This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Society

  • Robert Kaplan: Modern Heroes

    The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Robert Kaplan this morning entitled “Modern Heroes” that attempts to repair the disconnect between the American public and the US’ volunteer military;

    The cult of victimhood in American history first flourished in the aftermath of the 1960s youth rebellion, in which, as University of Chicago Prof. Peter Novick writes, women, blacks, Jews, Native Americans and others fortified their identities with public references to past oppressions. The process was tied to Vietnam, a war in which the photographs of civilian victims “displaced traditional images of heroism.” It appears that our troops have been made into the latest victims.

    Oh, I agree – Michael Moore used them in his so-called documentaries, every night on the news is a clip of a legless or armless veteran trying to learn how to walk or eat again. I’ve met these “victims” still dirty from their encounters with the enemy and they’re ready and willing to return to their units – they don’t want to be pitied, they just want to do their jobs.

    Kaplan continues;

    The first Medal of Honor in the global war on terror was awarded posthumously to Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith of Tampa, Fla., who was killed under withering gunfire protecting his wounded comrades outside Baghdad airport in April 2003.

    According to LexisNexis, by June 2005, two months after his posthumous award, his stirring story had drawn only 90 media mentions, compared to 4,677 for the supposed Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, and 5,159 for the court-martialed Abu Ghraib guard Lynndie England. While the exposure of wrongdoing by American troops is of the highest importance, it can become a tyranny of its own when taken to an extreme.

    Although Kaplan gives the media a pass in the first few paragraphs, I don’t. The aging editors decide that the American public needs to only see the ugly side of war and not the side that rescues children from death and injury, the side that valiantly crashes through a door, not knowing what’s on the other side and drags wounded comrades out of the line of fire.

    In particular, there is Fox News’s occasional series on war heroes, whose apparent strangeness is a manifestation of the distance the media has traveled away from the nation-state in the intervening decades. Fox’s war coverage is less right-wing than it is simply old-fashioned, antediluvian almost. Fox’s commercial success may be less a factor of its ideological base than of something more primal: a yearning among a large segment of the public for a real national media once again — as opposed to an international one. Nationalism means patriotism, and patriotism requires heroes, not victims.

    But, see, recognizing that there are heroes means recognizing that there is something greater than Man worth fighting and dieing – something beyond this existence here on this planet. Recognizing heroes means you have to admit that there are better people than yourself – that we’re not really all equal in all things, and there’s no government program that can level that particular playing field.

    That’s why the Left raises up it’s own heroes like Cindy Sheehan and Ramsey Clarke – two people when combined couldn’t make a pimple on the lowliest recruit’s ass. What the Left does isn’t at all heroic – the worst thing that could happen to them for the choices they make is a couple of hours in a sanitary holding cell waiting for arraignment in a society that forbids that anyone in authority even raise their voices at them. That’s not heroism – it’s gradeschool playground rules for the weak of spirit.

    Kaplan warns;

    The media is but one example of the slow crumbling of the nation-state at the upper layers of the social crust — a process that because it is so gradual, is also deniable by those in the midst of it. It will take another event on the order of 9/11 or greater to change the direction we are headed. Contrary to popular belief, the events of 9/11 — which are perceived as an isolated incident — did not fundamentally change our nation. They merely interrupted an ongoing trend toward the decay of nationalism and the devaluation of heroism.

    When that second event happens, there’d better not be leftists at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

  • Children Health Insurance Program hyperbole

    The President vetoed the Children’s Health Insurance Program legislation from Congress today – he said he would, didn’t he? But the Democrat Congress sent it to him anyway. The President even offered to negotiate with the Democrats over the bill – they refused. From the Wall Street Journal;

    Democrats “made their political point” by sending Mr. Bush a bill they knew he would veto, said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. “What the President said is, look, send me the bill, I will veto it, and then we will get about the business of trying to find some common ground and reach an agreement on a way forward.”

    House Republicans were virtually locked out of the discussion over the bill, and the White House was actually locked out.

    House Republicans complained that they were left out of the negotiations on the legislation, and they and the White House said the veto will open a chance to revisit the specific provisions. 

    It was a tax increase – pure and simple. And Democrats were immobile on funding the health insurance of people who could afford it – the President said he’d go for funding on families who made less than 200% of the poverty rate, while Democrats insisted on 300%. So Democrats were in for funding an entitlement program – for people who didn’t need assistance. Um, an entitlement program for the wealthiest Americans, if you will.

