Tag: relief

Speaking as a supporter who will cut you no slack when you are wrong, I am mighty proud to have you as my President.

From the AP:

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was personally informed of her continued imprisonment by officials from the Home Ministry who entered her villa prior to the announcement, the official said.

snip

The extension was issued despite a Myanmar law that stipulates no one can be held longer than five years without being released or put on trial.

The junta faced a deadline to extend Suu Kyi’s house arrest for another year or release her. Members of her National League for Democracy were marching from the party’s headquarters to her home when riot police shoved the group into a truck.

It was not immediately clear where the truck was headed or exactly how many people were detained.

link: http://ap.google.com/article/A…

According to this YouTube, “Dust In The Wind” has been adapted as a song of protest by Burmese refugees living along the country’s border (it’s YouTube, so take it with the appropriate grain of salt):

“I’m quite confident we will be able to overcome this tragedy. I’ve tried to bring a message of hope to your people,” Ban said earlier as he made an offering at the country’s holiest Buddhist shrine, the Shwedagon Pagoda.

“At the same time, I hope your people and government can coordinate the flow of aid, so the aid work can be done in a more systematic and organised way,” said Ban.

“The United Nations and the whole international community stand ready to help you overcome this tragedy.”

link: http://afp.google.com/article/…

Meanwhile pressure is building on the military regime to do far more to help the victims of the cyclone, and not all of the pressure is coming from outside the country:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is en route to Myanmar today, but already his presence in the region seems to have had an affect:

“We have received government permission to operate nine WFP (World Food Program) helicopters, which will allow us to reach areas that have so far been largely inaccessible,” Ban told reporters in New York on Tuesday before departing for Southeast Asia. His announcement was not immediately confirmed by officials in Myanmar.

“I believe further similar moves will follow, including expediting the visas of (foreign) relief workers seeking to enter the country,” Ban said, warning that relief efforts to save survivors of the May 2-3 Cyclone Nargis had reached a “critical moment.”

“We have a functioning relief program in place but so far have been able to reach only 25 percent of Myanmar’s people in need,” he said.

link: http://ap.google.com/article/A…

Progress can’t come too soon, as cyclone victims, desperate for food, beg by the side of the road:

“For the vast number of Americans, if they just gave to some disaster far away and then another disaster happens, in their mind that’s clumped as ‘faraway disaster,'” Strahilevitz says. “So they will feel, ‘I just gave to a faraway disaster.'”

link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24…

It’s no secret that Americans are feeling less fortunate than in previous years. Escalating gas and food prices, the mortgage crisis and a recent “economic recovery” that only positively affected the most wealthy among us have left families seeing their household budgets shrink.

But as tough as we have it, it is nothing compared with what millions of people are going through right now in Myanmar:

MSNBC reports that Americans have given $12.1 million to charities for Myanmar relief efforts, far short of the $1.92 billion the US gave to assist the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami.

There have been several diaries on the devastating floods in Mexico in Jalisco and Tabasco.  The flood is frontpaged here and I thought I could crosspost a diary I sent over to Daily Kos where is is sadly falling flat.  Probably bad timing on my part, but here goes! link, link.  mariachi mama and mango on Ask a Kossak, community members in Mexico, have written asking for us to help but warned us to be cautious where to send money.  mango personally collected funds to redistribute in a regional flood in her area recently and many of her diaries were recommended.  This was great, but we can’t be sure that this will be as effective in a flood of this magnitude, with a million people displaced.  At that level, you need volunteers AND organizations that know what they are doing.  Over a million people are displaced, 40% children.  Many will have lost everything they own as well as their crops for this year.