We point fingers at the Myanmar governement and its lack of efficiency instead of discussing how to be of help.

We spend days arguing about why there is a food crisis and who is causing it , we spend no time deciding on what we should be doing.

Welcome to the real world, my friends.

Dara

We want to see love, peace & joy in this world, but work hard on spreading fear, hate and misery.

Not until each one of us individually understands that we are the creators of our experience, will our experience change and this world stop suffering.

Death toll will top 50,000?

Times Online:

...Foreign aid workers in Burma have concluded that as many as 50,000 people died in Saturday’s cyclone, and two to three million are homeless, in a disaster whose scale invites comparison with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3879492.ece

If this were a hundred years ago, when storms could approach a country with no warning, this tragedy would have been inevitable. But many of these deaths would have been prevented if more people in the Myanmar government had done their jobs. When people take responsibility for others' lives, they should be true to their commitments.

Thank you, Mallika, for a post on this disaster.

love, h

I wonder about this:

"...The United States, which has led a drive for economic sanctions against Myanmar’s repressive regime, said it would also provide aid, but only if an American disaster team was invited into the country.

"The policy was presented by the first lady, Laura Bush, along with a lecture to the junta about human rights and disaster relief.

"'This is a cheap shot,' said Aung Nain Oo, a Burmese political analyst who is based in Thailand. 'The people are dying. This is no time for a political message to be aired. This is a time for relief. No one is asking for anything like this except the United States.'"

(full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/world/asia/07myanmar.html )

Personally, I agree it's a cheap shot.

It was all written, directives and insight given, but none heard, or if they did, not much was done. Those that could have facilitated did not. The world is debilitated by ego impediment, attention misplaced.

For this one a waste of time and effort I suppose.

A conversion of faith and human rights is often a condition to foreign aid by nations and by religious groups alike.

The president's much-lauded international AIDS initiative has succeeded in saving lives through treatment. But its abstinence-focused prevention programs have put many more lives in jeopardy.

To attach any kind of prerequisite to those in desperate need for our help is simply immoral.

Intent is fine but maybe it is time to move beyond and treat our fellow world citizen the way we want to be treated?

There but for the Grace of the universe go the rest of us.

Thank you Mallika for posting this.

B

Talking of cheap shots,
you've gotta be freakin kidding me...

"US First Lady Laura Bush accused Myanmar's military rulers Monday of failing to warn their citizens in time about a killer cyclone and pressed the junta to accept US aid in the disaster's wake. "Although they were aware of the threat, Burma's state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path," Bush said in an unusual appearance at the White House briefing room podium."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080505/pl_afp/myanmarweathercycloneus

Let's skip the obvious pot & kettle dig here over the Bush Administration's staggering, deadly incompetence before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, put partisanship aside, and only wonder in embarrassment on behalf of the nation I love: what lowlife, imbecilic White House PR slug intentionally sent the First Lady out into the international public spotlight dressed only in this painful irony?

Volcanic activity on the planet is increasing right now and that will dwarf human contributions to global warming. There is some good video from Chile. Like I said before the solution is the same no matter what is the cause.

The other planets in the solar system are experiencing upheaval and massive storms with lots of energy like we have not seen before. Something is going on… energy from somewhere is entering the system, which is perfect since there is a shortage of energy on the planet according to the management.

Safe havens in the United States are not California, New York, Florida and Texas or the coastlines, yet they are heavily populated.

I wonder if anyone is anticipating the mass migrations to the mid west, Michigan and Ohio with all that fresh water and inherent buffers to the extreme stuff…

People with businesses should probably already be planning.

As the new data is plugged into the phonon calculations the speed of predicted escalation grows.

It was as one had predicted, however with deterministic chaos one can only predict the short term not the long term and nothing is for certain, except that it not going to be business as usual.

The good news is the rate of scientific discovery and invention is also increasing whether we can overcome the ego impediments and apply it fast enough is a question to be answered.

