"KILLER WAVE"

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

Way to manipulate a tragedy for your benefit.

Love,

Me

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.

Actually, wasn't a lot of the original infrastructure developped by the imperialists?

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.

shows more direct culpability, on every country in the region as well as the UN.

India increased Thursday its defense expenditure for the fiscal year 2004-05 by 27 percent, allocating Rs. 77,000 crore (around 16.74 billion US dollars) for the sector, largely with an eye on several big ticket arms deals presently in the pipeline.

There was approximately 60 percent hike in the allocation for "capital expenditure", parlance for funds provided for arms purchases, from Rs. 20,953 crore (around 4.57 billion US dollars) in 2003-04 to Rs. 33,483 crore (around 7.31 billion US dollars) inthe current fiscal, the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reported.

In the national budget for 2004-05 presented in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of parliament), Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram proposed an increase of Rs. 11,700 crore (around 2.55 billion US dollars) over the allocation of Rs. 65,300 crore (around 14.51 billion US dollars) for defense in fiscal 2003-04.

Chidambaram presented a Rs. 477,829 crore (around 103 billion US dollars) national budget that continues with economic reforms while harmonizing it with the unmet needs of rural India.

He noted that the increased allocation for defense expenditure was largely for concluding several major defense deals to modernize the armed forces.

"The allocation for 'capital expenditure', parlance for funds provided for arms purchases, would be hiked from Rs. 20,953 crore (around 4.57 billion US dollars) to Rs. 33,483 crore (around 7.31 billion US dollars)," IANS quoted Chidambaram as saying.

"As promised in the national Common Minimum Program, the government is determined to eliminate all delays in the modernization of the defense forces," he said.

"Having regard to the trend of defense capital expenditure in recent years, it has become necessary to make a higher allocation this year."

India has recently inked several major defense contracts, including a 1.5 billion US dollars deal with Russia to acquire theAdmiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier and a 795-million pound (around 1.3 billion US dollars) deal with Britain's BAE Systems to purchase 66 Hawk advanced jet trainers.

It has also clinched a deal with Israel for three Phalcon airborne early warning radar systems worth 1 billion US dollars.

The sharp hike in India's defense budget came almost a month after Pakistan increased defense spending by 20 percent for fiscal2004-05.

However, in spite of a heavy hike, India's defense expenditure still forms only 2.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

India has 1.2 million-strong military, the worlds fourth-largest.

OMG IT'S THE UNITED STATES'S FAULT!!! WTF SOMEBODY ALERT MOMUS!!!

(xpost)

also, that air america was a failure as a radio network because he couldn't get a station in flint(even tho he moved to TN before they started broadcasting) and that 80 stations isn't nearly enough to compete with the conservative radio networks.

isn't it kind of common knowledge though? if there's a 9.0 earthquake in the middle of the ocean, there's going to be huge-ass waves?? why does anyone need america to tell them this?

It was only 2-3 hours between the earthquake and the waves hitting Sri Lanka and India, so I doubt anyone there even knew about it.

I wonder how effective it would have been anyway to inform the authorities, with no public loudspeakers strung up in all coastal areas. You would have to break in to radio and TV broadcasts, with constant announcements, and the logistics of getting the message from the person receiving the alert to the public seems daunting.

Do the places with the warning system tie into some sort of air-raid type loudspeaker network, with regular tests so the public knows what it means and what to do?