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UPDATE:

An eyewitness from inside Burma reports that injured protesters are being taken to the Yay Way cemetery outside of Rangoon, and burned alive in an effort to destroy the evidence of the genocide occurring.

This shocking report comes only hours after news that dozens of high school students were shot and beaten to death.

Regardless, the junta continue to claim responsibility for only 9 deaths. They have cut off internet and telephone connections to the country almost entirely, to shield their horrific actions from world scrutiny.

This CAN NOT continue. We MUST support the people of Burma in their quest for not only democracy, but BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS.

The most comprehensive source for updates on demonstrations, petitions and email campaigns is the Facebook group “Support the Monks’ Protest in Burma“, which now has over 170,000 members.

via:: Ko Htike’s Prosaic Collection

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The military regime in control of Myanmar (Burma) opened fire today on peaceful protesters led by Buddhist monks, killing 9 innocent civilians.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The military junta has been responsible for massacring thousands since it seized control of the country over forty years ago. They have also denied Aung San Suu Kyi her right to govern the country, since her election in 1990.

Equally guilty in the conflict is China, the biggest supplier of weapons to the Myanmar military. China refuses to intervene and has thwarted efforts by the UN security council to impose sanctions on the country. In fact, China’s Foreign Ministry said only that they hope “the situation there [in Myanmar] does not… get complicated.”

Are nine dead people not enough to qualify as ‘complicated’? Were the thousands killed in 1988 not enough? How many bodies need to be stacked up before we put a stop to it?

In recent weeks images and videos smuggled out of the country by email have been one of the main sources of news of the protests, as Western journalists are not permitted into the country. So it’s reasonable to assume that the only news getting back into Myanmar is from the internet as well.

I know this is usually a climate change blog, but what good is it to save the future of the planet if I’m not also concerned with its people in the present. So here’s the challenge:

Write about it. Post the news on your own blog and on every forum you know of.

Comment about it. Leave a response here. Leave a response anywhere it’s talked about.

Digg it. Make the issue jump to the front page of Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsvine, wherever. Just make sure it gets seen.

Make today Blog Action Day for Burma.

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Since 1993, Littlearth has been injecting recycled materials into the fashion scene, and they’ve been doing it with huge success.

Their uberchic handbags, belts and other accessories, made from recycled license plates, tire rubber and bottle caps have spread like green-hot wildfire across the United States and out to Canada and Europe.

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The UN dedicated an entire day yesterday to Climate Change talks prior to its General Assembly’s Annual Debate in New York. The world’s leaders took the opportunity to say absolutely nothing new.

My own Prime Minister for instance, Mr Harper, continued his record of telling us only that Kyoto won’t work, rather than telling us what will. He claimed that Canada is taking a balanced approach to acting about climate change. We Canadians would call it a non-approach, as it seems to be based on stalling any real action by blaming the previous government for their lack of action.

Mr Harper said that our priority must be to “find cleaner and more efficient ways to convert hydrocarbons into energy.” But he continues to back away from actually implementing these technologies which are readily available. At a talk I attended recently by Dr. David Keith, a world expert on the topic of Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Dr. Keith expressed his frustration with the Harper administration for repeatedly making promises of action that he never keeps.

Furthermore, shortly after the UN meeting, the Prime Minister announced that Canada will be joining the Asia Pacific Partnership, comprised of the six nations responsible for half of the world’s GHG emissions, and more than half of its coal production. I wonder which end of the equation will weigh more heavily in their plans? Aside from the fact that the partnership has no actual targets, their goal, as stated on their website, is to address the partnering nations’ increasing energy needs, air pollution, energy security, and GHG emissions intensities. In that order.

So it seems that Mr. Harper is taking his domestic strategy systematically disassembled any of the real (but admittedly few) climate change policies left to him by his predecessors in favour of legislation with no real targets or consequences, and repeating on the global scale. Well done.

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For the first time in tens of thousands of years, Siberia’s frozen land is undergoing a thaw.

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