Buscador avanzado

'The dog that didn't bark' was how one US analyst described hurricane Gustav. From a US perspective, he's right. Gustav did not match the build-up. The New Orleans levees held.

But a few hundred miles south, and it's a different story. In Haiti, Gustav – and its little sister, Hannah – have killed more than 160 and left hundreds of thousands homeless. In neighbouring Cuba, 90,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed. Cuba's southern Isle of Youth is a scene of total devastation. State-run media, which tends to put a positive spin on things, says the destruction wreaked by Gustav is equal to the last 14 major storms to hit the island combined.…  Seguir leyendo »

The State of New Orleans: An Update

The third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina lands squarely between the Democratic and Republican conventions. Some might lament that this reflects the public abyss into which New Orleans has fallen. But it also serves as a reminder to urge the next president to bring fresh attention to the city’s recovery.

Yes, New Orleans is regaining economic health. The city has recovered most of its population and jobs, giving it a foundation to support rebuilding. It has also reopened 87 public schools, including many new charter schools, as the state strives to overhaul the city’s public education system.

Yet serious challenges remain. A deficient system of levees leaves most of New Orleans facing the same risk of flooding from a major storm as it did before Hurricane Katrina.…  Seguir leyendo »

Three months have passed since Cyclone Nargis and an accompanying tidal surge swept across Myanmar's fertile Irrawaddy Delta region, claiming nearly 140,000 lives and devastating the livelihoods of many more people. All told, some 2.4 million people were seriously affected by Nargis, ranking it among the worst cyclones in Asia in the past 15 years and the worst in Myanmar's history.

I recently completed my second trip to Myanmar, where I was again sobered by the immensity of the tragedy but was also cautiously hopeful about relief efforts. In May, government reluctance to allow international aid workers into the affected region sparked a storm of international criticism.…  Seguir leyendo »

Las sociedades civiles occidentales suelen aspirar a influir en situaciones en cierta medida distantes que juzgan insostenibles. Les impresionan, por ejemplo, la rigidez o inclemencia de algunos regímenes y su forma de imponerse sobre la población: cuando el general Jaruzelski acabó con la experiencia social y democrática de Solidarnosc en Polonia en diciembre de 1981, se manifestaron con energía poderosos grupos y movimientos de opinión. Tampoco aceptan el racismo de Estado y gracias a sus presiones contribuyeron al término del régimen de apartheid en Sudáfrica. Y fruncen el ceño cuando un régimen autoritario impone su dominio sobre realidades nacionales que lo rechazan, como cabe comprobar en los casos de Chechenia o Tíbet ante Rusia y China.…  Seguir leyendo »

For three days last month, China’s national flag flew at half-staff in Tiananmen Square to honor the victims of the devastating earthquake in Sichuan. It was the first time in memory that China has publicly commemorated the deaths of ordinary civilians.

Crowds were allowed to gather in the square to express sympathy for their compatriots. Despite a death toll that has risen to nearly 70,000, the earthquake has shaken the nation back to life. The Chinese people have rushed to donate blood and money and join the rescue efforts. They have rediscovered their civic responsibility and compassion.

Their grief, shock and confused solidarity recall the hours that followed the Tiananmen massacre 19 years ago today, when the Communist Party sent army tanks into Beijing to crush a pro-democracy movement organized by unarmed, peaceful students.…  Seguir leyendo »

Un desastre natural suele ser ocasión propicia para apartar a un lado las diferencias políticas y mostrar compasión. No obstante, la Birmania devastada por el ciclón, gobernada por elites militares ultranacionalistas y rapaces, temerosas de sanciones de parte de Occidente, se ha visto presionada para franquear sus áreas devastadas a la ayuda humanitaria o bien enfrentarse a una intervención armada de signo asimismo humanitario.

