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Arthur C. Clarke Reports From Sri Lanka
Jeff Patterson writes "Sir Arthur C. Clarke has filed a damage report from his home in Sri Lanka on the Clarke Foundation page. He is fine, however 'among those affected are my staff based at our diving station in Hikkaduwa and holiday bungalow in Kahawa -- both beachfront properties located in areas worst hit. We still don't know the full extent of damage as both roads and phones have been damaged. Early reports indicate that we have lost most of our diving equipment and boats. Not all our staff members are accounted for -- yet.'"
I find it horrifying that someone of Clarke's calibre referenced one of the worst sci-fi films ever produced, The Day After Tomorrow. Run, quickly, the cold is coming to get us!
If this happened to America, I wonder who they would bomb?
> you can see a shit storm of blame and finger pointing coming: "americans don't care if we drown"
Gee, how could the people of third world nations possibly come to that conclusion?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
oh look, we're all terribly sad about thefact that 25,000 people have died in a natural disaster, while the americans have kiled over 100,000 people by DELIBERATELY bombing them.
I believe that the network of floating bouys and underwater sensors in the Pacific Ocean is run and operated by NOAA and the USGS. The fact is that most of the world is instrumented by our weather service and the Geological Survey, with reports fed by satellite to various centers for analysis. Hurricane forecasts in the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Pacific have all benefitted from this network. It is totally wrong to say that the financial and technological burden of instrumenting what was well known as the absolute hot spot on the earth's crust belonged to "governments in the indian ocean". We (this country) do these things in the interest of science and humanity. Those who observe that the US did nothing to mitigate the loss of life in this instance really have only to look at our government's annual budgets to see that their arguments are quite correct. Our leadership would rather kill Iraqi's than contribute to a scientific understanding of global environmental processes that benefit humanity.
It was directed at you, since you seem to think there's "fashion" to anti-USA feelings all over the world. As a European I can assure you that the reasons we're out in numbers protesting against the crimes being committed by your regime have nothing to do with "fashion" - and everything to do with your blatant disregards for (non-american) human lives and rights.
What's even more amazing is the sheer number of americans who still think you are "the land of the free".
it's in my head
It's not a question of how many people died. It's how they died and what causes were behind.
I read something about the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea only a year or two ago.
The larges battle in history since the second world war (measured in humans participating) was supposed to have been between those two contries. Rumors have it that over 100.000 people got killed in that battle.
The death toll was so extremely high because one of the armies used unarmed groups of people to run through mine fields, just to get them cleared.
Did we hear/read/see anything from that disaster? Nope. No western people involved and probably nothing important to fight about...
This doesn't dwarf 9/11.
9/11 was something extraordinary.
Something evil and cunning.
Something the world had never seen before.
It was spectacular! Although in a vicious way.
This is just another natural disaster. Not even comparable to floods/droughts in China which have had millions of people killed in the last century.
Soon it will be forgotten by most of us.
are not in the indian ocean
so any warning for what would have happened would have to haveinvolved a call to cnn, because the systems and procedures you speak of don't exist where the tsunami happened
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I won't cry for you.
Does affecting an air of righteous indignation help you cope with a tragedy of this scale?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
the people in the middle east are not real people, with their own dreams and responsibilities
the people in the middle east, with thousands of years of history, are simply carboard cut out reflections of american actions, a country with 200 years of history
and so when bin laden kills thousands of my own countrymen, i should say "well, we gave him a stinger missile in 1984 to fight the soviets, so clearly, everything he does is our fault 100%, and so i should just yawn"
let me tap you with a cluebat:
the problem that is al qaeda is the fruit of the entire middle east, not one country
therefore, the solution to al qaeda is the democratization of the entire middle east
iraq is but the first step
syria and iran will fall peacefully to democracy given the example of next door iraq, or they will also fall by the sword should another event of the magnitude of 9/11 strike american soil at the hands of fundamentalist terrorists again
what gives me the right to invade these countries?
9/11 does
i see you protesting on the streets when the usa invades iraq to grow democracy, but i don't see you demonstrating on the streets when fundamentalist crusaders invade the usa to kill innocents by surprise, on purpose
interesting intellectual honesty you have there
the actions of a secular democracy, fighting fascism and fundamentalism that breeds madmen that visit american soil, are not comparable to that of fundamentalist crusaders
are they in your mind?
that you think that what happened in 9/11 is somehow the fault of the usa, merely means that you are hold the united states in very high regard, and that you hold middle easterners in contempt: according to you, everything that happens in the world traces back to the usa, and nothing original ever can come from the minds of middle easterners?
onyl americans are cpaable of original sin?
meanwhile, i posit that iraqis are my equal, and that americans should die so that they someday can have freedom of political expression, and the peace and prosperity that goes with that, is an honor
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
in bin laden's own words:
to overthrow all non islamic governments (non islamic to include such "apostates" as shia muslims), kill all jews and convert everyone else to islam at gunpoint. atheists are high up on bin laden's shit list too, all atheists are marked for death. iirc all hindus must die too, since they're polytheists.
the extremely religiously conservative authoritarian saudi government - a human rights nightmare to westerners - is considered a decadent, liberal cesspool by bin laden. just so you have a basis for comparison.
want to know what bin laden is fighting for? to turn the entire world into an islamic state, ruled by something like the taliban.
It is only natural that American Media won't tell about the people the US Military killed in Iraq.
Linux is not Windows
set up concentration camps on remote islands
Pluuueeaaseee.. Have you ever seen footage of the end result of a real concentration camp? There wouldn't be a single inmate at a german or soviet concentration camp who wouldn't kill to be kept in an american "concentration camp". Lets see here, we feed them food that meets their dietary needs, provide access to their religion, and barely lay a hand on them. Compare that to being worked to death on a starvation diet or paying a visit to the showers.
The sad fact is that what I wrote is true - and can easily be verified in seconds. Rather than doing that, my post gets moderated as "troll".
Ignorance is bliss.
(PS: The reason the US "helped" in the Balkan war is finally approved now - the oil pipeline will be built - by an american company. Same thing is happening in Afghanistan, and we all know how it looks like in Iraq.)
it's in my head