The Miracle of Banda Aceh

Things to Come ^ | 1/1/2005 | Joel Raupe

[Lurker]

Thanks for the links.

L

[Squantos]

http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=6881

For you !

[Lurker]

She is an amazing woman.

Thanks for that link.

Happy New Year to you my friend.

L

[RightOnline]

Reading further in this thread about the hampering (directly and indirectly) of our and others' rescue efforts........

Is there any more useless organization than the U.N., or any more worthless "religion" than Islam on the face of this planet?

Yeah.......rhetorical question.

[txhurl]

and if they find Osama among the dead there, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Hmm...

[MEG33]

http://diplomadic.blogspot.com/
Check out this interview (on the UN's official website) with SecGen Annan and Under SecGen Egeland shows,


Mr. Egeland: Our main problems now are in northern Sumatra and Aceh.
<...> In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving. <...> Tomorrow, we will have eight full airplanes arriving. I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh.

Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers – 90 of them – which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don't want them to be an additional burden on the people there.


I provided this to some USAID colleagues working in Indonesia and their heads nearly exploded. The first paragraph is quite simply a lie. The UN is taking credit for things that hard-working, street savvy USAID folks have done. It was USAID working with their amazing network of local contacts who scrounged up trucks, drivers, and fuel; organized the convoy and sent it off to deliver critical supplies. A UN “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh? Bull! It's the Aussies and the Yanks who are running the air ops into Aceh. We have people working and sleeping on the tarmac in Aceh, surrounded by bugs, mud, stench and death, who every day bring in the US and Aussie C-130s and the US choppers; unload, load, send them off. We have no fancy aid workers' retreat -- notice the priorities of the UN? People are dying and what's the first thing the UN wants to do? Set up "a camp for relief workers" one that would be "fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything."

The UN is a sham.

[Prospero]

Joel Raupe, the author of the blog that I posted to begin this thread, tells me by Email his father was in Djakarta as part of USAID back in 1960.

The United Sates is the "United Nations," and it has clearly become a Cold War NGO with delusions of grandure.

It has, he tells me, "become like all the best intentions, starting as a organization devoted to it's reason for being, and needing to form departments to see to self-continuity, inevitably been supplanted by self-continutity. Self-Continuity has become it's Reason for being. Tear it down and start over, with a Coalition of the Willing, a United Free Nations."

[Libertina]

Foreign media and aid organizations were shortly after banished from the province and the government deployed up to 51,000 troops to annihilate an estimated 5,300 armed guerrillas.

51,000 troops STILL trying to kill 5,300 terrorists? This is why terrorists cannot be shown any consideration. They must be killed, before their relatively smaller numbers annihilate greater numbers of innocents.

[Libertina]

I find this article extremely thought provoking...

[txhurl]

It occurred to me a minute ago raking leaves that if Banda Aceh was that hot, then the cell & conventional phone call intercepts to the Island - to check on the inhabitants - must have connected many dots.

Additionally, Iran taking that quake at Christmas last year must have some islamos wondering if Allah isn't going down for the count.

[Quix]

AGREED!

[Libertina]

Christmas questions, indeed.

[SuziQ]

As it was, in our shock, probing in from the parameter toward the epicenter of the Banda Aceh Earthquake, only a few have considered whether the hand of the Almighty reached out and sliced off a decade from what still promises to be a protracted conflict with Islamo-Fascism.

That's something I hadn't thought of. One of my older sons asked just a little while ago if Al Queda might try to attack our ships offshore. I hadn't thought of that, either. I figured they couldn't get to them because of the nature of the destruction; they wouldn't be able to get to the seashore from the interior. But if the photographers can get there, so can the terrorists.

[SuziQ]

Those are amazing pictures of the devastation.

[SuziQ]

One of the country's holiest Christian sites, the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health in Velankanni, was hit severely. The shrine, typically busiest during the Christmas season, has reported at least 700 deaths, and that number is expected to rise dramatically.

I read on a different thread that the Basilica was spared any major damage and that those attending Mass when the tsunami struck were saved, even though areas around the church were devastated. It has become a hospital and its grounds a morgue since the disaster.

[Prospero]

There is certain reasons to be concerned, since 53,000 national troops were recently in Aceh to hold at bay 5,300 Aceh insurgents.

But, the nature of the destruction is nearly complete, with the "civil emergency" in Aceh put in place by the central government a moot point.

Aceh is drowned, the man said... it is finished.

Everyone says how terrible the Tsunami was, but it is only now becoming clear how nearly complete the destruction of Aceh was. There really hasn't been anything in recent times to compare with the size of the destruction there... Even Krakatoa didn't compare... even the wasteland of industrial Germany in the summer of 1945... An area the size of California is simply gone...

[SuziQ]

You know, the heavy rain could also help them clean the mud and debris from the streets.

[SuziQ]

Which country did I hear about that had hundreds of floating mines washed away to higher ground?

That was Sri Lanka, and the mines were left over from the civil war with the Tamils.

[txhurl]

People 50 years from now will be trying to landscape their houses they built, and when digging the flower beds will be unearthing all sorts of artifacts: cell phones, bones, who knows what.

[MEG33]

http://diplomadic.blogspot.com/
A colleague came back from a meeting held by the local UN representative yesterday and reported that the UN rep had said that while it was a good thing that the Australians and Americans were running the air ops into tsunami-wrecked Aceh, for cultural and political reasons, those Australians and Americans really "should go blue." In other words, they should switch into UN uniforms and give up their national ones.

Now you all know that The Diplomad is not a cynical or suspicious being, but there is something funny going on here . . . what could it be? Could it be a genuine concern for local "cultural and political sensitivities" that would be offended by the presence of Aussies and Yanks in their own military uniforms saving thousands of lives? Maybe . . . or, might it not be an odd coincidence that just after the infamous Mr. Anan (see prior posts) says the UN will be setting up air traffic control in Aceh, the UN wants to show that it has an ATC system operating? What better way than to continue in the UN tradition of taking credit for others' work? And this just before Mr. Anan arrives in Indonesia on January 6.