Japanese clone mouse from frozen cell, aim for mammoths
by Kyoko Hasegawa Kyoko Hasegawa – Tue Nov 4, 3:31 am ET AFP – This handout picture, released by Japan natural science research center shows a cloned mouse (left) created … TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese scientists said Tuesday they had created a mouse from a dead cell frozen for 16 years, taking a step in the long impossible dream of bringing back extinct animals such as mammoths.
Scientists at the government-backed research institute Riken used the dead cell of a mouse that had been preserved at minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a temperature similar to frozen ground.
The scientists hope that the first-of-a-kind research will pave the way to restore extinct animals such as the mammoth.
The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
The scientists extracted a cell nucleus from an organ of the dead mouse and planted it into an egg of another mouse which was alive, leading to the birth of the cloned mouse, the researchers said.
"The newly developed technology of nucleus transfer greatly improved the possibility of reviving extinct animals," the research team led by Teruhiko Wakayama said in a statement.
"Even though reviving extinct animals is often described in films and novels -- such as in Michael Crichton's 'Jurassic Park' -- it had in reality been impossible," they said.
Cells from dead bodies have previously been useless as they are ruined in the freezing process. But Wakayama's team discovered a way to extract a nucleus intact from a frozen cell by grinding cell tissues into multiple pieces.
The cloned mouse was able to reproduce with a female mouse, it added.
But the researchers said tough challenges remain ahead in terms of how to restore extinct animals, which would require breeding with animals that are still alive.
To revive a mammoth, researchers would need to find a way to implant a cell nucleus of a mammoth into the egg of an elephant and then implant the embryo into an elephant's uterus, it said.
The elephant is the closest modern relative of the mammoth, a huge woolly mammal believed to have died out with the Ice Age.
But Akira Iritani, a mammoth expert at Kinki University in Osaka, said it was only a matter of time before researchers could find a mammoth for a resurrection project.
"I have high hopes that we will be able to find a fine sample," he told public broadcaster NHK.
"It's said that there are more than 10,000 mammoths lying underneath Siberia," he said.
Even if it is impossible to recreate a whole animal, the process could create cloned embryonic stem cells for extinct species, giving a boost to research on evolution and zoology, he said.
Cloning can be controversial in terms of both bioethics and, if the animals are eaten, food safety.
Earlier this year, a report by the European Union warned that cloning can threaten the health of livestock.
South Korea's parliament has passed a law to regulate research into cloning, following a scandal in which a now-disgraced expert falsely claimed to have made the first human clone stem cells.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Japanese clone mouse from frozen cell, aim for mammoths
Obama vows to be president for all
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obama
CHICAGO – A triumphant Barack Obama vowed to be a president for all America, even those who voted against him, and asked for patience to address the nation's problems of war and finance that he called the greatest challenges of a lifetime.
The first black president-elect cast his election as a defining moment in the country's 232-year history and a rebuke to cynicism, fear and doubt.
"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer," he said in his first public words after winning the election.
His victory speech was delivered before a multiracial crowd that city officials estimated at 240,000 people. Many cried and nodded their heads while he spoke, surrounded by clear bulletproof screens on his left and right.
He appeared on stage with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, poised to become the first family of color ever to occupy the White House. Every family member dressed in black and red, and Obama told his daughters during his speech that they would get the puppy he promised would come with a victory.
"Even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century," he said. "There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and, for us to lead, alliances to repair."
He was already suggesting a second term to accomplish his goals, saying he expected "setbacks and false starts."
"We may not get there in one year or even one term," he said. "But America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you — we as a people will get there."
To those who voted against him, he said, "I will be your president, too."
Obama, an Illinois senator born 47 years ago of a white American mother and a black African father, sprinkled his address with references to the civil rights struggle. He paid tribute to Ann Nixon Cooper, a 106-year-old daughter of slaves born at a time when women and blacks couldn't vote. She cast her ballot in Atlanta Tuesday, Obama said.
He quoted another president from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, and although he didn't mention Martin Luther King Jr.'s name, he echoed King's statement that "we shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
Obama invited "those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day."
The president-elect said he looks forward to working with Republican rival John McCain, who called him to concede as The Associated Press and television networks called the race at 11 p.m. EST. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama thanked McCain for his graciousness and told him he had waged a tough race.
Gibbs quoted Obama as saying to McCain: "I need your help. You're a leader on so many important issues"
President Bush called Obama shortly after the Illinois senator hung up with McCain, and Vice President Dick Cheney called Obama running mate Joe Biden. Obama watched McCain's concession speech from his suite in a downtown hotel, where he had watched returns with Biden, his extended family and senior campaign staff.
A few blocks away, the crowd in Grant Park that included celebrities Brad Pitt and Oprah Winfrey erupted into cheers to see their chosen candidate break the White House color barrier. Audience members leapt into the air, waving American flags.
The size of the group, spread out toward the Chicago skyline a few blocks in the distance, reflected the eye-popping crowds that Obama drew throughout his campaign. Even the weather favored Obama — the temperature was around 60 degrees as he spoke, unusual for a November night in Chicago.
Obama began the day by casting his vote with his wife and daughters at his side. He unwound while waiting for returns by playing two hours of basketball with friends and staff, then eating a steak dinner at home with his immediate family and in-laws.
He made a final Election Day campaign stop in Indiana, one of several longtime Republican strongholds in the presidential race that he tried to win. It was a symbolic ending of a campaign for a candidate who first made his name with an address to the Democratic National Convention four years ago in which he decried efforts to "slice and dice our country into red states and blue states."
He repeated that sentiment in his victory speech. "We have never been a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and always will be, the United States of America," he said.
___
On the Net:
Obama campaign: http://www.barackobama.com
US first lady: an unscripted and powerful role
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/usvotewives
by Kate Beddall Kate Beddall – Featured Topics: John McCain Barack Obama Play Video Reuters – Obama wins U.S presidency
Play Video Video: Michelle Obama Ponders Possible Future As 1st Lady WCCO Minneapolis Play Video Video: '08 winner's daunting "to do" list Reuters Play Video Video: Sights and Sounds: Presidential elation AP Reuters – U.S. President-elect Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), his wife Michelle and their daughters Malia (2nd R) … WASHINGTON (AFP) – Unpaid, with no official duties, the wife of the US president can exert enormous influence, since she has both the ear of the president and a powerful bully pulpit all her own.
With Barack Obama's victory in the US election Tuesday, Michelle Obama is set to become the first African-American first lady in US history, in a year that also saw former first lady Hillary Clinton shatter barriers with her formidable run for the White House.
Since Martha Washington reluctantly debuted the role in 1789 -- despite a marked preference for private life -- a varied parade of American women has passed through the role, transforming it along the way in its many guises: national hostess, White House manager, behind-the-scenes policy advisor, public advocate of favorite causes.
The vivacious Dolley Madison, wife of the fourth president James Madison (1809-1817), presided the first inaugural ball in Washington, entering on the arm of the new president "dressed in a buff-colored velvet-gown, wearing pearls and large plumes in a turban," according to the National First Ladies' Library.
The celebrated hostess and fashion-setter was later seen as a national heroine because she refused to leave the White House until a portrait of George Washington was taken to safety when British troops burned Washington during the War of 1812.
Mary Lincoln (1861-1865) lived one of the most tragic chapters in the history of the role, seeing her 11-year-old son Willie die of disease in the White House and her husband shot dead while the two attended the theater just days after the end of the Civil War. Mary Lincoln later slipped into madness and died, impoverished, in 1882.
The gifted and ambitious Hellen Taft (1909 - 1913) was the first first lady to advocate women's right to vote, not established in the United States until 1920.
She also made dramatic symbolic changes at the White House, replacing its corps of all-white male ushers -- who greeted visitors -- with African-Americans, and changing presidential transportation from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles, according to the National First Ladies' Libraries.
When a stroke left Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) partly paralyzed in 1919, his wife of four years, Edith Wilson, "took over many routine duties and details of government," her official White House biography says.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1935-1945) eschewed the duties of running the White House and became one of the most active first ladies ever, travelling all over the United States and the world speaking on the issues of the day, notably civil rights.
After Franklin D. Roosevelt's death she maintained a high profile, and was appointed by President Harry Truman US delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 to 1952. She helped draft the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and was dubbed "First Lady of the World" by Truman.
The young Jacqueline Kennedy (1961-1963) charmed with her glamor and beauty, attracting a glare of public attention to the role that has never faded.
But it was her courage and grace after John Kennedy's assassination that most engraved her image on the world and, fourteen years after her death, she remains among the most popular first ladies ever.
Among first ladies still living, Betty Ford (1974-1977) further transformed the role through her public battles with alcoholism and breast cancer and her outspoken advocacy of women's rights.
Her candor inspired thousands, demonstrating the influence a first lady can yield on social issues, and she went on to win a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991, among other accolades, for "selfless, strong, and refreshing leadership on a number of issues."
In 2001, Hillary Clinton became the first and to date only former first lady to hold elected office when she became a US senator representing the state of New York.
And she subsequently became the first American woman to mount a viable run for president, leading a fierce and ultimately losing battle for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
While first lady (1993-2001), she also took a pioneering role in fashioning national policy, leading an ultimately doomed effort to reform the US health care system.
Outgoing First Lady and self-professed book worm Laura Bush initially used her position to encourage child literacy.
But -- over eight years in the White House, during which her popularity waxed while her husband's waned -- she went on to exert influence in causes including the fight against heart disease in women and the promotion of girls' education in Afghanistan.
She travelled widely on her own, to Asia, the Middle East and Africa, advocating women's rights to education and health care.
Obama sweeps to victory as first black president
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/election_rdp
President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle and Vice president-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill take the stage after Obama delivered his victory speech at the election night party at Grant Park in Chicago, Tuesday night, Nov. 4, 2008.
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
WASHINGTON – Barack Obama swept to victory as the nation's first black president Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself. "Change has come," he told a jubilant hometown Chicago crowd estimated at nearly a quarter-million people.
The son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, the Democratic senator from Illinois sealed his historic triumph by defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in a string of wins in hard-fought battleground states — Ohio, Florida, Iowa and more. He captured Virginia, too, the first candidate of his party in 44 years to do so.
On a night for Democrats to savor, they not only elected Obama the nation's 44th president but padded their majorities in the House and Senate, and in January will control both the White House and Congress for the first time since 1994.
A survey of voters leaving polling places showed the economy was by far the top Election Day issue. Six in 10 voters said so, and none of the other top issues — energy, Iraq, terrorism and health care — was picked by more than one in 10.
Obama's election capped a meteoric rise — from mere state senator to president-elect in four years.
Spontaneous celebrations erupted from Atlanta to New York and Philadelphia as word of Obama's victory spread. A big crowd filled Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.
In his first speech as victor, to an enormous throng at Grant Park in Chicago, Obama catalogued the challenges ahead. "The greatest of a lifetime," he said, "two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century."
He added, "There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face."
McCain called his former rival to concede defeat — and the end of his own 10-year quest for the White House. "The American people have spoken, and spoken clearly," McCain told disappointed supporters in Arizona.
President Bush added his congratulations from the White House, where his tenure runs out on Jan. 20. "May God bless whoever wins tonight," he had told dinner guests earlier.
Obama, in his speech, invoked the words of Lincoln and seemed to echo John F. Kennedy.
"So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder," he said.
He and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, will take their oaths of office as president and vice president on Jan. 20, 2009. McCain remains in the Senate.
Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, returns to Alaska as governor after a tumultuous debut on the national stage.
He will move into the Oval Office as leader of a country that is almost certainly in recession, and fighting two long wars, one in Iraq, the other in Afghanistan.
The popular vote was close — 51.3 percent to 47.5 percent with 73 percent of all U.S. precincts tallied — but not the count in the Electoral College, where it mattered most.
There, Obama's audacious decision to contest McCain in states that hadn't gone Democratic in years paid rich dividends.
Shortly after midnight in the East, The Associated Press count showed Obama with 338 electoral votes, well over the 270 needed for victory. McCain had 141 after winning states that comprised the normal Republican base, including Texas and most of the South.
Interviews with voters suggested that almost six in 10 women were backing Obama nationwide, while men leaned his way by a narrow margin. Just over half of whites supported McCain, giving him a slim advantage in a group that Bush carried overwhelmingly in 2004.
