Burmese Cyclone Leaves Thousands Dead

Not that anyone cares, since apparently only Americans are worthy of our attention, but on Saturday a cyclone smashed into Burma, killing more than 4,000 10,000 22,000 people, although you wouldn't know it listening to the American media. Read more here.

And for those of you who have read The Shock Doctrine, you can be sure that the free market crowd will jump all over the disaster and use it to force the government to privatize, deregulate, cut social assistance programs and allow the building of resorts by multinationals. Disaster capitalism in all its glory.

Update: The American media finally started to pay a little bit of attention after the death toll hit 5 digits, apparently anything less than 10,000 dead foreigners isn't all that significant...but that shouldn't be much of a surprise given the non-reporting of Iraqi deaths for the last 5 years, or during the 90s as our sanctions killed half a million children.

Update (5/7): Death toll estimates have now reached 60,000, and by some estimates this could rise to 100,000.