The evolution memes are taking hold, The Supreme Evolutionary Principle..

In fact a new journal has just manifested. “Evolutionary Applications”

Click my name to check it out.

Large number of deaths due to natural calamities occur because of herd mentality of people.

By herd mentality I mean people congregate in large number during Kumbh Fair due to herd mentality.

It is real difficult to understand how somebody outside Myanmar can help them, if their government does not accept help and keep everything behind closed door.

An elected government should be formed in Myanmar.
Education should be spread.

International community should pressurize their government to be more open.

May be god has some plan for them in its / his / her mind.

God bless Myanmar.

The real reason that one wants to be sure that a group of Americans can help to supervise the aid that is offered is to make certain that the needy get it. I do not see that as a cheap shot but a responsible reaction to our offer. Most of the time the governments let aid go neglected so that nobody gets it, and why should then anyone offer aid to them.

"YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Myanmar's military regime distributed international aid Saturday but plastered the boxes with the names of top generals in an apparent effort to turn the relief effort for last week's devastating cyclone into a propaganda exercise..."

"...State media say 23,335 people died and 37,019 are missing from Cyclone Nargis, which submerged entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta. International aid organizations say the death toll could climb to more than 100,000 as conditions worsen..."

"...Officials have said only one out of 10 people who are homeless, injured or threatened by disease and hunger have received some kind of aid since the cyclone hit May 3.

"The government's abilities are limited. It has only a few dozen helicopters, most of which are small and old. It also has about 15 transport planes, primarily small jets unable to carry hundreds of tons of supplies.

"''Not only don't they have the capacity to deliver assistance, they don't have experience,'' said Farmaner, the British aid worker. ''It's already too late for many people. Every day of delays is costing thousands of lives.''"

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Myanmar-Cyclone.html

Since Mallika posted this Myanmar blog five days ago, contributors to Intentblog have written about a book, gardening, lying politicians (that's big news, huh?), parallel universe theories, a hoped-by-the-producers-and-all-financially-involved-people-to-be funny movie, US media, theories on pain, thoughts about how to forgive mothers, personal anger / manipulation / betrayal, and what being good means in US politics / government / public life.

There were 78 (as I write this) entries in the new OT, commenting on politics, politics, politics, politics, quoting Fitzgerald (gee, who's been reading Fitz, recently?), politics, politics, politics, politics, an accolade for the Fitz quote, a poetic comment, politics (real thoughts, not pastes), politics, politics, politics (real thoughts, not pastes), politics, politics, politics (real thoughts, not pastes), politics, politics, a whinge, a tease, a shout-out, a whinge defense, a 7-part poetic series, politics (real thoughts, not pastes), a shout-back, a response to the poet, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, a shout-back, politics, politics (real thoughts, not pastes), politics (real thoughts, not pastes), politics, politics (real thoughts, not pastes), politics (real thoughts, not pastes), a comment with substance to the poet, a comment on Myanmar (thank you, Tammy!), politics (real thoughts, not pastes), politics, a comment on Myanmar (thank you, Tammy!), a two-part discussion of a banned commenter, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, a response about the banned commenter, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, personal thoughts on politics, politics, a response about the banned commenter, politics, a whinge, politics, politics, and a comment on Myanmar (thank you, Tammy! -- we were reading the same article at the same time -- see my prev comment in this thread).

On the old OT, in the day following Mallika's Myanmar post, there were 26 comments, most of which were politics pastes, plus a few poems, a whinge, and some personal thoughts.

Before Tammy's and my separate comments this morning, there were a grand total of 15 comments about Myanmar made anywhere on IB, in the five days since Mallika posted this blog.

This is contrasted with 263 comments and 15 new blogs, all posted on non-Myanmar subjects, in the same five day period.

OK, what was that about being good, about pain, about forgiveness? What was that supposedly funny movie again? What were those thoughts on anger / manipulation / betrayal? Could you please revise your blogs, or comment again, after meditating for a moment on what happened and is happening in Myanmar?

