was then distributed to the local press. The hospital said the minister had agreed to photographs being "merged", but he said it was an innocent "misunderstanding". In a statement to BBC North West, the hospital said: "As we would not be able to stage a repeat of this historic day for the hospital, we decided to take a photograph of Mr Purnell in the same spot very shortly after, and merge it with the earlier photograph, to which Mr Purnell kindly consented."

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Media control and deception are a time-honored tradition of the Left. The Commissar Vanishes maintains a virtual museum of Bolshevik-era airbrushing. Nice to know that in a world of cheap change, some things remain the same. The Burmese socialist regime should know.

Here's the classic reference to the disappearing commissars.

An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between O’Brien’s fingers. For perhaps five seconds it was within the angle of Winston’s vision. It was a photograph, and there was no question of its identity. It was THE photograph. It was another copy of the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford at the party function in New York, which he had chanced upon eleven years ago and promptly destroyed. For only an instant it was before his eyes, then it was out of sight again. But he had seen it, unquestionably he had seen it! He made a desperate, agonizing effort to wrench the top half of his body free. It was impossible to move so much as a centimetre in any direction. For the moment he had even forgotten the dial. All he wanted was to hold the photograph in his fingers again, or at least to see it.

‘It exists!’ he cried.

‘No,’ said O’Brien.

He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O’Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O’Brien turned away from the wall.

‘Ashes,’ he said. ‘Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.’

‘But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.’

‘I do not remember it,’ said O’Brien. ...

‘We are the priests of power,’ he said. ‘God is power. But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: “Freedom is Slavery”. Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone—free—the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he IS the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. ...

‘Do you believe in God, Winston?’

‘No.’

‘Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?’

‘I don’t know. The spirit of Man.’

‘And do you consider yourself a man?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are ALONE? You are outside history, you are non-existent.’ His manner changed and he said more harshly: ‘And you consider yourself morally superior to us, with our lies and our cruelty?’

‘Yes, I consider myself superior.’ ...

He seized one of Winston’s remaining front teeth between his powerful thumb and forefinger. A twinge of pain shot through Winston’s jaw. O’Brien had wrenched the loose tooth out by the roots. He tossed it across the cell.

‘You are rotting away,’ he said; ‘you are falling to pieces. What are you? A bag of filth. Now turn around and look into that mirror again. Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity. Now put your clothes on again.’ ...

Men have defied tyranny through history because defiance is sometimes the only way to remain a man in the face of oppression. Resistance provides the possibility of remaining a man even in death; a possibility that is to be preferred to the certainty of slavery. And if the idea of remaining a man even in death sounds crazy, it is no crazier than the Party's idea of immortality through power. To resist is to perform an act of faith and to believe that while a man may vanish, the spirit of something always remains.

Round One to the Burmese Regime

The iron fist has come down. The socialist military leaders of Burma are now applying large-scale suppressive methods which cannot be peacefully opposed. Yangon Thu reports:

we called this monk in Yangon, whom my whole family admire, a monk known to be supportive of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, to check on how he was doing. He said to my mom "Da khar ma gyi, we are staring at death in the eyes. They might come for me tonight. I think it is my turn." What am I supposed to say to something like that?

And the UN is on the way. Mizzima news fears a sell-out:

with China, which along with Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution on Burma earlier this year, once again calling the ongoing protests and crackdown an internal affair, the Council ended up urging the junta to exercise restraint.

The Council, however, agreed to send Gambari, who has extensively traveled to key countries in Europe and Asia including Asean countries to consult on Burma's political issue in June and July this year, to visit Burma immediately.

However, critics fear that Gambari, who has made two earlier visits in 2006, would be used by the junta to save face internationally.

I think Robert Mayer was right when he called it for the government, which apparently has not split and has made the decision to crack down hard. The peaceful phase of the resistance to the Burmese regime is apparently over. What comes next is another story.

Nothing follows.

Is the Burmese Army splitting?

Singabloodypore is quoting Burmese blog sources suggesting that the Army is starting to split. There have been reports of troop movements and air force sorties which might be interpreted as military units facing off against each other. More reports of the same nature, some of it from the same source, at Yangon Thu. It's too early to tell; most pundits think the Burmese military will not cave. This article suggests the Burmese officers are "tough fighters" who may be far savvier than the opposition and "human rights" activists who are ranged against them.

Jotman reports General Sonthi, head of Thailand's National Security Council is uttering what may be the line the Burmese governments wants to spread. Nothing to see here, just move on. If so it indicates that Rangoon is sensitive to how their actions are perceived. They are trying to avoid the appearance of repression. That is also the context in which to understand their shutdown of Internet access: the need to control the perception of their actions.

Burma's shutdown of the Internet may consist of closing down the country's only ISPs. However, as old timers on this site may remember, data can still be sent in a number of ways. One of them is peer to peer over modems. Remember them? The other method, one I think is actually be used, is simply to slowly dictate messages over the phone. I am not sure whether text messaging has been completely shut down.

Regarding the dispersal of demonstrations, the Burmese government did not use military force. Police were deployed. That was the right approach. It has been used by every country— the military must step back to let police take charge. But the actual tactics may vary from country to country. However, I think there is no violence in the current situation. Everything is under control. The Burmese government is still in control of the situation. On the reports that Buddhist monks were assaulted, that cannot be concluded just from looking at the photos. . . As it happened in Thailand, sometimes people used violence against officials. So officials may have to defend themselves. There has been no political suppression. Burmese authorities should understand that it—getting Buddhist monks involved in the demonstrations — is a tactic used by demonstrators. . . If we get involved, that will undermine our relationship.

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Update

How easy is it for the Burmese government to shut down communications? Let's begin with what the infrastructure looked like in 2006.

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Burma's outdated communications systems are a serious impediment to modernization. Regime authorities regularly monitor all communications. The switching systems for Burma's land lines are improving but are still inadequate, particularly outside Rangoon and Mandalay. GSM and CDMA cell phone service, although very unreliable, is available in Rangoon, Mandalay, Bagan, and surrounding areas. Text messaging is available, but closely monitored. The government allows Internet access, but censors, monitors use, and routinely blocks “Freemail” sites like Yahoo! and Hotmail.

Myanmar Teleport and Myanmar Post and Telecom are the primary Internet Service Providers in Burma. The companies offer email and dial-up and broadband Internet services, but speed is still very slow. These censored and monitored services are available to all, but are prohibitively expensive for most Burmese. In 2003, the government licensed several private companies to run Internet cafés. However, the government censors all websites available at these cafes and Internet surfing fees of about $1/hour are beyond the range of ordinary people. Wireless internet connections are not available.

CDMA phones were made available in limited supplies in 1996. The government began to sell a limited number of GSM phones in March 2001 and has sold additional GSM phones since then, with the objective of 1 million phones sold by the end of 2006. The state-owned Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications is selling 30,000 GSM phones for a price of 1.5 million kyat each (about $1,500) to well-connected people. The secondary market price of the phones can be as high as 3 million kyat ($3,000) each. Effective February 1, 2003, domestic telephone call charges for all foreigners were set at 15 kyat ($0.15) per minute, with cellphone calls 25 kyat ($0.25) per minute for local calls and 35 kyat ($0.35) per minute for domestic long-distance calls. International phone calls are considerably more expensive.

