‘wOw Friend’ Adelle Lutz, an artist and Burma activist, is reporting from Bangkok, Thailand, on the post-cyclone situation in Burma.

Special Express no.1 is a creaky, squealing old thing that pitches and lurches as unpredictably as a bad dance partner. The door opens incessantly with a pneumatic pah-ffffff sound.

It is just before sunrise. With too little sleep, yawning and yawing, I roll with its punches to the endless pah-fffffs and cacophony of train orchestrations. Then I think of how easily I boarded, how I was served a tasty duck curry with vegetable soup dinner and how graciously the attendant made up my bed with crunchy sheets and a clean toweling blanket. There but for the grace of God; the luck of the draw – I am not a captive citizen of Burma.

It is now more than a month since Cyclone Nargis claimed 134,000 lives and left 2.5 million people in urgent need of help. Four long weeks have come and gone and half of the victims have yet to receive any care whatsoever. Access, vehicles and even basic means of communication are still routinely denied to humanitarian workers. Those hanging on in the Irrawaddy Delta speak of spotty aid — at best — with most relief coming from monks and intrepid citizens braving treacherous byways for hours at a time in small crafts with smaller loads of life-saving supplies.

"The people can survive with self-reliant efforts even if they are not given chocolate bars from the international community," snarled the regime through official mouthpiece newspapers. They added that plump frogs were aplenty in the mud — get moving, stop being a nuisance, start planting.

How? How does one pick up when hungry and thirsty, sick and homeless, when grieving for family, friends, homes, villages, animals and even soil and seeds? All means of support are gone. I am told over and over that the revered monks must now soothe the spirits of the dead – not only the human spirits but the animal spirits that perished as well. All sentient beings are precious; their souls are restless. This must happen to allay the great fear of the ghosts of those returning to the chaos of nothingness that is the Irrawaddy Delta.

The “USS Essex” has now been ordered away. What a massive psyche attack on the people of Burma that news must be and what hoots of triumph around the generals’ table.

"We need two things: physical rehabilitation and, equally important, we must have psychological rehabilitation," said Bo Kyi, director of Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) with deep feeling. "The people need the spokesperson. Aung San Suu Kyi is the hope for the people. They are so low right now. She is the key to Burma’s psychological rehabilitation. She is the hope we cannot buy with money."

I can think of no comparable world leader. After her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won the overwhelming mandate with more than 80 percent of the popular vote, the junta immediately put her under arrest and imprisoned NLD officials. Aung San Suu Kyi is the only Nobel Peace Laureate under lock and key. Word is now official; her sentence has been extended again, and will now total 20 years with 13 in detention.

How must she feel separated from the millions who so dearly need "the lady," as she is affectionately known? In their not wanting to "politicize" the cyclone relief effort, the United Nations, ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) and international NGO (non-governmental organization) leaders have, across the board, evaded mention of her name for fear of reprisals from the wacko generals.

But it has, in fact, been absolutely political from the beginning. It is precisely why this morally bankrupt regime never warned the people, why humanitarian aid still sits in Rangoon (and in stalls in the markets), why only seven helicopters are available to deliver WHO supplies when the "USS Essex" had 23 at the ready. Larry Jagan, a freelance journalist based in Bangkok, gave confirmation to what had been hearsay for weeks – that Gen. Than Shwe had ordered planes moved out of Rangoon and safely north before the storm.

Why was his navy left out of the loop? Those stationed in the delta were decimated along with the locals. Odd. Could this peculiar behavior point to rifts in the military? If not before Nargis, then surely now. The generals have monumentally screwed up and they know that the people know.