Myanmar Storm-Update

[PJack]

well, you're just not making a lot of sense.

but i wouldn't expect that from someone who envisions themselves as a potential pr consultant for Samak.

But he will be going to Burma anyway on Sunday and I'm sure do precisely as you want him to - if the Burmese finally let aid workers in, he'll try and take credit for it.

i never said i had any answers for the burmese people.

and talk about banal. you want to shower us with more your shining intelligence and brilliant political advice?

my PR offer was made tongue in cheek. Not surprising it was missed by someone wired as tight as you.

Oh, so my observation about Samak was correct after all?

mmmmm. How could that be?

I will simplify it for you.

The main point was where are the statesmen?

Or, where are the politicians to try to take credit as such? The Thais are missing an opportunity.

And my point, which its not surprising that someone as thick as you doesn't seem to get, is that neither Thailand's politicians nor its statesmen have any influence over the Burmese generals.

They have no opportunity to miss.

you mean they can't take advantage of it, not that there isnt any. clearly there are lots.

Come on.

Surely a wordsmith could/should choose their words more carefully.

[Loburt]

And my point, which its not surprising that someone as thick as you doesn't seem to get, is that neither Thailand's politicians nor its statesmen have any influence over the Burmese generals.

They have no opportunity to miss.

you mean they can't take advantage of it, not that there isnt any. clearly there are lots.

Come on.

Surely a wordsmith could/should choose their words more carefully.

Except you haven't told us what any of these "opportunities" are, except to grandstand while achieving nothing. But I guess trying to look good while getting nothing done is a great result for a briliant "manager" such as yourself.

Well, your hero Samak was going to go to Burma tomorrow to try and grandstand while the generals would, of course, ignore him.

But today, the generals told him they are too busy to meet him.

Trip cancelled.

So much for a wonderful opportunity.

[Zombiedriven]

This country need help yes but with the current government in the worlds way. lets put it simply IT WON'T HAPPEN. Yes I feel sorry for them and yes if I could go out and give aid I would.

but here is a better question instead of all the fighting and bickering over this.

What would you do knowing that if you went to help the people knowing full well the repercussions that this government will try to silence you :?:

[richar1]

Very sad for the people of this country. The goverment wants to distribute the supplies without outside expert help.Which means that the food ,medicine and other items will not go to the poor,but the power elite running the country and military that keeps them in power. :x

[Bruce551]

Are Invasions Sometimes O.K.?

By STEVE SESSER

While the U.S. invasion of Panama provoked a great deal of debate, there was no argument about possible French and Russian intervention in Rumania. And that raises an important question: Could big-power intervention -so often used in the past by Washington and Moscow to establish repressive regimes - now become a positive force wielded on behalf of democracy and human rights?

While the U.S. invasion of Panama provoked a great deal of debate, there was no argument about possible French and Russian intervention in Rumania. And that raises an important question: Could big-power intervention -so often used in the past by Washington and Moscow to establish repressive regimes - now become a positive force wielded on behalf of democracy and human rights?

France offered to send troops if the Rumanian Army had difficulty overcoming the security forces loyal to the ousted and executed dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. And Secretary of State James Baker said America would support any move by the Soviet Union to intervene militarily.

No such help was ever needed. But the flurry of events that ended 1989 shouldn't mask the significance of this talk about military intervention in Rumania. U.S. approval of an invasion by its traditional adversary was obviously unprecedented.

The statements about intervention that came from Washington and Paris drew, so far as can be determined from news accounts, not a peep of protest anywhere in the world. While critics saw the Panama invasion as an action aimed mainly at aiding the Bush Administration, rather than the Panamanians, no similar charge of self-interest could have been leveled at intervention on behalf of the Rumanians.

Clearly, opposition to military intervention under any circumstances is anachronistic in a world of growing interdependence. Human rights abuses, wherever they might occur, are no longer accepted as business as usual. And new forms of communication - as indicated by the use of fax machines in China during the pro-democracy demonstrations - are turning human rights struggles into movements that cross national boundaries.

Can anyone really argue that we should grant any government - no matter how brutal or how unpopular - the right to terrorize or kill its citizens for as long as it can cling to power? Would it have been morally wrong for France, or the U.S., or the Soviet Union, to intervene in Pol Pot's Cambodia and thereby to have saved at least one million Cambodian lives?

I have been thinking about this issue since I visited Burma last April to research an article on that nation. The Government of Burma - the country now is called Myanmar -takes a back seat to none in the extent and severity of its repression. The dictator, Gen. Ne Win, overthrew a democratic Government in 1962, and his tyrannical rule has brought his country to ruin.

By the summer of 1988, the Burmese people could take no more. Led by students and monks, they rose in revolt. In what now seems almost a blueprint for what happened nine months later in China, that revolt was crushed by the Burmese Army.

