Friday, May 16, 2008

Disasters and Politics

As is my habit, I was cruising various news websites, when a couple of articles on news.com.au about recent disasters in China and Burma caught my eye (as well as others in The Age).

I started looking through the pictures from the Chinese earthquake, and I'm not hugely embarrassed to admit that I got a little teary, and couldn't go further than the first three or four - that was hard enough.

I have to wonder, what possible, sane reason could these governments have for refusing aid from other countries? China is apparently FINALLY allowing aid in from certain countries, while Burma has apparently decided to close its gates to any foreign assistance. I can only hope that, somehow, this has been mis-reported, because I would hate to imagine a country doing this purely "in a bid to stop the outside world seeing the plight of its cyclone victims".

At least I have the option of saying "enough sad stuff for today, let's read some
Dilbert". Kinda makes my worries seem a little trivial, eh?

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