Diego Garcia -- did US military/CIA know tsunami was in progress? : Melbourne Indymedia

Did US military/CIA know the tsunami was in progress? Based on my experience of investigating earthquakes for the US government for almost 22 years and doing research on seismological techniques to monitor underground nuclear explosions, I believe that the US military/CIA had critically useful information about the tsunami which was not transmitted to emergency response organizations.

Using seismological data alone, any tsunami expert would know that a magnitude 8+ submarine megathrust event like the 2004 Sumatra Earthquake would have a good possibility of generating a tsunami. The US has a very large military base on the island of Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and they have been aware of tsunami hazard to the island due to the proximity of the southwestern Pacific archipelago. The US Navy and CIA have many sea-bottom sensors in the Indian Ocean for detecting submarines, undersea nuclear explosions, earthquakes and tsunamis. I am sure that US military/CIA knew the tsunami was in progress but they did not relay this information to the countries at risk because the info was "CLASSIFIED".

"One of the few places in the Indian Ocean that got the message of the quake was Diego Garcia, a speck of an island with a United States Navy base, because the Pacific warning center's contact list includes the Navy. Finding the appropriate people in Sri Lanka or India was harder", New York Times, 28 Dec 2004.

... so what happened to Diego Garcia? What damage did it sustain from the tsunami? Were emergency measures taken before the waves hit?

The justification for not warning the countries that have been so devastated by the tsunami is that the US authorities did not know who to call in these countries -- how do they expect to fight the "War on Terrorism" or shoot down a nuke ICBM -- are they really that incompetent? Is this the same kind of lapse that occurred on 9/11 in the two hours between the time when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center and the time when fourth plane "crashed" in Pennsylvania?

A monumental international blame-game and cover-up exercise is developing with respect to the failure to issue tsunami warnings -- it was even suggested by the remarks of Australian Foreign Minister Downer who spends much of his time prevaricating about the situation in Iraq and the reasons for the Australian participation in that fiasco.

There is a good possibility that the US military/CIA let tens of thousands drown rather than "compromise" the sources of their "intelligence".

Hi Ed.

I wondered how long it would be before some imbecile tried to make political mileage (against the US, of course) out of this epic human tragedy.

Congratulations. You're pretty much the first to do it here at MIM.

Your ingrained prejudices just won't let an opportunity go where you can weave even the most tenuous link between some action/inaction of the US and the deaths of thousands of people.

Hang your head in shame.

Imbecile.

" I wondered how long it would be before some imbecile tried to make political mileage (against the US, of course) out of this epic human tragedy. "

The only surprise, is that the Jews weren't blamed for the earthquake....yet...

Yes we can assume that Halliburton's train is going to supply uranium to the best profit seekers and military maniacs in the world and make darwin an even more toxic place to survive in

Uranium to be shipped to Darwin by rail
4:15 PM December 31

WMC Resources has been given approval to send uranium oxide concentrate from its Olympic Dam and Beverley Mines to Darwin by rail.

A three-month trial will begin within the next month.

The uranium will be loaded at the Islington railyards on the northern outskirts of Adelaide.

Spokesman for WMC Resources, Richard Yeeles, says he hopes the trial will prove to be successful.

"We've been shipping out of the Port of Adelaide since production began at Olympic Dam in 1988," he said.

"We've done that without any incident but now the Adelaide to Darwin rail link's established Darwin gives us another option and we'd like to look at that on a trial basis and see what benefits that provides for us.

"We'll access it in conjunction with the South Australian, Northern Territory governments and the Federal Government and see if it works for us and see if the governments are happy with it and if all of that falls together we'll continue with it."

And Casey just keeps that Imbecile Express a'rolling along.

Please don't let it slip out that it was the Zionist-Capitalist Weather / Earthquake generator that was responsible.

"The only surprise, is that the Jews weren't blamed for the earthquake"

Only three days after the disaster -- the official newspaper of the Vatican denounced Israel as not providing enough aid and being "too preoccupied with war"

This despite the fact that Israel was one of the first countries to organise air transport of aid medical supplies (18 tonnes worth) and doctors to Sri Lanka.

But, Israel doesn't give aid to be appreciated by the Vatican or the UN, or anyone for that matter. They do it because it's a central tennant of Judaism

'...The only surprise, is that the Jews weren't blamed for the earthquake....'

Simon Willice has, to his credit, already linked it to Global Warming;

"Global Warming,

"The temperature of the sea is increasing so its ability to maintain the Oceanic crust insulation has already been compromised.
West of Indonesia the oceanic crust was split by a well known fault line, where pressure found its weakest point and released the force required to send destruction over a wide area.
However it was not within the ring of fire, where such seismic shifts occur frequently and the populations of half the world breed, an Indian Ocean tsunami of this size in the years to come will be seen as a small and insignificant example of what will be a common enough occurrence. …"

http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2004/12/85487_comment.php

I'm sure Simon would be only too happy to connect Global Warming back to the USA and "therefore" the Jews.

(Notwithstanding his earlier claims that outside Israel, the largest population of Jews in the world is living safely in Iran where they are being cared for in secret. See his

'....Jews have the largest community out side Israel in Teheran..'
http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2004/12/84967_comment.php

Back on planet earth.....

My understanding is that seismologists in the affected countries were well aware that a major tectonic plate shift had happened, but local warning systems and civil defense arrangements were woefully inadequate to the purpose of mobilising the huge numbers of people involved. Also, there were bungled attempts at raising the alarm, further compounding the tragedy.

India has announced its intention now to start a Tsunami warning system.

But you cannot entirely blame Edward Cranswick for holding the USA accountable for the disaster. In the paranoid, half-educated loony world of leftist pseudo-intellectuals, Americans are held responsible for all the humiliating defeats and failures of the philosophically bankrupt Marxist or Marxisant micro-cults and their ratbag offshoots.

After all, like Islamicists, the Marxists and quasi-Marxists, belive they hold a "key to history" which explains all events.

How then to account for the relentless, crushing failures that socialism - especially nutty Marxist versions of socialism - are dealy year after year after year?

You guessed it - the Great Satan "explains" everything.

Coming, as it did, the day after Christmas... perhaps it's not the fault of the "Great Satan"

But, the work of the "Great SANTA"?!

Well, Rick. As you know, Coca Cola invented Santa for the purposes of exploiting Chilean peasants.

So, they're the same, really.

The proof of this is the 'Masonic' pyramid - nothing to do with the Christain trinity - on the US one dollar bill

Several published theses, and at least one feminist documentary, on this.

Oh. My. Where is my tin hat?
Edward Cranswick needs to find better use of his time.

Reading this article was 2 minutes of my time I will never get back.

Find something better to do people. Suggestion? Raise money for those suffering in Asia from the tsunami.

A question was asked of what can be done for the victims of the tragedy.

Chris Parsons Communications officer for Manly Council (Sydney) responded

" Its the left they were to blame for every thing, they should be shot"

Leon Carter of St Kilda, Melbourne responded

" It was the Jews, hrrmm hmmmm meant the zionists who control the world...." who then continued on a rant for an half hour blaming the Jews for everything...

The two are now in talks to produce a sequal to the Hit "twins" called funny enough twins2

It's obvious Bush created the earthquake to distract from the war on Iraq. The US has top secret classified earthquake generating technology, and the earthquake/tsunami had the added benefit of destabilizing two countries with rising Islamic militancy problems.

By the way, I'm a totally insane moonbat who has discovered a new theory that will allow left wingers to blame everything in history on the United States, even if it happened prior to its founding. A breakthrough unrivalled for the team since Rousseau, Marx, Lenin, Foucault, Derrida etc.

Oh , and did I forget to mention that I had a miserable childhood and hate the human race?

Bushitler is worse than Hitler, Halliburton, No Blood for Oil, Jews are the new Nazis, Free Palestine, Free Mumia, Up with mass murder, US has no right to stop terrorism, US deserved 9/11, Republicans are Nazis....

Save time, skip this post, article is only of interest to morons, Mormons and right wing detractors whose values are present and comments and are of equal significance.
The ill-informed should remain here; and dig deeper holes, this post can occupy your attention span for as long as ye all shall all refrain from seeking understanding.
Jews, Nazi’s Americans and Australians seeking power over others repeat the same crimes against humanity, neither should be blamed for greater crimes of genocide, present actions can be held up for example of normal human behavior because each of the current protagonist still demand following while they pretend difference in intention.

Genocide just makes room for protected species, there’s nothing more human than genocide, its practiced in farming for the same reasons it occurs in recent colonialist examples presently, Israel or Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia can run parallel , genocide must therefore be required and will always occur, get used to it, its natural or at least normal human behavior as can be seen.

However the acts of all humans currently contribute to the destruction of nature while it retains the power to prove what has greater control, it can be more cruel and heartless in retaliation
It reacted recently to shed the world of a threat and removed an unnecessary burden. 150 000 and still rising!. Nature commits genocide, oh the humanity! Oh compare

We all play a part in the destruction of our planet although it pays some idiots to blame others, Global Warming is Global, all inclusive, so we only have each other.

But let’s let the rightwing destructionists rule the world as they see fit, because they are doing such a great job of it, they have a plan, promoting greater development and encouraging reliance upon consumerism models while such action consumes what little time we have left as Global Warming accelerates.

Oh what an obvious mistake, never mind ignore it, carry on support it, keep on dismissing GW theories and excuse away all evidence of looming catastrophes as glitches in nature , ridicule it, after all we know what’s at risk, go for the shorterm profit, carry on primitives, limit despicability, line your caskets, die rich.

In the end nature flexes her muscles in a very un-lady like manner and mankind trembles, we just can’t win.

A word to the wise

‘The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them’ Who said that?

Doesn’t matter no one listened..

And at the level of thinking so far represented by all of the above proves there is little reason to expect change anytime soon.

No thanks to our time

American media has pulled out all the stops in its heartbreaking coverage of the Tsunami catastrophe that thus far has claimed 80,000 lives. Every major news organization and even the president himself have declared the death toll "almost incomprehensible".

I guess they must be right - that magic threshold of "comprehensibility" must indeed lie at just over 80,000, since the unthinkable horror of 100,000 Iraqis dead by the Tsunami of America's iron fist seems to have escaped their comprehension entirely. What a sad commentary that those who loudly profess their common humanity could look upon two so comparably epic disasters and react with such apparent heart-felt empathy on the one hand and such total indifference on the other.

I don't know that "heart felt empathy" accurately describes Bush's attitude towards the disaster victims of India and Asia. The U.S have killed 100,000's of thousands of defenseless people in Iraq, so why would they give a shit about non-white people suffering elsewhere? let alone even about non-whites here in the USA? (unless of course, you're old enough to enlist and go to war for them - then they pay attention to ya).

In fact, it is clear that they DO NOT give a shit about people's humanity and welfare in general. Bush could have used this opportunity as a photo op to make himself look good (we know that genuine concern for brown people would be impossible for a white supremacist) but he chose to send a very clear message that such people are not worth his concern, and to underscore that message, only threw a few pennies in relief aid, to insult the humanity of the suffering. (the motherfucker is spending more money on his inauguration than to respond to this massive tragedy.)

It is ironic that Bush's policies will lead to massive disaster, i.e Iraq, global warming, etc... but his empathy is zero in responding to the very violence he inflicts. In other words, he is your typical sociopath.

