Sunday Scan

Bad News For Cal. GOP

Everyone worth their political salt knows grassroots campaigning is key, so when a state party cuts its funding of its county kingpins -- the roots of the grassroots program -- you know they're in trouble. Welcome to the California Republican party:

At a regular scheduled meeting on November 16, the California Republican Party axed its counties "Executive Director" program because of the lackluster fundraising operation and the ongoing financial problems plaguing the organization. When Ron Nehring ... took over the party's chairmanship in the aftermath of the '06 election, the CRP's treasury was in red, with nearly $4 million in debt left behind by Duf Sundheim. (Red County)

The $260,000 a year program paid part of the salary of county GOP Executive Directors, whose primary job is to grow the party.

California has always been liberal, but it gave us Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in days gone by ... make that day long gone by. With a liberal Republican in the statehouse, the conservative California GOP has lost its way; no, with this news we see that it is still losing its way and there's a way to go before the way back to strength is found.

Speaking Of Our RINO Governor

How liberal is the Republican in the California statehouse? How about this liberal, as described by Bakersfield Californian columnist Marylee Shriver:

Despite all his tough talk about securing borders and immigration reform, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month signed AB 976, making California the first state in the union to prohibit landlords from asking tenants about their immigration status.

Talk about your dubious distinctions.

Not a single Senate or Assembly Republican voted in support of the bill, but the governor -- never one to fret over party loyalties -- signed anyway. (source)

This is a no-brainer. You have individual property rights and maintaining a semblance of respect for federal law on one side of the ledger and collapsing before the lobbyists for illegals on the other ... and Arnie sides with Big Government taking away individual rights.

Shriver, whose conservative viewpoint always makes her column a joy to read, wraps it up nicely:

... Assemblyman Charles Calderon, D-Industry, penned the new bill anyway, slamming [a similar] Escondido ordinance for targeting "people of color." It didn't. It targeted illegal immigrants, but such rhetoric surely grabs at the hearts of landlords who fear the threat of possible legal reprisals.

The problem now is Calderon's bill actually forbids landlords to even ask prospective tenants about their citizenship status.

"The point of asking is so landlords can protect their financial assets from someone who is more likely to flee the country," Fuller said. "This bill is a special protection to a person who does not have legal status and is breaking immigration laws."

Getting the Message ... Sort Of

Yesterday, the NYT acknowledged what I wrote about last week in my Watcher's Council winner of a post:

But the changing situation [in Iraq] suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue. While the Democratic candidates are continuing to assail the war — a popular position with many of the party’s primary voters — they run the risk that Republicans will use those critiques to attack the party’s nominee in the election as defeatist and lacking faith in the American military.

How do you stay defeatist and hope to win? How do you demand withdrawal without admitting that victory, even when it appears to be increasingly within reach, is not as important to you as embarrassing W?

Here's how the primary Dem Prez candidates are punting:

• Hillary: Won't say how large or how fast a withdrawal, but she supports the concept of withdrawal. Natch.
• Obama: Favors the withdrawal of one or two brigades a month.
  
• Edwards: Favors immediate withdrawal.

So the Dems still think the way to piece peace is premature withdrawal, which may prove a poor prophylactic to electoral defeat if victory continues to grow closer in Iraq.

Unable to continue to lay the blame for failure on the military, they are now clinging to the last desperate hope that the Iraqis will fail to establish a viable government. But now that the sectarian violence is diminishing, the likelihood that the Dems will lose that last crumbing toehold of a defeatist philosophy is increasing. Not surprisingly, that hasn't changed their message any; they remain steadfastly behind defeat in Iraq.

Differing Shades of Green

Green is great -- as long as it doesn't include that iridescent light green we associate with comic book renderings of nuclear power.

Case in point. The nice deep green was recently adopted as the County colors for Ventura County in CA, as county supervisors passed a new green ordinance they hope will make Ventura the venerated green leader nationally. The ordinance requires such things as biodiesel in all city diesel-fueled equipment, environmentally safe cleaning products, retrofitting city buildings to qualify for LEED standards, and eliminating Styrofoam.

