According to this article Laura Bush is really interested in Burma/Myanmar.
Who knew?
She has been a consistent critic of the military junta and a supporter of jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In May, she worked with 16 women senators to draft and sign a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, calling for the UN to pressure the Burmese regime to release Suu Kyi. The following month, Mrs. Bush wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, lamenting the fact that Suu Kyi's was spending her 62nd birthday while under house arrest. She called Ban again last week, to voice her concern over the Burmese military's latest crackdown on protests against price hikes.
amazing. Aung San Suu Kyi is largely pretty amazing I think. In as much as a First Lady can do something in the political sphere...this is pretty good. But catch what else Laura has to say...
Laura Bush...this is Laura Bush we are talking about says this:
Our sanctions don't mean that much because of other countries who take the benefit of Burma's natural resources. I'm very concerned about the teak forests, I'm worried about the Burmese people's patrimony being sold.
This is stunning stuff. She is essentially saying that the Burmese/Myanmarians(?) are becoming impoverished because its natural resources are being sold...often forced to selling at that. She is saying that a forest has intrinsic value to the integrity of a nation and that its people shouldn't be forced to part with it because they are in dire financial straits. She is saying that locals should control their own destiny in regards to their own natural resources or the cycle of poverty will be repeated again and again and everyone suffers for it.
Why doesn't she say something to her husband about the US forcibly taking oil from Iraq via corporations where the same cycle of colonialism, anger, fury and poverty will appear.
Why doesn't she talk with her husband about American company Bechtel as it rapaciously buys water rights away from indigenous people around the world?
Why doesn't she remind her husband that Hugo Chavez is trying to reclaim his nations patrimony over its natural resources to stop the cycle of poverty?
I could go on, but if she seems to understand this link...and I have no doubt that she is sincere and does understand this link, she should not talk with Ban Ki Moon, she should change the world by changing the mind of her poor miserable husband.
Her perspective is the most progressive thing I have ever heard out of the White House and it should be applauded, nurtured and expressed widely.
EDITED
Or maybe chat with her husband about The World Bank and the IMF that pressures countries to give up their prize assets for virtually nothing in exchange for Western interests coming in and pillaging their land. Awesome. Get on that Laura! Great.