Bush, Blair and Howard are totally unsympathetic to the lives destroyed by this natural disaster and their own man-made disasters. They have to ham it up for the public but in reality they will go home and laugh about it.

How can this so-called 100,000 deaths in Iraq still not be sheeted home to Osama's Emir of Iraq? And now it is being compared to the tsunami?

Get real. Blaming the USA for this is like blaming Britain for deaths caused in Normandy fighting in 1944.

And totally out of place here

America is out of place anywhere, however as you are willing to conceed that 100 000 iraqis died, what would have happened in their lives if America had'nt invaded/occupied?
Was there a choice?
Was there a threat?
Could the war have been avoided?

Therefore how many died because of American action?

So next time think about the comparrison, the Tsunami just Arrived, America was sent.

Who benifits?

This 100,000 number has somehow transmogrified into "how many Iraqis the Americans have killed."

Why is it so much higher than Iraqbodycount? Because it's crap.

If you care, read the article in the Lancet, and the many critiques available on the web. You will find that there are many, many methodological questions that call into question its accuracy.

More importantly, even this flawed study does not claim 100,000 people were killed by the coalition. The study says there are an estimated 20,000-200,000 more deaths than in the same time period before the war based on their (crappy) survey compared with official (Baathist) estimates of death rates before the war.

So we're not talking about Iraqis killed by the coalition. We're talking about deaths from all causes.

Probably more Iraqi deaths are attributable to Islamist terrorists than Americans.

Besides, what the hell does this have to do with a tsunami?

What makes me sick is seeing world leaders standing up and bragging about how much their government has contributed to the aid effort. It looks like some twisted auction where the punters are desperately bidding for humanitarian credibility.... Colin Powell (the Bush administration's token "humanitarian") standing there with Kofi Annan saying that his country's donation was "unprecedented". What ever the actual figure is, you can bet it wouldn't buy more than 2 cruise missiles.

Yesterday I sent the following article to the newsdesks/editors of The Age, SMH and The Australian, Margo Kingston's Webdiary and Stephen Mayne's crikey.com.au.

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Have you heard anything about Diego Garcia since Boxing Day?

Diego Garcia, a narrow horseshoe- shaped atoll about 63 km long, is the southernmost island in the Chagos Archipelago and part of the British Indian Ocean Territory formed in 1965 from territory belonging formerly to Mauritius and the Seychelles. It is located in the heart of the Indian Ocean, south of India and between Africa and Indonesia. The average elevation is just 36cm (four feet) above sea level.

Why haven't we seen a single picture of Diego Garcia after the Tsunami?

Until 1971, Diego Garcia's main source of income was from the profitable copra oil plantation. During the roughly 170 years of plantation life, coconut harvests on Diego Garcia remained fairly constant, at about four million nuts annually. The plantation years ended with the arrival of the U.S. military.

This low-lying little atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean is an important place. The United Kingdom owns the island; the U.S. lease expires in 2016. It houses about 1,700 military personnel and 1,500 civilian contractors.

Navy Support Facility Diego Garcia was established 1 October 1977, after six years as a Navy communications station. Two years later, following the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Diego Garcia saw the most dramatic build-up of U.S. forces in any location since the Vietnam War era. Navy Support Facility Diego Garcia became fully operational in 1986 and four years later the first Gulf War marked the most intense operational period in Diego Garcia's history.

It was aircraft stationed at Diego Garcia that dropped more bombs on Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan than any other unit during the war on terror. In late 2002 it was reported that the Americans started to build special shelters for four to six B-2 bombers at Diego Garcia.

Given its status as a key asset in the war against terror it is important to us too. So, why haven't we seen a single picture of Diego Garcia after the Tsunami? Did the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean suffer a big hit from the Indonesian Tsunami on Dec 26th, 2004?

It is entirely logical to conclude that the island may have been devastated. Especially considering its proximity to the epicentre off the coast of Aceh (equidistant as compared to Sri Lanka) and the island's geography as a coral atoll. According to some sources Diego Garcia suffered terrible damage.

On the other hand The Pentagon via Fox News said that there were no injuries and there was no damage at Diego Garcia due to the tsunami. On Tuesday 28 December our ABC relayed the Washington Post report that Diego Garcia was unaffected by the tsunamis and that the US base was apparently safe.

"There are no reports of any damage there," Lieutenant Colonel Bill Bigelow, a spokesman for US Pacific Command in Hawaii is quoted as telling the Post. Sounds like a great quote when Don Watson writes a new edit of “Weasel Words”.

Only yesterday the soon to be former Secretary of State Colin Powell replied to a direct question about the status of Diego Garcia saying, “I don't have any information on Diego Garcia. Sorry.” Do the Defense and State Departments not share information these days?

Just to blur things further it has also been reported that five P-3 aircraft will operate out of Diego Garcia to assist with the rescue and relief effort and with President Bush increasing U.S. aid to the region to $350 million yesterday Diego Garcia may have a greater role yet to play.

Confused? Perplexed? Bamboozled? Well that’s the way it’s meant to be.

Let’s assume that “no reports of any damage” means that there really was no damage. There are other questions that remain unanswered. Chief amongst these: Did Diego Garcia receive warnings that the tsunami was surging toward its northern neighbours? Could something have been done to save lives?

There are some reports that Diego Garcia was warned. Although located in the Indian Ocean, the U.S. Navy there is technically part of the Pacific fleet. Did anyone there receive a message? If so did they try to pass it on?

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center [PTWC] in Hawaii confirmed that it tried desperately to get in touch with those in the path of great danger. According to Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's centre in Honolulu, the team did its utmost to contact counterparts in Asia.

McCreey says that his team contacted the US State Department, which apparently contacted the Asian governments. The Indian government states that no such warning was received. What happened?

The New York Times reports that "One of the few places in the Indian Ocean that got the message of the quake was Diego Garcia, a speck of an island with a United States Navy base, because the Pacific warning center's contact list includes the Navy. Finding the appropriate people in Sri Lanka or India was harder."

According to Charles McCreery "We [PTWC] don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world." Only after the first waves hit Sri Lanka did workers at PTWC contact US diplomats in Madagascar and Mauritius in an attempt to head off further disaster.

Yet there are reported to be 26 member countries of the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System, including Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia. Why wouldn’t the PTWC have the phone numbers of representatives of these member countries? Fact is they must have had at least two numbers. Australia and Indonesia were notified.

After the survivors in the devastated region are safe and the debris is cleaned up, there will be questions left to answer that can not be swept away. Will the Australian media have the courage to seek those answers?

Re: Diego Garcia -- did US military/CIA know tsunami was in progress? by Edward Cranswick Friday December 31, 2004 at 07:34 PM

Did the US military know in advance of the tsunami and did it warn personnel on Diego Garcia, but not bother to warn nations threatened by the tsunami? Mr. Cranswick poses and answers the question by proceeding from speculation to accusation, both unjustified. We do not know what US undersea sensors showed in advance of the tsunami. But even if the US military was omniscient, the sad fact remains that there was no way to transmit the information to the affected countries to have it timely used. The affected countries simply do not have an emergency alert system in place. Mr. Cranswick should reflect on how his hatred of the US affects his perception of the world.

Dear Imbecile Spotter:

If you have a mailing list, please add me to it. You provide a needed service in the blog world.

Another gay fan for imbecile spotter? Or is he just changing his name and proclaiming his love for himself?

Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory – Navy personnel on board Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean are safe following the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that had devastating effects on Southeast Asia. Facilities and operations were not affected.

Favorable ocean topography minimized the tsunami’s impact on the atoll. Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Archipelago, situated on the southernmost part of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge. To the east lies the Chagos Trench, a 400 mile long, underwater canyon that ranges in depth from less than 1,00 meters below the surface to depths that plunge to over 5,000 meters. It is one of the deepest regions of the Indian Ocean.

Diego Garcia is located to the west of Chagos Trench, which runs north and south. The depth of the Chagos Trench and grade to the shores does not allow for tsunamis to build before passing the atoll. The result of the earthquake was seen as a tidal surge estimated at six feet.

"you can bet it wouldn't buy more than 2 cruise missiles."

Yes... But what would SE Asian flood victims do with cruise missles? Wouldn't they rather have the cash? Even what's left, after Kofi Annan and his cronnies take their cut, should be a lot

"Diego Garcia is located to the west of Chagos Trench, which runs north and south. The depth of the Chagos Trench and grade to the shores does not allow for tsunamis to build before passing the atoll."

What a great place to locate the Zionist-Capitalist Weather / Earthquake machine! If it had a volcano, it would be the perfect lair for GWB and his henchmen with cool uniforms

From the FREE PRESS INTERNATIONAL Sunday Mail PRISON ships holding Osama bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants were given an hour's warning of the tsunami. The terrorists were aboard the vessels, anchored off British-owned island Diego Garcia, 1000 miles south of India. Staff were alerted to the tsunami and had around an hour to batten down the hatches aboard the eight ships, whose detainees include bin Laden henchmen Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi Binasshibh and Abu Zubaida. It's not known if the boats rode out the killer waves. Diego Garcia is a key 15-mile stretch of land leased to the US military. They used it for bombing runs on Iraq and Afghanistan. They currently use it as a holding and interrogation centre for suspected terrorists. Interrogators are not subject to US government rules on interviewing suspects. Officials at the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii alerted the base but failed to warn the affected nations, which had no warning system in place. The US government said the base had not been damaged. Human rights organisations fear physical abuse similar to that meted out in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison is being allowed on Diego Garcia. Sunday Mail

Craig reports that [t]he US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii alerted the base but failed to warn the affected nations, which had no warning system in place.

Er, I think that's what Mr Krill just said.

The affected nations had no warning system in place.

Only an imbecile would try to ring a person who has no telephone.

And only an imbecile would criticise a person for not ringing a person who has no phone.

I have documents faxed from Texas that reveal the truth about Diego Garcia. Joseph McCarthy, Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon live there. They have regular communication with Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove. Together they planned and carried out, with the aid of the American Military, a submarine nuclear blast in the Sumatran trench that triggered the 'quake/tsunami. Please don't tell anybody I possess these faxes. My life is in danger!

Imbecile Spotter writes: "Only an imbecile would try to ring a person who has no telephone."

Only the ignorant would think the region had a poor standard of telecoms before the tragic events of 26th December, 2004.

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Announcements from Sri Lanka Telecom
28th December, 2004

Latest situation of the telecommunication network in effected areas Sri Lanka Telecom would like to update the public on the latest situation of the telecommunication network.

SLT technical staff have been able to restore services at the Matara exchange and telecommunication services are now available from Matara. Service to Hikkaduwa, Kosgoda, Baddegama, Nagoda, Udugama,and Bentota have been restored. However individual telephone lines would still be out of order due to the flood.

According to information from our regional staff the Hambantota exchange has been badly damaged due to flooding and the Hambantota tower has been destroyed. Nearly 10,000 lines in Hambantota, Ambalantota, Hungama, Tangalle, Anugunakolapelessa, Tissamaharamaya, Suriyawewa, Kataragama, Middeniya, Embilipitiya, Weeraketiya, and Beliatta are currently without telecommunication services. The exact situation of the Tangalle exchange is still being assessed. SLT staff have been dispatched from Colombo and outlying areas to provide a limited temporary service to Hambantota region.

