I heard a CNN reporter from the scene complaining about the tourists enjoying themselves while the destruction was being cleaned up a mile away. But then she had the grace to say, "well, they need the tourist's money."
The Left's Tsunami
American Future blog
By Marc Schulman on European Left
Via normblog, here are two examples of how (some of) the Left is conflating a natural disaster with politics:
In an editorial, the Guardian claims that the only reason for the massive outpouring of private donations is that Westerners were on the beaches when the waves hit.
. . . perhaps the brutal answer to an impressive display of empathy and charity is that wealthy westerners only really notice distant disasters when wealthy westerners are themselves caught up in them.
In a Guardian column ("In death, imperialism lives on"), Jeremy Seabrook has these choice words.
The tsunami struck resorts where westerners were on holiday. For the western media, it was clear that their lives have a different order of importance from those that have died in thousands, but have no known biography, and, apparently, no intelligible tongue in which to express their feelings. This is not to diminish the trauma of loss of life, whether of tourist or fisherman. But when we distinguish between "locals" who have died and westerners, "locals" all too easily becomes a euphemism for what were once referred to as natives. Whatever tourism's merits, it risks reinforcing the imperial sensibility.
For this sensibility has already been reawakened by all the human-made, preventable catastrophes. The ruins of Galle and Bandar Aceh called forth images of Falluja, Mosul and Gaza. Imperial powers, it seems, anticipate the destructive capacity of nature. A report on ITN news made this explicit, by referring to "nature's shock and awe". But while the tsunami death toll rises in anonymous thousands, in Iraq disdainful American authorities don't do body counts.
One of the most poignant sights of the past few days was that of westerners overcome with gratitude that they had been helped by the grace and mercy of those who had lost everything, but still regarded them as guests. When these same people appear in the west, they become the interloper, the unwanted migrant, the asylum seeker, who should go back to where they belong. A globalisation that permits the wealthy to pass effortlessly through borders confines the poor to eroded subsistence, overfished waters and an impoverishment that seems to have no end. People rarely say that poor countries are swamped by visitors, even though their money power pre-empts the best produce, the clean water and amenities unknown to the indigenous population.
In normblog's words, "Strange, isn't it, how the ruins of Galle and Bandar Aceh don't here call forth images of Halabja or of the mass graves of Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
I guess the poor countries would be better off if they weren't swamped by Western visitors and their money. Then there would be plenty of room in the luxury resorts for the indigenous population. |
