By Dietrich Fischer and - -
BASEL, Mar 17 2011 (IPS)

We all can only feel deep sympathy and compassion for the victims of the terrible catastrophe that befell Japan on 11 March 2011. One of the world’s largest earthquakes ever of magnitude 9, a 10-meter tsunami that flattened many coastal areas, freezing weather for the survivors sleeping in the open, shortages of food and water, and a series of explosions and fires at the six nuclear power plants in Fukushima, with the danger of a meltdown that would release huge amounts of radioactivity.

Some advocates of nuclear power have long argued that a major accident is about as likely as being hit by a meteorite. In 1975, the nuclear industry asked Professor Norman Rasmussen to produce a report that would reassure the public about the safety of nuclear energy. The report concluded that the probability of a complete core meltdown is about 1 in 20,000 per reactor per year.

Reality has shown this to be a gross underestimation. The three best known serious nuclear power accidents are those of Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl 1986, and now Fukushima. But there have been many more accidents and partial core meltdowns releasing radioactivity.

A study commissioned by Greenpeace concluded that the Chernobyl accident may have resulted in an estimated 200,000 additional deaths in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine alone between 1990 and 2004. The nuclear power plants in Fukushima have about thirty times as much radioactive material as the reactor that exploded in Chernobyl, and Japan is much more densely populated.

Even if there were no accidents, no solution has yet been found in over 50 years for the safe storage of the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. One of the by-products, plutonium 239, has a half-life of 24,100 years. That means, after 24,100 years, the intensity of radiation has declined by only 50%. It will take 241,000 years until the radiation has declined by a factor of 1000, which is considered a safe level. How can we guarantee that our descendants will not be exposed to those wastes for 10,000 generations?

The "precautionary principle" urges us to avoid the worst possible outcome of any decision. This implies that we should dismantle all nuclear power plants.

Are there any alternatives to nuclear energy? Indeed there are safe ways to produce renewable energy with wind, solar power, wave and ocean-thermal energy, which do not contribute to the greenhouse effect, unlike the burning of fossil fuels.

The Desertec project aims to generate electricity in deserts using solar power plants, wind parks and to transmit this electricity to consumption centers. The first region for application of this concept is in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Europe. Solar power systems and wind parks spread over 17,000 km2 (0.2% of the Sahara desert) would provide a considerable part of the electricity demand of the MENA countries and provide continental Europe with 15% of its electricity needs.

Why do we have nuclear power despite all of its dangers for current and future generations? There is a simple reason. Nuclear power plants are highly profitable for a few, at the expense of other people’s safety. Electricity from a nuclear power station can be cut off if people do not pay their bills, but energy from the sun collected on house roofs cannot be cut off. It makes people independent. The nuclear lobby does not want that.

Democracy requires that decision are made by those affected, and that voters be fully and truthfully informed. People have been lied to about the safety of nuclear energy, and have in most cases not been allowed to participate in decisions about nuclear energy. That must change.

It is remarkable that all insurance companies have so far refused to insure against nuclear accidents, because they argue that they do not want to risk their money based on some professor’s calculations claiming the risk is low. What if he is wrong? Insurance companies insist to base their risk calculations on real experience.

Because insurance companies refuse to cover the risks of nuclear accidents, the Price-Anderson Act of 1957 commits the US federal government to cover such risks. Other countries have similar legislation. This represents an enormous subsidy by the taxpayers to the nuclear industry. If the nuclear power industry were forced by law to pay for insurance against accidents, and pay for the safe disposal of its waste, we would have no nuclear power plants.

It is true that solar energy is currently more expensive than electricity from nuclear plants. But this is partly because of the indirect subsidy for nuclear power, and the shortage of research into alternative sources of energy. If a fraction of the research funds spent for nuclear power had been devoted to safe sources like wind and solar, we would most likely have cheap alternatives today.

