Burma gets hit by 9/11 TIMES SEVEN (63/77) (2 Viewers)

[the strange guy]

burma is in a permanent state of dictatorship. there is no simple way out of that, and it is at the moment a cold fact. the commandos won't work. but the disruption of their ability to maintain control and surveillance of the population will inevitably destabilize the state to some extent, possibly allowing revolutionary conditions to emerge.

i don't know what 'aid' exactly means here but it seems like it's not going to be mere financial capital, but real material support and possibly personnel - engineers, administrators - to help establish shelter and provide the basics needed for survival. again, the power of the state to guarantee the basic requirements for life is now greatly diminished, and they may be forced to admit international civil NGOs. this would further decrease their control over the population.

if they refuse to admit international actors then there's not much anyone can do about it. for all i know they're still in complete control.

but simply refusing to try to do anything about it isn't an option, morally or strategically.

well, you got a bit more out me than i'd initially imagined.

They turned away foreign aid after the tsunami. They really don't have a choice now though.

Given that most people who understand the situation in Burma have also had it beaten into them that they should boycott everything Burmese.
It's easy to do, a lot easier than boycotting Chinese goods anyway.

I can't imagine there'll be the same kind of donations made for this as there was for the tsunami.
It's not Christmas time for a start, the best time to part Westerners from their grubby cash with concentrated guilt.
People would be concerned that their cash is going towards starching a General's shirt rather than paying an aid-worker's food bill.

 

[flashback]

Can you give me the body count in multiples of Gulf war II's please.


How do they count the dead?
Presumably we are talking about entire villages being wiped out, mass chaos, and so on.
I can almost understand the number unaccounted for, is the number of dead an actual body count, or is it some statistic that they work out?

How do they differentiate unaccounted for from dead? If whole villages are gone, how do they know they ever existed?


Its fucking unreal though.

 

[Vinnie]

Ah jaysus

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/10/burma.naturaldisasters

 

[São Paulo Punk]

[/I] Anyway, I thought feminism was a magic word to make your thread longer, that's why I used it.

Seriously lads.
22,000.

It's a magic word to make your sociology and politics essays longer. Other magic words include: Marxism, Modernism, Globalisation and post-Schumpetarianism-ism-jism...jessop-jessop.

It seeme that they're accepting aid now after initially refusing it. The US and France were threatening to do air drops against the juntas orders but it looks like that wont be necessary now. Eh, cool.

 

[Gambra]

Quelle surprise, the junta are after blocking and seizing aid from the UN going into Burma. It's fucking nuts, they're blocking entry visas to all the aid workers as well. The only thing they're worried about is that when the fallout from this is ove, the workers will use the visas to get back in to see what the govt are up to.

France & Germany are raging to just get in there and say bollocks to any visas or whatever but England are blocking that cos they're trying to go for more diplomatic methods..

Anyone see the picture on the front of the English Independent today? Scary

 

[Los Davos]

fucking nuts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/11/cyclonenargis.burma2?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

 

[Los Davos]

vive la france

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL119496620080511

 

[Janer]

Fixed. What about the baybee's choice

Yeah even I woulda joined the thread at this stage, Anyone know if any pregnant women who were queuing up at family planning clinics were killed in this cyclone?