While we're complaining about gas prices, Bush and wondering who will win the Democratic nomination, a whole lot of people died in a nasty storm:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2008/05/07/2008-05-07_storms_rising_toll_100000_may_have_died_.html

Myanmar's military run government confirms 22,500 dead, but figures are likely two to four times higher than that.

Ant

Wow, that's so horrible.  :\'( :\'( My thoughts are with all the victims.

Let's hope their government doesn't hinder our efforts of aid!

This is really horrifying.  It's not quite as bad as the 2004 tsunami, but the level of carnage and destruction is still hard to comprehend.  The official body count my never be known.  As with the tsunami---and I hate to phrase it as such--it's hard to count people who the world has decided don't really count in the first place.

that is so extremely sad. :\'(

It's not quite as bad as the 2004 tsunami,


Scratch that.  I trust the Sun as far as I can throw it, but considering US government's response of cordoning off the survivors to prevent rescuers from getting in, you've gotta assume the Burmese government will be even more hardcore when it comes to cutting off aid, and that could mean numbers as high as half a million dead as starvation/thirst/disease kicks in.

As you say, they're in Burma, and there ain't no oil in Burma, so we don't care what the Burmese dictators do against the Burmese people.  Shoot 'em up -- we give 'em a week on CNN and then go back to watching the Primary Battle between White Chick Who Wore a Flag on Her Lapel and Black Dude whose Pastor Was Crazy. 

Against 500,000 dead (more than the most pessimistic estimates of civilian casualtiies for Gulf War II, and in a weekend), all we can do is thumb our noses at the Burmese dictators by refusing to call the country "M*bleep*anmar". 

Monks wear yellow,
Blood runs red,
Five hundred thousand,
Drowned and dead.
Burma Shave.

Nope, doesn't cut it.  I'm the guy who lauged his ass off at the "Patience" demotivational poster (with the Pulitzer-prize-winning photo of the vulture and the starving child), and I'm trying as hard as I can to find the Burma Shave joke in there, and that's the best I can come up with, and I still ain't laughing.  Even at my snarkiest, I can't even redeem this mess with so much as a smirk. This is just a galactic black hole of suck all the way around.

Five hundred thousand dead and wet
And so few saved
Is that "The best a man can get"?
Try Burma Shave


This is just a galactic black hole of suck all the way around.


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31EZR3GZHCL._SL500_AA280_.jpg



"What.... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen cyclone?"
King Awful: "What do you mean? An Asian or Indian cyclone?

- From Burmese Python and the Holey Rescue Trail


You're essentially correct though, Foo. Last week a few pissy tornadoes ripped through Suffolk, VA, and the local news covered it like it was the end of days despite no one being killed and property damage that was only in the eight figure range. Tornadoes are highly uncommon here is why. Cyclones hit "that part" of the world all the time and wipe out a few hundred thousand people every few years. I doubt few if any American tourists where visiting Myanmar: thus, we (the media) don't care.

And hey, there's plenty of oil in Iraq: how many here care about non-US fatalities over there?

Ant

i've been kinda shutting it out of my mind, to tell you the truth.

The World Food Programme has halted its aid to Burma after the first delivery is impounded by the military government.

Australia just increased its aid from $1mil to $25mil. But still no remote guarantee that the Burmese govt is letting any of the aid through.

One of my closest friends has just one relative here in Aus- her mum. The rest of their family and friends live in all of the worst affected areas.  For 8 days now she has been unable to contact or find out anything about her father, brothers, cousins and school friends etc. So many people. She has almost started to accept they may be all lost.

Figures are now up to a million missing people.

Aid it being allowed in but not on the scale that could save all the affected people.

Wow, cynicism rules in this joint!  8-P

Seriously, I can't believe these paranoid dictators are more worried about whether disaster aid comes from within or from outside their country's borders than saving the lives of their own people.  Sheesh. It's being reported that Burma's military has been tinkering with any aid that gets in the country to make it appear as though *they're* the ones who are so concerned about their own citizens' plight.
If what Max said is true about people in Burma not counting in the eyes of many other nations, you could say the same thing about their own government!

  Oh my god.  How many died in the 2004 tsunami..?