The results of the AP survey were based on a preliminary partial sample of nearly 10,000 voters in Election Day polls and in telephone interviews over the past week for early voters. Obama has said his first order of presidential business will be to tackle the economy. He has also pledged to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months.
In Washington, the Democratic leaders of Congress celebrated.
"It is not a mandate for a party or ideology but a mandate for change," said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Said Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California: "Tonight the American people have called for a new direction. They have called for change in America."
Democrats also acclaimed Senate successes by former Gov. Mark Warner in Virginia, Rep. Tom Udall in New Mexico and Rep. Mark Udall in Colorado. All won seats left open by Republican retirements.
In New Hampshire, former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen defeated Republican Sen. John Sununu in a rematch of their 2002 race, and Sen. Elizabeth Dole fell to Democrat Kay Hagan in North Carolina.
Biden won a new term in Delaware, a seat he will resign before he is sworn in as vice president.
The Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, survived a scare in Kentucky, and in Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss hoped to avoid a December runoff.
The Democrats piled up gains in the House, as well.
They defeated seven Republican incumbents, including 22-year veteran Chris Shays in Connecticut, and picked up nine more seats where GOP lawmakers had retired.
At least three Democrats lost their seats, including Florida Rep. Tim Mahoney, turned out of office after admitting to two extramarital affairs while serving his first term in Florida. In Louisiana, Democratic Rep. Don Cazayoux lost the seat he had won in a special election six months ago.
The resurgent Democrats also elected a governor in one of the nation's traditional bellwether states when Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon won his race.
An estimated 187 million voters were registered, and in an indication of interest in the battle for the White House, 40 million or so had already voted as Election Day dawned.
Obama sought election as one of the youngest presidents, and one of the least experienced in national political affairs.
That wasn't what set the Illinois senator apart, though — neither from his rivals nor from the other men who had served as president since the nation's founding more than two centuries ago. A black man, he confronted a previously unbreakable barrier as he campaigned on twin themes of change and hope in uncertain times.
McCain, a prisoner of war during Vietnam, a generation older than his rival at 72, was making his second try for the White House, following his defeat in the battle for the GOP nomination in 2000.
A conservative, he stressed his maverick's streak. And although a Republican, he did what he could to separate himself from an unpopular president.
For the most part, the two presidential candidates and their running mates, Biden and Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, spent weeks campaigning in states that went for Bush four years ago.
McCain and Obama each won contested nominations — the Democrat outdistancing former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton — and promptly set out to claim the mantle of change.
Obama won California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
McCain had Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
He also won at least 3 of Nebraska's five electoral votes, with the other two in doubt.
(This version CORRECTS years since Democrat won Virginia to 44, not 40)
Barack Obama elected 44th president
President-elect Barack Obama walks on stage at his victory celebration in Chicago with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha.
‘Change has come to America,’ first African-American leader tells country
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
msnbc.com
updated 1:10 a.m. ET Nov. 5, 2008
Barack Obama, a 47-year-old first-term senator from Illinois, shattered more than 200 years of history Tuesday night by winning election as the first African-American president of the United States.
A crowd of 125,000 people jammed Grant Park in Chicago, where Obama addressed the nation for the first time as its president-elect at midnight ET. Hundreds of thousands more — Mayor Richard Daley said he would not be surprised if a million Chicagoans jammed the streets — watched on a large television screen outside the park.
“If there is anyone out there who doubts that America is a place where anything is possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” Obama declared.
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“Young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans have sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of red states and blue states,” he said. “We have been and always will be the United States of America.
“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America,” he said to a long roar.
McCain notes history in the making
Obama congratulated his opponent, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, for his “unimaginable” service to the United States, first as a prisoner of war for 5½ years in North Vietnam and then for nearly three decades in Congress.
McCain called Obama to offer his congratulations at 11 p.m. ET, Obama’s chief spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told NBC News. Obama thanked McCain for his “class and honor” during the campaign and said he was eager to sit down and talk about how the two of them could work together.
Video
‘Change has come to America’
Nov. 4: Barack Obama tells more than 125,000 people in Chicago, “If there's anybody out there who still questions ... the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
MSNBC
Saying, “The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly,” McCain told supporters in Phoenix that he “recognized the special significance” Obama’s victory had for African-Americans.
“We both recognize that though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still have the power to wound,” McCain said.
“Let there be no reason for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth,” said McCain, who pledged his support and help for the new president.
President Bush called to congratulate Obama and promise a smooth transition of power on Jan. 20, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
“Mr. President-elect, congratulations to you. What an awesome night for you, your family and your supporters,” said Bush, who invited Obama and his family to visit the White House as soon as it was convenient.
The president also called McCain to say that he was proud of the senator’s efforts and that he was “sorry it didn’t work out.”
“You didn’t leave anything on the playing field,” Bush said.
A broad and deep victory
Campaigning as a technocratic agent of change in Washington and not a pathbreaking civil rights figure, Obama swept to victory over McCain, whose running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was seeking to become the nation’s first female vice president.
Obama’s election was a broad one. He won Florida, the scene of so much electoral chaos in recent elections. He won Ohio, a key to President Bush’s two election wins. He won Colorado, home of the religious right. And he won Virginia, reversing 40 years of Republican victories there.
Surveys of voters as they left polling places nationwide encapsulated the historic nature of the victory by Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas. As expected, he won overwhelmingly among African-American voters, but he also won a slim majority of white voters. He won among women and Latino voters, reversing a longstanding Republican trend. And he won by more than 2-to-1 among voters of all races 30 years old and younger.
Slide show
Parties and prayers
Supporters of both candidates gather across the nation to watch the results roll in.
more photos
That dynamic was telling in Ohio and in Pennsylvania, where McCain poured in millions of dollars of scarce resources. Obama won both, along with Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and New York, all states with hefty electoral vote hauls, NBC News projected.
McCain countered with Texas and numerous smaller states, primarily in the South and the Great Plains.
In interviews with NBC News, aides to McCain said they were proud that they had put up a good fight in “historically difficult times.”
A senior adviser said McCain himself was “fine” but that he felt “he let his staff and supporters down.”
Obama will have a strongly Democratic Congress on the other end of Capitol Hill. The Democrats won strong majorities in both the House and the Senate. NBC News projected that the party would fall just short of a procedurally important 60 percent “supermajority” in the Senate, however.
‘Transformation of America’
In the end, Florida, the scene of electoral chaos in recent elections, had little impact. Florida had been closely watched, but results there and in other closely contested states were delayed until after Obama clinched his victory as record numbers of voters flocked to polling stations, energized by an election in which they would select either the nation’s first black president or its first female vice president.
Americans voted in numbers unprecedented since women were given the franchise in 1920. Secretaries of state predicted turnouts approaching 90 percent in Virginia and Colorado and 80 percent or more in big states like Ohio, California, Texas, Virginia, Missouri and Maryland.
Voters were lured to the polls by the historic nature of an election that held the potential to yield an African-American president.
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Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a living legend of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, said he was “overwhelmed” and had broken down in tears.
Lewis: Struggle was worth it
Nov. 4: Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., talks about Barack Obama’s historic breakthrough.
MSNBC
“I never imagined, I never even had any idea I would live to see an African-American president of the United States,” Lewis said in an interview on MSNBC.
“We have witnessed tonight in America a revolution of values, a revolution of ideals,” Lewis said. “There’s been a transformation of America, and it will have unbelievable influence on the world.”
Ellora Lyons, 81, of Peoria, Ill., recalled boarding a train to Oklahoma with her two oldest boys in 1948. Her brother had been killed in an accident, and they were going to his funeral.
“There was a sign on this train that said, 'n-----s to the back,’” she said. “And we couldn’t drink out of the same water fountain.”
“I remember my mom and my dad talking about black folks being not able to vote,” Lyons said. “I never thought that I would see a black man [in the White House], but I was hoping that one day that a black man would run for president.”
All told, election experts predicted that as many as 140 million Americans would vote, many of them minority, immigrant and younger Americans who were casting their ballots for the first time.
Maria Reyes, who immigrated from El Salvador and was sworn in as a citizen in August, was one of them. She cast her ballot with help from her daughter, Elvia.
“It’s wonderful time for our country right now — Obama!” Reyes said as she waved a small American flag.
In the Little Saigon section of Los Angeles, Timothy Ngo, a Vietnamese immigrant, turned out to support McCain.
“I came here as a refugee, so Mr. McCain and I grew up and fought in the same war in Vietnam,” Ngo said.
Obama, McCain cast their ballots
Obama and his wife, Michelle, voted with their young daughters at their sides at Beulah Shoesmith Elementary School in Hyde Park, Ill. The family was ushered inside ahead of a line of their neighbors that wrapped around the block.
Fellow voters watched in silence and snapped cell-phone pictures. They cheered when Obama held up his validation slip with a smile and said, “I voted.”
“The journey ends, but voting with my daughters, that was a big deal,” he told reporters later.
Obama’s final days of campaigning were bittersweet: He was mourning the loss of his grandmother Madelyn Dunham, who helped raise him but died of cancer Sunday night and never got to see the results of the historic election.
In Delaware, Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, went to the polls with his elderly mother. Speaking to reporters on his plane, Biden said he had made a deal with his wife, Jill.
“If you get the vice presidency and get elected, you can get a dog,” Biden said his wife told him. “I know what kind I want, [but] I don’t know what kind I’m going to get yet. We’re not there yet. The deal’s not closed yet.”
McCain, meanwhile, cast his ballot early Tuesday at a church near his home in central Phoenix. A small crowd cheered “Go, John, go!” and “We love you!” as he stepped out of a sport utility vehicle with his wife, Cindy. One person carried a sign that read, “Use your brain, vote McCain!”
Palin returned to where her political career began to cast her vote in the snow-dusted, two-story Wasilla City Hall where she once presided as a small-town mayor.
Palin, accompanied by her husband, Todd, voted just after 7 a.m. Tuesday, pushing aside a red, white and blue curtain on a voting booth and handing her white paper ballot to a clerk.
With Tom Curry of msnbc.com and Athena Jones, Steve Handelsman and George Lewis of NBC News. The following NBC stations contributed to this report: KPNX of Phoenix; WAFF of Huntsville, Ala.; WEEK of Peoria, Ill.; and WTMJ of Milwaukee.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Arms Companies at the Engineering Fair
http://weaponsoutofwarwick.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/26/
There are a number of arms companies attending the “Engineering and Technology Fair” on the 8th of November. The University careers service recommends that you find out as much about the companies attending as you can, we feel that this is a very reasonable suggestion therefore to help out with information on the arms companies attending the careers fair that the companies and the careers service probably will not include in their recruitment pitch. For this leaflet an arms company has been defined as company who designs or manufactures products specifically for the military application.
BAE systems
3rd Largest Arms Manufacturer in the World. Largest UK arms Company. £13.7 billion sales, £11.8 billion military sales, 83% military[1]. 6 Ongoing Corruption investigations in the UK (not including the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into the Al Yamamah Saudi deal, stopped by the government). Less than 20% of BAE’s sales are to the UK[2]. In September 2003 The Sunday Times reported that BAE had hired a private security contractor to collate information about individuals working at the Campaign Against Arms Trade and their activities. In February 2007, it again obtained private confidential information from CAAT. In September 2005 The Guardian alleged that banking records showed that BAE paid £1 million to Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator.
Products include: Assault rifles and handguns (H&K), Combat Aircraft, Nuclear weapons (via MBDA), Missiles, Artillery Guns, Munitions, Armoured Vehicles, Tanks, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Warships, Radar Systems, Nuclear Submarines and shackles used in Guantanamo Bay and Saudi Arabia (from their subsidiary Hiatts[3]).
Military customers of note include the UK, US, Israel, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia (Hawk Jets sold during the violent repression of East Timor), India, Pakistan, Tanzania, Lebanon, Poland, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Romania, Chile, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Columbia, Egypt, Ghana, Afghanistan, Brazil, Columbia, Qatar, Algeria (via Qatar)[4], Malaysia, Kenya, Czech Republic, Sweden, Morocco (including attempting to secure a deal in the conflict area of Western Sahara), Greece, Germany, Italy, Austria, Australia, Finland, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Nepal, Uruguay, Vietnam,
Park Air Systems (Northrop Grumman)
4th Largest Arms Manufacturer in the World1. Total sales for 2006 US$30.1 billion, 90% military sales[5]. A 1999 lawsuit accuses Northrop of knowingly giving the Navy defective drones from 1988 to 1998 and seeks $210 million in damages. A 1992 case filed in Illinois questions how Northrop accounted for “scrap” parts, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. That suit seeks $113 million in damages. Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, Vice-Presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim, and Sean O’Keefe, director of NASA all former Northrop officials, consultants, or shareholders currently holding positions in the Bush administration[6]. Also Northrop recently lost a previously acquired $35bn refuelling tanker contract with the US Air Force after complaints of illegal bidding practices[7].
