(A preemptive disclaimer about the weird shifts in size in this post -- You are not in fact viewing this through a magnifying glass, but if you were to, and the glass were to rove around like a rabid mouse, this is roughly how it might look. Actually, not really. But you never know.)

-A divisional court in Rangoon rejects Oct. 2 Aung San Suu Kyi's appeal.

-The US announces its long-awaited policy shift on Sept 29, including an increase in humanitarian assistance and its first detailed talks with Burmese authorities. This takes effect immediately -- a day later, in New York, Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs meets with U Thaung, Minister of techonology, science and labour. Then he goes to Washington on the 30th to report on the State Department's new thinking in a Senate hearing, held by Jim Webb. He specifies that engagement with the junta would "supplement" rather than "replace sanctions."*

-Suu Kyi is reported to accept the US shift.

-Chinese authorities seek damages from the junta but block Myanmar from appearing on this month's UN Security Council agenda. Larry Jagan writes of a major flurry of Sino-Burmese diplomatic nattering, and something of a bust-up.

-Talks between the junta and the Kachin Independence Organization are in a stand-off.

-And another American finds his way into Insein prison.

It's been a heady few weeks, eh?

Pardon the long pause, fair readers. No undue respect intended. Still, all the better to accumulate in a single package a series of fits and starts on Planet Burma-- geostrategic, microscopic -- propelling us centimeters forward in a country that some have thought frozen by a magic spell of military whimsy.

About that assumption, I'd beg to differ. True the scene in Rangoon presents itself to the naked eye as little different, doubtless, to months, years previous (dishes and cell phones aside). But as my favorite poet once put it,

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Admittedly, the subject, as was John Donne's wont, was love, deep and profound and omnipresent between two parting paramours.

In Burma, deep forces of change -- geostrategic, microscopic -- are rooted in two recent events: the killing of monks in the protests of Aug-Sept. 2007, and, less than a year later, the empowerment of the people when their government hopelessly bungled the delivery of relief to victims of Tropical Cyclone Nargis.

*This was a colorful affair. Camera crews, mainly Japanese, buzzing outside the wooden doors. Inside, standing room only. The seated crowd were one-third red -- monks, and another third neon-yellow -- unidentified white folk, all stoney faced and wearing phosphorescent T-shirts that read "Burma is NOT Vietnam."

Lucky someone thought to hang a map of Asia behind Webb in case any of us were confused.

The yellow-wearers, it turns out, were conscripts of the US Campaign for Burma. At the end of the hearing, I asked a blonde why we should run the risk of comparing.

"Webb thinks they're the same," she answered. "He wanted to lift sanctions on Vietnam." And now Burma.

Ah. Didn't the hearing sway her a little, I ventured? Wasn't there a suggestion, I asked, of a rethink in policy grounded in historical and socio-economic circumstances rather than a mere cut and paste from Vietnam? To boot, at three hours long, the hearing consisted of complex, nuanced presentations from Campbell and three seasoned academics on Burma -- David Steinberg, Thant Myint U and David Williams. Webb's lengthy questioning to the panelists implied that he was, well, listening.

Less so the blonde. "No," she answered. And out she stomped.

But then perhaps the conscripts to the cause, to the cause of Burma viewed from far far far away where it looks all contrasty in black and white, well perhaps they're a bit like Rangoon at first glance: stagnant, frozen in routine. Stuck.