May 2005 Archives

Sometimes, it feels like someone is running electric currents through my body.
Sometimes, it feels like someone is poking me with hot iron rods.
Sometimes, it feels like sitting on pin cushions, upside down.
Sometimes, it's like someone just keeps pushing those points on your body and won't let go.
Sometimes, I'm just as stiff as a wall.
Sometimes, it feels like de ja vu constantly because you can't remember if you've told someone what you were going to tell them so you repeat it anyway.
Sometimes, it feels like an out of the body experience, coz you can't believe it's happening to you.
Sometimes, you think it's your fault.
Sometimes, you know it's not.
Sometimes, you think, it's going to be a good day and you count the hours for it.
and sometimes, that doesn't happen.
Sometimes, you almost get used to the throbbing, discomforting, hot, prodding pain as being part of you...

Then you remember, there are kids starving in other parts of the world and that Life is suffering and that this too shall pass and you roll over in your bed and try to find a comfortable spot and double your dosage of sleep aid so your eye lids will shut. No gurantees your mind will rest.

And you think, maybe there'll be a window of time tomorrow when you will be NORMAL.

Bush renews sanctions against Myanmar

WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush on Tuesday renewed broad sanctions against military-ruled Myanmar because of its continued repression of opposition threatens US interests.

Bush formally notified Congress that he was extending the sanctions for one year because Myanmar had made little progress on human rights and democracy.

“These actions and policies, including its policies of committing large scale repression of the democratic opposition in Burma, are hostile to US interests and pose a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” Bush said in a message to Congress. “For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency with respect to Burma and maintain in force the sanctions against Burma to respond to this threat,” Bush said. The United States and Europe have shunned Myanmar and slapped sanctions on Yangon to induce the military government to release democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

In its annual human rights report issued in February, the US State Department said the former Burma’s “extremely poor human rights record worsened” during 2004.

Bomb allegations: The United States on Wednesday dismissed as “nonsense” allegations by Myanmar’s junta that the US played a key role in bombings that killed 19 people in the former Burma this month.

Myanmar officials said on Sunday the people who attacked the capital Yangon on May 7 had been trained and financed “by a world-famous organisation of a certain superpower nation” - an apparent reference to Washington and the CIA.

“This suggestion is nonsense, unworthy of dignifying with a comment,” a US embassy official in Bangkok told Reuters. “We condemn all violence such as this. They are cowardly and senseless acts,” the official added.

Thailand has also rejected Yangon’s insinuations that the bombers received some of their training on Thai soil, and that the military-grade explosives used in the attack may have come from Thailand. Other observers have questioned the credibility of Yangon’s investigation into the bombings. “So, according to the junta, CIA operatives based in Thailand trained dissidents to plant bombs in Rangoon. Who on earth is going to believe that?,” Aung Zaw, editor of the Thai-based Irrawaddy magazine, wrote in a commentary for the Bangkok Post.

In Washington, US President George W. Bush renewed broad sanctions against the military regime, saying its repression of the opposition threatened US interests.

The United States has been a fierce critic of Myanmar’s human rights record and tightened sanctions against the junta after Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was detained in May 2003. She remains under house arrest at her home in Yangon.

The State Department, in its latest travel advisory for Myanmar, has warned US citizens to exercise extreme caution “in light of increasing incidents of bombings, and the possibility of additional attacks in the capital”.

The junta, which has ruled Myanmar in various forms since 1962, has often accused the United States and former colonial ruler Britain of meddling in its affairs.

From:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_19-5-2005_pg4_21

Ok, I finally was able to talk to my family in Burma this past weekend.
Whew!
The phone lines were dwn because they lived rather close to the markets where the bombs went off and my family heard one of them go off them and everything....

Sometimes I think I'm always on the brink of losing them. Sometimes i think already have and that I just don't know it yet. I know. Am Huge Pessimist.

It always remind me of the saying around the dinner table. "Hurry up and eat your food. If there was a war, you'd be dead by now". No one said that to be mean. Things were just that way. There was always a war somewhere in the country, so you learn to eat your food fast and you want your child to live so you tell them to eat fast too.
I wonder if there is a saying like that in other countries with frequent wars.

Maybe we should have a conference one day and talk about it.

The weather in L.A. is being weird again. It was super hot this weekend and now it's being all grey and pessimistic looking. Very fitting for Orlando Bloom, who's outside our window. Not Literally - There's been a giant poster of Orlando Bloom in "Kngdom of Heaven" out side our office window. He's in the midst of battle - dark blue skies- rocks falling, deep concentrated look on face as he is about to kill people - very fitting... war--- i guess if people are not living in it, they want to watch it on screen.

How to be a Dictator:

1) Always control the media first if you are going to want to control the masses.

2) Keep the information to youself. Any information. Close schools if neccessary, as long as information is not being leaked out to your people.

3) Look really prosperous and healthy in front of your poor people when you are giving them food and televise it so it looks like you are a good person.

4) Burn loads of heroin on TV and say you are trying to help the ethnic groups. Don't tell anyone you actually profit from it.

5) Who cares about the environment? Cut down all the precious Burmese trees because Teak brings in money, baby.

6) Make your country's people be mad at the foreigners. Tell them lies about them. So they don't want to leave.

7) don't give them passports. Ever. But do take their money when they appy for it and string them along saying they will eventually get one.

8) send your offsprings to the best schools in the world. when they come back with a medley of drugs, hug them because, now you can make them right here in the country. Watch out South America.

9) Say youa releasing the poor defenseless woman who loves her country over and over again and then keep her in custody anyway, because you can. Keep her in custody, even though her husband is dying. Keep her in custody, even though she doesn't want to harm anyone. Keep her in custody- that'll show everyone who's boss.

10) Put tanks on street corners everywhere. Green = terror.

11) Cut off the phone lines, cable line, transmission lines when there is a mishap. This will prevent foreign journalists from coming in the country.

12) Encourage the black market. Then arrest and torture people who are not your friends, who happen to be shopping in the black market.

13) Encourage the sex trade in the Thailand border. Why, that doesn't affect you anyway.

14) Make young people say really stupid mundane things as their national anthem in class. Repetition will only enforce it into their heads and one day, they will start to believe it.

15) Make people who manage to leave the country pay hefty taxes and fines to come back into the country. They deserve to for abandoning the country.

16) Just arrest people if they come under suspicion. it's just easier.

17) Encourage the Customs to open all mail and take anything valuable. People who leave the country shouldn't be allowed to communicate with their loved ones.

18) Show really awful things happening in other countries ocasionally so that your people will think things are better in the country.

19) Alternate giving electricity to the people on odd days at odd hours. Make them have to beg for electricity and running water. Except those who are your friends.

20) Cut off communication with the rest of the world.

I'm sick with worry. I can't reach anyone in Burma.