[kj] OT: Tsunami: USA partly to blame for deaths of tensofthousands

xps1 xps1 at quick.cz
Thu Dec 30 14:16:09 EST 2004


SHAME,SHAME,SHAME on you XPS 1.You are a despicable human being.There has
been a tradegy of mammoth scale and you are using the tradegy too further
your Anti-American crusade.

I have not written the article...only forwarded it...  I dont think it is
anti-american either... Btw: "crusade" is not the best choice of the word I
guess.. 

   I would pull your essay apart,But now is not the time.But I would just
like too make these points.
   1.The effected nations had a meeting last year too discuss  installing an
early warning system ,But they decided against it.

Probably not having enough money cause they stick to IMF/WTO and other
"recommendations".

   2.India got a warning four hours before it hit,But decided not to inform
the people

Who said Indian government are good guys?

    3.Indonesian ,Aceh would not of benefitted as the tsunami struck land
with-in minutes.Giving no time too evacuate.
   4.What the hell has it got to do with America?The effected countrys are
independent nations and what right do we have too tell them what to
install,You either want globalisation or you dont.

independent nation ... joke of the century?

   5.You are despicable ,for trying too turn this around for your own
political ends.DISPICABLE.DISGUSTING.

everybody does it. why it would be wrong in my case and not other cases?
(this time it was not my essay but if it was)



----- Original Message -----
From: "xps1" <xps1 at quick.cz>
To: "'A list about all things Killing Joke (the band!)'"
<gathering at misera.net>
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 5:41 PM
Subject: [kj] OT: Tsunami: USA partly to blame for deaths of tens
ofthousands


might be of interest...



Tsunami: USA partly to blame for deaths of tens of thousands


the USA spends all this money on war but can't even send an early warning to
the Indian Ocean countries in danger.  Some info on why, and what the unions
are doing: at http://www.labourstart.org/tsunami/ and below.

1. Unprecedented Human Devastation on Global Scale

A Statement from the International Action Center

55,000 Dead: The Role of U.S. Criminal Negligence on a Global Scale
Casualties of a policy of war, negligence, and corporate greed

While earthquakes and tsunamis are natural disasters, the decision to spend
billions of dollars on wars of conquest while ignoring simple measures that
can save human lives is not.

At least 55,000 people were killed by the tsunami that devastated coastlines
from Indonesia to Somalia.  Almost a third of the dead are children.
Thousands are still missing and millions are homeless in 11 countries.
Hundreds of thousands have lost everything, and millions face a bleak future
because of polluted drinking water, a lack of sanitation and no health
services, according to UN undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in charge of
emergency relief coordination.

Egeland said, "We cannot fathom the cost of these poor societies and the
nameless fishermen and fishing villages and so on that have just been wiped
out. Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods have gone."

No money for early warning system

Much of this death and destruction could have been prevented with a simple
and inexpensive system of buoys. Officials in Thailand and Indonesia have
said that an immediate public warning could have saved lives, but that they
could not know of the danger because there is no international system in
place to track tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.

Such a system is not difficult or expensive to install. In fact, the
detector buoys that monitor tsunamis have been available for decades and the
U.S. has had a monitoring system in place for more than half a century. More
than 50 seismometers are scattered across the Northwest to detect and
measure earthquakes that might spawn tsunamis. In the middle of the Pacific
are six buoys equipped with sensors called "tsunameters" that measure small
changes in water pressure and programmed to automatically alert the
country's two tsunami-warning centers in Hawaii and Alaska.

Dr. Eddie Bernard, director of the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental
Laboratory in Seattle, says just a few buoys could do the job.  Scientists
wanted to place two more tsunami meters in the Indian Ocean, including one
near Indonesia, but the plan had not been funded, said Bernard. The
tsunameters each cost only  $250,000.

A mere half million dollars could have provided an early warning system that
could have saved thousands of lives. This should be compared to the
$1,500,000,000 the U.S. spends every day to fund the Pentagon war machine.
This means that for what the U.S. is spending for less than one second of
bombing and destruction it could construct a system that could have
prevented thousands of needless deaths. Lack of funding for an inexpensive,
low-tech early warning system is simply criminal negligence.

Indian Minister of State for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal said,  "If
the country had such an alert system in place, we could have warned the
coastal areas of the imminent danger and avoided the loss of life."  But
there is no room in the Bush budget for such life-saving measures; the U.S.
government's priorities are corporate profit and endless war.

At a meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission in June,
experts concluded that the "Indian Ocean has a significant threat from both
local and distant tsunamis" and should have a warning network. But no action
was agreed upon.  Geologist Brian Atwater of the U.S. Geological Survey
said, "Sumatra has an ample history of great earthquakes, which makes the
lack of a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean all the more tragic.
Everyone knew Sumatra was a loaded gun."

U.S. government failed to warn region

Although the local governments had no real warning, the U.S. government did,
and it failed to pass along the information.  Within minutes of the massive
9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, U.S. scientists working
with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suspected that a
deadly wave was spreading through the Indian Ocean.  They did not call
anyone in the governments in the area.  Jeff LaDouce, an official in the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that they e-mailed
Indonesian officials, but said that he wasn't aware what happened after they
sent the e-mails.

