Posted on 01/02/2005 7:32:15 PM PST by Pikamax
'The Distribution System Is Not Working'
By Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, January 3, 2005; Page A01
BUNG BAK YOK, Indonesia, Jan. 2 -- Rukaiyah's right arm has swollen dangerously, puss leaking from an angry gash along the inside of her elbow. The skin has yellowed on a forearm puffy all the way to the wrist. Unchecked infection has led to the threat -- and maybe the onset -- of gangrene.
But Rukaiyah, 28, has not seen a doctor since a torrent of water destroyed her home a week ago in Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province, and swept her along for hundreds of yards in an uncontrollable surge marked by multiple collisions with churning debris. The mosque where she has found refuge along with 1,000 other tsunami victims has not been visited by medical personnel, refugees said. It has run short of tarpaulins to shelter from the rain, short of rice to eat, and short of pots and stoves to cook it in.
And yet Bung Bak Yok, this little village where Manassa Mosque has responded to last week's disaster as best it can, lies only three miles east of Banda Aceh's Sultan Iskandar Muda Airport, where planeload after planeload of relief supplies and emergency medical teams have begun pouring in.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
All the Red Crescent ambulances and MDs tied up doing terrorist duty?
It's impossible in a disaster of this scope. While it's terrible that the person hasn't been treated yet, more people are going to die just by the enormous numbers of injured. And then there's the inevitable spread of infectious diseases that will most surely come.
Look for many more articles like this from the media.
LOL! Dang, you're good...
Meanwhile, in New York, the U.N. is trying to extract their heads from their collective posteriors.
This guy Cody is a legacy media clown.
Tell us something we don't know.
Wait! I forgot! Wherever there is suffering in the world we Americans are supposed to feel responsible and guilt-ridden
Get rooted!
It's pus, NOT puss!!!!!!Geeze, what were they thinking!
Monday, January 03, 2005
almost fUNnny . . .
Day 9 of the tsunami crisis.
I know I had promised to lay off the UN for a bit . . . but I can't. As one reader commented on a previous Diplomad posting on the UN, "it's like watching a train wreck" -- you know it's horrible, but you've just got to look at it.
In this part of the tsunami-wrecked Far Abroad, the UN is still nowhere to be seen where it counts, i.e., feeding and helping victims. The relief effort continues to be a US-Australia effort, with Singapore now in and coordinating closely with the US and Australia. Other countries are also signing up to be part of the US-Australia effort. Nobody wants to be "coordinated" by the UN. The local UN reps are getting desperate. They're calling for yet another meeting this afternoon; they've flown in more UN big shots to lecture us all on "coordination" and the need to work together, i.e., let the UN take credit. With Kofi about to arrive for a big conference, the UNocrats are scrambling to show something, anything as a UN accomplishment. Don't be surprised if they claim that the USS Abraham Lincoln is under UN control and that President Lincoln was a strong supporter of the UN.
Maybe watching the UN flounder is not like watching a train wreck; perhaps it's more akin to watching an Ed Wood movie or reading Maureen Dowd or Margo Kingston -- so horrible, so pathetic, that it transforms into a thing of perverse beauty. The only problem, of course, is that real people are dying.
I hope soon to return to my habitual corner of the Far Abroad . . . far, far away from the UN.
# posted by Diplomad @ 9:25 AM
Sunday, January 02, 2005 UNsanity Update
Don't want to sound like a broken record (for you younger readers, a record was like a CD, except a lot cheaper) but I have to pass along this bit of UNsanity. I promise, after this I'll stop posting for awhile on the UNresponse to the tsunami disaster, it's just too depressing and UNbelievable.
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.
Please quote Vice President Cheney's recent comment to Senator Leahy next time.
Bump.
Thank you for your service, and please convey thanks to all those with whom you serve.
My advice is, think bigger.
That tsunami was merely a wakeup call, for anybody who will listen.
Good luck and God Bless
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