In some border towns, moreover, Internet service is provided through China. For example, in the border town of Meng La:

Electric power comes from China, and is stable. Internet access is also via China, and at ¥2 (25 cents) an hour, is reasonably cheap. The usual Chinese restrictions apply: Don’t plan on conducting any extensive research on Falungong from a Meng La Internet terminal. A postcard from the Meng La post office mailed to Beijing is charged as Chinese domestic mail. The currency in Meng La, the Myanmar khat, is more useful as comic relief than anything else. Everything is paid for with Chinese people’s currency, the renminbi (RMB).

Burma's land borders with India and China will mean that a complete shutdown on information will be impossible. However, it can be throttled to the point where international attention dwindles to a trickle.

The UN OODA Loop

My own views about where the last 24 hours have taken the Burma crisis are at Pajamas Media.

The most important development in Burma over the last 24 hours is that the protest movement has not retreated before the government crackdown. ... The lastest report from Irrawaddy dimly hints that it is the generals who may be starting to crack. Unconfirmed reports from a Western diplomat speculate that the government may try opening negotiations with the opposition and that Senior General Maung Aye, not the nominal paramount General Than Shwe is now in charge.

However things turn out, the next 48 hours will be critical and events will probably develop with extraordinary speed. How does the UN handle situations like this? This article illustrates how international human rights organizations are approaching the problem: by attempting to enmesh the protest movement in bureaucracy and engaging in irrelevant symbolism.

Several countries on the United Nations Human Rights Council have begun making consultations to propose a special session to study the brutal crackdown this week by the military regime in Burma/Myanmar on young Buddhist monks and other demonstrators. ...

Yes, you read that right: 1) consult to 2) schedule a meeting to 3) study the "brutal crackdown this week by the military regime in Burma/Myanmar". That's a three step process undertaken so that they may someday/sometime soon figure out whether eclairs or petit fours go best with coffee at such meetings. And afterward they'll swing into action to consider whether to appoint a special rapporteur to study whether it is advisable to have a special meeting to consider doing something about the Burma/Myanmar problem. If anyone is still alive. The article reveals that in certain circles at least, when action time finally comes it should consist of yet still more talk.

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The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Swiss-based conflict-resolution organisation, struck a similar tone, saying "No one side can resolve Myanmar's problems alone."

Leon de Riedmatten, the HD Centre’s representative for Burma, said "It is important at this time of crisis that we remember the serious issues that still need to be resolved so the country can move forward. The issues referred to include the political impasse, ethnic conflict, economic failure and humanitarian decline," he said.

The HD Centre announced that it would "remain on the front line of conflict resolution initiatives" despite "the current negative trends" and the March 2006 closure of the group’s office in Rangoon, which had been opened in August 2000.

The International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) urgently called for a special Human Rights Council session to debate the situation and to certify the Burmese authorities’ failure to implement the recommendations set forth by the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro of Brazil.

Yes, you read that right again: "1) debate the situation and to 2) certify the Burmese authorities’ failure to implement the 3) recommendations set forth by the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro of Brazil." Has anything happened yet in this proposed process? The internationalists will be at the center of everything, an odd thought when they apparently lack the sense to operate a dog pound at a poodle-show, let alone try to be dog catchers in world of pit-bulls with spiked collars. But rest assured, they know what's important. Like finding the right logo.

The Geneva-based Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), which is seeking the creation of an international emblem to identify -- and protect -- media workers, "condemned in the strongest possible manner the crackdown on civilians in Myanmar, the killing of a Japanese cameraman, and the expulsion of two other journalists,’’ while calling on the Human Rights Council to hold a special session. Blaise Lempen, the secretary general of PEC, told IPS that the Human Rights Council should include in its discussion the inability of journalists to work in Burma and the death of the Japanese media worker.

There's an entire organization dedicated to creating "an international emblem to identify -- and protect -- media workers". In their words:

La Presse Emblème Campagne, fondée en juin 2004 par un groupe de journalistes basés à Genève, est une organisation indépendante à but humanitaire. Elle souhaite renforcer la protection et la sécurité des journalistes à travers le monde.

Sad, sad.

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A Burmese girl with a gunshot wound.
I wish I could say, "don't worry, the UN is on the way"

Laura

And Laura Bush gives this interview on VOA, "I want to say to the armed guards and to the soldiers: Don't fire on your people, don't fire on your neighbors. Join this movement."

She said she was moved by a tiny picture she saw of Aung San Suu Kyi - the Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace prize laureate - who came to the gate of her home, where she is under house arrest to greet monks who were allowed to pass by there earlier this week. Mrs. Bush spoke of Aung San Suu Kyi's long years under house arrest, noting her husband died in Britain, while she was confined to her home in Rangoon. ...

"There is hope - absolutely, there is hope for Burma," Mrs. Bush said. "And, I think that is one of the feelings we all get as we look at these images - this very cautious hope that, this time, the people have turned a page." Mrs. Bush said the Burmese have told the world they can no longer tolerate oppression, and the nation must move on.

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Aung San Suu Kyi's frail little figure in the distance recalls a Rudyard Kipling story about a broken British regiment, fleeing before an onslaught of Ghazis in Afghanistan, whose counterattack is led by two orphan boys. How if the drummers were alone? Great Power politics has abandoned Tibet to China, and may abandon Taiwan too. Why should the Irrawaddy not flow to the sea?

"We're all that's left of the Band, an' we'll be cut up as sure as death," said Jakin.

"I'll die game, then," said Lew thickly, fumbling with his tiny drummer's sword. The drink was working on his brain as it was on Jakin's.

He slipped the drum-sling over his shoulder, thrust the fife into Lew's hand, and the two boys marched out of the cover of the rock into the open, making a hideous hash of the first bars of the "British Grenadiers."

As Lew had said, a few of the Fore and Aft were coming back sullenly and shamefacedly under the stimulus of blows and abuse; their red coats shone at the head of the valley, and behind them were wavering bayonets. But between this shattered line and the enemy, who with Afghan suspicion feared that the hasty retreat meant an ambush, and had not moved therefore, lay half a mile of level ground dotted only by the wounded.

The tune settled into full swing and the boys kept shoulder to shoulder, Jakin banging the drum as one possessed. The one fife made a thin and pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried far, even to the Goorkhas.

"Come on, you dogs!" muttered Jakin to himself. "Are we to play forhever?" Lew was staring straight in front of him and marching more stiffly than ever he had done on parade. ...

The men of the Fore and Aft were gathering thick at the entrance into the plain. The Brigadier on the heights far above was speechless with rage. Still no movement from the enemy. The day stayed to watch the children. ..