Areas of Habaraduwa, Kinniya, Wanela, Weerawila, Mawarella, Gomarankadawala, Beruwela and Payagala are still partially affected.

SLT is attempting to provide temporary service to important locations like Police, GA’s office, Hospitals in all affected areas.

27th December, 2004

Sri Lanka Telecom would like to inform the public of the current status of the telecommunication network. The network in several areas has been affected due to yesterdays disaster. Fixed lines services is not available currently in the following areas.

1 Tangalle
2. Hambantota
3. Matara

Service in the following areas are partially affected.
1 Hikkaduwa
2. Kosgaoda
3. Baddegama
4 Nagoda
5 Udugama
6 Habaraduwa
7 Matara
8 Kinniya
9 Wanela
10 Weerawila
11 Marawela
12 Gomarankadawala
13 Bantota
14 Beruwela
15 Payagala

Sri Lanka Telecom is doing its best to make temporary arrangement to provide service to effected areas. In the following locations telephone facilities are available for public to convey urgent messages to their relations, friends, relief centers, hospitals etc., The location where such facilities are available free of charge are as follows.

1. Galle Regional Telecom Office
2. Trincomalee Regional Telecom Office
3. Batticaloa Regional Telecom Office
4. Ampara Regional Telecom Office
5. Kalmnai Regional Telecom Office
6. Vavuniya Reguional Telecom Office
7. Hambantota Regional Telecom Office

The public can also contacted Sri Lanka Telecom Operator Assisted service by dialing ‘101’ and be connected to relief center, hospitals, etc., to obtain any information related to relief services.

Sri Lanka Telecom is working round the clock to restore normal services in all areas as soon as possible.

At this time of national disaster Sri Lanka Telecom extend its heartfelt condolences to all those whose family members are missing.

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Will we be mature enough to seek answers to the questions surrounding whether anyone could have been better warned and saved lives?

They could have used carrier pidgin, jungle drums, or the humble mobile phone; they could have rung the TV stations and the radio stations, maybe they just didn’t think of it?.

However they didn’t, because they really didn’t have too, it was out of their hands, not within demarcation, juristicion, outside terms of reference, not outlined in protocols, not part of the service, none of their business, making theirs an unbroken line of service while normalality resumes.

The Associated Press in Washington have reported that
the U.S. weather agency didn't have the phone numbers or staff to alert all Indian Ocean coastal countries when it saw the first signs that tsunamis could be heading their way.

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In the face of stern questioning by some in Congress over whether enough was done, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said his agency did all it was responsible for doing in warning 26 countries in the Pacific.

"We cannot watch tsunamis in the Indian Ocean," said Conrad C. Lautenbacher, the Commerce Department's undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere and a retired Navy vice admiral, noting that no warning system exists for all 11 countries where the death toll has now topped 117,000.

"Folks out there tried to contact people that they thought would be interested. ... They did what they thought at the time were the most prudent things to do," he said. "If we can improve it, believe me, we will improve it."

Fifteen minutes after Sunday's quake near Sumatra, NOAA fired off a bulletin from Hawaii to 26 Pacific nations that now make up the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System, alerting them of the quake but saying they faced no threat of a tsunami.

Fifty minutes later, the U.S. agency upgraded the severity of the quake and again said there was no tsunami threat in the Pacific, but identified the possibility of a tsunami near the quake's epicenter in the Indian Ocean.

After nearly another half hour, NOAA contacted emergency officials in Australia as a backstop, knowing they would quickly contact their counterparts in Indonesia. It wasn't until 21/2 hours after the quake that NOAA officials learned from Internet news reports that a destructive tsunami had hit Sri Lanka.

"The fact that the potential danger rose to the level of prompting a swift warning to two nations, while others could be faced with a potentially devastating impact, raises serious questions," the Senate oceans subcommittee chairwoman, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said in a letter to Lautenbacher.

Lautenbacher said there was only so much NOAA can do.

"The system is set up for the Pacific, and it is resourced and it is staffed to operate for the Pacific. It is not resourced or staffed to do the world," he said.

Among the nine nations other than Australia and Indonesia affected by the tsunamis, none was contacted by NOAA. After reports of casualties in his country, a Sri Lankan Navy commander called the Hawaii warning center to ask about the potential for more tsunamis.

Meanwhile, India's science and technology minister requested an investigation into a report that his country's air force base was told of a massive quake an hour before the tsunami hit its southern shore but disaster officials were notified too late.

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Could the call to the Indian air force have come from someone on Diego Garcia who had been contacted via US Navy channels and warned off the tsunami's rapid progress across the Indian Ocean?

Consider this news from Kenya and then think about what might have been done to save lives in Sri Lanka, India and the Maldives had the US Navy units based at Diego Garcia relayed the alert it received from Hawaii.

If you still believe "there was no one they could call" dwell for just a moment on the logic of calling the respective Ports Authority in each nation. If only someone stationed on the 'Freedom Footprint" had done just that.

Let's hope that NAVSUPPFACDG
designs and implements new procedures ASAP.

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Evacuation from beaches cut deaths by hundreds in Kenya
By Adrian Blomfield in Nairobi
(Filed: 29/12/2004)

Quick thinking by officials in Kenya may have saved hundreds of lives after the navy, police and ports authority instituted emergency precautions before tsunamis battered the east African coast.

The official death toll in eastern Africa stood at 123 last night but is expected to rise significantly once rescue workers reach isolated parts of Somalia, where entire towns and villages are said to have been submerged.

The Kenyan police evacuated 10,000 people from public beaches.

However only three people died in Kenya, one of whom is believed to be a western tourist, according to the Kenya Ports Authority.

The country seems to have been the only one affected by the earthquake that was able to react before disaster struck, an extraordinary fact given the reputation for inefficiency that most public services have here.

Although time played a crucial factor – television pictures were already showing some of the devastation in Asia by the time the first tsunami struck – an efficient evacuation programme stopped the casualties from mounting.

"Our marine specialists were monitoring satellite images from the Indian ocean so we knew we were likely to feel the after-effects," said a spokesman for the Kenyan navy. "We were then able to co-ordinate with the police, and the ports and harbours."

An emergency centre, mobilised in the past for oil spills and ferry disasters, was quickly manned and radio messages were sent out to commercial fishing vessels and ships off the coast.

"Our first priority was to get all boats out at sea into port," said Capt Twalib Hamisi, the ports authority's chief of operations.

"Many of the smaller fishing boats don't have radios but we were able to get a word-of-mouth chain going both north and south."

The main concern for officials was not so much from tsunamis, which were much less powerful than those that battered Asian coastlines, but from abnormal currents that would have sucked swimmers and boats out to sea.

Nonetheless, 9ft waves did crash over beaches, destroying properties and boats. Hippopotamuses in inland rivers were dragged five miles out to sea.

The police force was also mobilised, clearing more than 10,000 people off public beaches on Boxing Day, the busiest day of the year when Kenyans from around the country flock to the coast.

Many, fortified by alcohol and fuelled by scepticism, refused to leave until they were cajoled by riot police.

The emergency centre placed calls to hundreds of hotels, for which Christmas and New Year is the busiest period.

"The impact in terms of human lives has been minimal but I think that is only because we were very quick off the mark," said Capt Hamisi.

Many hotels and tourists had already begun to notice that something was amiss as water levels receded dramatically.

Bruce Collinson, from Maidstone, Kent, was scuba diving with friends off Watamu beach, when his boat received instructions over the radio to return to shore.

"We had just done one dive and were about to do another," he said.

"As we came in we could see the water had gone right out. After we got back on to the beach we could see that all the boats which had been anchored in several feet of water a few minutes earlier were marooned on dry land."

At the luxurious Hemingway's Resort on Watamu, a holiday destination for celebrities such as Bill Gates and Naomi Campbell at this time of year, 130 foreign tourists – most of them British – were evacuated to higher ground. Hotels up and down the coast followed suit.

Somalia, where civil war has raged for 14 years, was less fortunate.

With poor communications and no police force, most fishermen and coastal communities were unaware of the carnage in Asia. An emergency relief operation is under way and the Red Cross began flying in supplies from Kenya yesterday.

At least 10 people drowned in Tanzania. Ancient mosques and houses were badly damaged on the holiday island of Zanzibar, where mystics gathered on beaches to pray that the raging waters might be quelled.

There are a number of units based on Diego Garcia each with a specific mission.

The mission of Naval Central Meteorology and Oceanography Detachment (NAVCENTMETOCDET) Diego Garcia is "To provide the highest quality meteorological and oceanographic support to the fleet and joint war fighter in, around, or passing through the Diego Garcia operating area, and to provide support to other activities and perform other missions as assigned."

NAVCENTMETOCDET Diego Garcia is responsible for providing meteorology and oceanography (METOC) services to all U.S. and Allied forces operating in and around Diego Garcia.

Requests for METOC support from non-allied units and private/commercial concerns must be approved by NAVCENTMETOCCEN Bahrain, but the detachment will support any unit involved in an emergency or life- threatening situation.

-----

Could this unit have played a role that would have saved many lives in India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and the African east coast?

If the world is unwilling to accept the US taking the role of "world's police"

Why do they insist on the US provide the service of "world's weatherman"?

Or, for that matter, the world's amublance?

It is interesting to read the inelegant ripostes of those who automatically assume some anti-American bias in anyone who asks questions and seeks better outcomes in the future.

Few would argue that as the horrifying toll of death and destruction continues to mount in southern Asia, it becomes ever more obvious that lives could have been saved if a tsunami warning system had been in place.

As evidenced in the reports from Kenya with just 15 to 30 minutes notice, and clear directives to flee, many people who had no idea what was happening, or how to react, could have escaped to safety.

So there are legitimate questions about why there was not a warning system in place, just as there are probably acceptable answers - but the issue should still be explored so that we can learn how to avoid similar misfortune in years to come.

Some US resources did in fact try to assist those in the path of the devastating tsunami.

The quake occurred just before 8 a.m. Sumatran time [1 a.m. GMT]. Eight minutes later, an alarm was triggered at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii by seismic signals transmitted from stations in Australia. Three minutes after that, a message was sent to other observatories in the Pacific. At 8.14 a.m., an alert notified all countries participating in the network about the quake, indicating that it posed no threat of a tsunami to the Pacific.

An hour later, the centre revised its initial estimate of the size of the tremor from 8 to 8.5, and issued a second alert, warning of a possible tsunami in the Indian Ocean. A frenzy of phone calls were made to issue warnings - it would still be an hour before the wave hit India and Sri Lanka (an hour and a half before it hit The Maldives).

Geophysicist Barry Hirshorn told the Honolulu Advertiser that “We started thinking about who we could call. We talked to the State Department Operations Centre and to the military. We called embassies. We talked to the navy in Sri Lanka, any local government official we could get hold of.”

The governments of the effected countries have their own questions to answer. It has been reported that those countries the response was disorganised and lethargic. The few who were aware of the dangers were hampered by lack of preparation, bureaucratism and inadequate infrastructure. Others either did not know how to interpret the warning signs, or were indifferent to them. None of the countries surrounding the Bay of Bengal issued an official warning, leaving millions of people completely at the mercy of the approaching waves.

