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Posts Tagged ‘Economic Collapse’

How Astrology Ruined Myanmar’s Economy

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

If you have been following the news, you no doubt would have heard by now of Cyclone Nargis hitting Myanmar (also known as Burma) and the ruling military junta’s piss-poor disaster relief initiatives that makes FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina look like a shining moment in the Bush Administration’s history. It is estimated as of today that 155,000 people are dead and that number is certain to rise given the complete lack of food or medical aid and the completely unwillingness of the government to aid its own people. Apparently the regime is more concerned that foreign journalists and aid workers might report back the horrors of living in one of the least-developed countries in the world under a retrograde military regime; The callousness with which the regime is handling the situation hearkens back to how the 2007 and 1988 pro-democracy protests were brutally suppressed and is very different from China’s transparent and rapid response to it’s own major disaster in the Beichuan region.

But these instances do not constitute the only time the military junta has screwed over its own people. Of all the megalomaniacs, it is perhaps only General Ne Win and his successors who relied heavily on astrology and other superstition to chart out national policy

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