Pickers CAN be choosers

May 9th 2008 – Myanmar, or Burma, has refused the financial and logistic assistance from the United States whilst coping with the aftermath of devastating cyclone Nargis. Whereas preliminary reports gave us grizzly figures of 1, 2 and 4 thousand casualties, today, we have been made aware of the official, conservative number of 23,000 fatalities and 1.5 million inhabitants affected by the cataclysm. Furthermore, the United Nations has advanced the more plausible (according to them) number of 100,000 casualties. President Than Shwe’s gouvernment has refused American help and is apparently indifferent to the difficulties his country is having with Western aid in general. Instead, Shwe is focusing on a referendum for a new constitution. A referendum in a military dictatorship is surely more important than feeding children and housing families. There probably was no way to doctor the results a few weeks later rather than now.

Weather, Customs and general tensions have prevented most, if not all international aid (from countries and NGOs) from reaching anyone in Burma. For example, The United Nations Food Programme has been able to provide a full three planes of food to the Burmese people in the past seven days (.5% down, 99.5% to go). Unfortunately, these people seem to want to eat EVERY day; they should go vote instead. Political tensions between Burma and the US have made it so that they refused the logistics and material help of the wealthiest and most organised nation on the planet. Instead, they are accepting supplies from Vietnam and China, without necessarily having any way to distribute the relief effort once they have it.

It is quite simple; I understand the Burmese gouvernment’s reluctance to accept American and European administrators within their borders. You have to realise most of these helping nations have never recognised the current government of that country, in place since the early 1990s and thus President Than Shwe has been extremely reluctant to appear in public or negotiate internationally. On the other side, all that is left is for the afflicted Burmese people to die. The Red Cross and Red Crescent organisations have already reported massive outbreaks of diseases in the new refugee ghettos.

It is quite unfortunate yet not very original for a country with socialist/communist tendencies.

Needless to say, World War II was the most destructive and traumatising conflict in recent history and the scars that it left in Europe were greatly crippling in the late 1940s. Germany, France and the United-Kingdom, the three financial motors of Europe were economically, militarily and politically devastated. To the rescue comes the United-States and the Golden ‘Marshall Plan’. Beginning in July of 1947, President Truman offered financial assistance, not loans, to all allied countries, the Soviet Union and all its communist friends. Whereas Western Europe received over 13 Billion US dollars in reconstruction help, the USSR and the Soviet states refused the help for reasons of pride and for vague principles such as ‘avoiding the United States’ Dollar imperialism’. In all fairness, Stalin didn’t need the help since he found a handy third solution past accepting or refusing international help. He simply exterminated the poor strata of his society (who were deviants by definition) and by nationalising all industries and farms without compensating the former owner. It was the perfect plan except the Soviets spent the following 40 years monopolising up to 40% of their annual income on thermonuclear devices, ICBMs and Ghetto Space shuttles (i.e. the 1961 makeshift lemon in which Yuri Gagarin went to space in).

Starting this Monday, all Non-Gouvernmental Organisations that wish to help have vowed to try and get their relief to the population despite Burmese bureaucracy. As long as President Bush can refrain from saying the exact same thing, we should be able to avoid a second Iraq War and a third Vietnam War.

Good night and good luck to the Burmese people, don’t forget to go vote.

(Oddly appropriate 1948 poster for the Marshall plan - The before and after satellite images of ravaged Burma)

End.