Or maybe we should ask, what has happened to IB?

And then she though " True love never dies " only sleeps in deep corners on the heart.
Have a nice day heather, will be traveling to Key Biscanye to day to remember the corner of the heart.

Dear Heather,

I just read your post above and would like to remind you that there has never been more nor less suffering in the world than there is now. Instead of wondering what has happened to the world, maybe you should look at what is happening in you.

Love,
Aurora

NO suffering and NO death Aurora! You may think thats Crazy, but that's what I want, and I always get what I want..

Tammy, I understand and it's not crazy. But one can only find that in oneself.

Dear Aurora

As the number of people on Earth increase, the possibility for wholesale suffering increases. It is not accidental that there is more poverty, disease, etc. in more-populous countries.

Your idea that suffering has always been constant on earth is different from most people's sense of what life is about, and it is they who have to live their lives and deal with their own and others' sufferings. Neither you nor I recall having lived 5000 years ago, etc. Who is to say what quantity of suffering existed then, if suffering is even something to be quantified?

I didn't ask what happened to the world. I asked what happened to contributors and commenters here, that there were so few words posted about this tragedy and ongoing crisis.

Dear Tammy

Hugs to your always-open heart.

love, h

Dear Heather,

In the end it is always up to us ourselves to heal ourselves and with it our surroundings.

One can do that without commenting and going deep down inside.

One can do that by walking a labyrinth with a certan intention and ask for healing of the planet.

One can do that by commenting on this thread.

One can do that by sending money or food supplies, like our government did and many governments did.

Nature cannot be tamed by humans although we believe we can:). It is a horrible fact that many people live in environments that are more vulnerable than others.

Some countries just do not want other countries to interfere with their affairs. One can ask oneself whether this is right or wrong.

My heart tells me that everyone should have their first needs met. In many cases this is not possible yet.

But it is my firm belief that everyone, also the people in Birma have a full capacity to heal their own country. Compassion can be expressed in so many ways.

Much love to you,

Mieke

Dear Mieke

I agree compassion doesn't need to be publicly expressed. It always used to be, here, though. That was the primary reason I kept reading IB after I first found it. IB was a place for the heart to be open, or to open up, with love expressed in a hundred different ways. There were several contributor blogs about Katrina. There were even a couple about the tsunami, around the time of its first anniversary, despite IB not existing when the tsunami hit. What happened to Nargis? Is it that Myanmar doesn't matter to most people? What has changed? You're not liking my anger about this. I'm worried that fewer words here may mean fewer silent prayers and fewer compassionate actions. Giving and governments are logistical facilitators of compassionate intent. What if intent diminishes? If I were a mother in Myanmar with two dehydrated, starving, feverish children, and the price of water had risen 500% and rice was unavailable, and there were not enough doctors or medicine, and my home and all possessions were destroyed, I would be hoping that somewhere in the world there would be people with an intent to help my children and me survive.

love, h

To put things in proper perspective, the current est. death toll is in the twenty thousands. Relief agencies predict this may rise by -- hold your breath -- 400% -- that is, from the twenty thousands to the hundred thousands -- if incoming supplies cannot be delivered fast enough to the right areas.

It isn't a political question of who is doing the delivering.

It is an on-the-ground logistical issue: the Myamnar government does not have the in-place infrastructure to deliver supplies fast enough to prevent many more deaths, and they are turning down offers to supply some of the missing distribution methods, i.e., more planes and helicopters, and personnel trained to fly and maintain them.

Dear Heather,

You have been here at IB for a few years I think. I have read lots of wonderful posts by you, sometimes you were sad and sometimes you were happy. I've "seen" you discussing lots of subjects, writing poetry, joking, laughing...

All this time people have been born and have been dying. Every second, Heather. Of all kinds of reasons, including natural disasters,poverty, hunger, diseases.

