But then if you know the Burmese, you know they’re not prone to shooting, especially since Aung San Suu Kyi would roundly condemn that. A very gentle people overall.
The website of The Irrawaddy has been down lately, and they’re blaming it on a cyber attack by the junta. I daresay they’re most probably correct. There’s a notice about it here.
The Junta might be capable of that… but the Chinese are, and have bene known to do things like that before. So have the Russians. And both have more subtle methods.
The Chinese are the junta’s good buddies. They could be showing them how.
If the world wants regime change, then withholding aid might be the best solution. After all, it was a natural disaster that helped spur the breakaway of Bangladesh from Pakistan.
More bad news about Burma. They may have nuclear-weapon aspirations. Already, delegations of their good North Korean buddies have ben visiting there, supposedly in this regard. Story here.
A nuclear-armed Burma would be just as bad as a nuclear-armed North Korea. 
Gee, it just gets better and better for Burma. Not! Now it seems 100,000 people in Chin state are on the brink of starvation because of an infestation of “super rats,” and the government’s not lifting a finger to help. Story here. A phenomenon that happens about every 50 years. Happens other places, too, but Burma’s the only place where the government ignores it.
Not only ignoring the rats, but stealing the food aid. Excerpt: "Aid that does make it to the Chin is, for the most part, coming in the form of 60-pound bags of donated rice from Western Christian groups. And even that is reportedly endangered.
“The Chin Human Rights Organization reports that more than 450 bags of rice donated as food aid by the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of the Province of Myanmar in April were confiscated by the Burmese government. The group says this rice was then sold at an overpriced rate so that the local authorities could make a profit.”
Obviously this is an old line, but getting back here - I think the Myanmar goverment* probably lacks the computers to do the job, as well as the internet lines.
*I only say the government is Myanmar. The nation is Burma.
No, I think they could. Burma does have the Internet, although the government restricts it. The old fossils at the top may not be all that computer literate, but there are lots of younger lower-level minions who would have freer access. The good folks at The Irrawaddy and others seem to be pretty sure it’s them.
And this week marked a total of 13 years of house arrest for Aung San Suu Kyi (although not in a row; I believe since 1990). Story here.
Too, six opposition members were sentenced by a Burmese court to prison terms for involvement in last year’s protests. Story here. It doesn’t give the length of the terms, but I heard 13 years, although that sounds suspiciously like someone got that mixed up with Aung San Suu Kyi’s 13 years of house arrest.
And now we have junta leader Than Shwe’s daughter going shopping for US$80,000 worth of gold in Mandalay. Story here. Hmmm, I wonder how many people THAT would have fed. I wonder if the money used was redirected from funds supposed to be used to feed people?
Probably a drop in the bucket compared to the money spent repressing the story.
A couple of updates on the Burmese cyclone six months on:
Helpless and Hopeless, Myanmar Cyclone Survivors Struggle On
and
A couple more updates on Burma. I hope it’s okay to keep using this thread; it feels like it would be better than starting individual threads, and these are all related to the OP to some extent.
An interesting report on Burma’s new ultra-secretive capital city that they’ve built farther inland is here.
And here you can see there was a big Burmese interest in the US election.
Hell, Sam, I’m fascinated. And I want to thank you for updating this thread. I just don’t have anything to say.
And here we see that about 40 Burmese dissidents were given prison terms of up to 65 years on Tuesday.
And in addition to those, at the end of the article it mentions: “On Monday, a young Burmese blogger who largely provided information for the outside world on the brutal regime crackdown on the September 2007 uprising was sentenced to 20 years and six months imprisonment.”
Imagine, someone going to prison for 20-1/2 years simply for doing what I am doing sitting here at this moment. :mad:
Sam, just in case I get in too good a mood I can always check out your latest update and get sad real fast.
Are there any policy shifts that the West *could *do that would have any possibility of influencing positive change? It seems so hopelessly entrenched.
I honestly don’t see how anything short of a full-scale military invasion, which the average Burmese keeps hoping for, would do any good.
Mentioned briefly toward the end of that story is U Aung Thane (U is a title of respect), who deserves his own mention. “A very well-respected Supreme Court Advocate in Burma [who] was recently jailed by the ruling military regime; his crime … legally defending pro-democracy activists who have been prosecuted with trumped-up charges by military regime.”
But here is a little lighter news on Burma, just to show it’s not ALL doom and gloom: I give you the annual festival of Taunggyi Dazaungdaing, in Taunggyi.
(In Burmese linguistics, GY at the start of a syllable is pronounced like a J. Similarly, KY at the start of a syllable is pronounced CH, which is why the last part of Aung San Suu Kyi’s last name is pronounced “chee.”)