The Fore and Aft were pouring out of the valley. What officers had said to men in that time of shame and humiliation will never be known; for neither officers nor men speak of it now. "They are coming anew!" shouted a priest among the Afghans. "Do not kill the boys! Take them alive, and they shall be of our faith." ...

But the first volley had been fired, and Lew dropped on his face. Jakin stood for a minute, spun round and collapsed, as the Fore and Aft came forward, the curses of their officers in their ears, and in their hearts the shame of open shame.

Half the men had seen the drummers die, and they made no sign. They did not even shout. They doubled out straight across the plain in open order, and they did not fire. ...

All that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the hills, striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles away. And in the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and sore, a misguided Correspondent who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village-burning, and who had read off the message from afar, cursing his luck the while.

"Let's have the details somehow - as full as ever you can, please. It's the first time I've ever been left this campaign," said the Correspondent to the Brigadier; and the Brigadier, nothing loth, told him how an Army of Communication had been crumpled up, destroyed, and all but annihilated by the craft, strategy, wisdom, and foresight of the Brigadier.

But some say, and among these be the Goorkhas who watched on the hillside, that that battle was won by Jakin and Lew, whose little bodies were borne up just in time to fit two gaps at the head of the big ditch-grave for the dead under the heights of Jagai.

O Brave New World

Readers may recall London's Ring of Steel, a network of video cameras that is designed to record movement in streets. A smaller version of the system will be installed in New York. But fixed cameras have limitations. So why not put the camera on a micro-UAV? You can watch future of German law enforcement after the "Read More!" button. Wait for the part when it hovers outside a house window.

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The Temporal Cold War

In George Orwell's classic novel, 1984, Inner Party member O'Brien tried to teach Winston Smith that the struggle to control history is over. It is what the Party says it is. Today the Daily Telegraph reminds us that this dictum is truer than ever.

Parts of British history need to be rewritten to emphasise the roles played by other races and religions like Muslims, a prominent race relations campaigner has said. Trevor Philips, the chairman of the new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, said the history of Britain did not properly reflect the contribution of other cultures. ...

Mr Phillips said: "When we talk about the Armada, it was the Turks who saved us because they held up the Armada after a request from Elizabeth I. Let’s rewrite that, so we have an ideal that brings us together so that it can bind us together in stormy times ahead in the next century."

The past, present and future are all one place. In the inimitable words of George Orwell, "he who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." And wouldn't you know, the screenwriters of Star Trek agree.

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The Temporal Cold War is a fictional conflict waged throughout history in the Star Trek universe, notably during the 22nd century AD ... it is a struggle between those who would alter history to suit their own ends (the Cabal) and those who would preserve the integrity of the original timeline.

Unlike Earth's historical Cold War, the Temporal Cold War involves countless unknown factions, each with its own agenda. Humanity in the 31st Century is attempting to ascertain the identity of their adversaries and to thwart their efforts. ... Although the scope of the war was unprecedented, most of its casualties were unaware that they were involved in an organized conflict; hence the term "Cold War". Timelines were changed frequently, with history being rewritten or significant events being erased. Eventually the struggle broke out into full-scale war.

O'Brien noted that the only thing ever worth conquering was the human soul. Mastery over the tides, the planets and the winds were forever beyond the man's power. No one should bother to try. But to rule over the mind of man, to make up into down and left into right, to put a boot into the human face -- forever -- ah! how sweet that was.

Crimson Tide

Here are some of my reactions to events in Burma.

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The Bangkok Pundit is one of several which has noticed the superficial resemblance between the Buddhist-monk led opposition to the regime in Myanmar and the 1986 Philippine "People's Power" movement which toppled Ferdinand Marcos.

This reminds me of the People's Power movement against Marcos in 1986 and the key role that senior members of the Catholic Church played. It is one thing to tell a solider to kill a civilian, but it is completely different to tell them to a monk or a nun/priest in a deeply religious country. There would also likely be a strong reaction in Thailand to the killing of any monks by the Burmese military.

Not to go over the top with analogies with the People's Power movement, but there were two key events at that time (1) the very public defections of 2 key Marcos supporters/advisers Enrile and Ramos which weakened the powers of the state over the citizenry, and (2) the US providing Marcos with an opportunity for a clean break.

Read the rest at Pajamas Media. Nothing follows.

The Empty Throne

I wish I were enough of a political maven to understand two items which seem intrinsically related. Item 1: "Hillary has pulled way ahead of Obama in the key state of New Hampshire, and now enjoys a 23-point lead over her rival, a poll just released by CNN finds." Item 2: The biggest candidate-related group on Facebook is no longer "One Million Strong for Barack". Obama has been relegated to second place -- by the group "Stop Hillary Clinton (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary)". Taken together the two items suggest that the "stop Hillary" sentiment is alive and even surging but that hopes Barack Obama can do the stopping are fading. If Hillary buries Barack in the coming contests, where will the discontent go?

The separability of these two impulses -- anti-Hillary and pro-Obama -- this late in the campaign implies the existence of a movement whose leadership no one can credibly fill. Can the Daily Kos wrest control of the anti-Hillary forces? Not likely, argues David Brooks, who dismissed the Kos crowd as a spent force, worn out by their own excesses.

Now it’s evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the “netroots.” ... In the first place, the netroots candidates are losing. In the various polls on the Daily Kos Web site, John Edwards, Barack Obama and even Al Gore crush Hillary Clinton, who limps in with 2 percent to 10 percent of the vote. Moguls like David Geffen have fled for Obama. But the party as a whole is going the other way. Hillary Clinton has established a commanding lead.

But if Obama goes under, who becomes the torchbearer of the Stop Hillary Movement? Brooks argues that whoever that is, it won't be the Kos crowd. Minus Obama, who does that leave? The Republican candidate? Or does this portend a genuine Democrat shift to the center; an anti-Chicago, 1968? And should one welcome it, even at the price of returning a dynasty?

Nothing follows.

The Last Lecture of Randy Pausch

The reason it's the last lecture is explained here.

Pausch, a 46-year-old father of three, has pancreatic cancer and, most likely, just a few months left.

In the last week, he has gained national attention for an inspiring and sometimes upbeat talk, titled "How to Live Your Childhood Dreams," that included one-handed push-ups, bright smiles and reminiscences of some of his own dreams met (getting a Ph.D, walking in zero gravity, writing an encyclopedia entry, designing Disney rides). "Brick walls are there for a reason," he told his audience. "They let us prove how badly we want things."

The rest of the lectures may be found at this link. Part one is below Read More!

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Ahmadinejad at Columbia

The San Francisco Chronicle thinks Ahmadinejad speech at Columbia was a resounding victory for Lee Bollinger:

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger courageously, imho, resisted pressure to call off Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speech at Columbia today. But he went one better. In a stunning statement, right in front of Ahmadinejad, he wiped the floor with the putative head of Iran's despotic regime, taking him to angry, articulate task on issues such as Holocaust denial, Israel's right to exist, subversion of Lebanon's government and support for terrorism.

