Another Katrina, Far From Home

It's easy to suffer myopia when calamity hits on the other side of the world:

Flooding in the outskirts of the Burmese capital of Yangon

In the shadow of the media slam that was Hurricane Katrina, the relative murmur with which we have reacted to Tropical Cyclone Nargis that slammed into Burma this week has been disappointing.

Admittedly, with a military dictatorship that did little to warn the Burmese people of the oncoming storm and that is now hampering international aid efforts, some might say there is little that can be done right now.

That does not diminish the fact that more than a million people are now homeless with death tolls ranging in the tens of thousands already.

Before and after satellite imagery of the devastation in Burma this week.

This devastation is quite simply another Katrina, if not worse, even if it is as far from home as you can get.

UPDATE 5/7/08: U.S. diplomat: Cyclone toll could be 100,000: Officials say corpses are floating in the water as Myanmar disaster grows