In Sri Lanka Sarath Weerawarnakula, director of Sri Lanka’s Geological Survey and Mines Bureau has confirmed that his organisation received an alert from international bodies about the quake. Exactly who knew what, and when, will probably never be investigated. Even after the tsunami hit the east coast, no official action was taken to alert people elsewhere. In relatively shallow water, the wave took up to an hour to sweep around the island and hit the south and west coasts.

The Indian authorities confronted many of the same obstacles as their counterparts in other countries. But they had one advantage: the Indian airforce maintains a base on the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands—Indian territory in the middle of the Bay of Bengal situated close to the earthquake’s epicentre. It was not a matter of guessing whether or not a tsunami would form. Shortly after the earthquake, the wave swept over the islands and the airforce base.

According to a report in the Indian Express, the airbase in Madras received communications from the Nicobar Islands an hour before the tsunami struck southern India. Air Force Chief S. Krishnaswamy told the newspaper: “The last message from Car Nicobar base was that the island is sinking and there is water all over.” The chief instructed his assistant to alert New Delhi, which he did—by fax—to the home of the former science and technology minister. No further action was taken and no tsunami warning was issued for Madras or for other southern Indian towns and cities.

Of course the first priority for us now is too ensure as many lives as possible are saved, as it should have been for all government officers around the region on that fateful day. Then, during the process of rebuilding we must make sense of the disaster and learn from it to ensure something similar does not happen again.

Clumsy rejoinders don't help. Sensible questioning might.

"... the inelegant ripostes of those who automatically assume some anti-American bias..."

Anti-American bias?! On Indy Media?! Never!

How racist warmongering Mossad stooge Chris Parsons works"

quote:
===========
Only an imbecile would try to ring a person who has no telephone.
==============

No telephones in Sri Lanka.
No telephones in India.
No telephones in Malaysia.
No telephones in Thailand.
No telephones in Indonesia.

Fucking savages.

Only white people have telephones.

What losses have been reported from Diego Garcia?

Is this base not the second largest US base outside continental USA?

Is it not fully manned due to operations in Iraq?

Were no major US ships, deployed/attached in the Indian Ocean / Iraq theatre, at Diego Garcia at the time of the Tsunami?

Was the static nuclear deployment on Diegio Garcia safely evacuated from the islands?

Where no major US aircraft, deployed in the Iraq theatre, at Deigo Garcia at the time of the Tsunami ?

Is it feasible that all US millatary personell were able to evacuate Diego Garcia ?

If all US personell did safely evacuate - why would they deem it necessary ... to alert any other adjacent country / community !

"...Qatar and Saudi Arabia have each pledged $10 million...

"The Islamic Development Bank in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, said it would distribute $10 million in emergency aid to Indonesia, the Maldives, Somalia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka...."

NYT - January 4, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/worldspecial4/04arab.html

"The U.S. knew about the tsunami "

- Al Jazeera

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=6430

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka has refused Israeli offers of assistance

Shut The Fuck Up
by Crisp Arson, Media Liasons Tuesday January 04, 2005 at 06:05 PM

>>> "Sri Lanka has refused Israeli offers of [MILITARY] assistance "

As Mike Riveiro put it quite nicely - just because Sri Lanka has an emergency doesn't mean they've lost their sanity.

How Many Iraqis did Sri Lanka kill with bombs last year, Rick?

http://www.iraqbodycount.net

only an imbecile
by Crisp Arson, Manly Council Media Liasons Tuesday January 04, 2005 at 07:01 PM

A phone call saved an entire village

By Shonali Muthalaly

CHENNAI, DEC. 31. Fortunately, in the midst of the many heartrending stories of death and loss, chronicles of courage and miraculous survival are surfacing everyday: the latest being the tale of four coastal villages in the Union Territory of Pondicherry, which escaped obliteration thanks to quick thinking and sheer luck.

The most remarkable perhaps is the story of Nallavadu, whose entire population of 3,600 was saved by a phone call.
http://www.hindu.com/2005/01/01/stories/2005010107320100.htm

quote:
===========
Only an imbecile would try to ring a person who has no telephone.
============

The Australian main stream media have been relatively quite about the fate of some islands in the Indian Ocean. You may not have heard much from them about Diego Garcia.

They were dumb when it came to John Pilger's investigation into the mysterious mid-Indian Ocean island.

Can they remain blind to what may be happening on the "footprint of freedom"?

-------

Diego Garcia: Paradise Cleansed

by John Pilger
There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie: "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."

Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle Creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.

All this began to end when an American rear admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice," the Americans call it.

During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labor government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq.

To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents."

What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by D.H. Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction," another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along."

There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official appeared to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory" that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else." The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers.

At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of the "sanitizing," ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."

The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.

In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides and child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment, drugs and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from the British government: less than £3,000 each, which did not cover their debts.

The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In 2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington – in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the U.S. Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a "feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade." The "study" consulted not a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking," which was news to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the U.S. Navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are "unbelievable."

In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his illegal attack on Iraq.

Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and supported by a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the "deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. As Bush's bombers take off from their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win."

This article first appeared in The Guardian.

Care advice
by society for endangered idiots Tuesday January 04, 2005 at 08:39 PM

John Pilger and the Guardian in one article are you trying to kill SPanky?

Diego Garcia exiles to seek #4bn from US

Ewen MacAskill and Rob Evans
Wednesday December 13, 2000
The Guardian (London)

Indian Ocean islanders illegally evicted from their homes 30 years ago to make way for an American base at Diego Garcia are to sue the US government for $6bn in compensation.

The islanders are to mount the legal challenge after their case in the High Court in London last month, in which they won the right to return home.

Most of the islanders were moved from the Chagos archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia, to Mauritius, where they have failed to integrate and live in poverty.

An end to their exile appeared to be in sight following the case in London but complications have arisen. The US, which leases Diego Garcia from Britain and which strongly opposes the return of the islanders, is throwing up obstacles.

The US has conceded it cannot prevent them returning to neighbouring islands but it will not allow them on Diego Garcia itself. It has also refused to allow the islanders more than a handful of jobs on Diego
Garcia and, most important of all, is denying them use of the landing strip.

The cost of building an airstrip on a neighbouring island is estimated at #50m to #100m. Without access to an airfield, life on the islands would be difficult.

Richard Gifford, a lawyer acting on behalf of the islanders, was in Washington last week preparing the legal case. "I think there are considerable problems if the US sits tight in Diego Garcia," he said.

He held initial discussions with Commander Ed Grogan, a lawyer representing the navy section of the US state department.

Mr Gifford said court hearings will expose the discriminatory employment practices: "We want to let it all hang out."

Since the base opened, the US has brought in workers from the Philippines and Mauritius but has never employed any of the exiled islanders.

The Foreign Office is also being sued for compensation. Mr Gifford declined to put a figure on it yesterday, asking what price could be put to taking homes from 6,000 people. "It will run into millions," he said.

The foreign secretary, Robin Cook, initially tried to block the islanders return but caved in after last month's court setback. His office has accepted that it will have to pay the costs of resettling the islanders, but it will fight any claims for compensation, arguing that it will have done enough if it meets the costs of making the
islands habitable again.

Of the 6,000 islanders in line for the #4.1bn compensation being sought, between 400 and 4,000 want to return home. The initial compensation estimate put forward by US lawyers was #1m for each islander.

An initial assessment carried out by the Foreign Office into the feasibility of making some of the islands habitable found that it would be practicable but expensive. A further study into fresh water supplies, projected to take a year, is being carried out.

In a further twist, Mauritius, whose territory once included Diego Garcia, is demanding a restoration of sovereignty.

Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, met the island's prime minister, Anerood Jugnauth, on Sunday and said she was now well briefed on the Chagos Islands.

"But I think it's important to understand," she said, "that the legal aspects of this discussion are between the United Kingdom and Mauritius, and not between the United States and Mauritius."

http://www.dg.navy.mil US navy on Diego Garcia
http://www.chagos.org Chagossian campaigning site

=======================================
Guardian (London)
4 November 2000, p. 3

Scandal of Diego Garcia: Thirty years of lies, deceit and trickery that robbed a people of their island home

By Ewen MacAskill and Rob Evans

Diego Garcia, halfway between India and Africa, in the Indian Ocean, once an idyllic home to hundreds but also strategically placed to provide the US with a crucial air base, below Olivier Bancoult, cleared from his Indian Ocean home by the British government 32 years ago, dropped to his knees and kissed the ground when he returned this June. Mr Bancoult, who was only four when he left, was in tears, as were two older islanders accompanying him:
"After not being able to see the motherland for so long, it was something very emotional."

Mr Bancoult and his companions were allowed three days on the islands to gather material for yesterday's successful legal challenge to the Foreign Office. He was hugged by fellow islanders outside the high court in London after winning the right to return home.

Their return - or at least adequate compensation - would bring an end to a shameful episode in British and US history in which both governments tricked the islanders out of their homes to make way for a
US military base. The numbers involved are small - anywhere between 400 and 4,000 islanders might want to go home - but the issues raised are not. The episode highlights the ease with which politicians and
diplomats in Britain and the US lied; their determination to keep their duplicity hidden from parliament, Congress and the UN; the extent to which the US dictates British foreign policy; and, above all else, how two powers abused the trust of the islanders.

The behaviour of the governments is laid bare in hundreds of pages of correspondence, never published before and almost all of it marked secret. Many were unearthed by the Guardian in the Public Records
Office at Kew, others were presented as evidence in court.

Unwelcome questions

One of them, an internal Foreign Office memo in 1980, recommended to the then foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, that "no journalists should be allowed to visit Diego Garcia" and that visits by parliamentarians
or congressmen be kept to an absolute minimum in order to keep out those "who deliberately stir up unwelcome questions".

The US first took an interest in 1962 in the Chagos islands, a beautiful archipelago of 65 islands that includes Diego Garcia, Penhos Banhos and Saloman, halfway between Africa and India. The US, fixated on the communist threat at the height of the cold war, was
alarmed by a Chinese attack on India that year and wanted to plug the gap in its strategic deployment as it had no base between the Mediterranean and the Philippines.

Britain and the US entered into secret negotiations in 1964. The Chagos islands were - and continue to be - part of Britain's dwindling empire. Under the deal, Britain would lease Diego Garcia to the US to
use as a base. The US wanted not only Diego Garcia but the surrounding islands free of people for security reasons. The only problem was that there were people on them. Britain agreed. A Foreign Office memo,
marked secret, written by P. B. Porter of the East Africa department on February 13, 1969, disclosed that at a Whitehall meeting the Treasury representative "greatly preferred the ideal of a complete sterilisation of the islands."

How to achieve this? British civil servants hit on the solution of denying that the islanders were permanent residents and insisting they were temporary contract workers, employed on the copra plantations.
This was the line that both the British and US governments were to maintain for years, even though they knew it was untrue. One Whitehall document, dated January 1970, is even subtitled Maintaining the
Fiction.

Some of those working on the islands were, as Britain and the US insisted, temporary residents, brought in from Mauritius and the Seychelles to work on the copra plantations. But about 400, as the British government disclosed in memos but not in public, had lived on
the islands for at least two generations.

Britain and the US were worried that if this emerged, they would be in trouble with the UN. Instead, they hit on the ruse of categorising them as "transient" workers with no rights of residence and had them shipped to Mauritius, even though internal memos admitted it was an unsuitable cultural and economic environment. Britain paid Mauritius pounds 650,000 to help them settle.