    Dana Perino went on (Washington Post);

    She added: “I think the president is willing to talk to anybody about how we continue to move forward on this program, with the focus being on how do you get back to the original intent, making sure that the neediest children get taken care of first.”

    That makes perfect sense – but no one ever accused Democrats of having much sense. They wanted an issue – like I’ve said countless times in these pages, Democrats aren’t in the business of solving problems, they’re in the business of sustaining issues. The WSJ makes my point;

    Groups affiliated with Democratic causes plan to drive that message home in coming days. MoveOn.org, along with labor groups, plan rallies in more than 200 congressional districts Thursday, to urge action on the legislation. The groups’ message was clear in the headline of a press release from Americans United for Change shortly after the veto: “Bush Shafts Kids.”

    No, actually, Democrats shafted the neediest kids by sending a bloated bill to the President – just like they shafted the troops when they sent the same bloated Defense bill to him three times.

    Speaking of bloated, Ted Kennedy chimes in with his own brand of strawman logic;

    “Today we learned that the same president who is willing to throw away a half trillion dollars in Iraq is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that amount to bring health care to American children,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

    “The Congress has done its job, passing a bipartisan bill that meets a critical need without adding a penny to the federal deficit. The president has broken his promise to America’s children.”

    No, Jabba the Kennedy, Democrats have broken a promise to be bi-partisan. When I wrote to my Senators Cardin and Mikulski about CHIP, Cardin didn’t bother to respond, Mikulski responded that it was for the children…blah, blah, blah. Mikulski even told me that if I didn’t like the tobacco tax, I should quit smoking. Well, suppose I did – suppose we all did. How would your health insurance program get funded then? Suppose we all cut our habit in half? How would your program get funded? Shortsighted morons that you are. 

    Powerline says “Well Done, Mr. President” and I echo that sentiment.

    A quick perusal of Technorati gives me headlines like “Dear Mr. President: Private Medicine means no medicine if you’re poor” (read that: if government doesn’t do it, it won’t get done for me) and “God told him to spend the money on killing children not helping them” (read that: those God-worshippers love war and hate children) and “THEY NEED YOUR HELP!” (all caps and an exclamation point meaning they didn’t need help this morning, but as soon as the President vetoed the bill, they did need your help). Here’s a really good one; “The President and Jesus; two differing views on children“. Apparently Jesus wouldn’t have vetoed the CHIP – although I don’t remember any mandate in the New Testiment for government-funded health insurance for people that make 300% of the poverty rate.

    Like Newsbusters’ Julia Seymour says; “When the story’s got children, who needs facts?”

  • Obey: War tax to end the war

    David Obey, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee has decided since the Democrats can’t get a draft started, they’ll charge Americans a tax to fan anti-war flames (Washington Times);

    Rep. David R. Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, yesterday threatened unilaterally to block President Bush’s $189 billion emergency war-funding bill to force a U.S. pullout from Iraq and called for levying a surtax to cover the war’s costs.

    Mr. Obey, breaking with the Democratic leadership that has failed repeatedly to end the Iraq war, said unless Mr. Bush establishes a goal to abort combat operations in Iraq by January, he would act alone to cut off war spending.

    “Future generations should not be saddled with paying for an ill-advised war in Iraq that seems to be never-ending,” said the Wisconsin Democrat, who could use his powerful post to lock up the funding bill in committee. “If this war is important enough to fight, then it ought to be important enough to pay for.”

    The proposed income-tax surcharge — a progressive tax ranging from 2 percent to about 15 percent — would net $150 billion a year to cover the cost of the war in Iraq, said Mr. Obey.

    That’s the solution to every problem, I suppose – tax stuff you disagree with.

    Mr. Obey’s proposals did not target the war in Afghanistan, which he said was a justifiable war because the Taliban supported al Qaeda before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

    “It is to draw a meaningful line in the sand,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat and an outspoken war critic. Mr. McGovern and Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, were at Mr. Obey’s side when he announced the surtax plan.

    Yep, the war in Afghanistan is justifiable as long as you look at the war as pure revenge (an emotional response, not a rational response) instead of considering the fact that those 19,000 jihadists we’ve killed in Iraq could’ve been running all over the planet blowing themselves up along with innocent people. But the Democrats can’t just get past the fact that war is not a legal action – it’s a defensive action. All war has a preemptive nature.

