Editorial shorts: As thousands die, Myanmar stalls

It takes some doing to make the paranoid regime in North Korea look reasonable, but the Myanmar junta seems determined to die trying. Which might not be such a bad thing, if it didn't appear hellbent on taking so many innocent civilians along with it.

The cyclone that struck the former Burma last weekend did unfathomable damage -- unfathomable partly because of its scope, but also because of the government's refusal to grant access to the relief agencies and international observers who might help the outside world fathom it. Killed in the initial storm were perhaps 20,000, maybe as many as 100,000. Still in grave peril because of the regime's unwillingness to accept the help that is organized, ready and waiting to enter -- that number of potential victims is much higher. The threat now is that a devastated population without food, shelter or clean water could quickly fall prey to disease.

A junta that brutally suppresses civilian demonstrations has made its priority clear -- and that is its own self-preservation. In tune with that priority, it wanted no international observers to witness today's scheduled referendum on a constitution that would help cement its power. That referendum reportedly will proceed, as scheduled, in as much of the country as there is a population still alive and able to vote.

An illegitimate election is one thing. A much more damning crime is to have refused the world's help as thousands die.

The regime's inability to care for its people is already clear; it need not worry about being further embarrassed when the surviving population sees the helicopters and ships and supplies the outside world can provide at a moment's notice. Yet the junta soldiers on, with its five working helicopters, and tells the population it has the crisis in hand. It should drop the fiction, grant the visas, invite in the ships and ask the world for all the help it can offer.

Farmers and ag lenders who remember the 1980s should know well that land and commodity prices that go up can come down with injurious effect. But the quarter-century that has elapsed since the farm-crisis years may have dulled that awareness, says veteran agriculture journalist Lee Egerstrom.

Now with the progressive think tank Minnesota2020, Egerstrom is the chief author of a report drawing attention to the potential downside of farmland prices that have more than doubled in the past five years in much of rural Minnesota. (The report, "Minnesota's Bubble Economy," is at www.mn2020.org.)

The last time that happened, too many farmers took on debt loads that crippled or crushed their operations when land prices fell. Today's farmers and lenders should beware, lest history repeat itself, the report advises. It also recommends that the University of Minnesota Extension Service and the MnSCU farm-management program be maintained at full strength, ready to swing into action in case of a farm market crash.