The Labour MP, Tam Dalyell, then as now a nuisance to government, had been tabling questions. The Foreign Office, in a memo distributed round Whitehall on November 13, 1970, said: "We would not wish it to
become general knowledge that some of the inhabitants have lived on Diego Garcia for at least two generations and could, therefore, be regarded as 'belongers'. The memo, written by E. J. Emery of the
Foreign Office's Pacific and Indian Ocean department, added: "We shall, therefore, advise ministers in handling supplementary questions about whether Diego Garcia is inhabited to say that there is only a
small number of contract labourers from the Seychelles and Mauritius engaged to work on the copra plantations on the island."

Detailed guidance notes were issued to Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence press officers telling them to mislead the media if asked.

Why did British governments go to such trouble? The obvious reason was that both governments would have faced public outcry if it had come out at the time and would have been in contravention of UN treaties
respecting the rights of indigenous people.

But there were further implications. Foreign Office documents marked "top secret" reveal that, in return for granting the US the base, Washington waived pounds 5m Britain owed to the US for the Polaris
nuclear missile. The deal was signed by the Labour foreign secretary, George Brown.

The US initially asked for the deal to be kept secret and the then Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, complied, lying in public.

On April 18, 1967, C.H. Henn, sent a memo from the Foreign Office to the US government: "Ultimately, under extreme pressure, we should have to deny the existence of a US contribution in any form, and to advise
ministers to do so in (parliament) if necessary. Clearly, we should do more confidently if you could confirm that the US would take a similar line under pressure."

Financial agreement

But the US began to wobble. A Foreign Office memo to the British embassy in Washington on June 2 1967, advised the British ambassador to Washington in 1976 to stress personally to the US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, that "if the Americans, under pressure, reveal the
existence of the financial agreement, then we should be in acute parliamentary and constitutional difficulties."

Politicians and diplomats will go to extraordinary lengths to explain away their lies. Michael Stewart, then Labour foreign secretary, wrote in a memo on April 21 1969: "The Americans did not make a direct contribution: we have merely paid less than we would have otherwise ... there is thus no question of the House of Commons having been misled."

Every government since the 1960s has connived in this injustice. The foreign secretary, Robin Cook, supported the cause of the islanders in opposition but his position now is unclear. The Foreign Office yesterday distanced itself from the events of 30 years ago but it is the same Foreign Office that fought the islanders in court.

War is about making people do what your people want them to do by using force.

Genocide is making room for your own people, while they look the other way.

Peace is the time taken to reload.

Safety is the time taken between making threats

Wildlife is seen on Television, repeated frequently so endangered animals seem common species.

Conservation seems popular on television, politicians never answer the questions on television, and gardens are all green on television while reality isn’t reality on television.

It all looks good on television, I've never seen a bum look big in anything on the screen, and dead bodies don't smell on television while democracy seems feasible but only when it repeated without elucidation on television.

Do you take dictation?

I first visited Diego Garcia in 1995. The only way to reach there is by military transport from Singapore. This is the way that both civilians and military staff arrive at the island.

The population of the atoll, at that time was,

-- approx 3,000 US Navy and US Marines
-- approx 500 US Civilian Contractors
-- approx 3,000 Foreign National Contract Workers (mostly from the Marutius Island and the Philippines)
-- approx 100 British Custom Services

Which makes it pretty small, in terms of US Military bases and not (as is maintained above) "one of the largest US military bases in the world"

The British provide both the customs services -- they check your bags REAL well -- and the official police force (in conjuction with the US Military)

There is a VERY active social life -- a nice officer's club, enlisted clubs (which I didn't visit), and the "Brit Club" -- the "Brit Club" being the most fun of all.

The copra plantation is still there and it can be visited with permission of the British Customs Service.

Historically, there has never been an indiginous population, the first permanent residents being French lepers abandoned there in 1780.

The French later introduced slaves on the atoll for the coconut factories in 1793.

The British took control (and still own the island outright) during the Napoleanic Wars

There is a lagoon in the centre of the atoll -- but I don't recommend letting the dogs swim there (sharks, don't you know). Beachcombing is fun, I once found a Malaysian Airlines baseball cap washed up on shore and other people I know have found the strangest things.

There is an exceptionally long airfield -- which, among other things, is used as alternate landing site for the Space Shuttle.

It would make a really lousy place to be a spy station -- as it isn't close enough to anything to spy on. It's over 1,000 miles from the nearest location of interest.

Telephone communications in 1995 was pretty bad --

-- There was US Military AUTOVON -- which was, at the time, oversubscribed and took upwards of an hour to book an outgoing call.

-- There was INMARSAT satellite phone -- at the time, only available to ships

-- There is a "Cable and Wireless" STD Centre, where you can make outbound calls for just over US$10.00 / minute and it also takes a long time to book a call

The US Navy has been a very good tenant over the years. There are no awkward, outward signs of development. In the spirit of low-impact development, there isn't a building on the atoll that's higher than two stories. They are absolutely fanatical about pollution and any dumping into the sea can cost some poor Navy Captain his career. The lagoon at the atoll is as pristine as any I've seen. All rubbish not recycled is taken off the island.

Let's say the US Navy cleared out to let the previous tenants reclaim the island?

-- What would happen to the 3,000 or so Maruitian or Phillipinos who currently support there families from their jobs there?

-- What would the returned Islanders do? The island is to remote for tourism. There is currently no world-wide market for copra. It would just be another island nation on the dole.

Or, perhaps that really doesn't matter, does it?

Rick, French lepers in 1700 and watsit, Filipino itinerate workers and their families and what could be stranger than a MA baseball cap washed up on a beach..???
Have you ever been there?
Australia was an uninhabited Island before the British arrived; mostly a harsh land of desert swamps and torturous terrain, dangerous waters, and the British used it to dump prisoners.
What would the indigenous people do with their Island? well I'm sure they could live nicely on the back rent and earn a quid from Tourists who would like to do a bit of beach combing and fishing, water skiing and snorkeling on the reefs, you know tourist stuff Rick you moron.
Oh I know its remote but guess what most tourists fly to their destination and the Island has an Airport that could handle the traffic.
And I know spying should be done up close and personal, over the shoulder, but somehow the professionals like listening in to satellite communications, right beneath India’s stationary Sat System would be a good place to snoop, after all it is a N Power.
Rick at least think before you go digging graves.
The owners were tricked, and the Island was stolen, because they were brown people, like the Bikini islanders or Aborigines here …. Then you’ll get to realize there is a pattern forming, the Island has been polluted denuded of plants, chemicals have been tested there for military purposes and everything is just dumped into the sea for disposal, plus the accumulated wastes of military occupation has been surface dumped, why should they care where is the EPA whose looking?. The Island cannot be handed back because it would cost a fortune to decontaminate; there was also an N accident there a few years ago, maybe before your time, its an island story, one of those whispers but groundzero is known, have you had kids?/Cancer or one of each?. that you would also know about if indeed you have really visited the Island

"Australia was an uninhabited Island before the British arrived"

Really?! Then who are the aborigines? Are they English?

"What would the indigenous people do with their Island?"

There are no indiginous people from Diego Garcia

"...earn a quid from Tourists who would like to do a bit of beach combing and fishing, water skiing and snorkeling on the reefs, you know tourist stuff Rick you moron."

The beaches are terrible -- lots of high, rough surf (not the right kind for surfing either)

The lagoon, while pretty, isn't good for snorkling -- because of the sharks

Yes, people can fly there -- but there are so many better, closer locations -- that alone would make it difficult to make a business case for the required amount of capital for the development of a tourist industry. The natural fresh water supply on the atoll(according to an 1850 survey) can only support about 500 people. The US Navy runs mega-litre desalinization plants. Who will run them and maintain them when the US Navy is gone?

You mention back rent -- but, since the legal owners of the atoll are the British (since the 1820's) and they have been in continuous residence since then -- who would they pay the rent to? The US rents their facilities from the UK.

"...but somehow the professionals like listening in to satellite communications, right beneath India’s stationary Sat System would be a good place to snoop, after all it is a N Power."

I'm sure the US continously snoops on India -- but there are a lot of better places to do that from. If you want to monitor a geo-sat, you can be anywhere in its footprint. You don't need to be in the middle of the God-forsaken ocean

"The owners were tricked, and the Island was stolen, because they were brown people, like the Bikini islanders or Aborigines here"

There are no aboriginal people of the Chagos Island chain or Diego Garcia

"Then you’ll get to realize there is a pattern forming, the Island has been polluted denuded of plants, "

The part of the Island with the fewest trees is the old copra plantation -- which is a protected area, controlled by the British Customs Service. The US Navy has an active forestation programme on the atoll.

"The Island cannot be handed back because it would cost a fortune to decontaminate; there was also an N accident there a few years ago, maybe before your time, its an island story, one of those whispers but groundzero is known"

The island has been continuously populated by heavily monitored populations (US and British Civil Service and Military -- even guest workers are entitled to free health care) and the population hasn't shown any signs of unusual health problems.

"...have you had kids?/Cancer or one of each?. that you would also know about if indeed you have really visited the Island"

Two beatiful girls with no extra eyes or appendages... no cancer either, thanks for asking

Remember the string of embarrassing incidents for Lavarack army barracks last year.

Six soldiers from the barracks were six soldiers from Townsville were found to have tortured and killed a litter of stray kittens during a drinking session. The soldiers crushed a kitten under the tyre of a 4WD, dragged another on a rope behind a motorbike and doused the rest with petrol before setting them alight.

These boys (unworthy of being called soldiers) were each fined $2000 and discharged from the army.

Then again it seems that cruelty to animals is not a new trick in military circles.

Here's a fine 'war' story from a US Navy lad once posted to Diego Gracia:

"In 86 or 87 the Brits decided to declare 'open season' on chickens for one day. They figured the TCNs would go round them up, mercifully execute them and eat them. But it was a Sunday, and all the young toughs got drunk up and went out and killed chickens using some pretty gross methods. As I recall the story, the helicopter pilots went out with golf clubs and practiced on the chicks - that sort of thing. Was very "Lord of the Flies-ish". Anyway, that was the last of 'open seasons' and the Brits went back to secret roundups and drownings in the same cages they used for cats."

This news hit the web 1 hour ago

By Scott Foster and Robert Windrem
NBC News

Updated: 7:20 p.m. ET Jan. 4, 2005

A deep underwater trench, a 30-year-old military decision and a tsunami warning saved one of America’s most secret bases from any significant damage during last week’s tsunami, say U.S. officials.

Diego Garcia, a 10-square-mile British island leased to the U.S. Navy, sits in the middle of the Indian Ocean, just south of the hard-hit Maldives. From the tiny atoll, the United States monitors all manner of communications from around the Middle East, East Africa and southern Asia, whether Indian or Pakistani nuclear intentions or terrorist travels.

The island also has an airfield capable of handling nuclear bombers and a seaport where supplies for much of the region are stored aboard pre-positioning ships. Bombers launched from Diego Garcia flew missions over Iraq in Desert Storm in 1990-91 and in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

With an average height of 4 feet above sea level and a high point of only 22 feet, the island would have seemed to be as vulnerable as many other Indian Ocean islands to the tsunami that smashed into the coastline of Southeast Asia Christmas night and in the other direction sped across 3,000 miles of open water past Diego Garcia on the way to Africa.

