The World Is Wearing Red

As you may have noticed, the peaceful protest in Burma has rather captured my attention. Although I would love to fly to Bangkok and sneak over the Burmese border to join in, I figure that's not entirely practical. So instead I decided to make a website to consolidate info on all the various demonstrations and protests that are going on around the world in solidarity with the Burmese people and their struggle for democracy. It's pretty basic, but I think it works. The address is:

http://WorldIsWearingRed.blogspot.com


Go check it out if you have a minute. Use the archives on the right hand side to see media from various cities around the world.

Burmese Solidarity in Oslo - videos

Burmese Solidarity in Oslo

I attended the Burma Solidarity Rally at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo yesterday. I was surprised to learn that there is a large Burmese community in Oslo! In fact, a group called the Democratic Voice of Burma is based out of Oslo. They produce pro-democracy media (TV, radio, print, etc.) and beam it into Burma through various methods. Anyhow, I'm uploading some videos to YouTube, but here are some pictures to tide you over.

Japanese Reporter Shot in Burma

If you have been following the news, you've probably heard that a Japanese reporter has been shot and killed in Burma. The following YouTube video is from a Japanese news report, showing Nagai Kenji being shot. I post this not out of some morbid fascination, but rather to highlight that ACTUAL LIVES are being TAKEN AWAY by the Burmese military.

It is absolutely wrong on the most basic level. There is a worldwide campaign today to wear a red shirt in solidarity with the Burmese people and their struggle. I'm also attending a rally outside the Nobel Peace Centre where there will be speeches from the former Prime Minister of Norway, a Burmese monk, a Bishop of the Norwegian church and others. I will post pictures when I return.

Culture Clash

Ha! Check this out:



(Link is here for those who can't see it)

News From Myanmar

Sad today to hear that the military has started to violently crackdown on the monks protesting in Burma. With the media being so tightly controlled by the ruling military, it's hard to know exactly what's going on. However! I did discover something extremely interesting! This article on the BBC talks about how dissidents within Burma are uploading photos, videos and information to bloggers living in the West. Although less than 1% of the Burmese population has internet access, this still helps to show the rest of the world how the military junta is treating its people. The article explains how the internet is becoming a useful tool for organizing the resistance. Man, sometimes I hate technology, but other days I just love it!

Anyways, check out this dude's blog - there's a lot of Burmese text on it (which may come up as question marks if your computer doesn't have the language installed) but it's still cool to see pictures and videos from inside the country.

10 Degrees and Cloudy

Before I write shallow, narcissistic stuff about my own life, I would first like to draw your attention to this story. I think that it is incredibly exciting and has the potential for a non-violent revolution - of course there is also the potential that the military will turn it into a bloodbath and that would be horrible. Nevertheless, I feel like this is an excellent example of religion being put to good use. Religion often gets blamed as being the cause of every war in the world (and perhaps, rightly so) but it seems to me that the folks who point this out tend to neglect the positive contributions of religion and religious people to society. For those of us who pray, let's remember Myanmar and its buddhist monks and nuns.



All right, so you may or may not have noticed that I tarted my blog up a bit. The old template was broken so I migrated to the new one with a fancy archival process. Looking through the archives I noticed that it is nearly the end of the year and I don't even have 1/3 as many posts as I did in 2006. I think that is due to several reasons. The first being that I spent most of 2007 in Canada, which I find less stimulating and less conducive to blog-post-coming-up-withness. I believe also, as Matt pointed out, Facebook has contributed to a general decline in the world of casual bloggers. After all, it's a lot easier to change your status update (one line) and upload a bunch of photos from your camera (automated process) than it is to actually sit down and come up with something to say. However, I am not content to let my blog die. I have never felt obligated to post (nor would I want to) but there are still times in which it is the better suited medium. So having said that, I will try to be more intentional in sharing my life and thoughts here in the future.


What am I up to then? The truth is, not a heck of a lot. I have had lots of visitors the past little while (both couchsurfers and dear friends) and while it has been nice to see them, it is also going to be nice to have some time on my own again. School is, well, I'm not sure - I've kinda been neglecting it with my visitors, so it's important to focus on that again for the next little while. I'm also hoping to move into a room in a flat in the city centre, but that hasn't been finalized yet, so more on it later. I'm slowly adjusting to the Norwegian lifestyle, and hopefully even more so if I move in with this bunch of Norwegians. Oh! Speaking of whom, I have another Norwegian fashion update!

For some reason, clothing from UCLA is really popular here. One of my female norwegian friends told me that they even sell it in clothing stores alongside other popular brands. She also believes that a lot of young norwegian girls don't even know where it's from since they refer to it as 'ook-lah' (which is how it would be pronounced if it was a Norwegian word). Ha!

PS: For the Facebook-less, here are pictures from Oslo and Fredrikstad.

You and me both, buddy

Le Sigh

This is entirely unacceptable and yet it appears as if no one can do anything about it.

To put it into perspective: there have been 10 times more innocent people killed in Iraq since the US invaded than were killed in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. How much blood is enough?