denis bider

Various thoughts

People who don't help themselves...

Posted Oct 28, 2010 at 03:57 by denisbider

Last edited Oct 29, 2010 at 17:51 by denisbider

foreign aid media tragedy

In Indonesia, a country of 230 million people, they apparently "do not have expertise" to maintain a tsunami detection system which was put in place after the 2004 catastrophe:

Locals were given no indication of the coming wave because an early-warning system put in place after the devastating 2004 tsunami has stopped working.

Fauzi, the head of Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysic Agency, told the Associated Press that the system began to malfunction last year, and was completely inoperative by last month.

"We do not have the expertise to monitor the buoys to function as intended," he said.

There's just no excuse for this incompetence.

Over the course of 6 years, a country with a population of 230 million has been unable to acquire equipment and train people to run a crucial early warning system? After they received the help to put it in place from countries like Germany, China, France, and the US?

What a waste of help.

Every cent misplaced by helping people who don't help themselves could have been used towards a goal where it would actually have an effect.

Edit 2010-10-29: Unlike bloggers, BBC News does not possess the integrity to annotate articles when they change them after they're published, but instead they regularly change articles, after having published them, in complete stealth.

The article has now changed to quote that the buoys have been "vandalized". How that's compatible with the statement they quoted previously, and why they deleted that statement, is beyond me.

Here's a screenshot of the article the way it still appears at the moment through Google Cache.

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Showing 4 out of 4 comments, oldest first:

Comment on Oct 28, 2010 at 13:38 by johnc

"Fauzi, the head of Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysic Agency, told the Associated Press that the system began to malfunction last year, and was completely inoperative by last month.

"We do not have the expertise to monitor the buoys to function as intended," he said."

Where are you pulling this from ? The linked article omentionned the system was vandalized. :/

Comment on Oct 29, 2010 at 17:50 by denisbider

It is unfortunate that BBC keeps retroactively changing articles after they have been published, without ever attaching any notice about what they published before, and how they updated it later.

The article now says that the buoys were vandalized, but at the time I published this, it said exactly what I quote above.

I published above a screenshot of the way the older version of the article still appears through Google Cache.

Comment on Oct 29, 2010 at 20:10 by johnc

I see, thank you for posting the cached version.

It's a little bit awkward from the BBC staff to pull this kind of stunt :/

Back to the subject: it could very well mean that they don't have the expertise because they were sold the system as a service that has to be maintained by alien workforce. They have access to the technology but have no control over it. Money from donations are bound by agreement to be used to buy such services from foreign companies. (or maybe not)

I thought BBC was more reliable.

Comment on Oct 30, 2010 at 01:27 by denisbider

Well, it looks like our news sources are too unreliable to actually treat as evidence anything but the starkest, broadest claims. :(

I've seen BBC change the substance of their articles a bunch of times already when I came back to re-read something.

I am disappointed by their attitude to integrity as well. I would have expected a medium like that to stand for truth, transparency and sacredness of record.

Instead it looks like you can't reliably quote them without taking a screenshot of the page.