According to my contact in Yangon, what pitiful supplies are on the ground, have no distribution whatsoever to any of the thousands of villages and tributaries in Burma hit into utter devastation by the tsunami/ cyclone. The Burmese, most poorer than poor before the tsunami, are going on their 6th sunrise without clean water, food, or shelter or medicines.

Meanwhile, it is certain, while the military government gets down their fiddles, the infants and newborns and toddlers grow dehydrated. Without adequate water and food, their mothers’ breasts will have run out of milk, and the children will die from dehydration, an entire generation of young will be gone within a week.

Than Schwe: You cannot keep others from knowing about the mayhem of your country. Burma is on satellite. The floods and the people and the animals can be seen dead and floating and bloated. The living can be seen by satellite also, picking through ruins, entire villages wiped out with no survivors.

Than Schwe, delaying allowing aid workers in, makes you only look more and more unleaderly.

Than Schwe, animals survive by adapting. Animals who can learn new behavior, survive the unforeseen.

Than Schwe, animals who do as they have always done, die.

Than Schwe, open your heart, if not your mind. Be known as a ruler who took care of his people in every way possible, rather than going down in history as the leader who stood by paralyzed and allowed holy people and helpless people, his own kith and kin, to die in misery.

CODA
I hear from my contact in Yangon, that the people on the ground in Burma are begging that international aeroplanes please fly over and drop supplies.

Than Schwe, if they fly, let them fly unmolested. Add no more horror to horror. It’s within your power. Choose honorific over horrific.

Than Schwe, the new respect you would receive then, would be remarkable.

This is our deepest prayer for you Than Schwe, and for the people of Burma… the Central Buddhist Precept:

Deprive no living thing of its life.

Look at these faces.  While the rest of the world wrings its hands and waits helplessly on the sidelines, Burma’s government says it will accept aid, but that it doesn’t want the help of foreigners in getting it to the people. (BBC News)  The UN is pretty sure the government’s own unaided efforts won’t be enough. 

The UN says that up to 1.5 million people may have been affected by Cyclone Nargis, which devastated the Irrawaddy Delta region on Saturday. Burmese state media say 22,980 people were killed, but there are fears the figure could rise to 100,000.

Hundreds of thousands of people have no food, water or shelter. Officials say people could die because no help is getting to them.

In a statement, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the junta to prioritise the aid effort over tomorrow’s nation-wide referendum on a widely-criticised new constitution.

It would be "prudent to focus instead on mobilising all available resources and capacity for the emergency response efforts", he said.  (BBC News)

Read the rest of this entry »

Various news reports say there are over 200,000 dead in the cyclone and tsunami that hit Burma… now five days ago.

Other reports say over 500,000 will be dead if the thousands of bodies floating in water and lying in mud are not burnt or buried, and the injured given help, and the vulnerable given clean water.

This is after the government originally said there might be a total of 10,000 dead. Maybe not even that many, they said.

This from The Sun, U.K., by Nick Parker, Chief Foreign Correspondent at Mae Sot on the Burmese border
and James Clench

The UK has so far pledged more aid than anyone, announcing a £5million package to be channelled through the UN.

Charities Save the Children, Oxfam and the British Red Cross have also swung into action.

But most of the aid is yet to be distributed because of the secretive Burmese junta, led by ruthless General Than Shwe.

His isolationist regime is paranoid an influx of foreigners might have a political impact on a national referendum due tomorrow, set to strengthen the army’s grip still further.

Three days ago, the dictatorship’s Health Minister went on TV, in what was called a rare appearance, and he said aid was on its way to the Burmese people. Right away.

It’s not. Aid is not on its way. Five days later, world aid is not present in Burma.

General Than Schwe, dictator of Burma, has 400,000 soldiers at his behest.

And as I wrote at TMV earlier, hopefully Than Schwe would stand out of the way and allow the experienced international teams of aid workers to bring equipment and supplies, and the means to both unload it and distribute it.

It didn’t happen.

Ships from many nations are still fully loaded all over the world waiting orders to turn the wheel and steam toward Burma. Cargo planes are loaded and waiting. They are filled with medical supplies At various airports outside Burma, aid workers are sitting on their packed duffels and backpacks ready to go: parameds, post trauma specialists, doctors, engineers, health care workers, and heavy equipment, such as back hoes, trailers. All waiting.

