Socio-Political Rants
News: Iran EarthQuake, kills over 30,000 people in Dec 2003
Reuters: President Bush’s administration cast aside its branding of Iran as an “axis of evil” state to begin sending in military plane loads of aid and held rare talks with a government it has shunned diplomatically for two decades.
From China to South Africa, Britain to Australia, nations rushed to respond to Iran’s appeals and sent rescue workers, doctors, tents and cash to help deal with what appeared to be the world’s most lethal earthquake in at least 10 years.
In rare direct contact between Washington and Tehran, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations (news – web sites), Mohammad Javad Zarif, held telephone talks about aid.
The Islamic Republic’s quick acceptance of help from the international community contrasted with its rejection in 1990 when a quake killed 36,000 people.
It says help will be welcome from everywhere except Israel.
You think they could do this more often without the death toll of 20,000?
You know for say things like 20,000 are illiterate? 20,000 don’t have access to clean water? 20,000 who are dying of AIDS?
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 
Amazing and sad how it takes a tragedy like this for countries to get together. It’s also a huge death toll when you consider the earthquake recently in California was nearly the same magnitude (at least according to the news I heard) and yet only a couple of people died there. I guess it shows the difference in living standards, buildings etc.
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I wonder if this aid will come with certain ‘obligations’.
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No doubt. The Republican policies on “Aid” is all about “obligations.”
Lets see how long it takes for Iran to go the way of Libya and destroys its “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
Not that in this instance it’s a bad thing.
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its hard to throw nuclear arms at any country that is already ravaged with natural disaster ~ governmental show of human compassion could just be so that other people would read the papers and say: ‘hey, this so-and-so country is not so bad after all…’ ~ if they really want to show us what they can do, they could stop finding new playground to test their weapons of mass destruction. hey they should stop creating weapons in the first place.
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Wow… Aren’t we all so cynical? Which one of us should win the “Cynic” of the week competition?
🙂
Yan
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In fact. I actually added it to the blog. It’s on the left side above the recent posts. Too funny not to!
Maybe I will make it a weekly feature! But it will have to change.. like idealist of the week? Stupid comment of the week? Whatever. See what happens!
Yan
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Speaking of Israel, Libya are opening up their doors to the inspectors in the hope that Israel will do the same. That will never happen, despite a wealth of evidence to support the assertion Israel has its own WMD programs. Keeping your bombs isn’t about peace. It’s about who you know.
I’m not always cynical, but I’ve been reading a lot of books published by disinfo.org recently.
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