Burma: An Upside to the Relief Effort | Newsweek Periscope

The Lady by the Lake
6/19/2009 12:00:00 AM
After the trial of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi began, I visited Rangoon. The road barriers and heavy security outside her home, which I'd seen on a previous trip, were gone. "She doesn't live there anymore," my taxi driver told me as we drove past her compound gate. What was once a tightly controlled thoroughfare was now just like any other potholed road in Rangoon, Burma's biggest city and former capital (which the regime calls Yangon). A very bored-looking policeman sat outside the residence. After he ordered me to walk on the opposite side of the road, I gave him a thumbs-up in response—and got a toothy smile and a wave. Two blue police trucks were parked by the house with riot shields fastened to the sides. But the place seemed almost deserted, as if nobody expected Suu Kyi back any time soon.
‘The Lady’ And The Tramp
Tony Dokoupil 6/13/2009 12:00:00 AM
For years, John Yettaw had experienced visions that warned him of events to come. Sometimes the Missouri resident ignored them and came to regret it. This time, though, he intended to act. In early 2009, the 53-year-old told friends and family that he had seen himself as a man sent by God to protect the life of a beloved foreign leader. He arranged for his kids to stay with a friend, borrowed money to buy a plane ticket and printed new business cards, as if launching a new life. He seemed calm at first, spending hours at the local Hardee's, where he used the free Wi-Fi to download music—Gladys Knight, Michael Bublé—and Mormon sermons from Salt Lake City. But as his flight date approached, he also showed signs of nervousness. He broke down on the shoulder of his best friend, and didn't sleep at all on his last night at home.
SPECIAL REPORT: TRAVEL
Stuck in the Rough
5/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
Anyone who finds the old course at St. Andrews challenging—with its mine-free greens and minimal risk of a civil uprising—probably wouldn't enjoy golfing in Baghdad or Kabul. But for a select group of thrill-seekers willing to add sniper fire and house arrest to the more traditional hazards associated with a round of golf, there is a handful of courses tucked away amid the poverty and chaos of the world's failed or post-conflict states. Some are little more than dusty plots where the mortar blasts have barely been patched up, while others shine as oases of luxury that stand in sharp contrast to the desperation outside their well-guarded gates. Since most of these courses do not receive many foreign guests, playing them is less about whom you know than how you are going to get there.
TRAVEL
Rolling on the River
Sana Butler 4/25/2009 12:00:00 AM
Many of the world's great cities were built along rivers, making them easily accessible for trade and exploration. Today, riverboat cruises remain one of the most alluring and efficient ways to tour them. Like ocean liners, riverboats resemble floating hotels, but instead of carrying 2,000 passengers on the high seas, riverboats rarely hold more than 150 passengers, and they sail past fishing villages and vineyards to dock right in the heart of towns or medieval cities. In Europe, the Rhine and Danube are the hottest waterways for touring. Tauck organizes a 24-day Grand European Cruise through nine countries—including Germany, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania—to the Black Sea. Passengers awaken in a new city each day without the hassle of packing and unpacking. They stop long enough to walk to the ruins of a hilltop castle where Richard the Lion-Hearted was imprisoned in Durnstein, Austria, and study the architecture at the private library at the bishop's palace in Kalosca, Hungary (from $8,790; tauck.com).
BOOKS
Why We Need to Call a Pig a Pig (With Or Without Lipstick)
Jennie Yabroff 11/1/2008 12:00:00 AM
In 1944, a young British writer named Eric Blair sent the publisher Jonathan Cape a manuscript for a novel-length parable about the rise of Stalin. The book had already been rejected by one editor for its inflammatory content. Cape also declined. While he personally enjoyed the manuscript, he wrote, he believed it was "highly ill-advised to publish at the present time." Perhaps Blair might have better luck were he to change the identity of the main characters? "It would be less offensive if the predominate caste in the fable were not pigs," he wrote. Blair finally found a publisher, and the book, "Animal Farm," released under Blair's pseudonym, George Orwell, became a bestseller. But the experience proved instructive. The next year, in the essay "Politics and the English Language," he wrote that degraded, unclear language was both symptom and cause of the decline of contemporary culture and political thought. "One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end," he wrote. In other words, it's important to call a pig a pig.
WORLD AFFAIRS
The Stealth Rescue

They line the roads south of Burma's main city, Rangoon. Aid groups call them "separated children" because many don't know if their parents are dead or alive. They await food, water and other essentials delivered by private groups operating without legal authority in this brutal dictatorship. It's all surprisingly open; drivers stop, pop their trunks, and hand out noodles and water as soldiers look on. The kids then return to the churches, temples and schools that have become refugee camps across the Irrawaddy Delta.