To the FutureChina Taps into Burma's Nickel Resources
William Boot reported in the Irrawaddy that Chinese companies would extract nickel in the Mandalay region.
The military government has signed an agreement to allow the China Non-Ferrous Metal Group to develop mines in the Mandalay region to extract a massive 100,000 tonnes-plus per year.
Burma's Ministry of Mines claims that the project will provide jobs for more than 1,000 Burmese, but observers note that China will be the main beneficiary.
"It's reasonable to say that Burma is being systematically plundered for its natural wealth by its big neighbors, China, India and Thailand," said one analyst with an economic development agency in Thailand, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.
It's just sad that Burma, as always, will keep selling raw materials because it lacks human resource, technology and facilities to make refined products.
Chinese milk powder in Burma
Htin Kyaw reported in the Myanmar Times last year that Chinese brands dominated milk powder market in Burma. I am sure that is still true now.
The latest headlines in China and beyond are baby milk powder produced by 22 Chinese companies has been tainted with melamine, a toxic chemical. Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is included in the list of countries where the products have been exported according to the following report from AFP.
Chinese officials have found 22 companies produced baby milk tainted with a toxic chemical, state media said Tuesday, in a dramatic escalation of a scandal that has left two infants dead.
Milk powder contaminated with a chemical used to make plastics has sickened more than 1,200 infants in a health scare that erupted last week and prompted a nationwide investigation into the extent of the problem.
The contamination was originally thought contained to the Sanlu brand, with the company apologising on Monday for the scandal.
The 22 companies mentioned by CCTV included Torador Dairy Industry, a China-Australia joint venture in the northern city of Tianjian. Calls to Torador on Tuesday evening went unanswered.
They also included Guangdong Yashili Group, the report said, which exports its products to Bangladesh, Myanmar and Yemen.
Dictionaries
August went past so fast for me working with four dictionaries. Sigh..... Finally, here they are:
Burmese dictionary
Burmese dictionary is mainly based on the Myanmar-English dictionary published in 1993 by the Myanmar Language Commission and republished in 1996 by Dunwoody Press (ISBN 1-881265-47-1)
Mon dictionary
Mon dictionary is based on the Dictionary of Modern Spoken Mon by H.L. Shorto (1962, Oxford University Press)
Shan dictionary
Shan dictionary is based on the Shan-English dictionary by Sao Tern Moeng (ISBN 0-931745-92-6)
Karen dictionary
Karen dictionary is based on the Drum Karen-English Student dictionary published by the Drum Publication Group in 2008.
If you do use them and find any errors or mistakes, please let me know.
Too little, too late
First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me. by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
Parents Grief Turns to Rage at Chinese Officials
From New York Times:
Bereaved parents whose children were crushed to death in their classrooms during the earthquake in Sichuan Province have turned mourning ceremonies into protests in recent days, forcing officials to address growing political repercussions over shoddy construction of public schools.
The crowd grew more agitated. Some parents said local officials had known for years that the school was unsafe but refused to take action. Others recalled that two hours passed before rescue workers showed up; even then, they stopped working at 10 p.m. on the night of the earthquake and did not resume the search until 9 a.m. the next day.
The Chinese took to the streets now that it was their children who were the victims of the corrupted government system. When the Tibetans protested against the central communist regime, the Chiense nationalists were indifferent to them.
The authorities in Beijing appear to recognize the delicacy of the issue. On Monday, a spokesman for the Education Ministry, Wang Xuming, promised a reassessment of school buildings in quake zones, adding that those responsible for cutting corners on school construction would be severely punished.
My only comment for the Chinese is "too little, too late."
Burmese-English dictionary
I have been busy working with the visual input system for our dictionaries. Check out the beta version for Burmese.
Go to http://burmese.sealang.net
Click on the keyboard icon (on your left panel) as shown in the following picture.
Click on the input characters so you can see the prediction. Please wait for a fraction of a second (because of the server delay) after you click on the characters. You will see the predicted Burmese words based on the dictionary order as in the following picture.
Warning about fonts
- If you use Zawgyi font, you won't see the correct rendering of some characters, especially subscript forms. Zawgyi is incompatible with the Unicode standard.
- Our dictionary uses the old Unicode standard with UTN #11 (the documentations are listed below)
- Representing Myanmar In Unicode, Details and Examples by Martin Hosken and Maung Tun Tun Lwin
- Myanmar Unicode Standard
- The old unicode standard was implemented in some fonts, such as Padauk, Myanmar1 and MyMyanmar. Get MyMyanmar here.
