The generosity of the Bush government
A little over a week ago I heard a fast-breaking radio bulletin: "There has been an 8.5 Richter earthquake just off the west coast of Aceh and it is believed 150 people have been killed by the resulting tsunami".
"More like 150,000," I muttered. (When you live alone for long enough you start to mutter to yourself.) Now, I'm just a shmendrick and I live in the boondocks of Australia and I have a little bedside clock radio someone gave me for Christmas. Not this Christmas, but one about 20 years ago. The clock doesn't work and neither do most of the buttons.
On the other hand, guys like Colin Powell, Dubya and the rest of the US cabal, who are certainly no shmendricks, have next to their beds an array of things called NASA, the CIA, the NOAA and, of course, our friends at Echelon. The cabal has satellites that can literally read any car licence plate and the headlines on a newspaper carried by anyone outdoors in any part of the world.
By the time this shmendrick in Sandy Beach took a wild guess about the enormity of the Indian Ocean crisis, these guys and their space age technology already had thousands of films and photos, a careful selection of which we have all now seen in the media. They had films and photos that showed the froth on the waves and the bodies and probably the terrified looks on their faces.
Some days later, the US administration, via Mr Powell (the 'dove' in the White House who oversaw the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the first Gulf Invasion) announced the generous ofer of $15 million in tsunami relief. About half the price of a luxury yacht.
Under pressure of an international torrent of outrage, and a NY Times editorial entitled 'Are We Stingy? Yes.', Powell hastily increased it to $35 million, about half the cost of Dubya's inauguration party. It might be seen as generous, as the US government still needs to spend $8.3 billion per month ($270 million a day) in Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, who is a very bad man and has Weapons of Mass Destruction as their satellites showed. And couldn't be captured any cheaper.
What a windfall the Asia crisis is for Amerika! Across 11 countries in South and South-East Asia, the US and its corporations now have with a stroke of a miserly pen what they couldn't win after years of Vietnam and the deaths of 2 million Vietnamese. They can just stroll into Sumatra, Sri Lanka or any damn place they please, and put their own price tags on the merchandise. "Hmm, nice beach. How much do you want for that? And that rainforest over there ... is that real teak? Would you take $50 an acre? Say, what about a nice little resort over on that island. We could put in a McDonald's next to a Levi's sweatshop."
Santa must have decided that the rest of the world got it completely wrong: the US was nice, not naughty in 2004.
A little over a week ago I heard a fast-breaking radio bulletin: "There has been an 8.5 Richter earthquake just off the west coast of Aceh and it is believed 150 people have been killed by the resulting tsunami".
"More like 150,000," I muttered. (When you live alone for long enough you start to mutter to yourself.) Now, I'm just a shmendrick and I live in the boondocks of Australia and I have a little bedside clock radio someone gave me for Christmas. Not this Christmas, but one about 20 years ago. The clock doesn't work and neither do most of the buttons.
On the other hand, guys like Colin Powell, Dubya and the rest of the US cabal, who are certainly no shmendricks, have next to their beds an array of things called NASA, the CIA, the NOAA and, of course, our friends at Echelon. The cabal has satellites that can literally read any car licence plate and the headlines on a newspaper carried by anyone outdoors in any part of the world.
By the time this shmendrick in Sandy Beach took a wild guess about the enormity of the Indian Ocean crisis, these guys and their space age technology already had thousands of films and photos, a careful selection of which we have all now seen in the media. They had films and photos that showed the froth on the waves and the bodies and probably the terrified looks on their faces.
Some days later, the US administration, via Mr Powell (the 'dove' in the White House who oversaw the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the first Gulf Invasion) announced the generous ofer of $15 million in tsunami relief. About half the price of a luxury yacht.
Under pressure of an international torrent of outrage, and a NY Times editorial entitled 'Are We Stingy? Yes.', Powell hastily increased it to $35 million, about half the cost of Dubya's inauguration party. It might be seen as generous, as the US government still needs to spend $8.3 billion per month ($270 million a day) in Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, who is a very bad man and has Weapons of Mass Destruction as their satellites showed. And couldn't be captured any cheaper.
What a windfall the Asia crisis is for Amerika! Across 11 countries in South and South-East Asia, the US and its corporations now have with a stroke of a miserly pen what they couldn't win after years of Vietnam and the deaths of 2 million Vietnamese. They can just stroll into Sumatra, Sri Lanka or any damn place they please, and put their own price tags on the merchandise. "Hmm, nice beach. How much do you want for that? And that rainforest over there ... is that real teak? Would you take $50 an acre? Say, what about a nice little resort over on that island. We could put in a McDonald's next to a Levi's sweatshop."
Santa must have decided that the rest of the world got it completely wrong: the US was nice, not naughty in 2004.
Pip Wilson posted item above at 7:34 AM | Permalink
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