Since then, hundreds of students have been murdered and thousands thrown into prison - so many that last July the Government cleared the jails of common criminals to make room for political dissidents. The U.S. Embassy in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, reported that ''torture, beatings and mistreatment'' of these dissidents are ''commonplace.'' Some dissidents have been used as human minesweepers, chained together and marched ahead of the Burmese troops, who have been fighting ethnic minorities in border areas.

Of the Government's two leading political opponents, one, former Defense Minister Tin U, was just sentenced to three years at hard labor. The other, Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma's independence leader, is under house arrest.

In reporting on the 1988 revolt, I came to understand that the smallest gesture of U.S. military support -perhaps nothing more than a couple of battleships off the Burmese coast and a few warplanes over its skies -could have won the day for the Burmese people. Even today, with the army deeply split, merely the threat of American intervention might alone be enough to bring down the dictatorship.

In such clear-cut cases, would military intervention on human rights grounds be morally justified? If it is, a second question must be posed: How could the principle of big-power intervention on behalf of human rights be established without a future American or Soviet government perverting it to prop up, as in the past, repressive dictatorships? Could some effective international control mechanism be worked out - a Helsinki Accord with teeth?

I don't claim to know the answers. But the questions are certainly worth asking.

[Loburt]

Of the Government's two leading political opponents, one, former Defense Minister Tin U, was just sentenced to three years at hard labor. The other, Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma's independence leader, is under house arrest.

Please tell me that is not true. Tin Oo is 81 years old. Never mind the fact that he hasn't broken any laws. He won't survive it. It's murder.

In reporting on the 1988 revolt, I came to understand that the smallest gesture of U.S. military support -perhaps nothing more than a couple of battleships off the Burmese coast and a few warplanes over its skies -could have won the day for the Burmese people. Even today, with the army deeply split, merely the threat of American intervention might alone be enough to bring down the dictatorship.

Sadly, I can't agree with him. A US warship was in the Bay of Bengal during the 1988 uprising, and rumors of its presence did give hope to people. But the uprising ultimately failed.

[Loburt]

BRUCE:

That Op-Ed is a reprint from 1990.

You scared the sh*t out of me about Tin Oo.

Next time print the date and the source.

[friendlyCat]

.....>>>>>>>>>>>>>Can anyone really argue that we should grant any government - no matter how brutal or how unpopular - the right to terrorize or kill its citizens for as long as it can cling to power? Would it have been morally wrong for France, or the U.S., or the Soviet Union, to intervene in Pol Pot's Cambodia and thereby to have saved at least one million Cambodian lives? <<<<<<<<<<<<<

The difficulty is that Cambo had China's blessing, support and guidance, so taking on Cambo would have been challenging China in its corner of the world and the US had its failure in VN to deal with.

[PJack]

.....>>>>>>>>>>>>>Can anyone really argue that we should grant any government - no matter how brutal or how unpopular - the right to terrorize or kill its citizens for as long as it can cling to power? Would it have been morally wrong for France, or the U.S., or the Soviet Union, to intervene in Pol Pot's Cambodia and thereby to have saved at least one million Cambodian lives? <<<<<<<<<<<<<

The difficulty is that Cambo had China's blessing, support and guidance, so taking on Cambo would have been challenging China in its corner of the world and the US had its failure in VN to deal with.

The US also had it success (?) in Cambodia to deal with. Lon Nol and all those bombs. And more importantly it was like 1976 or 77 or so by the time people knew what was going on in Cambodia. Jimmy was president and public sentiment was not in favor of another war or police action.

[zeusbheld]

BRUCE:

....

Next time print the date and the source.

i too appreciate articles etc., but please note. very important, thanks.

fixed quote box hell.

[PJack]

And my point, which its not surprising that someone as thick as you doesn't seem to get, is that neither Thailand's politicians nor its statesmen have any influence over the Burmese generals.

They have no opportunity to miss.

Seems like some Thai politicians are looking for an opportunity (finally).

Bangkok Post 12 May:

UN says 102,000 dead in Burma

Thailand offers to be a base for relief supplies

BANGKOK POST AND AGENCIES.

Thailand will act as a mediator to help with the movement of international relief supplies to Burma, which are being held up by the military junta and are stuck in Thailand, Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama said yesterday.

The move comes as the UN says up to 102,000 people could have been killed by Cyclone Nargis and about 220,000 are reported missing.

Mr Noppadon said he planned to leave for Burma tomorrow to push for additional assistance and ask the Burmese generals to provide wider access and to allow foreign assistance for the cyclone victims.

He said he will also ask that foreign experts be allowed to enter Burma to give humanitarian aid to the victims.

He said the foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will meet in Singapore on May 19 to discuss ways to help the victims.

Former foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan is the Asean secretary-general.

The number of people reported missing after the cyclone hit has risen to about 220,000, the United Nations said, and it warned of environmental damage, violence and mass migration.

It said assessments of 55 townships in the Irrawaddy delta and other disaster-hit areas found up to 102,000 people could have been killed in the cyclone, which struck flimsy dwellings with fierce winds and huge waves on May 2.