If insurance companies, the experts in estimating risks, are unwilling to risk their money, why should people be forced to risk their lives? (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Dietrich Fischer, Academic Director of the World Peace Academy and Director of the TRANSCEND University Press, is author of "Nonmilitary Aspects of Security" and "Preventing War in the Nuclear Age."

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By Dietrich Fischer and - -
BASEL, Dec 1 2010 (IPS)

Johan Galtung from Norway, universally recognized as “the father of peace studies”, who recently turned 80, has been awarded the Korean DMZ Peace Prize for 2010. The award ceremony will be held in Seoul on 7 December 2010. The selection committee cited “his long-lasting work for world peace and Korean reunification”.

The De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) has been a tense border since the end of the Korean war in 1953, but it should be converted into a Zone of Peace, a place of encounter, dialogues, trade, cooperation. The latest deadly incident, where North Korea fired artillery rounds at Yeonpyeong Island, allegedly angered over US-South Korean military exercises off its coast, shows the urgency of Galtung’s proposals to build trust and avoid war.

Galtung has worked persistently since 1972 to promote peace on the Korean peninsula. He has visited Korea two dozen times, including two visits to North Korea in 1989 and 2000. He has also held numerous dialogues abroad with diplomats from both South and North Korea. He advised the late South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and recipient of the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize, whose “sunshine policy” helped improve relations between North and South Korea.

Based on published speeches that Galtung held in North and South Korea, some key points of his analysis and proposals emerge.

He emphasizes the need for both negative peace -the absence of violence- and positive peace -cooperation for mutual AND EQUAL benefit. Violence is to conflict like smoke to fire. To get rid of the smoke, it is necessary to extinguish the fire, and to avoid violence, it is necessary to resolve the underlying conflict.

The West portrays the root of the conflict as North Korea’s attack against the South in 1950, at the start of the Korean war, which still has not yet been ended with a peace treaty. This was the first time since 1812 that the US has not won a war, and the US has not yet forgiven North Korea. But this was preceded by the 1905 Taft-Katsura Memorandum about zones of interest, giving to the US the Philippines and to Japan Korea; Japanese colonial occupation of Korea 1910-1945; the partition of Korea in 1945; and the 1948 Jeju uprising against American occupation, which was brutally suppressed by South Korean troops under US command.

True, there are human rights violations in North Korea, but the same occurred in the South during military dictatorship. South Korea has changed. So will North Korea, Galtung expects, following the paths of China and Vietnam, who have adopted a combination of capitalism and socialism with rapid economic growth.

Galtung does not foresee a collapse of the North Korean government and a takeover by the South, as it happened in Germany in 1989-90. Koreans in both North and South are too proud for that. Instead he advocates a gradual process, beginning with functional cooperation (like the European Coal and Steel Union of 1951) which leads later to closer cooperation and joint institutions.

The Korean people should be united as soon as possible, through free travel and economic cooperation between North and South.

Galtung sees potential in an Association of the Mahayana Buddhist Countries, which have a common culture: North and South Korea, China (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), Japan and Vietnam. Such an association could produce goods of Japanese and South Korean quality, at prices of China, Vietnam and North Korea.

If the Soviet Union had adopted what in China is now called “capi-communism”, it might have survived. But it was too much in the grip of Western dualism, that there is one and only one correct system. East Asian countries understand that there can be many truths, and they choose the best from several schools of thought, including Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism and Christianity. Thus they can also combine socialism and capitalism.

The main conflict is not between North and South Korea, but between North Korea and the US, over a peace treaty and normalization of diplomatic relations, which the US has so far refused. It is understandable that North Korea seeks a nuclear deterrent as long as the US stations nuclear weapons in South Korea and refuses North Korea’s request for a mutual non-aggression treaty. If the US signs such a treaty, helps North Korea economically, and normalizes diplomatic relations, North Korea’s urge to possess nuclear weapons will lose its basis. In a similar way, when Libya was no longer treated as a pariah state, it gave up its nuclear weapons ambitions.

