Wednesday, June 04, 2008

US Departs from the shores of Burma

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24958259/

Above, is what set me off this morning! Sorry to all my gringo readers, it must seem like I am picking on y'all.

Is it possible that the USA is becoming more diplomatic?

After directly invading Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Vietnam, et al., and directly getting involved with the internal politics of countless nations, it seems the USA is getting diplomatic in the case of Burma aka Myanmar.

The military junta that 'rules' this unfortunate group of human beings that were cursed only by the locations of their mother's vagina when they emerged onto the scene, has denied most foreign aid organizations access to the country to provide emergency help in the form of food, supplies, medicines and doctors; all those things that post-hurricane would be so very helpful in helping people actually NOT DIE.

The USA deemed that it somehow needed permission on this occasion to 'invade' yet another country with whom they are in disagreement and having been denied it, is retiring it's help-laden ships from the coastline in front of Burma aka Myanmar.

Imagine how the world's opinion of the USA in general and the little man at the top himself could have been positively affected had there been a literal 'invasion' of food, medicine and supplies by the USA, overriding the idiots in charge in Burma and to actually save the lives of those that are suffering. Supplies, food and medicines, nothing else. No soldiers, no people on the ground.

Instead, they are asking permission to an internationally despised military junta. What - this junta has weapons of mass destruction and might actually use them? Or is the fact that there is no known oil reserve there that will warrant such an incursion, however humanitarian? Now that the junta has said no and again no, the generals and admirals and L'il Georgie shrug their shoulders and say 'gee we really wanted to help, but they won't let us".

This is so pathetic it makes me sick. Diplomatic indeed. Whatever happened to the shining beacon on the hill, the leader of the free world. Pathetic pathetic pathetic.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Based on your excellent blog, I thought you might be interested in an article I wrote about a visit to Becal for my blog...

http://chomposaurus.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/the-slaughter-of-a-pig-merida-mexico/

Thanks, have a good one!

Joe
[chomposaurus]

William Lawson said...

Such language! Tsk tsk tsk.

Actually I did eat shit (in the spanish language meaning of the phrase . comer mierda) as I was going through US immigration and customs the other day but I didn't die, sorry.

Unknown said...

I just wonder why we have to call it Myanmar (or Beijing, Mumbai, Chennai, etc.) when we already ahve words for those places in our language. I understand the Chinese don't call Los Angeles 'Loss Angelis' as it is pronounced in English, but rather 'Losan' or something agreeable to their tongue.

We don't insist Spanish speakers say 'New York' in stead of 'Nueva York'. Conversely, no one seems to think we should call places like Belgrade (Beograd) and Moskow (Moskva) by their local names, so let the Burmese call their country whatever they like in their language, but in English, that place already has a perfectly good name--Burma.

William Lawson said...

Grant - while I understand where you are coming from, I have always thought that names should be names when it comes to places. It might be hard to say them sometimes, but changing them seems incorrect somehow. Amsterdam remains Amsterdam because it's easy to say while Köln becomes Cologne and Colonia. JMHO!

Unknown said...

I'm with you as to places that don't already have established names in English, but for places llike Burma, that have had established English names for 400 years, it seems stupid to try to change it now.

I suspect that the English names reflect the common local name at the time the place became widely known to the English-speaking world. For various internal reasons, the dominant power group in those places now wants to use a different name. Fine, I say. When I speak your language I'll use the word that you know the place by, but when I speak English and the place has an English name, I'll continue to use that.