The Hook

The extreme left has thus far not been very succesful in the desperate search for a way to blame the horrific number of deaths resulting from the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis on the Bush administration. But I came upon this bit on Socialism in an Age of Waiting (via normblog):

Three things should follow on immediately from this tragedy. First, international and regional networks must be set up for all ocean areas to gather and share information on major seismic events. The argument of national security must not be allowed to prevent this from happening. The United States is far too defensive and ungenerous about sharing its data, even with its European allies.

Could this be the hook? The Rosetta Stone of blame? The article is by Philip Stott of the London Times, and is behind some kind of registration.

I'm no expert (I feel I should append this to every one of my posts) but doesn't the US share quite a bit of seismological data? Hell, at the US Geological Survey site, you can see worldwide earthquake activity in nearly real time.

And how does the responsibility of warning countries about possible tsunamis fall to the US anyway? Setting up these sensors is not a billion dollar enterprise beyond the reach of an India or Indonesia. The US cooperates with other Pacific Rim nations to monitor seismic activity in the Pacific. The duty to set up warning systems for the Indian Ocean coastal nations of course should fall upon Indian Ocean coastal nations. Which India now says it will do, but too late for this tsunami obviously.

In a related matter, Michele at A Small Victory writes:

All you people - from both sides of the political alley - who are using the disaster in Asia as a springboard to frothing at the mouth about people/politicians/religions/organizations you hate - are big, giant, fucking assholes.

It might be nice for politics not to raise its ugly head in the midst of such tragedies, but asking humans to put aside politics is like asking fish to put aside water. As we saw after 9/11, some people will use what they can get to make their political points. You can condemn it, as I have on several occasions, but you're really condemning human nature. It won't change.

And yes, I realize that this post can qualify as politicizing the disaster. But here we are.

On a more inspiring note, the donations to the Red Cross being made through Amazon are about to reach $5 million. Less inspiringly, the death toll in the accompanying text has risen from 80,000 to 120,000.