Word: junta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...natural to hope that the destruction wrought by Cyclone Nargis in Burma will have a similar impact - that it will force the military junta that, in one guise or another, has ruled Burma for decades to change its ways: win the trust of its citizens, and devote its resources not to sustaining a bloated, corrupt military but to helping people live better lives. But assessing how governments will conduct themselves is not like the common law, where precedents accrete until they solidify into doctrine that shapes future conduct. The dreadful famine in North Korea in the 1990s, for instance...
...Optimists will hope that the junta in Burma will learn the lessons of Chernobyl and Mexico City, and realize that they cannot continue as they have before. Realists, sadly, will note how long Burma's rulers have defied the manifest will of their own people, and guess that they will hunker down again. It would be nice if the realists were to be proved wrong. Until then, those within Burma as well as those from afar who genuinely care about its prospects can do little but hope for better, cloudless, days to come...
Burma has been selective about accepting foreign aid. It has allowed help in from allies like India and China and from neighboring Thailand to enter. After some hesitation over a number of days, the junta okayed a large shipment from the United Nations. It has yet to arrive. Aid workers from numerous organizations and personnel from numerous nations are mobilized and ready to assist, but the regime has been slow to process visas, fearing infiltration by journalists, who are banned, and more generally, Western, pro-democratic influence, which is not to be trusted. "They want the foreign...
...tens of thousands of people, in other words, should not impede efforts to codify the primacy of the generals. At a time when Burma's rice growing regions - which once made it the world's top rice producer - have been devastated leaving its people starving for the staple, the junta seems determined to remain the world's number one producer and consumer of barbed wire - literally and figuratively. The people are cowed. They utilize hushed tones when speaking to foreigners, take furtive glances over their shoulders, all part of the fearful obedience that keeps them calibrated to the crackdown they...
...time, though, she says they're trying to stage manage the entire process, skirting the fact that even if they do have the will to do what needs to be done, they have neither the capabilities nor the resources to pull it off. For at the heart of the junta's fearsome "normality" is fear itself...