Category Archives: Asia

Dalai Lama Derangement Syndrome

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To his credit, President Bush defied the wrath of China to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and present him with a Congressional Gold Medal. Suzanne Goldenberg reported yesterday for The Guardian:

The White House softened the slight to Beijing by keeping today’s meeting between the Dalai Lama and Mr Bush a distinctly private affair, and by previously assuring the president’s attendance at the 2008 summer Olympics in China.

However, Chinese officials today warned that the spectacle of President Bush standing by the side of the Dalai Lama as he is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour could damage relations with Beijing.

China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, called on Mr Bush to stay away from the ceremony.

“We solemnly demand that the US cancel the extremely wrong arrangements,” Mr Yang told reporters in Beijing.

“It seriously violates the norm of international relations and seriously wounded the feelings of the Chinese people and interfered with China’s internal affairs.”

China also withdrew from an international strategy session on Iran scheduled for today in protest at the honour accorded to the Dalai Lama. A Chinese official said the timing of the meeting was “not suitable”. …

… The Dalai Lama’s journey to Washington this week will be his 12th visit to the White House since he led his people into exile in 1959. It will be his fourth encounter with Mr Bush. But tomorrow’s award ceremony will mark the first time Mr Bush, or any other serving US president, has appeared in public with the Tibetan leader and the White House was treading very carefully today to try to minimise the embarrassment to China.

Ward Harkavy writes for the Village Voice —

Today’s scheduled embrace of the Dalai Lama by George W. Bush represents a major change in foreigner policy by the White House.

Bush’s new plan: If you meet the Buddha on the road, get a photo-op with him.

That’s a shift from the Blackwater philosophy: If you meet an Iraqi on the road, shoot him.

In any case, plagued by a war that his own regime started, the president has chosen to burnish his image by meeting with a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. No, not Al Gore, who looks as if he’s won several pizza prizes since Bush’s operatives stole the presidency from him in 2000.

This Nobel winner is Tenzin Gyatso, who was proclaimed the Dalai Lama when he was only two years old and ruled Tibet until China ousted him years ago. Gyatso won the 1989 Nobel prize “for his consistent resistance to the use of violence.”

Snark.

It’s hard to comprehend why the Chinese get so bent out of shape over the Dalai Lama, known affectionately in Buddhist online forums as HHDL. My understanding is that HHDL has offered to concede Tibet as Chinese territory, so long as Tibetans get some say over what goes on in Tibet. I believe most of the world regards HHDL as a benign and pleasant sort, even if many are befuddled about exactly what he is. But the government of China suffers from Dalai Lama Derangement Syndrome.

Last week, Slavoj Zizek wrote in the New York Times:

THE Western liberal media had a laugh in August when China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs announced Order No. 5, a law covering “the management measures for the reincarnation of living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism.” This “important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation” basically prohibits Buddhist monks from returning from the dead without government permission: no one outside China can influence the reincarnation process; only monasteries in China can apply for permission.

Somewhere in the Bardo between death and rebirth, there’s a Chinese bureaucrat handing out forms.

The Chinese desire to control reincarnation has its unfunny side. Back in the day the second-highest spiritual ruler of Tibet was the Panchen Lama. The 10th Panchen Lama was held prisoner by Mao Tse Tung for ten years and repeatedly tortured to force him to recant his loyalty to the Dalai Lama. He was released in 1981 and died in 1989.

In 1995 a six-year-old boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, was named the 11th Panchen Lama by HHDL. Two weeks later, the young boy and his family were taken into custody by the Chinese, and they have not been heard from since. After all this time, one suspects they were killed. Later in 1995, the Chinese government arranged to have the son of a Tibetan Communist Party functionary named the Panchen Lama. Buddhists in Tibet don’t have much choice but to go along with this, but the “official” Chinese Panchen Lama is not recognized as such by Tibetans in exile.

Slavoj Zizek writes that the Chinese are not really opposed to religion. “What bothers Chinese authorities are sects like Falun Gong that insist on independence from state control.” Given what they did to the Panchen Lama, I’m not seeing a distinction.

In recent years, the Chinese have changed their strategy in Tibet: in addition to military coercion, they increasingly rely on ethnic and economic colonization. Lhasa is transforming into a Chinese version of the capitalist Wild West, with karaoke bars and Disney-like Buddhist theme parks.

In short, the media image of brutal Chinese soldiers terrorizing Buddhist monks conceals a much more effective American-style socioeconomic transformation: in a decade or two, Tibetans will be reduced to the status of the Native Americans in the United States. Beijing finally learned the lesson: what is the oppressive power of secret police forces, camps and Red Guards destroying ancient monuments compared to the power of unbridled capitalism to undermine all traditional social relations?

No shit. But here Zizek shifts gears a bit:

It is all too easy to laugh at the idea of an atheist power regulating something that, in its eyes, doesn’t exist. However, do we believe in it? When in 2001 the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed the ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan, many Westerners were outraged — but how many of them actually believed in the divinity of the Buddha? Rather, we were angered because the Taliban did not show appropriate respect for the “cultural heritage” of their country. Unlike us sophisticates, they really believed in their own religion, and thus had no great respect for the cultural value of the monuments of other religions.

Buddhists don’t believe in the divinity of the Buddha, either, since the concept of divinity as understood in the monotheistic religions doesn’t apply to Buddhism. The various iconic figures of Buddhist art are best understood as symbols of enlightenment, or sometimes as Jungian archetypes. On the other hand, my understanding is that Islam objects to depicting any living figure, human or animal, in art, because only God creates living creatures. This objection seems to have been ignored by Muslim artists from time to time, but there it is.

So the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas because they saw them as disrespectful to God. For the most part, Buddhist accepted the loss as a reminder of the Buddha’s teaching that everything’s gotta end sometime, and prayed for the Taliban.

The significant issue for the West here is not Buddhas and lamas, but what we mean when we refer to “culture.” All human sciences are turning into a branch of cultural studies. While there are of course many religious believers in the West, especially in the United States, vast numbers of our societal elite follow (some of the) religious rituals and mores of our tradition only out of respect for the “lifestyle” of the community to which we belong: Christmas trees in shopping centers every December; neighborhood Easter egg hunts; Passover dinners celebrated by nonbelieving Jews.