    The Wall Street Journal’s David Rogers writes;

    House rules permit Republicans and prowar Democrats to try to go around Mr. Obey and force action on spending. But the chairman’s stand, blessed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), represents a significant escalation of the conflict with the administration.

    It came as moderates in the war debate enjoyed a rare triumph on the House floor. By 377-46, members approved requiring the Pentagon to report regularly to Congress on the status of planning for the redeployment of troops from Iraq.

    Supporters argued it was a first step to end partisan sniping, but many House Democrats remain frustrated by the pace of change in Iraq policy.

    In the past, they have approved Iraq funding with restrictions, only to see these amendments watered down in the Senate because of White House veto threats and Republican filibusters. Ms. Pelosi doesn’t hide her impatience: “We can’t go as slow as that ship” she said of the Senate last week.

    Mr. Obey gives her more leverage. Choosing not to move legislation is “our strongest card at this point,” he said.

    So, not surprisingly, Murtha (Mr. Pink Badge of Courage) and Pelosi are behind this latest end run around the Administration’s honest attempts at winning this war in our favor – as opposed to the Democrats who want to lose this war so they can win the presidency next year. All of this despite the fact that the war in Iraq is being won (as reported by Gateway Pundit and Bill Roggio and Bill Roggio again)

    So why would Democrats try these end runs around the administration? Because it’s their last chance to make splash – it’s their last chance to look like they’ve done something in this war against terror – even though it helps the terrorists. Just to stroke their critics on the extreme left wing.

    Democrats’ spinlessness gives hope to every jihadist in the world – especially those arrayed against our troops in Iraq. I’m sure Pelosi, et al. hope to spark courage in the Mahdi Army again so Democrats can point and call it a civil war – since it hasn’t been a civil war for months and the Iraqis are helping US forces to drive al Qaeda out.

  • Marion Barry robbed – again

    Watching the news last night, i saw that perennial DC hero and typical citizen, Marion Barry was robbed this last weekend. (Washington Post);

    The Southeast Washington home of D.C. Council member Marion Barry was burglarized recently, D.C. police said last night.

    Police said the items taken included watches and jewelry. The value of the items stolen was not immediately available.

    Barry had been on a five-day trip to China last month when the burglary occurred, an aide said. On Sept. 20, the former mayor addressed an association of Chinese mayors. It could not be learned from police exactly when the burglary was reported.

    Yeah, well WaPo got it wrong, somewhat – according to the local Fox Five news, the value of the items taken was about $14,000 in jewelry. Keep in mind, Barry owns this much jewelry and takes trips to China while he still owes back taxes to the Federal government all the way from 1999 – which to the last of my knowledge, he’s made no attempt to repay despite the fact that he’s escaped jail by the grace of a Clinton-appointee Federal judge. I’m sure that same judge would keep you or I out of jail, too, for the same offenses.

    I think the most amazing part of the story is that Barry, now twice a victim of crime in the last two years, still thinks gun control in the District is a good idea and he’s still sponsoring a gun control bill to block a Federal court finding on the issue earlier this year. In fact, Fox Five used the burglary incident to highlight his stance against legal guns. Disregarding the fact that crime is on a steep climb in the District according to Metro Police crime statistics.

    Of course, he’s not known as a cracksmoking whore-monger for nothing, I guess.

  • Juan Williams, the Happy Negro

    From Sister Toldjah, I read that Juan Williams is being attacked by Black media as a “Happy Negro”, a term I’m not familiar with, but apparently he is familiar, according to the Time article he wrote about the incident that caused this inflammatory name-calling;

    It started with Bill O’Reilly’s grandmother. And it blew up into charges of O’Reilly being called a racist and me being attacked as a “Happy Negro” (read that as a lackey or Uncle Tom).

    I guess, O’Reilly being the king of primetime cable news programs makes him a lightning rod for every specious charge on the planet. I’m not a fan of O’Reilly or Williams, for that matter, but I think everyone needs to chill on this one.

    I once met Juan Williams, by chance during our lunch hours (we both work within blocks of each other, so it was inevitable). We talked briefly and I found him to be a very friendly fellow. We talked about Panama (he’s Panamanian by birth, by the way, so it’d be tough for him to be an “Uncle Tom” since he shares skin color, but not a heritage with American Blacks) and his career. The first I’d ever heard of him was when we used his book “Eye on the Prize” in a history seminar I took once.