Galtung also proposes an open-ended Conference for Security and Cooperation for North-East Asia, with all parties at the table and all issues on the table, analogous to the 1972-75 Helsinki Conference, which prepared the end of the Cold War in Europe. This conference could form an organization to deal with security and cooperation issues in the region.

Galtung’s broad knowledge of numerous conflicts, having mediated in over one hundred international conflicts around the world, has helped him see solutions that others have overlooked. With his tireless efforts to promote peace, not only in Korea, but throughout the world, having helped avoid several wars, he has amply deserved the Korean DMZ Peace Prize. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Dietrich Fischer is Academic Director of the World Peace Academy in Basel, Switzerland ( www.world-peace-academy.ch) and Director of the TRANSCEND University Press ( www.transcend.org/tup).

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By Dietrich Fischer and - -
NEW YORK, Jul 24 2006 (IPS)

Bombs are falling again on innocent civilians in Lebanon, Gaza, and northern Israel. Why? It is necessary to go back in history to understand what is happening today, write Johan Galtung, a Professor of Peace Studies and Founder and Co-Director of TRANSCEND: A Peace and Development Network (www.transcend.org), and Dietrich Fischer, Director of the European University Centre for Peace Studies (www.epu.ac.at) and Co-Director of TRANSCEND. The problem is the vicious cycle of repeated mutual retaliation characteristic of wars, and underlying it the unresolved conflict between Jews and Arabs. This problem cannot be solved by de-escalation in the choice of targets and level of destruction. A ceasefire is urgent to end the immediate suffering, but it will remain only temporary as long as the underlying conflict is not solved. Israel should consider how to make peace rather than war. One way out might be a Middle East Community modeled after the European Community of 1958, with Palestine fully recognised. It would be in Israel\’s and its Arab neighbor\’s interest to learn from that success story. People of good will should come together in the midst of the present crisis to elaborate what a peaceful Middle East could look like.

Palestine is the victim of settler colonialism, practiced by England on what later became the territory of the US, and upheld by both of them as a right, conferred to Jews in the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

Someone suggested to a German, “Since Germany is responsible for the holocaust, a Jewish state should really be established in Germany, as partial compensation. Baden-Wuerttemberg would be about the right size.” The German protested, “That is impossible! Where should the people go who now live there?” This shows how the Palestinians who used to live in what is today Israeli territory must feel.

Of course, biblical history, the location of ancient Jewish holy sites, and the reality of Israel’s existence as a state for what will soon be 60 years, make it necessary to find a solution that allows both Israeli and Palestinians to coexist peacefully in the former Palestine.

Palestine is further the victim of Israeli occupation after the 1967 war. Israel withdrew from Gaza in September 2005, but still occupies the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Therefore, under the United Nations charter, the right of self-defense would accrue to Palestine as acts of liberation from occupation by an illegal war. UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1,i) clearly demands the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories occupied in 1967.

The problem, however, is that Palestine as a state does not now exist. There is a right of self-defense, but to whom does it accrue? To the Palestinians, a non-state? They live many places. To the Arab/Muslim world? That means many and strongly connected people, separated mainly by artificial borders drawn by Western colonial powers, according to Caesar’s principle “divide and rule“. Does it accrue to Lebanon, and if so, also to Hezbollah as one of the many militarised factions in Lebanon? Does it apply to Syria, also with territory occupied by Israel?

Or is this an on-again/off-again war and like all wars two-way, with a first phase starting in May 1948 between the state of Israel and Arab states, and a second phase starting in June 1967 with Israel against Arab states, but increasingly against Arabs in general, and at present broadening to Muslims in general?

A war consists of offense and defence. Defence can take two forms: a retaliatory attack into the territory of the aggressor (offensive defense), or simply repelling an aggressor from one’s own territory up to the border, but not beyond (defensive defense). The mutual killing and capture of military combatants is no surprise. In modern war, the use of rockets and bombs dropped from the air has become typical, and in post-modernity, even the killing of civilians by state terrorism or non-state terrorism.

