KHIN MAUNG WIN/AFP/Getty Images

Since last week's deadly cyclone in Burma, the nation's ruling military junta has been reluctant to allow aid to enter the country. Since then, trickles of food, water and medicines have been allowed to enter the country, but international aid workers have not. Citing a government that failed to even warn its citizens of the impending disaster, international observers believe that the regime in Burma has neither the will nor the capacity to distribute aid fairly, that corrupt officials are profiting from aid packages, and that the situation created by these conditions threatens to outpace the humanitarian devastation of the 2004 tsunami.

Last week, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner--the founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)--suggested that the international community and the UN are obligated to intervene in Burma, regardless of the wishes of the military junta, in accordance with the "Responsibility to Protect", or R2P, as outlined by the UN at the General Assembly in 2005. The concept asserts that the international community is obligated to intervene in cases where states fail to protect their populations from "genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity."

There are widely varying opinions (pdf) on the legality of the Responibility to Protect. Some argue that it violates the basic concept of sovereignty, while others like the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt, believe as Kouchner does, that the UN is abdicating its responsibility in Burma. Garreth Evans, of the International Crisis Group, offers a more nuanced interpretation in an editorial for The Guardian:

If it comes to be thought that R2P, and in particular the sharp military end of the doctrine, is capable of being invoked in anything other than a context of mass atrocity crimes, then such consensus as there is in favour of the new norm will simply evaporate in the global south. And that means that when the next case of genocide or ethnic cleansing comes along we will be back to the same old depressing arguments about the primacy of sovereignty that led us into the horrors of inaction in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the 1990s."

He admits that if the inaction and neglect of the Burmese government is widely interpreted as a crime against humanity, then there might be room for the principle's application.

But there is no disagreement that the people of Burma can't wait for these issues to be bandied about at the Security Council or across editorial pages. Frustrated nations have a choice to make: either they must defy the wishes of the Burmese junta and send aid workers or airlifts to the Irrawaddy Delta, or they must submit to the regime and send whatever they have in the hopes that it will reach those in need. Regardless, it is clear that moralizing and posturing on the issue is not going to influence many, either in Rangoon or at the UN.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

It seems hard to imagine a scenario in which the massive earthquake that rocked China's western Sichuan Province at 2:28pm local time today has not killed tens of thousands -- possibly more. Beijing originally put the death toll at 61. Hours later, the figure was increased to "up to 8,500." With rescuers, including thousands of Chinese soldiers, still unable to reach the epicenter of the quake, one can only assume this figure is tragically optimistic.

Officials at the U.S. Geological Survey have said that the magnitude 7.9 quake was relatively shallow. Shallow earthquakes do more damage near their epicenters than ones which occur deeper in the Earth. Just over 30 years ago, in 1976, a similarly shallow quake, measuring magnitude 7.5, hit the northern Chinese city of Tangshan. It killed more than 250,000 people.

It's worth watching Beijing's response to the crisis, for a couple of reasons (in addition to any worst-case Olympic scenarios).The first will be to see how real recent transformations in Beijing's disaster response policies are, including a new network of emergency management offices and provisions which give local leaders more autonomy in times of crisis. So far, the speed with which Beijing has responded has been impressive. Can it be sustained and intensified?

The second will be to gauge Beijing's commitment to transparency with regard to the scale and scope of the quake's impact. So far, information seems to have flowed relatively freely to the Western media. As the scale of the disaster increases, and with it the death toll, in all likelihood revealing deficiencies in engineering and infrastructure, it will be interesting to see if these channels of communication remain as open.

The full extent extent of the damage caused by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit China's Sichuan Province on Monday afternoon is just starting to become clear. It is estimated that about 9,000 people were killed. The quake was felt in Beijing and Shanghai, and in places as far reaching as Taipei, Hanoi and Bangkok.

In order to reassure people and to squelch false rumors, the Chinese government is using SMS text messaging (translated) to mobile phones as well as internet postings to inform people that the areas where they live are not in the seismic zone. Over a million such messages were sent in nearby Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guizhou Province.

The government plans to use text messaging not only for emergencies, but for various situations relating to the public interest. The plan is part of the government's new openness in information regulations which it says will promote "openness as principle, being closed off as the exception" in an effort to provide timely and accurate information to the public.

The hand of the government doesn't seem so far away when it's reaching you through a device clutched in yours.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Nearly a week after Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma, the first UN World Food Program and Red Cross planes were finally allowed to land in Yangon today. U.S. military planes carrying supplies are still waiting in Bangkok for permission to fly from the Burmese government.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen. The total number of casualties is anywhere between 23,000 and 100,000 depending on estimates and over 1 million people may have lost their homes. As the arresting images in FP's photo essay "Burma Picks up the Pieces" show, rebuilding after this catastrophe would be a monumental task for any state. For one as repressive and paranoid as Burma, it may be impossible.

