Left Flank

Pendagon wins the contest for apt sentiments:

Our hearts are with those who struggle in Burma because they must, because you will never be wholly owned as long as you continue to struggle. It's easy for me to say that, though, isn't it? Which is why writing this is hard; my awe of those who put their lives on the line is humbling. May we all have the courage of our convictions as those who struggle against the military dictatorship do.

And, here, I was going to stop. Discussing what is admirable, though, should not detract from criticizing what, as it were, is making Sisyphus push that rock up that hill. There's a reason why Myanmar is a problem, and it's not because any one country has not gotten tough, or not because of a dearth of sanctions laws, or lack of publicity. It's because the world can never agree what needs to be done, and is more concerned for its own national concerns.

Ed Morrissey attacks sanctions, justifiably:

Sanctions alone have never collapsed a tyranny. Usually it just results in misery for the people who already suffer under the oppressive tyrants, a dynamic which the UN tried to avoid in Iraq by establishing the Oil-for-Food program. That turned into a massive corruption scandal that wound up enriching the tyrant that sanctions supposedly targeted. Even without the corruption, the sanctions lost popularity in just a couple of years, with some nations arguing that they killed 5,000 Iraqi children a month. The world has almost as little tenacity for sanctions as they do for military action.

The notion that worldwide condemnation would change the direction of the military junta seems mostly naive.

In another post, he attacks the shame weapon:

This process enables people to change action for rhetoric. We do that often enough already. In the case of Burma, even the testimony of diplomats attesting to dozens dead in the streets hasn't convinced China, Thailand, or India to cut off Burma and close down trade with them. Are we to believe that a strongly-worded letter from the State Department recapping what everyone already knows about the Burmese military dictatorship will exceed the power of those images?

Reliance on challenge documents just lets everyone off the hook. It seeks to embarrass governments that have no accountability to their people. Shame doesn't work in that setting, and for those who think that is the ultimate in diplomatic offensives, it keeps other solutions off the table. That's the harm.

Shame seeks to use group dynamics, to modify the behavior of a subgroup, in this case, the Burmese junta. Unfortunately, there are processes already at work, political and economic. Social psychological forces count for little at the global level. But, sanctions, are more a domestic palliative, for the governments giving them than for the junta receiving them, than a sharp tool, as Morrissey argues.

Again, Michael J.W. Sticking's raises the specter of genocide to advocate sanctions.

These are «techniques are modeled on the sanctions designed against North Korea,» sanctions which have been somewhat successful in terms of cutting off (Western) investment and other engagement with the Hermit Kingdom. But there is only so much the U.S. and Europe can do without Chinese and Indian support. As long as the totalitarians in Burma have China and India to prop up their regime, efforts to «speed their demise» may not be all that effective.

Still, it's something -- and something (Bosnia) is better than nothing (Rwanda). With military action not feasible, the crisis in Burma forces the U.S. and Europe to pursue other means, notably diplomacy (through the U.N.), tougher sanctions, pressure on China and India, and, presumably (hopefully), secret efforts in support of the protesters and their cause.

Sticking's wants to use shame to persuade India and China to pressure Myanmar, as well as implementing sanctions against the junta itself. Firstly, the Burmese people need closer integration with global markets, not less. Sanctions both inflict pain, but, as in the case of the DPRK, actually empower a sadistic state apparatus to mismanage its state and economy without the scrutiny of markets. Doing just something takes a backseat to doing something in a coordinated way. The UN and all major players have to agree, and that has not happened. And, it never will.

Tokyo's concern for journalist Nagai Kenji is an example. Any reaction short of parking a destroyer in the Indian Ocean is just perfunctory, and no other player would join Japan. So, instead of an honest reaction, Tokyo will lodge complaints. Netizens will raise awareness of Myanmar's plight with their invective, to a certain extent. There's not enough journalist or oil deposits in the world the Burmese junta could kill or spike, to alienate every country in the world with sufficient sadism and ineptitude for the world to park its armed forces around the Burmese borders.