And waiting

And waiting

Than Schwe, hugely well fed dictator of the ancient Burmese people, he who has suffered no personal loss from this disaster for he is ensconced more than 200 miles away from where the tsunami/ cyclone hit… and it is Than Schwe, who wanted to be king of everything and who wanted to control everything, it is he who has publicly failed the world soul, failed the world heart that cries out for a humane response…

Than Schwe has failed publicly and utterly by keeping aid workers out of Burma, by putting no real teeth behind his health minister’s claim that help was coming, big help was coming, right away, huge help was coming.

Than Schwe is merely keeping all aid workers on strings… without cutting the red tape.

The dictatorship’s excuse? Than Schwe and his merelings continues to parrot that they “cannot let aid workers into the country out of concern for the workers own safety.”

Than Schwe, NEWS ALERT: to aid workers, a disaster site wouldn’t be a disaster site if it weren’t unsafe.

Than Scwe’s huge lie will not hold water, not even a drop left behind by the tsunami.

According to this infuriated op-ed from Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper, “xenophobic” Americans are celebrating the fact that the amount of money migrants send home to their families in Latin America is beginning to drop.

Sergio Muñoz Bata writes for El Tiempo:

“As if the protagonists weren’t human beings who has separated themselves from their families to try and build a better future, the news that cash remittances from Latin American immigrants to their impoverished families back home are declining has been cause for celebration in xenophobic circles in the United States. … that doesn’t imply, as anti-immigrant groups say, good news for those seeking to restrict the flow of migration, since if the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate, the effects will be felt throughout the region. And when the economies of Latin America enter into a major crisis, the only escape valve will once again be immigration.”
Read the rest of this entry »

After six years at Guantanamo Bay prison, the only journalist yet to be incarcerated there, Sami Al-Hadj, was released last week. The case of Mr. Al-Hadj, who was a cameraman for Al-Jazeera, has sparked renewed outrage around the world.

It’s not easy reading for an American, but a good sampling of the emotion in the Arab world over the case can be found in this article from Algeria’s French-language Le Quotidien d’Oran.

K. Selim writes for Le Quotidien d’Oran in part:

“The United States is indeed a democracy: Within its own borders, the rule of law is enshrined. But beyond its walls, only the law of the jungle prevails. Read the rest of this entry »

China, meaning those men and women at the top of all things, has sent out a country-wide alert to try to get Chinese citizens to wash their hands more often and to spray disinfectant

– all in order to deal with a disease called Entero-virus 71, described as a hand, mouth and foot virus. (not the same as hoof and mouth disease in cattle)

In one city alone, Entero-virus 71 has killed 22 children in the last week. Tens of thousands are said to be hospitalized across China, and in one city , over 3000 cases are reported. The disease is passed by effluvia: spittle, feces, blister fluids, nasal and throat discharges.

The Chinese nationwide order about this epidemic remarks:

–EV-17 shows signs of spreading further.

–”Health bureaus at all levels must recognize the importance and urgency of preventing the spread of infectious diseases.”

–Preventing the spread of infectious diseases was necessary “to guarantee the smooth staging of the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics and to practically preserve social stability.”

–The order said any person or agency who tried to cover-up or delay disclosure of outbreaks, would be punished.
(During a SARS pneumonia outbreak in 2003, the government at Beijing tried to cover it up, delaying intervention, causing the deaths of many more people, and finally under pressure from world voices, took severe measures.)

–In the same order, China acknowledged that they have many more cases this year of EV-71, and that also the people need to take steps to prevent epidemics of hepatitis A, measles and other infectious diseases commonly spread in warm weather.

–And peak for infectious disease transmission would come in June and July, the government said.

Even under ordinary conditions, if you are the newly-elected president of a small Central American nation like Guatemala, coming to Washington to meet the U.S. president is a singularly important and daunting event.

Unfortunately for Guatemala, President Alvaro Colom’s visit comes during an election year in which the idea of legalizing the undocumented is the political kiss of death. According to this editorial from Guatemala’s Prensa Libre, the trip also proved a lesson in the global pecking order:

“Meetings between Guatemalan officials and their Washington colleagues stand out, due to a failure to comprehend how the complicated American political system works Read the rest of this entry »

One must hand it to the Beijing authorities. It takes tremendous gall for a regime that outlaws press freedom or open criticism of any kind, to liken the failure of Western reporters to parrot the Communist Party line to a lapse of journalistic ethics.

According to Shen Xinggeng, senior Desk Editor at the strictly state-controlled People’s Daily:

“If news reporters don’t respect basic facts, how can they talk so glibly about ‘objectivity and fairness’? Read the rest of this entry »

There is a persistent tendency amongst people (all people, not just Americans) to deny their group or nation’s role in oppression or atrocities — something I discovered recently when I observed that the U.S. has, in fact, supported terrorism in Central America (the death squads of the 1980s). Denial is a tempting emotion. But it is also exceedingly dangerous, and lays the ground work for the reiteration of mass atrocity worldwide.

