Scoopit!

Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic writes an interesting piece on Burma, it's future, the interests of China, India and the USA reflecting the views of four Americans who know this country well.

The Atlantic references also near the beginning of the Kaplan article a 70 page supplement they published in 1958 on Burma and some more recent comment by James Fallows.

Scoopit!

Burma still suffering, but off the international front pages.

See Irrawaddy web site for essential updates. They may be biased, but they seek to do something.

Unfortunately I cannot find an RSS feed, as I would link to it.

Like Zimbabwe, these people are in peril.

Scoopit!

QUOTE OF THE DAY
	It is being made into a man-made catastrophe by the negligence, the neglect and the inhuman treatment of the Burmese people by a regime that is failing to act and to allow the international community to do what it wants to do. —British Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Pictures from and other information from the Irrawaddy News Magazine

Comprehensive articles and photographs from the Irrawaddy site

An update from Al Jazeera

]]> http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=658 Thu, 15 May 2008 00:19:27 +0000 adamsmith1922 http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=658 If like Adam you are looking for information on Burma, then you might find these sites of interest:-

Irrawaddy News

Jotman

Voices for Burma

BOGALE, Myanmar — It is a disaster still shrouded in secrecy. The world is growing accustomed to seeing images of devastation, from earthquakes or calamitous storms, as they unfold. Here the military dictatorship continues to cordon off the areas worst hit by Cyclone Nargis on May 3, and so little is known about the extent of the devastation, how aid is reaching those in need — or extraordinary stories of survival and death like that of Than Lwin.

SO begins an article in the New York Times on villagers striving to survive in the tragedy that is Burma.

The stories are astounding and harrowing.

We saw the first one a few minutes downriver, no more than five hundred yards from the quayside and the busy town centre of the river port of Pyapon. He was caught in the crook of a toppled tree, floating in the water on his back with his arms spreadeagled - the naked, decaying remains of a drowned man.

There was another corpse a few yards down, and then another, and then three more close together. Number six was recognisably that of a woman, with a green undergarment still clinging to her; number seventeen was a young girl. Close by was a dead buffalo, and what I mistakenly took to be a coconut or a drowned animal. “Khalaylay,” said the boatman, correcting me. A baby.

We chugged gently down the river, past the devastation of Cyclone Nargis, which passed almost directly over head a week ago this morning. Warehouses had their roofs ripped off, 50 foot boats had been picked up by the storm surge and deposited a hundred yards inland, and every few yards were the sunburned, distended bodies of the storm’s human victims. In 25 minutes, I counted 23 of them. And then I stopped counting.

Until yesterday, this disaster has had an unreal quality. The physical damage to trees, fields and buildings is overwhelmingly obvious. Refugees are living in schools and monasteries thought the Irrawaddy Delta. But the huge casualty figures have been impossible to grasp imaginatively.

Later in the article:-

Foreign diplomats in Rangoon report that the government has at its disposal only seven helicopters but, from the available evidence, these are not being used for serious aid work. Instead, the generals use them for a series of photo opportunities, which duly appear in the following morning’s state run press.

In one, the prime minister, Thein Sein, is pictured “assisting” the loading of relief supplies onto a helicopter; in another a junior minister, hands over a bag of rice to a scared looking but “grateful” cyclone victim. The accompanying news stories achieve the feat of making the country’s worst disaster in living memory seem like nothing more than a bothersome inconvenience.

In the most staggering image of all, Mr Thein Sein “presented 20 sets of TV, 10 DVD players and 10 satellite receivers … for the storm victims enabling them to enjoy the programmes”. It would be hilarious if it were not so depressing: having survived the destruction of their homes, the deaths of their loved ones, and lacking food or medicines, the cyclone survivors are being forced to watch Burmese state television

The bold text is Adam's.

WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS THE WORLD DOING?

THIS IS JUST NOT ACCEPTABLE IN 2008.

THESE PEOPLE NEED HELP, NOW!!!

