Democratic Voice of Burma

I've been woefully neglecting the peaceful protests by the Theravada Buddhist monks in Burma/Myanmar (now thuggishly put down).
At the very least, I should post the link to Democratic_Voice_of_Burma.
I remember reading an observation in an article/blog post somewhere that Burma's principle backer, the People's Republic of China, is woe to criticize the Burmese military junta's beating of Buddhist monks, since they themselves have been doing much the same thing in Tibet for decades now. . .

In Florida, the belly_of_the_beast.

The heirs of Joseph Stalin strike again

from the_AP_via_AOL_News:

The protesters gathered earlier Saturday near the White House in Lafayette
Park with signs saying "End the war now" and calling for President Bush's impeachment. The rally was organized by
the ANSWER Coalition and other groups.

Organizers estimated that nearly 100,000 people attended the rally and
march. That number could not be confirmed; police did not give their own
estimate. A permit for the march obtained in advance by the ANSWER Coalition had
projected 10,000.

Christopher_Hitchens explains (2005 Slate article):

I suppose that it is possible that he has never before come across
"International ANSWER," the group run by the "Worker's World" party [Wikipedia:
"Many of ANSWER's leaders were members of Workers World Party
(WWP) at the time of ANSWER's founding, and are current members of the Party for
Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist-Leninist
organization that formed in 2004."-Chris] and fronted by Ramsey Clark,
which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the
"resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to
volunteer as attorney for the génocidaires in Rwanda. Quite a "wide range of
progressive political objectives" indeed, if that's the sort of thing you like.
However, a dip into any database could have furnished Janofsky with
well-researched and well-written articles by David Corn and Marc Cooper—to
mention only two radical left journalists—who have exposed "International
ANSWER" as a front for (depending on the day of the week) fascism, Stalinism,
and jihadism.

The group self-lovingly calling itself "United for Peace and Justice" is by
no means "narrow" in its "antiwar focus" but rather represents a very extended
alliance between the Old and the New Left, some of it honorable and some of it
redolent of the World Youth Congresses that used to bring credulous priests and
fellow-traveling hacks together to discuss "peace" in East Berlin or Bucharest.
Just to give you an example, from one who knows the sectarian makeup of the Left
very well, I can tell you that the Worker's World Party—Ramsey Clark's core
outfit—is the product of a split within the Trotskyist movement. These were the
ones who felt that the Trotskyist majority, in 1956, was wrong to denounce the
Russian invasion of Hungary. The WWP is the direct, lineal product of that
depraved rump. If the "United for Peace and Justice" lot want to sink their
differences with such riffraff and mount a joint demonstration, then they invite
some principled political criticism on their own account. And those who just tag
along … well, they just tag along.

Looks like all-out war in 2008 in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention. . .

So many bicycles, so little time: Part_II

So many bicycles, so_little_time . . .