Mai 18, 2008
= Seeking Allies: To all people anywhere on the globe who want to help the tsunami 2004 victims and to help us dig up the truth =
After the tsunami of Christmas 2004 Bill Clinton agreed to be sent to southeast Asia by George W. Bush and by Kofi Annan.
The idea probably was that he would find the appropriate words and dispense some pastoral care. As a matter of fact, he allowed himself to be used for propaganda. There were people who needed him to cover up a huge scandal. The culprits had every interest to pretty up the catastrophe into an act of God and an unavoidable natural disaster. Everybody was gullible enough to swallow this swindle, especially the press and the media who didn’t express the least bit of doubt. As is customary at such sad occasions, newspapers got their most unctuous pens out, the ones that will invariably come up with words like theodicy, unfathomable will of God and who quote Shakespeare some even talked of “the execution of God’s judgement”.
The truth is: The quake and the wave that it triggered were natural events and beyond human control. But the disaster that ensued was man-made and wholly avoidable, had the crisis been handled properly. Journalists, if they had only been more sceptical and done their job, wouldn’t have had to dig deep.
Let’s just mention some incontrovertible facts. The seaquake starting off northwestern Sumatra was the strongest in nearly half a century. It could be measured and precisely be located by hundreds of seismographs around the planet. This was a shallow quake. Only shallow ones can cause a tsunami. But they don’t always do it.
Now all the irresponsible, incompetent, lazy and criminally negligent politicians, bureaucrats and experts in at least twenty countries who have those hundreds of thousands of victims on their consciences will say to defend themselves: We couldn’t know there was a wave. This is, of course, a lie. But even if it had been true the mere possibility of a wave should have been sufficient reason to issue warnings. And it wouldn’t even have been difficult to know there actually was a wave. The quake started a few miles off the island of Simeulue, which is Indonesian, and then continued in about ten minutes for up to 1600 km along the fault which skirts a string of islands that belong to India, the Nicobars and the Andamans. Within minutes of the quake they all witnessed the unmistakable characteristics of the tsunami: first a swift receding of the water away from the coast and then the sudden onslaught of several destructive waves. It would have been easy for anyone in responsibility, if they had cared, to pick up the phone and get an eye-witness picture of what had happened from the people on these islands. And, on the other hand, it is likely that scores if not hundreds of islanders themselves contacted or tried to contact authorities on the mainland.
In addition, it should have been no problem, on this cloudless day, to detect via satellite what was happening. Some of the coasts were so badly affected they afterwards looked as if A-bombs had been dropped. Adm. Lautenbacher in Washington, D. C., heads an outfit responsible for tsunami warnings and, more generally, for continuous global monitoring of the Earth. He later claimed they hadn’t been able to recognize anything on the satellite screens. This is ridiculous and must be rejected. Lautenbacher did not yet know how to spot a tsunami that was moving across the high seas. He didn’t have to. On the myriad islands from Simeulue to the northern end of the Andamans there were lots of beaches where the affects of the tsunami were clearly observable.
Aceh and northwestern Sumatra was struck within 30 minutes after the quake and tens of thousands were killed there. It would have helped if people had been warned 25 or 20 minutes beforehand. Quite apart from the fact that the Indonesians with their long history of disasters should have been so tsunami-savvy as to take the required comprehensive precautions long before the events took their course on Christmas 2004. In the twelve years preceding 2004 there had been three destructive tsunamis with thousands of dead in Indonesia and right next-door on the north coast of New Guinea. You had to be a complete idiot if you lived in Indonesia and didn’t know what a tsunami was. In most parts of the world it was, of course, only experts who had sufficient knowledge of the phenomenon. But the hundreds of experts on the globe combined should have been able to deal with the problem adequately.
After the tragedy in Aceh, at the very latest, the big picture should have been obvious to anyone who cared to connect at least some of the dots. Strictly speaking, the following few facts and tools in conjunction with minimum expert knowledge would have sufficed:
The fact that is was a seaquake and that it was of such a giant magnitude meant that there was the possibility of a tsunami. The initial measurements were 8.0 which later had to be corrected upwards. But even at 8.0 it was strong enough to warrant an instant and urgent alert to all coasts around the Indian Ocean.