While it might seem unimaginable to find a reason for optimism in suffering of this scale, the Burmese people can only hope that the cyclone, and the government's inept handling of it, might be the final blow that brings this odious regime to an end.

The 130-mph winds and 12-foot-high waves of Cyclone Nargis have already left at least 22,500 dead and another 40,000 missing along Burma's Andaman coast and Irrawaddy river basin, but the worst may not be over. Caryl Stern, head of the U.S. fund for UNICEF, said of the days to come, "Our biggest fear is that the aftermath could be more lethal than the storm itself."

Burma's paranoid, isolationistic junta has actually asked for international assistance in the face of this mounting disaster, but according to The Irrawaddy, a Burmese newsmagazine run out of Thailand, government cooperation with international relief groups is still questionable in practice.

As seen in this week's Tuesday Map(s), though, the biggest issue on the ground may simply be standing water -- miles and miles of standing water.

These images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite show just how much of Burma's coastal plain is now under water.

On April 15, the image shows clean-cut river tracks and a visible shoreline:

NASA

The May 5 image, however, is clearly a different story:

NASA

And this map, created by UNOSAT (the Operational Satellite Applications Program of the U.N. Institute for Training and Research), shows the flooding's impact on Burma's citizens along the Andaman coast:

UNOSAT

As you can see, standing flood water (red-pink areas) has unfortunately closely followed the denser populations (red/orange dots) of this agricultural region. And that's why the cyclone's toll has been so astoundingly high.

KHIN MAUNG WIN/AFP/Getty Images

The devastating cyclone that hit Burma this weekend, killing perhaps 22,500 people -- 40,000 more are still missing -- seems to have spared the country's new administrative capital, Naypyidaw. Deep in the heart of the country's interior and surrounded by mountainous jungle, the isolated new capital, only unveiled last year, suits the insular military junta just fine. But The Irrawaddy reports that civil servants and military officials, many of whom left family behind in Rangoon, are bucking orders from the junta to stay put. Instead, they've fled to look for lost family members in the cyclone's path:

We left our children in Rangoon, and we should be there with them now," the official said, adding that higher authorities have turned down all requests for leave until after the May 10 referendum.

Many of Burma's bureaucrats have homes in Rangoon, where they lived until the junta suddenly shifted the capital to Naypyidaw in November 2005. Telephone lines and Internet connections in Rangoon, which is still the country’s main commercial center, have been down since Friday.

Military personnel with relatives in the stricken area have also been returning to their homes without permission from their commanding officers.

Perhaps another sign that bungling relief efforts could weaken the junta's control?

Here's a clip of Susan Rice, one of Barack Obama's foreign-policy advisors, discussing the infamous 3 a.m. phone call ad:

Transcript:

Clinton hasn't had to answer the phone at 3 o'clock in the morning and yet she attacked Barack Obama for not being ready. They're both not ready to have that 3 a.m. phone call."

Whoops.

(Hat tip: The Caucus)

UPDATE: MSNBC sends along the full clip, so that you can see the context and judge for yourself.

In one of the biggest annual movements of humanity, about 200 million Chinese make roughly 2.2 billion trips over the Lunar New Year holiday. This year, Jack Frost made a guest appearance, causing massive travel delays, damaging key infrastructure, and disrupting coal shipments to power plants. 

How does China's winter disaster stack up against Hurricane Katrina? Here's a look: 

Fatalities	60	1,353
Damage	$7.5 billion	$96 billion
Evacuees	1.7 million	1.1 million
Homes damaged or destroyed	Over 1 million	300,000
Official visits	PM Wen Jiabao to Guangzhou	Bush to New Orleans
Industries affected	coal	oil & gas
Power supply	17 of 31 provinces in brownouts	2.5 million without power
Troops Deployed	500,000 soldiers, 1.6 million paramilitary	50,000 National Guard Troops

Photos: MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images; ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

LIONEL HEALING/AFP/Getty Images

Goma, a city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is what you might call a star-crossed place. It has endured decades of bloody civil war, played host to thousands of fugitive murderers who masterminded the genocide in neighboring Rwanda, and in 2002, a hot wall of lava from an erupting volcano flattened the downtown. 

But now mansions are going up. The Chicago Tribune's intrepid foreign correspondent, Paul Salopek (who was detained for more than a month last year in Darfur for his reporting) just filed a fascinating piece about the city's recent transformation from hell on Earth to real estate boomtown. Where survival crops were once planted in traffic circles, he writes, tropical flowers now bloom. Land plots are going for $30,000 not far from the lake where bones of Rwandan genocide victims still wash ashore.

