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  Monday 3rd January 2005  World News   Powered by Yeast Logic
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God smiles on Diego Garcia

Grim reaper gives sun-kissed British outcrop a miss
by Dick Spillage

As hundreds of miles of coastline and dozens of islands were being visited by the grim reaper on Boxing Day, with tens of thousands of victims swept away in the ten metre high tsunami that hit unsuspecting shores from Sumatra to Somalia, life in Diego Garcia, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory lying some 500km south of the devastated Maldives, and only slightly further away from the epicentre of the quake, carried on almost regardless. No casualties were reported as the two thousand military personnel and handful of civilians repaired in orderly fashion to their designated meeting points, and after a couple of hours' mopping up in and around the harbour the interrupted game of beach volleyball, which had stood excitingly poised at 8-7, was resumed.

Apparently the United States commander in charge of administration on the delightful atoll known locally as Fantasy Island received a "message from God" almost two hours before the tidal wave was due to hit, and promptly issued the order to evacuate the shoreline. The charmed American residents of the British-owned island, the jewel in the crown of the beautiful Chagos Archipelago on loan to the US military in perpetuity, have luxuriated in its phenomenal safety record ever since they settled here in 1965, but never has its blessed favour with the Almighty been so dramatically proven to the world.

Your Rockall Times correspondent was eager to learn more of the benign deity who watches over the simple, carefree inhabitants of this remote ocean paradise, ensuring by his divine grace that, whatever natural disaster may strike the region, they come to no harm, while the corrupt civilisations to the North, East and West are regularly punished with death, destruction and all manner of afflictions for their folly. Thus it was that I embarked on a spiritual journey that took me half-way across the world on American Airlines Flight 294 to Honolulu, headquarters of the Pacific tsunami monitoring facility, where on 26 December 2004 God in his omniscience did not fail to detect a pretty big one gathering force in the Indian Ocean, caused by an earthquake of an intensity that occurs in the region only once every 700 years.

Inside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Centre I approached the hallowed desk of director Chuck McCreery, the prophet whose premonitions of impending doom go out to the chosen people in far corners of the world, saving them from the catastrophes that befall the ignorant and unadvised. In my human frailty I could not look directly upon his radiant face, hidden as it was behind the covers of Fisting for Profit and Pleasure January 2005 Pacific Rim Edition. Caught off guard, Chuck slid his feet off the desk and seamlessly slipped into his public role of authoritative spokesman, holding the magazine face outward to display the centrefold spread in all its cun*t-splitting glory, inviting yours truly to "Get a load of that!"

In deference to time-honoured Hawaiian custom I shook hands, politely drooled over the sacred image, and with the upturned palm of my other hand banged rapidly on the underside of the desk several times until Chuck gave the signal of divine approval, and we settled down to business.

Ashamed of my miserable ignorance I coughed, and hesitantly expressed my profound desire for enlightement. "Some of those really big countries that were also in the path," I asked the holy seer, "with millions living down by the sea — is there any way they could've been warned too? Even if only a few lives were saved?"

There was a flash of lightning outside and a gale blew up inside the room as the prophet's voice boomed forth. "Listen buddy, we tried to do what we could," Chuck admonished me. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world."

In a gesture of loving forgiveness he put a comforting hand on my shoulder and continued the lesson. "Hey buddy, within moments of detecting the quake, our guys were on the phone to Australia, then to our Naval officials, various US embassies and finally the State Department. We actually issued a bulletin about the quake but it only went to the countries in the Pacific that subscribe. We couldn't reach those guys in those other places, like, um..."

"India?"

"India, yeah, and um, Sirloinka and those other countries, because they don't have a tsunami warning mechanism or tidal gauges to alert people."

I left Hawaii feeling a new-found spiritual understanding welling up inside me that I hoped would be consolidated on the next leg of my journey of discovery. This was to be an interview with the archangel Waverly Person of the US Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Centre in Colorado, a scarcely imaginabile privilege for a simple layman such as I. Archangel Waverly and his team also had their finger on the earth's pulse, but were even quicker on the draw than their marine counterparts, as he modestly explained:

"I ain't got nothing much to do with it, you see, it's all automotivated — as soon as the needle goes off the end of the scale then all kinds of electromoronic messages get sent to the guys on the list, waking them out of bed and all."

Naturally the names on the list, in accordance with God's perfect plan, are the very same worthy officials and diplomatic agencies cited by the prophet Chuck.

Referring to the countries not on the list and their unfortunate inhabitants, Waverly's testimony was in full accordance with that of the Hawaiian director of NOAAC. "Most of those people could have been saved," he pointed out, "if they had had a tsunami warning system in place or tide gauges. I think this will be a lesson to them."

