Myanmar FINALLY Agrees To Assistance

Well, Finally the Myanmar military junta is going to allow aid workers in to assist the survivors, but it should be noted that thousands may have died because of their refusal to allow aid workers in right away. So while this is a positive step, "they" deserve nothing but disdain for their attitudes and behaviors over the last two weeks.

The story at Yahoo News reads:

Myanmar's junta agreed on Friday to admit cyclone aid workers "regardless of nationalities" to the hardest-hit Irrawaddy Delta, a breakthrough for delivering help to survivors, U.N. officials said.

Western disaster experts, largely kept out of the delta and restricted to the former capital Yangon, welcomed the news but wanted more details on the deal struck by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and junta supremo Than Shwe.

"The general said he saw no reason why that should not happen ... as long as they were genuine humanitarian workers and it was clear what they were going to be doing," a U.N. official with Ban said. The U.N. chief and his aides, on a mission to help 2.4 million left destitute by the storm that struck three weeks ago, met Senior General Than Shwe for more than two hours in the remote new capital of Naypyidaw.

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Why Do We Care Or Not Care?

For all the death and destruction around the globe, there is a story at Yahoo News, which tells us why we care, when tragedies occur. So as bad as humans can be, there is this positive trait that we have as part of our hardwiring.
I Hope you Enjoy the story:

The dire situations in cyclone-battered Myanmar and quake-tossed southwestern China and the impulse of many to offer relief have a lot to do with human nature. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors likely did it, and non-human primates do it. We are hard-wired to help others, to drop everything in crisis situations, scientists say.

"People do really respond in these crisis situations where it's really a short-term matter of life or death," said Daniel Kruger at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health. The motivation to give dates back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, he said. Some non-human primates also have been shown to step in during a crisis to help their kin or even humans.

Myanmar is an acute case, with the death toll at nearly 78,000, though expected to surpass 100,000, and up to 2.5 million people considered severely affected. And major relief efforts have mounted since Cyclone Nargis struck on May 2. In China, millions of dollars are also pouring into Sichuan Province, where more than 34,000 are reported dead and 4.8 million were left homeless from the recent earthquake and its aftershocks.

Several factors make acute disasters like these different from other human hardships, including their short-term nature, widespread images that tug at our heart strings, and the high benefits relative to costs of helping.

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China Stands Still To Mourn Quake Victims

I was just reading this story at Yahoo News, concerning the Chinese earthquake, and their time of mourning as a week has passed since the quake hit. In a rare move for China, they also thanked the international community for the aid they have received so far, and requested more!

China stood still Monday in mourning over tens of thousands of earthquake victims, and the government appealed for more international aid to cope with the country's deadliest disaster in a generation.

Construction workers, shopkeepers and bureaucrats across the bustling nation of 1.3 billion people paused for three minutes at 2:28 p.m., exactly one week after the magnitude 7.9 quake hit central China.

Air-raid sirens and the horns of cars and buses sounded in memory of the dead. Rescuers searching for signs of life among the rubble paused briefly then continued to dig but hopes for finding survivors a week after the disaster were growing slim.Further adding to the tragedy, state news reported that more than 200 workers who had been repairing quake-shattered roads in Sichuan province were buried over the past three days by mudslides.

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Myanmar Government Remains Intransigent

Everyday I keep hoping something will happen and we will be able to assist the Myanmar cyclone victims, and each day that hope is dashed when I read the news. When will we take a stand and work with the world to recitfy the situation there. The story this morning at Yahoo News is of another rebuff of United Nations assistance by the Myanmar thugs-in-power, with the slightest hint that they may relent with continued pressure.

A senior U.N. envoy went to Myanmar Sunday to urge its military junta to accept more international aid for cyclone survivors, as a British minister suggested the isolationist regime may be relenting.


John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, was greeted by Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Thu at the start of a three-day trip that will include a tour of the Irrawaddy delta, the area most severely hit by Cyclone Nargis on May 2-3.Holmes also will meet with high government leaders, said Daniel Baker, a senior U.N. official.

He did not elaborate but other officials have said Holmes' mission is to assess the needs of survivors and urge the isolationist junta to open its doors to more international aid before people begin dying from starvation and diseases.

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