Is It Time to Invade Burma?

Romesh Ratnesar takes to the pages of TIME to ask, in apparent seriousness, "Is It Time to Invade Burma?" The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas ...

Indonesian Rebels End Insurgency After 30 Years

Indonesia's Free Aceh Movement insurgents have laid down their arms after thirty years of fighting: Rebels in Indonesia's tsunami-ravaged Aceh province formally disbanded their armed wing Tuesday, ending a 29-year struggle for independence that killed thousands so the movement could participate in elections next year. Free Aceh Movement fighters returned to peace talks with the government after mammoth waves ...

Schroeder Quits Government

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will not play a role in the future government of Germany. BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who has led Germany since 1998, said for the first time on Wednesday he would not play a role in the next government, in an emotional farewell including broadsides at the United States and Britain. "I will not be a part ...

Maurice Strong Stepping Aside At UN

Maurice Strong is stepping down from his UN post. Maurice Strong, a long-time Canadian businessman and currently the top UN envoy for North Korea, will suspend his work for the United Nations while investigators look into his ties to a South Korean businessman accused in the UN oil-for-food scandal in Iraq. Previous SDA posts here and here. The Sri Lankans would like ...

8.2 Earthquake Hits Off Indonesia

CNN reports another massive earthquake off the coast of Indonesia. Quake strikes off Indonesia coast An earthquake measuring a preliminary magnitude of 8.2 struck off the coast of Indonesia Monday -- on the same fault line that originated a December 26 earthquake that launched a deadly tsunami. The director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said scientists there feared another tsunami ...

Shifting Tides?

Poll results in Indonesia show that US sponsored tsunami relief may be having an effect on public opinion. In the first substantial shift of public opinion in the Muslim world since the beginning of the United States' global war on terrorism, more people in the world's largest Muslim country now favor American efforts against terrorism than oppose them. [...] For the first time ...

Final Moments

A Canadian couple who died in the December 26th tsunami took a series of digital photos of the waves that claimed their lives. The camera was destroyed, but the memory card was retrieved.

Tsunami Uncovers Ancient City in India

Tsunami Uncovers Ancient City in India (AP) Archaeologists have begun underwater excavations of what is believed to be an ancient city and parts of a temple uncovered by the tsunami off the coast of a centuries-old pilgrimage town. Three rocky structures with elaborate carvings of animals have emerged near the coastal town of Mahabalipuram, which was battered by the Dec. ...

Bush Spending Money Like a Drunken Sailor

Bush nearly triples request for tsunami relief (Cox) President Bush said yesterday he would ask Congress for $950 million for tsunami relief, nearly tripling U.S. aid pledged for victims of the monstrous seismic wave that swept the Indian Ocean in December. The beefed-up aid proposal, to be part of a supplemental budget request to go to Congress later this week, ...

India Emerges

With the supposedly "stingy" response of affluent nations occupying the media's attention during the tsunami relief efforts, other issues have been sidelined. For instance, what have developing countries done? The Washington Post provides one answer by looking at Indian contributions: India Takes Major Role In Sri Lanka Relief Effort Those trends [economic liberalization, improved relations with the United States, and transformation into ...

Looting Follows Tsunami’s Rampage

After Tsunami's Rampage, Looters' Market Is on a Roll [RSS] (NYT) Business is coming back to Banda Aceh, a city hit hard by the tsunami, and not all of it fits into neat moral boxes. On Diponegoro Street, at what was once the commercial heart of this city, a muddy man named Husnaidi, 30, picked through the debris ejected from the ...

What Is Barbara Boxer Talking About?

I've already discussed the Rice hearing below, but I think that the following issue deserves its own post. Before Senator Boxer criticized the Iraq War, she lectured the nominee (emphasis added): Transcript: Confirmation Hearing of Condoleeza Rice (NYT) And if you're going to become the voice of diplomacy, this is just a helpful point. When Senator Voinovich mentioned the issue of tsunami relief, ...

The Post-Tsunami Stock Markets

If there can be a silver lining at all in Southern Asia, perhaps the New York Times has identified part of it: Why Stock Markets Stayed Calm in Southern Asia [RSS] Natural disasters often provoke sharp stock market declines where they occur, usually followed by recoveries that are almost as intense. Ten years ago this week, the Kobe earthquake in Japan sent ...

Tsunami Relief and Missed Opportunities

Russell Berman of the Hoover Institution makes a couple of good points that I'd like to synthesize: Lessons Learned from the Tsunami (The Stanford Daily) As the toll from the tsunami continues to mount, it has become clear that this catastrophe was also a political turning point. No governments may have fallen, but some deeply held political myths and beliefs have not ...

Indonesia Orders Foreign Troops Out by March

Indonesia Sets Deadline for Foreign Troops (AP) Indonesia announced that U.S. and other foreign troops providing tsunami disaster relief must leave the country by the end of March and ordered aid workers Wednesday to declare their travel plans or face expulsion from devastated Aceh province on Sumatra island. The government's moves highlight its sensitivities over a foreign military operation ...