TSUNAMI ALERT
WOULD A WARNING HAVE DONE ANY GOOD?
Not Without A System Of Public Alerts
Here in Hawaii, we are frequently annoyed by air-raid sirens and obnoxious taped radio messages, warning us that there could be a real warning, some day. This is the business end of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center of Ewa ("Ev-va") Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii. The other end is miles deep, on the bottom of the ocean, or floating on the surface somewhere thousands of miles away. In addition to the seismometers that picked up Sunday's record-breaking ocean-bottom Indonesian earthquake, there's this vast web of tidal-wave detection stuff out there, all over the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, or the Sea of Andaman, where the tsunamui originated. So there was no warning, for them. They don't have a system like the PTWC.
Yet, our tsunami guys are scrambling now to explain why they didn't warn anybody, didn't even have anybody's phone numbers to share warnings in the affected areas. I think this means they fucked up, and they know it. They knew there had been an undersea quake. They knew there could be a tsunami. They should have put out an alert to the affected areas. They didn't. Result: Pompeii. Krakatoa. The San Francisco Earthquake. "Days of Heaven": A disaster of Biblical proportions. And it was THEIR fault!!! AAAAAHHHH!!!!! The bureaucrat's ultimate nightmare: Pinnable responsibility.
But the fact is, calling other geo-nerds and oceano-boffins would not have saved all those lives. Without a bunch of regularly-tested sirens all along the tsunami-threatened beaches, and corresponding systems of radio alerts, and radios in everybody's hands, there would have been no way to warn the people on the waters' edge, from Thailand to Kenya. And I doubt there ever will be.
See, the science of this is quite simple. So are the economics and the politics of it: These are poor people, not worth saving. They died for your sins: You fat-assed Americans with the beach houses, protected by the PTWC, and the full force of the Army Corps of Engineers. You money-grubbing Wall Street scum, sitting on a pile of profits made by "outsourcing" in India, without contributing anything to their welfare. You Republican pukes, sucking up the power of it all, and doing nothing to help, even now. Not good stewards of the land, you right-wing assholes. That's why these innocent, hardworking black, brown and yellow people died. Because of you, you greedy bastard, you cheap, racist scum.
The proof of this? The refusal of your Nazi hero Bush to fully fund relief efforts. Billions for killing Arabs, but only $15 million for saving other Muslims, Hindu's, Buddhists and Animists. For this, you phony asshole "Christians" will rot in a Hell of your own sick devising. My curse is upon you, and your scumbag children, and their horribly deformed children, unto the seventy-seventh generation. That's how YOU think, right? If lowlife like you can even be SAID to think!
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posted by Cosa Nostradamus @ 12/28/2004 11:57:00 PM
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4 Comments:
Woah Cosa... tell me what you REALLY think, don't back off now :) HA!!
I won't: Atrios puts it all in context: "$15 MILLION FOR TSUNAMI RELIFE TO MILLIONS IN 14 COUNTRIES - $40 MILLION FOR BUSH INAUGURATION" (not including security costs... ). Remember, that's not his money. That's YOUR money. Your hard-earned, hard-paid tax dollars at work, folks. Still think it doesn't make any difference who won the White House? It does now, to millions in this tsunami disaster.
If Bush were a leader...he would cancel the ornate trimmings to his coronation and donate that money as well...then reach out to the Murikan public and encourage them to do the same at their own level. give up that new year's eve party champaigne or not buy that fancy this or that and donate the funds. Alas, he is not a leader, he is a fascist.
weblackey
D'accord.
What people,especially our "official" leaders and media types, don't seem to realize is that this tsunami is a disaster of historical proportions: Think Pompeii. Only worse: Never before have so many people in so many different countries been so devastated. And much of it was avoidable.
But the corrupt, incompetent, backward local governments chose not to install tsunami detection & civil defense warning systems. And the dominant technocratic nations, especially the U.S., chose to sit and watch with their hands in their overstuffed pockets as the tragedy unfolded. This time, on world-wide live satellite TV.
This will bring about a shift like the Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755. But don't expect an Enlightenment. I think it will more likely lead to a loss of faith in government, technology and the "Free Market," all of which failed miserably, and predictably here.
What that should lead to is people taking over their own governments, and running things for their own benefit, including markets, and technologies. Unfortunately, the alternative is religious irrationalism, which is more likely. So long, Voltaire!
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