    I’m not fond of his politics, but I’ve always admired him since he took a few minutes of his lunch period to talk with me. I’ve read some of his books, and he’s a meticulous reseacher and writes very well – for a journalist. Given the body of his published works, by that alone, I can’t imagine the Black media thinking that Williams is anything except a proud Black man working for the betterment of Black society. If they want to take the side of braggart thugs creating an image of Black society that is totally out of sync with reality, against Williams, perhaps Black media-types ought to take account of their own values. If it can be said that Williams is carrying water for O’Reilly, then it is also true that the Black Media is carrying water for convicted and potential felons. Who is on higher ground in this discussion?

    Newsbuster’s Noel Sheppard does the background on Media Matters, the group that cherry-picked O’Reilly’s comments as well as the Limbaugh incident this week.

  • Free Burma Protest in DC

    Friday September 28th at about 4 PM there was a protest that began at the Myanmar Embassy and moved several blocks blocks through Northwest DC to the Chinese Embassy on Connecticut Avenue. Actually, I got at the Myanmar Embassy early and the Burmese has already begun, with very few Americans in attendance;

    Here’s a YouTube link to one of the speeches in their native language.

    [youtube JGm2b5cxydg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGm2b5cxydg]

    Then the monks showed up;

    And the crowd started growing;

    This is what endeared me to the movement. Whenever one of the Burmese would talk to a monk, they’d put their fingers together like this. I can appreciate a culture that reveres the piety of their old world while enjoying the benefits of our culture. To me that represents our melting pot – the western dress while observing their own culture’s traditions – without forcing the rest of us to bend to their particular whims. And so I, in turn, felt a measure of reverance for their culture.

    Although I commend the unions for showing up and lending their support, they brought very few rank-and-file members, but a lot of chiefs. Of course when you have topheavy leadership they took control away from the Burmese folks who were there and it began to look like a strike with chants like “What do we want?” “Democracy!” “When do we want it?” “Now!”

    Most of the Anglos that showed up were from Georgetown, GWU and American University. But the Code Pink gals showed up in their official protest clothes complete with Impeach Bush hats

    As well as some of the ANSWER creeps like this one in her Arafat scarf and ANSWER T-shirt who was chanting something while the monks were singing. I wonder if she knows her little Arab buddies bust up Buddist shrines every chance they get. I thought it was pretty offensive myself.

    Somehow the Impeach Bush stuff just didn’t fit in with the call for a free Burma – especially since President Bush made a point of telling the UN to get off their fat asses and do something about Burma just the other day. In fact the Burmese at the protest were thankful;

    This guy was live-blogging the event to Burma

    Finally, we were on our way to the Chinese Embassy

    With the Burmese Monks leading the way

    When we got to the Chinese Embassy, the monks stood between the protesters and the embassy much as I imagined they stood in front of protesters in Rangoon this week.

    Protesters shouted “Shame on you, China” (Video)

    [youtube KVV2dONkqvY nolink]

    And the monks led a traditional song (Video)

    [youtube zPAFP3yn4jo nolink]

    I’d say several hundred people showed up – and for an underpublicized event that’s a pretty good turn out for a Friday afternoon in DC during rush hour.

    I felt pretty good about myself afterwards – it was pretty black-and-white who was the good guys. And the good guys were well-behaved – well except for the US college students who couldn’t follow instructions from the police – like “stay on the sidewalk”.

    There shouldn’t have been any US partisanship – but there was. Some goofball fellow wearing a pink tie and pink socks and a pink “Peace” bumpersticker on his hat pulled up on his bicycle and yelled “Impeach Bush and save Burma” Of course, he got a giggle from the barren old hags from Code Pink – but pretty much was ignored by the others. Other than that, it would have been a nice non-partisan event supporting an oppressed people.

    Michele Malkin has the skinny on what’s happening in Burma. My protest buddy (three protests in two weeks), Kate from A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective was there and took some great pictures. She exchanged words with a Pinko, apparently.

    UPDATE: Spanish Pundit attended the protest in support of Burmese in Madrid today (Saturday) and writes a bit about Zapatero’s response to their plight.

  • Myanmar; when a blog is your only weapon

    US sanctions and ASEAN condemnations against the government of Myanmar are the only weak internatonal responses to a brutal regime that has victimized it’s population for half-a-century (Washington Times);

    The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, under increasing pressure from the West, ended its habitual silence on the situation in Burma yesterday, expressing “revulsion” at the ruling military junta”s killing of protesters and demanding an end to the violence.

