Just remember these are people from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, who likely do not understand the harm they're doing, but are simply doing what they can to feed their families. Those are some hard knock lives.

And then there's us -- the ignorant technocrats who only become outraged when our access to information catches up to us and teaches us that our viral desire for exotic pets has fueled a harmful trade.

It's just ignorance all around. Our ignorant desires and the ignorant workers our desires have employed. Is there even an evil boss/distributer in all of this? Or is it just ignorance at every single level?

I'm fine with your other points, but you really think there are not working, funded refugee camps in Turkey?

An_Aerial_View_of_the_Zaatri_Refugee_Camp.jpg

http://sheldonkirshner.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Turkish-refugee-camp-for-Syrians-e1413585834309.jpg

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/pb-120411-syria-refugees-ps2.photoblog900.jpg

Are they amazing? No, but I've never stepped foot in a refugee camp that was (and, yes, for the record I have visited several). Compared to the 30-year-old jungle camps on the Thai-Burma border, these places look pretty well outfitted. They clearly have the infrastructure, support and funding to serve the populations that are there.

What they don't have is the economic infrastructure to allow for good, rewarding work for these refugees. Of course, that is generally the situation for every refugee population. The biggest difference here is that some Syrian refugees have the financial resources to reach Europe whereas most refugees in other parts of the world don't.

Other than Yugoslavia and Czechslovakia there is the split of Sudan, name changes for Benin/Dahomey, Myanmar/Burma. Many are included as countries that are in fact possessions of other countries. (Puerto Rico, Guam, Bermuda, French Guiana). The Caribean is pointed to as a country but the actual countries of the region are left out mostly (Dominica, St. Kitts & Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Antigua & Barbuda etc). Like I said in my comment I'm sure this wasn't intended to be an absolutely accurate listing even for 1995 and things were included to make the song work. Gaum is rhymed with San Juan and neither one is a country. What can I say, I'm a trivia player whose strong suit is Geography. And don't get me started on places like South Ossetia, Nagorno Karabakh, Nakhchivan, Transnistria. People can't even agree on how to spell them let alone whether they qualify as independent countries. And I shouldn't forget Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland.

This wow's me as to how much time/money for a temporary thing. Can't see this ever happening on this scale again.

(for those keeping score, Burma is now Myanmar, Ceylon is Sri Lanka )

It's Burma.

Calling it Myanmar lends legitimacy to the current government.

I will get to what is wrong with strongly denouncing Islam in a second....

As for the article, I hadn't actually read the whole thing but rather had heard coverage about it along with an article on Al Jazeera. Specifically, I take issue with Harris and his stance on the 'war on terror' (and aren't you essentially advocating for religious profiling by condemning Islam and its practitioners? Or is it rather that you identify it as a threat but wish to see no action taken?) I also have problems with Hitchens and his enthusiasm for the invasion of Iraq.

As for the quote I posted, after re-reading it, I think that I saw something that wasn't there. I believe that trying to prove that one religion is more evil than another is pointless. Reading history books, which oddly I have done, will not disprove that belief but rather reinforce it as the tragedy of all religions would be laid bare.

Finally, I would gladly take up your 'snidely', non-issued challenge. As a matter of fact, I've already done it. I lived in Indonesia for a year both in Muslim dominated areas and tribal, animist Christian dominated areas. While I am by no means an atheist activist, I nonetheless lived openly as an atheist and honestly answered the question of my religion (I have none) when it was asked of me. Nothing happened to me. Furthermore, I currently live on the Thai-Burma border in a Buddhist dominated country and do not hide my lack of belief when asked about it.

And that is where I come back to the problem of denouncing Islam. Just last month there were pogroms against Muslims by Buddhists in Burma (a smaller conflict than that which occurred last year against the Rohingya in Rakhine state). The proximate cause of this pogrom was a Muslim jeweler refusing to pay for damaged jewelry of a Buddhist woman. But more generally, it is a result of a campaign of extremist Buddhist monks issuing edicts about the evils of Islam and the dangers it represents to Burmese culture. Unequivocally condemning an entire religion invariably leads to this type of violence, and therein lies my concern.

There are ones that don't come from Burma. I know they come from Montana and North Carolina (and nearby places)

Sears is performing their own investigation... to see if they can increase efficiencies at the labor camp or possibly relocate it to Burma where laws are more favorable to corporate considerations.

>> ^serosmeg:

I went on a manhunt once. I just got back from Nam. I was hitchhiking through Oregon. Next thing I know there's a bunch of cops chasing after me through the woods! I had to take them all out, it was a bloodbath!


That must have been so stressful! I recommend holidays in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Burma.

I stumbled upon the best inexpensive present this year....

A local woman is a big supporter of schools in Burma. She has worked to make the most wonderful cards, with a photo of Burma as the artwork on the front (she took all the photos.)Somehow, she got all the printing costs donated.