It seems that the town's near-destruction a few years ago by a nearby volcano has given it the chance to reinvent itself—or at least for the real-estate speculators to move in and recreate a city center at extortion prices. And yet the "startling rebirth of the town-that-just-won't-die," as Salopek calls it, is still just one eruption away from more ruin.

And then there's the rest of the neighborhood: The surrounding countryside is still rife with rebels battling with government forces, and an estimated 800,000 refugees have been displaced recently due to the fighting. Not the most stable real estate environment for investment, perhaps, but admirable all the same that people can shake it all off and rebuild.

As mentioned in this morning's Brief, the town of Tuusula, Finland was the tragic site of school shootings Wednesday when an 18-year-old gunman shot and killed seven classmates and the principal of his school. Having been an exchange student in Finland many moons ago, I can imagine this coming as a huge shock to the Finns, whose violent crime rates are exceedingly low. 

That said, Finland does have a robust gun culture. Any adult can own a handgun as long as it's registered with a shooting club. And just from my experience there, the gun culture is largely centered around hunting (reindeer meat*, anyone?) and target shooting. I personally knew more people who owned guns over there than I do in the United States, which makes me think that gun ownership is more concentrated here. Anyhow, Finland ranks third in the world in gun ownership, with 56 firearms per 100 people, compared to a whopping 90 in the United States and 61 in Yemen, which ranks second. That's according to this fantastic graphic by the Washington Post, which was tucked away on page A14 in today's paper:

Other surprises from this chart? Iraq has "only" 39 firearms per 100 people.

*UPDATE: Finnish reader Timo Riitamaa writes in—

People don't shoot reindeer, they shoot moose. Moose are wild animals.
Reindeers, while living freely in herds, are earmarked by their owners and killed by a butcher.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News

During the past week, at least 640,000 people in California have fled their homes, 14 people have died, more than 2,760 buildings have been destroyed, and many millions of dollars worth of damage has been inflicted. The culprit is, of course, the massive wildfire that has spread across roughly 700 square miles (181,300 hectares) of California, all the way from Santa Barbara down to the Mexican border. Authorities suspect that arsonists were to blame for starting at least two of the fires that have raged out of control, which have been fanned by Santa Anas—the region's strong, dry seasonal winds. And after a week, there are still serious risks of further blowouts in some areas of the state.

But it's not just California that faces threats from fierce and incredibly damaging wildfires. Every year, countries as diverse as Australia, Indonesia, and Russia experience their own deadly, forest-fire outbreaks, and are at the mercy of forces ranging from global warming to arsonists. Some of these wildfires even make California's 181,300 burning hectares look mild. In 2003, for instance, over 23 million hectares of Siberia's forests went up in flames. This week's FP List, "The World's Worst Forest Fires," looks at some of the countries that are most at risk for wildfires and previews some of the dangers that lie ahead. It's a pretty gloomy outlook, unfortunately. Check it out.

Dick Cheney is tired. Watch this video clip of him catching a little shut-eye during yesterday's Cabinet meeting at the White House, where the main item on the agenda was the California wildfires. Maybe he would care if it were a red state.

I've categorized this blog post where it belongs: Disasters.

A steam roller destroys bottles of alcohol, during a ceremony in Jakarta, 04 October 2007. Jakarta authorities destroyed some 35,065 bottles of alcohol seized by police in the capital from illegal alcohol vendors, during [the] Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, when practicing devotees abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and any sexual activity from dawn to dusk.

More photos, including the giant beer vacuum, after the BREAK

ALI YUSSEF/AFP/Getty Images

How's the surge going? The latest figures from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees tell us that an average of 60,000 Iraqis a month are fleeing their homes in fear of their lives, an increase of 10,000 since the buildup of U.S. troops began in January. And who could blame them? We've already highlighted the recent BBC/ABC/NHK poll here on Passport, which revealed that as many as 70 percent of Iraqis feel less secure since the surge started.

What's worse, escaping the violence has just gotten a lot harder. Until this Monday, neighboring Syria had allowed in any Iraqi without a visa for a six month period. Now, new visa regulations imposed by the Syrian government have made it so that every Iraqi—with the exception of academics and businessmen (and perhaps the odd insurgent)—must apply for a visa at the embassy in Baghdad's al-Mansour district, an area prone to sectarian violence. The result? According to a UNHCR spokesman:

For the first time in months, if not years, UNHCR field workers visiting the Syrian-Iraq border yesterday found the crossing point virtually empty.

