As I’m sure you’ve heard, Central China experienced a devastating earthquake today, killing thousands. This follows the nightmare cyclone in Burma (not Myanmar), a.k.a. Katrina writ large, which may now have claimed upwards of 100,000 lives. [Donations.] As with the 2004 tsunami, it seems almost criminally obtuse to keep nattering on about superdelegates and movie trailers while such large-scale catastrophes are unfolding. But, what is there to do?
Tag: Burma
Report Card: Incomplete.
By way of a friend, the State Department releases its mandated yearly human rights report for 2005 (here), finding cause for alarm in Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, Burma, North Korea, Belarus and Zimbabwe and (surprise, surprise) progress in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report doesn’t delve into human rights violations here at home (although China tries to fill that gap in response every year), but it does unequivocally state — in bold, no less — that “countries in which power is concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers tend to be the world’s most systematic human rights violators.” Hey y’all might be on to something. Deadpans the head of Amnesty International: “The Bush administration’s practice of transferring detainees in the ‘war on terror’ to countries cited by the State Department for their appalling human rights records actually turns the report into a manual for the outsourcing of torture.”