The problem is not who started it, whom is to blame, or what can and cannot be justified as “self-defense“: the parties will defend themselves by the means available to them. Nor is the problem whether an act of war is “proportionate“: the stronger parties will use what they have, and in so doing will, as here, stimulate the desire for increased armament, even the acquisition of nuclear weapons, in the weaker parties.

The problem is the vicious cycle of repeated mutual retaliation characteristic of wars, and underlying it the unresolved conflict between Jews and Arabs.

This problem cannot be solved by de-escalation in the choice of targets and level of destruction. Albert Einstein compared the arms limitation talks of the League of Nations to discussions in a town council after a series of fatal stabbings on how long and how sharp the knives ought to be that people are allowed to carry when they go out.

A ceasefire is urgent to end the immediate suffering, but it will remain only temporary as long as the underlying conflict is not solved. Israel should consider how to make peace rather than war.

What has ended the long cycles of wars between Germany and France, and between the members of today’s Nordic Community, was a joint project of building a better future for all, through mutually beneficial cooperation, something that can inspire the imagination and hope of people who suffered from frustration and despair.

One way out might be a Middle East Community modeled after the European Community of 1958, with Palestine fully recognised.

In early 1945, Germany was at war with 25 countries it had occupied and three nations it exposed to genocide–the Jews, the Cinta-Roma, and the Slavs, particularly Russians. Today it has reasonable relations with them all. How was it able to accomplish that? The key was reconciliation, through apology and compensation, but above all letting truth speak through new textbooks, hiding nothing, conveying to victim nations and future generations of Germans the horrors of Nazism with a German vow of Never Again. Germany also became a pillar in the European Community construction, while avoiding a dominant role. It remained a friend of the US but, like any good friend, said No when the friend went astray and attacked Iraq.

It would be in Israel’s and its Arab neighbor’s interest to learn from that success story. People of good will should come together in the midst of the present crisis to elaborate what a peaceful Middle East could look like. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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By Dietrich Fischer and - -
NEW YORK, Jul 26 2005 (IPS)

Given the recent G-8 summit\’s focus on reducing poverty in Africa, it is worth calling attention to a successful anti-poverty programme in China, write Fred Dubee, a long-time advisor to the UN Global Compact and a graduate of the European University Centre, for Peace Studies (EPU) in Stadtschlaining, Austria, and Dietrich Fischer, Academic Director of EPU. Both are members of TRANSCEND, a peace and development network. In 1994, the China Society for the Promotion of the Guangcai (glory) Programme was founded by a group of ten concerned, dedicated, and brilliant young Chinese entrepreneurs, the authors write in this article. In contrast to other poverty relief projects, the Guangcai Programme encourages social responsibility among private entrepreneurs. It facilitates investment in sustainable development projects in China\’s less-developed areas, thus bringing to disadvantaged groups the fruits of economic development. When Deng Xiaoping changed the laws in China in 1994 to encourage private enterprise, they knew they would become very successful, because they had good business plans, and opportunities abounded. But they also realized that if they did not share their success, they would arouse the envy of the public and local officials. For this reason, and because they wanted to help their fellow citizens, they set out to create a multitude of small and medium enterprises to help generate jobs and income, especially in the poorer regions of China.

