Freed at last?

Can you hear them dream? Forty-eight million dreams strung together one clear November evening with a single vision of a common future?

Can you hear them move? Does the movement of thousands to one tiny point in space cause a seismic shockwave?

A woman in lilac steps out into the light after 7 years isolation, 15 out of 21 years alone in her lakeside compound. The last time Aung San Suu Kyi was released, there followed an elaborate plan to assassinate her.

And this time? From totally incommunicado, barring a radio and a lone lawyer permitted to meet with her after applying each time to Naypyidaw, she walks out her door into the euphoria of thousands of followers, so loud in their greetings they drown out her first words. She invites them to a gathering tomorrow.

And then? The business commences anew. Without pause.

Here's to the possibilities beyond...and to the collective joy of Burma to see returned to them a leader deeply revered and beloved despite a litany of efforts to destroy her good name, her livelihood and her spirit. All this only a week after the roundly dismissed elections, replete as they were with violations and instances of fraud that friends inside risked all to compile.

To say so little so late, for my part, is not to diminish the significance of events. Only to point you to better roundups and shrink from offering thoughts too tinged in empathy.

Lots up ahead, so don't crack open the champagne just yet.

Aung San Suu Kyi responds to comments that she might be released when the terms of her house arrest end. Best summed as "all talk and no law = bad"

Ooh, and in an interesting twist, "Burma Media Gagged on Haiti Relief Effort". I was waiting for something of the sort. Any guesses why that might be? Anyone?

In case the irony's lost (because you might not have noticed the cyclone and its after-effects in a far distant country all of a year and a half ago), let's briefly pause and compare:

Haiti earthquake: kills 150,000, government buildings collapse, total devastation is among the worst seen in Western hemisphere.
Tropical Cyclone Nargis, May2-3 2008: savages Rangoon and the Irrawaddy Delta aka "rice bowl," kills 140,000, 2.4 million affected, rice economy devastated, early prospects of a year of lost harvests and reliance on handouts for survival. Government buildings in distant capital intact, however, and offers of aid and international largesse prove typical of global generosity when a natural calamity hits on a grand scale.

Now let's compare what happened:
Haiti: In swarmed the journalists along with US Marines and a massive influx of aid and aid workers. If obstructions and delays there have been -- and there have been -- these have been caused chiefly by a bottleneck at the airport, a collapsed port and other logistical and infrastructural impossibilities.

Burma: Offers of foreign aid rebuffed. Checkpoints thrown up. Visas for aid workers stalled or denied outright. Permits required for those inside. Not clear which set of ministries was responsible for which foreign organizations. Foreign journalists, if they get in, locate sites of damage and stories of woe chiefly as stowaways smuggled in under bags of rice. Calls to Sen. Gen. Than Shwe by UN Secretary General initially not returned. No matter. After three weeks, the US naval carriers positioned offshore and loaded with relief supplies turn around and steam off home, and Save the Children has cut a deal with a famous government crony to speed relief and supplies to the worst hit areas. Oh the scandal.

On a side note, a rare silver lining: Burmese do-gooders, something of a nascent wave of civil society activists, filled the vaccum by heading there themselves, returning with stories of confiscation, rotten rice handouts and bodies left rotting in the rivulets and rice paddies.
Also, with a new and bold sense of empowerment. To be continued...

Hello.
Reuters, Jan. 25, 2010: The pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be freed when her house arrest ends in November, according to a government minister quoted by witnesses on Monday, but critics said that may be too late for this year’s elections. Maj. Gen. Maung Oo, the home minister, told a Jan. 21 meeting of businessmen and local officials that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi would be released in November, a month after Myanmar is expected to hold its first parliamentary elections in two decades.

Mizzima, an Indian-based exile magazine, refracts this tidbit here through the dismissals of National League for Democracy party leaders, who respond that the announcement carries scarcely any significance because Maunt Oo delivers it word of mouth without the weight of an official announcement.

But notice that said article doesn't even amount to top billing on Mizzima's site (another version is buried inside the Irrawaddy under "Haiti Aid Response Far Better than Nargis" -- and more on that in second). When it comes to the hazy pronouncements of the junta on details of expansions to basic freedoms or the like, the news judgment of Burmese editors, much like general opinion, is apparently soaked in cynicism.