    The United States, meanwhile, imposed financial sanctions on 14 senior officials from the Burmese regime, freezing any assets they might have in U.S. banks and barring Americans from business dealings with them.

    The Washington Post reports that the Burmese government is moving to shut down internet and cell phone trunklines out of the country;

    Violence subsided markedly in Rangoon on Friday as armed troops sealed off key downtown streets in an attempt to halt the bloody rioting that has shaken Burma and generated broad condemnation of the military dictatorship that has ruled the country for nearly half a century.

    Restrictions on Internet use imposed by the military’s State Peace and Development Council sharply reduced the flow of information. As a result, Thailand-based exile groups and outside observers had only a sketchy picture of what was going on in Rangoon, Burma’s main city, and the dozen other places where anti-government protesters led by Buddhist monks have mounted the strongest challenge to the junta since 1988.

    They’re shutting off the internet because apparently, that’s the only way news, photos and videos are getting out of the country according to the Wall Street Journal;

    In the age of YouTube, cellphone cameras and text messaging, technology is playing a critical role in helping news organizations and international groups follow Myanmar’s biggest protests in nearly two decades. Citizen witnesses are using cellphones and the Internet to beam out images of bloodied monks and street fires, subverting the Myanmar government’s effort to control media coverage and present a sanitized version of the uprising.

    The Washington Times explains why “citizen journalists” are so intregral in this latest protest against the government;

    Burma, formally known as Myanmar, is largely closed to Western journalists, who are predominantly covering the crisis from outside the isolated country. But bloggers living in the commercial port of Rangoon, where Buddhist monks, pro-democracy activists and residents have been defying security forces, are recording the events in Burmese and flawed English.

    The bloggers rely on word-of-mouth, cell phones, online chat groups, instant messaging and firsthand experience in barricaded streets amid tear gas and gunfire.

    The best blogs provide photos, video and text updates purportedly by eyewitnesses, which are later confirmed by news organizations or, in some cases, can’t be verified. 

    The Wall Street Journal story tells why these reports from citizens inside Burma are so important;

    Who produced these reports — or how the information got out of Myanmar — hasn’t been established. But that’s the point in a country where people caught protesting or writing against the government risk years in prison.

    The last time there was a protest of this scale in Myanmar was 1988, when a pro-democracy uprising was crushed by the military and more than 3,000 people died. First reports of that event came from diplomats and official media. “Technology has changed everything,” says Aung Zaw, a Myanmar exile whose Thailand publication Irrawaddy has been covering events in Burma hour-by-hour, with reports gathered online. “Now in a split second, you have the story,” says the editor.

    According to the AP, on Thursday Myanmar’s state-run newspaper blamed the protests in Yangon, formerly called Rangoon, on “saboteurs inside and outside the nation.” It also said that the demonstrations were much smaller than foreign media were reporting.

    The government can’t tell the world that there’s nothing to see here, because the photos and videos tell a different story. As illstrated in this portion of the Post story;

    Soldiers opened fire at several places around the city Thursday, killing nine people and injuring 31 according to an account read on official Burmese television. But exile groups said they had received information overnight that the toll was considerably higher, perhaps in the dozens. Bob Davis, the Australian ambassador, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio that he believed the number dead was several times the official count.

    The media has, in the past, been forced to report only what they were fed by the government, now they have other alternatives where nearly every person can send proof out of the country. The Associated Press reports that crackdowns continue today;

    Soldiers in Myanmar cracked down on dissenters Friday by swiftly breaking up street gatherings of die-hard activists, occupying key Buddhist monasteries and cutting public Internet access.

    By sealing Buddhist monasteries, the government seemed intent on clearing the streets of monks, who have spearheaded the demonstrations and are revered by most of their Myanmar countrymen. This could embolden troops to lash out harder on remaining protesters.

    Daily demonstrations drawing tens of thousands of people demanding an end to 45 years of military dictatorship have grown into the stiffest challenge to the ruling junta in decades. The crisis began Aug. 19 with rallies against a fuel price hike, then escalated dramatically when monks joined in.