''Based on these assessments, the UN estimates that 1,215,885 to 1,919,485 people have been affected by the cyclone, the number of deaths could range from 63,290 to 101,682, and 220,000 people are reported to be missing,'' said the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

State-run television in Burma reported last night that the death toll had risen to more than 28,458 and 33,416 people were missing.

Meanwhile, a cargo boat carrying the first Red Cross aid to survivors sank yesterday. The boat carrying relief supplies for more than 1,000 people was believed to have hit a submerged tree in the Irrawaddy delta and started taking on water, International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) official in Bangkok Andy McElroy said.

The accident highlighted the enormous logistical difficulties of delivering aid to the survivors, who are in need of food, shelter and medicine, with roads washed away and much of the delta turned into swampland.

The crew steered the stricken Red Cross boat to an island but it sank rapidly, Mr McElroy said. All crew members and the four Burma Red Cross personnel on board, two men and two women, scrambled to safety.

''This is a great loss for the Burma Red Cross and for the people who need aid so urgently,'' Aung Kyaw Htut, the Burma Red Cross aid distribution team leader, said. ''This would have been our very first river shipment and it will delay aid for a further day.''

Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said yesterday he called off his plan to visit Burma to push for British and American rescuers to be allowed in.

But he said he fully supported Burma as Thailand was a neighbour and he would not mind if his stance causes the West to isolate Thailand.

Mr Samak also said he admired Supreme Commander Boonsang Niampradit for arranging for swift assistance to Burma. Thailand was the first nation to send help.

Gen Boonsang said Nipat Thonglek, the director-general of the Border Affairs Department, left for Rangoon as a special representative of Mr Samak yesterday. Lt-Gen Nipat would meet Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein to coordinate assistance.

The visit followed a US statement that agencies were ready to help through the World Food Programme.

The US is sending its aid to Bangkok and is committed to supplying food to 600,000 Burmese for six months, but supplies cannot reach Burma because of visa restrictions imposed by the junta.

Air Force commander ACM Chalit Phukphasuk also flew to Burma yesterday. He was delivering necessities worth 1.08 million baht His Majesty the King donated to cyclone victims.

Mae Sot district in Tak province is now the only land route for necessities to be transported into Burma.

According to local charity activist Panithi Tangphati, Win Myint, chief of the Myawaddy Border Trade Office, said donations can be delivered through government officials and at the Tamaya monastery. However, donors must pay a transport fee of 40,000 baht per truck.

[Loburt]

And yet Than Shwe, who is the only one who can give the green light to letting in more aid and aid workers, isn't going to meet Noppadon Pattama.

He already refused to meet Samak.

So much for Thailand being the "mediator."

All show and no substance.

But that's typical of this government. In the latest opinion poll cited in today's papers, 75% of those surveyed said this government had done nothing to solve their problems during its first months in office.

What do the Burmese think of Mr. Noppadon and his government? They took aid packages from Thailand and wrote "gifts from ... (add a Burmese general's name here)" on it.

That's how much they respect Thailand, Noppadon and Samak.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Samak to win the Nobel Prize.

[Bruce551]

On May 7 a team of UNDP and Pact staff went into the Delta to make an initial assessment. They cut short the assessment to return with an urgent message: people are dying?quickly. Immediate and efficient action is needed to save them. Specifically, they found:

- One-third of the total population has perished (upwards of 100,000 people)

* Two-third of the villages are very severely damaged

* Severe diarrhea outbreaks have occurred in two townships (not cholera?yet)

Pact has over 1300 local staff working in Myanmar, primarily in microfinance. Four hundred of them are in the Mirrawaddy Delta region , where we have 34 branch offices (mostly intact due to sturdier construction) that provide services to more than 1500 villages. Pact is the only NGO with such reach and, in two of the hardest hit townships, we are the only operating NGO. Because of our local, on-the-ground network, we are being approached to take on a role as distributors of immediate assistance?most importantly food, water and shelter.

We estimate that we can quickly mobilize to reach 75,000 households with food aid, 50,000 with oral rehydration solution, and 20,000 with plastic water containers. Down the road, we hope to be able also to help survivors of the cyclone to rebuild their lives.

http://www.pactworld.org/cs/help_myanmar

The scale of this disaster is hard grasp, the affected Burmese need help very soon.

[Loburt]

Another good local NGO in Burma is the Metta Development Foundation:

www.metta-myanmar.org

Unfortunately, the NY Times is also reporting that military officials on the ground are stopping some groups and individuals from distributing aid on their own - insisting it has to be given to the military first.

And that the people who need food the most are being rice that is so old and of such poor quality, one villager said "the dogs wouldn't eat it.''

What a senseless tragedy.