“Culture” has commonly become the name for all those things we practice without really taking seriously. And this is why we dismiss fundamentalist believers as “barbarians” with a “medieval mindset”: they dare to take their beliefs seriously. Today, we seem to see the ultimate threat to culture as coming from those who live immediately in their culture, who lack the proper distance.

Except that, these days, it’s the fundies and religionists who confuse culture with religion. Take, for example, the annual War on Christmas that must be about to start, as I’m already getting Christmas catalogs. I say if the religionists were serious about keeping Christmas as a sacred observation of the birth of Jesus, they’d be opposed to the materialistic trappings and commercialism. Instead, they get bent out of shape if department store clerks say “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” In Wingnut World, the true meaning of Christmas is using it as an excuse to pick fights with people you don’t like.

In other words, it’s not the religious observance of Christmas that’s a problem. It’s the way the fundies toss Baby Jesus out of the manger so they can break it up into clubs that some of us find worrisome.

I haven’t found the text of HHDL’s remarks today, but the Washington Post has this quote: “All major religious traditions carry basically the same message: That is love, compassion and forgiveness.” Susan Jacoby dismissed this as “meaningless doggerel,” and I suppose it is. But then she says,

Is the Dalai Lama suggesting that the Taliban, which reduced ancient Buddhist statues to smithereens, was interpreting Islam in a way that carried a message of love?

A Buddhist could interpret the act that way, yes, or at least as an opportunity to practice forgiveness and non-attachment, although certainly a message of love wasn’t the Taliban’s conscious intent. But what HHDL said is verifiably true — you can find, in all the major religions, teachings about love, compassion and forgiveness. That those teachings are pretty much ignored isn’t his fault.

The Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, a lovely lady I met at Yearly Kos, says,

The Dalai Lama is right. All religious traditions do have messages of love, compassion, and forgiveness. Unfortunately, all religions also have messages of hate, cruelty and condemnation. The conundrum of religion, as we saw illustrated in the On Faith discussions with author and professional atheist Christopher Hitchens, is that for every claim that religion does good in the world, there are also the well-documented examples of religious messages of intolerance, moral callousness and judgmentalism, and the harm that they have caused.

The problem, however, is even more convoluted than simply that all religions proclaim contradictory messages. Love, compassion and forgiveness can be used against individuals and groups through certain kinds of religious interpretation. I have spent many years working and volunteering in the movement to end family violence. Battering husbands often accompany their violent acts with the language of love, citing the oft-quoted scripture that wives need to “submit” to their husbands. Battering parents do the same, telling their child that a violent punishment is “because I love you” and “for your own good.”

Violent people love violently, stupid people love stupidly, selfish people love selfishly and so forth. Love without justice can degenerate into sentimentalism and finally into narcissism.

Compassion is a widely respected religious virtue and rightly so. Yet compassion or empathy can keep us from confronting destructive behaviors in others. The virtue of compassion has been thrust upon women as their sole responsibility in relationships. Finally, empathy for others can erode the important and healthy sense of an integrated self that everyone, women and men, children and adults, needs to function as a separate individual.

And finally, forgiveness. Women are often urged to “forgive” their batterers. Many women have told me in counseling sessions that when they took their problem of domestic violence to their local preacher, they were urged to “forgive the beatings as Christ forgave us from the cross.” Forgiveness cannot be separated from the need of the one who is perpetrating the violence to confess the wrong and change. Then and only then does forgiveness become possible and sometimes still it takes a very long time for people to let go of the hurt that has been done to them, the deep meaning of forgiveness.

The Dalai Lama commands world-wide respect and admiration not only for his espousal of the virtues of love, compassion and forgiveness, but for his practice of them in a way that sets them in the context of peace and non-violence. Absent that context, these virtues can be corrupted beyond belief—corrupted as much as the machinations of their seeming opposites of hate, cruelty and condemnation.

I believe that the practice of peace and non-violence is the greatest religious lesson the Dalai Lama has to teach us all.

Amen, Sister Susan.

Legacies

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Yesterday in the Washington Post, Bill Kristol expressed frustration that the U.S. didn’t do more to help Burma.

What about using our national power to help the Burmese people against their tyrannical rulers? Burma’s regime lost what little legitimacy it had with its bloody crackdown. Parts of the ruling elite must be nervous. Couldn’t we give at least some of Burma’s generals and soldiers reason to doubt the wisdom of slaughtering political opponents? Couldn’t we turn our intelligence-gathering capabilities on Burma to monitor, document and publicize what is happening? Couldn’t we tell the generals who are ordering and the soldiers who are carrying out this crackdown that they are being watched, that their names are being recorded — and that the day will come when there will be plenty of evidence to hold them personally accountable for their deeds?

I believe that day comes for us all, Bill, but let me address your questions anyway.

As I explained last week, a critical fact about Burma is that it shares a 2,000 kilometer border with China. Burma also supplies natural gas and other vital resources to China. Therefore, any messing around with Burma by a western power is likely to be of keen interest to China.

And there are two key facts to keep in mind about China:

1. China has the largest standing army in the world.

2. China is holding a big honking chunk of U.S. debt.

Niall Ferguson, of all people, has noticed this second fact, and it bothers him. He writes in today’s Los Angeles Times:

France, Britain, America: They each have had their era of hegemony. Now, however, they all belong to the club of developed debtors, with combined current account deficits of $970 billion last year. Other members of this club are Australia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain. Apart from Iceland, it reads like a list of ex-empires, with the former members of the British Empire (energy-rich Canada excepted) in the lead.

Collectively, the developed debtors had to borrow about $1.3 trillion last year. On the other side of this great global equation is the club of emerging exporters. According to the International Monetary Fund, more than 40% of the developed debtors’ funding requirement last year was met by China, Russia and the Middle East.

The problem for the deficit countries is essentially that their people think the world owes them a living. Their politicians pander to this assumption by making a series of more or less incompatible promises: that expenditure on healthcare and education will always go up; that direct taxation will never go up; and that the assets against which voters borrow will never go down. The only way to fulfill these promises is to pump out ever more printed paper: bank notes, bills, bonds, stocks and the rest. The emerging exporters buy these. The net result must be a creeping transfer of financial ownership from West to East.

