Recap of BBC Show, as promised to TMV readers earlier.

I was on a BBC radio show today as a blogger from The Moderate Voice.

The issue of the day there was (still), “Should Hillary Clinton quit?”

As a sign of intense international interest in the Obama-Clinton primary race, the BBC has been airing many opinion shows about the elections.

This one segment of one particular show today was just a few minutes of discussion on that topic.

There were, in those few moments on air, lots of emails flying, listener-phone callers… also, about 7 passionate bloggers on the long distance lines too at the same time… and a well-spoken BBC reporter on site at Clinton headquarters in West Virginia.

The BBC show was what I would call ‘a scattershot of opinions,’ wherein as one of the many guests, you sort of get called on by the radio host, as in school, to give your briefest .02 worth… the question itself pressuring for a yes or no response with some details of support.

There’s no time, really, ‘to question the question’… and it would have been bad form on my part, disrespectful of the host and all the planning that went into this segment… but I wanted to ask, “But, is this the right question?” or, “What is behind this question?”

I do hope that’ll be another show though that will cover such ideas. I think we need opinions. But also, like any living entity, we need routes into far larger ideas too.

Quicker vs. Deeper
I note, and certainly not just in this segment at the BBC, that radio guests cannot respond nor interact with one or two other persons, as one would in an actual conversation.

So, the talk-fest is almost like a subliminal/ fast slide-show of opinings, valuable in an instant-snapshot-of-the-culture montage way. Yet, it cannot– as a true conversation in depth would– provoke or catalyze thoughtful grasp and grappling with deeper issues… the latter, I think, adds value to listeners’ shorter-term ‘right/wrong’ and yes/ no/maybe judgments re election issues.

In such important cultural discussions, just to coin a metaphor, I wish for a flowering plant with roots. Rather than just a cutting and gathering of the roses as one may. Both beautiful forms. But, one has far more longevity.

Yet, the radio show was interesting nonetheless, and the male radio host was snappy and energetic. The woman reader of emails on-air was very expressive in tone of voice, lending a theatrical air to listener’s emails. And, the people who are this show’s producers are good-natured, smart, and gentlemanly to the bone.

Though I’ve been on radio many times over these years, at length, and as the sole guest… I’m sincerely appreciative of being asked on today… even though I’m not sure they’ll ever ask me back again… as I interposed Read the rest of this entry »

Wait, wait, don’t clobber me for asking this low in vitamins, high in refined sugar question. I’m not qoing to answer it. I question the question… the repeater-rifle question stuck on automatic: “Should Hillary quit?”

Hear me out…

There are several poignant “election times” topics for national discussion that have been mostly ignored. They oughtn’t be. For instance:

How much of the MSM, by their pronouncements about what any candidate ought or ought not do, (such as quit running) seems to be attempting to influence and create behavior in a candidate, rather than reporting on a candidate’s behavior?

This one too: Whether or how powerful media TV and radio show hosts, who daily perseverate on ‘Should Hillary Clinton quit?’ (sometimes with bald exhortations rather than as inquiry) come close –perhaps unwittingly– to subverting the spirit of the election process…

An election process in the USA seems to guarantee that citizens are allowed to place their votes in a nomination contest without having themselves, or the candidates, be unduly pressured to quit by any outside power or force.

In a democracy we are told that our votes count, that voting is the rich marrow of the bones our country is founded on. It seems sensible that each person in America who so chooses, wants to be able to have their one say-so in this nomination contest.

I think, from the people I listen to, just average people who work for a company or who own their own businesses, the voters don’t want their chance to vote in the primary pre-empted by a media surge that contains overt and covert calls for a candidate to quit.

What I hear in my corners of the world is that ‘the people’ don’t want the contest to be shut down by media influence, nor by endless fair-weather polls quoting, nor by pollsters’ choices of what to/ whom to test and what not to test, what to keep in, what to leave out.

I think a majority of people just want what they have been promised, what they have prepared for, given their time to already for many months now. They want their right to cast a vote in the election primary not to be interfered with.