But embrace nuclear power as the only technology capable of large-scale energy generation today without significant greenhouse gas emissions? Not a chance. California GOP Assemblyman Chuck Devore found that out as he realized his proposed ballot initiative that would have streamlined the development of nuclear power plants in the state did not have the support needed to pass.

Here's part of Devore's interview with FlashReport:

With the initiative filed, we were able to do two statewide polls, following on to a statewide poll done in July by a group of nuclear power supporters out of Fresno. The Fresno poll showed the public backing nuclear power by a margin of 52-42 - encouraging, to be sure, but not enough to launch a successful statewide ballot initiative. Our follow up polls showed the same public opinion climate: slight support for nuclear power.

Further, our polling showed that when voters where given the facts on the pro-nuclear side and the arguments against nuclear power, that there was a modest improvement in support for nuclear power. This was all encouraging, but the standard rule of thumb in California initiatives is that, to be successful in the face of well-funded opposition, an initiative has to start out with support in the mid- to high-60s.

We therefore decided that the time was not yet right to push to bring an initiative lifting the nuclear ban to the ballot. Discretion is the better part of valor.

Syria Wiggles

Last week, it was the news that Syria has suddenly begun closing its border to jihad-crazed Islamists wanting to enter heaven via Baghdad. Now, a new sign that Assad's toy country is still unable to resist the gravitational pull of America's global strength:

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syria announced Sunday that it will attend the Annapolis summit on Mideast peace, saying it would send its deputy foreign minister because the future of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights had been put on the agenda.

The official news agency, SANA, said Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad would travel to the U.S.-backed conference, a decision made "after the Syria track was added to the conference agenda," the agency said. Syria had said it will attend only if the conference discusses the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed.

Funny thing, though: The Golan Heights aren't on the agenda. The White House stated that the Golan Heights were "not specifically on the agenda" but attendees would be able to freely raise issues. So if you see Mekdad in the media coverage, look carefully to see if his tail is between his legs.

Now if we could just get Syria to pay attention to us on Lebanon ...

Why We Call It Climate Change

Greenie Watch spotted this:

If last season was one for Europe's skiers to forget, the coming months on the slopes look more propitious than in recent memory, thanks to large snowfalls in recent days.The white windfall, although confined to the northern Alps and omitting France, prompted some Swiss and Austrian resorts to open early. Heavy snow forecast for the southern Alps on Saturday and Sunday might trigger the same there, as ski operators on both sides of Europe's mountain divide strive to make up for the misery of last season, when poor conditions and abnormally high temperatures prompted widespread fears about global warming.

Of course, it was perfectly all right for the media to clang the global warming hysteria gong last year, but this year we will all be warned that a single year does not a trend make. Still, here's what Swiss meteorologist Jacques Ambuehl said about this winter thus far:

"Last week's snowfalls were certainly quite extreme. We have no record, especially at mid altitudes, of such an event in the past.

Brrrrr.

Burma 101

History News Network provides us this week with a lengthy article by Donald M. Seekins, professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Japan's Meio University on the history of repression and defiance in Burma, showing how the regime's inept demonitization program of 1988 was a mirror of its fuel price hike in 2007: Same loony ineptness, same cavalier attitude about the financial condition of the populace, same uprising, same brutal quelling of the uprising.

The piece is informative, but anything but hopeful. The best Seekins an offer in terms of resolution is:

• Smart sanctions that target the ruling elite, not the people -- you know, prohibitions on single malt scotch, fine watches and the despots' ever-popular entertainment of choice, American porn.
• Pressure on China, which Seekins acknowledges is likely to go nowhere.
• More cooperation among Burma's neighbors, which Seekins sees a probably unattainable.
• Greater prominence of Burma on the U.N. agenda, even though China and Russia will continue to veto any real progress.

In other words, barring a miracle, Burma will continue to be a hell-hole for years to come.

Risks Of Teen Binge Drinking

Finally, since the Christmas decorations are calling, it's time to draw this to a close, with a warning about teenage binge drinking.