2) The pinheads in Honolulu, in Denver and countless others elsewhere who didn’t even have some of the crucial telephone number to hand should still have been able to reach some people on their telephones and mobile phones (tool # 2). We can’t believe that there weren’t at least a handful of witnesses on all these islands and on the ships next to the quake willing to share what they had seen with their own eyes.
3) On Dec. 26, 2004 hundreds of seamen was staying next to their high-tech communication equipment cruising near the shores of Sumatra, the Nicobars and the Andamans. They all were able to communicate with experts around the globe. Admittedly, most of the developed world was celebrating Christmas. It was Christmas afternoon and evening in most of the U.S. but not in Asia. Still there were hundreds of experts around the globe who had a phone. The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) was established for worldwide maritime communications via geostationary satellites and over coast earth stations and of terrestrial communication by radiotelephony or direct-printing telegraph: shore-to-ship, ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship for transmitting and receiving of standard, warning and safety messages in the case of an emergency. All sea-going ships are obliged by international maritime law to be equipped with appropriate communication devices like VHF-radiotelephones, NAVTEX receivers and INMARSAT terminals (tool # 3).
4) These experts could have contacted somebody, an agency or whatever, that had access to or disposed of data gained via satellite. By pooling the data gained from different sources among others (first: seismological data, second: eye-witness reports, third: satellite data, i.e. satellite images from Earth-orbiting radar satellites and reconnaissance Earth observation satellites (tool # 4) deployed to provide continuous surveillance or observation for military or civil applications it would have been possible to establish the big picture.
5) And last but not least we should mention the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) managed by the US Navy, a multibillion-dollar networks of hydrophone arrays mounted on the seafloor used to monitor naval fighting ships especially submarines. The U.S. Navy’s reconnaissance experts have studded the bottom of the seas with sensors that continuously transmit signals via satellite: the sounds of submarines, and also seismic data. "If somewhere in the water a herring coughs," said a Pentagon official proudly, "we we’ll hear it." Network stations of the SOSUS and the IMS are placed on Diego Garcia and transmit hydroacustic data of sea quakes from hydrophones that are installed near the coast of the island in the ocean (tool # 5).
Looking at all these advanced and sophisticated monitoring facilities in the developed countries and at all the posibilities of global communication in computer science era it becomes clear that any seismic (human or environmental) activity in the Indian Ocean on the Dec. 26, 2004 could have been monitored and communicate within seconds around the world to the Indian Ocean Rim Countries and to the ships staying over there.
So we refuse to believe Indian, Indonesian, Thai and other authorities weren’t in the know fairly early on.
Along with the coasts of the Indian Ocean all the countless emergency services in the developed world should have been alerted and set in motion. There were still another 1½ to 4½ hrs. until the waves would reach Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and the Maldives. Anyone good at math could have worked out themselves the approximate speed of the waves if they had looked up “tsunami” in an encyclopaedia. Experts who knew what a tsunami was certainly should have done so.
The Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu, which, by the way, ought to be disbanded instantly because it is so grossly incompetent. This service even issued the all-clear per internet 14 minutes after the quake.
Bulletin #001: ...NO DESTRUCTIVE TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS...
This, by the way, isn’t the only time they goofed. They do so nearly every time. It’s incomprehensible that these jerks were later lionized like stars on TV.
In point of technology everything was there. And a lot more than has been mentioned here. No need to waste more of the taxpayer’s money. Lautenbacher’s outfit alone employs thousands of scientists. In spite of all the expensive high-tech gear, we got this total snafu. The tools were perfect but not the dummies who manned them. Just think of the incredible capabilities of the navies of the great powers, most notably the U.S. Navy, which also has a base on Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
But nothing happened. No warnings came, nowhere. This way became the tsunami catastrophe on Dec. 26, 2004: a man-made disaster.