An article on the situation is here, but this is only an extract, please read the entire piece:

The water has not receded fully, and few aid trucks have made it here. Only one helicopter, from the Myanmar military, was spotted all Friday, dropping off packages of instant noodles around a devastated delta that needs much more. Win Kyi, a mother looking for a lost son, was crying, her body shaking and her arms outstretched for food, money, water — anything.

“I have nothing,” she said, shuffling in a state of shock. “Everything is gone.

Six days after a cyclone churned through the coastal plain of Myanmar, it was clear that the damage was great and that little aid had made it to the thousands of Burmese villagers along the sea south of the largest city, Yangon. The smell of rot and death was in the air here, part of a single district where the military government says 10,000 people died.

The New York Times has 2 video pieces:

The Aid Crisis, and

Military Junta Portrays Control

these pieces clearly show how the junta have hi-jacked some of the limited aid received to date. The reports tell also of the junta's persistence with a rigged referendum to legitimise their despotic regime.

Half the population of 53 million are affected.

A tragedy.

Firstly is

The Myanmar Junta

How on earth can this regime despotic though it is, adopt the callous and unfeeling attitude it is doing in the face of the massive calamity to hit their country.

Only this morning I heard that they will only allow one US aid flight and that not until Monday, other relief workers are refused entry and apparently the regime 'confiscated' 2 plane loads of World Food programme supplies.

The Americans have a task force in the area for an exercise on helping countries suffering natural disasters. Yet these unfeeling , evil despots will not allow them to help.

Though I suppose given everything else they have done to the country it is only to be expected.

The ruling junta, their acolytes and lickspittles have looked after themselves for years at the expense of the common people. The country's natural resources have been plundered for their benefit.

Adam is no socialist far from it, but he understands how socialist revolution can flourish when you have regimes as corrupt as this one.

Yet again though the West has stood supinely by, as to a large extent it has in Darfur, Congo, Liberia and elsewhere.

It was to be hoped that in the 21st century we could finally learn to conduct ourselves differently, but mans' inhumanity to man continues in a myriad of different forms.

Their present actions are outrageous and they should be dealt with as a pariah state once the aftermath of this calamity is worked through.

Myanmar is a member of ASEAN, what is it doing to ensure relief is made available to the people of Myanmar?

China is supposed to have influence, what is it doing?

Indeed, if China wished to improve its' global standing now is a great opportunity for it to do so.

I wrote the above before I read this morning's print edition of the Dominion Post, this had a major article on the front page of the World section of the paper. The article made me fume in sheer frustration and anger at the generals who put themselves before everything else.

This disaster will be a much greater calamity through their sheer ineptitude and incompetence, let alone their paranoia, even if they let aid workers in immediately, because for many it is too late.

The article referred to above, is as usual not yet on Stuff.

My second target is:

Nanny Statism

What has happened to this country. I saw an item in the paper on school tuckshops and the items they were to be allowed to sell.

Then I read a thread on Kiwiblog on the subject,

Why will parents not take responsibility for educating their children as to what they should eat and when?

When did it become acceptable to have the government saying what we should eat, how often and when?

I think people should eat more healthily and yes, obesity is a problem. However, you will not achieve the objective by coercion or regulation.

Far, far too often New Zealanders look to the State for an answer rather than thinking and acting for themselves. That does not bode well for the future of this country.

An adjunct to this is why do the Greens think they have the right to sit in moral judgement on the rest of us in respect of lifestyles, and everything else. They have such a totalitarian approach to everything do the NZ Greens, everything must be regulated and imposed upon us for our better good.

The are such a load of bigoted, zealots, hell bent on 'improving' things to meet their own peculiar world view.

Unfortunately, under MMP they get to have influence. May heaven preserve us from them and those like them.

Do not vote Green.

Finally today

Two Tom Scott cartoons

Now as can be seen from my blog I like cartoons. Especially those I think are clever, they do not have to be funny per se, but they need to have a valid point.

I am not saying in this rant that Scott did not have a perfect right to draw and publish the cartoons in question, he did and does.

My rant is that I think the juxtaposition of subjects was inappropriate and that he could have found more apposite ways of making his point.

