Petition to the U.N to Demand Aung San Suu Kyi's release

Sign Here

Saw This on CrooksAndLiars

That is some sweet singing. Reminds me of a place I went...

"Trial" News video

Sham Trial of Aung San Suu Kyi Begins

News coming out of Burma:

The state media have avoided making any mention of the arrest of Ms Suu Kyi, who is being detained in Insein Prison after the intruder, John Yettaw, secretly swam across a lake to the house where she has been held under house arrest for most of the past 20 years. Today US consular officials reportedly were allowed into the prison, where he too is to be charged with entering a restricted area and immigration offences.

...

Her latest six-year term of house arrest was due to expire later this month, and Western governments have accused the Burmese regime of using the current case as a pretext for prolonging her detention. According to reports in the state media, Mr Yettaw, a Vietnam veteran and Mormon, swam across Inya Lake and spent two nights in Ms Suu Kyi’s compound, despite her pleas for him to leave. He was arrested by the security forces as he took the same route out again.

He made a similar visit last November, when he escaped detection. Ms Suu Kyi has been charged with violating the terms of her house arrest by not reporting the intruder to the authorities, as have her two friends and house keepers, Khin Khin Win, and her daughter Win Ma Ma.

Burmese courts invariably find for the government in political cases, and the authorities further stacked the odds in their favour on Saturday when one of her lawyers was struck off for “not abiding by professional ethics”.

This Is What Happens...

...when you cut funding to NPR and "allow" them to make up the shortfall by taking corporate advertising. Another corporatist news outlet. Today's example:

I listened to this Planet Money interview yesterday and it wasn't even close. Elizabeth Warren, a class act in every sense, totally destroyed the host's argument that concerning herself with the economic health of the American family was somehow her liberal "pet cause" and outside her bailiwick as TARP oversight chair. Not that it made any difference in his evident scorn!

NPR may have some nice little essays, but the only time their hosts show anything resembling teeth is when they attack... people who attack corporate interests! From the Columbia Journalism Review's "So That's Why The Press Won't Cover Elizabeth Warren!" by Ryan Chittum:

A couple of times in the last few months I’ve taken the press to task for ignoring the Congressional Oversight Panel and its report on the TARP. I’ve talked to reporters in the biz since and got the impression that many of them don’t really take it seriously because its chairwoman Elizabeth Warren is a liberal who, they say, pushes her agenda.

So it’s worth listening to this entire Planet Money podcast from NPR, where Adam Davidson badgers Warren for more than an hour to justify her existence, so to speak.

If you want a peek inside business-press mentality, and why certain stories get reported and others don’t, you can do worse than start here. It sees Warren as an outlier whose views, based on decades of research, are suspicious. It would never, ever have badgered a former bank exec, say, like this if one had been chairman of the panel. Davidson, like the reporters I referenced above, has been talking to too many bankers and insiders who sneer at someone not inside their bubble. Perhaps he’s trying to prove his objective journalist bona fides at “liberal” NPR by taking it to a liberal.

Yeah, what right does she have trying to make the taxpayer-funded bailout provide some actual benefit to taxpayers?!?! Doesn't she know that we're all here to provide executive bonus guarantees?? She is such a liberal!

Aung San Suu Kyi Ill, Imprisoned

Two stories developing regarding the democratically elected leader of Burma and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. First, she has fallen ill and was initially being refused medical treatment after her doctor was arrested. Second, she has been arrested herself and taken to prison through no fault of her own. So, just to be clear, she has been arrested while under 'house arrest'.

From UPI:

Nyan Win, a spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's party, said she met with a doctor Monday who put her on a drip and there was no longer cause for concern about her health, CNN reported. The doctor was allowed to see her after being barred earlier from doing so.

The CNN report said while it was not clear why she was put on an IV, the procedure is used to give saline solution to patients facing dehydration.

The doctor attending on her was not her regular physician Tin Myo Win, who was arrested last week on an undisclosed charge, Nyan Win was quoted as saying.

Regarding her arrest, the story is strange to say the least. I received an email from Burma Campaign UK containing this information:

This morning Burma’s democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested by the regime and moved to Burma’s notorious Insein prison. It appears she will face trial for breaking the terms of her house arrest which forbids visitors, after an American man, John Yettaw, swam across Inya Lake and refused to leave her house.

Aung San Suu Kyi has committed no crime, she is the victim of a crime. There was an intruder in her house who refused to leave, yet she is the one being imprisoned.

HELP AUNG SAN SUU KYI - TAKE ACTION NOW
The United Nations and ASEAN must dispatch envoys to Burma to demand the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all Burma’s political prisoners.

Please go to this page where you can email the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon and ASEAN leaders to urge them to send envoys immediately. http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/ASSK_action.html

Guardian U.K. has this:

Hopes for the release of Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi were dashed today with the announcement she has been arrested for violating the terms of her house arrest and could face up to five years' confinement after a bizarre intrusion by an American who swam across a lake to her home.

The news was greeted with anguish by supporters of the increasingly frail Nobel peace laureate: her most recent six-year term of house arrest was due to end in less than two weeks.

International reaction was swift, and appalled.

The UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, who included her in his book on courage, said: "I am deeply disturbed that Aung San Suu Kyi may be charged with breaching the terms of her detention. The Burmese regime is clearly intent on finding any pretext, no matter how tenuous, to extend her unlawful detention.

"The real injustice, the real illegality, is that she is still detained in the first place. If the 2010 elections are to have any semblance of credibility, she and all political prisoners must be freed to participate. Only then will Burma be set on the road to real democracy, stability and prosperity."

Please contact the U.N. and/or your members of Congress and ask them to intervene on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's behalf.

Should I Stay or Should I go?

If this is true:

But the stem cell battle is not just a high-profile clash of values. The dispute provides a sharp focus on how science may help reshape America. Several states have set aside billions of dollars to support stem cell research, and the new federal money Obama is promising will generally flow to those areas. That means states supporting stem cell research will experience an economic windfall while attracting highly educated technology workers who tend to vote Democratic. The more conservative states restricting stem cell research will attract fewer funds and fewer socially liberal voters. In short, a state's stem cell policy will influence electoral results and help determine whether a state turns red or blue.

...then what should one conclude from this?

Texas researchers who thought President Barack Obama’s executive order lifting the restrictions on embryonic stem cell research would finally free them to ramp up work with the cutting-edge science are facing a new obstacle: the state Legislature.

Eighteen of the state’s leading scientists signed a letter sent to the Legislature Monday objecting to a provision inserted in the Senate budget bill last week that would ban state funding from supporting research involving the destruction of human embryos.

“Such an amendment would be detrimental to Texas,” said the statement. “A ban would halt ongoing research projects and negatively impact the ability of Texas academic health institutions, both public and private, to competitively recruit and retain world-class scientists, professors and students in the biological sciences.”