La politización de la ayuda ha oscurecido el papel de una protagonista cuyos esfuerzos han contribuido a ejercer mayores presiones sobre los generales birmanos. En cuanto el ciclón Nargis,con vientos de hasta 190 kilómetros por hora, devastó el delta del Irawadi, la esposa del presidente Bush, Laura, lanzó públicamente improperios contra los aislados gobernantes birmanos.…  Seguir leyendo »

Cuando llegó la noticia del catastrófico terremoto en Sichuan, recordé a Zheng Sun Man, un ejecutivo especialista en seguridad que conocí en un viaje reciente a China. Zheng dirige Aebell Electrical Technology, una empresa con sede en Cantón que fabrica cámaras de vigilancia y las vende al Gobierno. Zheng, salido de una escuela de administración de empresas, de 28 años, quiso persuadirme de que sus cámaras y altavoces no eran usados contra los activistas pro democracia o los sindicalistas. Son para lidiar con desastres naturales, explicaba Zheng, como las monstruosas tormentas de nieve antes del Año Nuevo lunar. Durante la crisis, me aseguró, el Gobierno "pudo usar los datos de las cámaras del ferrocarril para organizar una evacuación".…  Seguir leyendo »

From the moment we arrived at Beijing's spectacular new airport May 6, the pride of the Chinese people as they prepared to host the Summer Olympics was evident. Six days later, in the aftermath of the Chengdu earthquake, we witnessed an even more impressive face of China.

We were visiting the Panda Reserve Center in Wolong, about three hours from Chengdu, as part of a World Wildlife Fund tour when the 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck on May 12. The reserve is like a typical zoo but with 1,500-foot mountains towering on all sides. At 2:28 p.m., in a series of jolts that lasted about three minutes, boulders, trees and dirt came tumbling down.…  Seguir leyendo »

This weekend, unless Burma's generals rediscover in their shrivelled souls some remnant of human decency, there will take place in the Irrawaddy delta one of the most grotesque events in the political history of the modern world. While dead children still lie face-down in muddy flood waters after a devastating cyclone, while survivors become sick with life-threatening diarrhoea, while international aid workers are prevented by the military regime from bringing in supplies that could save them, Burmese citizens will be herded into makeshift polling stations to approve by plebiscite a constitution that is designed to prevent the results of a democratic election held 18 years ago ever being respected.…  Seguir leyendo »

As tragic as the Sichuan earthquake has been, perhaps it can do some good by helping dispel a widespread myth: that the new generation of Chinese students are materialistic and selfish.

I’ve been teaching political theory at Tsinghua University here since 2004 and I’ve found that almost all of my students are driven to do good for society. So I wasn’t surprised when, as word of the disaster came out, hundreds of Tsinghua students lined up overnight at a Red Cross station to donate blood and supplies. Others went to the earthquake zone, more than 1,000 miles away, to distribute aid.…  Seguir leyendo »

Two dictators faced two disasters, one in China, the other in Burma. One was an earthquake, the other a flood. Tens of thousands are dead and millions at risk. Being dictatorial, both regimes responded in a manner heavy with the politics of sovereignty. In one case that helps people, in the other it kills them.

Natural disasters are the world's greatest murderers after war and disease. Nature does not do revenge (as far as we know), but it leaves human beings to do mercy and recuperation. How they performs that task is the test of civilisation.

China's response to the Sichuan earthquake contrasts so glaringly with previous responses that I am inclined to revise my view of the Olympics: perhaps they should always be held in dictatorships.…  Seguir leyendo »

It's the rainy season in Myanmar. It’s also cholera season. When Cyclone Nargis arrived two weeks ago, the waters it unleashed destroyed houses and killed people and livestock. The storm also devastated other things that haven’t made the headlines, but that can mean the difference between life and death: toilets. Even before the cyclone, 75 percent of Burmese had no latrines. Like some 2.6 billion other people worldwide, they do their business by roadsides, on train tracks or wherever they can. But the few latrines that did exist in the Irrawaddy Delta are now flooded or flattened, and their contents have seeped into already filthy waters.…  Seguir leyendo »

Even before the rains hit Burma, the referendum of May 10 was looming as an assault on democratic values. Then the savagery of Cyclone Nargis guaranteed this poll would go down in history as not only one of the most undemocratic, but surely the most poorly timed. It will be remembered as the moment when the Burmese military reached the tipping point of its own demise.