Instead, what continues to seem odd, is the MSM in much of television and radio in particular, but also in many old mainline newspapers, seeming telling/ shouting out what a candidate running for high office ought do to quit…

Some in media remind me of a part of the old ballpark where habitually squatted a group we used to call ‘the loser bruisers.’ These were guys who’d never played the game, drank plenty of spirits, but enjoyed dispiriting the players on the field by shouting out insults… the theme of each being predictable: Go home, You’re no good.

But, the ‘loser bruisers’ forgot that for the game to be fair–and to make a winner really ‘a strong winner’ by having met the challenge, not just ‘a weak winner’ by default– the game had to be played out in a certain form… despite those who thought otherwise.

Exhorting a candidate to drop out, too, appears to be tromping on the form. I think the idea is that we are in a democracy, where as impatient as some of those in the MSM are pressured to rush onto the next big OJ thing… the people, ‘we the people,’ want their say. Everything in its own time. Without shortcuts.

Imagine for a moment, another nation, one that has lived under a dictatorship, but which suddenly was enabled to have their first democratic election. Imagine such a nation where the people are straining toward a new day after years of having been battered about. Imagine there are two or more candidates giving speeches, rallies, visiting parts of the country that no person from high office has EVER been bothered to visit before.

Then imagine a big portion of the big and moneyed media of that nation—rather than the people who have not yet voted—imagine the well-established media of that country, much of it old guard, begins pushing that one candidate or another ought disappear before the contest is done, before all the people can vote on which one they most want….

Most Americans would be Read the rest of this entry »

In terms of being the target of Beijing’s vitriol, House Speaker Pelosi has now joined such luminaries as the Dalai Lama and Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian. According to this ‘commentary’ published by the strictly-controlled state run Xinhua news service:

“If an Internet opinion poll were to be carried out in China to choose the most disgusting figure, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would probably be on top of the list. … How can such an irresponsible political figure not be detested by all Chinese?”

The commentary goes on to say, “Underneath her double standards lay a stubborn anti-China sentiment and uneasiness about China’s peaceful rise. Read the rest of this entry »

For the Russians, U.S. recognition of Kosovo’s independence was tantamount to an international crime, and the burning of the United States Embassy in Belgrade by angry Serbs could hardly have been avoided. The New York Bureau Chief of Russia’s Novosti News Service, Dmitry Gornostayev writes, ‘It was somewhat ridiculous to hear the appeal by Deputy Secretary of State Nicholas Burns to the Serbs to respect international law. What is he talking about? He and his colleagues violated it themselves last Monday by recognizing Kosovo’s independence!’ In regard to the past two U.S. presidents and the larger issues of Yugoslavia and Iraq, he writes with a burning sarcasm, ‘If reduced to the terms of criminal law, these global actions at least qualify as robbery and murder. According to the laws of Arkansas and Texas - the home states of the past two U.S. Presidents - the crimes of launching illegal wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq would be punishable by the death penalty. But at the homes of these U.S. presidents no one behaves that way - they are decent gentlemen: they play the saxophone, ride bicycles, keep mistresses under the desk and at the very worst, they drop their bagels and ice cream on the couch. All with perfect decency. But once they go outside, you had better get out of the way.’

By Dmitry Gornostayev, Novosti’s New York Bureau Chief

Translated By Igor Medvedev

February 22, 2008

Russia - Novosti - Original Article (Russian)

When the burning of the American Embassy in Belgrade appeared on television along with armored personnel carriers (filled with Serb policemen bereft of any desire to disperse fellow Serbs with Molotov cocktails), I thought to myself: How long will it be until the Americans recall international law and the Vienna Conventions? [which safeguard the immunity of diplomats and embassies] … They remembered very quickly.

It was somewhat ridiculous to hear the appeal by Deputy Secretary of State Nicholas Burns to the Serbs to respect international law. What is he talking about? He and his colleagues violated it themselves last Monday by recognizing Kosovo’s independence!
Read the rest of this entry »

Will he?…Will he not? The once mighty ex-general Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has become a pathetic figure desperately trying to cling on to the presidential chair. Meanwhile the new democratically elected politicians and the Pakistani public seem adamant…and are sending a clear message that the military dictator should move out of the presidential palace.

