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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Mon, May 5, 2008 - 1:41 PMthat is A LOT of people
to die all at once...... -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Tue, May 6, 2008 - 12:45 PM -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Tue, May 6, 2008 - 1:15 PMI expect it will continue to rise. The government wants it to appear not as bad as it is, and so i doubt we'll ever really know. I hope that the military govt.'s total incompetence in this is it's undoing. They are on my shit list for a number of reasons. Great country. Terrible government. Tragic situation. -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Tue, May 6, 2008 - 2:59 PMi agree on most points with wil, having spent few weeks in that country in February 2005. the people there are very sweet. as wil says, the government is pretty bad. the land is quite beautiful too, especially in some spots.
what i feel about the government is that it might not be that "incompetent". rather, i suspect that it's quite competent in some regards. the reason for my thought is that the Myanmar junta government is pretty much a puppet government of Chinese communist party and government. the know-how about how to oppress people, censorship, military stronghold, crowd control, media manipulations, and such are probably coming from Chinese government through the exclusive pipeline, along with military supplies and money. sure, they might be as dumb as a tin-man, but they got a very strong backbone called China.
the government would let people just die, without doing much of anything, knowingly, as they just don't care. if there are any shortage on anything, they benefit from generous international support, and i hope those goods and funds would actually go to the people, not in junta's pocket.
it saddens me deeply as my first-hand experience with the average people are way up on my list. they are still innocent, devoted buddhists, and struggling to make living. i pray for those average people there. -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Wed, May 7, 2008 - 2:54 AMYou are right, taro. I think the military govt there is extremely efficient in the area of staying in power. The incompetence is in their response to this crisis. Like soviet russia and the current chinese govt and the bushies (now that i think about it) they are all more concerned with hiding the extent of the crisis and covering up their lame response and preparedness than actually dealing with the problem at hand. The Katrina factor, if you will. In their xenophobia, they are refusing much needed help. I hope that fact and the suffering it causes turns on them.
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Wed, May 7, 2008 - 3:27 PMThis is a major disaster. Looks like half of Burma is under water:
news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared...5/img/1.jpg -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Wed, May 7, 2008 - 6:06 PMCrazy pic, Auton.
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Wed, May 7, 2008 - 6:02 PMGore says, told you so: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Wed, May 7, 2008 - 6:10 PMGore on NPR today: www.citizensugar.com/1609388 -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Wed, May 7, 2008 - 6:33 PMWell, i think Gore is basically right. Very low lying coastal regions are not good real estate investments. Sea levels are rising and are very likely to keep on rising for a while, and storms are getting worse.
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Death Toll to top 100,000
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 7:45 AMStaggering new estimates suggest that 100,000 people may have died in Burma's terrible cyclone. Incredibly, the corrupt and brutal Burmese government has stopped most international aid at the borders and is impeding the relief effort.
In under 24 hours, Avaaz members have donated over 690,000 Euros (over US$1 million--more than many governments!) to help Burma's monks provide the emergency relief, through their own networks and monasteries, that the government will not. We have already transferred three sets of funds, and we are working urgently to send more. Scroll down to see the email sent yesterday with all the details of how we can help, or click below to help us get over 1 million Euros (US$1.54m) today:
secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/23.php
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 8:17 AMAnd this.....www.reuters.com/article/to...56220080505
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Sun, May 11, 2008 - 12:28 AMeven more unbelievable is that the junta government has forced its way through national voting, for Myanmar citizens "to approve a new constitution", despite UN's plea to delay such vote for now and to place higher priority and act on addressing the immediate needs of the people. it is just obvious that the Myanmar government, amazingly, set higher priority on voting during the national disaster to get their "constitutional ideas" approved than saving the citizens' lives. like i have suspected, they just don't care, and that's completely incomprehensible:
afp.google.com/article/AL...lJkVHCKtUKw
further more, various new sources mostly originating from Thailand report that somewhere between 1 million to nearly 2 millions of Myanmar citizens' lives are at stake at the moment, as the majority of them are not receiving food, water, medicine and other basic needs of survival, while some source reports that "some people" are receiving food.
reports of malaria have been heard as well...
now i have a feeling this will develop into even bigger disaster. this combination of bigger cyclones occurrences and governments not responding and not doing enough to save their own peoples can be a major destructive force on this planet. sadly, it's only one of many imaginable bad combos. ther have been nations who completely failed to save their own people:
Japan after Kobe earthquake
US after Katrina
it is interesting to note that these countries are so eager now to send supports to Myanmar... that does not make sense to me... sure, being eager to send support to Myanmar right now and actually executing the disaster support are NOT the bad things. i am not criticizing that part, of course. yet i just have to wonder why they couldn't execute that for their own people? -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Mon, May 12, 2008 - 9:20 AMca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/080...l_estimate Speaking of Asia: Up to 5000 people killed in China from an Earthquake this mourning.
