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Why Burma Shouldn’t Listen to the IMF - By Rick Rowden

Why Burma Shouldn’t Listen to the IMF - By Rick Rowden
Burma is at a crossroads. While the country's dramatic (and fragile) political opening is receiving plenty of attention, its leaders are also confronting some stark decisions about their economic future. After decades of economic isolation, the economy of Burma (also known as Myanmar) is badly in need of reforms than can better promote development. The choices that Burma's government makes in the coming months could well determine what the country will look like 30 years from now: an industrialized South Korea or a resource-cursed Nigeria. Coinciding with its political opening, Burma's leadership has taken steps to deepen the pool of foreign investors in the economy beyond the traditional influence of neighbors China and Thailand. The IMF has already sent several delegations to the country and is assisting the government in unifying its complex system of multiple exchange rates for the currency, the kyat, as a necessary first step to other reforms. SOE THAN WIN / AFP / Getty Images

Aung San Suu Kyi's victory does not bring Burma freedom | Zoya Phan Aung San Suu Kyi waves to the crowd in Burma, with her party celebrating a major victory in byelections. Photograph: Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images I have dreamed for many years of seeing Aung San Suu Kyi elected to parliament and watching thousands of people celebrating in the streets. We always expected that Aung San Suu Kyi being allowed to take a seat in parliament would be a final step on the road to democracy. Too much importance has been attached to these byelections, whose significance is more symbolic than practical. Yet, as Aung San Suu Kyi hoped, the byelection campaign has successfully mobilised many people, breaking down the fear of engaging in politics after generations of dictatorship. I have another reason for feeling cautious. While the international community gets excited about the changes taking place in Burma, many people from ethnic minorities, who make up 40% of the population, feel left behind and forgotten.

Photo Booth: Postcards from Tohoku: Japan, One Year Later On Sunday, one year will have passed since the great tsunami of 2011 launched its “menacingly effective assault on Tohoku,” as the photographer Jake Price described it. “It took down the largest of structures, killed thousands of people, and inundated ancient fields, making them fallow for years to come.” This winter, Price lived with residents of this region in northeastern Japan in their kasetsus—trailer homes provided by the government. “Living in isolation, they endure and exist,” Price told me. “But people want not merely to endure; they want to connect to their culture, art, and history.” Moved by the quiet yet unflappable fortitude of the people he met over the four months he spent in Tohoku, Price organized “Dispatch from Tohoku: Documenting the Aftermath,” a special event that will take place on Sunday. “In the end,” Price said, “the tsunami’s assault proved a failure. Iwaki City. Hiruta-san, who volunteered to drive with me to Minamisoma in the early morning on a rainy day.

Ending Myanmar's civil war Beijing, China - In the past year, Myanmar's government has implemented a surprising series of liberalising reforms. Facing strong environmental and labour protests by activists and NGOs, President Thein Sein has halted construction of the Chinese-backed Myitsone hydroelectric dam, which would have been one of the largest dams in the world (152m tall) and was projected to supply 3,600 to 6,000MW of electricity, largely to Yunnan Province in China. In response to similar concerns, Thein Sein also stopped the building of a 4,000MW coal-fired power plant in the new Special Economic Zone, Dawei, where Thailand's largest construction company, Italian-Thai, is building a deepwater port to support container shipping to compete with Singapore and China. Then Thein Sein released many of the remaining political prisoners in the country, including comedian Zarganar, and former prime minister Khin Nyunt. British rule A historic agreement This discussion is far from being merely academic.

Haiti’s Medical Volunteers – Helping or Harming? | Tiny Spark Doctors and nurses responded when Haiti was shaken by a deadly earthquake in 2010. From across the United States and around the globe, an untold number of men and women took leave from their jobs and flew to Haiti to provide assistance to the injured. In our latest episode, Tiny Spark takes a look at the quality of care those volunteers provided. While they may have been well-intentioned, medical volunteers’ lack of specialized training would sometimes have severe repercussions for patients. Harvard’s Dr. We also speak to Andy and Jennifer Day, a couple from Indiana who decided to volunteer their medical skills in Haiti. Jennifer Day (L) and Andy Day (R). Jennifer, a registered nurse, says she was left to her own devices working at an orthopedic clinic in Port-au-Prince. Jennifer’s experience highlights one of the central challenges of international emergency medicine. Dr. Dr. But when Dr. See more photos from a surgeon in Haiti.

Is Myanmar the new Asian tiger? Bangkok, Thailand - While the big story of 2012 in south-west Asia is the increasingly lethal US-Iran psychodrama, there's no bigger story in south-east Asia in the Year of the Dragon than the controlled opening of Myanmar. Everyone and his neighbour, East and West, has been trekking to Myanmar since US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit last November. It's virtually impossible these days to book a flight or a hotel room. Like Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Astana in Kazakhstan a few years ago, the new capital Naypyidaw ("the abode of kings") - built from scratch with natural gas wealth halfway between Rangoon and Mandalay - is surging as a new promised land. In parallel, the European Union (EU) has lifted a travel ban on senior Myanmar officials. This may not be exactly a letter of recommendation - considering the ignominious past record - but still the IMF, after a two-week trip, declared Myanmar as the "next economic frontier in Asia". The amazing race Enter Pipelineistan

Saving Syrians, One Blanket at a Time - By Wijbe Abma KILIS, Turkey — I am a 21-year-old, independent aid worker. I don't work for any country or NGO, but for Syrian civilians. The project I started isn't just about bringing help, it's about bringing hope. The idea started small and simple: I wanted to take blankets to refugees. Before I knew what I was getting into, it had grown big and complex: I've just come back from Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, where I delivered my second batch of aid -- 500 blankets. It all started when I finished a university exchange in South Korea and decided to travel back home to the Netherlands overland. It was here that I met Ali, a refugee from Aleppo. I listened to his story, horrified. Reading up about the humanitarian situation in Syria, I was struck by how much aid was needed. I decided to visit Bab al-Salam, a makeshift camp situated just a few hundred feet into Syria, across the Turkish border. I was greeted at the border by a teenager in a camouflage outfit. Syrian nights are incredibly cold.

Don't buy into Burma's cosmetic reforms When the European Union reviews its Common Position on Burma next week it would be wise not to buy into the Burmese junta's cosmetic reforms. For the elaborate charade recently conducted by the Burmese junta to transfer power to former general Thein Sein as the president of a new "civilian" government, has not fooled the Burmese public at large. The entire process was, by any measure, a transparent attempt to legitimise the rule of the junta with just enough democratic window-dressing to make the country slightly more palatable to shareholders of international investment firms. While celebrating the transformation from world-class pariah tyranny to some sort of "flawed democracy," only the deliberately naïve or shamelessly opportunistic would describe these events as progress toward real democratic freedoms. This transition to democracy, of course, does not exist – neither slow nor gradual.

Western hunger for Myanmar's 'cleansed' lands When a team of health professionals reached the makeshift camps along the China-Myanmar border in September to meet with refugees displaced by fighting in Kachin State, they encountered a young boy whose tale symptomises how debased the wars in Myanmar's border regions have become. The 15-year-old told staff from Physicians for Human Rights how he had been forced to walk in front of a Burmese army patrol, ensuring that he and not they took the full blast from any landmine hidden along the path. "They asked me where I was from and they asked me if I was in school. I told them yes I was in 7th standard. And then they said nothing but made me show them the way. He is among more than 40,000 civilians who have been forced to flee their homes since fighting flared in June. Evidence of the ties that bind civil war to business abounds in these peripheral states, where egregious acts have long been committed by low-ranking soldiers of the Burmese military. 'A better friend than China'

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