This process is about to enter a new phase as China establishes its own sovereign wealth fund to join those operated by the likes of Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Singapore. According to Morgan Stanley, these funds manage about $2.6 trillion. In 15 years, their assets could reach $27 trillion, giving them control of nearly 10% of total global financial assets.

Bottom line, the more in debt we become to China, Russia, and the Middle East, the less power we have to influence anything they do. Ferguson thinks this is bad. Frankly, so do I. So let’s talk about why this is happening.

Furguson writes, The problem for the deficit countries is essentially that their people think the world owes them a living. Their politicians pander to this assumption by making a series of more or less incompatible promises: that expenditure on healthcare and education will always go up; that direct taxation will never go up; and that the assets against which voters borrow will never go down. Oh, those greedy people who want education and health care!

Ferguson didn’t mention the tab we’re running on the war in Iraq, currently estimated at $600 billion and climbing. The Congressional Budget Office says Bush’s long-term plans in Iraq will cost trillions. Even better, appropriations for the war in Iraq are supplemental rather than regular, which means that our military costs in Iraq are off-budget. That makes it easier for the Bush Administration to lie to the American people about the effect of the war on our national debt.

And for the most part it’s not American citizens who dissolve into twitches of apoplexy at the mention of raising taxes. It’s the Bush Administration. And why is that, you ask? Paul Krugman dropped a hint in his column today:

Here’s how Irving Kristol, then the editor of The Public Interest, explained his embrace of supply-side economics in the 1970s: He had a “rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems” because “the task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority — so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government.”

So Bill Kristol’s daddy, Irving, helped to sell voodoo economics to a gullible public in order to buy power — a conservative majority; a Republican majority. And now after 30 years of right-wing propaganda it has become political suicide — conventional wisdom says — for any politician to even think about raising taxes. So, we raise debt. Meanwhile, our military and intelligence resources are being depleted in Iraq, so that we are hurting to cover our real national security needs, never mind mess around with Burma.

And now Bill Kristol — a major supporter of the Iraq War, as is Niall Ferguson — wonders why the Bush Administration has no way to apply pressure to help Burma. Maybe he should ask his daddy.

Compromised

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There’s a reason nobody is talking about a military “regime change” in Burma, but it’s not the reason David Warren writes about here. Warren says,

The Burmese regime could hardly survive a direct military strike. … But this would require a West assured of its own ideals and principles, generous and willing to make sacrifices for them; a West not debilitated by layer upon layer of “politically-correct” self-doubt. And that simply isn’t on the table.

Actually, son, there are two reasons no one is going to invade Burma to overthrow the junta. The first reason is that Burma shares a 2,000 kilometer border with China, and there are two things to keep in mind about China:

1. China has the largest standing army in the world.

2. China is holding a big honking chunk of U.S. debt. Wikipedia:

The country holding the most U.S. debt is Japan which held $612.3 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2007. The People’s Republic of China holds the second most U.S. debt, ending the first quarter of 2007 with over $1.2 trillion in total foreign reserves, of which about $420.2 billion are U.S. Treasury securities.[

The West is not dithering because of some political neurosis, presenting as “layer upon layer of ‘politically-correct’ self-doubt.” The West is hamstrung regarding Burma because the West is afraid of what China might do.

In the event of an armed invasion of Burma by western forces to effect “regime change,” I don’t know that China would counterattack. But China could hurt us in a lot of other ways.

Recently Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote at The Telegraph (August 8, 2007):

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning – for the first time – that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Described as China’s “nuclear option” in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.

It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.

In effect, the Chinese are underwriting Bush’s tax cuts. And I believe China has more leverage over us than we have over them.

There’s a fascinating analysis by Lindsey Hilsum called “Why Burma was crushed” at The New Statesman.

As Burmese pro-democracy activists are rounded up, the west looks to China to intervene. We are failing to see the seismic changes that authoritarian capitalism is bringing the world.

In Beijing you might never have known about the saffron revolution that started with a bang and ended with a whimper in Burma. No pictures of chanting monks on state-controlled television, no anguished politicians saying “something must be done”. Yet the consensus in Washington and European capitals was that only China could resolve the crisis.

Over the past year, there have been similar cries about Darfur and North Korea. Suddenly China has become what the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright once called her own country – “the essential nation”. It is not just China’s new diplomatic reach, born of economic muscle, that is drawing international attention, but also its system of “authoritarian capitalism”, which is increasingly seen as a counterweight to liberal democracy. …

… Western leaders dream of a Burma reinvented in their image – with a little lustre from association with the revered opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi rubbing off on them. But China is still ruled by the Communist Party that shot and mowed down protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and which suppresses Buddhist monks in Tibet.

Authoritarian capitalism, not liberal democracy, has made China successful. The Beijing government’s ideal would be for the Burmese generals to allow limited political participation, so that stability could be assured and China’s supply of timber, gemstones, oil and natural gas guaranteed.

And there’s a bigger picture to consider.

Western leaders continue to assert that capitalism inevitably brings democracy in its wake. “As China reforms its economy, its leaders are finding that once the door to freedom is opened even a crack, it cannot be closed,” said Bush in 2005. “As the people of China grow in prosperity, their demands for political freedom will grow as well.” The US president cited South Korea and Taiwan as examples. “The economic wealth that South Korea created at home helped nurture a thriving middle class that eventually demanded free elections and a democratic government that would be accountable to the people,” he said.

But, as the scholars Azar Gat and James Mann have pointed out, China – unlike smaller east Asian countries – is not under the US military umbrella. It is forging its own path and it is not the one that Bush predicted. As the Communist Party of China prepares for its 17th Congress this month, scores of popular websites have been closed. Meetings of Aids activists have been banned and environmental campaigners have been jailed. Human rights campaigners say that far from more freedom being allowed in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the space for dissent is narrowing. …

… China is no longer alone. Russia’s retreat from democracy at a time when high oil prices are boosting the economy suggests that an alternative axis is coming into being. China and Russia parted ideological course in 1960, but today, once again, they share a vision.

