Quaking

The response to the Chinese earthquake makes for an interesting comparison with cyclone-devastated Burmese. Authoritarian states are supposed to be good at this sort of thing, making the trains run on time and being in control, but as we saw with the Bush non-response to New Orleans’ destruction, there’s a direct connection between democracy/citizenship and responsibility, including the state’s caring for the people it represents. China’s doing a relatively good job, even loosening their grip on their pravadamedia, but they realize they have little choice; the magnitude of the disaster, which reveals the ruling military-based kleptocracy in a most unfavorable light, means they really have to deliver to tamp down any dissatisfaction among the people. China in recent years has been bursting with little rebellions, mostly from the brutalized peasantry, who see all the talk of happy-happy shop-shop from their masters and spit in disgust. Nationalism is an excellent crutch, but it only goes so far. Their masters fear them terribly and know they can’t let them down here

Meanwhile, the murderous myrmidons of Myanmar are only too happy to see the Karen people of the Irrawaddy delta killed off. Naomi Klein calls it “laissez-faire ethnic cleansing.” As clients of China, who are hungry for Burman’s hydrocarbons, the generals don’t fear their own people. The big panda is on their side. And so is, shamefully, India, a democracy that should know better.

But it takes more than democracy, doesn’t it? The Italians, back under capo di capo Berlusconi, are whipping up for some internal ethnic cleansing of their own. Last week there was a petit (bloodless) pogrom against a Roma encampment in Napoli (a bitter pun) and a roundup of undesirables. And many Italians, suffering under near universal Camorra-ization, another version of the kleptocracy, are only too happy to find a scapegoat in migrant workers.