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I have a lot to say about the comments in these threads but I'll boil it down to a few concepts I think are most relevant:
1) other country's citizens have always been known to make a distinction between our common citizens and our nation's foreign policies.
2) it shouldn't be surprising to many people closely following geopolitics and under-developed nation's real or imagined affinity with the impoverished of our nation--and especially so when global capitalism trumps humanitarian issues as was the case with the precursors and aftermath of this disaster. Once one understands how these issues relate to the ideologies of the leaders and societies of the most "surprising" offers of aid (Cuba and Venezuela, most specifically) then these kinds of offers begin to make more sense--and not purely for political grandstanding. Besides the fact that on the face of it they don't stand to gain anything for their offers from a political perspective--the people who are most opposed to their policies and ideologies aren't even aware that they made offers and the "left" is already politically sympathetic to their autonomy in global affairs. now I've regressed....
3) bunching our "aid" with the aid that venezueal and cuba have extended seems to be ignorance at best or willful mischaracterization of global aid at worst...our "aid" and the aid countries become agitated about comes in the form of Breton Woods institutions imposed loans and SAP's, but the large bulk by far is in the form of military weapons. What would they do? Give us back our old technology...tanks and planes? instead, cuba offers doctors and food, venezuela offers to assist us in one of the most critical limited resources we need to run our economy--a need exacerbated by the region this disaster occurred within. In my mind, at least, I can distinguish which types of aid are more conducive to alleviating human suffering and are more likely to stem from altruistic motives....
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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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