Too bad that many may not hear about Bollinger's triumph in Iran. Reuters reports:

Iran judiciary seals offices of news Web site. ... Iran’s judiciary has sealed off the offices of a popular news Web site critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies after journalists continued to update it despite official filtering, the Web site said. ... Although Iran says it allows free speech, journalists say they have to tread carefully between a growing number of “red lines” to avoid closure. Iran’s culture minister in July said there were signs of a “creeping coup” in the country’s press.

And outside the firewall this is the way Al-Jazeera reported Bollinger's 'triumph' over Ahmadinejad. It sounds like it could be scored the other way.

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, was subjected to blistering criticism of his country's human rights record and foreign policy during a controversial visit to a New York university.

"Mr President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," Lee Bollinger, Columbia University's president, said on Monday.

He also challenged Ahmadinejad's reported denial of the Holocaust.

"When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous," he said. "The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history."

Ahmadinejad rose to applause, and after a religious invocation said Bollinger's opening was "an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here".

He blamed the university president's "unfriendly treatment" on the influence of the US media and politicians ahead of his visit.

And lest anyone think only Al-Jazeera scored things as a win, here is Time Magazine admiring the way in which the Iranian President used Bollinger.

It was pure political ju-jitsu, using the momentum of your adversaries to your own advantage. The protestors got him on TV, and he used the platform to grandstand for the folks back home. He will share an even bigger global platform with President Bush on Tuesday, at the lectern of the U.N. General Assembly. The two men won't appear together, of course, but each is making a pitch for international support in the showdown over Iran's nuclear issue. But Ahmedinajad appeared to steal a march on Bush Monday by virtue of his televised propaganda show at Columbia.

Challenged on his statements questioning the Holocaust, for example, Ahmadinejad cleverly turned the issue around, asking, "Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?" That argument may not get much sympathy with an American audience, but championing the Palestinian cause helps Iran's strategy of undermining the moderate Arab regimes allied with Washington.

Both Bollinger and Ahmedinajad broadcast their messages on a platform which grabbed the attention of the world. But what was said on that platform will be selectively quoted and amplified in a process that favors Ahmedinajad's signal over Bollinger's. The amplifying circuitry of the media will ensure that an anti-Israel, anti-American message will get more than a fair airing. Few will read the exchange verbatim. If Bollinger thinks that a few barbed questions, a few provocative statements; that a little defiance can compensate for giving the Iranian dictator an opportunity to emit a signal which is even now being tweaked and boosted to fit established talking points, he is mistaken. The medium is the massage. What works in the classroom doesn't always work on the larger world stage. In the final paragraphs of the Columbia president's speech he displays a touching faith in the power of his own remarks to explode Ahmedinajad's absurdities:

Let me close with a comment. Frankly -- I close with this comment frankly and in all candor, Mr. President. I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us.

I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do.

Fortunately I am told by experts on your country that this only further undermines your position in Iran, with all the many good-hearted, intelligent citizens there.

Does Bollinger actually believe that the more Ahmedinajad speaks the more he "undermines" his own position in Iran? That the "many good-hearted, intelligent citizens" listening to Bollinger's exchange with Ahmedinajad will have their eyes opened? About the only thing Bollinger got right was the assessment of the importance of his own remarks at the closing of his speech. The Columbia President continues:

A year ago, I am reliably told, your preposterous and belligerent statements in this country, as at one of the meetings at the Council on Foreign Relations, so embarrassed sensible Iranian citizens that this led to your party's defeat in the December mayoral elections. May this do that and more.

I am only a professor, who is also a university president.

This is beyond sad. It's the closing of a man out of his own depth. It's a faculty lunch speech dispatched against a man accustomed to command the secret police, rockets, EFPs, sophisticated propaganda and disinformation cells. Bollinger was game, but not only is he not in the same ring, he doesn't even know where the fight is scheduled to take place. If this is what our intellectual leaders think is effective resistance against the Islamic Revolution then we are in serious trouble.

Postscript

People at the Strategy and Games Magazine were reading the recent weekend history post on the Luzon Campaign and write that their next issue is about the Battle of Manila, the Stalingrad of the Pacific. The rules of the game are unique.

Historically the Japanese fought to the last man (literally, not metaphorically), and the game's victory conditions represent that brutally absolute mindset. To determine the winner, both players examine the map at the end of Game Turn 10. If at that time there's one or more Japanese units still in play anywhere, the Japanese player is declared to have won the game. If there are no Japanese units left on the map at that time, the US player is declared to have won the game. Of course, if all Japanese units are wiped out prior to the end of the last game turn, play stops and the US player is declared the victor. No draws are possible.

Yup.

Nothing follows.

Hitler at Columbia

To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal ...
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance ...
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek;
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.

And those who can't tell the difference are idiot savants of the worst kind. For some it is only ever a time to prattle. One man who might have held seminars on the combustibility of the human body while ovens at Auschwitz consumed their ghastly fuel is in the video below. What is moral blindness but the inability to tell right from wrong, friend from enemy, love from hate? And what is moral deafness but a man who can hear words and never understand their meaning?

Here's John Coatsworth, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia, (video after Read More) defending the decision to invite the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by declaring he would invite Hitler to speak if the Fuhrer were visiting at the "League of Nations" in New York and were willing to answer questions. Note to Coatsworth: Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill envisioned the United Nations in 1942 as an alliance to fight tyranny -- specifically Adolph Hitler. Had Hitler been been in New York to speak in 1942 they would have hanged him. But then, neither Roosevelt nor Churchill "wanted to understand Hitler". They wanted to defeat him.

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Weekend History Post, September 23, 2007

If the average person were asked to name the largest campaigns of the 1941-45 Pacific War the list would probably resemble the coverage of the forthcoming Steven Spielberg mini-series, The Pacific. The counterpart to the well known Band of Brothers mini-series will cover five campaigns: Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa through the eyes of three historical persons, Eugene Sledge, Robert Leckie and John Basilone. Listed below are the total losses for the US and the Japanese in each of the campaigns to be covered by Spielberg's The Pacific. With the exception of Peleliu they are all household names. The British have their own memory map of the Pacific campaign. In their recollection for example, one battle in the India/Burma theater stands out: the Battle of Kohima, in which 4,600 British and 5,800 Japanese were lost. It is remembered as the "Stalingrad of the East".

	KIA
	US	Japanese
Guadalcanal	1,800	26,000
Tarawa	1,000	4,700
Peleliu	2,340	10,700
Iwo Jima	8,226	20,703
Okinawa	12,500	66,000
	25,866	128,103

 

What's missing from this coverage of the Pacific War?

