On Wednesday, I wrote the following:
…don’t believe for a second that this money will be spent on the people.
Today, Myanmar proved why more and more people each day are reading All American Blogger:
Myanmar’s military leaders seized aid shipments headed for cyclone survivors and told the top U.S. diplomat there Friday that they’re not ready to let in American aid workers despite warnings the country is on the verge of a medical catastrophe.
Another 4 inches of rain was forecast to fall next week as more than 1 million people waited for food, clean water, shelter and medicine to reach them. Diplomats and aid groups warned the number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because of illnesses and said thousands of children may have been orphaned.
The U.N. World Food Program said two planeloads of supplies containing enough high-energy biscuits to feed 95,000 people were seized Friday, prompting the world body to say it was suspending aid flights.
Later, WFP chief spokeswoman Nancy Roman said the flights would resume on Saturday while negotiations continued for the release of the supplies.
Myanmar’s government acknowledged taking control of the shipments and said it plans to distribute the aid itself to the affected areas.
The United Nations was surprised, nay, shocked that the government would do such a thing:
The WFP’s regional director, Tony Banbury, directly appealed to Myanmar’s military leaders in an interview with Associated Press Television News.
“Please, this food is going to people who need it very much. You and I, we have the same interests,” Banbury said. “Please release it.”
Please. If begging worked with communists, there would be a lot more Cambodians around today. It is no surprise that the junta is starving its people. It is what communists do. Look at the history:
The following estimates represent citizens killed or starved to death by their own Communist governments since 1918. These numbers do not include war dead. The governments are sorted by body count (highest to lowest).
All numbers are mid-estimates.
While this list is as complete as I have been able to determine, it is evolving. Some numbers are incomplete and there are still five Communist countries that have the potential to kill more of their citizens. Over the next year, each government will be profiled in detail on this website.
A detailed bibliography is listed at the end of this page. Feedback is more than welcome.
Communist Body Count: 149,469,610
And we are still sending aid. If you really insist on expending federal tax dollars on this, send the people of Burma what they really need.
Couple of those shipments and the people will be just fine.