   Oh my god.  How many died in the 2004 tsunami..?
From Wikipedia:

"The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea (subduction) earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The earthquake triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing more than 225,000 people in eleven countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 meters (100 feet). It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in history. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand were hardest hit."

Let's hope their government doesn't hinder our efforts of aid!


I think they are doing just that.  Sucks for the people of Myanmar, but maybe we can airdrop all the food that we can't drop over there into the South Side of Chicago, lots of needy folks here too!  :P

I think they are doing just that.  Sucks for the people of Myanmar, but maybe we can airdrop all the food that we can't drop over there into the South Side of Chicago, lots of needy folks here too!  :P


Yep.  They can distribute the food over at the Moo 'n' Oink over on Stoney Island.  ;D

I just wonder how much advance warning they can get over there. I mean, a cyclone is basically the same thing as a hurricane, right? And hurricane fatalities are typically low in the US since people get enough notice to evacuate before the storm hits (with the exception of Katrina, where the local and federal governments completely dropped the ball). 

I can't claim to know all the circumstances, I know that Myanmar is a Third World country and perhaps the people there may not have had the means to evacuate in time, but I wonder if more lives could have been spared.

I just wonder how much advance warning they can get over there. I mean, a cyclone is basically the same thing as a hurricane, right? And hurricane fatalities are typically low in the US since people get enough notice to evacuate before the storm hits (with the exception of Katrina, where the local and federal governments completely dropped the ball). 

I can't claim to know all the circumstances, I know that Myanmar is a Third World country and perhaps the people there may not have had the means to evacuate in time, but I wonder if more lives could have been spared.


Cyclones and hurricanes are the same thing. I think the poor construction of the buildings had a lot more to do with the deaths and damage than any lack of forewarning.

A huge earthquake struck China yesterday: reports are that 10,000 are confirmed dead.

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/huge-quake-kills-thousands-in-china/20080512061409990001?icid=100214839x1202008804x1200071364

Ant

Cyclones and hurricanes are the same thing. I think the poor construction of the buildings had a lot more to do with the deaths and damage than any lack of forewarning.

A huge earthquake struck China yesterday: reports are that 10,000 are confirmed dead.

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/huge-quake-kills-thousands-in-china/20080512061409990001?icid=100214839x1202008804x1200071364

Ant

That and the fact that there are a lot of subsistance fishermen and farmers who live in near-stone age conditions and a military dictatorship that would just as soon shoot at 'em than help them.  It's hard to count people who it has been decided don't count.
::)

So horrific... I hope the country will let down its guard and allow foreign aid workers to come in and help save people's lives...

Five hundred thousand dead and wet
And so few saved
Is that "The best a man can get"?
Try Burma Shave


Karma.  On account of I(m too lazy to GIS the grinning cat captioned) LOL'D! 


Seriously, I can't believe these paranoid dictators are more worried about whether disaster aid comes from within or from outside their country's borders than saving the lives of their own people. 


The purpose of any government (whether it be in a democratic or totalitarian state) is to ensure its own continuity.  Everything -- and I mean everything -- else, is secondary.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were- cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
  -- George Orwell, 1984, and he had it figured out more than 60 years ago.

Now, do you begin to understand our cynicism? :)

this appears on  CNN today!

PATTAYA, Thailand (CNN)  -- Survivors in cyclone-devastated Myanmar are bracing themselves for further hardship following warnings that more bad weather is imminent this week.

A "significant" tropical cyclone is expected to form in the next 24 hours and sweep across Myanmar's largest city Yangon and into the Irrawaddy delta area -- the region worst affected -- according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

While we're complaining about gas prices, Bush and wondering who will win the Democratic nomination, a whole lot of people died in a nasty storm:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2008/05/07/2008-05-07_storms_rising_toll_100000_may_have_died_.html

Myanmar's military run government confirms 22,500 dead, but figures are likely two to four times higher than that.

Ant



Absolutely - it really sobers you up when you see the news footage. Also let us also remember all those lost in the China earthquake. I was feeling a bit down this week, but when stuff like this happens you really realise how blessed we are for living another day peacefully.