I was hoping to read something about this - so it was good someone posted something BUT I couldn't understand what exactly you were saying - too much irony/sarcasm?

I was trying to demonstrate the incompetence of those in power.

The Americans posturing in the Gulf could easily have got there by now, staging through any number of US overseas bases. Though they probably have adequate personel to do the necessary job in many nearer bases.

If Australia sent a plane, there should have been at least a parachutist with a Radio, preferably a trained paramedic with some skill in moving heavy objects, and survival, dropped in to get out word of actual conditions. The Churches on the islands had two way radios, which have probably been wrecked, and those knowledgeable about operation may have been killed.

There must be ships at sea that could get there to send a boat ashore to make contact long before the boat from Honiara can get there. But this is a Capitalist World where money rules. The pollution generated by Capitalism is causing the climate change that generates unheard of extremes of weather. Tuvalu evacuating away from the rising sea, and now this fantastic wind strength at least double that which no canvass can withstand. No Capitalist ship has made any diversion to render assistance, cost efficiency rules above all to generate the sacred profits. I hope I am wrong, and there will be a ship broacasting its report soon. ( but for education go read "Mid Atlantc" written in the 1930s by Taffrail, to see where cost cutting leads)

I am told there are cyber-cafes in Honiara, the Capital of the Solomons and in some other places, linked to the web. Does anyone have any @ddresses for us to encourage them to become IMCs? They need to know about Argentina which seems to be in a parallel economy. I am told the boss man in the Solomons begged money from Australia to pay key civil servants, and had to pay it all to the police to stop them shooting at the Palace. He had to beg more to fund the rescue ship.

Had it been a normal cyclone, then the islanders should have survived reasonably well, but the reported wind speeds are a tempest above the usual cyclone. We can only wait...


Parts of a comment in indycymru:

by Anonymous on Jan 02, 2003 - 12:36 AM

That is a bit cheeky, perhaps the President knows that at 200 mph the wind just picks up people who are lying flat on the ground and takes tham away, there are probably wind tunnel tests showing just what happens. Perhaps those who survived were in caves.
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There is a lot of research to be done here, why are you wasting your time reading this rubbish? Get on with finding the right questions to ask in order to know the answers to look for. All right, that is why you are reading this, and you are not a timewaster.

is  http://www.peoplefirst.net.sb/NEWS/News_summary.asp

Apparently no-one was killed!!! but they have no food, and only old coconuts for water.

In case people were wondering what all the holdups were, this New Zealand Herald reporter puts it quite well:
(Also local SI news headlines here:  http://www.sibconline.com.sb/main.asp - very interesting reading - and you think we've got problems...)

Supply ship ready to go to cyclone-hit islands but it's not that simple ...

04.01.2003
By GRAHAM REID
From the comfort of this distance the problem had a simple solution: Cyclone Zoe with winds of around 300km/h had battered remote Tikopia, Fataka and Anuta islands in the Solomons some 1000km from the capital Honiara.

The obvious and immediate thing to do was to send a boat laden with food and medical supplies.

But in the Solomon Islands things are never quite that simple.

As Lindsay Duncan, head of the New Zealand police contingent in Honiara recently told the Herald: "There are a lot of things here where you think, 'It's bloody obvious, why don't you do it?' But when you dig a bit deeper ... "

In this case the boat wasn't going anywhere because the Government couldn't pay for the $50,000 emergency aid of rice and tinned food. It also couldn't pay a similar amount for the fuel although the Australian Government stepped in to stump up that money.

But while many have waited an anxious week since the cyclone levelled 5sq km Tikopia Island, where it is believed between 1300 and 2000 people live, the boat remained tied up at Honiara's wharf.

That may appear tragically inept, but such impotence is common in the Solomons.

Duncan cites the condition of the holding cells in central police station.

They are appalling. You smell them before you see them and when you walk down the dark and narrow brick corridor you are confronted with human excrement and walls turned brown with age, neglect and accumulated filth. The air is thick and fetid and leaves you choking.

The simple solution is to hose the place out. Or at least get a bucket and a mop.

"But when you dig a bit deeper ... "

The station has no plumbing so the police have to pay the Fire Service to sluice the cells out. But the Fire Service has no fuel to get there so the police have to not only find money for that, but also find the petrol.

That isn't easy either. It can be in short supply.

With an arbitrary power supply - because the Government can't pay the electricity department - some businesses and Government departments have generators, but the shortage of fuel can render them ineffective also.

This is a country where simple problems can be very complex.

This has been the way in the Solomons since the ethnic tensions between Malaitan people living on Guadalcanal Island fought back against harassment from the local "Guale".

Militants on both sides armed themselves and Guadalcanal became a war zone in 1999. Thousands of Malaitans fled back to their home island, a mere 50km away. Hundreds of Malaitans and Guale lost their lives in a ruthless conflict which included beheadings and torture, and it was only when the Malaitan Eagle Force deposed the Prime Minister at gunpoint that neighbouring countries demanded a cessation to the violence. The Townsville Peace Agreement has lessened the violence but today the Solomons is a bankrupt nation where the politics are fragile and the people are trying to adopt some semblance of normal life again.

The civil infrastructure has crumbled because the Government is stacked with "ghost workers" and those who actually exist often cannot be paid. Before the patrol boat Auki finally left Honiara there were demands from its police crew for extra pay.

Power and water supplies are erratic, and international businesses such as the Gold Ridge mine were destroyed or their owners fled during "the tensions". While no one is actually starving in these fruitfully tropical islands there is only subsistence living for many in the 4000 villages scattered around al

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