The world according to Riff

YANGON, May 9, 2008 (Reuters) — Myanmar will accept foreign aid but not foreign aid workers, the foreign ministry said on Friday, after a disaster rescue team from Qatar that arrived in Yangon on an aid flight was turned back.(Yeah just give us the supplies so we can sell them to the rich, and make money while the rest starve)

"Myanmar is not in a position to receive rescue and information teams from foreign countries at the moment," said a foreign ministry statement carried in the official Myanma Ahlin newspaper.(Bullshit not able or not willing?)

"But at present Myanmar is giving priority to receiving relief aid and distributing them to the storm-hit regions with its own resources," the statement said.

The Qatar plane was one of 12 international relief flights that landed in the former capital on Thursday, it said.

PATRIOTIC REFERENDUM

Myanmar's junta urged citizens on Friday to do their patriotic duty and vote for an army-drafted constitution in a televised message that made mo mention of the millions living in cyclone-affected areas where the balloting has been postponed.

The junta's opponents have suggested the reason for the delays in allowing in aid workers could be that the generals do not want an influx of foreigners before Saturday's referendum.(Yeah they dont want the world to see the crooked shit going on there)The vote in the devastated south would be held in two weeks. The last time Myanmar had an election, in 1990, the generals lost in a landslide to Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.

In the storm-ravaged former capital of Yangon, a city of five million, people were stunned that the referendum was going ahead.

"It shows how unreasonable and crazy they can be. They just want to celebrate victory even though the people are suffering," one shop owner told Reuters.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said on Friday he had cancelled a planned trip to Myanmar this weekend after the junta's announcement that it would not welcome foreign aid workers, just hours after he said he would go.

"After they said today they would not welcome foreign staff, there is no point of me going there," Samak said.

Frustration is mounting over Myanmar's generally feeble response to one of its worst disasters in memory and particularly the delays in giving visas to aid workers and landing rights for relief flights.

I wont cut and paste anymore of this garbage, I just cant fathom the mind of these people, and the victims that far outnumber them, who don't rise up....riff