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The biggest American campaign in the Pacific of all. All the campaigns listed above, including the massive battle for Okinawa, are dwarfed by the Sixth and Eighth Army's Philippine Campaign of 1944-45. The raw statistics are astonishing. The Philippine Campaign was the graveyard of the Imperial Japanese Army: IJA KIA exceeded the estimated (300,000) German and Axis dead at Stalingrad. In terms of raw effort, Wikipedia notes that "in all, ten U.S. divisions and five independent regiments battled on Luzon, making it the largest campaign of the Pacific war, involving more troops than the United States had used in North Africa, Italy, or southern France." It also included the largest urban battle of the Pacific War, the Battle of Manila, in which 100,000 civilians were killed. Two of the most famous divisions in the US Army, the 1st Cavalry and 25th Infantry, participated in the Philippine Campaign. And yet it is nearly forgotten. It will not even be remembered in Spielberg's sequel to the Band of Brothers.

Philippine Campaign	KIA
	US	Japanese
Leyte	3,593	80,557
Luzon	8,310	205,535
Central and Southern	2,070	50,260
Total	13,973	336,352

 

 

What is even more striking is the phenomenal economy with which the US Sixth and Eighth armies inflicted these losses on the Imperial Japanese Army. Here are tables calculating the ratio of US to Japanese KIA in each campaign. Yet these remarkable ratios were inflicted in terrain that included urban battlefields, the dense jungles of Leyte and the rugged mountains of Luzon's Cordilleras against a first rate Japanese commander -- Tomoyuki Yamashita, the famed "Tiger of Malaya".

Guadalcanal	14.4
Tarawa	4.7
Peleliu	4.6
Iwo Jima	2.5
Okinawa	5.3
Philippine Campaign
Leyte	22.4
Luzon	24.7
Central and Southern	24.3

 

Much of the credit for these accomplishments must go to a man nearly as forgotten as his campaign: General Walter Krueger. A book recently published by the University Press of Kansas, General Walter Krueger: Unsung Hero of the Pacific War, asserts that Krueger never got nearly as much credit as he deserved.

He made his name in the jungles of the Pacific theater, was featured on the cover of Time magazine, was tapped by Douglas MacArthur to lead the invasion of Japan, and made crucial contributions to the army's tactical and operational doctrine. Yet General Walter Krueger is still one of the least-known army commanders of World War II. Kevin Holzimmer's book resurrects the brilliant career of this great military leader while deepening our understanding of the Pacific War.

As head of the Sixth U.S. Army, Krueger exemplified the art of command at the operational level of war and played a pivotal role in the defeat of Japan that until now has not been fully recognized. To the public he was a "mystery man," and his abrasive personality may have sometimes caused problems for MacArthur, but his commander credited him as "swift and sure in attack, tenacious and determined in defense, modest and restrained in victory." And although Krueger left no diaries or memoirs-and stubbornly refused to record many of his personal views-Kevin Holzimmer has mined military archives on Krueger and his Sixth Army to produce a compelling biography that finally acknowledges his importance.

We are accustomed to regarding history as an accurate picture of the past. But like any picture, it is vulnerable to distortion from the choice of perspective. And our memory of the Pacific is nothing but distorted. It is truly amazing to discover in the familiar terrain of the history of the Second World War an omission of such scope, caused perhaps by contemporaneous media coverage and the emphasis of post-war Hollywood. Many Americans are now familiar with the saga of Stalingrad, thanks perhaps to the movie Enemy at the Gates, starring Jude Law and Ed Harris. But spare a thought for the Sixth and Eighth Armies and the Campaign they fought, which alone accounted for two and half times more Japanese KIA than all the campaigns combined that will be depicted in The Pacific.

You Grow Up, I'll Move On

Tigerhawk responds to Josh Marshall's exhortation that "dingbats" to "Grow Up" and welcome Ahmadinejad to Ground Zero. Marshall says,

A president with some dignity and sense of the greatness of his country would say, good he should go there. Maybe he'll learn something about us and our loss. If we as a country were a person, I'd say grow up. Act like a man*. Have some self-respect. * Yes, outdated language. But I know no non-gendered language that conveys the same meaning.

To which Tigerhawk says, "get a clue".

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Technically, of course, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not have anything to do with the attacks on 9/11. There is more than a little circumstantial evidence, though, that Iran did. So much so, in fact, that the 9/11 Commission specifically called out the possibility that Iran was an accessory, via Hezbollah, and wrote that it believed that "this topic requires further investigation by the U.S. government" (9/11 Commission Report, 241). Notwithstanding lefty claims that the Bush administration has been promoting war against Iran, there is no public record that it actually followed up on this recommendation. Of course, one rarely hears this criticism from Democrats who otherwise remind us that the Bushies "ignored" the advice of the 9/11 Commission.

The circumstantial evidence supporting Iranian involvement in 9/11 is only one small part of its extended alliance with al Qaeda. Righty bloggers and their readers are very familiar with this history, but it is virtually ignored on the left. We at TigerHawk, however, are blessed to have a loyal stable of lefty readers with open minds. If you are one of those and are interested in Iran's involvement with al Qaeda, start here.

So when Josh Marshall tells us to "grow up" and "act like a man," my retort might be "get a clue," or at least read the 9/11 Commission report before declaring that the president of Iran, who underwrites Hezbollah to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, has "absolutely nothing to do with 9/11."

There's little I can add to Tigerhawk's riposte other than to notice the sudden preference in the Left, amounting almost to an epidemic, to a pretension to maturity and wisdom, even when it is clearly masochism in disguise. We are told to "put the adults back in charge"; to shrug off Iranian attacks on US soldiers with the world-weary maturity of experienced diplomats accustomed to a dirty game. We are told to "move on" and not to linger on morbid thoughts like striking back at an enemy who every week or thereabouts, goes on video to threaten us with destruction. We are told that any attempts to treat the enemy with justifiable harshness amounts to a "hatred of America", a lowering of its moral standing in the world's eyes. And now we are asked to "grow up" and share our pain with Ahmadinejad, as if by making ourselves pitiful enough before enough people we could prevent our enemies from striking us again. There you have the attributes of Leftist adulthood and maturity: cynicism, forgetfulness, vanity and self-pity. They are welcome to them.

I hope it is not out of place to observe that none of those attributes have anything to do with survival in wartime. I know there will be objections to that statement, but not to which aspect: the "survival" part or the "wartime" part.

The Gubmint Versus Ebay

If you think it is really impossible for a government worker to be fired, you would be wrong. The Times Online reports that 9 British council (municipal) workers were dismissed for trading on E-Bay. The sacked workers called upon the government to save others from the same fate in the future.

Three were sacked and six resigned when they were confronted with the records of their online dealings by managers at Neath Port Talbot Council in South Wales. The six women and three men, who were earning up to £25,000 a year, were the worst offenders when IT experts investigated the amount of time that staff were spending on eBay.

After the dismissals union officials said that the employer had “put temptation in their way” by allowing computer access to external internet sites. They called on all large employers to install a firewall program to prevent staff from being distracted by sites such as eBay, BBC Online and those that provide gambling.