Yet favorable ocean topography, including that deep underwater trench, and a fortunate decision by the Navy to place key facilities at the northern end of the island shielded Diego Garcia from major damage. While a 6-foot-high wave did hit the island, the underwater canyon essentially bore the brunt of the assault.

“There was no impact to facilities or personnel there,” one Navy official told NBC News, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There was minor debris and beach erosion at other areas of the island, but nothing significant.”

Diego Garcia on Jan. 1, five days after the tsunami, showed no significant damage. / spaceimaging.com

The Navy reports that more than anything else, “favorable ocean topography” minimized the tsunami's impact on the atoll. Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Archipelago, which extends north from the Maldives. To the east lies the Chagos Trench, a 400-mile-long underwater canyon that ranges in depth from about 3,000 feet below the surface to 15,000 feet. It is one of the deepest regions in the Indian Ocean.

"The depth of the Chagos Trench and grade to the shores does not allow for tsunamis to build before passing the atoll. The result of the earthquake was seen as a tidal surge estimated at 6 feet," according to a Navy fact sheet.

John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org has noted that islands like Diego Garcia have natural defenses: "Small islands with steep slopes usually experience little run-up [from tsunamis] — wave heights there are only slightly greater than on the open ocean. This is the reason that islands with steep-sided fringing or barrier reefs are only at moderate risk from tsunamis.”

Moreover, the base at Diego Garcia received the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's warnings, which are issued in Hawaii. The Navy official said the island gets the warnings routinely as part of the Navy's Pacific Fleet command structure even though it is located in the Indian Ocean.

A satellite image of Diego Garcia, taken on New Year’s Day south of India by Space Imaging, bears out the Navy's assessment.

“In this case commercial satellite imagery is useful to show areas that are still operational, especially since no reporters are allowed on Diego Garcia," said Mark Brender, Washington operations director for Space Imaging.

He noted that one image showed that KC-135 tankers, B-1 bombers and cocoon-shaped inflatable and portable B-2 stealth bomber hangars adjacent to a parking ramp were undamaged.

Bob Windrem is an NBC News investigative producer. Scott Foster is NBC's Pentagon producer. To see more satellite imagery, see the Digital Globe Web site.

Australia was an uninhabited Island before the British arrived"

Really?! Then who are the aborigines? Are they English?

No Rick aborigines were not thought to be human, until 1967, when finally Anglo's here decided that counting them as part of the flora and fauna was a little to obviously white supremist, while at around the same time were conscious of how the White only policy was looking. Australians practiced Genocide although in fairness that terms a bit misplaced, for ethnic cleaning genocide etc the target has to be human, so here it was regarded as more a kin to pest control. Poison was used, concentration, starvation disease and removing children with the intention to breed out the race while the world and Australians looked the other way, it was a church/government partnership, we are over that now, not sorry and reject the notion that it ever occure but, it was normal for the time..

How far do you want to go back regarding the Islands indigenous population?
It could not be ‘Terra Nullius’ could it? Were the descendant’s lepers?. I don't think any international law applies, because in reality there is no law. But the original inhabitance before the brits arrived still have a claim, the island was cleared of people, they were evicted and then the Island was leased to the US.
Britain laid claim to most of the world during the empire days, but really can they still own the stolen land, its not your call to say the people who want it back don't have a use for it and need to listen to authority.

War is about making people do what your people want them to do by using force.
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Is it not also about making your own people do what they do not want to do?

Genocide is making room for your own people, while they look the other way.
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Is it not about instilling xenophobia or at least fear of differences in people, persuading them that their safety would be threatened, should coexistence takes place?

Peace is the time taken to reload.
Safety is the time taken between making threats
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Is peace similar to a TV program with war the commercial break or vice versa? In the history of mankind has there been more peacetime than wartime?

Conservation seems popular on television, politicians never answer the questions on television, and gardens are all green on television while reality isn’t reality on television.
--------------------------------------------------------
Is Big Brother watching you or are you watching Big Brother?

It all looks good on television, I've never seen a bum look big in anything on the screen, and dead bodies don't smell on television while democracy seems feasible but only when it repeated without elucidation on television.
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I thought people looked fatter on TV. I would say that TV is like one of those distorting mirrors where all is not what it appears to be.

According to BBC television world talkback US scientists did know but did not alert anybody. It sounded more like a lack of thought than deliberate (non) response. One call to the media would have saved tens of thousands of lives.

even if it only saved one person... wouldn't that be better than NOTHING? wouldnt that be worth the effort?

But the world news broadcasters could have got the message across to tens of thousands if just one person had bothered to make one fucking phone call to them.

Just one.

"How far do you want to go back regarding the Islands indigenous population?
It could not be ‘Terra Nullius’ could it? ... But the original inhabitance before the brits arrived still have a claim"

'Terra Nullius' means 'empty land'. The principle was expanded in the 18th century to include land that was peopled by 'backwards or uncivlised people'. However, in the the case of Diego Garcia. The land was quite literally unpeopled -- civilised or un-civilised.

If your claim is that the original human inhabitant left prior to the 16th Century -- then the statue of limitation is probably exhaused on any claim to recover the territory.

Not every island in the world had people on in in the 18th century. There have been Europeans visitors to the Chagos island chain since the 16th Century -- including the Portuguese who originally named the atoll Diego Garcia. There is no record of a solitary human settlement being on the atoll. However, the records of those visits do record the presense of coconut palms and many seabirds.

The first permanent human inhabitants were French lepers who were forcibly abandonded on the atoll in 1780. The atoll became, at that time, a French possession.

The French later introduced slaves onto the atoll (the origins of those slaves isn't recorded) to harvest and process coconuts. No record was made of the population of slaves or their French overlords -- the first known survey and census of the atoll being taken in 1824, by the British.

The atoll became a British possesion during the Napoleonic Wars.

"... the island was cleared of people, they were evicted and then the Island was leased to the US. Britain laid claim to most of the world during the empire days, but really can they still own the stolen land, its not your call to say the people who want it back don't have a use for it and need to listen to authority. "

The atoll was a British seaplane base of operations during the Second World War.

In 1965 England formed the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which included Diego and the Chagos Archipelago (previously part of the colony of Mauritius),

In payment for the detached islands, and to resettle the inhabitants, Mauritius was given 3 million pounds, and the Seychelles was given a new airport on Mahe. The Governor of the Seychelles was made the Commissioner of the BIOT. So, any settlement claims the previous inhabitant have is against the current government of Mauritius or the Seychelles

The atoll was cleared of people in the 1966 -- AFTER Britain had dis-established more than 90% of its empire

Just like Mr Moss, the British government initially denied that the Ilois were inhabitants of Diego Garcia and claimed that they were "contract labourers" on the Chagos Islands.

However, the government was contradicted by its own film, shot in the 1950s, which spoke of the Chagos being inhabited "mostly by men and women born and brought up in the islands".

Rick Moss may be technically correct - there were no indigines when the Portugese 'found' Diego Garcia.

However, he is morally bankrupt to believe that those people born 'native' on the island have no claim.

A few years ago Olivier Bancoult stated that "The number of Chagossians (including Ilois) originally exiled by Britain is dwindling as many are dying naturally or of old age. But their children are here to claim their right. There are now altogether 7,818 Chagossians, including the younger generation, who are the victims of the colonial administration."

Imagine, Mr Moss, if our sons or daughters were denied the right to live in Australia because they are not "indigenous". You'd be taking up arms to stop that happening and fighting till your heart stopped beating.

"However, he is morally bankrupt to believe that those people born 'native' on the island have no claim. "

Actually -- there are many countries

-- Japan
-- Korea
-- Saudi Arabia

to name just a few

where being born in the country, to non-citizens, gives you no right to citizenship. What complicates the situation further, in respect to the claim to rights of citizenship, is that the atoll of Diego Garcia has never been a sovereign nation -- it has always been a possesion of either France or Britain (it remains a British possesion today)

"A few years ago Olivier Bancoult stated that "The number of Chagossians (including Ilois) originally exiled by Britain is dwindling as many are dying naturally or of old age. But their children are here to claim their right."

I don't argue that they can't make a claim -- anyone can make a claim. It's up to the courts to decide whether or not the claim is valid.

My question is -- WHO do they make the claim against? Since Britain has already paid out for repatriation of the inhabitants to Seychelles and Mauruitias governments, the claims need to made against them, not the US or Britain.

I do, however, suggest that the claim may be disingenious, as I don't believe the Chagossians actually mean to relocate to Diego Garcia. This claim is about compensation.

I also believe that those who incite the Chagossians to make such a claim (most likely to take a political swipe at the US or British government) are doing them a dis-service

"Imagine, Mr Moss, if our sons or daughters were denied the right to live in Australia because they are not "indigenous". You'd be taking up arms to stop that happening and fighting till your heart stopped beating. "

My daughters were born in Japan, and holds a US Passports. I am a naturalised Australian. So, neither I nor my family make claims to indiginous status. I don't believe I would take up arms to live in Australia.

I would, however, take up arms to defend Australia

As we have all now learned the Chagos Archipelago, which includes the coral attol of Diego Garcia fortunately saved from the destructive force of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, was ceded by defeated Napoleonic France to Great Britain in 1814 along with the islands of Mauritius.

From that date until 1965 the Archipelago was governed as part of the British colony of Mauritius.

On at least some of the islands there lived in modern times a people called the Ilois. They were an 'native' people: they were born there, as were one or both of their parents, in many cases one or more of their grandparents, in some cases (it is said) one or more of their great-grandparents.

In the 1960s by agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States of America it was resolved that there be established a major American military base upon the chief island of the Chagos Archipelago, Diego Garcia.

In order to facilitate the establishment of the base, the Archipelago was first divided from Mauritius and constituted (together with certain other islands) as a separate colony to be known as the "British Indian Ocean Territory" ("BIOT"). Ss.3 - 5 of the BIOT Order provide:

"3. As from the date of this Order -

the Chagos Archipelago, being islands which immediately before the date of this Order were included in the Dependencies of Mauritius, and the Farquhar Islands, the Aldabra Group and the Island of Desroches, being islands which immediately before the date of this Order were part of the Colony of Seychelles, shall together form a separate colony which shall be known as the British Indian Ocean Territory."

s.19 of the BIOT Order provides:

"There is reserved to Her Majesty full power to make laws from time to time for the peace, order and good government of the British Indian Ocean Territory (including, without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing, laws amending or revoking this Order)."

This makes Diego Gracia and its administration clearly a responsibility of the Crown.

Then in 1971 the whole of the Ilois population of BIOT (and other civilians living there) were compulsorily removed to Mauritius. Their removal was effected under a measure called the Immigration Ordinance 1971 ("the Ordinance"). The Ordinance was made by the Commissioner for BIOT.

He made, or purportedly made, the Ordinance under powers conferred by s.11 of the BIOT Order. He made it upon the orders of the Queen's Ministers in London.

A report written by a British official in March 1971, very close in time to the making of the Ordinance, includes this passage:

"There are now about 829 people in the Chagos Archipelago, of whom about 359 live on Diego Garcia itself and the remainder on the two other inhabited atolls of Peros Banhos and Salomon. Of the total, 386 are dual citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies and of Mauritius (they are known as Ilois). As far as we know, neither the Ilois themselves nor the Mauritius authorities are aware of their dual nationality. There are also 35 citizens of Mauritius, and 408 citizens of the UK and Colonies from Seychelles..."

