Friday, October 5th, 2007
BLOGGING ON BURMA
Wizards of Oz, Enterprise Resilience Management Blog, Thomas P.M. Barnett, TDAXP, Hidden Unities, Pundita, Agam’s Gecko, Democracy Project , Simulated Laughter -New!
Free Burma!
Archive for October, 2007
Friday, October 5th, 2007
THE MILITANT IDEOLOGY ATLAS
The most comprehensive, English-language, ideological analysis of Islamist extremist and terror movements yet compiled; assembled by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
Executive Summary (23 page PDF)
Research Compendium (361 page PDF)
Hat tip to Charles Cameron for the title of this ( actually, many) interesting scholarly work and to Right Truth for the URLs.
UPDATE:
Heh. Plagued by basic reading comprehension problems last night. Title corrected. Gracias, Charles!
Thursday, October 4th, 2007
WANTED! FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Senior General Than Shwe of Burma
Than Shwe and all members of the instrumentalities under his authority as commander-in-chief and Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, are accused of crimes including, but not limited to, actions defined under Article II. and Article II. of The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
“Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;(d) Attempt to commit genocide;(e) Complicity in genocide. “
The mass and systemic suppression and extrajudicial murder of Buddhist monks and ongoing ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Karen minority qualify for a referral to the UNSC for the establishment of an international tribunal to investigate, indict and try Burmese leaders suspected of crimes against humanity and genocide.
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
TRYING TO REOPEN A QUESTION SETTLED IN 1865
American political extremists try to bridge an ideological gulf to hammer out an agenda for secession:
“Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully.
That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence.
“We believe that an independent South, or Hawaii, Alaska, or Vermont would be better able to serve the interest of everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity,” said Michael Hill of Killen, Ala., president of the League of the South.
Separated by hundreds of miles and divergent political philosophies, the Middlebury Institute and the League of the South are hosting a two-day Secessionist Convention starting Wednesday in Chattanooga.
They expect to attract supporters from California, Alaska and Hawaii, inviting anyone who wants to dissolve the Union so states can save themselves from an overbearing federal government”
One of the major barriers to gaining momentum toward serious consideration of secession is the inherent lack of political attractiveness of the two groups pushing the idea. They wish a regional audience where their implicit political agenda is less marginalized than the current national one where their philosophy and motives are suspect as…well…tin-foil hat wearing wingnuts.
That being said, most separatist movements probably start that way – with groups trying to leverage relatively greater local acceptance as a wedge to accrue legitimacy vs. the state. For example, the wacky, chauvinistic, quasi-fascist, Pamyat parlayed minor grievances of the Russian majority population into a Russian nationalist wave against the USSR ( and Jews various other ethnic minorities)in the late 1980’s.
Pebbles and avalanches.
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
STRESSING THE SOFTER SIDE OF POWER
The State Department’s E-Journal abandons terrorism and counterinsurgency for an issue that covers “U.S. Food Aid: Reducing World Hunger“.
