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09/05/2005: ""

Of course, a bottom-up, locally autonomous society organised along anarcho-communist lines is only one possibility. It is utterly undeniable that, whatever its other shortcomings, the thoroughly statist Cuba regularly does a vastly better job of preparing for natural disasters not at all dissimilar to that which has laid waste to New Orleans.

Cristina Estrada, a regional spokeswoman for the Red Cross, told BBC News Online that only the country's prompt and well-organised evacuation procedures ensured no-one was killed. "In any other country in the region it would have been a disaster in terms of loss of life," she said. ... "Here people know what they have to do," she said. "There is 24 hour information on television which tells you the latest news of the hurricane, and which shelters to go to. It is proven that this type of disaster preparation saves lives," she said.

And now that same Cuba, which has borne the burden of illegal US sanctions for decades, is in a position to offer trained doctors to help its old enemy in its hour of need.

That the USA might just conceivably have something to learn about saving the lives of its citizens from another culture will not be discussed in the mainstream media. That the 'American way' is superior to all alternatives will be clung to as a doctrine of faith, even as the bodies lie rotting in the streets.

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The Two Americas
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t Perspective

Saturday 03 September 2005

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."

"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."

"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin."

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does."

CJG said @ 09/05/2005 02:59 PM GMT