Products include: Advanced Radar Systems, Missile Defence Systems, High-Energy Laser Systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Ship Systems, Mission Systems. Specific work include: managing, operating and providing infrastructure support for the Nevada nuclear testing site, B2 Stealth Bomber, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, Kinetic Energy inceptor missile shields, Military Satellites, Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, Fire scout unmanned attack helicopter, F-5 Freedom Fighter, T-38 Talon, 25% of the Parts for the F-35 Lightning, Zumwalt class destroyer, Nimitz class aircraft carrier, Virginia class attack submarine, Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier, Aegis Class guided missile destroyer, numerous amphibious assault vessels, Night Vision Goggles[8], Northrop’s subsidiary Vinnell Corporation was replaced after failing to fulfil its $48 million contract to train the Iraqi Army.
Military customers include US, China, Israel, Russia, Iran, Morocco, Chile, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya , Venezuela , Brazil, Kenya , Turkey , Jordan, Singapore, , Kuwait, Ethiopia, Malaysia, , Bahrain, South Korea, , Germany, Portugal, Philippines, Mexico, Thailand, Tunisia, Yemen, Vietnam, Australia, Canada and the UK.
Thales
11th Largest Arms Manufacturers in the World, second largest UK Arms Company. Approximately $7 million in military sales, 50% of business is Military.[9]
Military Products include: Air Defence Systems, Missile Systems, Surveillance Systems, Submarines, Helicopters, Communication Systems, Patrol Vessels, Combat Systems, Radar Systems and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Thales also specialises in electronics for many types of military vehicles including tanks, aircraft and warships. Thales claims to be ‘present on all types of air, sea and ground military platforms’.[10] On a side note Thales has also won contracts for the National Identity Card system in the UK.
Thales is prime contractor for the Sawari 2 programme, which involves supplying three frigates to Saudi Arabia equipped with the Arabel multi-function anti-air fire control radar and Aster missile system.[11] In Indonesia and Japan Thales has won contracts for maritime patrol systems. Thales is prime contractor for electronic warfare systems for naval vessels and was selected by Brunei for its Waspada ships and by the UK for “Type 45” destroyers.[12] Shorts Missile Systems, which is now owned by Thales, has delivered over 60,000 missiles to 56 armed forces worldwide[13].[14] Thales is also implicated (as well as EADS) in selling the “Advanced Light Helicopter” to Burma (via India)13 and licensed production of night-vision equipment to China (despite an EU embargo), Thales has also allegedly sold arms to Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Columbia.
QinetiQ
27th Largest arms manufacturer in the world, 3rd Largest UK arms company. £1 billion arms sales per year, 83% Military sales.
Products include: Combat Vehicle Systems (vehicle sensors, displays, power systems), Ballistic missile defence systems (navigation, guidance, detection systems), aircraft maintenance & repair, pilot Equipment (Helmets), Missile Systems, Close Combat Systems (small arms, cannons, infantry systems), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Communication Systems, Surveillance Systems[15]
Military sales include the US, UK, Israel (Joint Strike Fighter), Turkey, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Netherlands and the Philippines.[16]
AWE
AWE makes and maintains the UK’s nuclear weapons. AWE is 1/3 owned by the US company Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms company, 1/3 by the UK firm Serco, and 1/3 by the UK government owned BNFL. The BNFL 1/3 is currently in the process of being sold to either the US firm Jacobs or Fluor. AWE was in the news in 2006 by its attempts to circumvent nuclear testing treaties by developing a new “Reliable Replacement Warhead”, according to Matrix Chambers; this may be a material breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. By continuing to possess and make new nuclear weapons, Britain is failing to comply with its obligations to disarm under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which it signed in 1968. The Trident replacement programme to build a new generation of nuclear deterrents is thought to cost the UK taxpayer £75bn over 50 years[17].
MBDA
Part of 8th Largest Arms Manufacturer in the World (owned by EADS, BAE and Marconi), 100% Military, Largest manufacturers of guided missiles in the world. Products include Air to air, Surface to air, Air to surface, Anti-ship and Anti-Tank missile. MBDA missiles are also manufactured to carry nuclear warheads.
MBDA boasts over 70 customers worldwide including the US, UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, China, Chile, Indonesia, Iran, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Pakistan, India, Morocco, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Iraq (to Saddam), Kuwait, Libya, Venezuela, Ecuador, Singapore, Columbia, South Africa, France, Germany, Italy, Qatar, Zambia, Oman, Turkey, South Korea, Poland.
DSTL
DSTL is owned and operated by the Ministry of Defence; it is a hugely secretive organisation that works on high tech military products.
DSTL specialise in biological and chemical warfare, working with anthrax and highly toxic poisons. Their Porton Down site is notorious for testing LSD on armed forces volunteers without their permission and testing the effects of mustard gas on people from different nationalities to study the damage on those with different ethnicities.
Airbus
Airbus is a subsidiary of EADS, the 7th largest arms company worldwide. Airbus also manufactures military products itself, mainly transport and refuelling aircraft.
Products include the A400M tactical transport aircraft, the Multi-Role Tanker Transport and the KC-45 refuelling aircraft.
Customers include the US, United Arab Emirate, Turkey, UK, Spain, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium.
Jaguar Land-Rover
Land Rover’s Defender 4×4 is used for both civilian and military purposes around the world. Land Rover claims to have 70,000 of its vehicles in use around the world[18]. Land Rovers can be found with the militaries and security forces in Zimbabwe, Sudan[19], Israel and UK.
Detica
Detica is owned by BAE systems (92% controlling stake. Detica provides consultancy, customized technology, and knowledge management services to government and corporate clients in the defence, homeland security, counterterrorism, intelligence, and Federal markets sectors. BAE believes the UK ‘homeland security and resilience market’ will double to more than £3bn by 2011 and looks to cash in on this[20].
Atkins
£100m in yearly revenues from military contracts. Atkins provides consultancy services to private arms companies and the MoD. Atkins’ projects include the Rolls Royce made Nuclear reactors for submarines, “Type 45 Destroyer” warships made by BAE systems, military aircraft with QinetiQ and Boeing and armoured vehicles made working with DSTL. The Type 45 Destroyer is sold to Saudi Arabia.[21]
Amec
Provides project management services for military services around the world. AMEC has worked with the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston and has interests in nuclear weapons. AMEC has many contracts building and maintaining military facilities around the world regardless of their usage. Military customers include the UK, US, Iraq, Canada, Eastern Europe, Pacific rim and the Middle East.
Tessella
Tessella produces bespoke products for numerous arms companies including working on systems in the new “Type 45 Anti-Air Warfare destroyers” working directly for BAE systems. Tessella is also involved in nuclear experimentation with contract for the JET fusion reactor and Sellafield.
Tessella’s clients include BAE systems, EADS, AWE, British Nuclear Group, Lockheed Martin, MOD, Thales and various Oil companies including Total (Currently Operating in Burma).
IPL
IPL specialises in software products for arms companies and the MoD. IPL products include software for the Merlin Helicopter used for anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare roles. IPL supplies EADS with bespoke software (EADS is the 7th largest arms manufacturer in the world[22]).
Infosys
Infosys provides consultancy on manufacturing, design and information technology areas of the defence industry.
Special Metals Wiggin
Special Metals is a world leader in the invention, production and supply of the high-nickel, high-performance alloys used for the difficult jobs in engineering. Its high strength alloys are specified for military supersonic aircraft, helicopters and spacecraft as well as marine applications for military ships and submarines.
Lloyd’s Register
Lloyds Register provides management and technical consultancy services to navies around the world, Lloyds register also consults on defence procurement[23]. Lloyds Register has provided consultancy for arms companies such as Thales[24]. Lloyds Register provides maintenance services for marine vessels including military craft as well as advising on technical design issues.
Morgan Professional Services
Morgan Professional Services provides design, engineering and project management services. Projects include a floating submarine jetty for the MOD at Faslane nuclear submarine base and home of the UK’s nuclear arms.
For more information see weaponsoutofwarwick.wordpress.com
Or the facebook group Weapons out of Warwick
Please recycle this leaflet
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] World Rank is from the 2006 top 100 taken from Defense News Top 100 July 2007
[2] CAAT Publications – Arms Fairs, DSEI (2003), http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/armsfairs/dsei-2003-report/baes.php, Accessed 5/11/07
[3] As used on the famous Nelson Mandela, Thomas, 2006, Ebury Press pp212-222
[4] CorporateWatch – BAE systems, A corporate Profile 2003, http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=182
[5] Publications – Northrop Grumman, http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/companies/northrop.php, Accessed 1/11/08
[6] Corpwatch: Northrop Gumman, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=11 accessed 1/11/08
[7] The Times 11/9/08
[8] Northrop Grumman capabilities brochure
[9] CAAT Publications – Thales, http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/companies/thales.php , Accessed 7/10/07
[10] www.thalesgroup.com/ga/business_zone/defence/home.htm , Accessed 24/8/03
[11] www.thalesgroup.com/ga/business_zone/defence/naval.htm, accessed 24/08/03
[12] www.thalesgroup.com/ga/business_zone/defence/airborne.htm, accessed 24/08/03
[13] www.thalesgroup.co.uk/ga/business_zone/defence/AirDefence.htm, accessed 13/08/03
[14] http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/companies/thales2003.php, accessed 7/10/07
[15] CAAT Publications – QinetiQ, http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/companies/qinetiq.php , Accessed 5/11/07
[16] QinetiQ Annual report 2007, http://www.investis.com/reports/qntq_ar_2007_en/report.php? , Accessed 5/11/07
[17] Time for a real review of defence spending, Robert Fox, Guardian Comment is free, 4/9/08
[18] Army Technology Website – Land Rover http://www.army-technology.com/contractors/vehicles/ landrover/accesssed 1/10/08
[19] “British firm breaks Sudan arms boycott” Jon Swain & Brian Johnson Thomas Sunday Times, 22/4/2007
[20] Financial Times 29/7/08
[21] “UK seek £2bn Saudi destroyer contract”, Michael Harrison, The Independent, Published 9/3/2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article2341426.ece , Accessed 14/10/07
[22] CAAT Publications –EADS, http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/companies/eads.php , Accessed 14/10/07
[23] Lloyds Register Website – “Sectors We Serve – Defence”, http://www.lr.org/Industries/Defence, Accessed 5/11/07
[24] LRQA Website – Case Studies, Thales, http://www.lr.org/Industries/LRQA/Case+studies/Thales.htm, Accessed 5/11/07
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This entry was posted on November 3, 2008 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Arms Trade, Warwick University. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Burmese women stop wearing long hair after deadly Nargis
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2008/11/04/regional/regional_30087583.php
By Deutsche Presse Agentur
Rangoon//Singapore - Many young women in Burma's Irrawaddy delta region have stopped wearing their hair traditionally long, word goes.
Too many of them died in the metre-high floods brought on by Cyclone Nargis, because their hair got entangled in tree branches, or were strangled by their own hair as it wrapped around their neck.
Whether that is true or not is hard to verify. But hundreds of thousands were traumatised by the worst natural catastrophe the country has ever seen.
More than 138,000 lives were lost during the cyclone in May, and some 2.4 million people lost their belongings, while about 800,000 homes were destroyed.
The world community reacted with outrage over the heartlessness of Burma's military regime, which delayed deployment of troops to the affected area so they could instead conduct a highly criticised public referendum on the country's constitution.
Thousands of foreign relief workers were stranded outside the country's borders because the paranoid regime denied them entry visas.
Now, six months after the disaster, life is improving all over the delta.
The next rice harvest is due, families are able again to feed themselves, and field work provides income opportunities.
"The situation is now under control," said Chris Kaye, a representative of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Rangoon.
"While we still have to provide food for 740,000 people, we hope to reduce this figure to about half after the upcoming harvest has been brought in," he added.