    PDNPulse has the video that’s been running on the Japanese news of the shooting of Kenji Nagai, the Japanese journalist the Myanmar government claims was shot accidentally yeasterday. However from the video it appears he was shot intentionally and at point blank range. Bill Toddler at Pajamas Media tells the story of the world’s amazement at “Monks and Bloggers“

    From Burmanet News, the news for today;

    Rangoon; Afternoon—Trucks loaded with troops raided the offices of Burma’s main Internet service provider, Myanmar Info-Tech, located at Rangoon University (Hlaing campus) around noon on Friday in an effort to cut all public access to the internet. The move is in response to the flood of photographs, videos, news reports and e-mail sent out of the country to the international media and the rest of the world by average citizens.

    Downtown Rangoon; Afternoon—At least two people were hit by gunfire when military troops opened fire on demonstrators on Friday afternoon in Kyauktada Township in central Rangoon, according to a witness, who said she narrowly escaped by hiding under a vehicle. She said the demonstrators were boxed in between Anawrahta Road and Maha Bandoola Road. Dozens of protesters were arrested, bound and beaten. The troops pursued fleeing people into buildings, she said, singling out people with cameras. If they were arrested, the troops beat them while shouting, “Is it you who sends those pictures out?”

  • Myanmar government guns down nine more protesters

    According to the AP, nine more people were killed in Yangon, Myanmar today while 11 were wounded in anti-government protests, including an APF reporter;

    Among those killed was Kenji Nagai, 50, a journalist covering the protests in Yangon for Japanese video news agency APF News. He was confirmed dead after his father and a company representative identified him in a photo, a Japanese Embassy official in Myanmar told The Associated Press.

    Nagai had been covering the protests in Yangon since Tuesday, APF representative Toru Yamaji said.

    In Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said Tokyo will lodge a protest against Myanmar’s military junta.

    An American eye witness talked to CNN;

    An American witness told CNN soldiers waded into a crowd of protesters in Myanmar and beat several of them mercilessly, at least one of them to death

    “All of a sudden, the police and military guys started coming toward the crowd, and all of a sudden started beating them and running after them,” said the woman, who witnessed the incident from atop a nearby building.

    “And in one corner they got around, maybe, five or seven people, and they started beating them so bad for almost five minutes, and then they took them and put them in trucks.

    “And there was this one guy, laying down on the floor, and he was dead. And then these same police came a few minutes later and picked him up and took him to the police station.”

    This time the “Saffron Revolution” was missing their most ardent protesters;

    Red-robed Buddhist monks who had led several days of marches were largely absent from the streets Thursday after soldiers raided monasteries the night before. Monks reportedly were beaten and taken into custody or confined to the monasteries.

    “This morning, around noon, we went around the city and we saw that most of the monasteries were locked and we saw some of the monks inside,” the American witness said. “So the government is keeping them locked because they don’t want them to go out and protest anymore.”

    She said the soldiers used batons, rifle butts and riot shields to beat the protesters.

    “It was a crowd of, I would say, around 2,000 people, between 2,000 and 3,000 people today, and they … put 10 monks in front of them as a human shield. But the police didn’t care. They just came and started even beating the monks,” she said.

    Streets that had been jammed with as many as 100,000 protesters were deserted by 6 p.m. after the violent crackdown, the witness said.

    “Right now it’s a ghost town. I mean, nobody’s outside. Everybody is so afraid,” she said.

    “Please, these people need help,” the woman said. “It’s inhumane what’s happening here.”

    Not to worry, Anonomous Witness, the UN is on it’s way;

    After initial resistance from China, the U.N. Security Council issued a statement of concern about Myanmar’s violent crackdown on Buddhist monks and urged the military regime to let in a special envoy.

    Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, was expected to leave for the region Wednesday night after briefing the emergency council meeting in the afternoon on the fatal violence.

    Council diplomats said China, which has close economic ties to Myanmar, did not want any document issued after the closed-door session but relented and agreed to a brief statement, which was read to reporters by France’s U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert.

    And the UN is not just making strong statements, there’ll be emergency meetings, too;

    The U.N. Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting here Wednesday over deadly clashes between anti-government protesters and the military junta in Myanmar as the White House described the situation there as “troubling.”

    That should have that Myanmarian junta shaking in their collective boots.

    The State Department has background on the current turmoil and some historical perspective. Closet Republican gives us an historical overview.

    Kate from A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective emailed me about a protest outside of the Myanmar Embassy tomorrow afternoon at 4pm. I might head over and put up some pictures and videos on the Old Blog tomorrow night.

    Michael Goldfarb, Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin and Andrew Sullivan have all the links that matter. TimesOnline has links to Burmese Blogs.