The Russian economist Sergei Karaganov, dean of the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs of the State University in Moscow, describes this as a “new era of confrontation”, with China and Russia on one side and the US and EU on the other. “In an environment characterised by acute competition, the fight for the lofty values of democracy will almost inevitably acquire the character of geopolitical confrontation,” he says. “This will impede the probable process of liberalisation in the countries of the new ‘authoritarian’ capitalism – in particular, in Russia.”

The other reason no one will take military action in Burma has to do with U.S. business interests. Amy Goodman wrote in yesterday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

The Bush administration is making headlines with its strong language against the Burmese regime. President Bush declared increased sanctions in his U.N. General Assembly speech. First lady Laura Bush has come out with perhaps the strongest statements. Explaining she has a cousin who is a Burma activist, Laura Bush said, “The deplorable acts of violence being perpetrated against Buddhist monks and peaceful Burmese demonstrators shame the military regime.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said, “The United States is determined to keep an international focus on the travesty that is taking place.” Keeping an international focus is essential, but should not distract from one of the most powerful supporters of the junta, one that is much closer to home. Rice knows it well: Chevron.

Fueling the military junta that has ruled for decades are Burma’s natural-gas reserves, controlled by the Burmese regime in partnership with the U.S. multinational oil giant Chevron, the French oil company Total and a Thai oil firm. Offshore natural-gas facilities deliver their extracted gas to Thailand through Burma’s Yadana pipeline. The pipeline was built with slave labor, forced into servitude by the Burmese military.

The original pipeline partner, Unocal, was sued by EarthRights International for the use of slave labor. As soon as the suit was settled out of court, Chevron bought Unocal.

Chevron’s role in propping up the brutal regime in Burma is clear. According to Marco Simons, U.S. legal director at EarthRights International: “Sanctions haven’t worked because gas is the lifeline of the regime. Before Yadana went online, Burma’s regime was facing severe shortages of currency. It’s really Yadana and gas projects that kept the military regime afloat to buy arms and ammunition and pay its soldiers.”

The U.S. government has had sanctions in place against Burma since 1997. A loophole exists, though, for companies grandfathered in. Unocal’s exemption from the Burmese sanctions has been passed on to its new owner, Chevron.

Rice served on the Chevron board of directors for a decade. She even had a Chevron oil tanker named after her. While she served on the board, Chevron was sued for involvement in the killing of non-violent protesters in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. As in Burma, Nigerians suffer political repression and pollution where oil and gas are extracted, and live in dire poverty. The protests in Burma were actually triggered by a government-imposed increase in fuel prices.

So, the West flaps about, issuing statements and maybe sending an envoy or two. Please note I don’t believe an armed invasion is the only option or even the most desirable option. But I believe the West is too compromised to exercise any option.

See also:

“Monks Are Silenced, and for Now, Internet Is, Too”

Monks flee crackdown as reports of brutality emerge

Religion in Retreat: Burma

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From the Daily Mail:

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. …

… 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.

This is what we had feared.

Rosalind Russell writes for The Independent:

“We cannot turn back now. Whether it takes a month, a year or more, we will not stop.” With his russet-red robes pulled around his knees, rocking back and forth on a low, wooden stool, the senior monk spoke quietly but determinedly.

Over the past few days, the monk has seen many of his fellow Buddhists rounded up and carted away as Burma’s military regime brutally cracked down on anti-government protests, trying to suck any oxygen away from the flame of revolt. Pools of blood stain monastery doorways, memories linger of monks as young as 15 being clobbered over the head with truncheons and rifle butts.

But in the now-tranquil, tree-filled courtyard in central Rangoon, it is not of these atrocities that the monk, in his early sixties and wishing to remain anonymous, wants to speak. It is the atrocities which the Burmese people have suffered. The people are living under rulers busy enriching themselves with natural gas, timber, diamonds and rubies while spending less on health care per head than nearly any other country on earth. They are living in poverty more akin to sub-Saharan Africa than Asia.

“As monks, we see everything in society. We go everywhere, to ask for our food and we see how people live,” he says. “We know that they give to us when they themselves do not have enough to eat, because there is no work and the costs of living are so high. We also see how the wealthy live. We see how everything is getting worse and worse.” And that is why he is adamant that the fight must continue. “We have already lost too much and the people cannot continue to suffer as they do,” he explained. “We knew well the risks before we started. It is up to us. We have to see this through to the end, whatever the end will be.”

At the Washington Post, Fred Hiatt has a moment of clarity:

Tell China that, as far as the United States is concerned, it can have its Olympic Games or it can have its regime in Burma. It can’t have both.

Here, too, I understand the arguments against: China’s rulers are gradually becoming more responsible in the world; to threaten their Games would only get their backs up. The Games themselves offer a chance to enhance international understanding; if we let world affairs interfere, there will always — every two years — be some cause. The athletes have trained for years; they deserve their chance.

And yet: Hundreds of thousands of Burmese have risked everything — their homes, their families, their lives — to be free. They have done so with nothing on their side but courage, faith and the hope that the world might stand with them. And they still have a chance to succeed.

Whether they do depends mostly on decisions made inside Burma. But people and countries outside can have some effect. Burma’s neighbors in Southeast Asia could do more. The world’s largest democracy, India, could do far more. China could do most of all.

China’s Communist rulers have reasons not to help Burma’s democrats. They enjoy privileged access to Burma’s timber and other resources, for one. Even more fundamentally, dictators will shudder when they see another illegitimate regime threatened by people power.

What could push them the other way? Their desire to be seen as responsible players, maybe. Their desire to have their one-party rule recognized as more sophisticated and legitimate than the paranoid generals of Burma, maybe. And, maybe, their deep desire to host a successful Olympics next summer.

If a threat to those Games — delivered privately, if that would be most effective, with no loss of face — could help tip the balance, then let the Games not begin. Some things matter more.

A UN envoy has arrived in Burma and may or may not meet with junta leaders on Tuesday.

Mutiny?

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I hope this isn’t wishful thinking, but The Buddhist Channel reports —

Rangoon, Burma — Reports from Rangoon suggest soldiers are mutinying. It is unclear the numbers involved. Reports cite heavy shooting in the former Burmese capital.