Republicans might be interested to know that there are some people in the world, in this case in Brazil, who already assume that John McCain will beat either of his Democratic challengers.

But according to Paulo Sotero who writes for Brazil’s Estadoa, Brazilian elites should not only give up the idea of forecasting a U.S. election still six months away, but they should reassess a number of preconceived notions that lead them to believe that Republican presidents make better allies for Brazil. Read the rest of this entry »

Does a dictatorship that has outlawed freedom of the press have the standing to criticize the ‘journalistic ethics’ of American reporters? That is the question one must grapple with when reading through Beijing’s latest blistering attack against CNN host Jack Cafferty ‘and his ilk’ for referring to the Chinese regime as ‘goons and thugs’ and calling Chinese goods ‘junk.’ Paradoxically, now the Chinese authorities appear to be criticizing Washington Read the rest of this entry »

Those who were waiting for Pope Benedict to issue President Bush a ’slap in the face’ over the Iraq War have been sorely disappointed. In fact, according to Patrik Etschmayer of Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper:

“No one should believe that the Iraq War is really that high on the Pope’s agenda. When it came time for the Holy See to endorse a candidate for the last presidential election, the then chief-inquisitor who became today’s Pope found it more important to support the candidate who opposed the legality of abortion than the one who stood against the war. This meant that Bush garnered the support of about a million votes that otherwise would have gone to Kerry. Bush is President, so to speak, due to Benedict’s grace.”

Etschmayer goes on to say, “As Benedict XVI is a Pope of restoration, when he visits the United States during an election year it symbolizes a policy that is anti-liberal and is a sign of support for the only conservative candidate: John McCain. McCain’s talk of remaining in Iraq for even 10,000 years if need be changes nothing. In the end, the fact is that this Pope by far prefers a Christian theocracy that fights bloody wars over a liberal, non-Christian democracy that avoids conflict.”

By Patrik Etschmayer

Translated By Patrik Etschmayer

April 17, 2008

Switzerland - Nachrichten - Original Article (German)

The headlines looked to be rather promising for opponents of Bush: The Pope would give Bush a few verbal slaps in the face, unambiguously criticize him and perhaps the Pontiff would even administer a real beating. But one should not be deluded: Standing on the same foundation, these are two men that think reason and reality should take a back seat to belief in a world as one wishes it to be.

This unity stood out when George W. Bush integrated a core-belief of the Pope into his speech of welcome by stressing that it is important for the nation to heed “the dictatorship of relativism.” Ultimately, this means that both Bush and the Pope stand for an absolute believe in a God that accepts a diversity of faiths only in the sense that there are people left to convert.

It’s perhaps a little ironic then, that the relativism both of these men fight so passionately against exists between themselves, as Bush is a member of a Methodist Church while the Pope is the world’s top Catholic. As far as the Protestants, the Pope has already made his opinion quite clear: When he declared that the Protestant churches were in fact not real churches at all, it triggered considerable consternation among ecumenical [inter-church] organizations.

In this light, the Pope’s criticism of George W. Bush’s Iraq policy is doubly interesting and curious. It’s probably too simplistic to use oil to explain Bush’s drive to invade Iraq. This was certainly a major motivation but there might as well have been the hope of having his “Christian” army plant a flag of victory over the stylized Islamist fanaticism of Saddam Hussein, whose rhetoric certainly contained a religious component. Recall when Bush initially spoke of a crusade, it looked simply as a clumsy choice of words. But who today uses this expression in a military context? It’s quite possible that he actually meant it in a literal sense. A man that continuously stresses doing the Lord’s work will also be drawn into war for his master.

And no one should believe that the Iraq War is really that high on the Pope’s agenda. When it came time for the Holy See to endorse a candidate for the last presidential election, the then chief-inquisitor who became today’s Pope found it more important to support the candidate who opposed the legality of abortion than the one who stood against the war. This meant that Bush garnered the support of about a million votes that otherwise would have gone to Kerry. Bush is President, so to speak, due to Benedict’s grace.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the Pope’s visit to the United States.

While Pope Benedict’s visit to the US, and the UN, was highlighted in the media with special emphasis on the US priests’ misdemeanours in the US, and the veiled criticism of the military adventures in Iraq and concern about human rights (see here), what I really enjoyed reading was 50 religious insights from George Bush…please click here…

There are certainly valid issues here, but I doubt that the protests are doing Tibet, China, or the Olympics any good whatsoever. Imagine if all that energy were directed in constructive channels.

