Odds and ends

[nancylebov]

A disquieting animation found by theweaselking.

A button slogan idea: You can do what you please, but you aren't entitled to have it work out how you want.

And polish up your crystal balls-- do you think the current government in Burma will fall as a result of how they're mishandling their disaster? I hope so, but I don't know enough about Burma to have a real opinion.

Comments

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

An even bigger question is whether there would be any person or group remaining who is *capable* of running the country after > 40 years of a tyranny that systematically exterminated any possible opposition.

Alas, the most likely most likely result of a coup or collapse would be to simply transfer power from one general and/or his cabal to another.

[zenlizard]

Well, afer centuries of the Ottoman tradition of keeping rivals deliberately incompetant and ignorant, when they were allowed to live at all, Turkey managed to work things out. The process wans't necessarily pretty, mind you.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

"You control your actions, not your outcomes"?
"Actions: controllable. Outcomes: not."
Hmm. Still not quite right.

I'd be interested to see the pithy version, for sure...

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

"You control your choices, but not the consequences"?

Burma

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Pause to check male life expectancy at birth (one indicator of how stable a country is likely to be.)

My guess: It won't make the government fall, but will hasten its fall -- which I expect within about ten years.

For one thing, their responses to outside groups makes them look weak. And that's going to offend people who approve of dictatorship.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between bad and worse, and the new batch might take a lesson from what happened to the previous rulers.

Re: Burma

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Interesting about male life expectancy at birth-- what are you expecting for Russia?

Re: Burma

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

The easy part: It's not going to become a superpower again anytime soon.

I expect the Russian Federation to lose more territory. And to have rather less control of territory which will still be officially within its borders.

Fifty years from now, most of what is currently the Russian Federation will be part of the European Union (or whatever it's called by then.)

Re: Burma

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

A while ago, I heard about Chinese people just moving into Siberia.