Already the week is unbearable for these New Yorkers awaiting a subway train, and it's only fucking Tuesday.
The Onion
"The more I try to speed it along, the longer it almost seems to take," said Dale Bouchard, a Chicago-based broker who has been waiting for today to be over since it first began earlier this morning. "Honestly, today could not have come at a worse time this week."
Meanwhile the UN envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, has described as "extremely disturbing" new arrests in Burma and has called on the junta to stop detaining democracy activists.
Condoleezza Rice has pledged support for human rights activists in Moscow who hope to protect people from the ‘arbitrary power of the state.’
After writing about the "ravers" who regularly turn up at lectures to claim that President Bush/the CIA/the Pentagon/Mossad etc perpetrated the crimes against humanity of 11 September, I received a letter this week from Marion Irvine, who feared that members of her family run the risk of being just such "ravers" and "voices heard in the wilderness". Far from it.
For the first time, an outraged United Nations Human Rights Council has condemned the Burmese military junta for its violent crackdown on protesters and demanded it be allowed to immediately investigate the situation in Burma.
My own reaction to the news of the UN envoy visiting Burma says a lot, I think of how conditioned we are by the official narrative. I found myself hoping, along with newsreaders and reporters, that Gambari would be allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, and that he would meet the supreme general Than Shwe. But what difference does that make? We weren't told. Oh sure, the UNHRC is 'outraged'. How can a structure which includes states which not only support other states that practise 'violent crackdowns' but are themselves involved in human rights abuses be suitable 'outraged'? Interestingly, the United States does not see fit to join the UNHRC. A touch of honesty perhaps?Sources in Rangoon told Mizzima that several bodies of monks have been found floating in the Rangoon River and the bodies bear evidence that the monks had been beaten to death.
Is this a matter for friendly diplomacy?The HRC, in a rare criticism against a government, agreed to place the findings of the special Rapporteur to the UN General Assembly and to the Security Council, which observers say will give more evidence to discuss at the UNSC.
Indeed, that is how we come to accept the official narrative. Our moral ideals are drastically lowered until we honestly believe, that an expression of 'outrage' against the torture and murder of hundreds or thousands of pro-democracy protesters is extraordinary, and therefore, logically, more than sufficient.
