Live 8

Bob Geldof organised the original Live Aid charity event in 1985. As the world eagerly anticipates this weekend's Live 8 concerts, the impact of the original Live Aid charity event is still being felt across Africa. Concerts will be held at London, Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Philadelphia, Barrie, Tokyo, Johannesburg and Moscow on July 2, 2005.

These concerts are the start point for The Long Walk To Justice, the one way we can all make our voices heard in unison.

This is without doubt a moment in history where ordinary people can grasp the chance to achieve something truly monumental and demand from the 8 world leaders at G8 an end to poverty.

The G8 leaders have it within their power to alter history. They will only have the will to do so if tens of thousands of people show them that enough is enough.

By doubling aid, fully cancelling debt, and delivering trade justice for Africa, the G8 could change the future for millions of men, women and children." [link]

The G8 brings together the leaders of the worlds most powerful countries – the USA, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. This year they meet from 6th – 9th July in Gleneagles with Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair hosting the summit.

Tony Blair has put the challenges faced in Africa on the top of the agenda – but the leaders need to know when they sit down that the world is watching them and waiting for them to deliver.

They'll only do it if enough people tell them to. That's why we're staging Live 8. 10 concerts, 100 artists, a million spectators, 2 billion viewers, and 1 message... To get those 8 men, in that 1 room, to stop 30,000 children dying every single day of extreme poverty. [link]

From yahoo news

Live 8 official site

ITER tokamak

France was chosen to host the world's first nuclear-fusion reactor. ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is the joint project between six countries (Russia, Japan, EU, S Korea, China and USA). Tokamak will be built at Cadarache, France. It would be good news if you are interested in magnetic fusion energy though not for greenpeace. But fusion reactor is not as harmful as fission reactors and I can say it is quite green.

Cutaway of the ITER Tokamak.

Links: From wikipedia http://www.iter.org/what.htm nuclear engineering magazine bloomberg.com news more news

'slow genocide' revealed

It is really shocking news. The 600-page report revealing that Burma's military junta is carrying out a "slow genocide" of ethnic minorities is coming out. The report is prepared by Guy Horton, a British human rights researcher who made several secret trips into Burma in past five years for this human rights research.

Telegraph.co.uk, The Independent , and BBC have detailed news article about this.

From these articles:

Dr Martin Panter, international president of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which has campaigned on the Burmese issue for years and recently reported evidence that the Burmese junta had used chemical weapons, said the children were given pencils and paper and asked to paint whatever they liked.

"I said it might help to draw painful things, but nothing else. Some drew typical flowers and harmless village scenes but two thirds produced images of these terrible experiences.

"Some had seen their mothers raped, or children killed. They played and looked like normal children but with this great burden of pain." One depicts people fleeing their burning village; another shows a half-naked woman about to be raped by soldiers; yet another has a baby dumped in a rice pounder while villagers are killed.[Telegraph.co.uk]
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For four years, Guy Horton has travelled secretly in rural Burma, documenting the 50-year war being waged on the ethnic groups in the east. He has seen villagers forced to flee into the jungle, their homes destroyed, their animals slaughtered. He himself has experienced the brutality of the ruling regime, and he sums up its tactics in one word. Genocide. [The Independent]
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Government soldiers are said to routinely use torture as a weapon, along with the rape of girls as young as five.

Mr Horton told the BBC he had video of "villages in the process of being burnt down", the mass slaughter of animals and "numerous" people being murdered.

"It shows one particular massacre of 10 people," he added.

During one four-week visit, almost every village he saw had been burned to the ground.

Villagers told him of soldiers throwing babies onto a fire during one raid. [BBC]
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Often the soldiers would demand that local girls be given to them for marriage. A Sa Thon Lon soldier tried to rape a 19-year-old called Na. When she ran away, he forced her family to give her up. "Both the parents and the village headman had to tell her to marry him, a witness said. "The villagers told her the same thing. They said, 'If you don't marry him, they will kill us all.' Finally she had to give herself to the Burmese [soldier] because she loves her parents, the village headman and the villagers."

The soldier later wanted to take her away. When she refused, he burnt down her family's house. "When he had finished, he was worried that the people would say 'He is the one who burned his own father-in-law's house', so he burned down every house in the village."