The organisation Helfen ohne Grenzen (Help without Frontiers) is reporting that “Soldiers from the 66th LID (Light Infantry Divison) have turned their weapons against other government troops and possibly police in North Okkalappa township in Rangoon and are defending the protesters. At present unsure how many soldiers involved.”

Soldiers in Mandalay, where unrest has spread to as we reported this morning, are also reported to have refused orders to act against protesters.

Some reports claim that many soldiers remained in their barracks. More recent reports now maintain that soldiers from the 99th LID now being sent there to confront them.

Growing numbers of protestors are gathering in Rangoon, with 10,000 reported at the Traders Hotel and 50,000 at the Thein Gyi market. The police are reported to have turned water cannons against crowds at Sule Pagoda.

The latest from Mizzima News is that people rallied in the streets of Rangoon this afternoon but were dispersed.

An editorial from a Burmese activist: “Burma needs Strategy not Strategery.”

Faith, Hope, Metta

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Although — for reasons I went on and on about in the Wisdom of Doubt series — I object to using the words faith and religion as synonyms, I still liked this op ed by Sam Leith in The Telegraph — “The power of faith against the bullet.”

This – these monks staring down the guns – presents a problem for a militant secularist in the Dawkins or Hitchens mould. I don’t mean that it has any bearing on the argument about whether there is or is not a God. Buddhist monks don’t worship anything resembling the God on whom the Dawkins guns are trained in any case; and the fact that they stare down the guns doesn’t make a difference to whether or not what they believe is true.

BTW, this week, while much of the world’s attention was riveted on the monks of Burma, the great blowhard Christopher Hitchens appeared at the Washington Post‘s “On Faith” site, ranting about “The Subtle, Lethal Poison of Religion.”

So much for Hitchens. Here’s more Leith:

But stare down those guns they do – and their behaviour does have a strong bearing on the question of whether religious belief “poisons everything”, as Hitchens puts it. I’d submit, as an irreligious bystander, that one of the things that helps those monks hold the line is faith. The form that their resistance takes is shaped by that faith – and it is uniquely powerful.

The monks’ action is a demonstration of faith, but not belief. In religion — including Christianity, IMO — belief and faith are two different things, although this is a point lost on fundies and atheists alike.

They can’t be written off as “terrorists” or “communists”. They are not a rival faction seeking power. They can’t be co-opted into a fight. That is their strength against a regime that has only repressive force at its disposal.

If someone’s shooting at you, or throwing rocks at you, it’s not very long before the rights and wrongs of the original dispute get entirely lost amid the fighting. But if someone’s sitting patiently in the street, unarmed, daring you to shoot him dead … One of the reports from Burma has soldiers in tears. Early reports also suggested that more shots have been fired into the air than into the crowds.

In Burma, and in much of southeast Asia, it is customary for a young man to spend at least a few months as a monk before taking up his adult activities as a husband, father, and worker. It’s probable some of those soldiers have been monks themselves. I believe there was some hope soldiers would switch sides and join the monks, but I haven’t heard this has happened.

But what does this say about the nexus of political power and moral authority? They can’t be written off as “terrorists” or “communists”. They are not a rival faction seeking power. They can’t be co-opted into a fight. Religionists in America have waged an all-out campaign to get political power, and along the way they’ve proved themselves to be as morally frail and corruptible as any other human, “believer” or not. The monks of Burma renunciate power, and that renunciation is the source of their power.

That renunciation is also true religious faith. Religionists who seek political power in order to carry out some doctrinal agenda are demonstrating their own faithlessness.

I am encouraged by the fact that many of these soldiers will themselves be Buddhists; that they are facing crowds of fellow citizens who are also Buddhists; and that they know those fellow citizens are also prepared to take a bullet for their basic freedoms.

That reminds me of a Zen story, although a relatively modern one, taking place when the Japanese were overrunning Korea in the 1930s. Japanese soldiers entered a Korean Zen monastery and found most of the monks gone. But the abbot remained, sitting like an iron lotus in the zendo. The officer in charge drew his sword, walked up to the abbot, and said, “I could run you through without blinking an eye!” The abbot roared back, “I can be run through without blinking an eye!” The soldiers left the old man alone. I believe that really happened.

That suggests that a tipping point might be reached. It suggests that – as Patti Smith puts it – they might “get ’em like Gandhi; get ’em with the numbers”. Small flowers crack concrete.

Here’s the bad news — the tipping point may be postponed. The Buddhist Channel reports that monks are locked into their monasteries.

Thousands of monks had provided the backbone of the protests, but they were besieged in their monasteries, penned in by locked gates and barbed wire surrounding the compounds in the two biggest cities, Yangon and Mandalay. Troops stood guard outside and blocked nearby roads to keep the clergymen isolated.

The monks remained inside their monasteries late Saturday morning (Sept 29) with troops remaining on guard outside and blocking nearby roads. The streets of the two Yangon and Mandalay were quiet.

Many Yangon residents seemed pessimistic over the crackdown, fearing it fatally weakened a movement that began nearly six weeks ago as small protests over fuel price hikes and grew into demonstrations by tens of thousands demanding an end to 45 years of military rule.

The corralling of monks was a serious blow. They carry high moral authority in this predominantly Buddhist nation of 54 million people and the protests had mushroomed when the clergymen joined in.

“The monks are the ones who give us courage. I don’t think that we have any more hope to win,” said a young woman who had taken part in a huge demonstration Thursday that broke up when troops shot protesters. She said she had not seen her boyfriend and feared he was arrested.

The monks themselves have not given up hope.

At the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar’s most important Buddhist temple, about 300 armed policemen and soldiers sat around the compound eating snacks while keeping an eye on the monks.

“I’m not afraid of the soldiers. We live and then we die,” said one monk. “We will win this time because the international community is putting a lot of pressure.”

Condemnation of the junta has been strong around the world. On Friday, people protested outside Myanmar embassies in Australia, Britain, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Japan.

The Tao Teh Ching says nothing is softer or weaker than water, yet water wears down what is hard and strong. Whatever happens in the next few days, the monks of Burma will, eventually, prevail.

