On the Unending and Bloodthirsty Chimp_junta's Hypocrisy:

Powell declares tsunami aid part of global war on terror Imperialism in Samaritan's clothing
A little over a century ago, the great revolutionist Rosa Luxemburg wrote an imperishable essay on the reaction of the great powers to another devastating natural disaster, the volcanic eruption of Mt. Pelee that wiped out 40,000 people, virtually the entire population of the French Caribbean colony of Martinique. [See “Martinique” http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1902/05/15.htm]

She brilliantly exposed the hypocritical expressions of sorrow over the loss of life and pretensions of humanitarianism emanating from the capitals of France, Britain, the US, Germany and Russia. The governments of each of these countries, she pointed out, were responsible for bloodbaths carried out either against their own working class or in savagely repressing anti-colonial resistance from Africa to the Philippines.

Luxemburg wrote: “And now they have all turned to Martinique, all one heart and one mind again; they help, rescue, dry the tears and curse the havoc-wreaking volcano. Mt. Pelee, greathearted giant, you can laugh; you can look down in loathing at these benevolent murderers, at these weeping carnivores, at these beasts in Samaritan’s clothing. But a day will come when another volcano lifts its voice of thunder: a volcano that is seething and boiling, whether you need it or not, and will sweep the whole sanctimonious, blood-splattered culture from the face of the earth. And only on its ruins will the nations come together in true humanity, which will know but one deadly foe—blind, dead nature.”

In the light of recent events, these words remain evergreen. The juxtaposition of massive human suffering and imperialist hypocrisy that has characterized the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami is symptomatic of a society rent by inequality and oppression and ripe for social revolution.