But relief aid is still lacking in some remote regions to this day.
"Many families in remote areas of the Irrawaddy delta still only live in badly repaired huts, and children are malnourished and sick," said Helga Stamm-Berg of the non-governmental relief organisation World Vision.
But in its hour of greatest need and largely cut off from foreign aid, Burma's society has showed enormous selflessness, compassion and resilience.
"It was an incredible solidarity. My neighbour sold his wife's jewelry, bought drinking water and noodles with the money and simply started distributing the goods," recounted a woman in Yangon.
"A unique culture of solidarity emerged during the cyclone's aftermath" agreed Kaye.
"People not only raised some money for the cyclone's survivors and then moved on, but they deployed all their resources for weeks and months," he explained.
Only four long weeks after the disaster and only after numerous appeals by the United Nations did the junta finally open the country to large-scale foreign aid.
Since then, a plethora of foreign relief organisations has started working in Burma.
They build schools and latrines, pump salt water out of contaminated pools, educate farmers about new farming methods and bring new working animals and livestock into the country.
Still, Kaye estimates that the impending rice harvest of some 8 million tonnes will be about one third smaller than the usual yield.
"Due to the disaster the rice paddies could only be planted four to six weeks later than normal," said Klaus Lohmann of Germany's Welthungerhilfe (World Hunger Aid), who currently is in Burma together with 60 co-workers.
Then the paddies were invaded by freshwater crabs who started eating the young rice plants.
"The crabs come every year, but usually the plants are already stronger and less vulnerable by that time," he explained, adding that in some areas up to one quarter of paddies were lost to crabs.
Vocal outrage against the delayed aid from the military government has been heard nowhere.
"The cyclone was the best thing that could have happened to the junta," said a local journalist in Rangoon.
"After Nargis nobody had time to become outraged, and today the junta has consolidated its power more securely than ever before," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on condition of anonymity.
A former political prisoner even defended the ruling generals.
"US first lady Laura Bush called the disaster an opportunity for a possible regime change, and then foreign warships appeared off Myanmar's coast allegedly carrying relief goods. One really couldn't blame the generals for becoming suspicious," he said.
Some of the foreign aid workers in the country also speak with respect for the junta.
"One thing became clear: The government is not a monolithic block," said one of them who often has to deal with high-ranking officials about aid programmes.
"Some of them recognise that the country can profit from cooperating with the international community. But between these technocrats and the leading generals there still exists a concrete wall several metres thick," he admitted.
Pressurise insurers to cease operations in Burma!
http://aussgworldpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/pressurise-insurers-to-cease-operations-in-burma/
Posted by Charles on November 4, 2008
According to Aavaz, one of the world’s oldest and most respected secretive insurers, Lloyd of London, is the umbrella overseer of insurers for the Burmese junta’s ventures including in aviation and shipping. Its chairman, Lord Levene is also on the board of oil corporation, TOTAL which operates in Burma. Talk about conflict of interest!
Aavaz has set up a campaign microsite urging concerned people to email Peter Levene, asking him to cease as well as disclose its operations in Burma.
According to a Guardian commentary by Mathiason, the Foreign Office (of UK) has written a letter to the Baron, ‘reminding him of the UK government’s official position of discouraging business with the country’. Levene has also said he would not resign from TOTAL and that his position has no impact on his reputation nor that any of his business dealings support the junta.
In another news report, other insurance companies that are still operating in Burma include Hannover Re, Catlin, Atrium Underwriting, Tokio Marine, Sompo Japan, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, QBE, ACE, Labuan Re, OCBC Bank, Pana Harrison, Target Insurance Broker and AI Wasl.
The list, which came from a report, ‘Insuring Repression’ by the Burma Campaign UK surveyed over 500 global insurance companies and professionals. They discovered that companies in London, Antwerp, Singapore, Thailand, Germany, Bermuda, Japan and Malaysia continue to provide insurance services which support the Burmese junta.
According to the list, companies based in Singapore who have sold insurance to other companies in Burma include:
. OCBC Bank which stated that it ‘provides insurance services to Singapore owned companies in Burma;
. Pana Harrison, a Singaporean based insurance broker, who is ‘active in the aviation sector, providing insurance services for regime owned airlines’;
.Target Insurance Broker, ‘a Singaporean broker which works in the Lloyd’s, Australian and European markets’ and ‘provides insurance brokerage services for companies in Burma’;
Singaporean companies on the ’shame list’ refer to entities who have either not replied to correspondence from the campaign group or openly stated that they do not ‘provide insurance to foreign companies operating in Burma’. They include:
.China Insurance Co. (Singapore) Pte. Ltd
.Manulife (Singapore) Pte Ltd
.MSIG Insurance (Singapore) Pte Ltd
.Partner Reinsurance Co Ltd, Singapore Branch
.R + V Versicherung AG, Singapore Branch
.Sime Insurance Brokers (Singapore) Pte Ltd
.Singapore Aviation and General Insurance Co (Pte) Ltd
.Singapore Reinsurance Corporation Limited
.TM Asia Insurance Singapore Ltd.
.TM Asia Life Singapore Ltd.
Australian based insurance company, QBE, has two correspondent offices in Burma.
This entry was posted on November 4, 2008 at 9:52 am and is filed under Human Rights, Politics (Asia). Tagged: Burma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Lloyd's: Stop Underwriting The Junta-
http://www.avaaz.org/en/shame_lloyds_on_burma/?cl=142191118&v=2358
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Lloyd's: Stop Underwriting The Junta
EMAIL/CALL LLOYD'S INSURERS NOW - CONTACTS AND TALKING POINTS BELOW
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Who to Contact What to say - suggestions
We need to put pressure on both Lloyd's as a whole, and the syndicates we know to be involved. Suggestions about what to say can be found at right. First, email Lloyd's of London chairman Lord Levene, chief executive Richard Ward and key board and staff members -- just copy the list of addresses below and paste it into your email "To" field:
peter.levene@lloyds.com, richard.ward@lloyds.com, Jose.Ribeiro@lloyds.com, luke.savage@lloyds.com, rolf.tolle@lloyds.com, louise.shield@lloyds.com, nicholas.furlonge@beazley.com, andrew.kendrick@ace-ina.com, jim_stretton@wisegroup.co.uk, edward.creasy@kilngroup.com, graham.white@argentaplc.com, alan.lovell@infinis.com, ewen.gilmour@lloyds.com, rupert.atkin@talbotuw.com, chrisharman@hwsltd.com, dshipley@mapunderwriting.co.uk, dermot.odonohoe@xlgroup.com, barbara.merry@hardygroup.co.uk, nick.marsh@atrium-uw.com
Switchboard: +44 (0)20 7327 1000
___________________________________
Then if you have time, email or telephone contacts at Atrium, Catlin and Kiln -- three syndicates confirmed to be involved in underwriting the military dictators' aviation interests (scroll down for contact details):
CATLIN
david.ibeson@catlin.com, richard.clapham@catlin.com, chris.mauduit@catlin.com
Switchboard: +44 (0)20 7626 0486
ATRIUM
nick.marsh@atrium-uw.com, kevin.wilkins@atrium-uw.com, john.monsell@atrium-uw.com
Switchboard: +44 (20) 7327 3206
KILN
edward.creasy@kilngroup.com, robert.chase@kilngroup.com, peter.haynes@kilngroup.com, charles.franks@kilngroup.com, Richard.Lewis@kilngroup.com, keith.grant@kilngroup.com, morag.thornton@kilngroup.com
Switchboard: +44 (0)20 7886 9000
Below are the points likely to have the most impact on getting Lloyd's to stop insuring junta-linked companies. Please do frame it in your own words, while focusing on these rational points (insults won't help!). After you have called or emailed contacts at Lloyd's of London and the syndicates tied to the Burmese junta, please share your experience and any responses from them here.
_____________________________________________
TO LORD LEVENE AND LLOYD'S OF LONDON:
1. Lloyd's must tell its syndicates clearly to stop insuring any risk linked to the Burmese junta. They may object that Lloyd's is only a market, but this is no excuse: Lloyd's is responsible for everything that flows through it.
2. Will Lord Levene meet with Burma campaigners to hear their arguments and explain his position?
3. Lloyd's should disclose all Burma-linked risks that are insured through it, particularly those that go beyond shipping and aviation.
4. Lloyd's should disclose whether it is the conduit for insuring any of the Burma-related risks of oil company TOTAL, which channels over $2m a day to the junta. Given that Lord Levene also sits on the board of TOTAL, if there is any conflict of interest how will it be resolved?
5. We will be writing to the media about this, including the insurance press.
(Note that Lloyd's of London has no connection to the Lloyds TSB bank.)
______________________________
TO CATLIN, ATRIUM AND KILN:
(The syndicates known to be involved in insuring the junta's aviation interests)
They should immediately stop insuring risks linked to the interests of the Burmese military dictatorship, including on aviation. This part of their business is propping up an oppressive regime, making it possible for it to defy international calls to open up and release political prisoners. We will notify the media, including the insurance press, and won't stop the public pressure until they stop insuring junta-related risks.
IF YOU ARE IN LONDON OR CAN GET THERE: A protest outside Lloyd's of London is also being organised in the coming weeks -- if you'd like to express interest in joining it, email demo@burmacampaign.org.uk
Don't forget to share any feedback or responses you receive from Lloyds -- click here to tell us about it!
Tell Your Friends
Below is a short note you can send to tell people about this campaign. Please only send it to people you know
personally. Spam won't help our cause!
Click here to open a new email and invite your friends, family and colleagues to get involved.
Or cut and paste the text below into an email to friends and family
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Subject
Language English
Hi,
I've just heard about this important campaign to pressure Lloyd’s of London to stop insuring the military dictators of Burma.
Burma's military junta has been hanging on to power for years using repressive tactics - jailing monks and opposition leaders such as Aung San Suu Kyi, and denying their citizens relief after last year's devastating cyclone. One way to push for change is to cut off the businesses that prop them up by shaming western companies that are supporting them.
Lloyd’s of London is one of their lifelines -- so please join me now by emailing them, the media furore is growing and Lloyd’s could be pushed to terminate its Burmese contracts to save face. If you click on the link below a page will come up which provides key numbers, email addresses and suggestions for what to say. It will only take a few minutes. Please follow the link below to take action:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/shame_lloyds_on_burma/98.php
For the full Avaaz campaign read below:
Dear friends,
A year after their crackdown, Burma's military dictators remain entrenched, propped up by dealings with Western companies. But the Burmese democracy movement has found a powerful pressure point -- the insurers who underwrite the generals' economic stranglehold -- exposing them one by one, and forcing big companies to pull out.[1]
Now information has leaked that Lloyd's of London, one of the world's oldest, most respected and secretive insurers, is the ultimate channel for insurance on the generals' venturesincluding aviation and shipping: yesterday, news broke that Lloyd's chairman Lord Levene also sits on the board of the junta-linked oil giant TOTAL![2]
Bad publicity is growing as deals come up for renewal -- if enough of us email and call key Lloyd's decision-makers this week, we can shame them into pulling out of this dirty trade, undermining the hardliners and creating leverage for the release of political prisoners like rightfully elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/shame_lloyds_on_burma/98.php
The Burmese people's struggle is long and tough. But as in South Africa, international pressure on the regime's exploitative ventures could tip the balance. Because it's hard or impossible for them to continue without insurance, this is an effective and wide-reaching approach for citizens everywhere to have a real impact.
Lloyd's of London is the umbrella and overseer for hundreds of specialist insurance syndicates, the last option for many junta-linked companies, and it can stop this dirty trade if it so chooses. We'll ramp up the pressure by alerting the media to our campaign, specialist insurance publications included. Even the British government has begun to ask Lloyd's to cease its business with the Burmese military junta.[3]
We can win this campaign, so let's flood Lloyd's with emails and phone calls all this week -- on the campaign page we provide key numbers, email addresses and suggestions for what to say -- just follow the link below now to take action:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/shame_lloyds_on_burma/98.php
If we win, the regime will be thrown onto the back foot, Burma's people who see none of the benefits of this dirty trade will be immensely heartened, and the UN Secretary-General will have a greater chance of securing the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other prisoners this December. Together, our individual small acts are becoming irresistible. We can't forget Burma.
