for precisely these reasons:
Burma, a former British colony, was once the rice-bowl of South-East Asia, but in 1962 a bunch of generals took over with a misty-eyed plan to impose on their 50 million people the "Burmese Way to Socialism".
Their brand of politics was of the kind still distressingly popular at RMIT and Victoria University, and produced exactly the misery it's inflicted from Cuba to Russia.
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Two days before Cyclone Nargis hit, India's Meteorological Department warned the junta's minions it was coming, and where.
But Burma's state-owned media, one of the crudest propaganda outfits I've seen, issued no mass alerts. Indeed, illegal Voice of America broadcasts probably did more to warn Burma's civilians to take shelter than did Burma's own radio station
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Even now, the junta is killing people with its paranoia. Disaster assessment teams and helicopters from the United States have been blocked from coming in to prepare a huge rescue, and foreign aid teams not already in-country had their applications for visas stalled and aid shipments stopped.
Foreign journalists, whose reports would help raise appeal money, have been banned.
The UN is now "intensely" negotiating with the junta to let in aid workers and ease customs regulations on aid - literally begging the junta to let the world save its people.
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Why hand cash to thieves? I've seen for myself, on one of my trips to Burma, military heavies in shades openly demand bribes from Australian aid workers who were giving blankets to disaster victims.
In Mandalay, I saw a Red Cross ambulance, given by Japan, refitted for use as a taxi for military officials. The junta even today charges import duty on foreign donations.
With such tyrants in charge, the toll from Friday's cyclone - already horrific - can only keep rising.
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Lots of people are dead, and lots more will die because they're 'governed' by a bunch of socialist idiots who care more about power- theirs- than lives. Which leads to this:
So slow has the junta been to let in help, that French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, founder of aid group Medicins Sans Frontieres, suggested the UN Security Council adopt a resolution allowing aid to be flown into the country by force. China, naturally, is against such interference in the affairs of its "friend".
You can discount China: even without their influence, can you imagine the UN- the people who helped bring about the bloodbath in Rwanda, and would rather see people murdered, raped and enslaved in Sudan than actually do anything(and shits bricks at the very idea of arming the people being killed)- actually using force in Burma?
Fat friggin' chance. Among other things, the head of the UN is too busy trying to silence speech that might upset muslims(doesn't seem to mind interefering there) to do anything other than give speeches and ask for money.
Please note at the first of the article they go to town on the Goreacle:
THE vultures are circling over Burma's dead. Hey, isn't that fat one Al Gore?
Sure is. And - flap, flap, plop - there he lands, the first to go picking over carcasses for scraps to feed his great global warming scare campaign.
Found thanks to Sondra.
1 comment:
I believe in helping folks as much as the next guy, but you can't help anybody by starting a war. If they don't want our help lets give it to someone who does. And maybe sent those poor subjects some Springfields.
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