Guess this country.

It’s army, under the command of the ruling regime, is engaging in a campaign of genocide against racial and religious minorities, often beheading, raping and torturing its victims, but it is not the Sudan.

Children as young as 12 are being forcefully recruited into this army, but this is not the Taliban in Afghanistan or “Saddam’s Lion Cubs” in Hussein’s Iraq.

The military regime is busily building bunkers in a strongpoint defence matrix, allegedly in anticipation of a US attack, but it is not Iran.

This country is removing any crosses or other Christian symbols from public spaces, bit it is not Algeria.

This country has the world’s largest narcotics-trafficking militia operating on its territory, but it is not Columbia.

This country has a health crisis worse than the poorest areas of Africa, with more children dying before age 5 in some areas, than the Congo, but it is not Afghanistan.

This country has recently agreed to allow Russia to share in exploitation of its oil fields, in exchange for weapons shipments, but it is not Venezuela.

This country, while shunned by the West, counts China as its main political and economic ally, but it is not North Korea.

While the world’s attention is focused on several noisy ideologically and religiously driven nutjob regimes, one old backyard hussler is slowly but surely losing touch with reality, seemingly by way of good old fashioned drug-induced psychosis. That twitchy little battler is Burma.

“The side road the soldiers have blocked off is 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of the city of Pyinmana in the central Burmese plains. The jungle stretches for more than 400 kilometers (249 miles), like some vast, green carpet, toward a line of jagged peaks on the distant horizon marking the Golden Triangle bordering Laos and Thailand. The only destination worth seeing in this rural stretch of Burma is its tropical rainforest research institute.

But Burma’s ruling generals recently declared the region a restricted military zone, making the trip to the institute off-limits to outsiders. The Junta is having its new capital built somewhere at the end of this 20-foot-wide highway. The central government’s officials were already required to move there last November.

..

Burma’s leadership apparently plans to barricade itself into its remote new capital, from which it expects to control the country in the future. The nearest major city, Mandalay, is a 250-kilometer (155-mile) journey away on a deeply potholed road, and the trip to Rangoon takes about eight hours. Naypyidaw, or “Royal Country,” is the name Than Shwe, the junta’s 73-year-old leader, has personally selected for his government’s secretive new headquarters. According to official instructions to be followed in the event of a foreign attack, “Naypyidaw is our war bunker, where we will wait, during an American attack, until the Chinese hurry to our aid.”

Sounds like a brilliant plan. Although, considering the pace of events in Iraq and throwing in some generous estimates for the actions against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Trans-dnestr my estimated date of invasion is somewhere around hmmm.. how does 2090 sound? By which date you won’t need to wait long for China to help, because you’ll be a part of it.

So what the hell is going here? Well, I did mention drug-induced psychosis, didn’t I?

“Beheadings by troops are common. So too are beatings, the use of forced labour and rape. Growing use of amphetamines among Burma’s 400,000-strong army is fuelling this violence.

A narcotics expert from the Australian National University who is based in Thailand, David Matheson, said researchers had concluded that many troops went into battle high on amphetamines. “When they come across dead Burmese soldiers, they find methamphetamine tablets on most of them if not all of them, particularly in the Shan state.”

The brutality of the attacks is evident in video footage, taken by members of the evangelical Christian missionary group the Free Burma Rangers, of the burning of villages. The video shows young men, armed with AK-47 rifles, setting fire to bamboo homes as residents flee in terror.”

Lets put two and 400,000 together here. “Most if not all” of the military is marching to the rhythm of an ICE binge, and its leadership is barricading itself away from the world in the middle of the jungle, declaring their new place of residence “Royal County”. Add the delusion and paranoia up with the erratic acts of violence, and this is obviously one hell of a tweak out. And it is sure to be followed by one hell of a come down, yet oddly enough “Royal County” just doesn’t sound like a rehab centre to me.

But I propose a solution. Send in the bicycles. That should keep them busy for at least a couple of decades. Heck, maybe after that we can arrange for them to sort through the world’s garbage for recycling, and get on top of that global warming biznit too. Hey, its far more likely to have an effect than another UN Resolution.