Science in Service of Humanity Could Have Saved Thousands
Tsunami Catastrophe in South Asia
Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 839, 7 January 2005.
JANUARY 3—A magnitude 9.0 earthquake centered off the Indonesian island of Sumatra on December 26 triggered a catastrophic tsunami across the Indian Ocean, killing more than 150,000 people. The death toll rises daily and may never be known as entire towns and villages were obliterated, and many thousands of people are homeless, seriously injured and displaced. This staggering event makes one grasp for historical comparisons to comprehend the human tragedy. It was "possibly the deadliest tsunami in 200 years" (Reuters, 28 December 2004), set off by the biggest earthquake in 40 years. Some 40 nationalities were among the victims, including many vacationing tourists. Children are estimated to be one-third of the dead. The death toll is expected to skyrocket as diseases such as cholera and typhoid spread, due to the lack of clean drinking water and the contamination of existing sources by decomposing bodies. Hospitals and clinics were destroyed, as were roads, train tracks and communication systems.
The mind-numbing death toll, and the deaths yet to be counted, are the result of disaster magnified by class inequalities and the subordination of science to capitalist rule. Science cannot prevent earthquakes or tsunamis, but early warning systems do exist, and some tens of thousands of lives could have been saved. The earthquake and tsunami smashed coastal populations in some of the world's poorest and most densely populated regions. Especially in areas of the globe kept backward by imperialism, human life is deemed expendable; poverty and disasters are fertile fields for spreading the hocus-pocus of religious missionaries, rather than investment in social infrastructure and scientific/technological advancement.
The quake occurred in a known seismically active region where one of the tectonic plates of the Earth's crust is constantly slipping under another, sometimes in sudden shifts; the abrupt vertical motion of the seabed creates a massive wave of water which can travel at a speed of over 600 miles per hour and a distance of thousands of miles. This tsunami spread across the Indian Ocean, hitting nearly a dozen countries including Indonesia, India, Thailand and Sri Lanka and causing devastation as far as Somalia, 3,000 miles away on Africa's east coast. When the traveling wave hits coastal regions, it can reach great heights with unstoppable power to sweep away people, boats, houses, cars and just about anything else.
Countries located along the Pacific "ring of fire" can get warnings from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) established by the United States in 1949 and headquartered in Hawaii. The PTWC monitors seismic activity and ocean surface level, and utilizes the most modern communications channels of the U.S. military. Rich countries can also afford to deploy additional expensive technology to protect their own populations. Japan has long been known to have a system using hundreds of seismometers enhanced by undersea detectors to warn their public. The Economist (online, 28 December 2004) reports that the U.S. has deployed an even better system of "tsunameters" which transmit data to surface buoys and then to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by satellite.
Even though the Indian Ocean is officially outside of the PTWC domain, scientists running the warning system could perceive a tsunami threat and reportedly sent an alert to 26 countries, including Thailand and Indonesia. As scientists scrambled to alert the world, government officials did next to nothing! According to the London Independent (Democracy Now, 29 December 2004) the huge U.S. military base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean was warned.
This speaks loudly to how the value of human life and property is calculated by America's imperialist rulers. Diego Garcia is a key base, and prior to the seizure and occupation of Iraq, it was the main U.S. launch pad for death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. Aircraft from Diego Garcia dropped more ordnance on Afghanistan than any other unit in the "war on terror" (see www.globalsecurity.org).
Scientists on Australia's remote Cocos Island, 600 miles from Sumatra, alerted Australian emergency planners of the tsunami, but "key officials within Indian Ocean nations could not be reached" (Belfast Telegraph, 28 December 2004). Surely the Pentagon and the Australian government have phone numbers for some top-ranking officials in Jakarta! In 1965, Indonesia's military slaughtered half a million people with lists drawn up from the CIA and with help from the Australian embassy. Since then, the U.S. has been funneling millions in aid to the bloodthirsty Indonesian generals, who continue their slaughter in the very province of Aceh, which is nearest to the earthquake's epicenter. Though U.S. military aid was allegedly cut off in 1999, a lot of it was resumed by the Bush administration in the name of the "war on terror." In Thailand the U.S. has been using the Utapao Air Base since the Vietnam War, conducted joint exercises with the Thai military there in 2002, and flew combat aircraft from there for the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. No phone numbers there, either?
The allocation of aid is similarly instructive. The initial U.S. offer of a paltry $15 million is less than half the amount President Bush plans to spend on his upcoming inaugural balls and celebrations! World outcry has forced the U.S. to dig a little deeper. There is also a lot of politics behind the aid, which the U.S. and other powers will use to bolster their relations with the regimes of the region.
To put the relief effort in perspective, weigh today's promise of $350 million against the average $228 million the U.S. spends every day in Iraq! Indifference to the fate of South Asians echoes the contemptuous, racist U.S. rulers' attitude toward black Haiti last September after hurricanes slashed through the Caribbean and then Florida, a key state in Bush's re-election campaign. Florida was offered billions in aid, but Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, ravaged by mudslides and run by a puppet regime installed by U.S. troops only a few months earlier, was initially offered an insulting $50,000 in aid. Proportionate to available means, the donations pouring out of the pockets of working men and women through their union organizations in Australia, Japan, and around the world are much more generous.
So when anyone in high places refers to the massive loss in human life as an "act of God," or an "unavoidable natural disaster," they are merely providing cover for the criminal negligence and priorities of the capitalist system. We applaud the words of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (letter, London Guardian, 30 December 2004):
"Not only does science know why the tsunami happened, it can give precious hours of warning. If a small fraction of the tax breaks handed out to churches, mosques and synagogues had been diverted into an early warning system, tens of thousands of people, now dead, would have been moved to safety.
"Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering."
Speaking from the summit of Soviet power in 1925, Leon Trotsky noted that science has the "capacity to increase man's power and arm him with the power to foresee and master nature" (Problems of Everyday Life). But the capitalist class largely constrains science to the narrow purpose of accumulating profits, and today it is even denigrated by a religious-minded U.S. administration. The road of progress can be unblocked only by toppling rapacious capitalist rule through a series of socialist revolutions and establishing a worldwide planned socialist economy.