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Satellite Images Used to Monitor Burmese Junta
BurmesePython writes "Human rights groups are using high-resolution satellites images to reveal the activities of Burma's junta as it gets tough with pro-democracy protesters. Apparently 'it should be easy to spot groups of monks because of their distinctive maroon robes'. Like previous efforts to use satellites to monitor the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the hope is it will prod the UN and other international actors into putting pressure on the Burmese rulers."
To do what, be even more pointless???
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
What was maroon
Shows as red
In the street
Monks lie dead
- Myanmar Shave
Don't you just love it when technology developed for governments for their "reasons", whatever they may be, are then used to make the World a better place?
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Anyone know who these human rights groups are, and how they got access to such satellite imaging? Are these groups funded by the UN? Or are they just reporting to the UN on images they somehow got? If the groups are legit, the UN will at least let them plead their cases.
Let the Wookie Win!
It would be nice to see the satellite pictures in question.
But so far all the articles I've seen on this either have no pictures or other pictures (such as the smuggled cellphone images of the marching monks).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's just not right that governments should be under such scrutiny by citizens. It's like they can't do anything without being monitored anymore. Imagine you just were trying to do your job of restoring order and punishing disruptive monks, with Little Brother looking over your shoulder. This slide into an accountable society is terrifying.
There are satellite images of every country on Earth (fairly detailed too). Most of us visit /. for tech stories, not human rights stories we've been hearing all day about on the news. No one on /. is going to make a difference in this situation anyway.
In Burma we don't have pro-democracy protesters like in your country, I don't know who told you that.
cameras shoot you!
Why is it still illegal in powerful countries like the USA to arm the Burmese protesters? It could be done by aerial drops from B1s or other high altitude planes flying over 50000feet out of reach of the Burmese military's equipment. The protesters have no arms, while the Burmese army is armed to the teeth with deadly weaponry. We stand by watching CNN/whatever hoping that the inevitable won't happen to the protesters.
the UN needs to step up or pull the plug
sure we all want the Burmese leaders to be accountable, we want everyone to be accountable, unless it US
like when nicaragua brought charges against the us to the UN security comission
and SOMEHOW the US was able to veto their own charges
the UN is nothing but a bandaid, that keeps falling off
back in the day we didnt have no old school
The images revealed some bodies laying the shape of a swastika.
The junta announced they would spend up to 600k USD to bulldoze the corpses into a more appealing shape.
Oh snap! Feel the burn, Ban-ki Moon, 'cause you just got served, bitch.
I doubt I am alone in hoping for a revolution that reinstates the proper, democratically elected government in Burma.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
As another commenter points out, the UN in and of itself has zero power. It has no army, no police, no way of enforcing its will at all. The only power it gets is from member nations.
But if the only real power involved is the power of member nations, why don't the member nations just act and cut out the UN "middleman"? This is, after all, historically the way international action has been carried out. European governments trying to cope with Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler or (going further back) the Mongol or Ottoman invaders didn't feel a need to create a standing bureaucracy to validate by inscribing (in five official languages) on parchment what they'd already collectively decided to do. They just acted, forming governing councils and agreements as and where they were needed -- and not otherwise.
So why don't we do that nowadays? If Darfur (or Burma) is an international outrage, and most every reasonable person agrees on what should be done, what's to stop the four or five biggest countries from just forming an ad hoc Stop The Burma Slaughter task force, assigning it 25,000 troops and a naval task force, and punching the Go button?
Nothing, really. Except that this silly imaginary "world government" called the UN exists, and because it exists the major countries are off the hook. If you ask why doesn't somebody DO something, everyone can point to the UN as the agency that should be doing the doing.
In short, the UN pretty clearly now exists as a substitute for coordinated, effective international action. It's like how, in Congress or a university, if you want to just quietly kill a proposal for action, you refer it to a committee for a report. The UN exists so that big nations can ignore sticky problems by referring them to the UN for a report...or a vote on "sanctions"...whatever. You can look like you're doing something with actually, well, doing something.
Since Americans have always tended to favor action over talk, they tend to take a dim view of an institution which effectively and efficiently functions to replace action with talk. That's not what the UN is supposed to do, of course, but that's what it actually does. Yet another illustration of the Law of Unintended Consequences: there'd be much more effective international humanitarian action if the UN did not exist.
>Suppose Chinas growing wealth is diverted to funding the construction of STATELESS (read: non-nation-owned) policing ships
It's pirates you mean then is it Matey? We's not needin' no stinking Letters of Marque, we's the Free Company. ARRRR!!