I doubt if many C-SM readers are teenagers awakening today with binge-fired splitting hangovers, but if so, take heed. And parents, friends and relatives of teenage binge drinkers take heed as well:

Binge drinking by teens and young adults is linked with increased long-term risk for heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, a U.S. study found.

Senior author Dr. Marcia Russell of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Berkeley, Calif., says the risk is lower in people who start drinking alcohol later in life and maintain more moderate drinking patterns.

The study, scheduled to be published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, suggests that the increased health risks were independent of the total amount of alcohol consumed over a lifetime, or whether or not people stopped or curtailed drinking as they matured. (source)

Come to think of it, I should take heed as well -- and not just because I have young daughters. I haven't touched alcohol for a decade or so, but did binge in my youth. So far, the ticker and the blood sugar are fine, though, so I hope I'm an exception to this rule ... but not as much as I wish I had been wiser in my youth.

Sunday Scan

The OCRegister editorial page leads off today's scan with its editorial giving a cool reception to Al Gore's ignoble Nobel:

"Nearly every significant statement that Vice President Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one-sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative or wrong," says CEI environmental policy expert Marlo Lewis. Otherwise, nice job Mr. Gore.

Global warming alarmism serves those opposing free-market economics and its fossil-fuel reliance and those seeking power and profit by gaming the system once they force rule changes. Neither motive is in most peoples' interests. The Kyoto Protocol, which would force nations to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, if enforced would reduce projected temperatures about one degree over 100 years while – and this is not exaggeration – dampening and devastating economies worldwide.

Gore got a much warmer reception in Palo Alto, where young and old alike believe his hype, says an also hyped up Merc News:

Mackenzie Pope, 12, ... was one of several kids who had the day off from school [what?!] and showed up with signs saying [to Gore] "Welcome to Palo Alto."

"I was walking my dog when I saw all the people here and so I went home to get them," she said, motioning to her mom, little sisters Bailey and Rylie, and a couple of friends. [Mackenzie, Bailey and Rylie -- how cloyingly No. Cal.]

The girls, like typical Palo Alto kids, were well-versed on the climate-change issue.

"They say in 20 years New York City is going to be half gone," said Mackenzie's friend, Charlotte Barry.

The alliance is a small organization Gore founded last year as a fundraising arm for his media campaign. Its office, at Hawthorne Avenue and High Street, once housed the Foundation for a Global Community, a descendant of Beyond War. And it's next door to POST, the Peninsula Open Space Trust.

"This spot has good karma," said POST Executive Director Audrey Rust. "We're sort of at ground zero, right here on High Street."

The Merc News, which is after all a news paper, somehow didn't feel compelled to correct little Charlotte's gorism.

Babs At The Money Trough

Wrapping up news from the Golden State, the LATimes reports that Bay Area Greenie Babs Boxer is swimming in dough from the very hooligans against The Sacred Earth Mother she has worked so hard to harm:

For years Barbara Boxer has campaigned, first for Congress, then for the U.S. Senate, as a progressive Democrat strong on ... the environment. ...

But now that she's chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, she's finding some new people who want to be her friend. And not in the MySpace kind of way.

Roll Call reports (sorry, it's a subscriber-access page) that Boxer, who assumed the committee chair with the 2006 Democratic takeover of the Senate, received through Aug. 30 about $41,000 from political action committees representing "energy, natural resources, construction and transportation industries."

But in the 2004 cycle, when she was last up for re-election, Boxer "reported $18,500 in total receipts from the energy and natural resources sector in all of 2003 and 2004, according to CQ MoneyLine ....

Politicians. Love 'em or hate 'em, you gotta pay 'em off.

Don't Worry About Islam

There's a complicated piece by Simon Jenkins in the Times of London spurred by the 29-page letter to the Pope from 138 imams and other Muslim high and mighty. Jenkins doesn't see Islam as the biggest threat to the West, rather:

The chief threat to world security at present lies in the capacity of tiny groups of political Islamists to goad the West into a rolling military retaliation. Extremists on each side feed off the others’ frenzied scenarios so as to garner money and political support for their respective armies of the night. Each sees the other as a cosmic menace and abandons communal tolerance and peaceful diplomacy to counter it.

