Saturday morning I spent a few hours waiting for my connecting flight home, CNN kept talking about the typhoon in Burma. The vacuous talking heads kept refering to the country as Myanmar, and interspersing clips of US officials refering to the country as Burma and then coming back and saying Myanmar, occassionally thy would say "Myanmar, sometimes refered to as Burma." At no time throughout the morning did CNN take time to explain why the US government says Burma while CNN and the junta that took control of Burma say Myanmar.
It occurred to me during the flight that the unelected junta ruling Burma will use the USA's official renouncing of the unofficial name of Burma as the reason they will not allow the US to help the recovery effort. This will allow the junta to paint themselves as victims while villifying the US. This will appeal to anti-US forces such as CNN who will play it up to no end.
And as the death toll creeps up from typhus, malaria, dysintery, malnutrition etc the junta will evade blame, laying it at the feet of the US (and George Bush) because we refuse to recognize an unelected military junta and the name they, and not an elected legislature, assign to the nation.
It should be noted that the left have traditionally been supportive of the Burmese who have protested the harsh regime that is guilty of a wide range of human rights violations, including violent and brutal crackdowns on dissenters. But watch how they allow their BDS to cloud their memories and join the junta in blaming the US government for the additional deaths. (Think Katrina.)
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