They cost $3.99 each. 100% of the proceeds go to fund a Burmese child's school costs. Two cards will fund a child for the year.

I don't usually do the massive buying of presents for everyone in my sphere. This year, I bought a bunch of these cards and have been giving them as remembrances of the season -- whatever season you celebrate. Even if it is just the fact that the days are getting longer -- that is a reason to celebrate, up here in the Pacific Northwest.

So someone gets a card they can use for whatever purpose they want, and I just helped a kid on the other side of the world.

Now THAT is fun to do! Puts me right in the mood!

It's really too bad that our conversion was stopped in mid-track by the ever present, "We're 'merican we do'n need no furners telln us nutin" meme.

For anyone not familiar with the history of the reason why only three countries still resist Metrication: Burma, Liberia, and the United States of America.

Its not a lack of police to fight drug cartels which is the cause of the violence. That analysis is hollow. You are leaving out the devastating consequences of NAFTA and imperialism on these countries.

Poverty and unemployment have only worsened as a result of subsidies going towards big agrobussiness instead of local farmers. This is what leads to crime. Its a reaction by the working class getting even more fucked. When you can't get any $ by growing corn and instead have the chance to make $ selling drugs, yeah, you do it.

It isn't a coincidence that the majority of immigrants come from countries that have had dictators and death squads with the support of the US. Guatamala, El Salvador, Mexico. Destroyed economies create migrants which are CHEAP LABOR. Add to this the criminalization of immigrants with AZ's SB1070 and GA's copycat HB87. The AZ bill was pretty much written by Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison corporation which gets $200 per bed a night.

Its all part of the imperative of profit, the inherent violence of capitalism, duh
----
Additional reading:

http://blog.sojo.net/2010/10/28/prison-and-profits-the-politics-of-az%E2%80%99s-sb1070-bill-revealed/

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/25/harvest_of_empire_new_book_exposes
"And then there's this from independent journalist Zafar Bangash:

"The CIA, as Cockburn and (Jeffrey) St Clair reveal, had been in this business right from the beginning. In fact, even before it came into existence, its predecessors, the OSS and the Office of Naval Intelligence, were involved with criminals. One such criminal was Lucky Luciano, the most notorious gangster and drug trafficker in America in the forties."

The CIA's involvement in drug trafficking closely dovetails America's adventures overseas - from Indo-China in the sixties to Afghanistan in the eighties....As Alfred McCoy states in his book: Politics of Heroin: CIA complicity in the Global Drug Trade, beginning with CIA raids from Burma into China in the early fifties, the agency found that 'ruthless drug lords made effective anti-communists." ("CIA peddles drugs while US Media act as cheerleaders", Zafar Bangash, Muslimedia, January 16-31, 1999)

And, this from author William Blum:

"ClA-supported Mujahedeen rebels ... engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government," writes historian William Blum. "The Agency's principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading druglords and a leading heroin refiner. CIA-supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan/Pakistan border. The output provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe....""


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18877

ie: Burma, Ivory Coast, Bahrain, Yemen, Sudan... >> ^JAPR:

We only intervene if we have other interests or stand to gain something. We use these positive reasons for intervening in something as a reasonable screen, but ultimately, we just do what the fuck we want and don't care about shit.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Moving train, Myanmar, running, Yangon' to 'Moving train, Myanmar, running, Yangon, Burma, whistle stop, nonstop' - edited by Krupo

No matter how well intentioned, I think military interventions nowadays that aim to dethrone an authoritarian regime are practically guaranteed to fail.

I think that depends on goals and commitments. If removing the regime is the only goal, Iraq has been a complete and unconditional success. If providing a stable and safe state for the local population is the goal, then Iraq has been a complete and unconditional failure. If providing the local population with a better future is the goal, then Iraq has been a success.

My ideal scenario, which I admitted no nation would ever commit to, was not just regime change, but regime change followed by nation building. Both the Iraq and Afghan conflicts have absolutely refused to take any part in nation building exercises and instead have tried to jump straight from authoritarian rule to functioning self sufficient local democracy.

Point is, military interventions don't work in removing despotic governments simply because something can and will go wrong.

Yet in many cases removing despotic governments can still be better for the locals, even with all that can go wrong. Even with all the grandiose mistakes and failures in Iraq, the nation has a better future than it would have without the invasion. Without the invasion there are only two alternatives, and Iraq still under Saddam which is worse. The other is an Iraq not under Saddam, but that did it without foreign intervention. I guarentee the civil warring in Iraq now is nothing to the bloodbath that there would've been toppling Saddam's Baath internally. Iraq is absolutely not a great place for it's people yet, but it is a better one than it would've been without the invasion. I'd argue the same would be true for both Burma and North Korea. Though North Korean locals would be benefiting at the cost of absolutely enormous and unfathomable losses on the part of South Korea.