In 1994, the China Society for the Promotion of the Guangcai (glory) Programme was founded by a group of ten concerned, dedicated, and brilliant young Chinese entrepreneurs. Some had studied both in China and in the West, in areas from physics, chemistry, or engineering to agriculture, business, etc. When in the same year Deng Xiaoping changed the law to encourage private enterprise, these entrepreneurs knew they would become very successful because they had good business plans and opportunities abounded. But they also realized that if they did not share their success, they would arouse the envy of the public and local officials. For this reason, and because they wanted to help their fellow citizens, they set out to create a multitude of small and medium enterprises to help generate jobs and income, especially in the poorer regions of China. Ten years later, 16,500 entrepreneurs from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao are participants in the Guangcai Programme, and together they have helped create over 10,000 new companies in the poorest areas of China. The total investment in these companies today is around USD 6.3 billion, and so far they provide employment and a better life for about 5 million Chinese. In 2000, the Chinese government vowed to improve within a decade the lives of approximately 28 million rural people living in extreme poverty. In contrast to other poverty relief projects, the Guangcai Programme encourages social responsibility among private entrepreneurs. It facilitates investment in sustainable development projects in China’s less-developed areas, thus bringing to disadvantaged groups the fruits of economic development. Some projects help people in poverty-stricken rural areas to learn the latest agricultural techniques and expand markets for their products. Others have built factories in remote areas to provide local employment. More important, the programme changes people’s mindset and gives them the confidence that they can improve their lives through hard work. The first project of the Guangcai Programme was a large animal feed plant built in 1994 in a remote autonomous prefecture in Sichuan Province. Apart from anti-poverty efforts in the countryside, the programme also helps urban residents with low incomes by reforming deeply-indebted state-owned enterprises, thus saving jobs and re-employing laid-off workers. A private investment of USD 35 million in five state-owned enterprises in Chongqing provided jobs for more than 20,000 laid-off employees. Another enterprise that participates in the Guangcai Programme employs over one thousand people producing aromatic soap made with special berries. In another venture, a chemist developed a special polymer that absorbs water and slowly releases it. Spread in a dry region of Inner Mongolia, it helps prevent rain water from sinking quickly into the sandy ground and has increased vegetation, allowing more sheep to graze, and their sale has increased rural income. As of 2004, 156 entrepreneurs have won “Guangcai Programme Medals” for their outstanding achievements. One of these is an ingenious scheme devised by Wang Junyao (1966-2004) after he learned at a government seminar that many elderly Chinese suffer from osteoporosis, a softening of the bones that increases the risk of fractures and is caused by calcium deficiency in the diet. Chinese milk consumption at that time was only a few litres per year per person, compared with several hundred litres in the West. There is clearly a demand for more milk, but most Chinese farmers with small plots are too poor to buy a cow. So Wang came up with the idea that farmers could acquire one or more cows and pay over time with half of the income they make from selling milk. Another problem was that only a few rich people could afford refrigerators, which greatly limited the market for milk. In cooperation with an international partner company to produce and package long-life milk that does not require refrigeration, making milk available and affordable to the average Chinese citizen.

By the time of Wang’s early death, his scheme had enabled tens of thousands of Chinese small farmers to keep cows and gain additional income while meeting a nutritional need of the Chinese population. Under Wang, the Junyao Group became one of the first privately-owned Chinese companies to engage in the Global Compact, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s initiative to promote the greater involvement of business in creatively working to meet the needs of the disadvantaged and requirements of future generations. A case study on the Junyao Group project can be found at www.unglobalcompact.org.(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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By Dietrich Fischer and - -
NEW YORK, Jul 10 2005 (IPS)

If the world continues on its current course, the terrorist bombs in London should be considered a mere foretaste of far worse future catastrophes, writes Dietrich Fischer, Academic Director of the European University Centre for Peace Studies in Stadtschlaining, Austria, and a member of TRANSCEND, a peace and development network. As long as the major powers insist on maintaining nuclear weapons, they cannot expect to prevent other countries and terrorist organisations from acquiring and using them. Those who still believe in the fairy tale of \”deterrence theory\” better wake up to the age of suicide bombers. Ee need a vastly more open world, where all nuclear weapons are verifiably destroyed and the manufacturing of new ones cannot be hidden. The IAEA can now inspect only sites that member countries voluntarily place under its supervision; such an \”inspection\” is meaningless. If we cling to obsolete ways of thinking –that threatening others will make us safe– we face extinction as a human species. Is getting rid of all nuclear weapons a realistic prospect? Certainly more realistic than waiting until they are used. Some have argued that we cannot disinvent nuclear weapons and therefore will have to live with them as long as civilisation exists. But nobody disinvented cannibalism either; we simply learned to abhor it.