With hope and determination,
Paul, Alice, Iain, Graziela, Ricken, Pascal, Paula, Brett, Veronique, Milena -- the entire Avaaz team
For updates on Avaaz campaigns: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/report_back_2/
You can also view reports on our campaigns in support of the Burmese democracy movement and the$2 million of aid Avaaz members provided in the wake of Cyclone Nargis.
Sources:
1. Reinsurance Magazine: Big insurers including Marsh, Swiss Re, AON pull out: http://www.reinsurancemagazine.com/public/showPage.html?page=787739
Arab Insurance Group and XL also pull out:
http://www.mizzima.com/news/world/962-campaigners-hail-arigs-decision-to-pull-out-of-burma.html
2. The Observer: "The baron who holds Burma's purse strings", 2 November 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/02/oil-total-burma-lloyds-levene1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/28/insurance.foreignpolicy
4. Asia-Europe summit in Beijing calls for release of political prisoners:
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/independent/2008/10/release-aung-sa.html Import automatically from my personal address book. Select this option to load contacts from your Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, or AOL email account.
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Burma
Just received this from Avaaz:
Dear friends,
Burma is far from the headlines - but we’ve found a real pressure point, the insurers who prop up the junta’s economic interests. Read the email and take action now!
(Meanwhile a new US president is about to be elected — watch out for our post-election campaign…)
A year after their crackdown, Burma’s military dictators remain entrenched, propped up by dealings with Western companies. But the Burmese democracy movement has found a powerful pressure point — many of the Generals’ West-linked business ventures depend on one insurer: Lloyd’s of London.[1]
Lloyd’s is the world’s oldest, most respected insurer, and cares a great deal about its global reputation — by pointing out Lloyd’s blameworthiness as key insurance deals come up for renewal, we can shift their cost-benefit calculations on support to the Burmese regime.
If enough of us email and call key decision-makers at Lloyd’s this week, we could shame them into pulling out of this dirty trade, undermining the hardliners and creating pressure for human rights and the release of political prisoners like democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Follow the link below to lend a hand to the Burmese people:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/shame_lloyds_on_burma
The Burmese people’s struggle is long and tough. But as in South Africa, international pressure on the regime’s exploitative ventures could tip the balance. Because it’s hard or impossible for them to continue without insurance, this is an effective and wide-reaching approach for citizens everywhere to have a real impact. Burma’s democracy movement decided on this strategy because the benefit of these ventures flows overwhelmingly to the generals, while the Burmese people have grown ever poorer.
Lloyd’s of London is the umbrella and overseer for hundreds of specialist insurance syndicates, and it can stop their dirty trade if it so chooses. Already many big global insurers have stopped insuring junta-linked businesses – after Lloyd’s, the generals will start to run out of options. We’ll ramp up the pressure by alerting the media to our campaign, specialist insurance publications included. Even the British government has begun to ask Lloyd’s to cease its business with the Burmese military junta.[2]
We can win this campaign, so let’s flood Lloyd’s with emails and phone calls all this week — on the campaign page we provide key numbers, email addresses and suggestions for what to say — just follow the link below now to take action:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/shame_lloyds_on_burma
If we win, the regime will be thrown onto the back foot, Burma’s people will be immensely heartened, and the UN Secretary-General will have a greater chance of securing the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other prisoners this December.[3] Together, our individual small acts are becoming irresistible. We can’t forget Burma.
With hope and determination,
Paul, Alice, Iain, Graziela, Ricken, Pascal, Paula, Brett, Veronique, Milena — the entire Avaaz team
For updates on Avaaz campaigns: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/report_back_2/
You can also view reports on our campaigns in support of the Burmese democracy movement and the $2 million of aid Avaaz members provided in the wake of Cyclone Nargis.
Sources:
1. The Observer: “The baron who holds Burma’s purse strings”, 2 November 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/02/oil-total-burma-lloyds-levene1
Reinsurance Magazine: Big insurers including Marsh, Swiss Re, AON pull out: http://www.reinsurancemagazine.com/public/showPage.html?page=787739
Arab Insurance Group and XL also pull out:
http://www.mizzima.com/news/world/962-campaigners-hail-arigs-decision-to-pull-out-of-burma.html
2. “Foreign Office warns Lloyd’s over Burma”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/28/insurance.foreignpolicy
3. As Ban Ki-Moon prepares to visit, Asia-Europe summit in Beijing calls for release of political prisoners:
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/independent/2008/10/release-aung-sa.html
———————————
ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means “voice” in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Sydney and Geneva.
Click here to learn more about our largest campaigns.
Don’t forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo pages!
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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Stand With The Burmese People
SOLIDARITY: Burma (4); Free Burma Campaign 4th Oct
words are only words when blood is on our hands
Written by bigcircumstance
November 3, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Posted in Current Affairs
Tagged with Aung San Suu Kyi, avaaz, Burma, Lloyd's, Myanmar
North Korea, Russia, Iran, Myanmar Nukes and US Elections
http://baganland.blogspot.com/2008/11/n-korea-russia-iran-myanmar-nukes-and.html
Source: TurtHugger]
So, how many current US news stories have informed you about the connection between N Korea and Myanmar/Burma exchange of nuclear technology? As far back as 2002: US Warns Myanmar On Nuclear Reactor Aspirations
Myanmar activists staged a protest Tuesday outside the Russian Embassy in Malaysia, calling on Moscow to scrap plans to help build a nuclear research centre in the military-ruled country.
But, today the US economic meltdown, assisted by unrestrained spending on an obsession, credit disaster, and campaign personality wars distract us from the task of altering that path leading to the wall we just crashed in to. The rest of the globe is positioning itself for advantage on the world stage. Respect is measured by how dangerous you ‘appear’ to be. Making deals to acquire nuclear capability is a crucial step toward credibility. Appearances are everything. Dictators of poor countries want to be respected by the ‘big boys’ and counted among the worthy in the nuclear street gang. Street gang mentality is ‘I have a gun, too’ … Can you picture Myanmar with nuclear capability, beyond energy? More attention should be directed to the pathway these capabilities are taking and more teeth are needed for the IAEA.
Nuclear bond for North Korea and Myanmar
YANGON - A recent flurry of high-level contacts between North Korea and Myanmar raises new nuclear proliferation concerns between the two pariah states, one of which already possesses nuclear-weapon capabilities and the other possibly aspiring.
At least three delegations led by flag-level officers from Myanmar’s army have traveled to Pyongyang in the past three months, hot on the heels of the two sides’ re-establishment last year of formal diplomatic relations. According to a source familiar with the travel itineraries of Myanmar officials, Brigadier General Aung Thein Lin visited North Korea in mid-September.
Before that, other Myanmar military delegations visited North Korea, including a group headed in August by Lieutenant General Tin Aye, chief of the Office of Chief Defense Industries, and another led in July by Lieutenant General Myint Hlaing, the chief of Air Defence.
The rapid-fire visits have gone beyond goodwill gestures and the normal diplomatic niceties of re-establishing ties. Rather, the personalities involved in the visits indicate that Myanmar is not only seeking weapons procurements, but also probable cooperation in establishing air defense weaponry, missiles, rockets or artillery production facilities.
The secretive visits are believed to entail a Myanmar quest for tunneling technology and possible assistance in developing its nascent nuclear program. Tin Aye and Myint Hlaing, by virtue of their positions as lieutenant generals, are logical choices to head official delegations in search of weapons technology for Myanmar’s military, while Brigadier General Aung Thein Lin, current mayor of Yangon and chairman of the city’s development committee, was formerly deputy minister of Industry-2, responsible for all industrial development in the country.
Constrained reaction
The United States’ reaction to Myanmar’s nuclear developments has been somewhat constrained, despite the George W Bush administration referring to the military-run country as an “outpost of tyranny”.
… common interests have brought the two secretive nations back together. The famine in North Korea in the late 1990s and Myanmar’s military expansion ambitions, including a drive for self-sufficiency in production, have fostered recent trade flows. While Myanmar has the agricultural surplus to ease North Korean hunger, Pyongyang possesses the weapons and technological know-how needed to boost Yangon’s military might. There is also speculation Myanmar might provide uranium, mined in remote and difficult-to-monitor areas, to North Korea.
As testament to Pyongyang’s willingness to supply weapons to the military regime, more North Korean ship visits have been noted at Thilawa port in Yangon, one of the country’s primary receipt points for military cargo.
… Myanmar has publicly stated it seeks nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes, such as developing radio-isotopes for agricultural use and medical research. Yet two well-placed sources told this reporter that North Korean and Iranian technicians were already advising Myanmar on a possible secret nuclear effort, running in parallel to the aboveboard Russia-supported program. Asia Times Online could not independently confirm the claim.
The regime is also known to be interested in North Korea’s tunneling technology (see Myanmar and North Korea share a tunnel vision, Asia Times Online, July 19, 2006) in line with the ruling junta’s siege mentality and apparent fears of a possible US-led pre-emptive military attack.
As the true nature of the budding bilateral relationship comes into closer view, the risk is rising that Pyongyang and Yangon are conspiring to create a security quandary in Southeast Asia akin to the one now vexing the US and its allies on the Korean Peninsula.
UN CONCERN
There has been widespread speculation, and some skepticism, among U.N. diplomats about whether a nation such as Iran which is subject to U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program should — or could — win a seat on the same council that approved the sanctions.
The council voted unanimously as recently as Saturday to approve a resolution pressing Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium and comply with efforts to monitor its nuclear development program. The resolution contained no new sanctions, but reaffirmed existing ones.
On Myanmar, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who traveled to the southeast Asian nation in May, has expressed deep frustration at the failure of its military junta to agree to efforts aimed at reforming itself.
Ban has been trying to encourage Myanmar to take real steps to include opponents led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been under house arrest since her party overwhelmingly won a general election in 1990 but was not allowed to take power by the military.
Ibrahim Gambari, a special envoy for Ban, visited Myanmar in August but failed to see Suu Kyi, who declined to meet with him. Gambari has met with Suu Kyi seven times before.
“All the members of the council support the mediation efforts,” Zhang said after the council finished meeting privately to set its monthly agenda.
He expressed hope that Myanmar “will continue its close communication” with Gambari to agree on a date for a visit.
Zhang was also asked about North Korea, which began disabling its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon under an aid-for-disarmament pact negotiated by six nations, but abruptly stopped in mid-August and has started to restore its disabled reactor.
North Korea cited Washington’s refusal to remove it from a terrorism blacklist. The U.S. maintains that the pact requires North Korea to submit to a thorough verification of its nuclear accounting — a demand rejected by the North.
Burma’s Nuke Take Away
Wrapped with
Mr Khan, Kim Jong II and Kremlin
Myanmar Gets a Russian Nuclear Reactor
Deal Vexes China’s Efforts To Expand Its Influence By Courting Yangon
On state sovereignty, disarmament matters, world leaders urge solidarity over selectivity, as Assembly continues general debate
India ruling party hails historic nuclear deal
US Envoy Briefs China on North Korea Nuclear Talks
This is not a new development. Somehow this nuclear relationship has not been worthy of US Mainstream Media. Myanmar has been newsworthy only because of it’s cyclone disaster, it’s President under house arrest, it’s Buddhist Monks slaughtered, its horrible junta.
Some blogs may have mentioned this concern, but right now, the focus is on the entertainment of US elections and personality bashing.
Enter another headache for the next US President. If we just print more money and start a bonfire, we can forget the reason we are no longer Americans. We are silent lambs who prefer to ignore where we are headed. We can watch the pretty fire, roast marshmallows and ignore the noisemakers trying to put the fire out.
Small dictatorships pose bigger threats to world security than Russia, China, India and Pakistan. Israel and Iran are the most likely to pull the trigger first, using nukes as an excuse.
France urges Israel not to attack Iran
But NO, America is suffering from the consequences of a mis-directed administration.
Print this post
Posted by Baganland at 5:40 AM
Labels: Analysis
2 comments:
Anonymous said...
Myanmar (Burma) has large deposits of Uranium and undoubtedly supplied uranium ores to North Korea.
Recently a North Korean ship supplied Uranium from Myanmar to Syria via a Singaporean shipping agent.
This led to two airstrikes on Syria in late 2007. First by the Isreali Air force and the second allegedly by the US Air Force.
Myanmar may well be supplying Uranium to Iran, or enriching uranium for Iran in Myanmar to fool IAEA inspectors.
November 4, 2008 5:38 PM
Axil said...
