[lbo-talk] Re: cuba hurricane numbers: two sources

[frank scott]

that cuba does an infinitely superior job at protecting life shouldn't 
be an argument...but the numbers that are flying around are making me 
dizzy...there is a difference between these two items...the first was 
not only here, but all over the place and led me to even use those 
figures, despite my wondering at the source...

i can't vouch for the complete accuracy of the second source, either, 
but it sounds less breathless and inflated...

mayve we should all be more careful?

fs

1: Although Cuba is in the main path of most Caribbean hurricanes, it has  
suffered less than 10 deaths in the last 20 years.

 
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.

2:http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/septiembre/mart6/37consec-i.html

The same kinds of mobilizations took place in 2004 and 2005 for two
devastating hurricanes, Ivan and Denns. Dennis caused $1 billion in
destruction, demolished 70,000 homes, and even razed entire mountaintops,
but only 16 lives were lost. Cuba, a poor Third World nation with a 45-year
economic embargo against it, does what the richest imperial nation in the
world cannot, because of its very nature. Capitalism puts profits first. The
Revolution puts lives first.