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It will be interesting to see how British government employers do this. As many enterprises locate their critical applications online (for example, SalesForce.Com) you create the risk that some components may make calls to sites which the Firewall is not configured to admit. As Dave Linthicum at Computer World wrote, the line between corporate applications and the Internet is blurring:

The line is blurring between the enterprise and the Web. Mashups live on that porous perimeter, offering the reusability of an SOA plus very rapid development using prebuilt services outside the firewall. Soon, we may live in a world where it's difficult to tell where the enterprise stops and the Web begins. It's scary -- and exciting at the same time. ...

Even more complex applications are possible -- such as mashups that become sophisticated business processes, applications or sets of services in themselves. You can see where this is going: full-blown services, processes and composites that span from your new SOA to hundreds of Web-based services hosted by SaaS players, commercial Internet properties such as Google, and vertical market exchanges. ...

Mashup security is critical, considering that you're looking to leverage interfaces, content and services you neither created nor own. ... No one wants to discover that an innocent-looking AJAX mashup is actually sending customer data to some remote server and compromising the business. Care must be taken to implement security policies and technology layers that will protect the value of the mashup platform. This should mesh with your SOA security or become an extension to it.

I leave to the reader the question of whether the Neath Port Talbot Council can successfully manage its firewall in the long term, or whether, as I believe, it is looking at the wrong problem. Quite apart from the issues that Computerworld raises, the story seems to imply that the Council really does not know how to measure its employee's performance. If it had a reliable performance measure -- whether in terms of forms filled out or clients served -- the simple question would be whether these 9 employees were doing their job satisfactorily. If they were performing satisfactorily the question of whether they spent two hours on Ebay instead of staring at the desk surface -- which I take it would have been entirely satisfactory -- would be entirely irrelevant. But my guess is that the Council really has no way to measure how productive their employees are and must resort to ludicrous proxy measures as a substitute.

Vietnam again

Time Magazine notes John McCain's "tart" response to Code Pink hecklers while speaking before the NRA. John McCain's site provides video of the event. Time reports McCain's riposte as:

"Well, my friends, we beat you yesterday," he said. "We'll beat you today . . . And we'll beat you tomorrow!"

But that's not quite correct. What McCain really said, with a grin on his face (watch the video) was: "Well, my friends, we beat you yesterday, we beat you the day before yesterday, we'll beat you today and we'll beat you tomorrow. We won't choose to lose. We won't choose to lose this time".

This is one quote that is all about Vietnam and it is curious, but not unsurprising that a media obsessed with Vietnam doesn't report it for what it is. Maybe because it is a politically incorrect reference to an unfinished cultural conflict that didn't -- doesn't exist. The war's over, isn't it? McCain's outburst seemed to come straight from the collective subconscious that contains everything that isn't said but everything that is important. The "we" and "you" McCain refers to can be none other the enemies in the Cold War, with Code Pink implicitly in the enemy camp, right beside Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap. McCain's assertion that "we beat you yesterday, we beat you the day before yesterday, we'll beat you today and we'll beat you tomorrow" curiously juxtaposed with the apparently contradictory "we won't choose to lose. We won't choose to lose this time" is simultaneously a retelling of history; an affirmation of hostilities and it's renewal.

The Vietnam War officially ended for America in 1972. But the embers of that fire burn today. The Left declared a cultural victory for itself on that occasion, but as all would-be conquerors eventually discover, even victories are not what they seem.

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Maybe the only way to understand McCain's response to Code Pink is from a story he tells about his experience as a POW in North Vietnam.

One of the men who moved into my room was a young man named Mike Christian. Mike came from a small town near Selma, Alabama. He didn't wear a pair of shoes until he was 13 years old.

At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy. He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School. Then he became a Naval Flight Officer and was shot down and captured in 1967.

Mike had a keen and deep appreciation of the opportunities this country, and our military, provide for people who want to work and want to succeed. As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing. Mike got himself a bamboo needle.

Over a period of a couple of months, he created an American flag and sewed it on the inside of his shirt. Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell, it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.

One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically, and discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it. That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, and for the benefit of all us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours.

Then, they opened the door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could. The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept. Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room. As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American flag.

"Well, my friends, we beat you yesterday, we beat you the day before yesterday, we'll beat you today and we'll beat you tomorrow."

Deus ex machina

Here's a classic. "State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha sued God last week, seeking a permanent injunction against the Almighty for making terroristic threats, inspiring fear and causing 'widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.'" Unfortunately for Chambers, a response was anonymously submitted to the clerk of the Douglas County District Court arguing that the defendant is immune from earthly laws and that the Douglas County District court lacks jurisdiction. "Attempts to reach Chambers by phone and at his Capitol office Thursday were unsuccessful," and one suspects that similar attempts to elicit a comment from God will be similarly fruitless.

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The response from "God" was entirely appropriate. Chambers is one of the modern-day exponents of the nearly defunct literary tradition of apostrophe, defined "via Latin from the Greek apostrephein, meaning to turn away, a digression. Used to describe a moment when a speaker turns away from the main line of discourse, usually in order to address a real or imagined person and usually with an intense emotion that can no longer be held back." An example of apostrophe can be found in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel.
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him.

One of Chamber's chief preoccupations is apparently turning away from the legislature and addressing himself to anybody who will listen -- or rather to the press in the gallery.

A self-professed "defender of the downtrodden," Sen. Chambers is known for liberal ideals: He is a firm opponent of the death penalty, and introduces a bill to repeal Nebraska's capital punishment law at the start of each legislative session. It remains one of his primary goals while in office. Chambers has also long advocated on behalf of David Rice and Ed Poindexter, who were convicted of the murder of an Omaha police officer, but whom Amnesty International considers political prisoners. He has also pushed to recognize University of Nebraska student athletes as state employees, due all of the benefits of those jobs. However, his push was eventually thwarted by state legislators and the governor as it was revealed that acknowledging student athletes as employees would jeopardize the University's NCAA standing.

What literary term should be used to describe "God's response" to Chambers? The term deus ex machina may apply. "The Latin phrase deus ex machina has its origins in the conventions of Greek tragedy. It refers to situations in which a mechane (crane) was used to lower actors playing a god or gods onto the stage."

Burma

A Burmese blogger has photos of the demonstrations by Buddhist monks in Rangoon.

The photos were taken when the monks were heading towards Sule Pagoda. Initially, they tried to enter Shwedagon Pagoda. But they couldn't enter since the doors of pagoda where shut not to let them in.

The Associated Press has more. As is usual with authoritarian regimes, the real source of their weakness is incapacity. Such dictatorships, unless they are artificially propped up by oil, eventually run the economy to the ground.

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At least 3,000 people led by Buddhist monks marched along flooded streets in Yangon on Friday, piling pressure on Myanmar's ruling junta in the most sustained challenge to its rule in nearly 20 years. ... Myanmar's pro-democracy movement has long demanded reforms from the regime and freedom for Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the last 18 years under house arrest.

But the latest protests have centred on bread-and-butter issues such as the skyrocketing costs of food and transportation, concerns that cross the often deep social divisions in a country wracked by decades of ethnic conflicts.

"We've been waiting for this kind of day for 45 years," said an elderly Muslim man watching the protest. "I was thrilled to be a Buddhist," said one woman who teared up as she recalled applauding the monks during Thursday's protest.