It's easy to discount this out of hand because Jenkins slices too thin. Our fear isn't of the tiny groups of jihadists ... it's the consequences of even five or ten percent of Islam picking up the jihadist terror tool kit. Still, the piece isn't just liberal pap and multi-culti over-optimism. There's a lot of food for thought there, like:

It is ironic that defeat in the cold war should have led Russia to the exuberant self-confidence of Vladimir Putin’s Moscow, while victory has plunged the West into a loss of nerve. In both Washington and London are leaders who have so little confidence in democracy as to regard it as vulnerable to a few madmen, and who have so little respect for democracy’s freedoms as to suspend them at the bang of a bomb.

I believe the liberties that have been suspended have been carefully defined and limited so as to protect Americans and subject suspicious foreigners and battlefield enemies to the treatment that is needed and deserved. But how about this for a Sunday pondering: What if we fought the war on terror the way the Libs would have us fight it? Would we not still win?

Of course, to answer that, you also have to answer this: Would the extra American dead that might result from the Lib approach be worth the rigorous, hard-line protection of each letter of the Constitution, as applied by Lib judges?

Watch It, Canadians!

Canadian readers, watch out! Science Daily tells us that according to the journal Environmental Research, you might be one of the 25,000 Canadians pollution will kill this year! I love these studies that pore over medical records and death certificates and attempt to lay the blame at pollution, or global warming, or fast food, or whatever else the Lib media have their eyepieces focused on.

Here's the picture that accompanies the story. I kid you not. Look at that awful, life-nipping gunk! The caption reads:

Photo taken near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Industry in the foreground, pristine mountains in the background -- Canada is not immune to environmental problems. (Credit: Michele Hogan)

Help me find the industries in the photo that are cavalierly ignoring Canada's environmental laws and spewing toxins into drinking water and mother's milk. More easily, help me find manipulated statistics that look at cancer deaths and low birth-weight babies (as this one did) and attribute them to pollution instead of, oh, the luck of the draw or genetics or moms who smoke and booze.

Corn Fission?

Earlier in the week, Syrian flacks toured media hacks around an ag field and ag lab that they say were targeted by Israeli fighters ... why the Zionists would do that, who knows? After reporting the tour with almost a completely straight face, today the NYT joins those who understand what really was going on there:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 — Israel's air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.

The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state.

Central mystery? Not to everyone.

Who Defines 'Dying Well?'

Charlotte Allen, faced with minor breast cancer surgery -- seemingly an oxymoron, but not really -- was asked on three separate occasions whether she had a living will. A complicated form was stuffed into her mitt, asking her to ponder "a range of conditions under which I might like to have a Do Not Resuscitate order hung over my hospital bed, whether I would want to be denied "artificial" food and water under some circumstances, what I thought about being taken off a ventilator, and so forth."

Her conclusion, as very well relayed in her WaPo piece today:

In fact, when I contemplate the concept of "dying well," I can't avoid the uneasy feeling that it actually means "dying when we, the intellectual elite, think it is appropriate for you to die." Consider what's happened in recent years: The classic Hippocratic Oath and its prohibition against physicians giving people a "deadly drug" has collapsed with the growing acceptance of such notions as physician-assisted suicide, the "right to die," and even giving some very sick, disabled or demented people a little push over the edge, as seems to be the case in the Netherlands. People facing end-of-life decisions may well feel subtle pressure from the medical and bioethical establishments to make the choice that will save the most money, as well as spare their relatives and society at large the burden of their continued existence.

As the SCHIP plan catches the news and the Dems vow to override a prez veto, do you recall ever seeing someone raise the question of whether parents would be pressured to quickly dispatch sick babies once the feds start paying for their costly health care? Neither did I.

Start thinking about it.

Road to Rangoon

No, it's not a long-lost Bob Hope/Bing Crosby movie; it's the UN's continuing dismal performance in its attempts to stop the Burmese junta from killing off every monk and protester in that poor country.

