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...