Undermine right to be ashamed?

There is no place slated dreaded for politics to come up.

And this time again, no different. When US offered to work with India, Japan and Australia to coordinate relief operations, many of us were happy. And was a bit proud of seeing India out there too. What we need is help. Period. There is a limit of what kind of help. Food, water, clothes, shelter, money that can buy some of these. And there are many which no one can help. Lost love. Hope. Moms and Dads. Sons and daughters. Still, whatever we can do, let us do. And let us coordinate that right things flow to right place in right quantity.

Kerala is no place to compare in this vast wrath of God. Still, at the micro-level what Dr.Fuad told me echos why we need coordination upto macro level

we had visited the camps here. a lot can be done immediately. relief efforts are well coordinated and very active now. food no problem.manpower no problem. what they really need is bedsheets towels soap paste etc.NOT clothes,they have plenty of clothes we are not allowed to physically distribute materials.we can go there and hand over the materials to camp organizers.they are really doing a good job under the most trying circumstances.

The same is true across India. Enough food, enough clothes and enough people. Let the aid go to other nations who are in real need. This is out our PM also told other nations. And we have also allocated around $25M to other affected nations.

Coordination is a real tough job. World wide, people are pouring in money. Good souls across the continents are moved seeing footage of crying moms handing over their dead children. Of daughters moving in between piled bodies searching for their dear ones faces. They are all sending money, whatever they have. Families are offering adoption of orphaned children. What we need now is the distribution mechanism. I took the US offer as the one in the right direction. Very humanitarian.

Well, thats why we have the UN and the numerous organisation under its umbrella. But to read something like this is irritating, that too in the same year they started a Platform for the Promotion of Early Warning

..U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland, who is also the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said he did not know the region didn't have a warning system....

Again I understand, fully agree that its not time for criticism. UN has probably failed here too. It fails to avoid wars. It failed to avoid other calamities too. It will continue hosting World Conferences of Disaster Reduction every year in great places. Let it. But I really dont think a criticism of "undermining UN role" http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3944374 is a timely one. Remember, one can undermine your powers. But never never your responsibility. As long as you deliver that. No mom will ever complain someone undermined her motherhood!

I really worry what would happen to UN now. Will it become another League of Nations?

Anyway lets all make sure no one else would undermine our responsibility. If anyone does, it simply means, we were not doing our job. I would hope that UN would find out places where it can take some responsiblity and deliver too. Anyway I am overwhelmed by new initiative on the UN website for setting up the early warning system within a year. And I guess UN is not left out in coordination too. Lets hope.

Yes, it is shame on mankind

Cherian put me a note seeing the picture in my blog -
….. What I found most interesting in your blog was the comment under the picture on Tsunami. You said “shame on you mankind”. There was no note elaborating as to why you think mankind should be blamed for something that can be categorized as an act of God and one about which Man could do nothing to prevent or reduce the devastation…at least that is how every one treats it in the news media.

Whatever you mean when you say shame on mankind, I would like to echo those remarks and also tell you why I say so. For one, if we spend a fraction of the money that is spend on defense funding (which is basically money used to deliberately kill people) I am sure science could come up with solutions to provide warning about such calamities or even do things to reduce the impact on people and their lively hoods.

In addition I have a question or a comment about another aspect of how the impact could have been reduced. It is said that it took almost 2 and a half hours for the (first?) Tsunami to hit the cost of Sri Lanka and India. It is apparently common knowledge among meteorologists that an earth quake 7.0 and higher on the ritcher scale (in the ocean?) is capable of creating tsunami. If that was the case, as soon as the quake was recorded, why were there no warnings to evacuate people from the costs in India at least….we have a good system in place for disaster warnings, any such evacuation would have reduced the cost of lives drastically. Do I not understand something about this phenomenon? Am I missing something? Or do you think what I am saying makes sense…….

I am yet to write that. I am deeply disturbed after seeing some pics. Of flesh and blood. Of real emotions and faces. Of the true pain. In full real colours.

We have been behind WMD for around 10 years now. What are we trying to escape from? Whom are we trying to protect? From whom? We have forgotten God. Understand that He holds the power of nature. Nature the nice guy, when you are nice to him. Or you take sword, sure it will. In 2004, we have had hurricanes in the US, a series of typhoons and quakes that caused Japan tremble with fear and now the tsunamis that hit every nation in between.

And this is not new. We have a system working in Pacific already. For 40 years. True that we are not yet there in predicting earthquake. Even after a deep sea quake, they say it is difficult and costly to determine the tsunami and directions. But again, we had developed this 40 years back for the Pacific.

We had great celeberations for the new millenium. A lot of promises. Of a world of better ozone layer. Of no landmines (shame on us Indians, we are one of the top exporter of landmines). Of no WMD and with a global police and truly global economy. But leaving half of the world with half a century old technology.

US was busy designing SDI (aka Star Wars) last decade. Seconds after the satellites detect a fire on the ground, a patriot (or the ilike) will go and destroy an ICBM. Trillions of dollars is what they talked.

Then we have the UN. Whatever it means. As we all know it has failed to be a broker of peace, if war is the opposite of peace. But war is not necessarily the only opposite. A natural calamity is. Now the UN is saying it did not know Indian Ocean do not have a warning system. For 40 years we have one in pacific and we dont have one in Indian Ocean!!!! Shame, what else. Shame on you, Shame on me, Shame on all of us. God, forgive us. We talk about global economy. My salary comes from a global market. And here we say, no country in Indian Ocean has the money to install these costly equipments. I dont know what is big money and what is small money. What I read is that the finance required is just $3M. 100,000 people not worth for $3M?

If we can leave Siachen to be protected by nature, we would save $365 Million in a year? Why even talk about defense? If every new mobile phone buyer in India can pay Rs 100 extra, we have 10 million dollar in one year.

Zarqawi and Osama has united. If we have people like them with passion, with the charisma, with money and with followers that are ready to die, and alas, if the passion was for mankind, if the charisma is based on good faith on God, Asia becomes the richest continent on planet. O Osama, you could hit only two towers. See the sample of the wrath of God, it can wash off entire communities across continents. O LTTE, what you are trying to get as a homeland, can vanish off in a matter of hours. You could be begging to your neighbour.

People of Global Economy, it is time to unite. People of technology, get solutions working for humanity. Our kids should not be listening to such shameful stories in the future. I fully agree we cannot totally prevent these calamities. Unless we are as power as God. (God forgive). With all the systems in place, Japan had a lot of calamities. There were warnings of typhoon one full week, still there were casualties. But if we tried, our job is done.

Death is certain, so don’t you take your kin to hospital when he is sick? If someone says he did not, because hospital is costly, what will you feel like? Shame? Then this is 100,000 times that shame. And more

Shame on Mankind

WMD? Terrorist attack? This is tsunami. That killed more than a hundred thousand people.. Shame mankind, shame on you.

Petals I Picked

So I have set up a separate house for my friends today. Same neighborhood. Petals I Picked. I just moved all the posts. I did have some more nice posts. Google mail in feature should save from losing more posts. Anyway this is my email feed test! Let me see if this comes up there!!!

Ryz