Unsurprisingly, the military junta is not predisposed to being forthright about its impending downfall. More of a surprise is the fact that the international community allowed this reprehensible poll as the regime sought ways to secure its own future at the expense of ordinary Burmese traumatised by Nargis.…  Seguir leyendo »

It is a cruel and poignant certainty that the children who died in the wreckage of their school during the earthquake this week in Dujiangyan, China, knew all too well that their country once led the world in the knowledge of the planet’s seismicity.

They would have been taught, and proudly, that almost 2,000 years ago an astronomer named Chang Heng invented the world’s first seismoscope. It was a bizarrely imagined creation, with its centerpiece a large bronze vessel surrounded by eight dragons, each holding a sphere in its mouth.

A complex system of internal levers ensured that if an earthquake ever disturbed the vessel, a ball would drop from a dragon’s care into the mouth of a bronze frog positioned underneath.…  Seguir leyendo »

When news arrived of the earthquake in Sichuan, my mind turned to Zheng Sunman, a security executive I met on a recent trip to China. Zheng heads a Guangzhou-based company that makes surveillance cameras and PA systems for the government.

Zheng was determined to persuade me that his cameras are not being used against pro-democracy activists. They are for managing natural disasters, Zheng explained, pointing to the freak snowstorms before the lunar new year. During the crisis, the government "was able to use the feed from the railway cameras to communicate how to deal with the situation and organise an evacuation.…  Seguir leyendo »

More than 60,000 people may have died as a result of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, and at least 1.5 million are homeless or otherwise in desperate need of assistance. The Burmese military junta, one of the most morally repulsive in the world, has allowed in only a trickle of aid supplies. The handful of United States Air Force C-130 flights from Utapao Air Base here in Thailand is little more than symbolic, given the extent of the need.

France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has spoken of the possibility of an armed humanitarian intervention, and there is an increasing degree of chatter about the possibility of an American-led invasion of the Irrawaddy River Delta.…  Seguir leyendo »

You don't have to be cynical to do foreign policy, but it helps. A sigh of relief rose over the west's chancelleries on Monday as it became clear that the Chinese earthquake was big - big enough to trump Burma's cyclone.

To add to the relief, Beijing was behaving better than it has over past calamities. Since this might have been thanks to the west's "positive engagement" with China's dictators - even awarding them the Olympics - we could possibly take credit from the week's tally of disaster. Sorry about that, Burma.

The Burmese cyclone of 11 days ago has already slid into liberal interventionism's recycle bin, a purgatory called Mere Abuse.…  Seguir leyendo »

They are "cruel, power-hungry and dangerously irrational," in the words of one British journalist. They are " violent and irrational," according to a journalist in neighboring Thailand. Our own State Department leadership has condemned their "xenophobic, ever more irrational policies."

On the evidence of the past few days alone, those are all accurate descriptions. But in one very narrow sense, the cruel, power-hungry, violent and xenophobic generals who run Burma are not irrational at all: Given their most urgent goal -- to maintain power at all costs -- their reluctance to accept international aid in the wake of a devastating cyclone makes perfect sense.…  Seguir leyendo »

China's Year of the Earth Rat, which began in February, has produced more than its fair share of shocks for the modern-day mandarins of Beijing. The earthquake that ripped a hole in the heart of the country on Monday afternoon is but the latest rollercoaster crisis to rock the Communist leadership's vision of a smoothly advancing 21st century superpower. On this occasion, reports from the disaster zone suggest they have responded well so far.

This was always going to be a big year for China, with the Olympics taking pride of place. Its leaders insist sport and politics do not mix.…  Seguir leyendo »

We were four men of a certain age, sitting above the pews at the altar end of Great St Mary's Church in Cambridge, late last Friday afternoon.

The doors were open to the sunshine outside and to King's College opposite, and the occasional cultural speculator would look in and then, usually, wander off again. We speakers said what we liked. The audience asked what they liked. And, given that the Burmese disaster was relevant to our discussion, we might as well have been on the Moon.

The first speaker argued that we had to be very careful, we in the West, about assuming that we knew what other peoples wanted, or that we could give it to them - unless there was some kind of regional or local connection, we could rarely intervene to good effect.…  Seguir leyendo »