NPR: Tibet Protests Stir Chinese Nationalism

Audio for this story will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET

All Things Considered, April 18, 2008 · Internet death threats and attacks on property greeted at least one person’s efforts to mediate between protesters on opposite sides of the China-Tibet issue. The official Xinhua News Agency is urging Chinese to harness their nationalistic fervor for constructive ends.

Why is it that Popes don’t usually visit the United States during presidential election years? Lucas Mendez writes for the BBC Brazil, “As neutral as the papal robe is, his messages can and will be used by the candidates … every time Benedict XVI opens his mouth, Democrats and Republicans will interpret and “spin it,” according to their own political ‘gospels’”
Read the rest of this entry »

Programming others to do one’s will, or else…
When I first trained in my field, veterans from Korea and those coming back from Nam who’d been POWs, had often suffered extensive efforts by the enemy… to rearrange their impulses, instincts and attitudes. At that time too, deprogramming had become a watchword, and thus we studied deeply the psychological effects of vulnerable human beings being ‘programmed’ by others

…Actual brain changes appeared to take place, deleterious ones that undercut the victim’s confidence and certainty about selfhood… and psychological changes, such as, feelings of helplessness, inability to think for oneself clearly and quickly. These and more, appeared to issue from experiencing untoward pressures and torments meant to destroy the core person.

Thus, whether crude or sophisticated the enemy attempted to cover over and subvert the soldiers’ true selves, by:
–using punishments erratically,
–withholding of food and other subsistances,
–restricting movement, and access to the outer world, to like-kind colleagues who shared a desire to be free
–and to also, reward via pathetic means, erratically also… as one soldier I worked with had been given a rat’s leg, raw, as a reward for agreeing to be beaten by the enemy in order to save a badly battered fellow soldier from being beaten to death.

That kind of ‘reward’ of ‘poisonous love’ can seem a moment of light… but only to those entirely degraded, those whose core self has been stolen away.

The good news is that the core self can, with care and time, be restored. And the work to do so is noble and worthy.

Yet… though we can notice that some aspects of a deleterious cult are also held by highly disciplined groups and service groups….

we can also note the difference between a group that is straight arrow, and one that is destructive … in the latter, the creative spirit is not free, and the person is
–not free to leave,
–not free to learn beyond the leader’s knowings,
–not free to change,
–not free to question or to create,
–not free to be compensated,
–not free to create sub-groups,
and that the ‘contact’ or agreement to become part of the cult was made without fair reasoning
–by virtue of being born into the cult as a baby,
–or being seduced into it during a time of travail,
–or being drawn in by insecurity, ill health, lostness, a seeking of intense meaning and dense ‘unusual’ experiences,
–or wanting very deeply to belong and be loved but without adequate fore-discernment,
–and other kinds of tender vulnerabilities that are found particularly in the young, the naïve, the unworldly,
the hopeful, the weary, the good hearted, those who feel called to serve…

…including some who
–hope for a free ride, who are themselves exploitative,
–those who have been in some hurtful way disenfranchised by their parents or a great love,
–those who have been already denuded of the core self by some previous person or association,
– those who want to attain importance/protection by being attached to someone or something their see as very shiny,
– those who are passive-dependent as personalities (want to be taken care of and told what to do and not have to think/feel anxiety),
– those in the manic swing of bi-polar disorder who will be thrilled, fawning and radiant acolytes …for as long as their mania lasts
–those caught in an over-idealizing complex as either part of a garden variety neurosis, or as a feature of borderline personality disorder….

Vulnerability to joining up and defending a destructive cult is not a matter of intelligence. IQ is not a factor for pledging. Vulnerability to ‘hyper-belong’ is often caused by absence of experience, lack of discernment, and a good deal of disappointment and/or distrust of/with the world ‘out there.’

Here is a shortlist of how to go about it, were one to try to ‘build’ a negative cult… keeping in mind that the destructiveness of such comes from de-personalizing human beings, by stripping them of freedom to choose to follow one’s own pathway without being exiled, to force, to threaten shunning and exile, to keep a soul from learning deeply and broadly in the world as well as within the community, to shame and humiliate, and to even strike or deprive of necessities, in order to garner ‘perfect’ obedience. In a phrase: Absolute CONTROL over others’ thoughts, feelings, bodies, development, social, spiritual, and economic functions.