In this case, the road will lead UN chief Burma dude Ibrahim Gambari to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, China and Japan, before "hoping" to return to Burma. Condi's response? Knock it off! Get back to Burma pronto and do something.

Good advice.

Ladies, Check Your Underwear

In Burma, where jobs are as scarce as freedoms, women in the border town of Myawaddy cross the muddy Moei River to Thailand, where, if they are lucky, can work for $4.30 a day sewing together bras that eventually reach our shores labeled as Vanity Fair or Maidenform.

The little tag in your underthings will read "Made in Thailand" if it is their handiwork, but your bra was probably made by Burmese, and to some extent at least, your bra is helping keep the world's longest-going military dictatorship in power. The riots that rocked Burma's larger cities earlier this month didn't ripple the waters in Myawaddy, thanks to its relative (very relative) economic prosperity.

Lest my lady readers burn their bras in protest, its good to remember what the American manager of the bra factory told the WSJ (subscribers only):

"There is nothing over there for them," says Michael Lurer, boss of the Top Form factory. The 32-year-old American argues that his jobs, providing take-home pay of about $3 a day, offer an opportunity for the hungry from Myanmar. "They have no food, no income, no nothing," he says, standing outside his riverside plant, a few miles from the Thai town of Mae Sot.

We free market types see capitalism as the answer to the world's ills, and it is providing some relief to some desperate people on the Burma-Thailand border -- but it is also exploiting people who work for companies less enlightened, if we can use that word, than Top Form. Top Form is, of course, exploiting Burma's desparation to its advantage, but the operators of other factories in Myawaddy are far worse, keeping their workers penned into their factories, paying a fraction of the minimum wage, and offering no health care, as Top Form does.

No solutions are perfect, but the Burma Junta's utter destruction of one of Southeast Asia's most promising economies in the 45 years it has been in power shows that totalitarianism and state-run economies are no match for capitalism if the goal is a healthy, well-fed populace.

If Myawaddy's businesses were to be shut down through economic sanctions on the Junta, only the Burmese people would suffer. Our lingerie may go up a nickel or less in cost, which is nothing to us, but their income may go down a nickel or more, which is profound to them. So, all things considered, wear your "Made in Thailand" bras with a certain amount of pride. You're putting food on some otherwise empty tables.

photo: Andrew Higgins, WSJ

U.N. Uselessness, Case #1,798,433

Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N. special envoy, spent several days in Burma this week, leaving yesterday after meeting with the power-hungry, repressive @#$!%s generals who exploit the country and opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

Even before the conrails of Gambari's departing jet could blur into the muggy south Asia skies, the utter ineffectiveness of the U.N. became evident to all:

At least eight truckloads of prisoners were hauled out of downtown [Rangoon], the former Burma's biggest city and center of last week's monk-led protests against decades of military rule and deepening economic hardship, witnesses said.

In one house near the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest shrine in the devoutly Buddhist country and starting point for the rallies, only a 13-year-old girl remained. Her parents had been taken, she said.

"They warned us not to run away as they might be back," she said after people from rows of shop houses were ordered onto the street in the middle of the night and many taken away. (Reuters)

Meanwhile, the NYT piles on with more news of U.N. ineffectiveness contrasting sharply with the brutal effectiveness of the Rangoon regime:

A local staff member of the United Nations in Myanmar and three of her family members were taken from their home in Yangon before dawn today as part of an ongoing crackdown on demonstrators.

Charles Petrie, the most senior official for the United Nations in the country, said a 38-year-old woman, her husband and two relatives were detained by security personnel at 4 a.m. He said he was not releasing their names to avoid jeopardizing their return.

The U.N. worker’s arrest is one of an unknown number of nighttime abductions conducted by the junta to identify and round up people who took part in the demonstrations, which were the largest protests against the junta in nearly two decades.

While reports of deaths and detentions running into the thousands are common and held to by most Western nations, the Junta has apparently hired Baghdad Bob as it spokesperson, saying only 10 people were killed in the protest, and figures to the contrary are "a skyful of lies."