Well, Burma's certainly deserved access to the "Axis of Evil" for some time now, sad that it took this and a Ramb film to put them on centre stage.
November 4, 2008 5:41 PM
Post a Comment
Vote for Than Shwe
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JK04Ae02.html
By Muhammad Cohen
HONG KONG - Despite the record voter turnout forecast for Tuesday in the United States presidential elections, it's easy to understand why Americans may be tired of the campaign. After all, it began way back when US stocks and property seemed like good investments. The campaign blew in with the political fresh air of a woman and an African-American each making appealing bids for the presidency but concludes with too much focus on a fringe female who'd do for women what Clarence Thomas has done for blacks.
Perhaps you've grown fatigued with the candidates, even though Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain flashed real allure to overcome standing-room-only fields to capture their
party nominations. Obama beat Hillary Clinton, whose anointment seemed inevitable. Now he's acquired some of Clinton's air of inevitability, losing freshness that made him so appealing initially.
McCain has always been the straight-talker, the guy who would rather be right than liked, and the torture victim who stood up against torture. But he's been stretching the truth with tortured readings of his opponents' positions since January, now calling Obama un-American for supporting progressive taxation. He also keeps insisting Sarah Palin is ready to be president. Perhaps it's unavoidable that candidates who spend nearly two years on the campaign trail sound and act like candidates.
Two wars and more
If you don't like the candidates, consider the issues. The US is fighting two wars on the other side of the world that cost taxpayers nearly US$500 million a day, plus priceless respect and admiration. The world's only superpower faces a nuclear armed rogue dictator in North Korea; nuclear armed neighbors India and Pakistan that have fought four wars in 60 years and both now believe they have backing in Washington; gas-rich Russia is looking to regain influence over former Soviet satellites; Iran is anxious to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel, and China is holding so many billions in US Treasury securities that its financial power is a political weapon.
At home, America is mired in its worst financial crisis in 80 years and exporting its toxins worldwide. Healthcare costs threaten to bankrupt business, government and families. Fully 35 years after the first Arab oil embargo, this year's oil price spike finally renewed concern over America's energy and greenhouse gas profligacy. On these issues and more, from taxation to education, McCain and Obama offer radically different solutions.
Maybe you've soured on the campaigning. The race began with a frontrunner trying to extend one political dynasty and ends with an underdog desperately distancing himself from another. Since its winning streak in February that clinched the nomination, the Obama side has played defense. It broke a promise to accept public financing and has used its groundbreaking Internet reach not to stir the public imagination for Obama, but to raise funds in huge amounts, supporting a relentless television assault that includes negative advertising, outspending not just McCain but some of America's top brands. If the election doesn't pan out, the Illinois senator is positioned to launch a clothing line or travel website - "Your Obama holiday includes ... "
Kitchen sinking
The McCain campaign picked up the Clinton strategy of throwing the kitchen sink at Obama, with Joe the Plumber added to connect the faucet. It's also picked up that campaign's lack of discipline and unity, and added even more name calling and half-truths about its opponents and, lately, the other half of the ticket. While Clinton eventually found a successful voice as a fighter for working people, McCain goes to polling day still searching.
Although racism and ageism have raised their heads - as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does over Alaska, according to Governor Palin - things could have gotten much uglier. To the credit of all, the enduring phrases of this campaign will be: "the 3am phone call", "Yes, we can, "You betcha" and "Spread the wealth", rather than "God damn America" and f-bombs on the Senate floor. Still, you may be reluctant to vote for a candidate who picked Palin as his vice president or who has shown himself more ready to duck a tough scrap than fight the good fight.
So if you're having trouble bringing yourself to vote for McCain or Obama, then vote for Than Shwe. In case you don't recognize the name, Than Shwe is the head of Myanmar's military junta, once known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC. I'm not suggesting that you write in Than's name on your presidential ballot. Instead, if you're thinking of skipping the voting booth on Tuesday, please consider Than.
Thought W was bad?
Than leads the State Peace and Development Council cabal that keeps Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest and refuses to recognize her party's landslide victory in Myanmar's 1990 elections. Since then, the junta has imprisoned thousands, moved the national capital to a remote site to insulate itself from the pesky populace, conscripted an estimated 800,000 civilians into forced labor projects, brutally suppressed anti-government demonstrations, including beating Buddhist monks last year, and prevented international and internal aid from reaching victims of Typhoon Nargis last May, a calamity that left more than 130,000 people dead and up to a million homeless.
When you don't vote, you're agreeing with Than Shwe and dictators all over the world who proclaim democracy is a farce. Shamefully, while ordinary Burmese, Chinese, Cubans, Saudis, Syrians, North Koreans, Yemenis and Zimbabweans take big risks to express their dissent and can only dream of electing their leaders, millions of Americans can't be bothered to exercise their franchise. Turnout in the 2004 US presidential election was 60.7%, the highest figure since 1968. According to the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, that robust turnout meant 78 million eligible voters stayed away from the polls on Election Day 2004.
Each one of those 78 million no-shows bolsters arguments that democracy doesn't work, that Than Shwe or his political bedfellow North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is right and Thomas Jefferson is wrong. After all, even in America, the dictators and their cronies laugh, 78 million people don't vote. No-shows have outnumbered the votes for any candidate ever, meaning the real winner of every presidential election in America history has been "I don't care" in a rout.