To cut a long story short, it is the UK that is responsible for the fate of the Ilois and the British High Court had ruled in 2000 that the expulsion of the Chagossians (including the Ilois of Diego Garcia) was illegal. This was only over-ruled in 2004 by the British Government exercising a little-used 'prerogative power'.

The course now being taken runs to the European Court of Human Rights, where the Chagossian's lawyers are looking again at the circumstances of the forced removal, and have begun to discuss whether it should be labelled as a 'crime against humanity'.

The concept of crimes against humanity consists of a number of practices, including deportation or forcible transfer of population and other inhuman acts directed against any civilian population when committed on a widespread or systematic basis. Given this, the question is whether the forcible transfer of the Chagos islanders to Mauritius and the Seychelles by the UK in the 1960s and 1970s constitutes a crime against humanity.

International law clearly forbids time limits in prosecutions in such cases and may also preclude time limits for bringing civil cases for restitution and compensation for victims of crimes against humanity. However, there are some suggestions that the British government is playing a waiting game in the hope that younger generations born outside the islands, may give up their claims as the emotional ties to the islands become weakened and Chagossian identity and unity is eroded.

"The course now being taken runs to the European Court of Human Rights, where the Chagossian's lawyers are looking again at the circumstances of the forced removal, and have begun to discuss whether it should be labelled as a 'crime against humanity'. "

I wish them luck with it

The Chagossians are not without friends, but so far it is those interested in keeping Diego Garcia for their own secretive purposes that seem to have all the luck.

Senator Arken Specter from Pennslyvannia, widely considered to be one of the most moderate Senate Republicans, met with Mauritian Prime Minister Sir Anerood Jugnauth and then Deputy PM Paul Raymond Bérenger to explore trade and security issues in 2002.

Prime Minister Jugnauth was nearing the end of his term as PM at that time, and has since assumed the ceremonial role of President of Mauritius. Paul Raymond Bérenger, former Secretary-General of the MMM (Mauritius Militant Movement), is now Prime Minister.

The Senator asked Berenger about U.S. security interests in the region. According to the Senator, "He seemed to qualify what we understood to be the official Mauritian position on the Chagossian island of Diego Garcia by stating that, in return for full sovereignty over all the other Chagossian islands, Mauritius would be willing to defer the issue of Diego Garcia – "agreeing to disagree" over its final status while seeking to build U.S. confidence in the prospect of eventual Mauritian succession."

Just thirteen days before the Tsunami smashed much of the Indian Ocean rim, this is just a taste of discussion in the House of Lords:

Lord Beaumont of Whitley asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they will reconsider their decision to prevent the British people of the Chagos Islands returning to their original homes.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the Government undertook a study that concluded in 2002 to look at the feasibility of resettlement by the Chagossians of the outer islands of the Chagos archipelago. The conclusions of that study stated that resettlement would be precarious and the cost of maintaining long-term habitation would be prohibitive. The Government will therefore not reconsider their decision to prevent resettlement, which was taken after long and very careful consideration.

Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, is it not extraordinary even by the standards of a British government that a people should be expelled from their country, that that should be declared legally inadmissible and wrong and that the British Government should then forbid them to return to their settlement, which the judgment would have allowed them to do? Regarding the possibility of how precarious their position would be if they arrived, is that not a matter for them to decide?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, over the passing years, there are many issues on which governments have cause to reflect. The expulsion of the people from these islands took place in the late 1960s and, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, is aware, the Government have already paid compensation to the Chagossians. There were two payments, which altogether amounted at the time to almost £5 million. In today's value that amounts to some £14.5 million. At that time, the Chagossians' own lawyers advised them that that represented a fair and reasonable settlement. It is important to remember that when the noble Lord implies—as he managed to do in his Question—that we have somehow behaved dishonourably.

There is now legislation by Order in Council, which is the normal procedure for amending the constitution of an overseas territory. For some territories, Orders in Council are made under statutory powers. For others, such as the BIOT, they are under Royal prerogative. The noble Lord will know that that status is being challenged by judicial proceedings and it would be inappropriate for me to comment further on the legality.

Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, will the Minister kindly tell me approximately where are the Chagos Islands?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the Chagos Islands are near Mauritius and the Seychelles. Some of those who were expelled went to settle in Mauritius and some went to settle in the Seychelles. Now that they have access to British nationality, which this Government granted them, some are resident in the United Kingdom.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, apart from the cases of mass deportation by Stalin in the Soviet Union, is this not the only instance in the past half century where a whole people have been uprooted and removed from their ancestral territories? What advice did the Government take before the Orders in Council were promulgated on whether this action by the Government is consistent with the ECHR?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the noble Lord should be jolly careful not to over-egg his pudding with his reference to Stalin. The fact is that these people were paid compensation: I do not believe that that happened under Stalin. The noble Lord should be a little more careful when drawing his analogies. Of course proper legal advice was taken before the Government proceeded with the Orders in Council.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, why do the people want to return? Will they be physically prevented from doing so or is this a legal matter? Do they merely have nostalgic ideas about how good life might have been there?

The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had this to say at:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2004/s2358.htm

Dec. 29, 2004 - NOAA scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii went to work within minutes of getting a seismic signal that an earthquake occurred off the west coast of Northern Sumatra, Indonesia. NOAA issued a bulletin indicating no threat of a tsunami to Hawaii, the West Coast of North America or to other coasts in the Pacific Basin-the U.S. area of responsibility.

NOAA scientists then began an effort to notify countries about the possibility that a tsunami may have been triggered by the massive 9.0 undersea earthquake. The Pacific Basin tsunami warning system did not detect a tsunami in the Indian Ocean since there are no buoys in place there.

Even without a way to detect whether a tsunami had formed in the Indian Ocean, NOAA officials tried to get the message out to other nations not a part of its Pacific warning system to alert them of the possibility of a tsunami. However, the tsunami raced across the ocean at speeds up to 500 mph. Below is the timeline of agency's actions once the undersea earthquake was detected by the NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

(All times listed below are Hawaii Standard Time or HST.)

At 2:59 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time (HST) on Christmas Day a large earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, Indonesia.

At 3:07 p.m. the resulting seismic signals received at the NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) from stations in Australia triggered an alarm that alerted watchstanders.

At 3:10 p.m. PTWC issued a message to other observatories in the Pacific with its preliminary earthquake parameters.

At 3:14 p.m. PTWC issued a bulletin providing information on the earthquake and stating there was no tsunami threat to the Pacific nations that participate in the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific (ITSU). These member nations are part of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific (ICG/ITSU). India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives are not part of the Pacific system.

At 4:04 p.m. PTWC issued bulletin No. 2 revising the earthquake magnitude to 8.5. That bulletin stated no tsunami threat to the Pacific but identified the possibility of a tsunami near the epicenter. No additional information regarding the formation of a tsunami was available.

At approximately 4:30 p.m. HST PTWC attempted to contact the Australia Met Service with no luck but were successful in contacting Australia Emergency Management. They confirmed they were aware of the earthquake.

At approximately 5:30 p.m. Internet newswire reports of casualties in Sri Lanka provided PTWC with the first indications of the existence of a destructive tsunami. Indications are that the tsunami had already struck the entire area by this time, although we have not been able to obtain arrival times.

At approximately 5:45 p.m., armed with knowledge of a tsunami, PTWC contacted the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) in Hawaii.

At approximately 5:45 p.m., PTWC received a call from a Sri Lanka Navy Commander inquiring about the potential for further tsunami waves from aftershocks.

At approximately 6:00 p.m. the U.S. Ambassador in Sri Lanka called PTWC to set up a notification system in case of big aftershock. He said they would contact Sri Lanka Prime Minister's office for such notifications.

Continuing news reports gave increasing and more widespread casualties.

At approximately 7:25 p.m. the first reading from the Australian National Tidal Center gauge at Cocos Island west of Australia gave a reading of 0.5m crest-to-trough.

At 7:25 p.m. the Harvard University Seismology Department reported its preliminary Centroid Moment Tensor solution that indicated a magnitude of 8.9.

At approximately 7:45 p.m. PTWC contacted the Australia Bureau of Meteorology and advised them about the increased earthquake magnitude and the 0.5m reading at Cocos Island, as well as the possibility of a destructive tsunami impact on Australia's west coasts.

At approximately 8:00 p.m. PTWC re-contacted PACOM to advise of increased earthquake magnitude and potential for further tsunami impacts in the western Indian Ocean.

At approximately 8:15 p.m. Australia Bureau of Met called PTWC to advise they had issued an alert to their west coast.

At approximately 8:20 p.m. NOAA National Weather Service Pacific Region director contacted PTWC to report PACOM said no tsunami was observed at Diego Garcia in the Pacific.

At approximately 10:15 p.m. PTWC spoke with U.S. State Department Operations and advised them about the potential threat to Madagascar and Africa. They set up a conference call with the U.S. embassies at Madagascar and Mauritius, and PTWC advised them of the situation.

At 5:36 a.m. on December 27 PTWC issued a third Tsunami Information Bulletin for this event informing the Pacific that small sea level fluctuations from the Indian Ocean tsunami were being observed in the Pacific, probably from energy that wrapped around south of Australia.

The Pacific Warning System
Pacific warning network is comprised of (1) hundreds of seismic stations worldwide; (2) coastal tide gauges and sophisticated Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) buoys in the Pacific Basin capable of detecting a centimeter's difference in ocean height.

However, it is important to note that without similar gauges and buoys in the Indian Ocean PTWC officers were not in a position to detect a tsunami there.

NOAA's Responsibility to the International Community
The U.S. has demonstrated the effectiveness of its warning system within the Pacific region. It has also demonstrated that the warning system can provide initial earthquake information to other nations and is most willing to share that information with all concerned. With national dissemination and water level networks in place, NOAA's information can be used to mitigate future disasters.

It is also important to recognize that tsunamis can come ashore within minutes of nearby earthquakes. In those instances, people must know what to do in the event of a "felt" earthquake in low lying coastal areas.

The need for a tsunami warning program outside the Pacific region has been raised since 1985 with little result. It now appears that there is new interest in this issue within the international ICG/ITSU community. The U.S. strongly supports such an effort.

Furthermore, the development of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS) led by the United States, Japan, South Africa and the European Commission-with 53 nations currently participating at the ministerial level-should help fill the sensor gap for other regions of the world. Two key focus areas of the GEOSS initiative are addressing "reducing loss of life and property due to disasters" and "monitoring our oceans."

NOAA is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of the nation's coastal and marine resources. NOAA is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

If you were caught in the tsunami disaster zone and you believe what you see on CNN - you'd better hope you're not American.

----

(CNN) -- An American woman who was scuba diving with her husband in Thailand as one of Sunday's tsunamis roared overhead said she was oblivious to the disaster until after they surfaced, her mother told CNN on Tuesday.

Faye Wachs, 34, was diving with her husband, Eugene Kim, Sunday morning off Ko Phi Phi Island in Thailand when they noticed the water visibility worsened and felt as though they were being sucked downward, Helen Wachs said.

[...]

Faye Wachs said she was impressed by the efforts of the Thai government and the International Committee for the Red Cross, but "she was appalled at the treatment they got" from the U.S. government, her mother said.