Another pet peeve is the name game. Is it Myanmar, or Burma? I think it's just childish not to use Myanmar, to spite the junta. But, there is the issue of comprehension. So, I've chosen to use 'Myanmar' as the name of the country and 'Burmese' for the majority ethnic group living in Myanmar. The other alternative sounds like a butchered pronunciation of 'mayonnaise'.

As Yangon's streets seemingly stand poised for more riots, and the UN envoy is doing the rounds of both the junta and the opposition, it's good to recall, that his job is to manage conflict, not solve the crisis. There's no certainty, that with all the good will and negotiations, both sides could hammer out a compromise. And, it's equally unclear whether the opposition could rule Myanmar.

Of course, Burmese could just flee. That would incite instant global anger if thousands of immigrants hit foreign shores

Sisyphus might just be Burmese.

Not that here isn't something awe-inspiring about the concept of spending gazillions for nuke-tipped missiles, only to present a check for yet more missiles to destroy the first batch, but 70% is not a great record.

The $85 million test was a rerun of one that was supposed to have taken place in May but was scrubbed when the target misfired.

The test marked the sixth successful downing of a target in 10 full-fledged intercept tests since October 1999 in which knocking down the target was the primary objective, said Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency.

It's also inspiring, that Washington doesn't feel challenged enough in Iraq to tackle another challenge with the Kim regime that cannot both feed people and deliver a nuclear payload consistently. I feel safe as an American, that Washington can spend so much money to be so diligent about self-fulfilling tests. Being the profligate hyperpower that devices the threat of wasting more money than humanly possible is a big deterrent to a sadist willing to sacrifice his population. It'll certainly be embarrassing if Pyongyang can undermine the US the way the US outspent the former Soviet Union.

As a married guy and a victim of household cockroaches, the story of the ampulex compressa is just exquisitely entertaining.

The larva grows inside the roach, devouring the organs of its host, for about eight days. It is then ready to weave itself a cocoon - which it makes within the roach as well. After four more weeks, the wasp grows to an adult. It breaks out of its cocoon, and out of the roach as well. Seeing a full-grown wasp crawl out of a roach suddenly makes those Alien movies look pretty derivative.

There's much more, so read Carl Zimmer's account, or listen to him on BHTV.

McClatchy's Tim Johnson, and author of the blog, China Rises, lays his thoughts down about the DPRK in a video. For committed DPRK pundits, Johnson presents nothing new or shocking, and never really gets that far into the hermitic state or any particular place where he goes. One would think only about hundred people live in North Korea whenever these documentaries are filmed. But, for newbies, it's a short introduction.

But, really, this picture says so much more about Kim Jong-il's playground.

I'm almost certain Smith and Ricardo would agree. that a free-trade agreement that includes a provision about dumping hazardous waste, is not a win-win situation.

At Thursday?s hearing, groups opposed to the treaty even managed to impress Ambassador to Japan Domingo Siazon.

Siazon commended Junk JPEPA lawyer Golda Benjamin for her ?excellent, thorough, articulate and well-researched? arguments that the treaty would promote the entry into the Philippines of toxic and other hazardous waste from Japan.

Under JPEPA, the tariff rates for hazardous waste would be reduced to zero.

Siazon, who flew back to Tokyo after the hearing, said the Philippines needed the support of a ?technologically advanced? country like Japan to deal with its own hazardous waste.

Health Undersecretary Alexander Padilla, meanwhile, stunned the senators when he disproved the Department of Environment and Natural Resources? claim that Japan would not export hazardous waste to the Philippines.

Padilla said the Department of Health had ?concerns? that the treaty would allow for reciprocity, meaning that both the Philippines and Japan could export hazardous waste to each other.

?While we agree with the noble objectives of the JPEPA, we feel we do live in an imperfect world,? he said.

That's an understatement, indeed!

People and resources get sacrificed, to maintain an average of 10% growth a year. Ask the residents of Hongwei.

