Word: burma
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...coercive humanitarian intervention in Burma wouldn't be without precedent: the U.S. funded and helped coordinate the delivery of aid without the host governments' consent during the wars in Bosnia and southern Sudan. Nor would it be illegal: according to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1674, member states have a "responsibility to protect" populations from genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, if their own governments fail to do so (or are responsible for committing the crimes themselves). Burma's crisis--hundreds of thousands of innocents at risk of death because of their rulers' willful neglect--easily meets that standard...
Cyclone Nargis For more images of the disaster in Burma, go to time.com/burma
China's Communist Party leaders now face another stern test: to show its citizens and the world that the government can cope with a horrific disaster. Keenly aware of the opprobrium heaped on Burma's rulers for their callous and incompetent handling of the killer cyclone earlier this month, Beijing will want to demonstrate that it has "the capability and readiness to handle an emergency like this," says Huang Jing, a China scholar at the National University of Singapore. Swift and transparent handling of the tragedy would also mark another step in Beijing's evolution from an unfeeling regime that...
Some blowhards with pulpits insist on attributing acts of God to the sins of the victims, but recent days have provided awful reminders that natural disasters don't discriminate. A cyclone killed 50,000 in Burma; an earthquake killed 15,000 in China; a tornado killed seven in Picher, Okla. The only generalization that can be made about all the victims is that they were unfortunate. As it says in the Book of Matthew, "God sendeth rain on the just and the unjust...
...blame the Burmese military junta for Cyclone Nargis either. But you can blame it for seizing aid shipments and refusing to admit aid workers. Nargis exposed the horrors of Burma--not only for the cyclone's victims but also for the survivors, whose lives are imperiled by the junta's inaction and who will still be stuck there after the world loses interest. It's a reminder of Lord Charles Bowen's take on the Book of Matthew...