Friday

Ecuador, Myanmar, drugs.

Music: Speedy J – “Ginger”; Pizzy Elliot – “Could You Be Loved” (Mungolian Jetset Remix)

Ecuador ups oil ante

Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa says his government will take almost all the extra money being generated by the high price of oil in his country.

Ecuador currently takes 20-50% percent of so-called windfall profits, which are sometimes defined as however much more than $40 a barrel of oil costs. In the president’s proposal, the government would take 99% of this top slice.

Mr Correa’s party won a large majority of parliamentary seats last Sunday.

• BBC: Ecuador issues foreign oil decree
• Reuters: Ecuador’s Correa outflanks foes in popular assembly
• Christian Science Monitor: As oil profits soar, scrutiny rises

US meets with Myanmar regime

A US ambassador met today with a representative of Myanmar’s military government. Shari Villarosa, the top-ranking American diplomat to the region, travelled to the remote jungle redoubt of Naypitaw, where the dictatorship that rules Myanmar (formerly Burma) has anchored itself.

Ms Villarosa has frequently expressed criticisms of the brutal and inept tactics of the ruling junta, and was expected to urge the regime to stop the brutal crackdown against demonstrators that has left dozens dead and thousands arrested in secret camps around the country.

The junta’s leader, General Than Shwe, said yesterday he will meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for more than a decade. His conditions for the talks, however, include Aung’s willingness to stop leading the opposition and to stop calling for international sanctions against the military regime.

The current talks and negotiations come after the largest protests in Myanmar since the junta assumed power in 1988. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets, led by students, civilians and Buddhist monks. The government waited several days before initiating a string of violent reprisals, including raiding Buddhist monasteries, mass arrests, and shootings.

• International Herald Tribune: Top U.S. envoy meets with Myanmar junta official
• Voice of America: Burmese Military’s Offer to Meet Opposition Leader Questioned
• Al-Jazeera: General ‘willing to meet Suu Kyi’

Wednesday

North Korea, Iraq, and Myanmar.

Roundup will be available as a podcast soon.

US outsourced Blackwater report to… Blackwater

American military contractors wrote the initial government report about their own behavior.

Blackwater, a private security firm, killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in an incident last month. The initial two-page report was written by a Blackwater employee on US State Department stationery. It did not mention the civilian deaths.

A full-scale investigation has now been launched by the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

• AP: Blackwater legal questions and answers
• CNN: Blackwater contractor wrote government report on incident
• New York Times: From Errand to Fatal Shot to Hail of Fire to 17 Deaths
• New York Times: Report Says Firm Sought to Cover Up Iraq Shootings
• Seattle Times: Founder defends Blackwater firm

More renters, more jobs?

Countries with the fewest homeowners have the shortest unemployment lines, and vice-versa, says a member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee.

In a speech in London last night, Professor David Blanchflower said that the three European countries with the highest rates of home ownership in the 1990s — Ireland, Spain and Finland — also led Europe in unemployment, around 20% in each case.

And conversely, Switzerland currently has the lowest rate of home ownership in Europe and the lowest amount of unemployment.

Blanchflower speculated that home ownership reduces labor mobility because owners find it more costly to move where the jobs are.

• Guardian: Reducing home ownership cuts unemployment
• Dartmouth University: David G. Blanchflower

Myanmar’s Internet link broken

The main public Internet link between Myanmar (also known as Burma) and the outside world is down. An official with Myanmar Post and Telecoms blames a damaged cable under the sea.

Embassy internet connections, however, remain viable.

The country’s loss of Internet connectivity came this morning amid an intensifying repression against pro-democracy protestors. Government soldiers have killed at least nine and have raided and looted Buddhist monastaries.

Buddhist monks led vast street demonstrations against the ruling junta over the past two weeks, but laypeople have begun to take over after hundreds of monks were beaten and arrested.

The mood of the protests has grown less peaceful as the monks’ presence has dwindled.

• Agence France-Presse: Myanmar’s main Internet link not working: official
• The Register: Note to despots: You can’t kill the internet
• Roundup: Complete coverage

Myanmar troops kill nine

Nine people have been killed in Yangon by government soldiers, according to Myanmar’s state-controlled television station. The dead include eight pro-democracy protestors and a Japanese cameraman.

The station says 11 demonstrators and 31 soldiers have been injured.

Buddhist monks have led hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protestors in street demonstrations over the past 10 days.

Following government raids on Buddhist monasteries, however, the protests are increasingly led by laymen.

• BBC: Nine killed in Burmese crackdown
• Mizzima News: Realtime updates from Yangon
• Roundup: Complete coverage

China, Russia, undermine UN condemnation of crackdown

China and Russia have blocked a UN security council effort to condemn the violent repression of protestors in Myanmar (also known as Burma).

Wang Guangya, the Chinese ambassador to the UN, said that Myanmar’s problems are its own, and that a UN statement of condemnation would not be useful.

Any recognition by the security council that the violence in Myanmar could have repercussions beyond its borders could lead to severe measures being taken by the UN against its military dictatorship.

Myanmar is effectively a client state of China, which has poured billions of dollars into the country in the form of arms, naval installations and infrastructure since the current government came to power in a 1988 coup.

Russia also has investments in Myanmar. It signed a deal in May to build a nuclear reactor there.

India, Myanmar’s other big neighbor and trading partner, was conspicuously silent until yesterday, when it released a carefully worded statement saying that it hopes for a peaceful, stable and prosperous Myanmar.

These latest pro-democracy demonstrations began last month over fuel prices, but they have grown to express a more general dissatisfaction with the government. Tens of thousands of protestors, led by Buddhist monks, marched again today in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city.

At least six protestors were killed by the government yesterday, and hundreds of monks and civilians have been arrested and beaten since the protests began.

• Times Online: Htein Win’s photographs
• Ko Htike: Ko Htike’s photographs
• Canadian Press: Tens of thousands defy Myanmar junta despite violent crackdown on protesters
• Rediff: Myanmar: India and China’s dilemma
• Bloomberg: China, Russia Block Bid for UN to Condemn Myanmar
• New Scientist: Russia to build nuclear reactor in Myanmar

Israeli jets kill two in Gaza

Israeli air strikes killed two Palestinian soldiers in Gaza during the night. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it was targeting rocket-launching facilities near Beit Hanoun, a town in the extreme northeast of the Gaza strip.

Palestinians in Gaza have sent 11 rockets into Israel since yesterday, with no reported casualties. Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak says that Israel is conducting an extensive operation to stop them.

The IDF has killed 11 Palestinians in Gaza over the past 24 hours and more than 20 have been wounded. It’s unclear what proportion of those killed are civilians.

Gaza is almost completely cut off from the relatively more prosperous West Bank, where the majority of Palestinians live.

Yesterday, thousands of Gazans attended the funeral of Abdel Shafi, co-founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and lead negotiator at the Madrid peace talks with Israel in 1991. Both major Palestinian political groups, Hamas and Fateh, attended.

• Agence France-Presse: Israel kills 11 Palestinians in Gaza in less than 24 hours
• The Independent: Barak says Israel is ‘close’ to Gaza operation
• BBC: PLO veteran mourned in Gaza Strip