by Alex Evans | Oct 9, 2007 | Influence and networks, South Asia
At ForeignPolicy.com, Blake’s been doing some research into the standard media assumption that China is Burma’s biggest trading partner. While China is indeed the main provider of Burma’s imports, it turns out that it’s the destination for just 5.3 per cent of the exports coming out of Burma. So what’s the number one export destination? Thailand – for no less than 49 per cent of Burmese exports. Blake concludes:
Bottom line: Be very skeptical when reading accounts of how China, or any country, can put meaningful pressure on the junta.
by Alex Evans | Oct 9, 2007 | Conflict and security
Gideon Rachman in the FT is concerned:
In a recent book John Mueller, an American academic, notes that the number of his fellow-countrymen killed by terrorists since 1960 “is about the same as the number killed over the same period by accident-causing deer”.
I was upset when I read this. Hitherto, I have always rather enjoyed watching the deer in Richmond Park in London. But now I find myself looking at them with suspicion and resentment. Of course, we must be careful not to generalise about deer. Most of them live peaceful lives. But surely it is foolish to blind ourselves to the murderous threat posed by a small, but fanatical, minority of the deer community? A vicious ideology has lodged itself between their antlers. They seem to be willing to kill and die in pursuit of a deadly fantasy – returning to a golden age when deer controlled the forests of medieval Europe.