Yesterday I saw the BBC’s “Have Your Say” programme that reflects opinions worldwide on a topical subject. The majority verdict favoured that Mr Musharraf bow out of office instead of going through the ugly drama of impeachment by the newly elected parliament in Pakistan…But the world has come to believe that Musharraf would not leave office until his mentor in the White House orders him to do so. (However, the mentor has a few more months to go before he too is reduced to a similar situation as his Pakistani protege).

The last the world heard on this subject was that Bush & Co were pleading with (or pressurising) the new democratically elected Pakistani leaders to allow Musharraf to stay on. Says so much eloquently for the USA promoting democracies in the world and fighting ‘dictators’!!!

Pakistan’s wellknown newspaper The Dawn reports: “US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has backed President Pervez Musharraf in the strongest possible term, calling him the man the United States has been dealing with as the president and wants to continue to do so. Her endorsement comes three days after President Bush telephoned his Pakistani counterpart, apparently to assure him that his administration still recognises Mr Musharraf as the president of Pakistan despite the changes that followed the elections.”

While the Hindustan Times says: “Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf may soon resign to avoid being pushed out by the new coalition of the Pakistan Muslim League(N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which will shortly assume power, according to a report in The Sunday Telegraph.

Read the rest of this entry »

Foreign coverage of the U.S. elections reveal a lot that one might never expect. For example, change seems afoot in Nicaragua, now being governed by Ronald Reagan’s old Sandinista nemesis, Daniel Ortega. In this editorial from La Prensa of Nicaragua, which is heaped with praise for the U.S. election process, sharp criticism of Mr. Ortega’s rejection of primary elections is particularly striking.

“In every way, and despite of the defects that the U.S. primary system has, the U.S. system is far superior to the political procedures that exist in many Latin-American countries.”

EDITORIAL Translated by Miguel Guttierez February 9, 2008, Nicaragua - La Prensa - Original Article (Spanish)
The U.S. primary elections to choose Democratic and Republican Party candidates to contest the presidential election next November 4 show the strength and credibility of North American democracy and have resulted in admiration around the world. In fact, independently of which candidates the two parties select, these primaries demonstrate Read the rest of this entry »

There is one Pakistani politician to watch in the coming months. He hails from the so-called tribal badlands of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, and could play an important role at the national level…that is, if he survives…

Asfandyar Wali Khan, an MBA, who hails from a distinguished family of politicians and is the leader of Pakistan’s Awami National Party (ANP), said on Sunday the blast that killed 29 of his party workers at an election rally in Charsadda in the North-West Frontier Province was a “targeted bombing” that was meant to eliminate the entire party leadership.

Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Wali Khan, grandson of the Pakhtun nationalist leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (better known as Frontier Gandhi), said it may have been intended to scare the ANP into pulling out of the electoral race or a move to sabotage the holding of elections scheduled on February 18.

The Jamestown Foundation in its Global Terrorism Analysis provides interesting insight into Asfandyar Wali Khan’s, and his party’s, role. “The potency of Pashtun nationalist forces should not be underestimated. Given their checkered history and traditional support base, they are potentially an effective and viable political force to challenge the religious extremists in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the adjacent Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). This analysis profiles Asfandyar Wali and his party, which has shown determination in reversing the radical Islamist political trends in the Pashtun-dominated areas of Pakistan.

“…He argued that a Pashtun peace jirga involving Pashtun nationalists, civil society actors and religious players from both sides is the last hope for the region. He interpreted the recent ANP victory in the Bajaur elections as a bright spot in the overall troubling scenario and made a case for allowing liberal political parties to operate and function in the tribal areas. This can only happen, he emphasized, if the Political Parties Act of Pakistan is extended to FATA.

“In reference to the causes of conflict in the tribal areas, he lamented the fact that only pro-government maliks (tribal elders who are on the government payroll) are engaged and mushiraan (”people’s” maliks who are financially independent) were completely ignored. This led to a failure in resolving the crisis in FATA. Furthermore, he thinks that Pakistan should have distinguished between the pre-9/11 foreigners who are by now well settled in the area and the post-9/11 foreigners that came in to find a sanctuary.
Read the rest of this entry »

Having given President Bush a kick in the chops yesterday for being complicitous in the Benazir Bhutto assassination because of how he has coddled his favorite dictator and her implacable enemy, let’s take a half a step back and address one of the administration’s serial failures – its chronic inability to use diplomacy to advance America’s interests abroad.