We would like to find out who was guilty. There are powerful people who prefer to hide the truth. We need allies with some clout before we can hope to force them to fess up.
To all who are reading this: Would you help us to find out the truth? Would you help us to get all relevant documents published, including all satellite pictures of the critical period (8 a.m. to 12 noon Sumatra time 12/26/04), which, strangely, are still being withheld?
Why didn’t the U.S. Congress immediately launch a thorough investigation? After all, an unknown number of Americans were also killed. We want to get a list of these persons published. After a mad shooter had killed 32 people and himself in April 2007 on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute all their names and pictures were available in the internet and elsewhere. Why not of the tsunami victims?
We want to have substantial funds for those victims among the Western tourists who are badly in need. We will not accept the lack of substantial help for those victims from the degenerated and disreputable organisations that call themselves humanitarian. They have forgotten to help them, despite the immense amounts of money (billions of dollars/670 million of euros only in Germany) that they were managing after the tsunami disaster. We wish a substantial assistance for those Western victims and their relatives. And we want to have adequate memorials erected in Thailand and somewhere else.
= Seeking Allies: To all people anywhere on the globe who want to help the tsunami 2004 victims and to help us dig up the truth =
After the tsunami of Christmas 2004 Bill Clinton agreed to be sent to southeast Asia by George W. Bush and by Kofi Annan.
The idea probably was that he would find the appropriate words and dispense some pastoral care. As a matter of fact, he allowed himself to be used for propaganda. There were people who needed him to cover up a huge scandal. The culprits had every interest to pretty up the catastrophe into an act of God and an unavoidable natural disaster. Everybody was gullible enough to swallow this swindle, especially the press and the media who didn’t express the least bit of doubt. As is customary at such sad occasions, newspapers got their most unctuous pens out, the ones that will invariably come up with words like theodicy, unfathomable will of God and who quote Shakespeare some even talked of “the execution of God’s judgement”.
The truth is: The quake and the wave that it triggered were natural events and beyond human control. But the disaster that ensued was man-made and wholly avoidable, had the crisis been handled properly. Journalists, if they had only been more sceptical and done their job, wouldn’t have had to dig deep.
Let’s just mention some incontrovertible facts. The seaquake starting off northwestern Sumatra was the strongest in nearly half a century. It could be measured and precisely be located by hundreds of seismographs around the planet. This was a shallow quake. Only shallow ones can cause a tsunami. But they don’t always do it.
Now all the irresponsible, incompetent, lazy and criminally negligent politicians, bureaucrats and experts in at least twenty countries who have those hundreds of thousands of victims on their consciences will say to defend themselves: We couldn’t know there was a wave. This is, of course, a lie. But even if it had been true the mere possibility of a wave should have been sufficient reason to issue warnings. And it wouldn’t even have been difficult to know there actually was a wave. The quake started a few miles off the island of Simeulue, which is Indonesian, and then continued in about ten minutes for up to 1600 km along the fault which skirts a string of islands that belong to India, the Nicobars and the Andamans. Within minutes of the quake they all witnessed the unmistakable characteristics of the tsunami: first a swift receding of the water away from the coast and then the sudden onslaught of several destructive waves. It would have been easy for anyone in responsibility, if they had cared, to pick up the phone and get an eye-witness picture of what had happened from the people on these islands. And, on the other hand, it is likely that scores if not hundreds of islanders themselves contacted or tried to contact authorities on the mainland.
In addition, it should have been no problem, on this cloudless day, to detect via satellite what was happening. Some of the coasts were so badly affected they afterwards looked as if A-bombs had been dropped. Adm. Lautenbacher in Washington, D. C., heads an outfit responsible for tsunami warnings and, more generally, for continuous global monitoring of the Earth. He later claimed they hadn’t been able to recognize anything on the satellite screens. This is ridiculous and must be rejected. Lautenbacher did not yet know how to spot a tsunami that was moving across the high seas. He didn’t have to. On the myriad islands from Simeulue to the northern end of the Andamans there were lots of beaches where the affects of the tsunami were clearly observable.
