Tsunami aid total only adds insult to injury
Two billion dollars offered to these devastated people collectively by the well-heeled First World while UNICEF, in its recently-published annual report, stated that these same countries spent $960 billion on armaments and weaponry in 2004.
We spend 480 times more killing people (eg, Iraq, 128,000 dead, two million injured) than in helping the survivors of an unprecedented natural disaster.
Now that the season of goodwill has passed we should remember that of all the toys our children found under the Christmas tree, 78% were produced by kids just like ours in labour camps for a euro a day in this devastated part of the world.
Gen Suharto of Indonesia was installed in 1965 as a puppet president by British, US and Australian governments. From Carter to Clinton he was supplied with all the military hardware he needed to suppress his own people and the people of East Timor for thirty years, killing hundreds of thousands, while the usual oil giants sucked the place dry for ‘our’ good. Bodies from his genocide were left overground as a reminder to anyone inclined to stand up to his regime. It is an insult to these people to call what little we give charity, when we have taken everything else.
Paul O’Toole
11 Thorndale Park
Artane
Dublin 5