The only dismaying development in the situation is this: "The US and British ambassadors to the United Nations on Thursday urged Myanmar to allow a visit by UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari "as soon as possible."

A State of Mind

The AP says Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been outlawed by al-Qaeda.

Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden called on Pakistanis to rebel against President Pervez Musharraf in a new recording released on Thursday, saying his military's siege of a militant mosque stronghold makes him an infidel.

Al-Qaeda certainly isn't shy about declaring wars, issuing sentences of death on dissident literary figures, crashing wide-body aircraft into buildings, threatening universal death to all who defy them. That's of course when they aren't busy blowing up school buildings or operating their patented slaughterhouses. Why just recently Ayman al-Zawahiri suggested anyone who turned a deaf ear to his calls for Jihad should have his eyes gouged out. Shy they ain't. What a contrast to a Western leadership that can hardly name its enemy, is stumbling all over itself to apologize to any offense it may have given, both real and imagined, to those who have sworn to kill it, and who will tomorrow host Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York City, an experience which almost included a trip to Ground Zero. He does get to speak at Columbia University though.

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The psychological contrast between the two sides, one immensely powerful but infirm of will, the other supremely weak but confident is evident in this NYT article describing all the Lebanese government must do to remain in power. Stay alive.

Lawmakers from the anti-Syrian governing party, the March 14 Movement, took refuge on Thursday in a landmark hotel near the Parliament building in downtown Beirut because they fear assassination plots aimed at eliminating their razor-thin majority in the House.

The move reflects just how terrified the legislators are after one of their colleagues, Antoine Ghanem, and six others were killed in a powerful car bombing near Beirut on Wednesday. Mr. Ghanem was the fourth member of Parliament and the eighth anti-Syrian figure assassinated since a huge blast killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, setting off a cycle of political crises.

“The problem is now the security of the M.P.s,” said Fares Souaid, a former lawmaker and leader in the March 14 Movement. “Our M.P.s are now locked inside the Phoenicia Hotel under the responsibility of the government and the Internal Security Forces. They will move under their supervision.”

There's a reason it's called "terrorism".

Nihil obstat

Academia's rough handling of Larry Summers stands in stark contrast to the deferential, even fearful treatment accorded to Ward LeRoy Churchill, who even after being shown to be third-rate fraud continued to be defended on the grounds of "academic freedom". At a time when the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted 218-185 to express a "lack of confidence", following his remarks about the difference in scientific aptitude among the genders, a survey by the Crimson showed the students in support of Summers by a margin of nearly 3 to 1. Today the Crimson denounced Summer's "disinvitation" to a University of California dinner meeting of the Regents at the behest of Maureen Stanton, a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology, as "a disgrace". Stanton had claimed that "inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message to the university community and to the people of California." The Crimson wrote:

---

the quashing of Summers’ speech points to a troubling trend in academia. Increasingly, the unrestricted marketplace of ideas that must form the heart of any university worth the name is being poisoned by a perverse pressure to conform truth to political agenda and stifle any speaker who espouses uncomfortable or invonveneint opinions. In the present case, the culprits are academics who fashion themselves as progressives eager for social justice and tolerance, but the other side of the political spectrum is no less guilty in others. This situation is alarming and dangerous. If academic freedom cannot exist in the university, our society is in trouble.

What is truly remarkable about the persecution of Larry Summers is that he cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as a conservative. His liberal credentials are impeccable. Summers served in the Clinton cabinet. He publicly identifies himself as a Democrat. Summers served with the UN. To be sure Summers sometimes flirted with heresy, being among others things a proponent of free trade and globalization. But surely he was entitled to think those thoughts being an academic economist, one good enough to a have serious shot at a Nobel Prize nomination -- before his downfall. Apparently not, in common with all theocrats there is nothing the academic left hates more than the Fallen Angel. Men like Summers, who should have modeled the brightest of chains for the Left, but who instead perversely chose to think their own thoughts deserve only the deepest pits of hell. Better the pious parrot like Ward Leroy Churchill than the critical thinker, even one belonging to their own church like Larry Summers.

But the Crimson editorial staff gets it right when they say that inquisitors themselves stand condemned. Whatever they may style themselves, by their actions and small-mindedness they have shown themselves unworthy to stand in judgment of anything.

Maureen Stanton and company represent the worst of academia. The side that politicizes its classrooms and refuses to hear, or let others hear ideas that they find distasteful or uncomfortable, no matter their merit. We hope the UC realizes the gravity of its error and makes amends by inviting Summers back. We know he’s worth listening to, even if one disagrees with him.

The Clipped Wings of the Flightless Dodo

Richard Miniter reports that CIA teams operating out of the Green Zone have had their wings clipped by the State Department ban on Blackwater escorts. Blackwater Blogger correctly observes the issues involved are far broader than the identity of the security contractor itself. It goes to the heart of how "diplomacy" should be conducted in the age of terror.

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Embassy Security For Dummies: OK, this is put together on the fly, in about five minutes of internet research, but it is apparently necessary because the idea that there might be security personnel as part of a diplomatic mission and host nation security personnel as well is apparently quite a complex one. At least we make some effort to document our assertions of fact.

Yes, the U.S. Secret Service does provide some security, stationed outside embassies, for our foreign guests. Just like other nations provide external security for U.S. missions overseas.

But the diplomatic mission itself has its own inherent security force. (Some, e.g., Jamaica, probably not so much, mon. But a G8--you bet.) Whether those individuals are hired as employees or are provided to the embassy by a private security company, when the individuals are providing security services to the diplomatic mission, be it on embassy grounds or in embassy vehicles, our understanding is that the professional licensure requirements of the locality do not apply. Specifically, those places are islands of sovereign territory of the foreign power, and the applicability of licensure is at best quite unclear. If someone can document that it is otherwise, we'd genuinely be glad to know that. But we’ll put money that the answer is no.

And to put a point on it: Nobody's claiming that traveling through the Mansour district is like rolling Anacostia after dark. (Even if it sometimes seems close.) We're just saying that there is far more to this than: "Who has a license?" 'Course we're just dumb bunnies who don't bother to research facts before we speak. ...

IF Blackwater followed the U.S. government-issued Rules for Use of Force (and that is really the $800 million dollar question of the day--one to which we won't know the answer until DoS/MoI complete their investigation), then this is actually a dispute between the MoI and DoS over RUF. Because plugging in DynCorp or Triple Canopy won't change anything. So it will be interesting to see whether the two bureaucracies get together and throw Blackwater under the bus. Pinkertons, anyone?

Addressing this issue broadly is the key to fixing one of the key shortcomings in Iraq and elsewhere: enabling the projection of nonmilitary components of the nation's power. Unless some way is found to secure AID personnel, civilian advisers, diplomats and spooks, then embedding with the military is the only way to survive. Ryan Crocker has had to waive State Department security regulations simply to get diplomats into the field legally. Now with their Blackwater escorts grounded (by the State Department itself) the need to find some way to allow "nonmilitary" elements to operate in the War on Terror environment is greater than ever.