The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed over 200,000 people. Today’s nuclear bombs are vastly more powerful. If even one nuclear device had been detonated in a parked car or a sailboat on the Thames, the centre of London would be strewn with smoking radioactive rubble with probably over a million people killed outright and scores more millions left to die slowly from radiation disease.

The double standard, “Nuclear weapons are good for us but bad for you”, is stupid and unconvincing; believing that nuclear weapons technology can be kept secret forever is simply naive.

Those who still believe in the fairy tale of “deterrence theory” better wake up to the age of suicide bombers. The threat of apocalyptic retaliation will not deter a person convinced he will go straight to heaven after he is blown up.

Governments that order tonnes of bombs to be rained on Iraq and Afghanistan should not be surprised if this plants ideas in the minds of eager imitators. Osama bin Laden once benefitted from support and training financed by the CIA.

Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton University, rightly pointed out: ”The greatest utopians are those who call themselves ‘realists’, because they falsely believe that we can survive the nuclear age with politics as usual. The true realists are those who recognise the need for change.”

What changes must we make if we want humanity to survive?

First, we must stop believing that problems can be solved by applying offensive military force, which only encourages others to retaliate in kind. Policing to stop criminals and defense against a foreign attack are justified; military interventions abroad are not.

Second, 37 years after the signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is time for the nuclear powers to fulfil their commitment to nuclear disarmament. We also need a vastly more open world, where all nuclear weapons are verifiably destroyed and the manufacturing of new ones cannot be hidden. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can now inspect only sites that member countries voluntarily place under its supervision. Such an ”inspection” is meaningless. The IAEA must have the power to inspect any suspected nuclear facilities, anywhere in the world, without advance warning; otherwise it will be impossible to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

The governments that now possess nuclear weapons object to such intrusive inspections as a ”violation of their sovereignty”. Yet many airline passengers also protested at first against having their luggage searched for guns or explosives, when such searches were introduced after a series of fatal hijackings. Today, passengers realise that such inspections protect their own security. Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Sooner or later, governments will reach the same conclusion. The question is only whether this will happen before or after the first terrorist nuclear bomb explodes.

Third, we need to address the root causes of terrorism: long festering unresolved conflicts. Peaceful conflict transformation is a skill that can be taught and learned. Johan Galtung, widely regarded as founder of the field of peace research, was able to help end a longstanding border conflict between Ecuador and Peru over which they had fought four wars by suggesting they make the disputed territory into a jointly-administered binational zone with a natural park. This peaceful intervention cost nearly nothing compared with a military peacekeeping operation.

We need a UN Organisation for Mediation, with several hundred trained mediators who can help prevent conflicts from erupting into violence. This is a worthwhile yet very inexpensive investment in human survival, compared with the trillion dollars the world spends each year to arm millions of troops, which only make the world collectively less secure.

If we cling to obsolete ways of thinking –that threatening others will make us safe– we face extinction as a human species, like other species that failed to adapt to new conditions.

Is getting rid of all nuclear weapons a realistic prospect? Certainly more realistic than waiting until they are used. Some have argued that we cannot disinvent nuclear weapons and therefore will have to live with them as long as civilisation exists. But nobody disinvented cannibalism either; we simply learned to abhor it. Can’t we learn to abhor the incineration of entire cities with nuclear weapons? (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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By Dietrich Fischer and - -
STADTSCHLAINING, AUSTRIA, Jan 1 2005 (IPS)

In a January 2 interview on CNN, the head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was asked, Why was no warning issued to the countries hit by a tsunami after NOAA detected the earthquake on 26 December? He responded that, first, there was no warning system in place; and second, that NOAA lacked a precise model of the tsunami and could not have known how many people would need to evacuate, writes Dietrich Fischer, Academic Director of the European University Center for Peace Studies in Stadtschlaining, Austria, and Co-director of TRANSCEND, a global peace and development network. In this article, Fischer writes that even if the job description of the scientists who detected the earthquake did not include warning those whose lives were in danger, it was their moral responsibility to do so. They may not have had phone numbers of the relevant government agencies in the affected countries. But if they had informed people who could pass on the warning, even at night, they might have been able to reach some people in the affected areas who could have forwarded the information to others. And the US State Department could have contacted foreign governments and its embassies in the region directly. It took the tsunami 3 hours and 52 minutes to reach Sri Lanka, less for Thailand, but plenty of time for a warning.