[Bruce551]

When Burmese Offer a Hand, Rulers Slap It

By THE NEW YORK TIMES, 12 May 08

MA NGAY GYI, Myanmar ? When one of Myanmar?s best-known movie stars, Kyaw Dhyu, traveled through the Irrawaddy Delta in recent days to deliver aid to the victims of the May 3 cyclone, a military patrol stopped him as he was handing out bags of rice.

?The officer told him, ?You cannot give directly to the people,? said Tin Win, the village headman of the stricken city of Dedaye, who had been counting on the rice to feed 260 refugees who sleep in a large Buddhist prayer hall.

The politics of food aid ? deciding who gets to deliver assistance to those homeless and hungry after the cyclone ? is not just confined to the dispute between Myanmar?s military junta and Western governments and outside relief agencies.

Even Myanmar citizens who want to donate rice or other items have in several cases been told that all assistance must be channeled through the military. That restriction has angered local government officials like Tin Win who are trying to help rebuild the lives of villagers. He twitched with rage as he described the rice the military gave him.

?They gave us four bags,? he said. ?The rice is rotten ? even the pigs and dogs wouldn?t eat it.?

He said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had delivered good rice to the local military leaders last week but they kept it for themselves and distributed the waterlogged, musty rice. ?I?m very angry,? he said, adding an expletive to describe the military.

At least 1.5 million people were severely affected by the hurricane, and outside relief agencies fear the officially reported deaths, which rose on Sunday to more than 28,000, could escalate if the military did not allow foreign aid to flow in. But more than a week after the hurricane hit, the junta was still permitting only a few planeloads of supplies to land and was refusing to grant visas to most foreign aid workers.

For the generals, who have held power for more than four decades in Myanmar, the restrictions on aid and how it is distributed are part of their overriding priority of showing who is in control and of cultivating the image that they alone are the nation?s benevolent providers.

While the generals have permitted some token relief efforts by wealthy citizens, who could be seen Sunday handing out sweets and instant noodles from their cars to destitute families lining the roads near Yangon, the largest city, and elsewhere, the junta is clearly not allowing some prominent domestic donors to help for political reasons.

Kyaw Dhyu, for example, is perceived as unfriendly to the military because he assisted monks who protested against the government during the demonstrations last year ? and was jailed for a month.

The military also appears to be trying to minimize any foreign presence or role in the relief effort. The United Nations World Food Program said Sunday that only one visa had been approved of 16 requested. The aid group World Vision said it had requested 20 visas but received 2. Doctors Without Borders, the French medical aid group, said it was still awaiting approval of dozens of visa applications for technical support staff aid coordinators.

Paul Risley, a spokesman for the World Food Program, said the volume of aid allowed by the Myanmar junta into the country amounted to one-tenth of what was needed.

The authorities here have agreed to permit a United States Air Force C-130 transport full of relief supplies to come on Monday. The plane was scheduled to leave Utapao airport in Thailand at midday, said a spokesman for the United States Pacific Command, Cmdr. Jeffrey A. Breslau. An American official in Yangoon confirmed that the plane as enroute and due to arrive Monday afternoon.

In Yangon, where 70 percent of the trees were uprooted by the storm, residents were struggling to return to some semblance of normality but most remained without power. In the street markets and stores, the prices of rice and candles have doubled and the cost of gasoline has tripled. The price of corrugated tin, used for roofing, has also doubled.

Privately, some residents showed flashes of resentment toward the military for monopolizing the distribution of basic necessities. ?These military men are notorious,? said a college student in Yangon whose family had to buy seven panels of corrugated tin to repair their roof. ?They get these supplies free. They are donated by other countries, then the military receives them and sells them to the people.?

Here in Ma Ngay Gyi, in the farthest southern reaches of the delta, a reporter was detained for an hour and a half on Sunday by soldiers who said they had orders to report foreigners in the area.

In what was emblematic of the wider tensions over the issue of aid distribution, an argument broke out in the village between the soldiers, who said any foreigner was suspect, and the village headman, Myint Oo, who solicited aid from the visitor for the rebuilding of a school flattened by the cyclone.

?The government told us that school must reopen June 1, if you have a schoolhouse or not,? Myint Oo told his visitor. ??Teach under a tree if you have to,? they said.?

When he began describing the devastation to the school and village, a portly man in a white T-shirt who also seemed to hold a position of power interrupted.

?Don?t tell these foreigners anything,? the man said.

Myint Oo replied that he wanted to talk to the visitors in the hope that they could help rebuild the village.

?They will send the facts to the world and show the weakness of the Myanmar government,? said the man in the white shirt.

He looked directly at Myint Oo and said in a loud voice, ?Come outside!?

More than 250 people were killed by the cyclone in the village, which is reachable only by boat, and the stench of death lingers in the surrounding canals. Men in the village rushed to the reporter?s arriving boat and made the universal gesture of food, putting pinched fingers up to their lips.

As the visitors departed, a village woman asked a soldier holding an AK-47 assault rifle why they had detained the foreigners.

?These are orders,? the soldier replied. ?Be quiet.?

