 #2 (permalink) Thu May 15, 2008 0:31 am Natural Disaster |
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| BelajarEnglish wrote: |
| I am just wondering that this is the reality? Are there any reasons the Burma's dictator risked 1.5 million lives? If that is right. that policy is really antithesis of altruism. |
Sometimes dictators exploit natural disasters to make sure that people in supportive parts of the country get food and assistance, and that people who aren't likely to support them will die.
In the 1980s, a big charity event called Live Aid was staged to collect money around the world for famine relief in Ethiopia. The cash was collected, and food was bought and shipped, but it rotted on the docks in Ethiopia, because the government refused to allow it to be distributed. What hadn't occurred to most people in the West was that the famine was being used intentionally to depopulate areas where the opposition was strong.
Sometimes those famines are engineered deliberately by government policy, as when Stalin starved 10 million people in Ukraine for refusing to collectivize their farms.
I don't know what the generals in Burma have in mind, but there's obviously some method to their madness. It's very tragic, however. We're going to be reading a lot of horrifying memoirs when that regime falls. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
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Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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