Regime-Quakes in Burma and China
by Naomi Klein, The Nation, USA - When news arrived of the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan, my mind turned to Zheng Sun Man, an up-and-coming security executive I met on a recent trip to China. Zheng heads Aebell Electrical Technology, a Guangzhou-based company that makes surveillance cameras and public address systems and sells them to the government.
Comments (1)
The breakdown in censorship of the media that is attendant on natural disasters in authoritarian regimes, which Klein points out, certainly happened after Katrina here. Up till then, the Bush regime had succeeded in controlling the media in the US. The first chinks in that control came about during coverage of Katrina. Unfortunately, here in the US, little real change has come about. The defeat of the Republican majority in the Congress seemed to bode well, but has amounted to little of substance. I am not hopeful for major changes with any of the "major" presidential candidates either.
Maybe more desperate people, such as those in China and Myanmar, will take bolder actions than we in the US. The pattern that Klein shows in this article does apply here as well, however.
Posted by Nancy Vining Van Ness | May 17, 2008 8:14 AM