Maybe this will happen. Maybe enough will finally get pissed off to rise up and overthrow the government. I doubt it, they’ve been cowed for so long, but I’m pulling for it. It would entail much violent death but be worth it in the long run.
There is a local editorial here that is of interest. (Asean is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which both Thailand and Burma are members.)
The last nationwide mass uprising in Burma occurred in August and September of 1988. I was here then, living in northern Thailand. Back then, there was no cable television in Thailand, no Internet. I would listen to VOA and BBC over my little shortwave receiver late at night in my little teakwood house. It sounded promising for a while. The people were rising up everywhere. But the army simply shot every person they saw in the streets and kept doing so until the unrest was quelled. Monks, women, children, the elderly, it made no difference whatsoever. It was a slaughter of monumental proportions. And they’ll do it again if they have to. This is why I have no hope the junta will be overthrown by a popular uprising. Burma is not the Philippines. 
I just read a very interesting book, called The Road to Hell. It’s about how simple old fashioned food aid basically fuelled the fighting in Somalia for years. One side steals the food, sells it, buys weapons, uses those weapons to cause trouble, which leads to more refugees. Meanwhile, young men are free to go fight because the women and children are looked after in camps, and age-old sustainable practices are destroyed as people flock to camps. And nobody in the aid agencies look at this too hard because if things calm down they lose their job.
Now, Burma is a different situation for sure. I think this sort of disaster is more likely to happen when there are groups of ragtag rebels fighting it out in a place with no laws. Burma, of course, has plenty of laws and not too many rebels.
But the point still stands that aid rarely helps and can be very harmful even when it’s dearly wanted by everyone.
The problem here lies with the forces supporting the junta, and not much anyone does can do much good until they change their ways. Sometimes there is just not a good answer to things, especially when it comes to helping people.
That’s a tad extreme, but there IS a grain of truth in that. Now, where do you send aid to? Places that are desperately poor. And in all desperately poor areas, you are going to find a few individuals who have managed to carve out a territory that they control. And those individuals, having already become king of their little plot of land through ruthless measures, will think nothing of subverting aid for their own use. The prime example is Cold War Africa, with tin-horn dictators playing the Soviets and Americans against each other. Anyone remember 1960s Congo?
Aid agencies often act in at least tacit collusion. And many of them, especially the UN-associated ones, will have these big annual meetings in Washington, with chauffered limos and five-star hotels and expensive catering. Who do you think pays for that? Why doesn’t THAT money go to the poor? And then they could hold their meeting in the town hall of Lawrence, Kansas. But no.
And the aid workers themselves. I generally roll my eyes when I come across an aid worker. If the local people are very lucky, the aid workers will not cause too much damage and have left things pretty much as they found them when it comes time to leave. I encounter very few aid workers who actually do any good, no matter if there hearts ARE in the right place. There are some, but they’re in the minority from my experience. And many aid workeres do NOT have their hearts in the right place. Quite a few are nothing more than adventurers who have managed to land a lucrative salary and live a more comfortable and interesting life than they could back home and are only interested in maintaining their lifestyle. You can these people in places like Vientiane and Phnom Penh getting drunk on a weekend night, throwing their money around like there was no tomorrow. That wouldn’t be so bad either if they’d just pay more attention to their job. No, I have a low opinion of many aid agencies and workers. I admit that NGOs are guilty until proven innocent in my eyes, I’ve seen so much bad associated with them over the years.
I’m not saying no aid should go to Burma for the cyclone or China for the hurricane. Emergency disaster situations are a whole other kettle of fish. I’ve been talking more about your everyday run-of-the-mill sort of aid, which I admit to being cynical about. (Still, there are those hundreds of thousands of US dollars in aid to Thailand for the tsunami that mysteriously disappeared.)
Okay, rant over. Now for a little lighter side, it’s in the local news today that the UN is sending an emergency shipment of almost 220,000 condoms to help the needy in Burma. Story here. It’s in the local news today, too.
Update: BBC Television just reported that conclusive evidence now shows the Burmese junta is actively preventing aid from reaching the hardist-hit areas. Secret video shows convoys being turned back by the army. The junta is now repeating again that the situation has returned to normal and that no aid is needed, that in fact it only attracts the lazy and allows foreigners to look down on Burma.
Today’s news has the government agreeing to let aid workers come into the country.
Sounds too easy, and I don’t believe it. There’ll be some stumbling block.
But I hope it’s true. Nothing would make me happier than to be proved wrong.
Side note: The Burmese Embassy here in Bangkok suffered a fire this morning. Story here.
I remain pessimistic, too, about this “breakthrough” with Burma. Days after Burma agreed to let in “all” aid workers, not that much seems to be happening.
I guess next time there’s a hurricane we could launch empty boats full of supplies to ride in with the storm surge.
Sigh and of course, now there’s lots of cyber scams for relief donations. See here. Indeed, my fellow humans know no bounds when it comes to crass opportunism.
And here is a local story on how the junta continues to delay aid work.
BBC Television is saying victims are now being forced out of camps back to whatever’s left of their villages.
And Burma slams “chocolate bar” aid." Story here. The generals say: “The people from the Irrawaddy can survive on self-reliance without chocolate bars donated by foreign countries.” And they say the victims can “stand by themselves.”
Update: Burmese junta blasts media.
Excerpts: "[Burma’s] military junta lashed out at its own citizens and foreign media Friday for what it called distorted coverage of the aftermath of a devastating cyclone.
"The attack came after authorities detained a popular comedian who had just returned from helping survivors of the disaster and had said government aid was not reaching some victims.
"Unconfirmed reports circulated Friday in [Rangoon] that at least a dozen people involved in filming cyclone victims in the Irrawaddy delta have been arrested.
"The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper, considered a mouthpiece for the junta, accused ‘self-seekers and unscrupulous elements’ of working in collusion with foreigners to shoot videos with made-up stories in storm-ravaged areas in the delta.
“‘Those foreign news agencies are issuing such groundless news stories with the intention of tarnishing the image of Myanmar and misleading the international community into believing that cyclone victims do not receive any assistance,’ the newspaper said.”
Small update here, Now the Burmese are banning shops from selling satellite dishes, to prevent people from watching foreign news broadcasts.
Apparently they haven’t hit bottom yet.
There’s nothing stopping the world from sending sending supplies in on the tide and using balloons to float them inland 1 meal at a time.
Sure there is. A lack of gumption.
There’s an interesting update here.
Excerpt: “Now doctors and aid workers who have gained access to remote areas of the delta are returning with a less pessimistic picture of the human cost of the delay in reaching survivors. They say there have been no signs of starvation or widespread outbreaks of disease, and the number of lives lost because of the military government’s slow response to the disaster appears to have been very few.”
This does NOT mean, though, that the Burmese government was right. At the very least, it means they’ve been very lucky … so far! Epidemic disease remains a distinct possibility.
Well, that IS good news. I’m glad that the stupidity of the government there hasn’t caused more death or suffering than it was feared.
Like you I don’t think this lets the government there off the hook though.
-XT
A sort of related update here. Not cyclone-related, but it shows even more what a bunch of bastards the Burmese junta is, as if more proof were required. They’re renewing interrogations of a blogger who’s been held for five months. :mad:
Small update. It seems several species of rare birds were also decimated by Cyclone Nargis. See here.
Thanks for the regular updates.