A New York Times correspondent reported from Yangon, Myanmar. Seth Mydans contributed reporting from Bangkok, Eric Schmitt from Washington and Denise Grady from New York.

:?

[Bruce551]

Time to Save Burma

By YENI Monday, May 12, 2008

Irrawaddy

http://www.irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=11973

Burma is in the middle of a catastrophe?the lives of more than a million people are at great risk and about 100,000 people have been killed. The damage to the country's infrastructure and agriculture caused by Cyclone Nargis will be felt for years.

The landscape of Burma's Irrawaddy delta is devastated. The bloated corpses of men, women and children lay strewn around the rice paddies. Animal carcasses float down rivers and wash up on riverbanks. Those lucky enough to survive now desperately seek shelter, water, food and medical care anywhere they can. Buddhist temples and schools have been turned into makeshift refugee centers and clinics.

To Burma's military rulers, however, the goal is still to maintain absolute control over everything?from barring almost all foreign aid workers with expertise in massive aid distribution to intense micromanagement of the distribution of aid. Observers suggest the regime wants all aid to pass through the hands of the military government leaders, because of their well-known penchant for theft, corruption and propaganda.

Sources in the southern Irrawaddy delta told The Irrawaddy the army has barred survivors from entering shelters in certain towns, such as Bogalay and is forcing them back to their shattered villages.

On Friday, the UN?s weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization, reported that occasional tropical showers are expected through next Wednesday, May 14. It also forecasts ?a period of heavy rainfall settling in around Thursday or Friday next week.?

As an old Burmese proverb says: ?The rain always pours wherever the desperate people go.?

However, the country's secretive military leaders are too busy with the referendum vote to notice. They say the country is not ready to accept foreign aid workers, indicating on Friday that it wants foreign relief but not foreign workers.

In addition, members of regime-backed groups such as the Union Solidarity and Development Association have attempted to hijack relief supplies, according to local charity groups and nongovernment organizations in the former Burmese capital, Rangoon.

Now humanitarian workers fear that the ?unimaginable tragedy? is closing in. Survivors still lack water, food and sanitation. The predicted rains this week will undoubtedly affect and expose to the elements those survivors who are struggling to cope in makeshift shelters.

There are also the increased threats of dengue fever and malaria, diseases that manifest from mosquitoes breeding around stagnant water. With so many corpses and animal cadavers infecting water supplies and rivers, the risk of bacterial infection is extremely high?cholera, typhoid, diarrhea and dysentery are all epidemics waiting to happen. Even those who mange to get to refugee shelters are susceptible to increased risks?the collection of so many children in enclosed spaces causes measles and other air-borne diseases will spread quickly.

Oxfam's regional chief Sarah Ireland warned on Sunday that it ?could all combine to endanger the lives of up to 1.5 million people.?

Unfortunately, the rest of the world can do very little except sit back and watch in horror.

France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has called upon the UN to use its newly approved "responsibility to protect civilians" policy to enter Burma and deliver aid over the objections of the generals. But eight members of the UN Security Council?both permanent and non-permanent?even opposed the French move to have a discussion on the humanitarian crisis and the progress of relief operations in Burma. In the meantime, the French have sent a ship containing 1,500 tons of aid anyway, hoping that the Burmese junta will do an about-turn in the coming days.

One would think that the UN would have enough leverage with the Burmese authorities to at least pressure them to lift the complicated visa requirements that are preventing more than 1,000 aid workers from entering the country. But no.

Beijing has stated that foreign governments should not politicize the issue. Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said: "We should take full consideration of Myanmar's [burma?s] willingness and sovereignty."

Sadly, survivors from Burma's devastated Irrawaddy delta are facing homelessness, starvation and disease?each factor compounded by a heartless regime. The world must now decide whether national sovereignty trumps the moral responsibility of alleviating human suffering.

Sovereignty should not mean that governments are free to do what they want within their own borders if it causes the deaths of tens of thousands of its citizens.

** Free democracies should not tolerate the these inhuman acts against the Burmese people by military gov. Junta.

[Loburt]

Beijing has stated that foreign governments should not politicize the issue. Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said: "We should take full consideration of Myanmar's [burma?s] willingness and sovereignty."

The Chinese are such good friends to the people of Asia.

[Ngairo]

Beijing has stated that foreign governments should not politicize the issue. Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said: "We should take full consideration of Myanmar's [burma?s] willingness and sovereignty."

The Chinese are such good friends to the people of Asia.

Interesting how they sorte their owm disaster so simply...???

[Bruce551]

May 14, 2008

Myanmar Government Still Blocking Relief

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

YANGON, Myanmar ? Further deliveries of small-scale aid arrived in Myanmar on Tuesday ? a darkly clouded and rainy day in Yangon and in the south ? but international aid experts and diplomats here in the main city expressed concern that the government may not be up to delivering it, a task it has claimed almost exclusively as its own.