Being Peace

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I want to respond once again to this fellow, who thinks the Burmese monks are saps for not leading an armed resistance against the military junta instead of a nonviolent protest.

The monks and their followers have caught the world’s attention, I’ll grant you that. (That and a subway token…) International pressure is probably the only hope right now, but see what good that’s done for Tibet or Darfur. Or against Iran. Or against the Taliban. I don’t need to continue. …

… These people don’t want to lose, and they’re prepared to fight a lot dirtier than the monks are.
But we already knew that.

As for Gandhi (and Martin Luther King), they knew that their opponents, bad as they were, had moral limits.

The blogger may be a graduate of the Michael Medved School of History; I don’t see many “moral limits” in the history of racial violence in America.

The American government sent the military to enforce civil rights, not suppress them. If the protestors thought they were up against similar foes, they misjudged badly. The protests are gone, and people have died.

Isn’t it only decent to ask what for?

In other words, means justify ends. But Buddhists don’t think that way. In fact, one of the differences between Eastern and Western thought is that westerners tend to think of events in terms of ends, or results, whereas easterners are more likely to think in terms of never-ending cycles of cause and effect. Ends are not, in fact, ends. Even after great victories — or defeats — the wheel of existence does not stop, and in time “ends” dissipate like smoke. Because cause and effect are locked together in a great, eternal continuum, means do not justify “ends,” ever. Even if you achieve a desired goal, sooner or later you will enjoy — or suffer — the fruits of whatever means you used to achieve it.

As my first Zen teacher said, often, “What you do to others is done to you.”

There was an article in the Spring 2007 issue of the American Buddhist magazine Tricycle — available to subscribers only, alas — about political action and nonviolence. In “The Disappearance of the Spiritual Thinker,” Pankaj Mishra wrote,

It may be hard to conceive of nonviolence as a viable force, especially as we appear to be in the midst of a worldwide upsurge of violence and cruelty. Nevertheless, the history of the contemporary world is full of examples of effective nonviolent politics. The movements for national self-determination in colonized countries, the Civil Rights movement in the United States, the velvet revolutions in Russia and Eastern Europe, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the gradual spread of parliamentary democracy around the world–the great transformations of our time–have been essentially peaceful.

Every time a peaceful resistance is put down, somebody is bound to say they should have used guns. But when an armed insurgency is put down, or when it turns into a cycle of violence and vengeance dragging on for generations, for some reason this doesn’t count against the effectiveness of armed insurgency. And how often does the residual anger from one war blossom into the next one?

In fact, I’d say nonviolent resistance has a pretty good track record, particularly as far as long-term results are concerned.

I particularly like this next paragraph (emphasis added):

And there have been activists and thinkers in our own time, such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Václav Havel, who rejected politics as a zero-sum game (in which the other side’s loss is seen as a gain) and adopted moral persuasion and conversion as means to political ends. As the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh wrote to Martin Luther King, Jr., after a spate of Buddhist self-immolations in Vietnam in 1965, “The monks who burned themselves did not aim at the death of the oppressors, but only at a change in their policy. Their enemies are not man. They are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred, and discrimination, which lie within the heart of man.”

This touches on Pankaj Mishra’s thesis, that the western concept of “shaping history,” or pushing mankind toward some idealized future by any means, is the chief cause of much of the violence of the past couple of centuries. And I acknowledge that much of Asia got sucked into the game of shaping “history” by force — Japanese militarism of the 1930s, China under Mao. But it’s a very un-Buddhist way of interacting with the world.

“Their enemies are not man. They are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred, and discrimination, which lie within the heart of man.” If you observe long enough, you notice how easily un-self-aware people become like their own enemies. Consider the McCarthyite or Bushie, eager to flush the Bill of Rights down the toilet in the name of “freedom.”

The monks of Burma make a conscious choice not to become what they are trying to defeat. They choose not to give in to intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred, and discrimination. That’s the point of chanting the Metta Sutta as they march. To do otherwise would betray everything they have vowed to maintain as monks.

Pankaj Mishra continued,

Imprisoned by the totalitarian regime of Czechoslovakia, Havel echoed a Buddhistic preoccupation with actions in the present moment when he warned that “the less political policies are derived from a concrete and human ‘here and now,’ and the more they fix their sights on an abstract ‘someday,’ the more easily they can degenerate into new forms of human enslavement.” In his own political practice, Gandhi opposed any mode of politics that reduced human beings into passive means to a predetermined end–it was the burden of his complaint against history. He insisted that human beings were an end in themselves, and the here and now was more important than an illusory future.

This has always baffled or disappointed those who measure nonviolent political action in terms of the regimes it changed. But for Gandhi, nonviolence was not merely another tactic, as terrorism often is, in a zero-sum game played against a political adversary. It was a whole way of being in the world, of relating truthfully to other people and one’s own inner self: an individual project in which spiritual vigilance and strength created the basis for, and thus were inseparable from, political acts. Gandhi assumed that whatever regimes they lived under–democracy or dictatorship, capitalist or socialist–individuals always possessed a freedom of conscience. To live a political life was to be aware of that inner freedom to make moral choices in everyday life; it was to take upon one’s own conscience the burden of political responsibility and action rather than placing it upon a political party or a government.

As Gandhi saw it, real political power arose from the cooperative action of such strongly self-aware individuals–the “authentic, enduring power” of people that, as Hannah Arendt presciently wrote in her analysis of the Prague Spring of 1968, a repressive regime or government could neither create nor suppress through the use of terror, and before which it eventually surrendered.
Many of Gandhi’s own colleagues often complained that he was delaying India’s liberation from colonial rule. But Gandhi knew as intuitively as Havel was to know later that the task before him was not so much of achieving regime change as of resisting “the irrational momentum of anonymous, impersonal, and inhuman power–the power of ideologies, systems, apparat, bureaucracy, artificial languages, and political slogans.”

This power, the unique creation of the political and economic systems of the modern world, pressed upon individuals everywhere–in the free as well as the unfree world. It was why Havel once thought that the Western cold warriors wishing to get rid of the totalitarian Communist system he belonged to were like the “ugly woman trying to get rid of her ugliness by smashing the mirror which reminds her of it.” “Even if they won,” Havel wrote, “the victors would emerge from a conflict inevitably resembling their defeated opponents far more than anyone today is willing to admit or able to imagine.”

