The Goons of Rangoon

Can you believe those pricks in Burma? I mean, I've long known they were Jerky Generals, but in the aftermath of the disastrous cyclone just over a week ago, they've managed to top themselves yet again.

I'm an American, and I've just finished writing the President and his wife, the Secretary of State, both my senators and congressman, and the chair and ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urging them to support granting Nobel Laureate Sung San Suu Kyi U.S. citizenship -- full citizenship. After all, with positively exquisite timing, the President awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award in America for civilians, thereby not only recognizing a wonderful man but enraging the Burmese Goons' buddies up in Beijing just as the forces of The Tired Old Men of Zhong Nan Hai (the top Chinese leadership residential compound adjacent to and part of the Forbidden City) were shooting people in Tibet and elsewhere.

To give "The Lady," as she's known in Burma by all, U.S. citizenship isn't only the right thing to do, but it would be a strong kick in the Jerky Generals' crotches. (Such a heart-warming metaphor to visualize, isn't it?)

The Goons showed themselves for what they really are when they swiped two plane loads of relief supplies that included emergency rations for about 95,000 people for a week and deported 8 aid workers from Bangladesh, that hugely threatening power from where the Goons don't dare allow a Trojan Horse advance guard. Deported, not just blocked from reaching people. Probably black-listed them, too.

Quite a few people I know here in Bangkok are calling for a military invasion for the twin purposes of forcibly getting aid to victims and coincidentally getting rid of the Jerky Generals as an aside. Sure, Burma has an army of some 400,000 "soldiers" -- if you count the great many who are just 12, 10, even 8 years old. Unfortunately, the logical candidate to lead such an effort is the U.S., but invading yet another country is about the last thing the world wants to see it do.

Even China has rebuked their erstwhile buddies.

I have no plans to visit Burma anytime soon, a place I've never visited but would like to. But when and if I ever do go, I'll be quietly giving stuff directly to people, if nothing more than a bag of rice to some hungry person. I'm sure as hell not going to give it to the Goons for them to sell at inflated prices to their own people.

Which reminds me -- remember the great skill the Goons' forces demonstrated beating, shooting, and killing unarmed peaceful protestors last year? Well, where are those forces now? -- they sure aren't out arresting those parasites selling basic foodstuffs and other necessities at black market prices, gouging the already traumatized, victimized survivors.

This is great tragedy unfolding, with no quick end in sight.

By the way, it would also be nice to see other countries and the E.U. give Aung San Suu Kyi citizenship. And, if the U.N. can ever get off its lazy duff and create a U.N. passport, one that's been talked and talked and talked about but remains only a dream, give her one of those, too.

Then every single country or agency granting her citizenship and passports could raise diplomatic holy hell with those idiots.