In Brussels on Tuesday, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, Javier Solana, said that if the Myanmar government continued to bar large-scale aid, outside donors should find a way to deliver it anyway.

?We have to use all the means to help those people,? he said. ?The United Nations charter opens some avenues if things cannot be resolved in order to get the humanitarian aid to arrive.?

Ten days after the devastating cyclone struck, the isolationist military government has slightly eased its restrictions on aid but is still blocking most large-scale deliveries of relief supplies, aid officials said. Adding to the difficulties, the hundreds of thousands of people who most need help are largely in remote and inaccessible coastal and delta regions.

Myanmar?s state television reported that the death toll from the May 3 cyclone had risen again, to 34,273, The Associated Press reported, with 27,838 missing. The toll has been increasing daily, as more and more of the missing are identified as dead. The United Nations has estimated that the toll could be more than 60,000.

Still, the junta was making some progress in accepting aid. Two more American relief flights landed Tuesday, and United States officials said they were talking to the government about expanding the relief program.

But Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Myanmar, said the junta had refused the United States? offer to send in search-and-rescue teams and disaster-relief experts. The United States is conducting a military exercise with Thailand and has 11,000 troops in the area and several ships off the coast. (Hmmm)

Ms. Villarosa said the government had also rebuffed teams from China, Bangladesh, Singapore, Thailand and other countries.

At the United Nations on Tuesday, concerns emerged that some of the aid meant for victims of the cyclone was being diverted to people who did not need it.

?That concern exists,? a United Nations spokeswoman, Michel Montas, said at a regular news conference, according to Reuters.

?We don?t have any independent report of a specific portion of the aid going to other sectors besides the victims,? Ms. Montas said, adding that that ?it is a fact that a very small percentage of victims have so far received the aid.?

The British ambassador to the United Nations, John Sawers, said Britain had also received unconfirmed reports that aid was being redirected away from disaster victims.

?If they do turn out to be true, we would be very concerned indeed,? Reuters quoted him as saying. He added, ?This just underlines the necessity of the Burmese authorities? accepting that their own capacity to distribute aid to 1.5 million people? is insufficient.

In a report from Yangon, the official news agency of China, Myanmar?s friend and neighbor, said international aid had been arriving in Myanmar since last week, with aircraft landing at the airport one after another. The Chinese reports made no mention of delays.

On Monday, several medical teams from the Swiss-based branch of Doctors Without Borders were ordered out of the Irrawaddy Delta with no explanation.

Andrew Kirkwood, country director in Myanmar for Save the Children, said he had surveyed the delta by air in recent days and had concluded that trucks and helicopters would not be enough to deliver the aid needed by the people affected by the storm. The Myanmar government reportedly has five working helicopters.

?It?s clear that the vast majority of people will have to be reached by boat,? he said.

He said his teams in the delta had seen no outbreaks of cholera yet, although he expected other diseases and diarrhea to start taking their toll soon, especially on children.

?Children can die within 24 hours from diarrhea,? he said, ?and delivery of oral rehydration solution is one of the things we?ve prioritized. Water is not enough. It has to be water, sugar and salt, in the right combination.?

He said Save the Children rented two boats from private owners and in the past two days delivered 200 tons of rice, water and rehydration fluids to a remote, storm-smashed island. He said that aid reached 9,400 people living in 13 villages, including 2,350 children.

Reports of rampant infections, caused by infected cuts, were starting to reach aid offices in Yangon, as well as many cases of wind burns.

The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said Monday that he had been trying to reach the country?s senior leadership to ask for greater access for aid delivery, but without success.

John Holmes, the under secretary general for emergency relief, said less than half of more than 100 visa applications for relief workers had been approved.

*** There's also another Tropical Depression headed for Irrawaddy Delta that may develop into a typhoon in the next 24 hours. It doesn't get much worst than this.

[dannyboy]

There must surely come a time when the needs of so many dying innocents outweigh the need for respect of sovereignty and national boundaries.

It's about time someone stood up and said f*ck you, we're doing it anyway.

First the monks and now this?

What more is needed?

Sadly, I believe a vast amount of oil to be found there.

[zeusbheld]

I suspect there's a whole lot of people who feel just as angry as I do when we the faces of those affected are shown beaten, bloodied and bruised in rags under plastic sheets without food, water or protection alongside pictures of the regime in their neatly pressed greens adorned with ribbons awarded for sweet fa pretending to give a sh*t about their populace by handing out a tiny bit of aid when everyone knows it's just a crock of sh*t.

If one kid dies because of their reluctance to allow aid to reach it, I hope the whole damn lot of em are slaughtered in their beds.

i think the problem isn't so much bumping off the Junta, they won't get a lot of sympathy. but... what do you do next? nation-building has been working soooo well lately...

[zeusbheld]

I suspect there's a whole lot of people who feel just as angry as I do when we the faces of those affected are shown beaten, bloodied and bruised in rags under plastic sheets without food, water or protection alongside pictures of the regime in their neatly pressed greens adorned with ribbons awarded for sweet fa pretending to give a sh*t about their populace by handing out a tiny bit of aid when everyone knows it's just a crock of sh*t.

