Cyclone Nargis.
This is coolbert:
The satellite photos out of Burma showing the area flooded by Cyclone Nargis reveal a truly apocalyptic situation.
Much of the Irrawaddy River delta and the low-lying area north of the delta to include Rangoon [Yangon] is under water.
Up to 100,000 [?] persons now believed to have perished in the cataclysm?
[it is amazing how quickly these casualty figures escalate. In an alarming and marked manner that astounds. First 5,000 dead, then 6,000, then 20,000, then 60,000, NOW 100,000!!!]
Disease, starvation, unrest will claim even more lives unless aid arrives IMMEDIATELY!
This [Irrawaddy delta] was too one of the main rice-growing areas of the world. Was prior to World War Two [WW2] primarily mangrove swamp, but has been cleared and given over to agriculture during the last sixty years!
An area, due to flooding from salt-water, that will no longer sustain crops as was harvested in the past? Exacerbating the current rice “shortage” world wide, driving up prices.
[let me reiterate: Rising sea levels and warmer ocean temperatures [both making for cyclonic storms of greater frequency and intensity], teeming and restive populations seemingly without hope and at the mercy of authoritarian and despotic regimes, inappropriate agricultural practices, etc., all a recipe for disaster!]
THE RESPONSE OF THE BURMESE JUNTA AT THIS TIME IS TEPID AT BEST!
Paranoid and just-don’t-seem-to-care. The junta is clueless and callous! “Things” could very well spiral out of control in a manner that cannot be anticipated.
This is exactly the type of situation British Admiral Parry has in mind for a breakdown of the world-order. Begins in a place like Burma. A taste of things to come. A calamity of biblical proportions leading to governmental and societal breakdown.
[a U.S. naval task forces with a helicopter-landing-carrier is standing by? The U.S. has already pledged $30 million in aid. I fear that just about the only way to get immediate aid to most of the folks in the flooded area will be by helicopter! Just operating several dozen “choppers” in such a situation for several weeks will cost, just by itself, way beyond the initial aid package!]
The Arakan region of Burma does have a Muslim population. Traditionally found in an area on the border with Bangladesh. Further north - - not where the cyclone has struck. These are the Rohingya peoples. Victims of ethnic cleansing at the hands of the junta! Muslims in Arakan are biding their time, wait for events to transpire?
coolbert.
Labels: Burma
1 Comments:
The storm track there looks amazing, it went straight for the biggest city in hundreds of miles after landfall. Similar to Katrina, except with better aim and higher winds. Rohingyas we should not want here or in any civilized country, as they have the highest prevalence of terrorism of any population other than Palestinians perhaps. No patriot should take up their cause, and rewarding their displacement would tend to radicalize them further. The regime tries to assimilate them or send them to Bangladesh, and that third country is more than corrupt enough to be bribed into taking care of or resettling as many of them as would even show. One big storm and flood is only different in scale from the many thousands of local floods and storms which have always bedeviled the poor who cling to backward ways and the politics that goes with that. The net taxpayer of our citizenry is one to whom loyalty is owed, but the victims of the Burmese authorities are China's responsibility before they are ours. They are never our responsibility actually. What about the Belgian and Dutch refugees of 1940 into northern France, did they not prevent counterattack on the exposed flanks of the German salient across the Meuse? If the good people here are to suffer because Hitler won in 1940, maybe it should be asked if he could have even won those victories without the special compassion for those refugees, in that exact time and place?
2:09 AM
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