Crisis Upon Crisis
Burma's leaders have urged the international community to come up with the trifling sum of $11-billion in reconstruction aid for that country. Just send the money, thank you very much.It has been made abundantly clear that the military junta has, for all practical purposes, embraced a fatalist view with respect to the hundreds of thousands killed and injured, the millions of people displaced and homeless. Their interest in salving the wounds of the injured, of saving those who could be saved, was never a reality; they were abandoned as a matter of government disinterest.
Three weeks post-cyclone the Burmese authority never advanced beyond pretense, in its concern for its afflicted people. Their single interest was to advance the fiction of Democratic action in calling out the voting public in complete abandonment of humanity, for the furtherance of their political agenda.
The estimated 2.4-million survivors of Cyclone Nargis have been left to their own desperate devices. The generals have promised entry to disaster relief teams from abroad, but this is a thin promise, meant to ultimately elicit the hard cash they await.
Rotting corpses remain unattended to, ensuring that waterways will remain contaminated for some time to come. Ensuring also that dread disease epidemics will also become a reality for those who have managed to survive their crises.
Ever the optimist - rather than wringing hopeless hands of despair - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon insists that Burmese General Than Shwe's word will be good, that the French and U.S. naval ships full of relief supplies awaiting permission to enter the country will eventuate.
While in China, the government has released new figures of a death toll that will surmount 80,000 and beyond, and with an estimated 300,000 people injured, the country's medical teams and hospitals are working to exhaustion to meet the challenge put to them.
Another 30,000 missing, and over 5.47 made homeless by the earthquake. Some of these homeless will never be able to return to their destroyed villages, nor the geography which will remain too vulnerable to further collapse.
China's premier has issued a message to the world: "I would like to sincerely thank the international community, the leaders of the world, the governments and people of every nation for their concern and the materials and the help they have offered."
The country's plight has been compounded by the fact that it's chief nuclear weapons laboratories are located within the disaster site. Along with a number of atomic sites. China's experts have isolated 50 "hazardous sources of radiation", as a result of the geo-tumult. They are dealing with these additional threats. Hopes remain high that they can be contained.
And soldiers have been dispatched as well to try to avert the potential for mass disease outbreaks, spreading disinfectant to counteract the effects of still-unburied corpses remaining in the quake centre.
China has announced it welcomes the intervention and assistance of international psychiatrists and psychologists. To aid the country in trying to assist the countless victims who are inevitably suffering the trauma of their experiences. There are over twelve million displaced in the country, five million of whom will never be able to return to their ancestral geography. It's estimated that it may take three years to relocate destroyed villages.
Yet a Chinese official pledged that attempts will be made to provide "safe, economical and convenient temporary housing for 98 percent of the residents within the next month". An amazing contrast in governing methodologies, in leadership qualities, in civilian and government response to the disasters in each of these countries.
Both of which claim rigid ideologies. Both of which represent totalitarian governance. One of which, despite anomalous human-rights abuses, adheres to a profound value principle of necessary civilian entitlement to safety, security and critical needs met. The other, dysfunctional humane-offensive governance reeking of corrupted human values.
Aren't human beings just so complex, so compellingly and frustratingly complicated? Aren't human institutions so reflective of the flawed humans that control them...!
Labels: Nature, Societal Failures, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, May 25, 2008
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