Are the numbers correct in Burma?

[Fragony]

That is one huge red herring.

Fragony, a military-style, nationalist dictatorship that preaches autarky and the triumph of the unique Burmese mentality over all odds clearly spells fascism.

What did North Korea do this time???

[Tribesman]

Could blame me for not looking it up but if you ask me we should blame socialism in general for being like that.

But they are nationalists Frag , they like to keep the minorities down because they don't seem to integrate and adopt to the correct Burmese way of life , I thought they would have been right up your street as far as regimes go .

[InsaneApache]

The Chinese like 'em.

[Banquo's Ghost]

It pains me to shore up Fragony's neat and tidy view on the world, but he can claim this one as a socialist regime.

The original nutter that instituted the junta in 1962, General Ne Win, did so through creating his Burmese Socialist Programme Party which had the catchy policy of the Burmese Way to Socialism. He nationalised everything that moved down to water buffalo, shutting down all democratic institutions and eradicating the free press.

Now, discerning minds might see that these characteristics are socialist in the same way that National Socialism was, or that countries that call themselves Democratic Republics are always democratic. Not.

But in Fragony's World, he has a point.

[Adrian II]

The regime in Burma called itself Socialist until 1988, when it renamed itself 'Union of Burma' and then (1989) 'Union of Myanmar'. It is controlled by the military. There is not even a socialist party. The old BSPP re-formed itself into the National Unity Party in 1988. It's ideology is fervent nationalism, mitigated by institutionalised corruption.

But in Fragony's World, he has a point.

He is also the only one who lives there.

[Caius]

For me, its not a good idea. I think the government will use the funds for other things.

[rory_20_uk]

If you don't want to play in the International playground, then don't expect money when things go wrong.

Do nothing: people will suffer.
Give money: prople will still suffer.
Invade: people will suffer.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

But they are nationalists Frag , they like to keep the minorities down because they don't seem to integrate and adopt to the correct Burmese way of life , I thought they would have been right up your street as far as regimes go .

Why can't nationalism and socialism mix?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bolshevism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea

In short, they can mix, but it's a bad combination.

[Tribesman]

Why can't nationalism and socialism mix?

Egalitarianism , once nationalism gets into the mix it isn't socialism is it .

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Egalitarianism , once nationalism gets into the mix it isn't socialism is it .

Socialism as an economic theory can coexist quite peacefully with nationalism. There's no reason why they can't coexist - but, like I said, I wouldn't want to live where they did.

Link
Link
Link

[Tribesman]

Your first link disproves your point , if Zanu was socialist and nationalist then it wouldn't have policies favouring tribal , political or race groups would it as all people of Zimbabwe would be equal before the law.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Your first link disproves your point , if Zanu was socialist and nationalist then it wouldn't have policies favouring tribal , political or race groups would it as all people of Zimbabwe would be equal before the law.

Zanu-PF is both left-wing and nationalist.

[Adrian II]

What did North Korea do this time???

Well, there you go, the Burmese junta is nationalist, authoritarian and xenophobic to the core, just like the North Korean regime.

There is an interesting theory that says most or all socialist governments until now have been essentially nationalist, using (internationalist) socialism only as a guise for their true (imperialist) ambitions. Indeed, if you look at the fate of militant socialist governments, particularly the authoritarian ones, many have transformed into outright nationalism: Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Burma fall within this category.

[Tribesman]

Was the German Workers' Party socialist?

Not in the slightest since the core is that all are born equal , since the workers party had at its core that whole tracts of society are born as sub-humans then it cannot have been socialist even though it used the word in its party title .

[InsaneApache]

There is an interesting theory that says most or all socialist governments until now have been essentially nationalist, using (internationalist) socialism only as a guise for their true (imperialist) ambitions. Indeed, if you look at the fate of militant socialist governments, particularly the authoritarian ones, many have transformed into outright nationalism: Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Burma fall within this category.

A lot of my mates said this back in the 70s and most of them were Marxists/Trots. My reposte (as someone normal who saw things as they really were) was 'why do you bother then?'

You know what, they couldn't answer, they hadn't a clue.

Intellectual masturbation in my view.

[Beirut]

If the Myanmarese don't let aid in, then bring it in anyway. Park an aircraft carrier nearby, establish control over the airspace, then just dump food and medicine where people are congregated.

Tell the military regime if they take one potshot at a relief plane, the next planes will dump rifles and ammo to the peasants and a MK84 right on the general's hacienda.

There is a time to act tough and use force and this is it.

