You can help by donating to the Red Cross/Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders, Save The Children, UNICEF or the World Food Programme, all of which are providing assistance in Burma.

Our government, meanwhile, has decided this is a good time to play politics:

"The United States, which has led a drive for economic sanctions against Myanmar’s repressive regime, said it would also provide aid, but only if an American disaster team was invited into the country.

The policy was presented by the first lady, Laura Bush, along with a lecture to the junta about human rights and disaster relief.

“This is a cheap shot,” said Aung Nain Oo, a Burmese political analyst who is based in Thailand. “The people are dying. This is no time for a political message to be aired. This is a time for relief. No one is asking for anything like this except the United States.”"

The government in Burma is horrible. But that is no reason to attach these sorts of conditions to assistance in the face of disaster.

For foreign donors, Myanmar raises a dilemma seen also in North Korea, which may be on the verge of another famine (see article): how to rescue desperate people whose own government spurns outside assistance, and how to do so without providing a lifeline to an illegitimate and unpopular regime. In the aftermath of a disaster, only the first of these questions matters: when so many are in such need, the humanitarian imperative overrides qualms about giving handouts to a repugnant regime. Nor, on the whole, is there any way of sidestepping the junta (or the North Korean regime) in the distribution of aid. Some foreign aid agencies have existing networks in the country.

In theory it may be possible, as France's foreign minister has argued, to obtain a United Nations' resolution obliging the junta to accept aid. In practice, Myanmar's friends on the Security Council would probably block such a move and it will remain a question of coaxing the generals into accepting help. That means avoiding the risk of feeding the junta's paranoia. It sees the offer of help as the thin end of a wedge of political interference aimed at prising it from power. In this sense it was unfortunate that George Bush's magnanimous offer this week (“Let the United States come and help you!”) was made as he signed legislation awarding a congressional honour to Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's detained opposition leader.

The generals will also have noticed that on the same day Congress passed a resolution condemning their constitutional referendum scheduled for May 10th as “one-sided, undemocratic, and illegitimate”. This is an accurate description of both the process and the constitution the generals want to impose on their people—with such urgency, after 14 years in the drafting, that they have delayed voting in the worst-hit areas by just 14 days. Of course they should postpone the vote. Evil enough in itself as a way of providing some legal cover for the perpetuation of military rule, administering it (and presumably fixing the outcome) is now a distraction from what should be the army's main task: saving lives. However, pressure from America will not make the junta yield. Instead, it will make it even cagier in handling the offers of aid. Postponement would have a better chance if the neighbours who have maintained good links with the junta—Thailand and, especially, China—added their weight to calls for a suspension.

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Two faint hopes flicker in the sodden gloom left by the cyclone. The first is the possibility that the need for humanitarian help may lead to a renewed engagement with the West. At the very least it might advertise Western expertise, wealth and generosity, and restore some of the influence that has been lost to Myanmar's big commercial partners in the region. Second, the regime's shocking, bungling response to the crisis might lead even some of its own members to wonder whether their leaders know what they are doing. The army believes it must stay in power because no other force can hold the country together and run it competently. The cyclone must have brought home to some senior soldiers what most civilians have long known, that this is nonsense.

It is not unprecedented for a natural calamity to bring political change: in 1972, the embezzlement by Anastasio Somoza, Nicaragua's dictator, and his cronies of aid sent after an earthquake contributed to the unpopularity that eventually toppled him; more recently, the tsunami was instrumental in bringing peace to Aceh, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In Myanmar, superstitious generals and civilians alike will have seen the cyclone as a sign of divine impatience hinting at the looming downfall of a tyrannical government. You don't have to believe in portents to hope that they are right.