Sitting here in Bangkok, Thailand with hundreds of other experienced international relief people is the pinnacle of frustration. The Generals in charge of Myanmar, isolated from world opinion as they may be, are nonetheless intent on achieving "Failed State" status with or without a cyclone disaster.

Yesterday, I attended...

Burmese Nobel Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi a few years ago admonished international relief groups to withhold aid to her country as long as the ruling Junta eschewed democracy and trampled on human rights. On that basis, a number of groups who would otherwise have mounted aid and development...

You would think Laura Bush, being given the podium at the White House Press Room to appeal for help for hundreds of thousands of victims of Friday's killer cyclone that struck Myanmar, would have known better than to mindlessly repeat the toothless US policy positions on a government we disapprove...

Republican operative Charles Black is organizing a Swiftboat-style attack on Barack Obama for the general election campaign. While normally this involves creating distance and deniability for the candidate behind these attacks, Senator John McCain could not help himself last Sunday on ABC News when interviewed by George Stephanopoulos. It seems...

While the US is consumed with a $4 billion general election campaign with its all-important focus on whether someone wears an American flag lapel pin or knew anyone with a checkered past, a slowly developing Tsunami of Hunger is rolling across a number of lands both near and far.

Today's...

In this exceptionally painful period of economic chaos for so many families, our safety net here at home is shredding. The number of Americans using safety net organizations like hospital emergency rooms, public health clinics, school-based health clinics and community food banks is growing dramatically even as these essential services...

Once again, an intensive media-driven campaign is underway to fill the coffers of two of America's largest nonprofits--the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army. The Los Angeles ABC TV station joined with the Red Cross for a second consecutive time (Hurricane Katrina was the first) in arranging "drive-by drop-offs"...

December 26, 2004 saw the world's strongest recorded earthquake (9.3) produce its most destructive tsunami and most generous (-ever) relief effort. Two of these three are true (hint: it's hard to hide an earthquake and tsunami but easy with cash or promises thereof).

So much cash was given...

Money is the mother's milk of disaster relief. And over the last 12 months - with the Indian Ocean tsunami, the hurricanes on the Gulf Coast and the Pakistan earthquake - fund-raising records have been broken by the King Kong of relief agencies, the American Red Cross, and by many...

The American Red Cross, for so essential an institution, has a disturbing and decades-long history of sacrificing its presidents for the failures of its own governing board and its overseers and paymasters in the US and 50 state governments. It fired its presidents after the San Francisco quake, the 9/11...

Let's hope we are not treated to having to endure American Red Cross "pop-up" ads on all the major websites touting a fund raising drive for victims of the October 8th quake in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

I'm headed for my 4th trip since January to Aceh in Indonesia and...

As the Red Cross pushes ever closer to its announced goal of $2 billion to cope with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, increasing numbers of local people in the affected region -- especially the indigenous poor black population -- are asking out loud whether such an imbalance in fund-raising is even...

Americans have a short and forgiving historical memory. Most can remember last year's Super Bowl champs and World Series winners, but few seem able to remember a $1 billion scandal involving the American Red Cross following 9/11, America's most disastrous terrorist or military attack on its homeland.

The details are...

I love the fact that the Administration buried FEMA director Michael Brown's 11 years as Executive Director of the Arabian Horse Association of America. He was just an quiet trust and estate lawyer in Colorado during that time, according to his official Administration bio.

That this qualified...

As of noon on Friday, September 2, The American Red Cross was reporting it had already raised $73 million in private funds for Hurricane Katrina victims. At the same time, the authoritative journal, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, which monitors nonprofit fund raising, stated that $108 million had been raised by...

If a relief group is not funded by the government (as is the Red Cross, which has cost reimbursement contracts with all levels of government to provide shelter and disaster services) or does not have a mega-business generating over $1.5B a year (the Red Cross again, through its sale of...