Aceh and northwestern Sumatra was struck within 30 minutes after the quake and tens of thousands were killed there. It would have helped if people had been warned 25 or 20 minutes beforehand. Quite apart from the fact that the Indonesians with their long history of disasters should have been so tsunami-savvy as to take the required comprehensive precautions long before the events took their course on Christmas 2004. In the twelve years preceding 2004 there had been three destructive tsunamis with thousands of dead in Indonesia and right next-door on the north coast of New Guinea. You had to be a complete idiot if you lived in Indonesia and didn’t know what a tsunami was. In most parts of the world it was, of course, only experts who had sufficient knowledge of the phenomenon. But the hundreds of experts on the globe combined should have been able to deal with the problem adequately.
After the tragedy in Aceh, at the very latest, the big picture should have been obvious to anyone who cared to connect at least some of the dots. Strictly speaking, the following few facts and tools in conjunction with minimum expert knowledge would have sufficed:
1) First let's tell now some words about the non-military used International Monitoring
System (IMS) managed by the CTBTO in Vienna which plays a central role in
monitoring compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
The verification regime of the CTBT is unique. It consists of 321 facilities
they send data continuously to the International Data Centre (IDC) in Vienna
using different technologies to monitor the globe for nuclear explosions by seismic,
infrasound, hydroacoustic and other tools. This network registers shock waves
emanating from a nuclear explosion underground, in the seas and in the air and
provides valuable information about seismic activity of the ocean's bottom.
Over 200 stations were transmitting data to the IDC by April 2007. The data
products were distributed to 800 institutions in nearly one hundred countries. Had the quake had only a magnitude of four (instead
of 9.3, as was the case) this already would have been sufficient not only for the sophisticated IMS' seismic network but also for hundreds
of seismographs around the globe to detect, measure and precisely
locate it (tool # 1). It should be enought in conjunction with the following example. On the sites of the USGS (United States Geological Survey) and the IRIS (Incorporated
Research Institutions for Seismology) everybody can read:
"The Global Seismographic
Network (GSN) is a permanent digital network of state-of-the-art seismological and
geophysical sensors connected by a telecommunications network, serving as a
multi-use scientific facility and societal resource for monitoring, research,
and education. Formed in partnership among the USGS, the National Science
Foundation (NSF) and the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology
(IRIS), the GSN provides near-uniform, worldwide monitoring of the Earth, with
over 150 modern seismic stations distributed globally."
The fact that is was a seaquake and that it was of such a giant magnitude meant that there was the possibility of a tsunami. The initial measurements were 8.0 which later had to be corrected upwards. But even at 8.0 it was strong enough to warrant an instant and urgent alert to all coasts around the Indian Ocean.
2) The pinheads in Honolulu, in Denver and countless others elsewhere who didn’t even have some of the crucial telephone number to hand should still have been able to reach some people on their telephones and mobile phones (tool # 2). We can’t believe that there weren’t at least a handful of witnesses on all these islands and on the ships next to the quake willing to share what they had seen with their own eyes.
3) On Dec. 26, 2004 hundreds of seamen was staying next to their high-tech communication equipment cruising near the shores of Sumatra, the Nicobars and the Andamans. They all were able to communicate with experts around the globe. Admittedly, most of the developed world was celebrating Christmas. It was Christmas afternoon and evening in most of the U.S. but not in Asia. Still there were hundreds of experts around the globe who had a phone. The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) was established for worldwide maritime communications via geostationary satellites and over coast earth stations and of terrestrial communication by radiotelephony or direct-printing telegraph: shore-to-ship, ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship for transmitting and receiving of standard, warning and safety messages in the case of an emergency. All sea-going ships are obliged by international maritime law to be equipped with appropriate communication devices like VHF-radiotelephones, NAVTEX receivers and INMARSAT terminals (tool # 3).
