Myanmar Mess Gets Worse

The unfolding disaster in Myanmar following the recent cyclone gets worse by the minute. The junta, which operates with all the efficiency of the New Orleans and Louisiana governments (before Gov. Bobby Jindal) failed to warn its citizens that the cyclone was coming, and now is obstructing efforts by the world to provide aid. Even the hapless UN has been forced to suspend shipments into that mess:

YANGON, Myanmar — The U.N. is suspending aid shipments to Myanmar after the government began seizing the supplies.

A U.N. official said Myanmar's junta has confiscated all the food and equipment that the World Food Program had flown into the country for cyclone victims.

WFP spokesman Paul Risley said Friday that the WFP "has no choice" but to suspend further aid shipments until the matter is resolved. Risley said all "the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated." The shipment included 38 tons of high-energy biscuits.

Risley said it is not clear why the material was seized. It was also not clear if the shipment seized was the one that was flown in Thursday or another one.

Earlier Friday, the U.N. blasted Myanmar's military government, saying its refusal to let in foreign aid workers to help victims of a devastating cyclone was "unprecedented" in the history of humanitarian work.

While the junta dithered and appeared overwhelmed by Saturday's disaster — the worst in the country's records — more than 1 million homeless people waited for food, shelter and medicine, many crammed in Buddhist monasteries or just camped in the open.

There are now reports of cholera outbreaks and other diseases that will greatly increase the death toll.

And while the world rallies to try and help the people of that devastated country, the oil-rich OPECkers who are rolling in dough thanks to $125 a barrel oil are keeping their money to themselves and won't even support world food aid programs:

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his top lieutenants on Monday are convening the first meeting of the U.N.’s Task Force on the Global Food Crisis. Ban says it will “study the root causes of the crisis,” and propose solutions for “coordinated global action” at a summit of world leaders in June.

Ban might want to consider convincing the oil-rich nations of the Middle East to provide more than the near-invisible amount of money they currently give to the World Food Program (WFP), the U.N.’s food-giving arm, which is charged with alleviating the food crisis.

WFP internal documents show that the major oil producing nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) gives almost nothing to the food organization, even as skyrocketing oil prices and swollen oil revenues contribute to the very crisis that the U.N. claims could soon add 100 million more people to the world’s starving masses.

The overwhelming bulk of the burden in feeding the world’s starving poor remains with the United States and a small group of other predominately Western nations, a situation that the WFP has done little so far to change, even as it has asked for another $775 million in donations to ease the crisis.

You'd think that the party of compassion and caring, the Democrats, would be motivated by news like this to try and help America free itself from OPEC oil by allowing us to go and get our own oil on our own lands. But no, we're going to continue to ban energy sources that could reduce our reliance on Middle Eastern oil and continue to pour billions into the oil shiek's wallets.

The Democrats are demonstrating neither compassion nor intelligence.