So what has changed now? The world, or your inner landscape? Is the reason out there, are you sure? Or in the way you feel these days...

You are angry, according to what you write to Mieke. You believe that you are angry because of people here. But the anger is in you, it is yours and it has to do with you and not with anyone else.

Aurora, I'm not angry in general -- you're projecting, love.

In my next comment, I will paste an entire NY Times article that is also angry. Strangely for a NY Times article that is very well-written and has been in the front page -- and above the fold -- of NYTimes.com for two days, no by-line is given. It is the finest report on any crisis that I have ever read.

"In Flooded Delta, a Want as Pervasive as Death

"BOGALE, Myanmar — The water has not receded fully, and few aid trucks have made it here. Only one helicopter, from the Myanmar military, was spotted all Friday, dropping off packages of instant noodles around a devastated delta that needs much more. Win Kyi, a mother looking for a lost son, was crying, her body shaking and her arms outstretched for food, money, water — anything.

"“I have nothing,” she said, shuffling in a state of shock. “Everything is gone.”

"Six days after a cyclone churned through the coastal plain of Myanmar, it was clear that the damage was great and that little aid had made it to the thousands of Burmese villagers along the sea south of the largest city, Yangon. The smell of rot and death was in the air here, part of a single district where the military government says 10,000 people died.

"It is difficult to assess the actual human toll, even in a landscape of toppled trees and houses and bloated farm animals that resembles the devastation of the 2004 tsunami, which killed 181,000 in Asia. Along the 70 miles of road — the only one — from Yangon to Bogale, there was not a single human body visible. Still, aid groups and the few reporters in the country have had little access to some of the areas that were reportedly hardest hit, especially directly on the Andaman Sea.

"And people spoke of villages wiped off the map, the damage tallied not by the dead but by the survivors, so few they were easier to count.

"In the village of Day Da Nam, 33 miles from Yangon, residents said the remains of 28 farmers killed by the storm were still floating in the falling floodwaters. Thein Tun, a 44-year-old bus driver who is out of work because all the buses were destroyed, said food was scarce and the well water was contaminated.

"“The diarrhea is coming,” he said, echoing a grave concern among aid officials that the death toll could rise quickly if clean water and medicine do not arrive here soon.

"Lacking alternatives, villagers are eating waterlogged bananas and other rotting fruit, he said. “Normally we have two meals,” Mr. Thein Tun said. “Now we eat only once.”

"Yet of the two dozen people interviewed in the flattened villages and flooded rice fields along the road, none said they were starving. Most rice reserves were soaked during the storm, but villagers have laid the grain on large plastic mats to dry. The rice has a musty smell, but farmers say they have no choice but to eat it.

"“It tastes bad, but if we can eat it we will,” said Than Tun, 43, a rice farmer. “If not, we will throw it to the pigs.”

"Like hundreds of other farmers here, he has lived in an A-frame, three-foot-high bamboo structure along the side of the road since his house was destroyed. Many villagers fled to the relative safety of the road when the storm came because it rests on an embankment higher than the surrounding countryside.

"But the water has not completely pulled back to the sea. It is brackish, a problem for humans, but not so much for rice: A little salt, they say, does not hurt the plants. The more long-range problem is that many farmers have no seeds.

"“Everything is gone with the wind,” said Zaw Win, a farmer in Leyaim, a half-hour drive from the city limits of Yangon. His rice reserves, which would have lasted him until November, were blown and washed away by the storm. The main crop is normally planted in May and harvested in November.

"To help with immediate needs, the monastery in Painal Kone village distributed rice from its stocks on Friday. Some villagers, especially in areas farther south, said the government was also giving out rice rations.

"“Anyone with a broken roof gets one or two cups of rice,” said Htayl Lwin, a trader in duck eggs. At the entrance to his stilt house, built on the river that runs beside Bogale, his smudged and still-damp account books were laid out to dry. He counts himself lucky that no one from his family died.

