Burma (Myanmar) has been led by a brutal, genocidal military junta for decades. It was hit by a massive, devastating cyclone last week and hundreds of thousands of people perished.

Now, the world is trying to send aid, but the junta is only allowing some shipments of food into the country - not the aid workers to go with it. As one would expect, this means that the government is not getting the aid to the people, and the devastation is thereby worsened artificially.

Perhaps in the meantime we can offer our aid through intermediary countries that get along better with Burma, like China or India. It’s a terrible shame that this totalitarian dictatorship, chooses political self-interest over the interest of its people - but it’s hardly surprising. That, or maybe they hired Brownie to oversee their relief situation.

You can help at:

US Campaign for Burma
UNICEF / Direct Relief International via Google Checkout
Doctors without Borders
Avaaz

David Torke over at Fix Buffalo has the scoop. Evidently, the City of Buffalo is suing 36 lenders for the cost of demolishing homes that never make it all the way through the foreclosure process and end up vacant and derelict.

A copy of the City’s pleadings is here. Over 3,000 foreclosures took place within city limits in the last two years, as alleged in the Complaint. There are 10,000 vacant homes that need to be demolished at a cost of between $16,000 and $40,000 each.

This particular lawsuit, however, deals with 57 specific properties which the city alleges are nuisances it is dutybound to abate, and the Complaint is 90-something pages long, so each affected property is tied to each defendant lender.

Good for the city for holding someone responsible for the cost of demolition. But the raw statistics are sobering and put the lie to any talk of a renaissance.

Buffalo isn’t coming back until all of Buffalo is coming back.

And absolutely nothing has happened in the last 4 years to help Buffalo stop the bleeding.