Weather Signs: Verdict?

Yangon, Burma, August 13th --It happened during the Cultural Revolution, too, right before Mao died.

China's Tangshan earthquake of 1976 measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and some estimate killed over 700,000 people, making it the most deadly earthquake of modern times. One month later, Chairman Mao Zedong was dead. The ever-so-ominous earthquake weather sign.

Early Tuesday morning, August 11th, an earthquake of 7.6 in magnitude hit of the coast of the Andaman Islands. Shocks were felt as far as 1500 miles away in New Delhi. The shocks felt in Yangon, however, related more to the closing of the Suu Kyi trial, whose verdict was handed down the same day as recently imprisoned American John Yettaw's. The Mormon Vietnam veteran used flippers he constructed out of sandals and Tupperware flotation devices to swim across Inya Lake to warn Burma's beloved dissident of his premonition military intelligence planned to have her assassinated. Described as a "nutty fellow" by Suu Kyi's house staff, the man was writing a book on heroism, and had entered the country from Thailand May 2nd on a tourist visa. After suffering seizures last week, he was placed under medical surveillance in aptly named Insein Prison's health facility.

He was sentenced to six years of hard labor.

The Lady got off the hook with just 18 months of house arrest, a soft sentence considering she could have been facing another five years in Insein. The mild sentence, however, is just inconvenient enough to keep her out of next year's upcoming elections.

The verdict was supposedly signed by Than Shwe, leader of the ruling military junta, before the court had even had an opportunity to hand down a decision.