"In the days after the storm, several bodies floated past his house.

"Mr. Htayl Lwin said the areas affected worst were along the coast. In one village, Kyme Kyoung, only two people survived. The police were limiting access to that area.

"About 400 people without homes have sought shelter in the prayer hall of a local monastery, including Ms. Win Kyi, who was separated from two sons when the cyclone hit. She also lost her house and all her water buffalo.

"Every day since then she has traveled to the police checkpoint to scour the list of names of the dead. On Friday, the police told her that one of her sons had been located, injured in the storm. When they were united, they hugged for a long time, she said.

"“He told me, ‘I’m alive. My whole body hurts. But I’ve come back to Mama,’ ” she said.

"For the other son, she is still waiting."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/world/asia/10scene.html

good grief!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/world/asia/11myanmar.html

"YANGON, Myanmar — The military junta continued to restrict foreign aid shipments to survivors of last week’s devastating cyclone but forged ahead on Saturday with a constitutional referendum intended to cement its power after a campaign of arm-twisting and intimidation.

"The junta is refusing to grant entry to foreign aid workers that relief officials say are crucial to preventing further deaths from disease among an estimated 1.5 million victims.

"By Saturday, the military had not released two United Nations World Food Program aid shipments that arrived on Friday, according to a spokesman for the program. Several aid flights have landed in Yangon or are en route, the spokesman said, and supplies from other countries were also on the way. But the aid amounted to about one-tenth of what is needed, along with a major logistical operation, said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the World Food Program..."

"...The military appeared to be diverting some resources from cyclone victims to the referendum. A resident of Yangon, speaking by telephone, said that refugees seeking shelter in schoolhouses were evicted so they could be used as polling places. She said refugees had also been evicted from other buildings..."

Sweet Heath, this is what I read in post 22:

"You're not liking my anger about this. I'm worried that fewer words here may mean fewer silent prayers and fewer compassionate actions"

So are you not angry? Maybe you are worried? Or maybe you are completely unaffected?

My anger is about this: what is happening in Myanmar, and how complacent people seem to be, by their silence. I am worried that silence tells of a deeper affliction, a withdrawal from active compassionate intent and action. When people come together with similar, openly-expressed intentions, the seeds for compassionate actions are formed. I am trying to understand others' thoughts by challenging them to speak for themselves via my comments. I'm wondering where are the people who care enough to speak openly about what they perceive and feel.

Heath, it is very good that you speak openly about what you perceive and feel. I am only trying to show you that your anger and worry are not caused by Myanmar, nor by IBers' behaviour. Your feelings arise in you and have to do with your perception. This is where feelings come from - our own interpretations and view.

Why should silence mean complacency? It can mean anything, you don't know what people do and think and feel, but this is your conclusion. Why not look inside to see what your behaviour is all about instead of worrying about other's behaviour?

Dear Heather,

I do not agree with you that silence is the same as a withdrawal from active compassionate intent and action.

I believe that silence here on IB means that many already have found how to convert their compassion into a passion. A passionate effort on how they can BE the change they would so much like to see in the world.

I have found my passion too. Building labyrinths in nature as a healing walking meditation for the many people in our country who have fled their own country for numerous reasons and try to find solace here.

(And for all those children and grown-ups who are becoming a little bit overweighted, to bring them back to nature a little more.)

We already have ongoing discussions in our country for many many years now about all those lost souls and (do not forget that) the few that time and again try to spoil it all by illegally trying to molest our good intentions.

Many countries in Europe have to deal with this problem.

The U.S. also has to deal with this but they have a double burden. They also have to deal with a national burden caused by their own government.

It is all very complicated and as a simple soul one has to first take care of oneself. Improve the world starts with oneself. That is my simple saying. And another: what you radiate you receive back.

One can talk and talk and talk about it. At a certain moment the talking is over and the deeds have to be added to the words.

And then there is no time to blog anymore.