If one kid dies because of their reluctance to allow aid to reach it, I hope the whole damn lot of em are slaughtered in their beds.

i think the problem isn't so much bumping off the Junta, they won't get a lot of sympathy. but... what do you do next? nation-building has been working soooo well lately...

I don't disagree, and I don't pretend to be holding any other cards either, but they shouldn't be allowed to continue killing their civilians either by intent or lack of it.

But it's them that's in the main responsible and as long as they're there, no progress wil ever be made.

And in the meantime a whole lot of people will die. Needlessly.

We all know this sh*t can't be allowed to go on forever.

Someone, somewhere has to have the balls.

this ain't Iraq, and may work better... and most likely there are ppl in Burma who could do a better job running hte country and are willing... but i'd heard the same sort of thing said about Saddam.

i don't think there are any easy answers to this sort of question.

[Bruce551]

Amid Myanmar Secrecy, Tales of Survival and Devastation

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

15 May 08

BOGALE, Myanmar ? It is a disaster still shrouded in secrecy. The world is growing accustomed to seeing images of devastation, from earthquakes or calamitous storms, as they unfold. Here the military dictatorship continues to cordon off the areas worst hit by Cyclone Nargis on May 3, and so little is known about the extent of the devastation, how aid is reaching those in need ? or extraordinary stories of survival and death like that of Than Lwin.

When the surging water ripped apart his house, he and his family scrambled onto their small boat in a futile attempt to outrun the intensifying cyclone. The boat capsized when a giant wave crashed onto it and Than Lwin began a six-hour battle for his life, grasping for anything that would keep him afloat amid the churning seawater.

?The water was so high sometimes I touched the tops of trees,? he said. When the storm finally passed at dawn Than Lwin was miles away from home, on Main Ma Hla island in the mouth of the Irrawaddy Delta. He and 26 other survivors found a boat that was intact and used their hands to paddle to the mainland, passing dozens of bodies along the way.

Of the 7,000 people who lived in his village, only 600 survived. His parents and siblings disappeared, and he assumes that they are dead.

With so little information coming from the vulnerable villages along the coast, the full extent of the damage and the death toll may never be known. But it is possible to piece together from scattered accounts from survivors, diplomats and aid groups a picture ? at once grim if tinged with uncertainty ? of a storm of immense power but a rescue operation of not nearly the same magnitude.

And despite little evidence of large numbers of bodies, accounts like Than Lwin?s lend credence to the notion that many more people died than the 34,000 thus far acknowledged by the government. On Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has assisted in virtually every conflict and disaster for decades, gave a more pessimistic, if wide, estimate of the dead between 68,833 and 127,990.

The military government that has kept a tight grip on this country for more than four decades has tried to keep foreign eyes, and cameras, away from the epicenter of the damage. The police have blockaded the lower reaches of the delta, setting up checkpoints at bridges along the few roads that link it to Yangon, the commercial capital. With few exceptions, foreigners, including diplomats and United Nations personnel, are barred from entering the area. This reporter, whose name is being withheld to avoid detection by the government, was able to reach some, but not all, of the worst-affected areas by hiding in the bottom of a boat.

The major southern towns of the Irrawaddy Delta ? Bogale, Pyapon and Labutta ? suffered severe damage in the storm, but it is the hundreds of fishing and rice-farming villages closer to the sea where the greatest number of people died. In those villages, where houses are typically made of bamboo lashed together with thin strips of wood, survivors are counted in the hundreds and the dead in the thousands.

?The only thing left is the ground,? said Tin Nyunt, a betel nut seller in Bogale, referring specifically to two villages near the sea, Hi Gyi and Maw Kyune. ?Everything else was blown away.?

When the skies darkened in the early afternoon of May 2, those wealthy enough in this impoverished area to own radios heard reports from state broadcasters about the arrival of strong winds. It was a warning that vastly underestimated the storm they were about to endure.

?The wind sounded like an airplane engine,? Daw Sein, a relatively wealthy rice farmer who rode out the storm in her sturdy, teak-frame house with water up to her waist. Others said that the wind was so loud you could not hear someone shouting next to you.

?You couldn?t even hear the sound of a tree trunk cracking,? said Myint Oo, the village headman of Ma Ngay Gyi village, where more than 250 people were killed.

When the storm hit land in the late afternoon, heading due east, it was a Category 4 cyclone, the second most dangerous type, with winds reaching 155 miles per hour.

In the early evening, as the storm traveled over the delta, villagers stood huddled together in their houses as a series of waves crashed down, each larger than the next. Like the tsunami of 2004, some waves were higher than eight feet, villagers said; but unlike the tsunami, the largest waves struck at night, leaving villagers scrambling to survive in the dark.