Canada has a few CC-177s (C-17s), this is a perfect opportunity for us to use them. We should fill 'em up with medical supplies and get 'em over there.

[BigTex]

If the Myanmarese don't let aid in, then bring it in anyway. Park an aircraft carrier nearby, establish control over the airspace, then just dump food and medicine where people are congregated.

Tell the military regime if they take one potshot at a relief plane, the next planes will dump rifles and ammo to the peasants and a MK84 right on the general's hacienda.

There is a time to act tough and use force and this is it.

Canada has a few CC-177s (C-17s), this is a perfect opportunity for us to use them. We should fill 'em up with medical supplies and get 'em over there.

I doubt the Chinese would let that happen sitting down. A conflict involving Nato allies so close to them will probably make them a little uptight. Not to mention a revolt resulting in another pro western country near them will not make them very happy.

There are times to act with force, but this is not one of them. A tsunami is hardly a reason to involve ourselves in a burmese civil war, or to create one for that matter.

Do nothing: people will suffer.
Give money: prople will still suffer.
Invade: people will suffer.

Someone will suffer no matter what you do, but to what degree? Do nothing and recovery will take a very long time. Give money, and maybe some will filter down to relieve the suffering. Even the cruelest of dictatorships have a need to help in the wake such a massive natural disaster. Invade and involve yourself in a decades long low intensity war in the jungles and mountains of burma.

Really there's little to be done, donating to disaster relief is always innefficient and most wont get to the people who are suffering.

[Beirut]

I doubt the Chinese would let that happen sitting down. A conflict involving Nato allies so close to them will probably make them a little uptight. Not to mention a revolt resulting in another pro western country near them will not make them very happy.

There are times to act with force, but this is not one of them. A tsunami is hardly a reason to involve ourselves in a burmese civil war, or to create one for that matter.

I'm sure the Chinese could be dealt with somehow. As for interfering with or creating a civil war and this not being the time; if a 100,000+ people are possibly dead and another 100,000+ ready to die, and if this isn't the time to use force and interfere, when is the time?

[Ice]

http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...0.html?cnn=yes

By Romesh Ratnesar

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma's infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.

So what is the world doing about it? Not much. The military regime that runs Burma initially signaled it would accept outside relief, but has imposed so many conditions on those who would actually deliver it that barely a trickle has made it through. Aid workers have been held at airports. U.N. food shipments have been seized. U.S. naval ships packed with food and medicine idle in the Gulf of Thailand, waiting for an all-clear that may never come.

Burma's rulers have relented slightly, agreeing Friday to let in supplies and perhaps even some foreign relief workers. The government says it will allow a US C-130 transport plane to land inside Burma Monday. But it's hard to imagine a regime this insular and paranoid accepting robust aid from the U.S. military, let alone agreeing to the presence of U.S. Marines on Burmese soil — as Thailand and Indonesia did after the tsunami. The trouble is that the Burmese haven't shown the ability or willingness to deploy the kind of assets needed to deal with a calamity of this scale — and the longer Burma resists offers of help, the more likely it is that the disaster will devolve beyond anyone's control. "We're in 2008, not 1908," says Jan Egeland, the former U.N. emergency relief coordinator. "A lot is at stake here. If we let them get away with murder we may set a very dangerous precedent."

That's why it's time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma. Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the U.S. to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says. The Bush Administration has so far rejected the idea — "I can't imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday — but it's not without precedent: as Natsios pointed out to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government's consent in places like Bosnia and Sudan.

A coercive humanitarian intervention would be complicated and costly. During the 2004 tsunami, some 24 U.S. ships and 16,000 troops were deployed in countries across the region; the mission cost the U.S. $5 million a day. Ultimately, the U.S. pledged nearly $900 million to tsunami relief. (By contrast, it has offered just $3.25 million to Burma.) But the risks would be greater this time: the Burmese government's xenophobia and insecurity make them prone to view U.S. troops — or worse, foreign relief workers — as hostile forces. (Remember Black Hawk Down?) Even if the U.S. and its allies made clear that their actions were strictly for humanitarian purposes, it's unlikely the junta would believe them. "You have to think it through — do you want to secure an area of the country by military force? What kinds of potential security risks would that create?" says Egelend. "I can't imagine any humanitarian organization wanting to shoot their way in with food."