Illegal Burmese Labor Fuels Thailand Economy by William Boot
The deaths of more than 50 Burmese migrants last week in a sealed container truck transporting them to illicit jobs in southern Thailand starkly illustrates the growing reliance Thailand places on unofficial labor to help run its economy.
The Thai authorities acknowledge that there may be 1 million Burmese migrant workers living in Thailand, yet Thailands Migrant Assistance Program recently recorded that only 367,834 were registered with work permits in 2007.
Various NGOs campaigning for the rights of abused minorities and refugees say the number of illegal Burmese in Thailand is closer to 1.5 million. Many of them are children.
The Migrant Worker Group, a coalition of NGOs pressing for human rights, documents many instances of abuse by employers.
The MWG estimates that illegal Burmese laborers, especially in the booming construction industry, are paid up to 50 percent less than Thai unskilled labor and have no rights.
Migrant workers are very badly regarded and very badly treated by Thai society, wrote academic and former Thai Senator Jon Ungphakorn in the Bangkok Post. Yet it is hard to imagine how our economy would manage without them.
Ungphakorn says that since illegal laborers are not taking jobs away from Thais they should all be given legal status and employment rights.
Source:
Boot, W. (2008, April 19). Weekly Business Roundup. The Irrawaddy. Retrieved April 23, 2008 from http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=11461&page=1
A boom at the border By William Sparrow
I went to a "mom and pop" store for cigarettes. A very young woman was handling the transaction; thin, long hair, long legs, pretty face with no makeup. I wondered if she was 18.
As she turned and descended into the dark shop, an elderly women, presumably a relative, emerged from the shadows. She lunged from her seat, sensing opportunity. "You want she?" the woman asked, meaning "her" - the young woman.
I was shocked and caught off-guard and couldn't respond. In the silence, the elder woman continued "You want daughter? You take," she said, pointing. "Have hotel. Fifteen dollar."
"No," I said firmly. With that, the old woman scowled and slunk back to her seat.
The shop girl never met my eyes as she handed over the cigarettes. Still, I perceived a small smile.
A sex slave working as a shop girl; a young woman being sold by her own mother. It was a sad situation that I won't soon forget. Sadly, scenes like this will likely continue until the Myanmar government can improve the lives of its 55 million people. I was overcome by this realization as I settled the bill in that tiny shop on the Myanmar-Thai border.
As I turned to leave, I heard the shop girl whisper "thank you".
Read more at Asia Times
Politicizing Olympics
The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
George Orwell said those words in his 1946 essay "Why I write."
Pro-Chinese governments, including Burma, and the Chinese government have been saying that olympics should not be politicized.
[Chinese] Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang says the Beijing Olympics is a grand event both for China and for the whole world, and that the Games should not be politicized.
The statement by Qin Gang is in itself a political one, describing a "grand event" showcasing the "rich and powerful" China. Olympics have long been used by various governments to promote their ideology. Hitler used the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany as a tool to promote Nazi ideology by allowing only members of the "Aryan race" to compete for Germany.
Looking as far back as ancient Olympics events, winning athletes were heroes who put their home towns on the map. Winning medals at the Olympics signify the wealth and power of a town. A young Athenian nobleman used the number of his entries in chariot-race in the Olympics to defend his political reputation. [From Tufts]
Therefore, as far as I am concerned, olympics is a sporting as well as political event. As much as the Chinese government has the right to make the "grand" event successful, activists around the world should also have the right to express their anger towards the Chinese government and its policy.
This is a business
"This is a business! Don't call me again!" said the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Hinthada Township before hanging up the phone abruptly.
http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=11367
One of the business owners responded to a phone call from the Irrawaddy magazine regarding the survery about the referendum.
I want to quote Lord Byron:
Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
Psalm 137
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?
China importing cheap and unsafe materials to Burma?
Most of the Adidas and Nike shoes I bought in the US were made in China. The quality was good, at least, because of the quality control imposed by the US government.
However, the products imported to Burma from China are dirt-cheap. There is also no quality control on both sides of the border. People with low income needs cheap and affordable materials.
The following quotes are from Fires Continue to Plague Mandalay.
A Burmese engineer now working in Singapore explained that the frequent occurrence of fires in Burma is largely due to the poor quality of materials used in the country.
There is no quality control by authorities in Burma, and most of the electrical materials that Burmese people use are imported from China. These are very cheap and don't last very long, he said.
No Olympics
Think global, act local.
Logo from http://uscampaignforburma.org/
Injured Burmese from Mae Sot bomb blast detained and sent back to Burma
Eleven persons who were injured in a blast apparently caused by some kind of homemade bomb at the Mae Sot dump on Thailands border were themselves detained and then sent back to Burma on February 26 because they didnt have ID cards.
Read more at Ratchasima
