Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Despite a bloody government crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Myanmar, Chevron and other oil giants continue to operate in the country, paying billions in taxes and fees that support Myanmar's repressive regime.

Myanmarese dissident groups say the government has killed hundreds and detained thousands of monks and citizens in camps as part of its recent efforts to violently quash a pro-democracy movement that threatens their rule. The government of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, says only 10 people have died in the violence.

. . . The oil companies, who have argued their business in Myanmar helps its citizens, have expressed concern over the crackdown -- and kept their operations going.

-- AVNI PATEL

When the Burmese government shut down all the Internet Service Providers in the country in an attempt to silence its virtual opposition, they may have actually done the opposition a long-term favor. How can shutting down the Internet help the virtual resistance? Even John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School described the Burmese shutdown as a "nuclear bomb" . . . in an interview with MIT Technology Review.

But in reality the Burmese military authorities could have done more damage to the virtual resistance by leaving the ISPs open. Those who rely on the Internet for comms should know that it is both a blessing and a curse. Although some jihadi theorists believe that the Internet provides a way to safely move information around control points dominated by the West, in reality the Internet also creates certain unique vulnerabilities. Some of those vulnerabilities became evident when the White House was accused of compromising the data mining efforts of the Search for International Terrorist Institute (SITE), a nonprofit organization which has been described as "monitoring terrorist and extremist websites and penetrating password-protected Al Qaeda linked sites [thereby providing] . . . state-of-the-art intelligence service to both practitioners and analysts to understand the adversary."

-- WRETCHARD

It seems that President Bush would like the US to become an official holocaust denier. Not that holocaust, one of the other ones: the 1915 killings of Christian Armenians by Muslim Turks. Both Gates and Condoleezza spoke with CNN this morning after advising Congress to give in to threats by Turkish President Gul and refrain from passing a bill which although it would not affect foreign policy, would call the genocide a genocide. Turkey of course, has been spending a lot of money in grants to US universities in exchange for downplaying their responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Armenian deaths and money in America is truth.

It seems we need the Turks to continue our forever war in Iraq and the dire consequences threatened by the Turks have the administration all acquiver. Bush has demonstrated his true nature this morning and his true nature looks a lot like an over aged woman in pink hot pants lurking under a street light.

-- CAPT. FOGG

If there is a Rosetta Stone to American politics, then it is the ongoing fascination with the need for 'tough' politicians. Some people are worried about the ascension of Hillary Clinton because she might not be "tough enough" . . . which appears to be based largely on her gender. [I]t is frankly offensive and reminiscent of a mindset that long ago should have been put to rest in a country that claims to be civilized. The idea that men are somehow inherently tougher than women, which appears to be based on adolescent male behavior that is inexplicably adjudged desirable, such as a tendency towards physical violence and recklessness, is pure fantasy. When men start passing football-sized kidney stones without anesthesia, maybe they can lay claim to being as tough as women. The facts speak for themselves: in the biggest "contest" of all, life, women outlast men by an average of seven years. So, really, who's tougher?

People referring to toughness don't really mean physical toughness, of course. They are referring to the willingness to stand up to the world's bogeymen, like Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il. Which brings me back to the notion of a Rosetta Stone of American politics: where, exactly, is the evidence that the United States' troubles stem from a lack of toughness?

-- G'KAR

It's been said sometimes that you can gauge the temperature, the kind of moral climate of a society by looking at the way it treats its most vulnerable people.

Are we a society where people are prepared to advocate for those who don't have voices of their own? Above all, are we prepared to put the necessary resource, skill and commitment, into the nurturing of human beings?

-- DR. ROWAN WILLIAMS