Snowmail: Aid agencies say up to 216,000 dead in Burma

Last Modified: 10 May 2008
By: Alex Thomson

On tonight's show...

Matters Burmese continue to dominate, as they should. Our correspondent is telling us this evening that the major aid agencies are working on a figure of 216,000 people dead. That is ten times the figure that the junta is talking about.

And what of the junta? Well some depressingly predictable photo-ops of goons in lots of braid and shoulder pads handing out aid to grateful Burmese. That junta has spent much of the day conducting a 'referendum' to bolster its already tight grip on power.

The UN fumes on the sidelines saying it is a response to a major disaster quite without precedence. The Americans and French talk about delivering aid whether the Burmese junta likes it or not. But they probably don't really mean it. The British say little but mutter about the vague possibility of doing this in the future. Meanwhile they trust pressure on China and India might open minds in Rangoon.

So a few pathetic bags of aid trickle into the Irrawaddy delta.

Wider frame though, are there not troubling questions to ask about the viability of humans living in regions like this with rising seas and global warming? Do you hear any of our political or diplomatic leaders asking them?

No - me neither.

In Lebanon - who is really running it? Probably not the urbane but beleaguered Prime Minister. His attempt to put the clamps on Hezbollah, destroyed by a couple of days of violence; by Hezbollah effectively taking over much of Beirut and the final nail in the coffin coming today with the army saying that clamping attempt should be abandoned.

And you know what? Yes, less than one hour later Hezbollah said fine, we'll take all our soldiers off the streets (they'd pretty much gone anyway) and that was that. Having proved they hold the whip-hand in Lebanon, Hezbollah have gone back to trying to destroy Israel instead of attacking their fellow Lebanese. In the UK, Cherie Blair's got a book out. And no doubt wants lots of publicity from the media she spent so much time moaning about and saying she'd not miss after she left Downing Street. Funny that. Few revelations and thus few reasons to buy said book I'd say. But there is, I'm told, a little bit of subtle knife-twisting about the Gloomy One lurking all that time in Number Eleven, plotting about how to take the Smiley One's job.

Plus -- Russia's Madonna is in the UK with the Bee Gees -- obviously. Jive Talkinsky. Plainly I have little idea as to what this is all about but it sure sounds like fun.