We shouldn't be quick to point fingers at Syria. The estimated 1.4 million Iraqi refugees living there have cost the Syrian government some $1 billion a year and have put undue strain on the country's health, education, and housing services. An on-the-ground Brookings report revealed that in 2006, the state had to foot the bill for a 35 percent increase in subsidized bread as well as 30,000 new Iraqi students flooding the school systems. Syrian citizens blame the refugees for the recent spike in unemployment, cost of basic goods, and high rents in Damascus neighborhoods (in some places, rental prices have doubled or even tripled since the outbreak of the war). But despite UNHCR's calls for international assistance, Syria has mostly been left to deal with the situation alone. U.N. officials have desperately been advocating the inclusion of a "humanitarian visa"—which would ensure that those fleeing persecution won't be turned away because they don't meet regular visa requirements—but it's about time someone else lent a helping hand.

MORRIS BERNARD/AFP/Getty Images

At least the refugees now have Angelina Jolie on their side. The actress visited refugees on the Iraq-Syria border at the end of August and demanded increased international support:

It is absolutely essential that the ongoing debate about Iraq's future includes plans for addressing the enormous humanitarian consequences these people face.

Maybe she can get someone to pay attention.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Where exactly did President Bush think he was visiting yesterday during his trip to the Gulf Coast?

[T]he taxpayers and people from all around the country have got to understand the people of this part of the world really do appreciate the fact that the American citizens are supportive of the recovery effort."

"I come telling the folks in this part of the world that we still understand there's problems and we're still engaged."

"We care deeply about the folks in this part of the world."

Doesn't it sound as if he's talking about people in another country? Tsunami survivors perhaps, or Iraqi refugees? But then, he's referred to the Gulf Coast as "this part of the world" at least a dozen times since Katrina. It's a rhetorical crutch, obviously, but also one easily avoided given the immense frustration most Gulf Coasters feel at being seemingly forgotten by the powers that be.

(Hat tip: David Kurtz) 

MARIO TAMA/Getty Images News     

   Photo: The French Quarter on August 29, 2005

Many people are probably wondering today why, two years after Katrina, New Orleans remains something a little less than a shining city on a hill. The news on the Big Easy's recovery is not all bad, but it's certainly disappointing for those of us who were hoping the city would bounce back quickly from tragedy. Only the old parts of New Orleans, which were built on the higher ground and were never destroyed, seem to be thriving—and many people have fled for the suburbs. In a fascinating New York Times Sunday Magazine article about the wild world of catastrophic insurance, Michael Lewis goes a long way toward explaining what is going wrong:

Louisiana cannot generate and preserve wealth without insurance, and it cannot obtain insurance except at the market price. But that price remains a mystery. Billions of dollars in insurance settlements — received by local businesses and homeowners as payouts on their pre-Katrina policies — bloat New Orleans banks and brokerage houses. The money isn't moving because the people are paralyzed. It's as if they have been forced to shoot craps without knowing the odds. Businesses are finding it harder than ever to buy insurance, and homeowners are getting letters from Allstate, State Farm and the others telling them that their long relationship must now come to an end. "I've been in the business 45 years," says a New Orleans insurance broker named Happy Crusel, "and I've never seen anything remotely like this." An entire city is now being reshaped by an invisible force: the price of catastrophic risk. But it's the wrong price.

Lewis's article is basically a long profile of John Seo, a math whiz who has pioneered "esoteric financial options"—complex financial products that other people couldn't figure out how to price properly. Seo's insights on how to spread the risk from catastrophic events such as Katrina are hugely important in an age of worsening storms. But they could have unexpected pernicious consequences.

Consider the undiminished risk of flooding in New Orleans, wildfires in Malibu, or hurricanes along the Florida coast. I know; everybody wants to be near water. But the truth is, people shouldn't be building their homes in flood plains, in areas that are especially prone to severe wildfires and mudslides, or on ecologically fragile barrier islands—and insurers shouldn't be encouraged to sell policies to people building new homes in such places. (I'm not calling for, say, the wholesale evacuation of Singapore.) It is politically costly for politicians to resist massive bailouts after events like Hurricane Andrew; just look at what happened to Bush I in the 1992 election. Knowing this reality, insurance companies might take risks that they otherwise wouldn't. We need to ensure that Seo's innovations, for all the good they might do, don't magnify this problem.

DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP/Getty Images

Zitiste may be a long way from South Philly, but this beleaguered Serbian village is hoping for a morale boost from the Italian Stallion himself. City officials unveiled a three-meter bronze statue of Rocky Balboa by sculptor Bojan Marceta over the weekend in the town square. Thirty-five miles north of Belgrade, Zitiste has fallen victim to flooding and landslides in recent years, gaining a reputation for misfortune and catastrophe. Officials hope that Rocky's underdog story will help the town's image:

For years, only negative reports on farm disease, monstrous murders, floods and landslides have been coming from our village," said Mayor Zoran Babic.

"This is the chance to give a better, more positive image to Zitiste."

No word yet on whether Vladimir Putin's government—always a factor in Serbian politics—will insist on equal representation for Ivan Drago.

As Hurricane Dean rips through the Caribbean and now Mexico, commodity traders who made contrarian bets on sugar--futures contracts for the commodity are down some 20 percent this year--are licking their lips:

While there's a projected surplus of 11 million metric tons of the sweetener, bad weather may cause the global stockpile to shrink, said Greg Smith, founder of Global Commodities Ltd. in Adelaide, Australia, manager of a $210 million commodities fund.

"The risk is now mostly in the upside as wild weather season approaches,'" said Smith, who said storm damage may send sugar prices doubling to 20 cents a pound, from 9.4 cents a pound as of Aug. 17 on the Nybot. "We consume a lot of sugar both for food and now energy, while unfortunately the weather patterns are becoming more extreme.''

The storm has wrecked sugar crops in places like Belize and Martinique, and may cause damage in Mexico. Still, there's reason to be skeptical of Smith's optimism. The economies of sugar-producing countries in the Caribbean depend heavily on sugar, but they're still only a small piece of the global trade. Brazil, Thailand, and India, some of the world's largest producers, are expecting bumper crops this year. And with India looking to dump excess sugar on world markets next year, the contrarians may be in for a bitter financial harvest in 2008. So far, the futures markets look unshaken by Hurricane Dean. Prices for Caribbean rum, however, could well skyrocket. Bad news for Jimmy Buffet.

TEH ENG KOON/AFP/Getty Images

As with so much else, China does mine disasters on a colossal scale. The Utah collapse and rescue effort have been heart-rending, but they pale next to China's ongoing saga:

Anguished relatives of Chinese coal miners trapped in flooded shafts clashed with managers on Monday to demand information, but hopes for the 181 men faded after another day of efforts to pump the mines dry. The disaster in the eastern coastal province of Shandong is the latest to strike China's coal mines, which -- with over 2,000 people killed in the first seven months of this year along -- are the world's deadliest.

My gut feeling is that if the Chinese Communist Party is to face a serious challenge in the coming years, it will be because of something like this: a local disaster that ignites simmering tension about the inequities of China's breakneck development and official corruption. Chinese officialdom appears to be taking no chances:

Accounts in China's wholly state-owned media have been terse. On Monday, the main newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, the People's Daily, ran on its front page an Aug. 1 story about the successful rescue of 69 miners from a flooded mine in Henan province. A much shorter story on the trapped miners in Shandong ran on page 5. Television crews in Xintai were asked not to film and in turn were videotaped by security officials.

ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

Forget "Deadliest Catch," the Discovery Channel show about the peril of being an Alaskan king crab fisherman. The most dangerous job in the world has to be mining coal in China. Last year alone, 4,746 miners were killed in China, according to state figures.

Stop and think about that for a second. That's about 1,100 more deaths than the U.S. military has incurred in five years of fighting in Iraq.

Which is why China is ecstatic over yesterday's rescue of 69 miners from a flooded coal shaft in Henan Province. The shaft, part of a 50 year-old state-owned mine, collapsed Tuesday afternoon when a torrent of more than 1 million gallons of water rushed into the mine after a rainstorm. The government said 102 miners were working at the time of the flood. Thirty-three escaped. The remaining trapped miners were kept alive thanks to hundreds of rescuers, who poured 145 gallons of milk down a 2,600-foot ventilation shaft over the course of three days while crews pumped out the mine and cleared tons of mud. 

It was a death-defying escape from the jaws of "development at any cost"—and a fate denied to far too many.

UPDATE: A reader writes in, "What on earth are you doing comparing gross number of deaths of Chinese miners to the number of Americans killed in Iraq? At least give us the denominator on the Chinese miners, otherwise the comparison is meaningless."

Just so there's no misunderstanding: I wasn't dissing American servicemen and women. Nor was I comparing apples to apples or trying to make a point that a coal shaft in Shanxian is more dangerous than a pillbox in Baghdad. Neither sounds like much fun to me.

So let's set the record straight. There are about 7 million miners in China. Our in house statistician tells me that, based on back-of-the-napkin calculations, you're about 8 times more likely to die as a U.S. soldier in Iraq than as a coal miner in China. I still don't want to sign up.