Kyaw Swe, a clothing trader, said his bamboo house started shaking so violently during the storm that he went outside. But when he waded into the rice paddies, a giant wave swept him away. He was transported by the water about a mile from his home before he was able to grab onto a tree branch. ?Nobody and nothing could help me ? except the tree,? he said, squatting near the spot where his house once stood.

Myint Oo, the village headman, said the most vulnerable were those who lived in open areas. The majority of victims in his village were those living in huts in the rice paddies who tried to run back to the village. After the storm, he recovered 70 of their bodies and buried them in mass graves. The rest of the bodies had been washed away.

During three days of traveling by boat in the delta a week after the storm, this reporter saw 66 bodies floating in canals or hidden among shrubs along riverbanks.

But the question remains: where have the thousands of bodies gone?

There appear to be no pictures of fields of bodies as in the tsunami in 2004. Pictures taken immediately after the storm show dozens of corpses in the area around Labutta on May 3 and 4. But villagers interviewed say emphatically that the death toll was high, but as happened on the west coast of Indonesia in direct line of the tsunami three years ago, most of the dead had washed out to sea.

The inability to retrieve bodies has compounded the grief of people who lost family members. Zaw Ayea, who is 27, was at his boss?s house during the storm. When he returned to his destroyed home, he found his sister?s body. His mother and two younger brothers are missing and presumed dead. That is the accounting given by his friends; Zaw Ayea cannot speak. He stares straight ahead with a strangely placid expression on his face. His friends say he has been in shock since the cyclone.

Although some of them smile reflexively when they talk to a visitor, villagers are clearly scarred by the death all around them. ?There is a ghost here at night, every night,? said Khin Maung Win, a farmer in the village of Gwe Choung, where half the population of 200 has been killed by the storm. The ghost, he says, throws rice in his face.

San Nge, at 81 years old the oldest survivor interviewed for this article, says that the day after the storm he heard a girl shouting for help. ?I went over and no one was there,? he said.

For most villagers in the southern parts of the delta, there was nowhere to hide when the storm hit. The delta is a vast, low-lying series of peninsulas and islands that even in the driest of periods of the year are flush with water. As in Venice, residents of the delta travel almost everywhere by boat.

Before the mid-19th century, the area was a thinly inhabited swamp. But the British colonial rulers saw this as an ideal place to cultivate rice and help feed their empire. They built dikes and drained the land. In the twilight years of British rule, colonial Burma was the world?s largest rice exporter and millions of Burmese moved here to cultivate the rich alluvial soil. The government says that 6.3 million people lived in the delta before the storm.

It will not take much to get villagers back on their feet in these areas because they had so little to begin with. Wealthy in the delta means having some furniture and a house made of concrete or hardwood instead of bamboo.

Farmers till their fields with buffalo pulling a plow. Now they lack both buffaloes and rice seed. During this reporter?s time in the delta, several times as many buffaloes could be seen floating dead on the water as were grazing on land. Villages in the delta often have dedicated ponds and large ceramic jars to store drinking water. Many of those jars have broken and the pond water has been blackened from the hay and foliage rotting in it.

Distribution of food to the destitute villagers has been uneven where it exists at all. Some villages say they have not seen anyone from the government while others say the military gave them rations of rice to last a few days.

In the city of Bogale, where most houses lost their roofs, residents say the military supplied each household with three cups of rice immediately after the storm. Then the army began selling portions of rice for 600 kyat, about 55 cents.

A motorcycle taxi driver said he had seen only two foreign aid workers since the storm. The military?s policy has been to allow foreign aid but bar foreign disaster relief experts.

In refugee camps there appears to be enough rice, partly because wealthy Burmese have been dropping off bags of food in recent days.

Than Lwin, who now sleeps on the concrete floor of a Buddhist temple that serves as a makeshift camp for refugees, is starting from zero. He was naked when he landed on Main Ma Hla island because the storm had ripped off all of his clothes. He now has a shirt and sarong but still needs a blanket. Twenty-six years old, he has no plan.

?I have nothing,? he said. ?I will do anything to survive.?

[Bruce551]

Now is the time to kick out the military junta gov. of Burma. There's enough US troops, ships, and helopters to hold Rangoon and other major cities in Irrawadddy Delta. Plus, French and British ships are on way to Burma. I'm sure the Australia would lend a hand too to help free Burmese poeple from these gangters.

There's wide spread support in all sectors of Burmese society to attain a democratic government.

The Burmese are perfectly capable of running their country without the junta.

[biachung]

Now is the time to kick out the military junta gov. of Burma. There's enough US troops, ships, and helopters to hold Rangoon and other major cities in Irrawadddy Delta. Plus, French and British ships are on way to Burma. I'm sure the Australia would lend a hand too to help free Burmese poeple from these gangters.

There's wide spread support in all sectors of Burmese society to attain a democratic government.

The Burmese are perfectly capable of running their country without the junta.

It sounds ideal, and possibly in a good position to do so. but I think enough people have died lately.