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Mr Horton called for international legal action against Burma. However, Rangoon has not signed the treaty that created the International Criminal Court, the new global war crimes tribunal, so its prosecutors cannot take up the case on their own.

Mr Horton proposed a back-door approach instead, based on the fact that Burma is a signatory of the 1948 Genocide Convention. This means that another country, such as Britain or the Netherlands, could bring a case against Burma in the International Court of Justice, which deals with inter-state disputes.

Its ruling would not be binding, but could force the United Nations Security Council to take up the matter. The Security Council can refer a case to the ICC. [Telegraph.co.uk]

Links:



Telegraph.co.uk The Independent

BBC

Multiverse?

Wai Pyo wrote "I found some Myanmar girls' pics at RedMyanmar. I don't really understand why they put their photos there. I guess they want to be popular. Some pics and poses are quite rovocative for a normal Myanmar girl." I strongly agree with him. I went there and checked these photos. I don't understand too. (May be someone else posted these photos there.) May be we are living in different universe from them. I think I should learn quantum mechanics to understand this. Any other suggestions?

Apple's last marriage

The hottest news in computer field these days is Apple's switch from IBM chips to Intel chips. So, next generation Apple computers would run on CISC chips. Why did Steve Jobs do that. Here is a news article about that.

Why the switch? Rau says that Intel can assure Apple a steady supply of chips for all of its products--including desktops, servers, and a range of notebooks. "And not just CPUs, but chip sets, Wi-Fi, and so on," Rau says. In contrast, IBM had been unable to meet Apple's demand for desktop chips, and neither IBM nor Freescale (another Apple chip supplier) had a comprehensive road map similar to Intel's. Further, IBM couldn't solve the PowerPC CPU's heat problems in order to create a PowerBook G5 notebook, and it couldn't help Jobs deliver a promised 3-GHz Power Mac. Rau says that the change to Intel should help to lower the prices for Macs. That, along with the prospect of a dual-boot Windows/Mac system, could help increase Apple's PC market share--which, according to IDC, currently hovers at about 3 percent. However, not all observers believe that abandoning IBM in favor of Intel is a smart decision for Apple. "Intel is not the 'de-facto leader in processor design' that it was a few years ago; in the recent past Intel has been out-innovated by both AMD (with a better approach to 64-bit computing) and IBM (with a better long-term strategy around multicore chips)," wrote Ovum Ltd. research director Gary Barnett in an e-mail message.

Whatever it is, there will be no clone Apple. Their hardware would be different from PC. I mean windows would run on that Apple machine but OS X won't run on normal clone PC. [link]

R.E.M. sent goodwill message to Aung San Suu Kyi

R.E.M. played three songs for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at 2005/06/20 concert in Dublin. REM were playing to 25,000 fans at Ireland's Ardgillan Castle.

In his message, Michael said, “To the people of Burma, hello from Dublin, Ireland. “To Aung San Suu Kyi, we are gathered here tonight to join in solidarity with your vision of democracy in Burma. “We want to wish you a happy 60th birthday filled with hope and say that we deeply respect your profound commitment to the people of Burma. And we pray with our hearts that by your 61st birthday, you will walk free among your people. “We celebrate your spirit, vision, dedication and commitment to democracy and peace.” [link]

On their official website they wrote: And last night the band dedicated part of the show to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese leader whose 60th birthday it was. Michael displayed a poster-sized picture of her and gave a dignified dedication before the band played “The Outsiders,” “Find the River,” and “World Leader Pretend.” It seemed appropriate and affirmative, and if it helps draw attention where necessary, we will be happy for that. [link]

Michael Stipe wore the blue color shirt which is the color of dress Daw Aung San SuuKyi wore in the poster he displayed. 2005/06/20 R.E.M. dedicate "The Outsiders" to Ang San Suu Kyi in Dublin (D Belisle) [Link]

Cosmos 1: the world's first solar sail

Cosmos 1, the world's first solar sail spacecraft, was launched a few hours ago (2005-06-21, 1946 GMT) from from the Russian Navy submarine which was stationed underwater in the Barents Sea offshore Russia's northern coast using a converted ballistic missile. According to the official blog of The Planetary Society and news, the fate of spacecraft is unknown until now.