In this day of instant communications, controlled in a large part by the
U.S., it is possible to communicate within minutes to every part of the
globe.  It is beyond belief that the officials at the NOAA could not find
any method to directly and immediately contact civilian authorities in the
area.  Their decision not to do so may have cost thousands of lives.

Even a few minutes warning would have given the inhabitants a chance to seek
higher ground.  The NOAA had several hours notice before the first waves hit
shore. Tim Walsh, geologic-hazards program manager for the Washington State
Department of Natural Resources, said, "Fifty feet of elevation would be
enough to escape the worst of the waves. In most places, 25 feet would be
sufficient.  If you go uphill or inland, the effect of the tsunami will be
diminished."  But the inhabitants of the area weren't given the warning - as
a result, television and radio alerts were not issued in Thailand until
nearly an hour after the waves had hit and thousands were already dead.

The failure to make any real effort to warn the people of the region,
knowing that tens of thousands of lives were at stake, is part of a pattern
of imperial contempt and racism that has become the cornerstone of U.S.
policies worldwide.

The NOAA immediately warned the U.S. Naval Station at Diego Garcia, which
suffered very little damage from the tsunami.  It is telling that the NOAA
was able to get the warning to the US Navy base in the area, but wouldn't
pick up the phone and call the civil authorities in the region to warn them.
They made sure that a US military base was notified and did almost nothing
to issue a warning to the civilian inhabitants who were in the direct path
of the wave--a warning that might have saved thousands of lives. This is
criminal negligence.

Disease may kill tens of thousands more

The 55,000 deaths directly resulting from the tsunami are just the beginning
of the tragedy.  Disease could claim as many victims as have been killed in
the weekend's earthquake-sparked tsunami, according to the World Health
Organization (WHO). Medical experts warn that malaria, cholera and dengue
fever are expected to pose serious health threats to survivors in the area,
where waves spoiled drinking-water supplies, polluted streets and homes with
raw sewage, swept away medical clinics, ruined food stocks and left acres of
stagnant ponds where malaria-carrying mosquitoes can breed.

"The biggest threat to survivors is from the spread of infection through
contamination of drinking water and putrefying bodies left by the receding
waters," said Jamie McGoldrick, a senior U.N. health official.

"Within a few days, we fear, there is going to be outbreaks of disease,"
Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said. "Cholera is going to be a
problem. This is going to be the most important thing in a few days."

The response of the U.S. government to this emergency is to offer a paltry
$15 million "aid package."  To put this in perspective, this is one tenth of
one percent of what Washington has spent thus far on the war against the
people of Iraq.

Money for human needs, not for war

The U.S. and British governments owe billions of dollars in reparations to
the countries of this region and to all other formerly colonized countries.
The poverty and lack of infrastructure that contribute to and exacerbate the
scope of this disaster are the direct result of colonial rule and
neo-colonial policies.  Although economic and political policies cannot
control the weather, they can determine how a nation is impacted by natural
disasters.

We must hold the U.S. government accountable for their role in tens, perhaps
hundreds, of thousands of deaths. We must demand that it stop spending $1.5
billion each day for war and occupation and instead provide health care for
the victims of this tragedy, build an early warning system, and rebuild the
homes and infrastructure destroyed by the tsunami.


Sara Flounders
Dustin Langley
for the International Action Center

The International Action Center
http://www.iacenter.org
mail to:iacenter at iacenter.org

----------
2.  labourstart at unionlists.org.uk
Subject: Tsunami aftermath: What unions are doing

At times like these, words fail us.

With more than 80,000 confirmed dead and millions more facing homelessness
and disease, the tsunami of four days ago is one of the more terrible events
that have occurred in our lifetimes.

We in the trade union movement have a special responsibility to mobilize our
resources and dig deep into our pockets.  Our brothers and sisters in
Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, India and elsewhere need our help
and they need it right now.

LabourStart has created a special web page featuring ongoing coverage of the
disaster and the international trade union response.  It is here:

http://www.labourstart.org/tsunami/

Visit that page today and read more about these stories:

* In Sweden, the metal workers union has pledged 100,000 Euros -- and called
on other unions around the world to make similar donations.

* A union in Cyprus has made a contribution of Ł2,000 to express its
solidarity with the working people of Sri Lanka.

* In Tamil Nadu, India, the Southern Railway Mazdoor Union distributed food
pockets, clothes and medicines to victims.

* Also in India, the Hind Mazdoor Sabha issued a public call on the
institutions of the international labour movement to help at this critical
moment.

* In Sri Lanka, the Norwegian trade union aid agency's mine clearance
program was severely hit.  The fate of its 650 local mine clearers is not
yet known.

* The food workers global union federation, the IUF, has produced an initial
report with some details of losses of lives of hotel and plantation workers
in the region.

In addition to covering news, we are also listing links to places where you
can donate, with the emphasis being on trade union linked relief agencies,
where possible.

If you know of sites we should be linking to -- particularly sites where you
can donate online -- please let us know.

We hope to soon air a report on our web-based radio station, Radio
LabourStart, featuring an interview with one of our correspondents who was
in Sri Lanka just before the tsunami hit.

If your union has done something -- made a donation, issued an appeal,
anything at all -- please make sure to let us know.  Send us an email to
ericlee at labourstart.org.  We'll try to publish as many of these as we can.

Thank you.

Eric Lee



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