60,000 dead or missing. Vanessa Kulick over at PCR has a good find, the Washington Post made up an animated satellite view that shows the extent of flooding when you move your cursor over the map.
The issues of U.S. aid and criticism from the U.S. are a bit complex and I don’t want to take a detailed stand on them without know more. At present it sounds as if Burma is accepting aid from neighbors [who tend not to be criticial] and the U.N., but not the U.S.. But I will say that this is a disaster and not a government crackdown, the death toll itself critiques the government, even without a free media to spread the details. [Update: Based on a Salon write-up by Jurgen Kremp the Burmese government is definitely doing a terrible job. Similarly, it’s quite fair to make clear that we’re offering aid that’s being rejected and to provide accurate commentary through Voice of America type sources, I’m just a bit leery of top level condemnation at this point.]
That said, I think Ackerman is right that the State Department blog really should throw in an expression of sympathy to the Burmese people and not just note how they’re protecting Americans. The focus on the Americans probably goes back to an attempt to show the value of the State Department to American taxpayers, but the entry doesn’t have to end there.
[Update: The prior donation links I provided seem to have such some trouble. The Washington Post provides a rundown of organizations that are in the field right now.]
Image taken from said State Department blog since it’s a government site
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