Emily Lakdawalla, the Project Operations Assistant and Image Processing Coordinator, wrote:

"It is now past 3 am in Moscow, and people are exhausted. Lou has hung up the phone with us. Over there, they switched from a nominal mode of operation to one in which they will search for the spacecraft every chance they get, the next one being at about 02:39:54 UT (19:39:54 here). During that search, they'll also send a command to the spacecraft to talk. But since no station has detected the spacecraft since Petropavlovsk, and Strategic Command has not detected it either, we don't know where the spacecraft is. Again, given the lack of detection by Strategic Command the two most likely scenarios at this point are failure to enter orbit at all, or entry into an unexpected orbit. If we don't know where the spacecraft is, we don't know where the radio antennas should be pointed and when they should be listening, which could make it a long search. Hours, days, maybe even a week. We don't know."

If everything goes as scheduled, the spacecraft is supposed to unfold its solar-sail blades on June 26. Each blade is about 50 ft long and there are 8 blades in total. So the diameter of entire spacecraft would be about 100 ft with the blades deployed. So, spacecraft would be visible with naked eye at that time.

I wish them successful launch.

Links:
Emily Lakdawalla’s Blog spaceflightnow news
Learn How Solar Sail Technology Works

Update: 2005-06-22, 5:11 PM
It is now confirmed that booster rocket may have had a problem during its first or second stage firing and the spacecraft was now in wrong orbit. They got weak signals time by time. But, whatever it is, it is not the failure of solar sail project. It is just the failure of launching system. To follow the latest news read Emily Lakdawalla’s Blog.

Global Campaign to Free Aung San Suu Kyi

Tomorrow, June 19, will be 60th birthday of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. While she is still under house arrest, her birthday will be held worldwide by various organizations and nationwide by NLD. Famous rock band R.E.M will dedicate a song at its June 19th concert in Dublin, Ireland, to Aung San Suu Kyi. The song will be broadcasted live via satellite television so that people from Burma will be able to watch. Irish singer Damien Rice is giving 2 concerts in support of Burma at London on June 20 2005 and at Paris on June 30 2005. His new single 'Unplayed Piano', written for Aung San Suu Kyi, will be released on June 20. Proceeds from the single will go to the Burma Campaign UK and US Campaign for Burma. “Anti-Dictatorship, People’s Fredom Movement” is holding 60 hours hunger strike at the front of Myanmar Embassy at Washington DC by now. US Campaign for Burma's plans include “Arrest Yourself” where 60 individuals will make it at their own places, sending 6,000 birthday cards collected worldwide and global protests at Burmese embassies.

On her 60th birthday day, June 19, she will have spent a total of 9 years and 238 days in detention. She is now serving her third term of house arrest since May 30 , 2003 after the regime's militia attacked her convoy and killed up to 100 of her supporters. In Burma, there are more than 1350 political prisoners suffering from strict rules of Burmese jails. Many died in prisons during interrogation. (Even there was an event many students were died from suffocation while they were taken in Prisoner Transport truck after red bridge student uprising.) Daw Aung San Suu Kyi used to say that her sacrifice was nothing compared to those in prisons. I wish Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, U Tin Oo and all the political prisoners would soon be released, and all Burmese people would be freed from dictator's rule.

The country -by Maru

I found this poem on Burmatoday.net originally in 2001 if I remember correctly. This is the best poem depicting our country I had ever come across. It's a long poem. following is just for preview. read complete poem here.

Life sucks

What happened is that I was so broke and went there to work. It ended up as a costly trip. Coz the work was such a bull shit and I chose to quit on the very first day. (at least I had got a chance to see beautiful Russian girls there. hee hee ) now I’m soooooo broke.

linked

Thank you v much ko Lwin Moe for talking about my blog on your diary_blog. It’s been such a pleasure!!!!!!!! Link: http://lwinmoe.friendsofburma.org/

Ostrich -by Min Khite Soe San

I remember this poem appeared in a small poem book sold in RASU in these days of university’s diamond jubilee. I found it now on Lan O Lay.