"But even so," I ventured, "couldn't you have done something — maybe looked up their embassies in the phone book?"

The archangel rebuked me for my foolishness. "Gee wizz, quit picking on me will you! We didn't get no training in the phone book. All we were told is it's something big and heavy up on the shelf there you best stay away from or it'll darn well fall on your head and do you all kinds of inurjy."

"But what about the American holidaymakers on the beach in Thailand who were swept away?" I persisted. "Couldn't they have been warned?"

"Hey, man, are you shitting me?" Waverly's lips trembled, his eyes opened wide in alarm and I feared he was about to strike me down in a fit of pious retribution. "Jeez, those poor guys!" he cried out and fell with a gnashing of teeth to the ground. "Oh my God," he wailed, "how come I wasn't told, jeez maybe I could've done something, told somebody, gee wizz, those poor fellas!"

Profoundly moved by such sorrow, I sought a resolution to the moral dilemma that seemed to lie behind it and had plagued me throughout my quest. It was this: should any effort be made to contact foreign governments regarding a thirty foot wall of water coming their way on a bank holiday, or would it be considered "bad form" to highlight their lack of preparation, provocative even, tantamount to a breach of national sovereignty? It seemed that only God's highest authority on earth could pronounce with conviction on this delicate question of international etiquette, and I faxed my enquiry accordingly to the White House. I was honoured to receive a gracious reply from the president himself, confirming that it was indeed "unamerican" to lift a finger either to harm a fly or to help the other guy out if he hadn't paid his subscription.

In the end I felt profoundly reassured that the fate of teeming millions in the most treacherous regions of the globe lies in the hands of these devout men so little troubled by gross material concerns. Yet the well-directed initiatives of more practical leaders can also be of value in alleviating the inevitable hardship that follows in the wake of such a momentous Act of God. The exceedingly generous offer by the outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell of $15m to the United Nations towards the relief and reconstruction effort is a case in point.

Not surprisingly the wildly excessive gift was politely refused. "No, no, it's far too much," declared Mr Jan Egeland, the UN secretary general for humanitarian affairs, "we couldn't possibly accept it, we know how stretched you are over Iraq and everything."

But Mr Powell was insistent. "No, go on take it," he urged, "Look, it's no big deal to us, we just add it on to our tab with Chinese."

"No, really we can't, it's out of the question," resisted Mr Egeland. "I wouldn't hear of it."

Mr Powell now risked everything in a daring bid to get his way. "Listen, I tell you what, I'll double it and add another five on top, thirty five million, how's that? Come on, you know how much you could use it. Take it," he urged once more, "I insist — you'd be doing me a favour."

"Oh well, if you put it like that then I suppose we have no choice," Mr Egeland finally succumbed, and having been beaten into submission expressed his deep gratitude on behalf of the ultimate recipients. "It's a truly marvellous gift, sir, generations will thank you."

Constrained by Britain's smaller economy and tighter budgetary policy Chancellor Gordon Brown would have to work hard to compete, but he produced a minor miracle, waving his wand with well-practised panache and pulling an impressive £15m out of the war-chest. "Moreover," he pointed out to an emergency gathering of the nation's newsreaders, "quick delivery will make it worth at least three times as much, more than twice the Americans' final offer. Just use your normal speaking voice and quicken the pace a fraction — 'fifteen million pounds' — see? It's indistinguishable from fifty million. They won't find out on the ground till the fuss has died down, and meanwhile the bulk of the fighting fund is still ring-fenced for the election."

Once again the British national interest has been splendidly served by the astute machinations of the phenomenal Mr Brown, truly the canniest Chancellor in history. The generosity doesn't end there however. The Queen is making a significant donation of unwanted Christmas gifts, and the Blairs themselves have set a shining example, pledging 100 per cent of their disposable income* to the relief effort. In a magnificent gesture of goodwill, which she hopes will unleash a torrent of copycat donations the length and breadth of Middle England, Cherie emerged with her husband onto the doorstep of Number 10 and proudly dropped the £2 coin into the collection tin, where it rattled most gratifyingly.

Mr Blair raised his hand to the cheering crowd, then turned and smothered his wife in the kind of loving embrace normally reserved for a tearfully outgoing Home Secretary. "The world is united in armchair sorrow," he intoned with statesmanlike gravity, as always fiding exactly the right words to encapsulate the sombre mood of international concern and goodwill.

* Combined net salary £1.4m, discounted at 55 per cent (to reflect the high risk of fluctuating earnings in the legal and political professions) = £630,000, less accommodation & travel expenses £1.50 = £629,998.50, less anticipated loss on property speculation £595,750.50 = £34,248, less provision for anticipated rise in school fees (Leo) £34,246 = £2.

Previously

 Go on then, hard man