Links and Minifeatures 2008 05 10 Saturday

Myanmar seizes UN aid supplies, 'not ready' to let in US

Myanmar's military leaders seized aid shipments headed for cyclone survivors and told the top U.S. diplomat there Friday that they're not ready to let in American aid workers despite warnings the country is on the verge of a medical catastrophe.

The country is already flooded, and they're expecting another 4 inches of rain this week. Millions are without basic supplies, and putrefying corpses are going to spread disease. What wonderful people. Oh, and the chinese government shares the blame for propping the junta up.

US official: 1 shipment to be allowed to Myanmar

The governing military junta in Myanmar has agreed to allow a single U.S. cargo aircraft to bring in relief supplies for victims of a devastating cyclone, the Bush administration said Friday.

One planeload is better than nothing, but a single C-130 load of food isn't going to make much of a difference. Oh, it'll stop a few hundred from starving for a few days, but when you're talking about potentially millions of cyclone victims, that's not going to go very far. (the sixty to a hundred thousand you hear about are the ones that are missing or known to be dead. That doesn't count the far larger number of people cut off from food and water)

As a swordfighting duel, it's slapstick at best, but the video of these two gymnasts with lightsabers is cool.

How Oil Lubricates Our Enemies

It's not reality, it's Scrappleface. But humor sometimes conceals a deeper truth.

Neville Chamberlain, without the umbrella

Obama pwned

Via Instapundit, Meet the New Trough, Same as the Old Trough