Of course according to FSM Church doctrine, this would take care of global warming.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
OK, I guess this is now the definition of a civil war. Let's hope the new government, if one comes to pass, is better than the old one.
In Soviet Russia, satellites watch you
Oh wait, in United States of America, satellites watch YOU.
--sf
I guess there's still one active feed into Burma.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Where's Burma? Isn't that next to Siam?
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all. -- Thomas J. Kopp
That's what they thought during the French Revolution: "Just a bunch of peasants pissed off at the high price of bread."
"kill the criminals"- you mean peaceful marchers deserve to be gunned down by their own government?
Captcha: "discuss"
We have intel on terrorists planning to attack the US - they are hiding in the Defense Ministry in the heart of downtown Rangoon. If you use a "truncheon Implosion Bomb" the building can be taken out without any civilian casualties. Go Talons!!! However let EDI deliver the bomb - there is no blood in those quantum veins...
Just airdrop a couple hundred thousand AK-47s, ammo, and green robes and see just how long the junta lasts.
This is not a 'pro-democratic' protest.
People are protesting against drastic increase in petrol prices - from 28 cents per litre to 38.
Nothing more.
You know, the same thing could've been said about the Boston Tea Party over the price of stamps. Sometimes it's just the straw that breaks that camel's back that turns discontent over economic matters into full-blown revolution.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Actually the French Revolution didn't start out because the people wanted more rights, but becuase peasants were hungry.
I don't think there are all so many examples of revolutions started with full stomach, if you don't count rebellions against foreign oppressors.
Burma's the name that the last democratic regime in the country called it. Myanmar's what the military junta renamed it in 1989. Burmese opposition groups still call it Burma because they don't recognize the legitimacy of the military regime.
You can read more about it here. Personally, I use Burma. Let a legitimate regime change the English name one ever comes around.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
...exactly in the spirit of the Liberator pistol
Then make a second drop after burma/myanmar into rhodesia/zimbabwe.
Talisman Energy, one of the main dictator supporters with cash and infrastructure support in the Sudan. There's oil profits you know. Business is business, nothing personal. What else do those folks say? Oh ya, money has no conscious. A corporation's mandate is only to make money for the investors. Free trade. The market is self correcting.
I believe the answer you were looking for was: Obama.
Burma was a British colony. Let the Brits and the Commonwealth take care of the problem by themselves for once. I look forward to watching Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe thugs forces liberating Rangoon under the Union Jack.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
You didn't look hard enough. Burma does have oil and natural gas. And the Chinese, Australia, Canada and the UK are involved. http://english.people.com.cn/200701/16/eng20070116_341829.html http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/company/cns43800.htm
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The more pressure we can put on the UN to do something, the better.
...but you've mistaken me for someone who gives a shit.
Sincerely,
UN
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
No, they can't just dump all the dollars. Couple problems with that:
1) Most of those funds are in the form for treasury securities (T-Bills/T-notes/T-bonds). Those are promissory notes issued by the US government. Basically it says "We agree to pay you this much money by this date." Fair enough, but the value is only because the government honours that agreement. So far, US securities are one of the safest things you can buy. They have always made good and have plenty of systems in place to make sure that keeps happening. However, they could if they wanted just not honour the notes issued to China. All of a sudden that wealth is gone. China can't sell the notes if the US has made it clear they are worthless, they can't redeem them, the wealth just goes away. This would, of course, have severe consequences to the US government in terms of the ability to issue more note sin the future since people wouldn't trust them as much, but it can be done.
2) China's economy is very dependant on it continuing to grow and the money continuing to come in. A big part of that is that America continues to be willing to buy their goods. Well, if America's economy got fucked up, and if it was well known that the cause was the Chinese, that would all go away. Not only does a depression put people in to a mode where they spend little money especially on non-essentials (which is largely what China produces) but there would be extensive boycotts, and perhaps even governmental sanction, against Chinese products. That happens, all of a sudden China has factories without work, people without jobs, an upcoming middle class facing the return to what is quite literally peasantry. Revolutions have started over that, and they know it.
3) China's dollar is pegged to the US dollar. For the US dollar to rapidly change is for their dollar to rapidly change, unless they un peg it, in which case it will also rapidly change. Strong and weak currencies are relative things and there is no one that is better than the other, each has advantages and disadvantages. However rapid change is problematic as your economy isn't ready for the new dynamic. Rapidly changing the US dollar would not do them well, regardless of how they chose to manage the yuan.