But I have little confidence the issue will be addressed in these terms. It is far more likely that "Halliburton"-type talking points will be bruited about instead. If America loses the War on Terror, the politicians in Washington will have deserved to lose.

Ghanem the Eighth

A huge car bomb killed an anti-Syrian MP and at least three others today in Beirut, a week before the Lebanese Parliament was to due meet to elect a new president. Antoine Ghanem, the eighth prominent anti-Syrian figure to be assassinated since 2005, died in the blast in the Christian Sin el-Fil neighbourhood of the capital.

That's how the UK Times describes the latest incident in undeclared conflict between parties whose identities are officially unknown but which are common knowledge. Joshua Landis at Syria Comment notes that Antoine Ghanem's death is an operation of subtraction in a deadly game of arithmetic for control of the Lebanese government. The participation of organizations like Hezbollah in the "democratic space" means that bombs are as legitimate as ballot boxes.

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This is significant because Presidential elections must be carried out before the end of November and March 14th's majority is only held by a few deputies. The immediate impulse of journalists will be to tie the killing of Ghanem to Syria. They will see it as Damascus' pay back for Israel's bombing raid on Syria.

Ghanem's death may also be a signal to France, which is said to be trying to diminish Syrian influence in Lebanon through its connections with Maronite Christian political allies. Ghanem was a Maronite.

It's difficult to speculate on what the "Western" response should be largely because all conceivable ripostes are illegal, with the exception of sending Syria a diplomatic protest -- which would be rejected anyway because they will not officially acknowledge any role in events. A declaration of war is out. Military action would legally require an application to the UN. Covert action is liable to denouncement by the New York Times. Counter-assassination is probably a criminal act which no Western politician could authorize without fear of being tried by a Human Rights Tribunal in the future. So what's left? A futile trek to the UN made all the more compelling by the fact that every liberal pundit will clamor for it. The fact that no such constraints bind Syria, Hezbollah or Iran is irrelevant; and they will be the first to denounce and reject the Western pleas at the UN.

The employment of the Israeli Air Force to bomb an unspecified target funded by unknown other countries passing through the airspace of an unmentioned allied Muslim Nation for reasons that are still mysterious shows how total this legal paralysis is. Despite the third-rate military capability of Syria, none dare act against except it but an "outlaw nation", which by definition, can operate outside international law. With Syria and Hezbollah knocking off one opposition politician after the other what can the moral mandarins of the West Left do, except hope the despised Jew will do their dirty work? They may have even arranged for it, because even if Syria succeeds in obtaining a "democratic majority" by tearing up all the rules of democracy, by employing the car-bomb and the machinegun, the West will be forced to play by the formal rule book anyway and accredit their diplomats to the Syrian puppets. A call to Jerusalem may have been easier. We all know how this works. The enemy can torture Americans but Americans must always abide by the Geneva Convention. Dura lex, sed lex.. And one way, too.

The alternative of course, is for Europe and America to forthrightly declare their intention to stop Syria themselves. And if any provisions of International Law prevent it, then International Law should be amended where appropriate and action proceed forthwith. But that's too honest a course for a political elite too clever by a half. They've manacled themselves and can't even muster the gumption to unlock it with the key between their fingers.

Well, why not?

Glenn Reynolds suggests, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that a "fireball [which] fell from the sky and slammed into southern Peru over the weekend, creating a huge crater that emitted a sickeningly smelly gas" may precipitate an attack of zombies. Anyone who is seriously worried about repelling an onslaught of zombies should visit Zombie Defense Training, a site which contains useful tips which may one day save your life. One handy reference you will definitely want to own is the Zombie Survival Guide, published by Random House. This is serious stuff folks.

I have often thought that a really enterprising screenplay or thriller writer might strike gold writing Zombies Versus al-Qaeda. There are two possible plotlines. The first opens when zombies are about to begin an attack on an unsuspecting town when suddenly they become aware of another threat ... can zombies remember they were once men? The second reverses the scenario. The baddest group of terrorists on the planet is preparing to slaughter the student population of an entire high school when suddenly an attack from the Undead forces the hardened al-Qaeda to consider whether they should join forces with humanity to repel these creatures from beyond the grave ... Sample dialogue: "We're not afraid to die!" "We're already dead!" "I became a zombie on 9/11." "Quick Abdul, the suicide belt. Do you think an IED will stop them?"

Nothing follows.

On Ebay

Readers with about $1.5 million to spare might want to buy a former Titan ICBM silo on Ebay. When my son saw the schematic below he said, "dad you've just got to buy this".

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The Cold War loomed for so long over the world that it's hard to accept the way it ended. And yet that end should not have been wholly unexpected. It was fought not just with weapons but with propaganda. If the Titan Missile epitomized the nuclear deterrent, the Saturn V represented the apex of the rocket as a weapon of ideas. The clip below shows Apollo 11 it lifting off. Look for the moment in the slow motion video when the letters "USA" slide past the camera lens. And when the Moon Rocket rises into the air against the background of clouds in the final seconds, you understand why bystanders, even critics of the space program, leapt to their feet, cheering. Yet for all its explosive magnificence, I'm glad the Cold War is over.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.

The Day the Music Died

Two intelligent men, Roger Simon and Ed Morrissey, ponder the phenomenon that is OJ Simpson. Roger describes the OJ trial as a psychological pivot; the day he realized how things really were and how that knowledge changed his life. Captain Ed for his part sees in OJ a terrible looking-glass in which our notions of celebrity are reflected back with the grotesqueness of a funhouse mirror. "It's very likely that no American celebrity has managed to dissipate his life so totally and completely, legally, financially, and morally, as Simpson has done over the last thirteen years. And maybe that's the fascination."

Murder of course, sets OJ apart from comparison with Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. But I wonder if I would be wrong in thinking that OJ may be the least conscious of these ironies; that maybe right at this very moment, he is totally oblivious to the tragic figure that he cuts or the lives he has blighted and is simply thinking about how to get out of jail and recover the sports memorabilia that he thinks is his. One reason why people find it hard to understand apparently nonsensical crimes -- such as when we read about a man murdered for a slice of pizza -- is that we refuse to accept that some people can kill for pizza.

The quality that I have found most dangerous in other human beings -- and you don't even find it in all murderers -- is when they are in a complete state of nature; where sex is a just an itch to gratified, hunger just a craving, anger something to be fed. Such people are fundamentally no different from Great White Sharks prowling the oceans. They'll take off your leg without even hearing you scream, just as long as they have something to chew on.

I don't know whether OJ is like that: cruising around behind that smile with his fangs out. But I know that some people can just go on wrecking lives, incuding their own, without thinking anything of it. You can feel sorry for them, as long as you keep your distance or are ready to hit as hard as they hit you without the slightest hesitation yourself. That's your concession to nature; learning that you're an animal is unfortunately part of being a man. Nothing follows.