Waxing and Waning

Escalation and peace talks, or things in between are the theme of military news today, with local grassroots activism thrown in for flavor. Roughly organized from worst news to best news, here is a brief of places where people are killing each other or moving away from it.

In what would be a dangerous escalation of the Bush administration's Global War on Terror, the CIA is reportedly considering expanding its area of operations into the tribal regions of Pakistan. Pakistan's government, of course, has announced that they would not allow any such operations within their country. Meanwhile, Pakistan's government has reassigned Generals ahead of a massive military effort in the aforementioned tribal region that is the North West Frontier Province. Should the CIA get approval to implement such a horribly misguided policy, the situation will become much worse, with global public opinion shifting further away from the idea of the United States as anything other than a lonely bully.

On the front of one of the longest-smoldering flashpoints in the world, Ehud Olmert has ordered security forces "to escalate Israel's actions" in Gaza after their homemade rockets went a little further than normal. According to the article, 4 people were killed and 34 wounded. This comes ahead of Bush's visit to the Middle East, which has been roundly denounced by al Qaeda's American spokesman. On the question of what becomes of those held by Israeli security forces during their raids into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization, has published a damning report of the Israeli Defense Force's military court system.

From another of the world's longest-smoldering flashpoints, comes news that the Tamil Tiger's military intelligence chief has been killed amid renewed fighting in northern Sri Lanka. The Nordic monitors are leaving, and the army is expected to begin its new escalation on January 16th.

In other news, the deal worked out with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program isn't being implemented as smoothly as envisioned.

Myanmar is celebrating its Independence Day! Iraq is celebrating its Army Day!

The Armed Forces of the Phillipines announced they are on schedule to crush the Islamist uprising in the southern regions of the country.

The guns will fall mostly silent in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as the government has suspended operations against rebel factions ahead of a planned peace summit.

Local citizens in Cyprus attempted to stand up for their sovereign rights in the face of British imperialism, with 120 demonstratings throwing rocks and fireworks at RAF Akrontiri.

shorten your briefs

Myanmar: a new internet blackout, coupled with the expulsion of the UN Special Envoy, forbodes trouble. The opposition claims that it's strength is waxing, but the military has only begun to respond. Meanwhile, a look at the govt's recruiting efforts, the life of one of the youngest members of the country's elite and his life in singapore, and why his life is about to become much more complicated.

Ivory Coast: What some see as a tenuous peace process moves at a careful pace, while questions are raised about fattening war chests.

Zimbabwe: Under the strangely opaque lighting of continuing negotiations between the government ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC, the two parties have agreed to postpone elections to March of '08. Will these negotiations lead to resolution of the crisis facing Zimbabwe? I bet on no. Phillip Pasirayi also bets on no, though for slightly different reasons.

The Bomb: A resolution will be coming soon to a UN General Assembly near you, with the usual suspects already voting in their respective ways. The world powers dispatch their representatives to London to talk about Iran's bomb. The Bush administration is trying to bully the other permanent members of the UN Security Council for license to attack Iraq, er, Iran. Sorry, I had a moment of deja vu there. North Korea, meanwhile, might soon be rid of their bomb. Germany wants a piece of the potential pie that is the Indian Nuclear Deal, which PM Singh says is only delayed. And check out Hindustan Times' "Nuclear Deal Imbroglio" page.

Myanmar, Oct 1 (Update)

The situation in Myanmar during the internet blackout was far worse than I have heard anyone speculate. According to the Daily Mail, thousands of monks have been executed and dumped in the jungle.

Myanmar, Oct 1

Despite its prevelance in the news, the country of Myanmar is for all intents and purposes, fails to appear on the mental maps of most Americans. To serve as background information, one need look no farther than Myanmar's Wikipedia entry(and in Chinese, notice the distinct difference in amount of content) and Myanmar's CIA Factbook Entry. For Al-Jazeera, Veronica Pederosa writes about potential conflicts among Myanmar's ruling generals. Jeff Hodson, writing for the Seattle Times, posits that Myanmar was a tinderbox waiting for a spark.

Despite notions in the mainstream media to the contrary, no country, even "the Hermit Kingdom," is ever entirely removed from the world around it. Described as one of the main battlefields between the world's two new emerging superpowers, the recent unrest in Myanmar was of particular concern to the Chinese elite and the Indian military establishment. The Guardian reports on the benefits of Beijing's policy toward the SPDC. The junta has been supported for years by foreign corporations, and, consequently, the French Corporation Total is again coming under investigation in Belgium. Writers in the Jakarta Post advocate that Indonesia, seeking to become a leading power among the ASEAN states, should support the protesters. Despite the death of Japanese photographer Kenji Nagai (video is in Burmese), the Japanese Government is approaching its response to the military crackdown delicately, unwilling to cut off Myanmar's largest source of foreign aid. The BBC rounds off the list, with responses from other countries' governments. Also, Gerald Warner opines in the Scotsman that paying attention to the situation in Myanmar is the latest hypocritical Liberal craze, and, on a related note, that the Chinese Government should also be overthrown. In the United States, notable foreign policy figures, such as John McCain and Laura Bush, have announced that they denounce the crackdown. As of this printing, the Support the Monks' protest in Burma group on Facebook has 238,630 members, with 'contextual coverage' from Jill Lawless for the Associated Press.

On a brighter note, there is a stream of good news coming out of Myanmar as the crackdown is apparently lifted. Humanitarian aid organizations are beginning to resume operations, the army is relaxing its grip slightly, and teh Internets were briefly available. On an interesting sidenote, "unknown hackers" did the work of Myanmar's military government and shut down irrawaddy.org, which publishes information from within the insular country.

Reflections on lessons learned from the affair, by Paul Reynolds for the BBC, layout a series of steps usually necessary for regime change.

For a fuller multimedia experience, here are segments of a video directly from the monks' protest in Yangon. One of the most interesting parts is the response to the girl's smile.

Myanmar, Continued

It would appear that the military dictatorship in Myanmar has started taking coercive actions against the protesters. Here are updates, from the Guardian and from the BBC. However, in rounding up Buddhist monks and nuns by the hundreds, the military might be picking one enemy too many, the entire Buddhist population of Myanmar, that is. With cutting off the internet, though, I fear that unless the rest of the world finds a way to productively intervene the key statistic of this affair may be bodies in mass graves. After all, the worst acts of violence are wrought in silence, ala Abu Ghraib.

Myanmar

So far this whole series of events has given me hope for the people of Burma. I have recently taken to saying that people deserve the type of government they have. The fact that this has not been violent at all yet is tremendous and encouraging. Hopefully it will be unthinkable for the army to harm a monk, because at this point as long as the monks have the peoples intrest at heart this can conceveably end with a representative government that looks out for its people.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/26/myanmar/index_np.html