So if you're having trouble convincing yourself to cast a ballot that says Obama or McCain is right, then vote to prove Than Shwe wrong, and relegate "I don't care" to a richly deserved last place finish in the 2008 tally. Oppressed people everywhere will thank you.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America's story to the world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com), a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance and cheap lingerie.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Flag this message【映像】いとうせいこうさん+沢知恵さん「ミャンマー軍事政権に抗議するポエトリー・リーディング ＱＵＩＥＴ」Tuesday, 4 November, 2008 12:41
【転送・転載歓迎】
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ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2008/11/4
People's Forum on Burma
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10月17日に行った『ビルマ（ミャンマー）サイクロン被災者救援チャリティ・コンサート』で
いとうせいこうさん、ダブマスターＸさん、そして沢知恵さんがみせてくださった
「ミャンマー軍事政権に抗議するポエトリー・リーディング ＱＵＩＥＴ」がYouTubeにて
ご覧いただけます。
沢知恵さんのピアノをバックに、いとうせいこうさんの言葉がさらに力強く胸に響きます。
サイクロン被災者へ、ビルマの人々へ、軍事政権へ、そして私たちへのメッセージ。
ぜひご覧ください！お知り合いなどにもぜひ紹介していただければ幸いです。
【YouTube】１０分
「ミャンマー軍事政権に抗議するポエトリー・リーディング ＱＵＩＥＴ」
FREE BURMA WE ARE BUDDHIST,TOO Poetry Reading QUEIT
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=XQeStlWaeuI
大型サイクロン「ナルギス」がビルマ南西部を襲ってから、丁度、半年が
経過しました。被災地ではまだまだ支援が必要な状況です。
引き続き、皆様のご支援をどうぞ宜しくお願いいたします。
PFB事務局 宮澤
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
★いとうせいこうさんのブログ
http://ameblo.jp/seikoito
★沢知恵さんのウェブサイト
http://www.comoesta.co.jp/index.html
▼いとうせいこうさん、ビルマ民主化支援Ｔシャツ（カタログハウス）
http://www.cataloghouse.co.jp/cat_order/tsuhan/burma/index.html
▼いとうせいこうさん：「ミャンマー軍事政権に抗議するポエトリー・リーディング」
アースデイ東京@代々木公園（2008年4月19日）
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=9-Hj-GwkH2I&feature=related
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■サイクロン被災から丁度半年が経過しました。
PFBが支援金を送るEAT-Burma（ビルマ緊急救援チーム）からの報告に
よると、未だ日々の食料や生活物資が必要な被災者も多く、引き続き
支援が必要な状況です。
http://pfbkatsudo.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-post_5252.html
先日の沢知恵さんといとうせいこうさんのチャリティ・コンサートでの
収益金とカンパも、EAT-Burma（ビルマ緊急救援チーム）へ届けます。
引き続き、皆様のご協力をどうぞ宜しくお願いいたします。
●支援金振込先 郵便振替（ゆうちょ銀行）●
加入者名：ＰＦＢ－ビルマ・サイクロン被災者支援基金
口座番号： ００１６０－０－３３６６１３
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■ビルマのことをもっと知ろう！
ビルマ情報ネットワーク
www.burmainfo.org
きょうのビルマのニュース
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/burmainfo
アムネスティ・インターナショナル
http://www.amnesty.or.jp/
ヒューマン・ライツ・ウォッチ
http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=news_japanese
ヒューマンライツ・ナウ
http://www.ngo-hrn.org/
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以上
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◇ ビルマ市民フォーラム事務局 ◇
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
〒160-0004 東京都新宿区四谷一丁目18番地6 四谷1丁目ウエストビル4階
いずみ橋法律事務所内
電話０３－５３１２－４８１７（直）／ FAX:０３―５３１２－４５４３
E-mail： pfb@izumibashi-law.net
ホームページ： http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/
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ျမန္မာျပည္ စာနယ္ဇင္းေလာကႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ သတင္းစာဆရာႀကီး ဦးဝင္းတင္ႏွင့္ ေတြ႕ဆံုျခင္း-FROM "Tom Brown"
လက္ရွိ ျမန္မာျပည္စာနယ္ဇင္းေလာက ဖိႏွိပ္ခံရမႈႏွင့္ ယခင္စာနယ္ဇင္းေလာက
အေျခအေနကြာျခားခ်က္မ်ား၊ မီဒီယာ၏ အခန္းက႑ အေရးပါပံုတို႔ကို
ဧရာဝတီမဂၢဇင္းက သတင္းစာဆရာႀကီး ဦးဝင္းတင္အား ေမးျမန္း၍ ေဖာ္ျပလိုက္ပါသည္။
ဦးဝင္းတင္ (ဓာတ္ပုံ - ျမတ္မိုးေမာင္)
ေမး။ ။ အက္ရွင္တိုင္းမ္စ္ဆိုတဲ့ ျပည္တြင္းထုတ္ ဂ်ာနယ္တေစာင္မွာ
ဆရာ့ အေၾကာင္း တပုိဒ္ပါလို႔ အပိတ္ခံရတယ္ ၾကားတယ္။ အဲဒီေပၚမွာ ဘာေျပာခ်င္
လဲဆရာ။
ေျဖ။ ။ သူတို႔ (အာဏာပိုင္ေတြ) က ရွင္းရွင္းေျပာရရင္ေတာ့ ႀကံဖန္ၿပီး
ခ်ဳပ္ခ်ယ္ဖို႔ကို နည္းမ်ိဳးစံုနဲ႔။ တလ ပိတ္မယ္၊ ၂ လပိတ္မယ္ ဆိုတာမ်ိဳး၊
ဒီဟာ လုပ္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ တျခားလူေတြကိုပါခ်ဳပ္ခ်ယ္ၿပီးျဖစ္သြားတယ္
ဆိုတာမ်ိဳး လုပ္ၾကတာပဲဗ်။ ဒါက စာေစာင္တေစာင္ခ်င္းစီကို ပိတ္တာ။
ေနာက္တခုကေတာ့ စာနယ္ဇင္း လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ကို တားျမစ္ထားတယ္ ဆိုတာကို ျပတာ။
ဒီဟာနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္တာကေတာ့ ႀကံဳေနရမွာပဲ။ ႀကံဳလည္းႀကံဳခဲ့ရတာပါပဲ။
ေမး။ ။ မ ဆ လ ေခတ္မွာ ဆရာသတင္းစာ အယ္ဒီတာလုပ္တုန္းကနဲ႔ ခုနဲ႔
စိစစ္ေရး ကိစၥေတြ၊ သတင္းစာ ေလာကေတြနဲ႔ ဘယ္လိုကြာဟလဲ ေျပာပါဦး။
ေျဖ။ ။ မကြာပါဘူး။ တူတူပါပဲ။ မထူးပါဘူး။ ဒီခ်ိန္မွာစာေစာင္ ၂
ေစာင္ကို ပိတ္တယ္။ မဆလ ေခတ္တုန္းက စာေစာင္ ေတြ အားလံုးပိတ္ပစ္ခဲ့တာပဲ။
ေနာက္တခါ စီးပြားေရးအရ ညစ္တာတို႔ တခုခ်င္း စာနယ္ဇင္း လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ကို
ပိတ္တဲ့ ေနရာမွာေတာ့ သီးျခား လုပ္ေဆာင္မႈေတြ မတူေပမယ့္ မ်က္စိပိတ္
နားပိတ္ေအာင္ လုပ္ထားတာကေတာ့ ဦးတည္ခ်က္က ဘာမွ မကြာဘူး။
က်ေနာ္ေျပာခ်င္တာကေတာ့ စာနယ္ဇင္းေတြအေနနဲ႔ ႐ုန္းကန္ရမယ္။ အခ်င္းခ်င္း
ညႇိလုပ္တာပဲ ျဖစ္ျဖစ္ တေစာင္ခ်င္းစီပဲ ျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ငံု႔ခံေနတာမ်ိဳး
မဟုတ္ဘဲနဲ႔ တတ္ႏိုင္သေလာက္ အေၾကာင္းအရာ တခုခ်င္းစီေပၚမွာ ႐ုန္းကန္မႈ
ရွိရမယ္။ အဲလိုပဲ က်ေနာ္က ယူဆတယ္။
က်ေနာ္ကေတာ့ သတင္းစာေတြ မလုပ္ႏို္င္ေတာ့ဘူး။ သတင္းစာက မ်ားမ်ားလုပ္ရတယ္၊
ျမန္ျမန္ လုပ္ရတယ္၊ က်ယ္က်ယ္ လုပ္ရတယ္။ က်ုယ္က်ယ္ လုပ္ရတယ္ ဆိုတာက
ေတာေရာ၊ ၿမိဳ႕ေရာ၊ ကမၻာေရာ၊ ျမန္မာေရာ။ စီးပြားေရး၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး၊ လူမႈ
ေရးေတြ လုပ္ရတယ္။ မ်ားမ်ားလုပ္ရမယ္ဆိုတာက အေၾကာင္းအရာ မ်ားႏိုင္သမွ်
မ်ားေအာင္ ထည့္ရတယ္၊ စံုႏိုင္သေလာက္ စံုေအာင္ လူမႈဘဝကို
လႊမ္းၿခံဳႏိုင္ေအာင္ အဲလိုေပါ့။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ျမန္ျမန္လုပ္ရတယ္။ အရင္ေခတ္ကဆို
တယ္လီဖုန္းေလာက္ပဲ ရွိတဲ့ၾကားက ျဖစ္ေအာင္ လုပ္ရတယ္။ ဒီဟာေတြေလာက္ကို
က်ေတာ္ မလုပ္ႏိုင္ေတာ့ဘူး။ ခု ဂ်ာနယ္ေတြ ႀကိဳးစားၾကတယ္ ေကာင္းပါတယ္။
မွားၾကတာေတြ ရွိမွာပဲ။ မွားပါေစ။ အေရးမႀကီးပါဘူး။ မွားတယ္ မွန္တယ္ဆိုတာ
တေခတ္နဲ႔ တေခတ္ စံခ်င္းမွမတူတာ။ မွားတာကို ဂ႐ုစိုက္စရာမလိုပါဘူး။
တခုပဲ ေဝဖန္ခ်င္တာက ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔မွာ ရုန္းကန္တာနည္းနည္း နည္းတယ္ထင္တယ္ဗ်။
က်ေနာ္တို႔ တုန္းကလည္း ဖိႏွိပ္မႈက အတူတူပဲ။ မထူးဘူး။ ဒီေခတ္မွာ
ဖိႏွိပ္ခံရတာလည္း တူတူပဲ မထူးဘူးဗ်။ တခ်ိဳ႕ကထင္ၾကတယ္ ဒီေခတ္မွာမွ
ပိုဖိႏွိပ္ခံရတယ္ လုိ႔ … ။ အဲဒါမဟုတ္ဘူး။ တူတူပါပဲ။ သူတို႔မႀကိဳက္တာ
တခုခု လုပ္မိရင္၊ ပါလာရင္ ဘယ္ေခတ္ပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ပိတ္ပစ္တာပဲေလ။
ဖိႏွိပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခ်ယ္မႈက ဒီလိုပဲ ရွိေနမွာပဲ။ အဲဒီၾကားကေန
႐ုန္းကန္ၾကရလိမ့္မယ္။
အဲဒီမွာ က်ေနာ္က ဘာဥပမာ ျပခ်င္လဲဆိုေတာ့ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၃၀ ေက်ာ္က
ကာတြန္းဆရာေတြကို မိန္႔ခြန္းတခုေျပာ ရတယ္။ အဲဒါေလး ေျပာခ်င္တယ္။
အဲဒီတုန္းက သူတို႔ကို ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ ကာတြန္းေတြ သိပ္ေကာင္းတယ္ဗ်ာ။ ေရးတာေတြ
လည္း ေျပာင္ေျမာက္တယ္ ဒါေပမယ့္ ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔မွာ ငံု႔ခံေနၾကတာေလးေတြ
ရွိတယ္။ ဒီလိုေရးလို႔မရရင္ ဟိုလိုေလးလွည့္ ေရးရမယ္။ ဥပမာေျပာရရင္
အဲဒီတုန္းက တိရစၦာန္႐ံုမွာ ကေလးတေယာက္ က်ားကိုက္တယ္ဗ်ာ။ အဲဒီသတင္းကို
ထည့္လို႔ မရဘူး။ ဘယ္လိုမွကို ထည့္ခြင့္ မေပးဘူး။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အဲဒီမွာ
က်ေနာ္တို႔ အနည္းဆံုးငံု႔မခံဘူးဆိုတာ ျပခ်င္တယ္။ ျဖစ္ခ်င္ ေတာ့
အဲဒီေန႔မွာ ႏိုင္ငံျခား သတင္းတပုဒ္က တိုက္တိုက္ဆိုင္ဝင္လာတယ္။
ျခေသၤ့ကိုက္တဲ့သတင္းဗ်။ အဲဒါကို မ်က္ႏွာဖံုးမွာ အႀကီးႀကီး ထည့္လိုက္တယ္။
ျခေသၤ့နဲ႔ က်ားနဲ႔ကေတာ့ မတူဘူးေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြကေတာ့ ဟာ
ဒီေကာင္ ေတြ ေရးျပန္ပလား ဆိုတာမ်ိဳးျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ ဒီျခေသၤ့ကိုက္တာကို
အေၾကာင္းျပဳၿပီး က်ားကိုက္တဲ့ သတင္းကလည္း လူေတြၾကားထဲမွာ ျပန္႔ေနတယ္။
ဆိုလိုတာက ဂ်ာနယ္လစ္ေတြက အဲဒီပံုစံနဲ႔ေတာ့ လႈပ္ရွား ႏိုင္တယ္။
႐ုန္းကန္ပါ။ သူတို႔က ဒီလိုမေရးရဘူးဆိုရင္ ရႏိုင္တဲ့နည္းနဲ႔ ေရးပါ။
သူတို႔ကဒီလိုလုပ္ပါဆိုရင္ မလုပ္ႏိုင္ဘူး တနည္းနည္းနဲ႔ လွည့္လုပ္ပါ။
ဟုိေခတ္နဲ႔ ဒီေခတ္ ဖိႏွိပ္ပံု ဖိႏွိပ္နည္း မတူတာပဲရွိတယ္ ဖိႏွိပ္တာကေတာ့
ဖိႏွိပ္တာပါပဲ။ ဂ်ာနယ္ တေစာင္ခ်င္းကို အေရးယူ ပံုခ်င္းေတာ့
