Than Shwe, as four (4), count them, four huge ships are anchored off Burma, ships filled with relief medical supplies, a helicopter, food, tents, clothing for the poor suffering people of Burma, and YOU Than Shwe, whose names literally mean “million gold’ …refuse to allow the ships into port to land.
This, Than Shwe, is now three weeks after the entire planetary community has rushed to give aid to the people of Burma. You have said and continue to say, No. You have grabbed what shipments of goods you’ve allowed into the country, for yourself and your friends, with only pale distribution far from the center of the Irrawaddy devastation.
A lot of people worldwide see no great leader in you, but think there’s a infantile mewling tyrant inside the great dictator of Burma. It may be so, for when a person carries a profound sense of inferiority, they also give great effort to compensate by overdoing status symbols. I hear you have festooned your military jacket with unearned gold medals, Than Shwe.
There’s an old saying in the military, the real and honorable military, not your colonized kind, Than Shwe: the more gold hanging on the outside, the smaller the man feels himself to be on the inside.
Even our five-star generals and admirals, Than Shwe, do not wear their ceremonial military uniforms at every turn as you do. They know the difference between daily hard work and the garb to do it in, and the occasional all-out ceremonial dress-up.
Most importantly, they got their medals, bars and epaulets the hard way: they earned them– often by spilling their own blood. Not like you, who spill the blood of your own people, and then award yourself a grand medal for doing so.
There’s another story Than Shwe, one from my own heritage:
The greed-sotted Conquistadores who staged a vicious coup, plundering the Aztec nations, setting themselves up as a dictatorship and junta… they had exactly the same problem as you Than Shwe.
Their lust to festoon themselves with gold they had not earned, but killed innocent Aztecs for, made the braggart Conquistadores’ bodies very heavy. The Conquistadores literally clanked from all the gold they hung on all over themselves.
Gold, so heavy in fact, that when the native people turned on them in rebellions that took hundreds of years to come to resolution– in the favor of the people– that when the phony dictators ran from the Aztecs to bunker themselves in their stolen palaces, the gold-laden soldiers often fell into the many waterways and aqueducts that wended through the ancient Mexico City.
So great was the weight of the ill-gotten gold they wore, they drowned there.
Hubris is a kind of gold, Than Shwe. Hubris is an over-abundance of what in right proportion is a good thing, a beautiful thing… a sense of oneself as a competent player in this world. Pride in one’s ability to do something useful and good.
But, an overage of pride transmutes into putrid viewpoints, squatting atop things that do not belong to you, and raging, utterly and relentlessly raging to have– like a two year old in a public temper tantrum– power over all.
You are indeed drowning in your gold Than Shwe. Drowning right before the entire world’s eyes from your ill-gotten gold… whether your be-medalling yourself without earning the honors, whether skimming the money from your cocaine exports, whether extracting the last few pennies from your poorest people by adding tariffs to their purchase of bare necessities, or by withdrawing a government subsidy so prices for essentials go sky high for the poor.
If you wonder why no one reaches out to you Than Shwe, why no one agrees with you, why no one ‘understands’ you… it is because you reach out to no one save those who prop you up; you give no understanding to anyone who suffers, including holy people, including, even, the most pitifully poor.
The definition of evil, Than Shwe, is when a human being, seeing the suffering of others, and fully empowered to act and in a timely manner, turns away with self interest instead.
Evil will never transmute to gold Than Shwe. Never. Not even if you name yourself, Than Than Than Shwe Shwe Shwe.
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for more by dr.e. with spiritual perspective on Than Shwe’s corrupt rule of Burma, see “Facing Evil” article uploaded at The National Catholic Reporter
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CODA
from AP:
At least 78,000 people were killed in the May 2-3 storm and another 56,000 were missing. The situation remained grim in the Irrawaddy delta south of Yangon.
In the delta city of Laputta, hundreds of children covered their heads from the rain with empty aluminum plates as they lined up in front of a private donation center on Sunday. They were given rice, a spoonful of curry and a potato.
“Children only. Please. Children only,” shouted a man who pushed back a crowd of adults. He explained they were feeding children and the elderly first…