This takes us back to what Glenn Greenwald wrote in (A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency:

One of the principal dangers of vesting power in a leader who is convinced of his own righteousness — who believes that, by virtue of his ascension to political power, he has been called to a crusade against Evil — is that the moral imperative driving the mission will justify any and all means used to achieve it. Those who have become convinced that they are waging an epic and all-consuming existential war against Evil cannot, by the very premises of their belief system, accept any limitations — moral, pragmatic, or otherwise — on the methods adopted to triumph in this battle.

Efforts to impose limits on waging war against Evil will themselves be seen as impediments to Good, if not as an attempt to aid and abet Evil. In a Manichean worldview, there is no imperative that can compete with the mission of defeating Evil. The primacy of that mandate is unchallengeable. Hence, there are no valid reasons for declaring off-limits any weapons that can be deployed in service of the war against Evil.

Equally operative in the Manichean worldview is the principle that those who are warriors for a universal Good cannot recognize that the particular means they employ in service of their mission may be immoral or even misguided. The very fact that the instruments they embrace are employed in service of their Manichean mission renders any such objections incoherent. How can an act undertaken in order to strengthen the side of Good, and to weaken the forces of Evil, ever be anything other than Good in itself? Thus, any act undertaken by a warrior of Good in service of the war against Evil is inherently moral for that reason alone.

It is from these premises that the most amoral or even most reprehensible outcomes can be — and often are — produced by political movements and political leaders grounded in universal moral certainties. Intoxicated by his own righteousness and therefore immune from doubt, the Manichean warrior becomes capable of acts of moral monstrousness that would be unthinkable in the absence of such unquestionable moral conviction. One who believes himself to be leading a supreme war against Evil on behalf of Good will be incapable of understanding any claims that he himself is acting immorally.

In Buddhism, good and evil are not thought of as attributes one may or may not possess. Rather, they are the consequences — beneficial or detrimental — of thoughts, words, and volitional acts. A practicing Buddhist doesn’t think, well, I’m a good person, and my cause is just,and my intentions are good, so whatever I do to attain this goal is OK. Believe me, after a few years of meditation practice, when a thought like that comes up you recognize such an idea as folly and let it go.

Of course, sometimes you have to fight. I don’t know where Burmese Buddhism falls on the pacifism scale, but Zen Buddhism in particular has a long association with the martial arts. However, even the most proficient martial artist should recognize there’s a time to fight, and a time to walk away from a fight.

The monks of Burma have chosen nonviolent resistance, as did the monks of Tibet and the monks of Vietnam, who still face oppression from Communist leaders. Short-term, this may not seem an effective strategy. Long-term, I suspect it is the wisest course.

Burma Updates

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The AFL-CIO is organizing a rally at the Burmese embassy today in Washington, DC, beginning at 3:30 pm. This will be followed by a march to the Chinese embassy.

* * *

Seth Mydans writes for the New York Times:

Myanmar’s armed forces appeared to have succeeded Friday in sealing tens of thousands of protesting monks inside their monasteries, but they continued to attack bands of civilian demonstrators who challenged them in the streets of the main city, [Rangoon].

Witnesses and diplomats reached by telephone inside Myanmar, a sealed country, said troops were now confronting and attacking smaller groups of civilians around the city, sometimes running after them through narrow streets, sometimes firing at protesting groups.

“Today has been quieter than previous days, meaning far fewer protesters came out, but the military is being very quick to use violence, tear gas, guns and clubs to break it up,” said the chief diplomat at the United States Embassy, Shari Villarosa.

Diplomats said there was no way to estimate the numbers of dead and wounded in Yangon or other cities, but they said it was certainly far higher than what the junta has reported.

Most recent news from Jason of The Buddhist Channel:

Kindly forgive the brevity and the lack of formatting of the following email. I am now sending this information out as we are now receiving it. As many of you are now aware phone lines have been cut, mobile networks have been disabled, and Internet access has also been disabled.

Information, therefore, is now very difficult to obtain and confirm. I therefore am unable to confirm any of that which follows, but my sources are adamant that this is the truth:

Soldiers from LID #66 have turned their weapons against other SPDC soldiers and possibly police in North Okkalappa township in Rangoon and are defending the protesters. At present unsure how many soldiers involved. Some reports cite “heavy shooting” in the area.

Other unconfirmed reports have stated that soldiers from LID #33 in Mandalay have refused orders to act against protesters. Some reports claim that many soldiers remained in their barracks. More recent reports now maintain that soldiers from LID #99 now being sent there to confront them.

Reports of approx. 10,000+ protesters gathering around the Traders Hotel in Rangoon. Other reports of 10,000+ protesters gathering at San Pya Market in Rangoon. Further reports of approx. 50,000 protestors gathering at the Thein Gyi Market in Rangoon.

According to Mizzima, an unknown number of soldiers from Central Command and South East Command are presently on their way to Rangoon to reinforce SPDC army troops.

Also according to Mizzima, an unknown number of aircraft have been scrambled from “Matehtilar” airbase – probably a reference to Meiktila in Mandalay Division.

According to one journalist, SPDC have turned water cannons against crowds at Sule Pagoda. The report maintains that the water contained some type of chemical. awaiting further information. Please circulate this information as widely as quickly as possible.

See also the hourly dispatches from Mizzima News. There are reports that troops are marching to middle Burma. “At this reporting, it is not clear if the troops are marching to reinforce or to challenge the troops in Rangoon for shooting the Buddhist monks.”

Update: See also Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés at The Moderate Voice.

Tiananmen Remix

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The Australian news organization ABC reports:

Reports from Burma say at least three monks and a civilian have been killed by security forces in a crackdown on anti-government protests.

A source from inside the military says two monks were beaten to death, while another was shot as he tried to wrestle a gun away from a soldier.

Soldiers have released tear gas in various parts of the city of Rangoon and a western diplomat says up to 300 people have been arrested, including about 100 monks.