The Hongwei Petrochemical Park is just outside the city of Daqing. Celebrated in Maoist myth as the scene of heroic industrialisation, Daqing is still the fourth most productive oilfield in the world. Of the six companies operating in the park, the largest is Daqing Lianhua, a PetroChina subsidiary.

For eight years residents of Hongwei have been waging a fruitless struggle to find the cause of high rates of serious illness in their midst. Out of a permanent population of 3,400, at least ten children have been born with an affliction diagnosed by local doctors as cerebral palsy. It is unprecedented for the incidence of cerebral palsy to «cluster» in this way. Foreign experts think from the symptoms and clustering that the disease is akin to Minamata Syndrome, a neurological condition caused by exposure to mercury in the womb. Cancer rates are twice the national average.

Legal efforts to establish a link between the plant and the illness have failed. But in 2003 the local government acknowledged the seriousness of Hongwei's pollution and called on Daqing Lianhua to relocate the villagers. But nothing has come of this, nor of offers to find jobs at the firm for protesting locals.

Or, Zhang Zhongmin.

«People who are buying apartments aren't thinking about whether there will be water in the future,» said Zhang Zhongmin, who has tried for the past 20 years to raise public awareness about the city's dire water situation.

For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China's galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China - even as demand keeps rising everywhere.

China is scouring the world for oil, natural gas and minerals to keep its economic machine humming. But trade deals cannot solve water problems. Water usage in China has quintupled since 1949, and leaders will increasingly face tough political choices as cities, industry and farming compete for a finite and unbalanced water supply.

One example is grain. The Communist Party, leery of depending on imports to feed the country, has long insisted on grain self-sufficiency. But growing so much grain consumes huge amounts of underground water in the North China Plain, which produces half the country's wheat. Some scientists say farming in the rapidly urbanizing region should be restricted to protect endangered aquifers. Yet doing so could threaten the livelihoods of millions of farmers and cause a spike in international grain prices.

For the Communist Party, the immediate challenge is the prosaic task of forcing the world's most dynamic economy to conserve and protect clean water. Water pollution is so widespread that regulators say a major incident occurs every other day. Municipal and industrial dumping has left broad sections of many rivers «unfit for human contact.»

Meanwhile, there's too much water near the Three Gorges Dam:

Wang [Xiaofeng, director of the administrative office in charge of building the dam] cited a litany of threats, especially erosion and landslides on steep hills around the dam, conflicts over land shortages and «ecological deterioration caused by irrational development».

The strikingly frank acknowledgement of problems comes weeks before a congress of the ruling Communist Party that is set to consolidate policies giving more attention to environmental worries after decades of unfettered industrial growth.

Wang revealed that Premier Wen Jiabao had used a cabinet meeting earlier this year to discuss the environmental problems surrounding the dam.

Tensions over residents resettled to steep hills where good farmland is scarce had been reduced and water quality in the dam was «generally stable», Xinhua said.

But the officials and experts were worried about the landslides threatening densely populated hill country.

«Regular geological disasters are a severe threat to the lives of residents around the dam,» senior engineer Huang Xuebin told the forum.

Huang described landslides into the dam waters making waves dozens of meters high that crashed into surrounding shores, creating even more damage.

The dam has displaced 1.4 million people and is retaining huge amounts of sediment and nutrients, damaging fish stocks and the fertility of farmland downstream, researchers say.

Trade, emigration, and a little technical help might tackle these crises.

Here's another reason why the Saffron Revolution will again dissipate: Total and its rationalizations.

«We are convinced that through our presence we are helping to improve the daily lives of tens of thousands of people who benefit from our social and economic initiatives,» said Jean-Francois Lassalle, a vice-president for public affairs at Total. «Our departure could cause the population even greater hardship and is thus an unacceptable risk.»

(...)

«To those who ask us to leave the country, we reply that far from solving Myanmar's problems, a forced withdrawal would only lead to our replacement by other operators probably less committed to the ethical principles guiding all our initiatives,» Lassalle said.

Actually, I do favor the argument presented by the Kuznets curve, and on a sunny day Total is right. But, it's not sunny in Yangon right now.