No tsunami warning

The United States government knew about the risk of the Asian tsunami with sufficient time to notify countries which might have been in danger, but did nothing. The jocular excuse goes along the lines that they didn't have Thailand in their rolodex. Conspiracy theorists know that the Asian meltdown of the late 1990's was engineered by the U. S. using its agent the IMF in order to put a stop to the embarrassing success of the Asian model of economic development. This model, based on Japanese experience, combines capitalism with a strong guiding hand of the government, and allows for very high rates of relatively non-exploitative growth in directions which favor public policy goals of the government. Its huge success was the main threat to the American 'free trade' model of raping and pillaging, and had to be stopped. Was the failure to warn just part of the same geopolitical war? Providing relief also provides the excuse for a massive American military encroachment into the area, including the movements of aircraft carriers. The movements of these ships always have political significance, and may constitute a military threat or warning, so a benign excuse to move them may be welcome to American strategists. Much military material can also be moved under cover of providing relief supplies. In this regard, I leave you with an interview with U. S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty conducted by David T. Ratcliffe concerning Prouty's experiences in Japan in 1945:

"The next day I went down to the harbor and met the harbormaster. Okinawa had been absolutely loaded with supplies for the invasion of Japan. It had been planned that 500,000 men would invade Japan and we had stock-piled what we call a '500,000 Manpack.' That's enough equipment, medicine, radios, everything, for 500,000 men for a certain fixed period of time. I wish I could tell you, but it's probably a month, or two months, something like that.

Ratcliffe: 500,000 men.

Prouty: A '500,000 Manpack' of supplies had been stacked up there on Okinawa. Now of course that wasn't all that would go into the invasion, because ships that had been preloaded for the invasion would also come in. But anyway, on Okinawa there was an enormous amount of equipment. And all of a sudden it was being reloaded on trucks, put back on transport ships, and sailing out to sea.

The first thing I asked the commander was, 'Is this all going back to the United States?' He said, 'No. We don't want any of that back. Anything that isn't going to be used is going to be junked.' He said, 'This is going to Hanoi in Indochina.' And he said, 'Actually about half is going to Indochina.'

At that time, that didn't have the same impact on me that it would have today. I've since learned that when it got to Hanoi - to the harbor of Haiphong - it was turned over to the representatives of Ho Chi Minh. We gave this equipment to Ho Chi Minh, who was with our own Army, with General Gallagher of the U.S. Army. We were equipping his people so they could help us round up renegade Japanese - and this would be their way of arming and putting together their original army in North Vietnam.

Now this was September 2, 1945. Also on that date, by another coincidence, with the American Army General Gallagher standing beside him and OSS representative Lou Conein there, Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam. He established the national independence of that country on that same date that the Japanese signed the surrender.

It's an historic date, because it marks the beginning of our entry on the ground in Vietnamese affairs, which lasted from 45 until '75. Most historians don't use that 20-year period from '45 to '65, when our Marines finally landed on the shores of Vietnam. They forget that we were there for 20 years before that."

Watch out for something big and military to happen in Asia.