The White House has been at sea when it comes to talking to friends and foes alike and has drearily resorted to threats of using the stick over the carrot time and again, its embarrassingly ineffectual Iran policy being a signal example.

Or, in the case of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, it has dithered while pouring tens of billions of dollars down a rat hole that has become a safe haven for terrorists while claiming that great strides are being made in heartland of the Global War on Terror.

The White House’s stroking of Musharraf aside, there isn’t a whole lot it could have done short of invading Pakistan (not an option) or walking away and making a bad situation even worse (also not an option).

Which in fairness to the Bush administration points up the difficulties that the U.S. has faced all the way back to the administration of President Teddy “Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick” Roosevelt in balancing its interests – benign or too often otherwise — with nations whose way of seeing things don’t coincide with Washington’s.

That noted, the Bush administration’s hard-wired default to bellicosity, the preferred means of the thuggish Dick Cheney, paired with it being the only global superpower of the moment, has exacerbated those historic difficulties. As has being played the fool by Nouri Al-Maliki in Iraq and Musharraf in Pakistan, two leaders who know that the U.S. needs them more than they need the U.S. in an era where presidential politics reliably trumps national policy.

With the exception of North Korea, the U.S. has precious little to show by way of diplomacy over the last seven years, and it has not helped that the un-Cheney — Condoleezza Rice — is a resume without a woman and the most ineffectual secretary of state in recent memory.

Beyond its blowhard approach toward Tehran, which took an embarrassing turn earlier this month when it was revealed that Iran apparently had shuttered its nuclear weapons program four years ago, there has been no bigger diplomatic failure on Bush’s watch than his quest to bring democracy to the Muslim world while forcing out the militants who are the gasoline of the jihad against the West.

As Helene Cooper and Steven Lee Meyers write today in The New York Times, the Bhutto assassination “highlighted in spectacular fashion” these twin failures.

An upshot of which is that in the wake of Bhutto’s death the U.S. is now forced to reach out to allies of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who have close ties to the very militants that Islamabad and Washington have been so ineffectual in marginalizing. Ironically, that may turn out to be not a bad thing as unaccustomed as the U.S. is to entering into dialogue with its foes.

The Bush administration (including Rice) get props for trying to broker a power sharing agreement between Musharraf and Bhutto.

But with its regional and world standing at low ebb and Musharraf more interested into holding onto power than sharing it, the deal was stillborn from the moment the opposition leader returned home to face a series of assassination attempts that in retrospect inevitably would lead to her death. No matter who actually pulled the trigger (my supposition is militants aided by Musharraf’s military), the Pakistani president bears responsibility for her death and, as I noted yesterday, Bush’s hands are anything but clean.

Juan Cole sums up the sitch thusly at Salon :

“Pakistan’s future is now murky, and to the extent that this nation of 160 million buttresses the eastern flank of American security in the greater Middle East, its fate is profoundly intertwined with America’s own. . . . If Pakistani politics finds its footing, if a successor to Benazir Bhutto is elected in short order by the PPP and the party can remain united, and if elections are held soon, the crisis could pass. If there is substantial and ongoing turmoil, however, Muslim radicals will certainly take advantage of it.”

To get through the crisis, Cole says, Bush must insist that the Pakistani Supreme Court be reinstated by Musharraf, the PPP must be allowed to elect a successor to Bhutto without the interference of the military, early elections must be held, and the country must return to civilian rule.

Scarecrow at Firedoglake lowers the hammer, asserting that the Bush administration convinced Bhutto to return to Pakistan “to save a risky policy foolishly built on a despised, repressive military dictator.”

“U.S. policy is in tatters. The administration was relying on Benazir Bhutto’s participation in elections to legitimate Musharraf’s continued power as president. Now Musharraf is finished,” says Barnett R. Rubin of New York University.