The problem is you cannot look at international economies in the same way you look at something like a personal economy. China and the US dont' have a worker - boss relationship. It is a customer - distributor relationship at the closest, but still different since each controls their own currency, each has real military force such that nobody else can come in and force them to do something different and so on. It's not a case of them holding the stick and the US being in trouble, it is a case of something like economic mutually assured destruction. Yes, they have the theoretical potential to hurt the US economy, however doing so would have severe consequences to them and as such isn't a real possibility.
It is difficult to understand fully since the globalized economy we have today is very new, and since on that scale things don't follow the same rules as the small scales we personally work on. Many people fail to understand this and thus misunderstand the intricacies of the situation.
If that's really what they were. Just a forum for the nations, especially the nations with the bib bombs, to get together and talk things over. Diplomacy is very useful and I think an international venue for that is really useful. However the UN doesn't seem to be that. It seems to want to play at world government and fail. That's the problem here. The UN passes stupid resolutions that it won't do anything about, trys to mandate things it can't, bitches about people not giving it enough recognition (like in the tsunami crisis wanting American soldiers helping out to wear UN blue rather than their national uniforms) and so on. Also the organization is a massive money waster on so many fronts. Have you ever been to a headquarters? If not you should. Pure opulence is the only way to describe it.
I'd be totally fine with a standing international forum that was all about trying to get countries together to work out differences. However the UN as it is now is very broken. It thinks it is a world government and wants to be, but isn't at all effectual at that. Either we need a real world government, or we need an organization that understands that it isn't. Either way, the UN should be thrown out and replaced with something better.
Just like Darfur.
This thread is useless without pictures.
cry. This stuff sucks.
sig sig sig siggy sig
if spy sat so powerful how come the US center wasn't using them to observe Bin Alladin's every move? and how come they STILL can not find him? Oh yeah they were but he somehow managed to slip through by giving his cell phone to somebody else. Or he only stays in caves. Or he... Im sick and tired of all these blantant lies the US gives.
fuck karma, I like saying the truth better
It's more expensive, but it's possible to send images.
I think you underestimate the brutality of this regime.
most of the heroin that comes into Australia is Burmese origin. The Karen rebels try to interrupt the supply, so as to weaken the Juntas trade, but the Junta retalliate by kidnapping Karen children and have them walk in front of the soldiers as human minesweepers.
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
But put what kind of pressure? All they've talked about so far is sanctions, but what good will that do?
Sanctions won't hurt the Burmese government, they will still sell their natural gas and buy weapons on the black market. It won't be the government that suffers, it will be the ordinary people on the street who are already suffering.
The Burmese government is not above forcing people to work for free, or allowing people to starve
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Various sources talk about 18 villages that have "disappeared" on these Satellite images and 30 new ones around a Military Base as "proof" for forced relocations.
How can this be proof of anything? Just a reminder, Myanmar has a population of a little less than 50 million people. The only pictures I've seen (here and here) show villages of maybe five houses in the middle of a wood, so these 18 villages could've simply been abandoned. Sources speak of burnt down ruins... but is it really that far fetched to assume there might be accidental fires involved? After all Myanmar population is said to live a quite backward style of living (and that being the Military Regimes fault).
If the pictures that are public are the best evidence they have then I'd be highly critical of using them as a base for any kind of punishment (the fact aside that sanctions won't hurt anyone than the population).
I'm not really in the mood to argue who can and can't do what in terms of China and the USA and economic competition but... seriously? you think number 1 is in the cards? really? even remotely in the scope of possibility?
If the USA decided to stop honouring ANY of it's securities it would be a greater economic disaster than if China decided to dump all it's USD assets. You're talking about effectively telling the world economic markets that every USD asset is worthless and 100% untrustworthy, trading in US issued securities would stop instantly and would really only start again when the US government either went so far into the shitter that the rest of the world forgave its debt (and that's what those securities are, debt owed by the US) or the US gov't decided to start honouring its securities again.
The US accounts are in seemingly permanent deficit to just about everybody in the world, it's only though the continued demand for USD (even now - mostly to buy oil with) that it's economy is ok. Dollars are the major export of the unitied states (the US is certainly not manufacturing much for export) which allow all that import of shiny Chinese manufactured trinkets.
l4h
Discussion at #burma on EFNet
1) Most of those funds are in the form for treasury securities (T-Bills/T-notes/T-bonds). Those are promissory notes issued by the US government. Basically it says "We agree to pay you this much money by this date." Fair enough, but the value is only because the government honours that agreement. So far, US securities are one of the safest things you can buy. They have always made good and have plenty of systems in place to make sure that keeps happening. However, they could if they wanted just not honour the notes issued to China. All of a sudden that wealth is gone. China can't sell the notes if the US has made it clear they are worthless, they can't redeem them, the wealth just goes away. This would, of course, have severe consequences to the US government in terms of the ability to issue more note sin the future since people wouldn't trust them as much, but it can be done.