These past three years here on IB have given me so much confidence in the strength of a human being that no matter what happens in a person's life, that same very person always receives the burden he/she is able to carry :)

And of course he/she will be able to act accordingly.

Much love and a peaceful feeling inside is what i now am offering you :).

Blessings and a warm hug from

Mieke

my dear Aurora and Mieke

My first post today was to share an important article on Myanmar. My second post was made because it seemed strange to me that so many words were written here about many things, and so little about Myanmar. If one is talking and talking, where are the words about a serious immediate crisis? If one has no time to comment on IB, why are there so many comments about other things?

Just what are your thoughts are on that?

Aurora, you write "Why should silence mean complacency? It can mean anything, you don't know what people do and think and feel, but this is your conclusion" and in so writing, you express your belief that I've come to a conclusion. But I'm questioning, not concluding.

Mieke, you write "I do not agree with you that silence is the same as a withdrawal from active compassionate intent and action" which assumes that my belief is that silence is a withdrawal -- but it is a worry, not a belief, with me.

Mieke, you "believe that silence here on IB means that many already have found how to convert their compassion into a passion." I urge you to question that belief, or if you feel it is absolutely true, say how you know it to be so.

Mieke and Aurora, my anger and worry don't mean I'm generally angry and worried, nor do my anger and worry on this subject mean I'm stuck in a state of negative thinking and no action. I think your worries about and advice to me are based on misreading parts of what I've written, and projecting your own attitudes on me in some ways.

For example: I'm aware that silence may signify a withdrawal from compassion, and it may not. That is why I'm challenging others to speak. I'm questioning my own perspective.

If you rebut my comments, please check to be sure you've read what I've written, i.e., that you haven't made assumptions about my beliefs that aren't true.

If you want to advise me about my attitude, your take on my approach to living or whatever, if it's personal, my email is on my typekey, and OT is always there if you want to say what you have to say publicly.

love, h

Hi Heather,

You urge me to question that belief.

I have come to know many people on IB here in the beginning in a very personal way. They all are compassionate beings and they all have found their heart's content and then, as Harb has put it, no conversation is necessary anymore. I do agree with them.

I have lost my heart to IB and have tried in the past many projects to work together with people here, and a few ones have been very productive like my translation of Harb's book and the design/poetry book with North. And to not forget my 3D Virtual Peace Labyrinth that has travelled around the whole world. And not for me to get anything out it but for as many people as have shown interest in it for free.

Or a project cut off, due to the fact that I wasn't good enough in the eyes of others with DK Matai,him being the main source of this.

My latest effort in writing essays about the labyrinth did not invoke anyone's interest here on IB but I did receive Harb's compliments and his willingness to go and write a book about it himself.

We now have a complete vision that we have integrated: Harb's book Self Designed Universe and my essays on the Labyrinth.

As you can read from the comments in Avtar's first thread about pain and suffering, you will not see many of those commenters back in future and this is my last comment on IB as of today.

I am going to fully concentrate myself on the labyrinth and his many possibilities and I have already explained why.

I have always commented here with pleasure, never have I encountered negative feelings of others, so I stick with my belief: "What one radiates, one receives back".

I wish you and everyone here on IB all the best, each and everyone with his/her own heartfelt intentions :)

Much love,

Mieke

Dear Heather,

I don't seem to be able to convey what I wanted to convey, and it's getting too late for deep discussions for me. I hope you get all the answers you are looking for, friend. Good luck and have a nice... must be Friday afternoon :)

Saturday?? :)))

Dear Mother and Father who's art is Heaven,

Hallowed be Thy names.

Thy Kingdom has come,

It is here and now.

Thy will by joint effort be done.

Thank you once again for being the Great Providers.

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power and the Glory, forever. Amen.

.

I happen to believe in the individual soul.

I believe this soul is part and parcel of God's Creation.

I do not believe in eternal damnation.

I think charity starts at home.

I live to serve others.

May God bless and keep you free from suffering.