How to insult, offend, and injure while "aiding"

[ritaxis]

So Bush hears about a disaster of unprecedented size, with over a hundred thousand dead, infrastructure broken and swept to sea.

What does he do? Help?

Helping would be to put resources at the command of the UN, which has agencies specifically formed for humanitarian aid, experience, trained people, connections . . . helping would be dispatching a bunch of the military to serve under the UN . . . helping would be giving money now and later to the agencies already in existence, already working on the ground.

So what's the agenda for the US?

The creation of a brand-new structure ("core group"), headed by the United States, with brand-new people running it, brand-new bureaucracy, brand-new startup costs, brand-new opportunities for Halliburton to overcharge.

This is an insult to the members of the United Nations, an offense to the affected nations, and an injury to their people.

It's stupid, and par for the course, and I bet most Americans don't get what's wrong with it.

Kofi Annan is graciously making the best of it, but Andi Mallarangang, the Indonesian presidential spokesman I heard on the radio, was clearly critical, and he's right.

I'm making my little donation to UNICEF. I recommend that anybody who's sending anything send it to an established agency which has a track record of helping out in crisis and dealing with displacement and epidemic:

Red Cross/Red Crescent
UNICEF
Doctors Without Borders
Oxfam
Catholic Charities

And one more thing. Colin Powell, who's lame ducking about now, and who has mumbled something to the effect that "of course the UN is in charge," is making a damned celebrity appearance down there with Jeb expletive deleted Bush "who has experience with helping out in disasters." Meanwhile, Kofi Annan explains to the reporter who challenges him as to why he didn't go there already that he can do his job where he is, and if he personally went to the scene now he would not be able to do his job and he would be in the way.

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

The British government has pledges fifty million _pounds_. The American government, by what I can gather from CNN, has pledged 35 million _dollars_.

Whose is the bigger economy?

It seems as if he has only waited for a reason to set up an organisation to rivel the hated UN. He makes political capital even out of this :-(((

I wish I could _do_ something. Not just give money - I can't give much, I haven't _got_ disposable income - but *do* something. And I worry about long-term effort. Sure, right now it's important to get those people fed and watered and sheltered - but what happens in the longer term? How will *those* economies get back on their feet?

Somebody ought to be bothered about that.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

It's a brutal way to look at things, but this is not the kind of disaster that knocks economies off their feet. Except for the Maldives, the countries affected are not ones reliant on tourism, and the enormous capital concentrations - the chip fabs of Thailand and the natural gas refineries of Indonesia - appear to be intact.

The Thai prime minister reckons the damage in his country amounts to about 0.36% of its last-year GDP.

I don't think there's anything we can do to help beyond giving money. South-east Asia does not lack people, and what the homeless victims of the wave need is shelter and food, which can be provided from local sources; it's not worth shipping tarpaulins from England to Sumatra, though it's probably worth shipping medicine.