Burma Disappears the Cyclone
Can you "disappear" a huge natural disaster with the whole world watching? This is the experiment that the government of Burma now seems to be conducting. The generals evidently have two purposes in keeping the country virtually locked down - preventing the population from being exposed to direct contact with foreign aid workers, and keeping the world from hearing too much about its own criminal non-response to the horrible aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. (The latest: Burma seized the first aid shipments, but more are on the way.)
Totalitarian states disappear things as matter of course - people, crimes, and history itself. No one knows how many died in the North Korean famine of the 1990s, though some estimates put the figure as high as 3 million. It's hard to contemplate the horror of such events precisely because so much suffering and death occurred out of sight of the world, of history.
The combination of famine with brutal government oppression a la Kim Jong Il or Stalin, however, is a slow-moving, manmade catastrophe, easier to shield from outside eyes. A natural disaster creates a sense of global urgency. Even China in the last days of the Cultural Revolution managed to mobilize itself to respond to the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed at least 250,000 people (though it refused outside aid, and Qiang Qing put things in perspective by saying, "There were merely several hundred thousand deaths. So what? Denouncing Deng Xiaoping concerns 800 million people.")
The networked world makes it much harder to keep the lid on. Satellites see all. Giant natural disasters are prime material for 24-hour news operations. The constant gush of information ratchets up political pressure on nations and international organizations to act, and to strong-arm recalcitrant governments to do more. Journalists with satellite phones will sneak across borders. It's not clear this will help get more aid to millions of cyclone victims, but it can't hurt, and may make other autocrats think twice about how they respond to future disasters.
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New Orleans is disappearing as we speak even worse than during the storm.
Ray Nagin gets reelected and now they have A REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR
who is being considered for VP. N.O. needed a cleaning out but people
are actually going to reelect the party that oversaw that fiasco. They bought
out Nagin but that wasn't too difficult, in fact it was EASY.
Fascinationg, & thanks to Mr. McQuaid.
A micrososm of both the MSM & the American left.
Weeks ago, hysteria was rampant re: China's alledged mistreatments in Tibet. Protests, disruption of the Olympic torch, libs ranting & raving all over the world.
Here, we have basic genocide being committed right before everyone's eyes as the regime steals what supplies that are even "allowed" into the country.
Not a single peep from a kook nor a single hint of protest.
Kudos to John McQuaid & the HuffPo for at least mentioning it.
How did this article turn into a rant against the left? I guarantee you that outside of the US government, there are more left leaning organizations trying to help than right leaning. People are still trying to figure a way in, as opposed to idiots like you soliciting blame and ignorance.
Have you ever seen a "FREE BURMA" bumper sticker? Me neither. Now, is that because "liberals" don't care, or is it because the regime in Rangoon has kept the country so tightly closed?
Just like Burma disappears its poor. No wonder we are fringe of the Universe.
5/9/08
11:35pm
Portland, OR
When a government "disappears" a mere individual, I guess that is of no concern to anyone.
Now see, THIS is a country that WOULD have welcomed us with open arms, flowers and their daughters on a beds of flowers. No insurgency, no terrorists and an actual free country that would have been a great ally, BUT for some reason...o
Never mind. Let the repression, death and destruction continue, no oil here.
Au contraire LiberalBuzz.
There is lots of oil, and our glorious Chevron corporation controls most of it.
Chevron reaps obscene profits and is fully complicit with the numerous human rights abuses in Burma.
http://www
http://www
Unocal, the original US oil company which built the pipeline was so unconcerned with the Burmese people that they actually were sued for using slave labor. As they were guilty, they settled up out of court.
Bad optics so they sold to Chevron while Condi Rice was on the board.
In 1997 when the Clinton government wanted to put on a good show for liberals, it placed sanctions on Burma which hurt their people in terms of access to every day items, food, meds, etc.
But Democrats also serve our big oil masters, so Chevron got a bogus grandfathered exemption from the sanctions using the Unocal legacy.
I believe the Yadana pipeline was natural gas, not oil, yes? Anyway, lots of resources.
And since the age of of synthetics, the market value of all those rubber trees has plummeted. What's a county to do when there are so many fewer world resources to capture and exploit?
I'm told they have lots of heroin...b
Referring to a cyclone in Burma or Myanmar you ask: "Can you "disappear" a huge natural disaster with the whole world watching?"
Of course they can. Isn't that what the Bush administration did about Katrina?
You mean Bush's sending $130 billion to NO with a current population of 270,000; or roughly $480,000 for every man, woman & child?
Just curious.
Sorry Kemp, pledged dollars and actual dollars are two seperate items. How about no-bid contracts for Halliburton in NO where they went out of their way to hire illegals as opposed to hiring people who were actively seeking clean up work? You're posts need a tad more research instead of the typical troll talking points...
You have it exactly right. Every time I start to think abou the incredible lack of action by the Burmese military government, I stop dead in my tracks and remember that the pot has no right to
call the kettle black. We have the Bush Administration's initial failure to pay any attention to the Indonesian tsunami and we have its continuing failure to restore New Orleans and its people.
Wasn't Dennis Hastert's initial reaction to the NOLA disaster a recommendation to basically let the city rot? And it is.
The US commercial
I call them the commercial coalition because : they no longer subserve the Constitution of the US. Our de facto government is something else and the Constitutionalists have lost.
I think this whole "Call it Burma to express what assholes you think they are" is just plain silly.
Since when did 'disappear' become a transitive verb?
Since the Argentine junta started disappearing people? The action goes back much further, of course, but that's the first use of the verb I can remember.