တူခ်င္မွတူမယ္။ ဟိုတုန္းကေတာ့ သိမ္းက်ံဳးၿပီး အေရးယူတယ္။ ဒါပဲကြာတယ္။ ခု
ဂ်ာနယ္ ေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး ရွိတယ္။ ဘာေတြ ေရးႏိုင္လဲ။ ဘာမွ မေရးႏိုင္ဘူး။
က်ေနာ္တို႔နာမည္ေတြကို လံုးဝေဖ်ာက္ထား ရာကေန အခုနာမည္ေလး ေတြ ပါလာတယ္။
မ်ားမ်ား မသံုးႏိုင္ဘူး။ တခ်ိဳ႕ဂ်ာနယ္ေတြဆို က်ေနာ့္ကို အင္တာဗ်ဴး
လုပ္တယ္။ အဲဒါေတြ က်ေနာ္ဖတ္ ရတယ္။ စာေပစိစစ္ေရးကို တင္တဲ့ မူေတြေပါ့။
ဒါပဲဗ်။ ဘာမွမထူးဘူး။
ထူးတာက ႐ုန္းကန္မႈ နည္းတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ လုပ္ခဲ့တာပဲ။ က်ေနာ္ဟံသာဝတီ
သတင္းစာ လုပ္ခဲ့တယ္။ က်ေနာ့္ကို ဖိႏွိပ္ တာက ဒီေခတ္ ဂ်ာနယ္ေတြကို
ဖိႏိွပ္တာထက္ ပိုတယ္လည္း မေျပာလိုဘူး လိုတယ္လည္း မေျပာဘူး တူတူပါပဲ။
က်ေနာ့္ အသက္အရြယ္နဲ႔ က်ေနာ့္ရာထူးနဲ႔ ပင္စင္နီးတာနဲ႔ ဒါေတြငဲ့ၿပီး
က်ေနာ္ ေအးေအး ေနရင္ ရတာပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ က်ေနာ္မေန ႏိုင္ဘူး တတ္ႏိုင္သေလာက္
႐ုန္းတယ္။ အဲဒီမွာ သူတို႔မေက်နပ္ဘူး က်ေနာ့္လည္း ျဖဳတ္ပစ္၊
က်ေနာ့္သတင္းစာလည္း ပိတ္ပစ္တာပဲ။
နမူနာေလးတခု ေျပာျပမယ္။ တခါက ဝန္ႀကီးကေနၿပီး အမိန္႔နဲ႔ လာတယ္။
ေပၚလစီလားဘာလားေတာ့မသိဘူးဗ် သတင္း စာမွာ ဘုန္းႀကီးတရားပြဲေတြထည့္ရမယ္တဲ့၊
ရန္ကုန္မွာလည္း ထည့္တယ္။ က်ေနာ္ကမထည့္ဘူးလို႔ မႏၱေလးက ဘုန္းႀကီး ၿမိဳ႕၊
ဟိုဘုန္းႀကီး တရားေဟာတာထည့္ေပး၊ ဒီဘုန္းႀကီးေဟာတာ ထည့္ေပးတာနဲ႔
ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔သတင္းစာ ဘာမွပါရေတာ့မွာ မဟုတ္ဘူး
ထည့္ရမွာလားလို႔ေျပာလိုက္ေတာ့မွ ေနာက္ ဝန္ႀကီးကလည္း မထည့္ပါနဲ႔ေတာ့လို႔
ေျပာတယ္။ အဲလိုေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အဲလိုလုပ္ရတာပဲ။
ေနာက္ ဦးေနဝင္းက တ႐ုတ္ဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ခ်ဴအင္လိုင္း ေသေတာ့ သူ႔မိန္႔ခြန္းကို
ေခါင္းႀကီးနဲ႔ မ်က္ႏွာဖံုးမွာ ထည့္ရမယ္လို႔ ေျပာတယ္။ က်ေနာ္ထည့္မယ္ဆို
မီတာေပါ့။ က်ေနာ္မထည့္ဘူး။ မႏၱေလးနဲ႔ ရန္ကုန္ အျပန္ျပန္ အလွန္လွန္
ဖုန္းဆက္တယ္။ ထည့္ရမယ္ေပါ့။ က်ေနာ္ကလည္း မထည့္ဘူး တင္းခံေနတယ္။ အဲဒီမွာ
ညေန ၄ နာရီ ၅ နာရီျဖစ္လာတယ္။ က်ေနာ္က မ်က္ႏွာဖံုးကို ျပန္ဖ်က္ရေတာ့မွာ
မလုပ္ႏုိင္ဘူး။ လုပ္ရင္ ကုန္မယ့္ စာစီခေတြ စာရြက္ဖုိးေတြ ဘယ္လိုလုပ္မလဲ
ဆိုေတာ့ သူတို႔က အကုန္ခံမယ္ ထည့္တဲ့။ အဲဒါနဲ႔ က်ေနာ္က ဒါဆို နက္ျဖန္
သတင္းစာ မထုတ္ႏိုင္ဘူးေျပာလိုက္တယ္။ အဲဒီေတာ့မွ ဒါဆိုလည္း မ်က္ႏွာဖံုးမွာ
မလုပ္ပါနဲ႔ေတာ့ အတြင္းက စာမ်က္ႏွာ ၃ တို႔ဘာတုိ႔မွာပဲ ထည့္ပါေတာ့
ျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ ႐ုန္းကန္ရတာေတာ့ နည္းနည္း ရွိတာေပါ့ဗ်ာ။
ေမး။ ။ ဖိႏွိပ္ခံရတာ တူတူပဲဆိုရင္ အရည္အေသြးနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ေကာ
ဆရာ့အေနနဲ႔ ဘယ္လိုျမင္ပါသလဲ။ အရင္ေခတ္နဲ႔ အခုေခတ္ ဘယ္လို ကြာျခားလဲ
သိခ်င္ပါတယ္။ တိုးတက္လာတာရွိလားေပါ့။
ေျဖ။ ။ ဒါကလည္း ေတာ္ေတာ္ေျပာရခက္တာပဲဗ်။ အရည္အေသြးဆိုတာက
ဘယ္ေပၚမွာတည္တာလဲ။ အေၾကာင္းအရာ ေပၚမွာ မူတည္တာလား။ ေခတ္ကာလကိုလိုက္ၿပီး
ေျပာင္းလဲေနတဲ့၊ ေရးဖို႔ လိုအပ္တဲ့ အခ်ိန္မွာ အသိဥာဏ္ရွိတဲ့၊ ေရးႏိုင္တဲ့
သူေတြက ေရးတာျဖစ္တဲ့အတြက္ သာတာေတြလည္း ရွိတာပဲဗ်။ ဒီေခတ္မွာလည္း
တခ်ိဳ႕လူေတြ ေတာ္ေတာ္ လုပ္ၾကတာ ရွိပါတယ္။ ဒီေခတ္မွာ ေက်ာ္ဝင္းတို႔ဘာတို႔
ေတာ္ေတာ္ လုပ္ႏိုင္တာပဲဗ်။ ေလ်ာ့သြားတယ္၊ ပိုၿပီး ေကာင္းလာတယ္ ဆိုတာ
မ်ိဳးေတာ့ မရွိေသးဘူးထင္တယ္ဗ်။ ဒါကေတာ့ ခုခ်က္ခ်င္းေျပာလို႔ ရတဲ့
အေၾကာင္းအရာလည္း မဟုတ္ဘူးဗ်။ ေခတ္ တေခတ္ေက်ာ္သြားတဲ့ အခ်ိန္က်မွ
သမိုင္းဝင္ စံတင္ၿပီး က်န္ခဲ့မွသာ ေျပာလို႔ရမယ္ထင္တယ္။
အဲဒါကိုပဲ ေကာင္းတယ္ ဆိုးတယ္ ဆံုးျဖတ္ၾကမွာပဲ။ က်ေနာ္ကေတာ့ အဲဒါနဲ႔
ပတ္သက္လို႔ မေျပာခ်င္ဘူးဗ်။ မလိုဘူးေလ။ သူတို႔လုပ္ေနတာ ေကာင္းတာပဲ။
ဒါေပမယ့္ ဘယ္ေလာက္ေကာင္းတယ္ ဘယ္ေျပာလို႔ရမလဲ။ ဒီေန႔ဆံုးျဖတ္တာလည္း
မွန္ခ်င္မွ မွန္မယ္။ ဒီေန႔ ေကာင္းေနေပမယ့္လည္း ေနာက္တေန႔က်ေတာ့ လူေတြက
ေမ့သြားရင္ ဘာမွမထူးဘူးဗ်။ ဒါေပမယ့္ တခုေတာ့ ေသခ်ာေျပာလုိ႔ရတယ္။ ဒါကေတာ့
ေခတ္အလုိက္ ေခတ္အလိုက္ လုပ္ေနၾကရမွာပဲ။ ဒီေန႔လုပ္ေနတာေတြက သာမာန္စံအေနနဲ႔
ေျပာမယ္ဆိုရင္ ေခတ္တေခတ္မွာ လုပ္ေနတဲ့ စံအရ မညံ့ဘူးဗ်။ ေဆာင္းပါးေတြ
ေကာင္းတယ္ဗ်ာ။ ဗိြဳက္စ္တို႔ဘာတို႔မွာ ေရးေနတဲ့ ပံုစံေတြဆိုရင္
ပညာတတ္လူတန္းစားရဲ႕ အသံမ်ိဳးနဲ႔ အထက္စီးက ေျပာတဲ့ ေလသံမ်ိဳး ေပါက္ခ်င္
ေပါက္ေနမယ္။
ဘယ္ေလာက္ပဲ ဘာေတြ ျဖစ္ေနေန လုပ္ေနတာကေတာ့ ေကာင္းေနတာပဲဗ်။ လူေတြကို
အသိဥာဏ္ဖြင့္ေပးတဲ့ ပံုစံမ်ိဳး ေတြလည္း ေတြ႕ေနရပါတယ္။ တခုပဲဗ်။
ပိတ္ခံရလိုက္၊ ေတာ္ၾကာေၾကာက္္သြားလိုက္ ဆိုတာမ်ိဳးမဟုတ္ဘဲ အဲဒီထဲက
ေဖာက္ထြက္ၿပီး ေရးႏိုင္ဖို႔ေတာ့လိုမယ္။ ကြာလတီကိုလည္း အဲဒီေပၚမွာ
ဆံုးျဖတ္ရမယ္ထင္တယ္။
ေမး။ ။ ျပည္ပက ျမန္မာ မီဒီယာေတြရဲ႕ အခန္းက႑ကိုေကာ ဆရာ ဘယ္လို သံုးသပ္မိပါသလဲ။
ေျဖ။ ။ အဲဒါနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္သိပ္မသိဘူးဗ်။
ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ဧရာဝတီေတာင္ (ေထာင္) ေဆး႐ံုမွာ တုန္းက တခါလား ဖတ္ဖူးတယ္။
ဝက္ဘ္ဆိုက္တို႔ဘာတို႔ေတြ က်ေနာ္သိပ္နားမလည္ေတာ့ သိပ္မေျပာခ်င္ဘူး။
သို႔ေသာ္ ဘာပဲ ေျပာေျပာ ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔နဲ႔ အတြင္းနဲ႔ ကြာတဲ့ အခ်က္က
ထင္ရွားတဲ့ ထင္ျမင္ခ်က္ ေတြကို ေဖာ္ထုတ္ ႏိုင္တဲ့ အေနအထား ကေတာ့
ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔နဲ႔ သူတို႔ကြာေနတယ္ဗ်။ ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ကလြတ္ေနတဲ့ သူေတြ ဆိုေတာ့
အတြင္းကလူေတြလို ခ်က္ခ်င္း လာပိတ္လို႔မရဘူး။ ေနာက္တခု အျပင္မွာ
ရွိတဲ့သူေတြက ကမၻာ့အျမင္က်ေတာ့ ဆို႔စ္ရယူမႈက်ေတာ့ ျပည္တြင္းထက္
အမ်ားႀကီးသာတယ္။ ဒီ ၂ ခ်က္သာေနတဲ့အတြက္ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အသြင္ ကူးေျပာင္းတဲ့
ေနရာမွာ အမ်ားႀကီး အေထာက္ကူျပဳ မယ္လို႔ ယံုတယ္။ အထဲမွာက ႐ုန္းပါ
ဆိုေပမယ့္ ႐ုန္းကန္တဲ့ ေနရာမွာ အခက္အခဲေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး ရွိေနႏိုင္ေသးတယ္။
ဒီေတာ့ ခင္ဗ်ားတို႔ အခန္းက႑က အေရးႀကီးတယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္ျမင္တယ္။
ေမး။ ။ ဒီမိုကေရစီ လုႈပ္ရွားမႈမွာေကာ မီဒီယာရဲ႕ အခန္းက႑ကို ဆရာ
ဘယ္လို သံုးသပ္ပါသလဲ။
ေျဖ။ ။ မီဒီယာရဲ႕အခန္းက႑ကေတာ့ အေရးႀကီးတာေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ခုမွမဟုတ္ပါဘူး။
မီဒီယာဆိုတာ တိုင္းေရး ျပည္ေရးရာ ကိစၥေတြမွာ အသံတဝက္ဝင္ေျပာတာ၊
တိုင္းျပည္ကို အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္တဲ့ ေနရာမွာ တဝက္ဝင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္တာ။
တိုင္းျပည္လုပ္ငန္းေတြကို ရွယ္ယာတဝက္ယူထားတဲ့ သေဘာပဲဗ်။ မီဒီယာကို
ဘယ္ေတာ့မွ ျငင္းပယ္လို႔၊ မ်က္ကြယ္ျပဳလို႔ မရဘူး။ ဒါကိုေတာ့ ႀကိဳက္
ေသာ္ရွိ၊ မႀကိဳက္ေသာ္ရွိ လက္ခံရမွာပဲဗ်။ သူတို႔ လုပ္ႏိုင္တယ္၊
မလုပ္ႏိုင္ဘူးဆိုတာကတပိုင္းပဲ။ ရွင္းရွင္းေျပာရရင္ ဒီမိုကေရစီအေရးကေတာ့
ပိုျမင့္မားတာေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ဒီမိုကေရစီ လႈပ္ရွားမႈမွာ မီဒီယာရဲ႕ အခန္းက႑က
ပိုၿပီး အေရးပါတာ ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အထူးသျဖင့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံလိုမ်ိဳး ပိတ္ထားတဲ့
ႏိုင္ငံမ်ိဳးမွာ ပိုၿပီးအေရးႀကီးတာေပါ့။ ခုအန္အယ္လ္ဒီ ရပ္တည္ေနႏိုင္ တာ
ျပည္ပမွာရွိတဲ့ မီဒီယာအား ေတြေၾကာင့္ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ခု က်ေနာ့္ကိစၥဆို
အမ်ားႀကီး အသံထြက္သြားတယ္ဗ်ာ။ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ အႏွစ္ ၂၀ ေလာက္ကဆို ဘယ္ေလာက္
ႀကီးက်ယ္တဲ့သူ ထြက္လာလာ မ်ားမ်ားစားစား မပါႏိုင္ဘူးဗ်။ ခုက်ေတာ့
အမ်ားႀကီး က်ယ္ျပန္႔သြား တယ္ဗ်။ က်ေနာ္ ဘယ္ေလာက္ပင္ပန္းပင္ပန္း
ေျပာႏိုင္သေလာက္ေျပာမယ္ ရွင္းႏို္င္သေလာက္ ရွင္းမယ္။ ဒါေတြ ေျပာႏိုင္ဖို႔
ေဖာ္ျပဖို႔က မီဒီယာက အဓိကက်တယ္ဗ်။
"ႏိုင္ငံေရးဆိုသည္မွာ ကၽြႏု္ပ္တို ့ေန ့စဥ္ႏွင့္အမွ် လူ ့ေလာကတြင္ ေတြ
့ႀကံဳေနၾကရေသာ ကိစၥပင္ျဖစ္ေပသည္။ တနည္းအားျဖင့္ဆိုေသာ္
ႏိုင္ငံေရးဆိုသည္မွာ လူ ့ကိစၥဟု ဆိုရေပမည္။ ကၽြႏ္ုပ္တို ့စားမႈ၊ ေသာက္မႈ၊
ေနမႈ၊ ထိုင္မႈ၊ သြားမႈ၊ လာမႈ အစုစုသည္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပင္ျဖစ္၏။ ကၽြႏု္ပ္တို
့သည္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးကို မဆင္ျခင္ မေတြးေတာမိေစကာမူ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသည္ ကၽြႏ္ုပ္တို
့ႏွင့္အၿမဲတေစ ဆက္သြယ္ေန၏" (ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္း)
"မတရားမႈတခုမွာ သင္ဟာ ၾကားေနတယ္ဆုိရင္...
သင္ဟာ ဖိႏွိပ္သူဘက္က လုိက္ဖုိ႔ ေရြးခ်ယ္လုိက္တာနဲ႔ အတူတူဘဲ"
"If you are neutral in a situation of injustice,
you have chosen to side with the oppressor."
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