4) These experts could have contacted somebody, an agency or whatever, that had access to or disposed of data gained via satellite. By pooling the data gained from different sources among others (first: seismological data, second: eye-witness reports, third: satellite data, i.e. satellite images from Earth-orbiting radar satellites and reconnaissance Earth observation satellites (tool # 4) deployed to provide continuous surveillance or observation for military or civil applications it would have been possible to establish the big picture.
5) And last but not least we should mention the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) managed by the US Navy, a multibillion-dollar networks of hydrophone arrays mounted on the seafloor used to monitor naval fighting ships especially submarines. The U.S. Navy’s reconnaissance experts have studded the bottom of the seas with sensors that continuously transmit signals via satellite: the sounds of submarines, and also seismic data. "If somewhere in the water a herring coughs," said a Pentagon official proudly, "we we’ll hear it." Network stations of the SOSUS and the IMS are placed on Diego Garcia and transmit hydroacustic data of sea quakes from hydrophones that are installed near the coast of the island in the ocean (tool # 5).
Looking at all these advanced and sophisticated monitoring facilities in the developed countries and at all the posibilities of global communication in computer science era it becomes clear that any seismic (human or environmental) activity in the Indian Ocean on the Dec. 26, 2004 could have been monitored and communicate within seconds around the world to the Indian Ocean Rim Countries and to the ships staying over there.
So we refuse to believe Indian, Indonesian, Thai and other authorities weren’t in the know fairly early on.
Along with the coasts of the Indian Ocean all the countless emergency services in the developed world should have been alerted and set in motion. There were still another 1½ to 4½ hrs. until the waves would reach Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and the Maldives. Anyone good at math could have worked out themselves the approximate speed of the waves if they had looked up “tsunami” in an encyclopaedia. Experts who knew what a tsunami was certainly should have done so.
The Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu, which, by the way, ought to be disbanded instantly because it is so grossly incompetent. This service even issued the all-clear per internet 14 minutes after the quake.
Bulletin #001: ...NO DESTRUCTIVE TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS...
This, by the way, isn’t the only time they goofed. They do so nearly every time. It’s incomprehensible that these jerks were later lionized like stars on TV.
In point of technology everything was there. And a lot more than has been mentioned here. No need to waste more of the taxpayer’s money. Lautenbacher’s outfit alone employs thousands of scientists. In spite of all the expensive high-tech gear, we got this total snafu. The tools were perfect but not the dummies who manned them. Just think of the incredible capabilities of the navies of the great powers, most notably the U.S. Navy, which also has a base on Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
But nothing happened. No warnings came, nowhere. This way became the tsunami catastrophe on Dec. 26, 2004: a man-made disaster.
We would like to find out who was guilty. There are powerful people who prefer to hide the truth. We need allies with some clout before we can hope to force them to fess up.
To all who are reading this: Would you help us to find out the truth? Would you help us to get all relevant documents published, including all satellite pictures of the critical period (8 a.m. to 12 noon Sumatra time 12/26/04), which, strangely, are still being withheld?
Why didn’t the U.S. Congress immediately launch a thorough investigation? After all, an unknown number of Americans were also killed. We want to get a list of these persons published. After a mad shooter had killed 32 people and himself in April 2007 on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute all their names and pictures were available in the internet and elsewhere. Why not of the tsunami victims?
We want to have substantial funds for those victims among the Western tourists who are badly in need. We will not accept the lack of substantial help for those victims from the degenerated and disreputable organisations that call themselves humanitarian. They have forgotten to help them, despite the immense amounts of money (billions of dollars/670 million of euros only in Germany) that they were managing after the tsunami disaster. We wish a substantial assistance for those Western victims and their relatives. And we want to have adequate memorials erected in Thailand and somewhere else.
We call for donations!
Jerzy Chojnowski
Chairman-GTVRG e.V.
www.gtvrg.de
Chairman-GTVRG e.V.
www.gtvrg.de
************************************************
GERMAN TSUNAMI
VICTIMS RESPONSE GROUP
WORKING TO PREVENT MAN-MADE
DISASTERS
Anyone can contribute. Donate and help our association.
Anyone can contribute. Donate and help our association.
Account for Donations: www.gtvrg.de
******************************************************
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