In an interview on CNN on January 2, Conrad C. Lautenbacher, the head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) in Colorado, was asked the question on everyone’s mind: Why was no warning issued to the countries that were hit by a tsunami after NOAA detected the strong earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra on 26 December?He responded that, first of all, there was no warning system in place and nobody in those countries to receive the message; and second, that NOAA did not have a precise model of the tsunami and could not have known how many people would need to evacuate.

It does not take an expensive warning system to suspect that a magnitude 9 earthquake under the sea might be followed by a tsunami, and that many thousands of people living along the densely-populated coast facing the epicenter would be in danger of losing their lives. A magnitude 8.3 earthquake in Lituya Bay off the Alaskan coast in 1958 generated a wave that swept up to 516 meters altitude, washing the trees off mountain slopes, fortunately in an unpopulated area.

True, not every earthquake under the ocean generates a tsunami, but precaution tells us to prepare for the worst in case of uncertainty.

Even if the job description of the scientists who detected the earthquake did not include warning those whose lives were in danger, it was their moral responsibility to do so. They may not have had phone numbers of the relevant government agencies in the affected countries. But if they had informed people who could pass on the warning, even at night, including friends and relatives, they might have been able to reach some people in the affected areas who could have forwarded the information to others. If one person calls ten others, and each of them calls ten more, and so on, in principle a billion people can be reached in only nine steps. Even if some fail to pass on the warning, others will.

People without telephone service can be warned by neighbors. Radio broadcasts and internet messages will also be picked up by some, who can inform others in person and by phone. Helicopters could have beamed warnings by megaphone along the endangered shorelines.

Why nothing of this sort was done is incomprehensible.

The US State Department could have contacted foreign governments and its embassies in the region directly. Some governments did have information but failed to act on it, fearing its adverse effect on tourism. It took the tsunami 3 hours and 52 minutes to reach Sri Lanka, less for Thailand, but plenty of time for a warning. There is enough blame to be shared.

It is not necessary to know precisely what areas are in danger and need to be evacuated. Which mistake is more serious: going to higher ground unnecessarily, or staying and drowning?

For the people on the West Coast of Sumatra, time for a warning was short, only about 20 minutes for Banda Aceh, one of the most affected areas. Moreover, some phone lines were destroyed.

But people should have been educated that strong earthquakes are often followed by destructive waves. Those who were not seriously injured by the quake could have reached safer ground.

Ignorance can kill, education can save lives.A good example is oral rehydration. A tablespoon of sugar and a tea spoon of salt mixed with a liter of boiled water and given teaspoon by teaspoon to victims of acute diarrhea from cholera or typhus can save them from death by dehydration. Before that simple therapy was widely known, 30-40 percent of cholera patients used to die. In the 1991 cholera epidemic in Peru, where people knew that therapy, less than 1 percent of the infected people died.

It is welcome that many governments and individuals have made available over one billion dollars for the rescue effort. But that still represents only 1/10 of 1 percent of the world’s annual military budget. Much more will be needed, and can be made available, before more lives are lost to thirst, hunger, injury, and disease.

In this enormous tsunami disaster, over 155,000 people are already known to have died, tens of thousands are missing, and many more could die from diseases caused by contaminated drinking water.

This immense suffering, which has been covered widely by the media, has for once vividly shown the magnitude of the structural violence that regularly goes unreported: an estimated 125,000 people per day, or 45 million per year, mostly children and the elderly, die needlessly from hunger and preventable diseases in our world of plenty. What consumers in the West spend for ice cream, cosmetics, and pet food would suffice to cover adequate nutrition and health care for all the people in the world who now lack it! Let us redouble our efforts to end this horrible injustice. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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