The soldiers’ actions against the monks have angered many people, because monks are revered in Burma and have remained peaceful throughout the past five weeks of action against the military government.

Buddhist monks have been leading peaceful street marches for the past nine days in the biggest pro-democracy demonstration since 1988.

The military junta used force to put down that uprising, killing about 3,000 people.

I wrote about the recent protests in Burma/Myanmar a couple of days ago, and mentioned President Bush was going to speak about Myanmar when he addressed the UN yesterday. This has resulted in mostly isn’t it nice that he mentioned Myanmar stories in the U.S. press. But Pepe Escobar writes for Asia Times:

The mystery of why US President George W Bush took center stage at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday but did not promote the next neo-con war on Iran was solved when it became evident that the job has fallen to his new European poodle, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who in his speech once again assumed the inevitability of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Bush instead announced new economic sanctions against the junta in Myanmar and urged the world to apply “diplomatic leverage to help the Burmese people regain their freedom”. Here is Bush engaging in another “liberation from tyranny and violence”, this time in Asia, while trying to start yet another war, as usual, in the Middle East.

The connection is clear: the Bush conception of “human rights” means “oil and gas”. Bush also claimed at the UN that Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq had “asked for our help”. Given the precedents, even the isolated people in Myanmar should be afraid, very afraid.

Myanmar has been in effect off the radar of the international community for years. Why this new, sudden, Bush administration interest in regime change in Myanmar? If the US and the West are so obsessed with “human rights”, why not put pressure on the ghastly practices of the House of Saud? Or the barely disguised repression under the glitz in Persian Gulf petromonarchies? Or the bloody Islam Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan?

A vast drug-money-laundering operation, plus full Asian cooperation – to the tune of billions of dollars – helped the Myanmar junta to build its new capital, Naypyidaw, in the middle of the jungle, almost 350 kilometers north of Yangon, in essence using slave labor. The 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member, has been very lenient, to say the least, with the unsavory generals, in the name of a policy of “non-interference”. Thailand – for complex historical reasons – would rather co-exist with a weak neighbor. India coddles the generals to get natural-gas deals – like a recent agreement to invest US$150 million in gas exploitation in the west of the country.

Enter the dragon

But Myanmar is above all a key strategic pawn for China. Not only as a captive market for civilian goods in addition to weapons, but as a pawn to keep India in check and assure China of key strategic access to the Indian Ocean. Just like Britain – which twice invaded Burma, as Myanmar was known until 1989 – China’s utmost interest is natural resources. Oil and gas, of course, but also gems and timber: the once-pristine forests at the Myanmar-China border have been practically wiped out. According to the rights group Global Witness, Myanmar exported no less than $350 million in timber to China in 2005 alone, and the bulk of it was illegal.

I apologize for doing so much pasting, but this is a complex issue that I’m learning about myself. There’s more in the article about connections between the Myanmar miitary junta and China, including a 2,380-kilometer oil-and-gas pipeline from Myanmar into China. Escobar continues,

US sanctions are just for internal American consumption; they will have absolutely no impact. For starters, Myanmar is not under a military embargo. A really different story, for instance, would be the Bush administration telling the Chinese to drop the junta, otherwise no US athletes will be seen at the Beijing Summer Olympics next year. London bookies wouldn’t even start a bet on it. The French for their part now say they fear a terrible crackdown – but in fact they fear what happens to substantial oil business by French energy giant Total. The European Union should have a unified position, but for the moment that is hazier than sunrise at the sublime Shwedagon Pagoda in the heart of Yangon.

This year China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the junta’s human-rights record. It’s virtually impossible that the collective leadership in Beijing will let one of its neighbors, a key pawn in the 21st-century energy wars, be swamped by non-violent Buddhists and pro-democracy students – as this would constitute a daring precedent for the aspirations of Tibetans, the Uighurs in Xinjiang and, most of all, Falungong militants all over China, the embryo of a true rainbow-revolution push defying the monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party.

So this seems to be the trillion-yuan question: Will Chinese President Hu Jintao sanction a Tiananmen remix – with Buddhist subtitles – less than one year before the Olympics that will signal to the whole world the renewed power and glory of the Middle Kingdom? If only the Buddha would contemplate direct intervention.

Just think of it — if the U.S. and other western democracies put China on notice to put a leash on the Myanmar junta or face a boycotted Olympics, think of the good it would do for hundreds of thousands of people in Asia. And at no loss of blood and treasure.

Well, I can dream. Maybe some other nations would consider it.

Sue Pleming of Reuters reports that the White House is “very troubled” today.

The United States said on Wednesday it was “very troubled” by the harsh crackdown against protesters in Myanmar and pressed China to use its influence to get the military junta to change its repressive policies.

The Bush administration was responding to word from hospital and monastery sources that two monks and a civilian had been killed, as Myanmar security forces tried to quell the biggest protests in 20 years.

“If these stories are accurate, the U.S. is very troubled that the regime would treat the Burmese people this way,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said as President George W. Bush pressed his foreign policy agenda in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

I’m sure the Myanmar military is “very worried.” Oh, and the UN Security Council is meeting today to consider action against the junta. They might decide to send an envoy. Yeah, that’ll fix it.

History can be a prickly thing. Back in the1990s Hallliburton CEO Richard Cheney grumbled because Congress got in the way of business deals with places like Myanmar.

He cited Iran, which is making overtures toward renewed trade with the West, Myanmar (formerly Burma), and Nigeria as oil-rich regions that have come under fire in Congress because of their internal politics and accusations of wrongdoing.

Some are suggesting boycotts of countries that fail to protect religious liberties, he said.

“I don’t agree with that approach,” Cheney said.

There’s no profit in that approach, you see. It’s better to start a war; then Halliburton can get the contracts.

Jawahara Saidullah writes of the monks,

There are thousands of them but they are unarmed. Their saffron and maroon robes, their heads shaved, they march down the streets of Yangon. With dignity and non-violence, exhorting people to stay away for they don’t want others to face the wrath of the army. They are Buddha’s warriors.

They converge at the two pagodas: Shwedagon and Sule though they have been closed. With no weapons except their will and the belief in a cause that is just, these are the monks of Burma.

This really is a Tiananmen remix.