Sometimes you hear things that are so unbelievable that you wonder
whether it was all in your imagination. That is precisely the way
that I felt in listening to comments by the Bush administration on
the disastrous cyclone that hit the south Asian nation of Myanmar (Burma).
Don't get me wrong. I am no fan of the military junta that runs
Myanmar and has both repressed its people and served the
multinational corporations. I am sickened by their anemic approach in
responding to the disaster, one in which it is now estimated that at
least 127,000 people may be dead. Yet in listening to the Bush
administration and their rants against the Myanmar junta's approach
to the disaster, one could get the impression that there had never
been something called the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
Consider, for just a moment, the Bush rhetoric; in fact, just
consider one piece of it. President Bush criticizes the Myanmar junta
for its failure to allow into the country foreign aid workers to help
with disaster recovery. While this criticism appears to be absolutely
correct, it ignores an interesting fact: in the aftermath of the
Katrina disaster the governments of both Cuba and Venezuela offered
badly needed assistance. The Bush administration, under those
circumstances, either ignored the offers or turned them down. In
fact, the Cuban government had experienced personnel on standby
prepared to fly to the Gulf Coast (note: Cuba has a great deal of
experience with hurricanes).
What is striking here is not only the hypocrisy of the Bush
administration but that few commentators have even noticed. A global
chorus of outrage has been expressed with the Myanmar junta, but a
significant silence surrounds any comparison with the failures of the
Bush administration's approach in the Katrina disaster.
<http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17711>Link
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Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2008/05/tale-of-two-storms-myanmar-and-new.htm>monochrom
at 5/23/2008 12:31:00 PM