If the US did such a thing then China would see that as an act of War. At that moment in time people under a nationalist sentiment would most likley volunteer to work in the factories for basically free and everyone else join the military. That said I would really doubt China would up and revoke its current debt because it would rather have economic stability and most Chinese believe they can beat the US on the economic front rather a pure military one.
Even if the US did collapse economically, their are other people to sell products to like Europe, Russia, India, and South America. It wouldn't be pleasant for China but they would survive. They have after all lived through things like the Cultural Revolution.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
They might, but that doesn't really do them any good. The US and China, you might notice, are separated by a vast expanse of water. The US has an extremely large and capable navy, in particular attack subs that can sink troop transports, China does not. A large amount of soldiers and tanks sounds impressive, but for that to do any good you must be able to get them to the field of battle. That's hard when you are talking about the country who has the largest navy, most projection of forces, and best surveillance.
That leaves nuclear as the only viable option of attack. Here again you have a MAD situation. Yes, China could launch missiles at the US. However if they did, their entire country would be destroyed in response. Us policy on the matter is quite clear and the capabilities are unquestionable.
The US and China, you might notice, are separated by a vast expanse of water.
Oh, I really doubt China would invade the USA unless really provoked. However, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan are there most likley targets all withing fighter/short missile range of Chinese soil. Not to mention China does border Afghanistan.
If push really came to shove, Russia might have allied with China and the focal point would be controlling the Bering Strait to cross over into Alaska.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Sanctions only work against governments that give a rat's ass about their citizens. The elite never feel a thing, unless you ferret-out and deliberately target just those resources available only to the elite.
The ruling class of the 'People's Republic' of North Korea didn't even blink when most of their populace were starving; it was only when it became difficult to get access to luxury items for their personal use that they came back to the negotiating table.
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Regards;
. . . for this sort of thing.
In any army, just like in any populace, you have the good, the bad, and the ugly. Distill-out the baddest of the bad, concentrate them into a single military unit ruled with an iron hand, and you have a Sondergruppe, or 'special group,' which you use for those jobs the regular army Joes would flat-out rebel over if ordered to do.
Sondergruppen have been around for quite awhile; they ran the death camps for the Nazis, cleaned-up Tiananmen Square for the Red Chinese, and are now deployed in Rangoon. The fact that the 66th, a regular army unit, is involved at all is an indicator that the Sondergruppen may be stretched too thin to handle the problem by themselves. A horrible idea, to supplement Sondergruppen with normal troops; regulars would sooner gun them down than have anything to do with that sort.
If they are, however, and if this military rebellion spreads, we could soon be looking at a full-blown civil war in Burma.
P.S.: Unless they're sophisticated enough to employ troposcatter or other techniques to mask their transmission site, any ham that keyed-up would either be incredibly stupid, or incredibly brave. Either way, they wouldn't live long if the junta took a dislike to them.
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Regards;
I take it you didn't bother to research the capabilities and limitations of spysats before you started your rant?
If you wish to make a valid point in the future, may I suggest you at least try to have at least a passing familiarity with the topic? And by that, I mean more than just sitting in a theater, watching some silly piece of Hollywood tripe.
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Regards;
There was plenty of the same thing happening in Cambodia not-all that long ago, and not-all that far away, either.
They may be indeed be jumping to conclusions, but after the monstrosities of the Khmer Rouge http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/Khymer+Rouge, perhaps they're a bit jumpy.
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Regards;
Think Somalia. Just before the old despot fell, he opened the armories to any yahoo who came shuffling in and parroted the right slogans.
Flooding Burma with uncontrolled military hardware would very likely produce the same result.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE3DE163DF93AA35751C1A964958260&n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FF%2FFirearms
Regards;
I am wondering why human rights groups do not use UAV's to try and monitor abuses. They are small and could be launched anonymously from bordering countries.
They could even be inexpensive enough to not bother with recovery. This could make it more difficult for authorities to trace the aircraft back to the launch site or originating country.
If you are good /. hack the official sites linked below
http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/09/29/hackers-unite-for-burmese-freedom/
Here's your chance to make a change
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well... If they are taking pictures for the 'public' to keep up on the ongoings, where are the pictures? Or is this some way for these satellite image companies to advertise the service?
Jeruvy