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"The Silver Lining Of The Myanmar Cyclone"
posted Tue, 05-06-08
Tue May 6, 4:33 AM ET
Advertising board is seen fallen following last weekend's devastating cyclone, Sunday, May 4, 2008, in Yangon. Myanmar announced Tuesday it is delaying a crucial constitutional referendum in areas badly hit by a cyclone that killed more than 10,000 people and may have left as many as a million homeless. Officials feared the death toll could soar.
(AP photo)
The cyclone death toll soared above 22,000 on Tuesday and more than 41,000 others were missing as the international community prepared to rush in aid after the country's deadliest storm on record, state radio reported.
Up to 1 million people may be homeless after Cyclone Nargis, some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out, the World Food Program said.
Some aid agencies reported their assessment teams had reached some areas of the largely isolated region but said getting in supplies and large numbers of aid workers would be difficult.
Images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar's rice bowl.
"From the reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattened and the final death toll may be huge," Mac Pieczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, said in a statement.
Cyclone aftermath in Myanmar - 05 May 2008
Cyclone Nargis left a trail of destruction as it moved inland from the Bay of Bengal. An Al Jazeera correspondent reports from inside Myanmar.
The chaotic essence of Nature has risen again in cyclone Nargis trail of destruction in Myanmar. When such "natural disasters" happen, humanity must remind itself that our Universe was born from the chaos of the "Big Bang" given order and beauty by the creative Divine Mind (God). Cyclones and other weather related phenomena have predictable order, to the extent that humanity can forecast the beginning and ending of such storms. Were the people of Burma warned of this devastating cyclone in advance?
US First Lady Laura Bush delivers a statement on Myanmar in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC. Bush accused Myanmar's military rulers Monday of failing to warn their citizens in time about the approach of a killer cyclone and pressed the junta to accept US aid in the disaster's wake.
(AFP/Mandel Ngan
US First Lady Laura Bush accused Myanmar's military rulers of failing to warn their citizens in time about a killer cyclone and pressed the junta to accept US aid in the disaster's wake.
"Although they were aware of the threat, Burma's state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path," Bush said Monday in an unusual appearance at the White House briefing room podium.
"It's troubling that many of the Burmese people learned of this impending disaster only when foreign outlets, such as Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, sounded the alarm," she said. Washington calls the country Burma.
Laura Bush, who has taken a leading role in shaping US policy towards Myanmar, said Washington "stands prepared" to increase its assistance well beyond an initial emergency 250,000-dollar outlay by the US embassy in Yangon.
She declined to give a precise dollar figure, saying the junta first had to allow a US disaster assistance response team into Myanmar to assess the scope of the devastation from Tropical Cyclone Nargis's weekend rampage.
"I can't speak to how large that would be. But I feel assured that it would be substantial, if we can give it," she said, promising help to provide water, sanitation, food and shelter.
Bush made clear any assistance would go through the United Nations or international nongovernmental organizations -- and not directly to a regime under US sanctions for failing to embrace democratic reforms.
"I hope that the military will realize they have to accept aid from everybody they can possibly accept it from. And maybe that will be the something good that can come out of this terrible destruction," she said
Laura Bush declared that "the response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta's failure to meet its people's basic needs."
Laura Bush, the quiet former librarian and First Lady of these United States of America, has been a powerful advocate for the Burmese people and a vocal opponent of the repressive Myanmar military junta. Like First Lady Bush, I can see a "silver lining" in the wake of the destructive Myanmar cyclone. The callous Myanmar military junta will have to accept the aid and presence of the democratic Free World, which will have a very positive impact for the people of Burma yearning for democracy. This will be another demonstration of a Universal Algorithm created by Divine Mind (God). When bad happens something good will come from it and when Evil has been done, Good will triumph. The Bible puts it another way, "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning" (Psalms 30:5) O' Hallelujah! Somebody say Amen!
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