Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

The New York Times is reporting that the United Nations has suspended relief supply to Myanmar because the military has seized the food and supplies that were delivered earlier this week.

Paul Risley, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, said, “all the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated.” He said the World Food Program was suspending the few flights that the Myanmar authorities had so far allowed to enter the country until the matter was resolved.

Myanmar said it had turned back one relief flight because, in addition to disaster relief supplies, it carried disaster assessment experts and an unauthorized media group

As international aid organizations scramble to facilitate any aid that might possibly reach the people stranded and starving following the cyclone, the government in Myanmar will not process visa applications and turns away flights that contain aid that it says also contain unauthorized personnel.

In New York, United Nations officials all but demanded Thursday that the government open its doors.

“The situation is profoundly worrying,” said Mr. Holmes, the United Nations official in charge of the relief effort, speaking in unusually candid language for a diplomat. “They have simply not facilitated access in the way we have a right to expect.”

Mr. Holmes’s predecessor in that job, Jan Egeland, said, “children are going to die from diarrhea because of this government’s inaction.”

The military junta has said it is “grateful to the international community for its assistance — which has included 11 chartered planes loaded with aid supplies — but the best way to help was just to send in material rather than personnel.” One wonders what exactly the international aid community can expect the junta to do with that “material” in light of its inability to warn and care for its citizens.

I don’t have enough words for how angry and outraged I am. ETA: I can think of a few more super powers I’d like today.

Updated 2:00pm EST: NPR is reporting that the UN World Food Program will resume aid flights, though the first shipment of high energy biscuits are still confiscated and have not yet been released by the military junta controlling Myanmar: “[World Food Program spokesman Paul] Risley said that Myanmar’s refusal to allow international aid workers into the country was ‘unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts.’” But storms are brewing - literally:

A U.N. weather agency is forecasting heavy rains next week in Myanmar.

The official death toll from Saturday’s cyclone and tidal surge stands at nearly 23,000. But officials fear it will go much higher, with the lack of safe food and water.

Like hot and humid weather following Katrina, the atmosphere compounds the problems made already untenable by government idiocy of intolerable levels. (Thanks to Lucinda Betts for the link)

ETA: Shiloh Walker is hosting a charity auction of a heaping pile of ARCs and signed books, the proceeds of which go to Save the Children. Bid early, bid often.

Our Friday video is courtesy of Nathalie Grey, who finds these things and mercifully sends them to me:

Great tits cope well with warming.

To which I say: Tits, schmits--won’t somebody think of the boobies?

(Many thanks to my friend HaikuKatie--my favorite source of anything tit-related--for sending me the link.)

I went a Google-hunting for a few links to Black romance reviews until I find find time on my tuffet to write some myself, and I found a very interesting article by Gwendolyn Osborne, aka “The Word Diva,” on AALBC.com. In her examination of Black romance, It’s All About Love, Osborne examines the stereotypes and issues facing romance, but more specifically, Black romance and the Black readers of romance novels. In short, Black romance fights the preconceptions about romance, as well as preconceptions and prejudices about Black women, and Black relationships. Note: I don’t know when this article was written, so if these quotes are profoundly out of date, I apologize.

Drawing from quotes from authors like Beverly Jenkins as well as from romance readers, Osborne examines the growth of the Black romance subgenre, and the social realities faced both by readers and by the characters within the novels:

[Renee A. Redd, director of Northwestern University’s Women’s Center, says] “They [romance novels] offer a substitute for those who have resigned to never really being able to find a fulfilling love in their actual lives. The reality of a dearth of available straight Black men for straight Black women is a disconcerting and painful issue before us. For a long time we have lived with the idea of the strong Black woman, who by implication can do without a romantic relationship if she must, but the truth is that she would rather not.”

This acknowledgement the social reality of the lack of marriageable African American men denotes the difference between sister-girl fiction and romance fiction, says second-generation romance reader Jean Dalton of New York City. “In Waiting to Exhale, four educated and successful Black women sat around complaining about Black men who were unable to commit, preferred white women, unemployed, incarcerated, gay, adulterous or sexually inadequate, etc. African-American romance heroines are more in charge of their futures. They aren’t sitting around waiting to exhale.”

Black romance heroines are located within a unique - and important - social and political culture, both in the fiction worlds they inhabit, and as part of the world inhabited by their readers.

There are few people more informed than the people who read this site (hi, folks) so I want to ask you who are better informed than I am about Myanmar/Burma and that region in the world. Currently, news reports list at least 22,000 people as casualties of Cyclone Nargis. According to Reuters reports, international relief and aid is somewhat compromised because those requesting a visa to enter the country for relief purposes are not being granted entrance by the military junta in Burma. One report from the Times Online estimates that the government totals released from Burma could be very low, and a more accurate casualty count could reach double the presently published number:

The latest official death toll was 22,500, according to Burmese state media. But even after three days there has been no comprehensive survey. Assuming that there are many casualties to be revealed, and that a significant proportion of the 41,000 listed as “missing” are dead, the final toll will be much higher.

“We’re looking at 50,000 dead and millions of homeless,” Andrew Kirkwood, country director of the British charity Save The Children told The Times. “I’d characterise it as unprecedented in the history of Burma and on an order of magnitude with the effect of the tsunami on individual countries. There might well be more dead than the tsunami caused in Sri Lanka.”

So, what to do, where to go, how to help? Any suggestions?

According to the Wikipedia article, very few organizations have operations already located within Burma, and those that do are accepting donations to help relief efforts. But I’m curious if anyone reading has suggestions or knowledge that might give me and other readers an indication which organizations can offer the most direct aid.

Below the fold are links to the organizations highlighted within the Wiki article that offer online donations earmarked for the Burma relief effort and who indicate that they are already within the country, if you are interested for more information.