What's with the Burma stuff? The country is Myanmar. Or are all of you working with maps that show Siam as well?
It is Burma. Burma. That regime is as illegitimate as they come, for forty bloody years. I'll call it Myanmar when Aung San Suu Kyi gets a chance to talk to the people who overwhelmingly elected her in the 1990's. She won and they put her under house arrest.
Burma, my ass. And I note the BBC still refers to the former capital (now in ruins) as Rangoon rather than Yangon. I despise dictators and Burma SHOULD be quite wealthy with its mineral resources, timber and agriculture. Poor because of kleptocratic asses with their boots on the masses.
Anyway, I was gratified to read on the BBC that the Buddhist monks and some Catholic nun orders were the only help available in organized group. No troops. No police. Just monks and nuns with saw and axes.
And Tibet is no more a part of China than the Philippines are part of the United States.
epu
Hi-In reply to you and sean up above, the reason to still call the country Burma is not just how we feel about it. Myanmar means "land of the Burmans" in the Burmese language. It was a way to slap in the face the 137 other ethnic groups which make up the 40 percent of the population that is not Burman, nor necessarily Bhuddist.. This includes everybody from the well-known Karen and Kachin who are Christians to the Muslim Rohingas in the west by the Bangladesh border, and to many groups such as some Wa who are animist.
We in the "civilized" world can't fathom why a nation's leaders would let its people plotz, and keep pesky meddlers from doing anything about it. We're appalled by the insensitivity.
Well, why is this such a mystery? Not every government derives its power from the people, yada yada. Not every government exists to provide for the social good of its citizens.
Some of them could care less. Because that's not what these folks are in the government business for. Amassing personal wealth for themselves and their cronies, maybe... but "the people" are only useful when they produce quietly and don't require high maintenance. Otherwise, like any cockroaches, they must be swept away efficiently.
I know one government of a major, well-known nation, about whom it was said it deliberately and radically let a natural disaster destroy the underclass of a internatio
I see no difference between that, and Myanmar. But I do see a trend. And that's what happens when the world's role model becomes the world's largest banana republic.
Your desire to reform Burma through the power of journalism is just blowing smoke, I'm afriad. Three reasons:
1. This society is very different from anything else in the world. It has an eight day week, and political and social decisions are guided by astrology and numerology. This is the reason the capitol was moved from Rangoon. The junta in particular is a strong believer in fate, and a cyclone is fate with a twist.
2. Journalists (usually freelancers) have been trying to draw attention to Burma for twenty years since the 8/8/8 uprising. You can sign as many petitions as you want, lobby as many foreign governments as you want, and write as many articles as you want. At the end of the day the only way to get rid of the junta is to go in there with a good sized army and exterminate the brutes.
3. Burma is sitting on a Mount Mehru of mineral and forest wealth, bought by China, India, and a lot of scoundrels from both east and west. This will keep the regime well fed for decades to come. Meanwhile, North Korea doesn't have much of anything.
A more interesting question is what happened to Coco island, which is at the top of the Andaman island chain in Burmese terrirotiy. There is a Chinese listening post there. It was also a former penal colony. If the cyclone took those bastards out then that would be the best news.
What's your point? That we should NOT write about Burma because nothing short of a military invasion that's going to change the government?
One start would be to shame neighboring governments and fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to act responsibly and bring pressure to bear on the regime. So far, they've treated the military junta the same way South Africa has treated the crisis in Zimbabwe -- pretending that there's no crisis. For the region's democracies (as some of them are or claim to be) to take such a hands off attitude is a disgrace. So where is ASEAN in all this?
You have to remember that ALL Republicans live in a "shared consensus reality", in which:
- Ronald Regan was the second coming and single-handedly torn down the Iron Curtain
- The Founding Fathers were ALL devout Christians and intended our government to be "faith-based"
- The second amendment allows ANY and ALL Americans to own as MANY guns as they want, no
matter what kind of gun
- They are the "party of Lincoln", even though the parties switched ideologies over 100 years ago, and
what Lincoln preached is the OPPOSITE of what Repubilcans believe in
- 9/11 is Clinton's fault because he didn't "kill Osama when he had the chance"
I could go on and on, but I would take up the entire internet.
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Very well said.
Saint Ronnie is so revered by the GOP faithful that they genuflect and cross themselves, while chanting "And his name shall rest in glory for ever and ever ..ahhhmenn
Hell Mickey Mouse could have been president and The Wall would have still fallen. BUT be prepared to be pounced upon and beaten to a pulp if you dare speak that truth to the cult of St. Ronnie..
You are wrong, grasshopper. If Reagan did not call the Soviets what they were and did not commit the funds for our defense systems, the old Soviet Union would still be standing. Reagan forced them into bankruptcy.
This whole thing is a disgrace. 100,000 people dead of missing and homeless while the ruling military [whatever's left of them] don't want to let aid in to help the people. God help the Burmese people.
What does your god have to do with it? If he was so wonderful, why did he kill in the first place, and destroy the lives of so many survivors?
Oh, I know, he is all-powerful, and loves everyone, and we cannot divine his intentions, especially when he wipes out a big chunk of a country.
Huh? I am not a member of organized religion. I don't have all the answers but you don't either. Just put your money where your mouth is and do something constructive.
President Bush is taking notes.
__________
A couple of years ago I'd have agreed with you. Now he's a total lame duck. I doubt this is is even a blip on his radar. He's much more concerned with how the hell to mount an attack on Iran, given the fact he's got nothing left to attack with.
President Bush is taking notes.
No, the Burmese learned everything from Katrina.
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