So what other options exist? Retired General William Nash of the Council on Foreign Relations says the U.S. should first pressure China to use its influence over the junta to get them to open up and then supply support to the Thai and Indonesian militaries to carry out relief missions. "We can pay for it — we can provide repair parts to the Indonesians so they can get their Air Force up. We can lend the them two C-130s and let them paint the Indonesian flag on them," Nash says. "We have to get the stuff to people who can deliver it and who the Burmese government will accept, even if takes an extra day or two and even if it's not as efficient as the good old U.S. military." Egeland advocates that the U.N. Security Council take punitive steps short of war, such as freezing the regime's assets and issuing warrants for the arrest of individual junta members if they were to leave the country. Similar measures succeeded in getting the government of Ivory Coast to let in foreign relief teams in 2002, Egelend says.

And if that fails? "It's important for the rulers to know the world has other options," Egeland says. "If there were, say, the threat of a cholera epidemic that could claim hundreds of thousands of lives and the government was incapable of preventing it, then maybe yes — you would intervene unilaterally." But by then, it could be too late. The cold truth is that states rarely undertake military action unless their national interests are at stake; and the world has yet to reach a consensus about when, and under what circumstances, coercive interventions in the name of averting humanitarian disasters are permissible. As the response to the 2004 tsunami proved, the world's capacity for mercy is limitless. But we still haven't figured out when to give war a chance.

I thought this would contribute to the thread.

[Marshal Murat]

The article was overall decent. I dislike the comparison to Black Hawk Down for a number of reasons, and the threat of military action seems so arbitrary. I think it's more a time where China can play G.I. Jong and try to reclaim the lost publicity from Tibet and Sudan. Whether it'll work or not is a different story.

Then again, I think that they should declare it a genocide, invade, annihilate the junta, and set up a government (preferably pro-western), close the door into China, and screw their plans to dominate the Indian Ocean.

[Conradus]

I'm sure the Chinese could be dealt with somehow. As for interfering with or creating a civil war and this not being the time; if a 100,000+ people are possibly dead and another 100,000+ ready to die, and if this isn't the time to use force and interfere, when is the time?

When there's oil involved probably.
Though I'm not sure that putting another country into endless civil war is the humane thing to do right now, even if that delivers them from a junta.

[BigTex]

I'm sure the Chinese could be dealt with somehow. As for interfering with or creating a civil war and this not being the time; if a 100,000+ people are possibly dead and another 100,000+ ready to die, and if this isn't the time to use force and interfere, when is the time?

The time for force was before a massive natural disaster killed 200,000 and destroyed infrastructure and crops. Now is a time to heal, to help, to ease suffering not to heap more suffering onto them.

Now is a time for diplomacy, to sit down and ask what international charities can be allowed to do. Besides give money directly to the junta.

If Nato invades, what then? After thousands more are killed battles, more still killed from basic infrastructure being destroyed. Thousands more slowly dieing from starvation because food supply's have been disrupted by a war and a natural disaster, what then? What do you now do with that large chunk of land. What do you do then to ease the suffering? Food supplies will take awhile to reestablish in the jingles of burma. Repairing roads, electricity, sewage and many other things will take months.

How will a war ease the pains of the people who are already suffering from the wake of such a massive disaster?

[Beirut]

How will a war ease the pains of the people who are already suffering from the wake of such a massive disaster?

Oh goodness, I'm not saying make war for the sake of it, I'm saying that the situation is grave enough that the government must let the victims of the disaster receive aid. It is not the prerogative of any government to force its citizens to die rather than accept aid that could prevent their deaths. Their government must be required to accept aid and allow that aid to get to those who need it.

The UN, or whoever for that matter, may quote our dear uncle of Exeter, as he said to the French King, "If requiring fail, we will compel."

[Samurai Waki]

If the Myanmarese don't let aid in, then bring it in anyway. Park an aircraft carrier nearby, establish control over the airspace, then just dump food and medicine where people are congregated.

Tell the military regime if they take one potshot at a relief plane, the next planes will dump rifles and ammo to the peasants and a MK84 right on the general's hacienda.

There is a time to act tough and use force and this is it.

Canada has a few CC-177s (C-17s), this is a perfect opportunity for us to use them. We should fill 'em up with medical supplies and get 'em over there.

Or you could just use NATO airbases in Thailand, and Diego Garcia.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

THe Burmese government is being quite rational about the whole thing.


U.S. Diplomat:

Offer = single payment of $obledey-gook

Demand = military access

Burmese Leader:

Answer = No, we do not think you would leave.




Besides, with records/missing expected to be shoddy anyway, sweeping a few thousand political murders under the rug should be easy -- they died in the cyclone, so sad -- but they've got to get the paperwork in line.