–Set oneself up as inspired by God or the equivalent
–Claim Revelation
–Take on one’s own version of being the wise old man (omniscient father,) or the great mother (endless maternalism)
–Remove all finances from devotees or require huge amounts of money from them in order to remain part of the group
–Isolate the group on a parcel of land, set far away or difficult to access by car or on foot.
–Change the diet to an eccentric one, healthy or not
–Regiment living quarters, reduce decoration, games and toys and material goods to bare bones or nothing
–Deprive sleep, despite the fact that different people have different Read the rest of this entry »

Has CNN host Jack Cafferty and others criticizing China over Tibet and its human right record betrayed a “sense of superiority” and an often dormant “anti-Chinese racism?” Such is the conclusion of this article penned by Ding Gang, senior desk editor at China’s strictly-controlled state run People’s Daily.

Dang writes, “Harboring hatred for China’s development, the Caffertys of the world have assaulted, slandered, framed and spread rumors over recent years, and now they have finally - nakedly - come to the fore.” Beijing’s assault on the Western media shows no sign of abating.

By Ding Gang*

April 17, 2008

People’s Republic of China - People’s Daily - Original Article (English)

On April 9, when CNN broadcast the news on the Olympic torch relay in San Francisco, its host Jack Catterty remarked that Chinese products are “junk” Read the rest of this entry »

“–Wherever the land is dry and hard, you could be the water …
–or you could be the blade disking the earth open;
–or you could be the acequia, the ditch that carries water from river to fields;
–or you could be the just engineer mapping dams that must be taken down, and those which would serve the venerable all, instead of only the very few;
–or you could be the battered vessel for carrying water by hand;
–or you could be the one who stores the water, protects it, blesses it or pours it;
–or you could be the tired ground that receives it;
–or you could be the scorched seed that drinks it;
–or you could be the vine green-growing overland in all your wild audacity …”

“If there is an ancient secret to caring for and mending the significant lacerations to this “Oh-my-dear-God-beautiful” earth we’ve been given, by soul’s light it might be just a tiny four-word prayer from Creator to humanity:

““Please, just start anywhere.”

”
(from “The Rainmakers: Beer Bottle Old Woman, Tin Can Old Man” by Dr.E, see here)

The Pope, this morning, in response to President Bush’s welcome at the White House sprang up from his ceremonial chair with the vitality of a young man, no ooofs or ehhhs, (the Pope is 81 years old as of today, April 16, 2008).

This morning President Bush ritually asked that the Pope keep the USA in his prayers. But the Pope in response, said with verve, that in addition he would exhort the people of the USA to be in spirit and “even more responsive/responsible to the life of their nation,” the USA.

This does not mean, “There there, nice people, just separate paper from plastic, and you’ll be doing your part.” It means to unleash convenings, meet to ask questions, to plan, to think of how to bring to bear, to implement, in millions of ways, and sustainedly.

The Pope’s heartfelt “God Bless America” at the end of his address at the White House today, held a sincerity and timbre not seen for years in the usual GodblessAmericabyrote at the end of many politicos’ speeches here in the USA.

President Bush noticed, and in one of his best traits when well aimed, which is a very sweet boyish enthusiasm, he leaned toward the Pope and said of the prelate’s speech, “…that was an awesome speech.”

The contrast between predictable official welcomes, and a rather startling vitality in the Pope’s opening volley, is becoming an increasing part of this Pope’s pronouncements publicly. Just as such was when the Pope recently began to describe for the first time… the debt of honor earth’s people have toward caring for the planet.

Recently, in L’Osservatore Romano, an interview entitled “New Forms of Social Sin,” offered Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti’s remarks about “ecological” sin, which undergirded Pope Benedict XVI’s now ongoing public expressions of concern about global Read the rest of this entry »

Have sports organizations like the International Olympic Committed become “illegitimate transnational powers” that are like “laws unto themselves?”

Columnist Henrique Montiero for Portugal’s Expresso asks, “Is the Chinese regime less brutal today than the Russian regime of 1980? Or, quite simply, is it that the world can no longer live without China, whose capital insures American banks? … a total boycott is dismissed. Read the rest of this entry »

In terms of being the target of Beijing’s vitriol, House Speaker Pelosi has now joined such luminaries as the Dalai Lama and Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian. According to this ‘commentary’ published by the strictly-controlled state run Xinhua news service:

“If an Internet opinion poll were to be carried out in China to choose the most disgusting figure, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would probably be on top of the list. … How can such an irresponsible political figure not be detested by all Chinese?”

The commentary goes on to say, “Underneath her double standards lay a stubborn anti-China sentiment and uneasiness about China’s peaceful rise. Read the rest of this entry »