And speaking of a skyful of lies, the nights in Rangoon are full of, if not lies, shouts of intimidation. Reports say that helicopters fly through the dark skies blasting out of loudspeakers: "We have your photos. We are making arrests."

Arrests do follow, as doors are bashed down in the dark and people hauled away to compound the fear and intimidation that keeps the Junta in power.

The U.N. is powerless against such rogue nations, and yet the world continues to turn to it in the hope it will somehow be effective this one time. But it is no more effective in Burma than it is in Darfur.

In every science fiction movie, the empire is repressive and has troops ready, like Roman legions, to crush a rebellion wherever it happens. Why can't we flip the model, and have legions of pro-democracy troops that will storm any nation that acts like Burma and hang the @#$%! by their fingernails until the raucous celebrations of newly-granted freedom die down?

Isn't that a better model than the U.N.?

Burmese Junta Kills Thousands To Stay In Power

The short-lived Saffron Revolution may be over in Burma, the Daily Mail (UK) reports:

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma's ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."

Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand. ...

The 42-year-old chief of military intelligence in Rangoon's northern region, added: "I decided to desert when I was ordered to raid two monasteries and force several hundred monks onto trucks.

"They were to be killed and their bodies dumped deep inside the jungle. I refused to participate in this."

If Win's charges are true, the thousands of dead speak very little of the Junta's real power. It is very, very easy to kill pacifistic Buddhist monks. It is very, very easy to kill crowds of thousands armed with nothing more than signs and slogans. It is much harder to justify your continued power after you've done such things, however. Still, the forcefulness of the Junta's reaction to peaceful public protest means that they've probably succeeded in crushing this revolt and holding onto power -- unless the Burmese people are braver and more tenacious than most.

The last few years have made me wary of positive thoughts about the public's ability to wrest freedom from repressors without the force of the U.S. military behind their efforts. When we are not there, as in Lebanon, the despots' grip is tenacious, and the Daily Mail story makes it clear that that's the case in Burma:

Reports from exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply "disappeared" as 20,000 troops swarmed around Rangoon yesterday to prevent further demonstrations by religious groups and civilians.

Word reaching dissidents hiding out on the border suggested that as well as executions, some 2,000 monks are being held in the notorious Insein Prison or in university rooms which have been turned into cells.

There were reports that many were savagely beaten at a sports ground on the outskirts of Rangoon, where they were heard crying for help.

Others who had failed to escape disguised as civilians were locked in their bloodstained temples.

There, troops abandoned religious beliefs, propped their rifles against statues of Buddha and began cooking meals on stoves set up in shrines.

Let's hear it for the peaceful force of secularism!

Meanwhile, the UN's envoy has been shuttling around the country, talking, and proving just how cheap talk is.

Update: Satellite imagery shows just how devastating the reaction to the revolution has been.

Bad Timing For Burma's Junta

Do Burmese Buddhist monks know that world leaders converge on New York in late September for the General Assembly?

Possibly, possibly ...

Since all the highest leaders of the ten-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are in New York for the General Assembly this week, it proved much easier for them to get together to discuss the latest attrocities -- five dead yesterday, eight today -- perpetrated upon their people by the commie-leaning megalomaniacs in Rangoon.

So, was it just higher fuel prices that got the monks and the people fired up ... or did they opportunely take advantage of General Assembly's sidebar dynamics to ratchet up the pressure on the wretched generals? Whatever, this is what the got:

The foreign ministers, who met on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly session, said in a statement issued after the meeting that they were "appalled to receive reports of automatic weapons being used and demanded that the Myanmar government immediately desist from the use of violence against demonstrators."

"They expressed their revulsion to Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win over reports that the demonstrations in Myanmar are being suppressed by violent force and that there has been a number of fatalities," the statement said.

They called on Myanmar to "exercise utmost restraint and seek a political solution" and "resume its efforts at national reconciliation with all parties concerned, and work towards a peaceful transition to democracy," the statement said. (Breitbart/AP)

In news related to the whole idea that foreign leaders are in the states, we learn:

• President Bush called China's foreign minister Yang Jiechi into the oval office when Yang was visiting the National Security Advisor and reminded him that with the Olympics coming up, China might want to take reign in its puppets in Burma.