My heart sends prayers to all.
om..... -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Mon, May 12, 2008 - 9:41 AMThis has been horrible, horrible.....so much concentrated pain and suffering. And you know whatever number China offers it's probably a tenth of the real amount. We have friends in Szechuan Province, haven't heard anything yet. I feel so sick..... -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Mon, May 12, 2008 - 12:01 PMFrom my friend:
"I haven't heard it mentioned anywhere but this earthquake was predicted by geologists when they started the Three Gorges Dam project. They said the weight of the water would cause changes in the geology of the region and might spark monster earthquakes. Considering that the reservoir is nearly filled, the earthquake was perfectly on schedule. This may actually delay the Olympics..."
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Mon, May 12, 2008 - 12:23 PMUh... If I'm not mistaken, May the 5th night... The darkest time of the decade... -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Tue, May 13, 2008 - 12:00 PMThis is a most excellent program on the situation in Burma. Highly recommended for those who want to understand it.
www.kcrw.com/news/progra...s_in_myanmar -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Tue, May 13, 2008 - 12:32 PMhmmm... if there are video clips on that site, i could not find them...
i am not at all concerned about the rescue and recovery effort for the earthquake victims by the Chinese government. the eyes of the world have been focusing on China for whatever the topics and subjects, varying from their economic growth, Olympic torch, to this natural disaster, and the government must show the world what it can do, so that they can claim that "everything we did was success".
on the other hand, i am very concerned about the health control situation in Burma. whatever they are doing, i don't know if junta is doing for themselves or to help people, and whatever they are doing, it's too damn slow and close to 2 million people's health conditions are unbelievably inhumane.
now Jaipur, India is suffering from multiple bombing. that's another town that has a place in my heart and memory.
i have been just busy trying to deal with all these mentally, while trying to maintain the balance and not getting sucked in too much to be radically affected. wow... -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Tue, May 13, 2008 - 1:59 PMIt's a radio program. It explained a lot to me. The burmese military is not well taken care of, they are designed to get resources from the local area they are stationed in, and a lot of them, including officer corps, are stationed in the delta. So the govt is terrified of a rebellion in the armed forces. There is a lot of talk about an international expeditionary force to help. This is the most in depth info i've heard. -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Tue, May 13, 2008 - 2:38 PMthat's a very interesting aspect of the information that military is closely tied to the local area where they are stationed in. no wonder the top junta doesn't want to move forward. -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Tue, May 13, 2008 - 2:49 PMI think the military govt is toast after this, just a matter of time. This is a huge disaster, and the burmese govt is making it much much worse. It is obvious that they are so corrupt that they can't even take care of the military, much less the common people. Epidemics, dehydration, and starvation could easily double the number of dead or even more. The buddhists, on the other hand, are going to look very good. I think this is likely to set a new precedent as far as international intervention, and i actually view this as a majorly positive development, although it is purchased at a tremendous price. -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Wed, May 14, 2008 - 12:25 AMyes, wil, the majority of Burmese are devoted buddhists, and if something form around it, combined with Aung Sung Su Kyi, that nation might see a change. on the other hand, i do not discount the strong military-oriented relationship between junta and the Chinese central government. the Communist Party would simply hate to see "buddhists" take power in the neighboring country, close to the Tibetan plateau. for this reason, Chinese would do their best to support junta, that's my guess. i am being a devil's advocate here and just throwing possible scenario, while i do hope what you suggested would be the case. those Burmese's smiles are like their smiling buddha, and they deserve some peace. when that happens, i would just love to travel there, once again. -
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Re: Cyclone Kills 10,000 people in Burma
Wed, May 14, 2008 - 3:32 AMI had not thought of burma's buddhism in relation to tibet and china's problems there, and that is an interesting facet to the problem. I would think the chinese themselves would be disgusted with the inaction and corruption of the burmese military and not wishing for the world to see them support such, especially during the olympics. The burmese govts. response is in stark contrast to china's response to the recent earthquake. The situation is as complicated as it is tragic.
It is looking more and more like the international community will mount some sort of expeditionary force, rather than sit back and helplessly watch a quarter million people die from a combination of natural and man made disasters.
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