At the airport in Bangkok, other governments had set up booths to greet nationals who had been affected and to help repatriate them, she said.

That was not the case with the U.S. government, Wachs told her mother. It took the couple three hours, she said, to find the officials from the American consulate, who were in the VIP lounge.

Because they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation, they had to have new passports issued.

But the U.S. officials demanded payment to take the passport pictures, Helen Wachs said.

The couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their pictures taken and buy food, Helen Wachs said.

"She was really very surprised" that the government did so little to ease their ordeal, she said.

Helen Wachs said her daughter told her they would need "some serious counseling" upon their return to Los Angeles.

---

I hope the Aussies were one of the "other governments [that] had set up booths to greet nationals who had been affected and to help repatriate them."

Thursday December 30 2004 00:00 IST

Indraprasth (aka New Delhi) - At 7.50 am on Black Sunday, more than one full hour before the tidal waves hit the Tamil Nadu coast, the top brass of the Indian Air Force knew that the Car Nicobar Air Base had been inundated.

But it was only 41 minutes later -- during which time the waves were heading west -- that the first communique went out from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) to the Government. And the Crisis Management Group, the Government's nodal emergency response unit, met at 1 pm by when the tusnami had come, killed and gone.

And guess who got this first IMD communique? It was sent at 8.54 am to the residence of Murli Manohar Joshi, former Science and Technology Minister rather than his successor Kapil Sibal.

It's always easier to find faults with the benefit of hindsight -- especially in an unprecedented disaster like this one -- but an investigation of the sequence of events after the quake hit Sumatra at 6.29 am shows a glaring disconnect between different agencies of the Government. And highlights how precious time – that could have been used to issue warnings and maybe save some lives -- was lost.

Consider the sequence of events:

* ''At 7.30 am, we were informed by our Chennai unit that coordinates the logistics for the Car Nicobar base about a massive earthquake near Andamans and Nicobar,'' Air Chief S Krishnaswamy told this website’s newspaper on Wednesday.

''But communication links went down in the Island Territories, the Chennai unit could only raise Car Nicobar base on the high frequency set at 7.50 am ... the last message from Car Nicobar base was that the island is sinking and there is water all over.''

* At 8.15 am, the Air Chief says, he asked his Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Operations) to alert the Defence Ministry.

Now cut to the civilian establishment.

* Unaware of its fax goof-up, the IMD, as per routine, sent another fax to the Disaster Control Room in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) at 9.14 am.

* Eight minutes later, Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi's private secretary was also brought into the loop.

* At 10.30, the director of the Control Room T. Swami informed Cabinet Secretariat officials.

* By then the tsunami had hit the Chennai coastline and another earthquake measuring 7.3 struck 60 miles west of Indira Point at 9.53 am.

What happened between 6.29 am and 8.56 am in the IMD is also telling: it shows how the country's premier met agency works in isolation during an unprecedented emergency.

So even as IMD stations in Chennai, Vishakhapatnam and Kolkata began started receiving after-shock signals within minutes of the main earthquake, and while the rest of the world had already issued the exact epicentre of the earthquake -- and the Pacific warning system had sounded a tidal wave alert -- the IMD was doing its own calculations to find out the magnitude and epicentre of the earthqake.

Not helping the IMD was the fact that the Andaman station in Port Blair runs on an old, analog system rather than a digital one. In other words, in the event of a large earthquake and frequent after-shocks, what it registered was a ''clipped seismograph'' -- a blank sheet of paperinstead of zig-zag lines.

This is exactly what happened.

''For computing the exact epicentre, we need data from three stations in three directions. With Andamans out of operations, it took us longer than expected,'' explained the duty officer.

By then, the after-shocks had begun at Andamans. The first one was at 7:19 am of magnitude 5.9 on the richter scale. It is not clear whether that was enough to sound the warning bells.

''Tsunamis are never recorded in Indian history, so it did not occur to us,'' said R S Dattatrayam, director seismology at IMD, who arrived after 8.30 am to the station after being informed. ''I don't recall the exact sequence of events.''

From The Australian today:

Thailand warned before waves hit
Kimina Lyall, Southeast Asia correspondent, in Bangkok
January 06, 2005

THAILAND was on a list of countries sent tsunami alerts by an early-warning centre in Hawaii within 15 minutes of the earthquake off Sumatra.

The first alert from the Pacific Tsunami Early Warning Centre did not specify a tsunami, but a subsequent warning an hour and five minutes later - still almost an hour before the wave hit many of Thailand's western beaches - did suggest the quake could have caused a local tsunami.

Ten days after the tsunami took thousands of lives in Thailand, it remained unclear whether Thai authorities had received advance indications of the impending disaster.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has suspended his weather bureau chief pending an investigation into the office's failure to provide a warning of the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami.

Mr Thaksin said Suparerk Tansriratanawong would be moved for six months to his department while an investigation was conducted.

"When a quake measuring at 8.9 to 9.0 on the Richter scale struck Sumatra, it was widely known a tsunami could happen," Mr Thaksin said.

"But why weren't there any alerts? I really want to know the truth."

Thailand's The Nation newspaper has reported that senior officials from the weather bureau, headed by Mr Suparerk, were meeting at Cha-am, a resort town on the protected side of the Thai peninsula, on Boxing Day when they received news of the earthquake from other sources.

However, according to the newspaper, they decided not to issue an evacuation warning for fears that it would affect the tourism industry.

The Australian revealed last week that the Thai Government was officially warned seven years ago that tsunamis stemming from an earthquake on the seabed could hit the country, but that warning was also ignored for fear of frightening off tourists and investors.

Geophysicist Barry Hishorn, of the US's Hawaii-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Australian yesterday he and his colleagues issued warnings through the Pacific Tsunami Early Warning Centre, to member countries including Thailand, in the 90 minutes after the quake.

Those warnings initially said the quake was an 8.0 on the Richter scale and that there was no risk of a tsunami in the Pacific -- the organisation's main purpose -- but later said the quake had been upgraded to an 8.5 and could have caused a tsunami in the local area, referring to Sumatra.

But he said Thailand, while a member of the group, had not attended a meeting for eight years and had never responded to regular requests to confirm its contact details. So he said the organisation had no way of knowing if Thailand received the warnings.

He said that even if Thai officials had received the notification, they would have needed to make their own deductions that the quake had a possibility of creating a tsunami that could reach Thailand's shores, as the warning did not suggest that that would be likely.

"It's reasonable they wouldn't have been too worried about it," he said.

"A magnitude 8 would probably mean a local tsunami for Sumatra. I know they have said they didn't want to affect tourism, but if there was nothing to worry about, there would have been no need to evacuate."

By the time the quake's true size - 8.9, about 32 times bigger than an 8 - was recorded, the wave had already hit Thailand, India and Sri Lanka and the Pacific Tsunami Early Warning Centre turned its attention to warning countries along the African coast.

Tsunami scientists' role criticised

Sunday 09 January 2005, 23:00 Makka Time, 20:00 GMT

The 26 December disaster killed 82 people in the island chain

The Maldives have blamed scientists for not sharing information that could have reduced the tsunami destruction across Asia.

Maldivian Foreign Minister Fathulla Jameel said on Sunday the death toll and damage in the Indian Ocean could have been minimised if authorities had been alerted when the tsunamis began after an undersea earthquake near Indonesia.

"The research and information is there. But unfortunately the international scientific community works in strange ways. They don't want to share their information with us," Jameel told AFP.

"No one told us about the tsunami. We were hit one and half hours after Sri Lanka. No one alerted us. Sri Lanka itself was hit several hours after the earthquake and I presume no one told them either."

Official figures show 82 people were killed and 26 reported missing in the Maldives when the 26 December tsunamis swept across the Indian Ocean, killing nearly 160,000 people.

Tourists invited

Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said the best way foreigners could help his country's recovery effort was by spending their holidays in this country, known as one of the most exotic tourist destinations in Asia.

Most of Maldives' islets are less
than a metre above sea level

Jameel said the seven-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, which had been due to hold a summit in Dhaka Sunday, would now discuss the tsunami tragedy affecting four member states when they hold the rescheduled meet on 7 February.

However, he said a SAARC initiative alone to set up an early warning system would be insufficient.

The minister called for a wider effort to involve all Indian Ocean states.

Sea walls needed

"Having an early warning itself is not enough. Even if we get an early warning, where can we go? Climb a coconut tree?" Jameel said, adding that sea walls needed to be built on the main island Male.

He said if the Maldives had been alerted to the impending sea surge on December 26, they would have been better prepared to meet the disaster as people on the beaches could have been warned.

The Maldives is a low-lying nation of 1192 coral islands scattered about 850km across the equator and most of the islets are less than a metre above sea level.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due to visit Vilufushi island, whose all 1156 residents have been moved out to four nearby islands that escaped relatively unscathed.

Isn't it amazing that eveyone is so wrapped up in the idea of conspiracy theories and paranoid hacks, that when something clearly very fishy indeed is going on it's all smart little comments and 'oh my, what a crazy!'.

The things that are really worrying me about this tragedy are as yet unexplained (and largely unpublisized ) facts such as

* there is presently a us naval fleet PREVENTING shipping from entering the area, which is in INTERNATIONAL waters, where the epicentre of the earthquake causing the tsunami is said to originate
(anyone suspicious yet?)

*there are a small but notable proporton of environmental groups voicing concern about the UNUSUALLY LARGE amount of RADIOACTIVE isotopes in sea water sample from the areas affected by the tsumani (even little bit suspicious?)

*Halliburton is getting the contracts to 'rebuild' affected areas, and in doing so are putting inordinate pressure on, and effectivly force, world governments who pledge money to help victims of such disasters in future to pay such fund UP FRONT in CASH to - (can anyone guess?) Halliburton themselves.

Can ANYONE see my point?
the powers that be have done such a good job of making us all dumb ( thanks mr murdock) and sceptical of each other, that when something REALLY IS going on 'nobody' will notice and anyone who does will be firmly ignored by the scared and apathetic masses.

It was obvious the moment I heard of the Tsunami having worked in aerospace for years. Not just the United States; but also France, England, Russia, and other countries were aware of the earthquake and the probable consequences. Certainly after eh first targets were hit by the wave.
The governments did not have to reveal how they knew. Cell phones could have been called in these areas and a cell phone avalanche could have been started to move at least some of the victims to safety.

CNN could have been notified. The UN should have been called. Did Bush, Blair, Mitterand have immediate knowledge. I sure hope so or we have a terribly broken infrastructure. How are we allowing the response that the correct phones numbers were not available. Emails were sent. Why doesn't a citizen of France ask for some accountability of their government in such a horrific event. A citizen of somewhere.

Look back at these lands in 10 years and see who owns the land, what factories are there, who is benifiting formt he new trade. This, as all modern history; is far beyound the U.S.

I know who will benifit.

There were several large earthquakes in Tasmania during the month or two before the tsunami (including one measuring 6 which was the largest in several decades). This is the same plate and due to the same shifting that led to the massive quake that caused the tsunami. This was reported in Tasmanian papers as "TAS tsunami link" etc.

Yeah
by someone Thursday January 20, 2005 at 02:41 AM
something 4356789 1233 w. jdhhayg st.

what the hell
by the real crisp arson Saturday June 11, 2005 at 01:59 AM
myspace.com/mentalnote