Maybe so or maybe not.

But it will take a newfound appreciation of the powers of patient diplomacy to begin to salvage the mess that an administration, more or less led by a president so deficient in the qualities of leadership, has made of its Pakistan policy. A good start would be to lock the vice president in a closet and throw away the key.

Arethe boom years freedom over and the forces of democracy in retreat? According to this column by Thomas Klau of Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, with the world of ‘capital’ migrating toward authoritarian regimes like Russia and China and ‘decoupling’ from the liberal democracies, ‘democracy could be only a matter of an era, and not the end of history.’

“Supporters of a liberal, humanistic respect for basic democratic values now must do battle on many fronts - and their greatest - the USA - now constitutes one of the greatest battle fronts of all.”

By Thomas Klau

Translated by Julian Jacob

November 29, 2007

Germany - Financial Times Deutschland - Original Article (German)

Authoritarian governments are witnessing a renaissance that the democrats of the world must fight – and they must do so forcefully.

Eighteen years have passed since Francis Fukuyama gained worldwide attention and fame with his forecast of the “End of History .”

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such, wrote the American intellectual wrote in his essay, published in the revolutionary year of 1989. Mankind may have reached the end of its ideological evolution, namely, “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

Fukuyama long ago distanced himself from this analysis, and not a few of his statements now seem like hastily formulated nonsense. Nevertheless, for a long time they had an astonishing resonance. The Soviet dictatorship that competed with the liberal democracies had disintegrated into dust, and the USA was the shining proof that a working democracy and military superiority are compatible. After this experience with the Soviet bloc, the triumph of liberal government seemed imminent in China, Asia and eventually even Africa.

DEMOCRACY ON THE DEFENSIVE

Tempi passati [Italian for Time has past]. Nowadays the hope of democracy’s triumph no longer dominates. Quite the contrary - the fear of a lasting renaissance of authoritarianism now dominates. In Russia as in China, authoritarian central governments enjoy tremendous popular support thanks to strong economic growth; in Latin America, Venezuelan Hugo Chavez demonstrates that in the southern half of the continent, the long-term dominant trend toward more democracy is not at all irreversible. The situation seems even more dismal in the Arab countries, where almost everywhere, free elections would bring to power Islamic disciples of Savonarola , who would usher in democratic rule to achieve Puritanical terror.

In the central organ of the German Zeitgeists, the news magazine Der Spiegel, Dirk Kurbjuweit recently wrote of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s most recent visit to China and of the sense of loneliness on the part of democrats. And he asked a heretical question. “It’s getting exciting to see which side capital will gravitate toward in the future,” Kurbjuweit wrote. “Up to now it was on the side of democracy, since it has always been democratic industrial states which adopted the market economy. The Chinese model could eventually become an alternative. Man sometimes forgets that democracy could be only a matter of an era, and not the end of history.”

A Renaissance of Puritanism, a Renaissance of authoritarianism, and perhaps the decoupling of free-market principles from the principles of democracy - these are the messages heard by people today. And to this we must add the weakening of the fundamental values of democratic humanism, such as the ban on torture and arbitrary imprisonment in the United States. The wind has changed and it’s blowing in the wrong direction.

READ THE REST ON WORDon.US

Burma’s prime minister, General Soe Win, died on Friday, but it hardly matters. Although he was “a reputedly ruthless member of the ruling military junta,… credited with overseeing a 2003 attack against democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi,” and although he was the “fourth-ranking member of the junta,” he apparently had “little if any policy-making role as prime minister and was largely considered a figurehead for the junta.”

So, good riddance, but there are still many more — and many more powerful — totalitarians left to brutalize the country.

**********

And the brutality continues: “Four prominent political activists were arrested in Myanmar on Saturday as the ruling junta kept up its crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, Amnesty International said.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Mainstream media outlets have already moved on from Burma. What is it now, to them, but a story of the past? What more, to them, is there to say?

Not much, not much at all, there are new and far more sensationalistic stories to tell, upon which to report. And for the mainstream media outlets of our sensation-driven society, what is important about the news is what is new.

