A North Korean warship fires a torpedo at a South Korean warship, killing all aboard. The South Koreans take their good time in developing a report (in triplicate, with lots of neat pictures and Power Point presentation), with the assistance of a range of other countries, which calls the Northerners out on their aggression. Naturally, the North is now threatening war for the release of the report and any future response to their lethal provocation.
Remember that old saying about the best revenge being “living better”? Here’s a case where that adage might apply very well. Do nothing. The North is already suffering badly enough under their own totalitarian misery that it’s hard to see how a South Korean military response could make things much worse for them. To illustrate, some videos:
See? You don’t have to be an American president to blast rogue regimes with both barrels (well, rhetorically, anyway). Our PM has some harsh words for Burma’s generals. The junta may not listen, but this is what Canadians need to hear:
Canada strongly condemns the Burmese regime’s decision to sentence Aung San Suu Kyi to a further 18 months house arrest.
This decision is clearly not in accordance with the rule of law: the charges laid against her were baseless and her trial did not come close to meeting international standards of due process. Her continued detention is unwarranted, unjustified, and vindictive…
We will continue to stand with the people of Burma and insist that their human rights be respected and their voices heard.
I’m reminded of an article I wrote about Burma eons ago that still seems relevant today. I’ve dredged through my Gmail and discovered it for your reading pleasure:
Ethics 101: Don’t Do Business With a Junta
“Of course it’s a democracy! The people just don’t have the right to vote.”
Mathew’s comment elicited a few chuckles from my colleagues sitting around the staff table. But I could tell I wasn’t the only one who felt a little uneasy.
My workplace in Vancouver had decided to open up a branch in Myanmar. We had just got the memo.
None of us really knew much about the country. Even in 2008, after the cyclone disaster and the mass protests brutally put down by the junta’s troops, I suspect not many Canadians can even find the place on a map.
Still, we were all basically aware the country was located somewhere in Southeast Asia and run by a military regime known for its low regard for human rights.
The Japanese-based owners’ rationale for setting up a branch in Myanmar was that in a global world, business had to reach out to new and emerging markets. Everyone else is going left, so you go right. Since companies were not rushing into Myanmar to invest, management saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor.
The company heads seemed to have a vague idea of the ethical minefield they were walking into, if only because it was going to be awfully tough to find an employee willing to go over there. Our local manager had come up with the line that Myanmar was showing signs of an emerging democracy to calm our concerns.
That’s when Mathew ran with his one-liner and broke the tension. But I was on edge.
I decided to do a little research and soon discovered that the US first imposed sanctions on Myanmar in 1990. This was after the incumbent junta annulled an election won by Myanmar’s National League for Democracy. The 1991 Nobel Peace Laureate and opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest more than a decade. The European Union imposed its own sanctions soon after.
As for us Canucks, the Canadian government officially discourages investment in the country. Petro Canada pulled out in 1998.
Despite its cash-poor status, trade with Asian countries provides the ruling generals with enough capital to run one of the most the most repressive and pervasive military intelligence systems in the world.
Fifty per cent of Myanmar’s economy goes towards military spending, but apparently there’s no cash to pay for the slave laborers the army dragoons to hack out roads in remote areas, or the child soldiers forced to raid villages inhabited by ethnic minorities.
Our company’s executives had to be aware that the only people able to afford our services would be involved with or related to the ruling junta. The company went ahead, anyway.
It didn’t take long to get things started. In weeks, we had a physical location and they were already printing brochures.
I moved on to greener pastures soon after, but I kept in touch with my old colleagues. Less than six months later, I heard the Myanmar branch had closed.
The customers had all registered in hopes of somehow getting visas and permission to travel abroad – evidently, promises had been made in the promotional materials that had been rushed to the printers. When that didn’t happen, they protested and the branch was forced to shut down. Rumor had it that the big bosses back in Japan had only set up the Myanmar in the first place as an elaborate scam to get a few friends some visas to get into Canada.
A few weeks later, US President George Bush listed Myanmar alongside Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Cuba and Zimbabwe as outposts of tyranny in his inaugural address.
It’s been four years since then. The junta has holed up in their jungle base while their soldiers continue to keep the people terrorized. I’d like to think that Canadians – and foreign executives with interests in Canada, for that matter — are a little more educated now about the downside of doing business in a country where Amnesty International has been collecting evidence of torture and human rights abuses for decades.
Unless you live outside of China, in which case, you may be aware of something very tragic and very significant happening on this day 20 years ago in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
What does it take to make a decision to stand up? How often are these decisions planned, and how often do they happen in a split second? I wonder what it was like for the tank man at Tiananmen Square. Hard to imagine that that was a deliberate, conscious decision. Most likely, he saw the situation and just walked out. Perhaps there was not even any self talk; it just happened…
There are hundreds of Tamil-Canadian protesters a stone’s throw from my office near the US consulate in downtown Vancouver. Their drums and chants are pretty catchy (and distracting the hell out of the IT consultants hunched frowning over their keyboards). Their flags – the flag of a recognized terrorist organization – are even more attention-grabbing.
It appears the Tamil protesters’ black flags of mourning were a short-lived tactic that could not win the support of their constituents, who continue to show allegiance to the flag of the Tamil Tigers – a group accused of (inventing) suicide bombings, recruiting child soldiers, ethnic cleansing and a bunch of other behavior most of my fellow citizens would consider un-Canadian. Interestingly, large Canadian and American flags are also waving in the crowd.
I spoke in passing with one of the protesters while wandering back to the office with some sushi. “I think you’d get more support for your cause if you put away the flag with the guns on it,” I offered. “It’s the flag of a terrorist organization. You want independence, great! But you know what that flag represents.”
“This is our national flag!” replied the over-eager protester. His friend added that it had been their flag for 1,500 years. Could I be so perverse as to argue with him that, technically, there is no Tamil state (and the chances of it ever being realized appear to be diminishing rapidly each day, thanks to the efficient gains of the Sri Lankan army) and that the firearms on the flag would not have been around 1,500 years ago?
I walked away.
What was the point? They’ve chosen this flag to represent their national aspirations and will not be convinced otherwise. If they’re blind to the implications of their own symbols, Canadians of all stripes and our elected representatives will continue to remain deaf to their chants for international intervention.
As a response to a fairly consistent theme in the comments at the NP, I would remind readers that I have nothing against Tamils protesting – frankly, given the circumstances, I’d be surprised and disappointed if they didn’t. What I’m criticizing is their choice of symbol, a flag recognized by anyone familiar with this conflict as being synonymous with terrorism. If they truly want the help and sympathy of their fellow Canadians, they ought to at least go back to the black flag they used for all of two minutes. A little pragmatism could go a long way politically.
Tamil protesters on Parliament Hill in Ottawa have made their position on supporting terror quite clear, even if some anyonymous CTV headline writer seems determined to delude their readership.
The quote, from protest spokesperson Senthan Nada, asked whether they support the Tamil Tiger terrorist group now getting a furious spanking from Sri Lankan forces: “Our pictures show innocent children and women who are the victims and I don’t know how people can misinterpret and say that we are only standing for the Tamil freedom fighters.”
Clearly, he doesn’t mean the innocent children and women are “freedom fighters” – the same term propagandists have used for decades when their own people engage in terrorist actions. The only plausible conclusion is that the protesters consider the Tamil Tigers fighting the army to be freedom fighters. See, they’re not just standing with the women and children, they’re ALSO standing for the people reportedly using the local Tamil population of women and children as human shields.
The headline, “Tamil protesters deny support for terrorist group” just doesn’t fly. Thanks, CTV, we have no need for a Ministry of Truth.
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