Word: rangoons
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...Yourself Cut off from the rest of the world for decades, the residents of Rangoon were surely not expecting cavalcades of foreign aid workers to descend soon after the tidal surge and winds abated. But what must have seemed particularly galling was the absence of Burmese military troops participating in the immediate cleanup effort. In September, when thousands of monks led countrywide protests against rising commodity prices, soldiers from the 450,000-strong army responded with chilling brutality, spraying live ammunition at the burgundy-robed demonstrators. The official government death toll was 31, although international observers believe the actual figure...
...Left to fend for themselves, residents of Rangoon rushed to the markets to stock up on plastic sheeting, food and water. In just two days, prices of some basic commodities had already quadrupled. Even before the cyclone hit, Rangoon was reeling from the price hikes that had sparked last year's civil protests; additional increases could push tens of thousands of shantytown dwellers from chronic malnutrition to starvation. Outside Rangoon, the fate of millions remains largely unknown, since roads are blocked and telephone lines are down. In a frightening glimpse of the storm's destructive power, the country's state...
...place that the cyclone spared was Burma's new administrative capital, Naypyidaw, which was carved out of the jungle by the ruling junta in 2005. Burmese civil servants who had to move from Rangoon to the new capital were given no explanation for the shift. But some local journalists in Rangoon speculated that junta leader Than Shwe had been swayed by soothsayers who predicted that civil unrest and a natural disaster would soon strike the city of roughly 5 million. In September, the monk-led protests made the first part of the prophecy come true; the cyclone fulfilled the second...
...weather have been scrutinized by astrologers who divine a relationship between celestial irregularities and earthly mayhem. So when a tropical cyclone tore across the country on May 2 and 3, killing tens of thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless in the Irrawaddy River delta and the city of Rangoon, Burmese couldn't help noting the curious timing: exactly a week later, on May 10, the thuggish ruling junta was set to hold a constitutional referendum, a step toward what the military has called a discipline-flourishing democracy. Then the heavens opened and the winds lashed. The gods, it appeared...
...place the cyclone spared was Burma's new administrative capital, Naypyidaw, carved out of the jungle in 2005. No official reason was given for shifting the capital from Rangoon, but locals have speculated that the military had been swayed by soothsayers who predicted that civil unrest and a natural disaster would soon strike the city. Within eight months of each other, both prophecies had come true. "People in Burma are angry about two things," says Aung Zaw, a Burmese in exile who edits a Thailand-based magazine called the Irrawaddy. "They're angry at the military for reacting so slowly...