In reality, I think what I am saying is that many of his cartoons have given me pleasure, amusement and caused me to think over the years. These two, in particular caused me to think that Tom Scott was off form when he drew them, or maybe I just did not get the point.

Whatever the actuality, these two cartoons made me cross, probably because they equate the Myanmar tragedy with two much more prosaic situations.

I will comment after each cartoon.

Cartoon 1- Dominion Post - May 8, 2008

Title - Everyone wants to know

Given the appalling conditions so many in Burma lived in before the cyclone and the way in which the junta controls things, I hardly think that a cartoon suggesting 2 peasants seeking to save their lives would be talking about Obama and Clinton makes sense, especially as I doubt if either would have had a TV in the first place and they definitely would not have CNN.

Strange as it may seem to Tom Scott people do have interests other than Obama/Clinton. Indeed, in NZ many do not know this is a NZ election year.

My main objection though is the idea given in the cartoon that people fighting for survival in a river in Asia would be thinking about US politics.

It was appallingly insensitive. he could have chosen alternative imagery.

At the time I was just unamused, until I saw this one

Cartoon 2 - Dominion Post - May 10, 2008

Title - Much needed aid

This one made me want to vent my frustration and anger in earnest, which is when I determined to include both in my rant for today.

I know we have problems in NZ. I know that by NZ standards we have poor people and that South Auckland is an area which by NZ standards is seen as a deprived area.

My anger is over the following:

• A great many decent people live in Burma and South Auckland, this cartoon denigrates both places
• It is offensive, to me at any rate, in the extreme to suggest that the immense suffering in Burma is in any way equivalent to the social issues present in South Auckland
• The cartoon suggests that South Aucklanders are starving and need massive aid - that is balderdash
• By world standards our poor are not poor - indeed many of the truly poor living on US$1 per day or less would regard our poor as wealthy beyond their dreams - with their TVs, cars and multi room homes
• This cartoon may be seen by some as a biting critique of lack of government action to solve problems in Auckland - to me it is just an insensitive comment- and shows a lack of judgement

The first report is more generalised, the second from a Yangon slum and the third is from a village in the countryside.

It is clear that the ruling junta has much to answer for. So do the 'civilised' nations who have let this situation exist for so long.

Not only is this event devastating in personal terms for so many, it will have economic consequences regionally and possibly globally too. The failure of the despotic regime to invest in agriculture and in flood prevention has now truly caused a catastrophe.

Read the FT article it makes for dispiriting reading, especially when one realises what potential Burma has.

Yet again we see the same factors present:-

• corrupt governance
• under development
• inefficient farming practices
• once self sufficient regions becoming food importers

Ukraine said it would allow exports of 1.2m tonnes in the next two months, up from a previous quota of just 200,000 tonnes.

Sorin Vaslobal, of Paris-based cereals broker Plantureux, said Kiev’s decision could trigger a domino effect. “We see Ukraine’s move as applying pressure on Russia to remove its 40 per cent export tax,” he said. Argentina and Kazakhstan have also restricted their wheat exports.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have asked agriculture commodities exporters to scrap or at least ease their foreign sales restrictions.

The International Grains Council on Thursday said the global wheat crop will hit a record 645m tonnes this year, up from 603.5m tonnes in 2007, as weather improves and farmers sow more wheat at the expense of crops such as corn. Luke Chandler, a cereal analyst at Rabobank in Sydney, said: “Wheat prices are expected to ease in the second half of 2008 as a potential record-breaking world wheat crop looms.”

This is a good sign, but much remains to be done, especially in the areas of:-

• market access
• farming practice
• agriculture development
• governance
• aid

He commends the blog and the articles to his readers.

Given the situation which Adam has written about several times recently on Food Security, it is even more of a tragedy that Burma blessed with great natural resources and formerly a major rice exporter has been reduced through the corruption of the despotic cruel regime in power to the state it is in today.

The Burmese people suffer greatly, yet for some reason their oppression and degradation does not seem to register as highly on the world indignation scale as say Tibet or the Middle East.

Why is that Adam wonders?