• Condoleezza Rice rallied the Association of South East Asian Nations in New York at a hastily called meeting which reportedly ended when Rice got a bit undiplomatically confrontational with the Burmese delegation.

Yesterday, China blocked a Security Council move to condemn the Burmese junta for its actions, but today a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman said Beijing is “extremely concerned about the situation.” That's quite a toughening of the ol' rhetoric -- made possible in part by the escalating violence, but also by the escalating dialog facilitated by the timing of this latest cry for freedom.

Smart monks, I'd say.

Hope, And Hope Delayed

Yesterday at the U.N., President Bush reminded that fallen body that it once stood for freedom and human rights, and it should again. He focused on countries that have taken steps toward freedom, and those that continue in darkness, including Myanmar ... er, Burma.

Bush used "Burma", and the CIA World Fact Book tells us:

... since 1989 the military authorities in Burma have promoted the name Myanmar as a conventional name for their state; this decision was not approved by any sitting legislature in Burma, and the US Government did not adopt the name, which is a derivative of the Burmese short-form name Myanma Naingngandaw

Good enough for me (although not the UN or the MSM, which use Myanmar). Here's what Bush had to say about Burma:

Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear. Basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and worship are severely restricted. Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Forced child labor, human trafficking, and rape are common. The regime is holding more than 1,000 political prisoners -- including Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party was elected overwhelmingly by the Burmese people in 1990.

The ruling junta remains unyielding, yet the people's desire for freedom is unmistakable. This morning, I'm announcing a series of steps to help bring peaceful change to Burma. The United States will tighten economic sanctions on the leaders of the regime and their financial backers. We will impose an expanded visa ban on those responsible for the most egregious violations of human rights, as well as their family members. We'll continue to support the efforts of humanitarian groups working to alleviate suffering in Burma. And I urge the United Nations and all nations to use their diplomatic and economic leverage to help the Burmese people reclaim their freedom.

It is obvious that it'll take more than mere words to force Burma out of the grip of the Socialist junta that rules it, as the Chinese-supported regime paid no heed and moved virtually as Bush spoke to try to crush the latest popular uprising there:

YANGON, Myanmar - Security forces shot and wounded three people, and beat and dragged away dozens of Buddhist monks Wednesday in the most violent crackdown against the protests that began last month, witnesses said. About 300 monks and activists were arrested, dissidents said.

Reports from exiled Myanmar journalists and activists in Thailand said security forces had shot and killed as many as five people in Myanmar's biggest city, Yangon [Rangoon]. The reports could not be independently confirmed by The Associated Press.

Witnesses in Yangon known to the AP said they had seen two women and one young man with gunshot wounds in the chaotic confrontations.

Zin Linn, information minister for the Washington-based National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, which is Myanmar's self-styled government-in-exile, said at least five monks were killed, while an organization of exiled political activists in Thailand, the National League for Democracy-Liberated Area said three monks had been confirmed dead, and about 17 wounded.

It seems like beating Buddhist monks is not a good strategy for gaining popular support in a nation where nearly 90 percent of the people are Buddhist. Of course, it would also seem that refusing to relinquish power after a popular election, as the junta did in 1990 after Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in a popular election.

So, how about an International League for Democracy to snuff out the brutes that are denying a nation its freedom? Bush reminded the U.N. that in theory we have such an organization headquartered in NYC, but that the theory and the practice have become woefully disjointed.

President Bush concluded his speech:

With the commitment and courage of this chamber, we can build a world where people are free to speak, assemble, and worship as they wish; a world where children in every nation grow up healthy, get a decent education, and look to the future with hope; a world where opportunity crosses every border. America will lead toward this vision where all are created equal, and free to pursue their dreams. This is the founding conviction of my country. It is the promise that established this body. And with our determination, it can be the future of our world.

Inspiring words to some, but let's face it: They're threatening words to a significant number of the world leaders who sat before him, whose sheer numbers drive the U.N., whose influence is too strong for the likes of Ban-ki Moon to stand up to.