This is a generalization, of course, and something of an exaggeration. The reporting continues, to a point, to a limited extent, to the extent that serious outlets like the BBC continue to focus on what is not an isolated but an ongoing story, one that requires out ongoing attention.

And there is news, activity, something upon which to report, a slap on the wrist, less than that, from the U.N.:

The UN Security Council has adopted a statement deploring Burma’s military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

The agreement came after China lifted its objections to a statement first drafted by the US, UK and France.

It represents the first time the 15-nation body has taken any formal action over Burma.

The move indicates a shift of position by China, which had previously used its veto to stop the council from criticising Burma’s military junta.

The statement “strongly deplores the use of violence against peaceful demonstrators” in Burma and calls on the junta and all other parties “to work together toward a de-escalation of the situation and a peaceful solution”.

It also calls for the early release of “all political prisoners and remaining detainees”, urging the junta to prepare for a “genuine dialogue” with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The statement — which, unlike a resolution, requires the consent of all 15 council members to be adopted — was issued by Ghana’s UN Ambassador Leslie Christian, the council’s president.

A statement. Great. Ooooooooh. I’m sure the totalitarians are trembling in fear. Some comments:
Read the rest of this entry »

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.)

I’ve been doing a lot of international-news-oriented posts recently — not because I’m turning away from the U.S. — I’m still mostly U.S.-focused — but because, well… because there’s been lot going on around the world. The situation in Burma is the big story at the moment, and rightly so, and I and others been covering it extensively, but here are a couple more fairly high-profile stories, both from the former Soviet Union:

1) Russia: It looks like Putin might be pulling a Chavez after all. He’s not trying to change the rules to keep himself in power — no, he hasn’t gone that far, yet — but he may not step aside, or out, when his presidential term is up:

President Vladimir Putin, in a surprise announcement, opened the door Monday to becoming Russia’s prime minister and retaining power when his presidential term ends next year.

The popular Mr. Putin is barred from seeking a third consecutive term in the March presidential election, but has strongly indicated he would seek to keep a hand on Russia’s reins after he steps down.

Mr. Putin’s remarks Monday at a congress of the dominant, Kremlin-controlled United Russia party hint at a clear scenario in which he could remake himself as a powerful prime minister and eclipse a weakened president.

You know what they say about power, especially the absolute variety.

Putin may install a puppet as president — say, current Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, a Putin loyalist whom Putin recently put in place — and rule from parliament, the Duma.

Garry Kasparov, chess master and now the leader of the pro-democracy, anti-Putin forces in Russia, is right: “In fact, Putin has done nothing more than decide to use United Russia [Putin’s political party] as the main mechanism for retaining power.” He is also right to attack “the anti-democratic and anti-constitutional nature of this whole electoral process”.
Read the rest of this entry »

(Cross-posted from The Reaction.)

Via Brad Plumer: England’s Daily Mail is reporting on the unofficial (if “official” is what the totalitarians are telling us) but likely accurate death toll in Burma, as well as on the nature of the brutality, the mass murder of the regime’s opponents:

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”

*****

Reports from exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply “disappeared” as 20,000 troops swarmed around Rangoon yesterday to prevent further demonstrations by religious groups and civilians.

Word reaching dissidents hiding out on the border suggested that as well as executions, some 2,000 monks are being held in the notorious Insein Prison or in university rooms which have been turned into cells.

There were reports that many were savagely beaten at a sports ground on the outskirts of Rangoon, where they were heard crying for help.

Read the full article for more, which includes photos.

The media will soon lose interest in this story, moving on to whatever is next, largely because the sensationalism will subside and their consumers will grow tired of more of the same — and because Burma is effectively a “closed” society. Whatever the attention is continues to receive, however, we must not let this story disappear. If there is little else that we can do — we who do not have the levers of government at our disposal, we who are not diplomats, we who cannot impose sanctions, that is, we bloggers, we in the alternative media — we can continue to seek out reports, and to report on those reports, and to comment on those reports, coming out of Burma or about the situation in Burma generally, as well as to comment on what our governments are doing, or not doing.

That’s the least we can do.
Read the rest of this entry »