Did that get your attention? I didn’t mean it, really.
But when I saw the Reuters story republished in the Toronto Star today, I couldn’t really react any other way. The guy is writing about Aceh and is presumably there, but unable to figure out what is going on under his nose. Instead he writes about how the people in the scene in front of him are trying to get food (now there’s a story, Dean) because they are hungry.
But he starts the story like this:
ACEH WEST COAST, Indonesia Like hungry locusts, they swarmed up over the edges of the raised soccer field from all directions.
That’s right, this guy started a story about starving tsunami victims in the middle of a vicious counterinsurgency by comparing these victims to swarming, hungry locusts.
I would love for the words “despicable vermin” to be forever associated with Dean Yates the way he has associated “hungry locusts” with Acehnese tsunami/counterinsurgency victims. But it’s not going to happen.
Don’t look to Dean for any serious idea about what’s going on in Aceh. There is however an interview by Derrick O’Keefe of Allan Nairn that can tell you something.
And below is the Reuters story so Dean can at least speak for himself.
ACEH WEST COAST, Indonesia Like hungry locusts, they swarmed up over the edges of the raised soccer field from all directions.
Frantic women juggling babies on their hips. Men with desperation painted on their faces.
Up to 300 people, many taking shelter in a tiny village of no more than a dozen homes, sprinted from the trees and undergrowth, anxious to get their hands on the water and biscuits inside the U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopter that had just touched down on the tsunami- ravaged west coast of Indonesia’s Aceh province.
Within seconds, dozens of men surged to the door of the helicopter, its powerful rotors still turning. Time and again, U.S. naval crewmen Jesse Cash and Vince Rodriguez struggled to push them away. “Get back, get back,” they shouted.
As each box was handed out, men fought for the food lifeline, the strong snatching their prize and running off. Women and the young stayed at the edge of the soccer field, the highest point in this village just beyond the reach of the killer waves that crushed everything in their path on Dec. 26.
One man climbed onto the wheel of the helicopter, oblivious to the deadly rotors whirling above his head.
The crew finally got all the men to sit in a semi-circle under the thrashing blades to receive the payload. But as the next box came out, they surged forward again, thrusting their hands into the cabin.
Many villagers looked dazed and tired. Their clothes were dirty. Women said their babies were sick. Some said they feared malaria.
“Sir, please help. Sir, please help,” the residents shouted at a foreign reporter.
“We need food and medicine.” They said it over and over.
While this village was spared, not far away homes were ripped off their foundations. Whole tree lines are gone, the earth gouged away. Brightly coloured fishing boats lie smashed in watery graves up to a kilometre beyond the shore.
Nearly 400,000 Indonesians have been displaced by the tsunami that swept Aceh province, the health ministry said today. About 387,000 are refugees and some 94,081 people have been confirmed killed.
In the shattered village of Meulaboh, an injured man stretched out on the ground, hooked to an intravenous drip that hung from a tree branch outside an overcrowded hospital emergency room.
In Lam Jamek, another ruined village, survivors used an elephant to pull a vehicle to the provincial capital.
For the homeless Acehnese along this west coast, a fleet of U.S. Seahawk helicopters from the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group has become their salvation, dropping urgently needed supplies up and down this battered shoreline, evacuating the injured and flying in medical teams.
As the helicopter hugged the coastline, makeshift shelters could be seen dotted among the hills – people living in small groups under salvaged corrugated iron or plastic sheeting. At some, fires burned. People came out and waved as the helicopter swooped overhead.
After the drop, the pilots spotted a refugee camp, home to scores of homeless and a few Indonesian soldiers. The U.S. crew asked if anyone needed evacuation. The soldiers said the serious cases had already been flown to the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.
Again, people crowded around. Seeing a foreign face, they pleaded for help.
“We don’t have enough food, clothes or medicine. Thousands are dead around here. Whole villages are gone,” said Edan, 25.
The job done, the helicopter lifted off for Banda Aceh, a 20- minute trip away. There, a tent city has sprung up, home to non- governmental organizations, international aid agencies and troops from countries such as Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Germany.
From dawn till dusk, a dozen U.S. Seahawks fly sorties, along with Superpuma military helicopters from Singapore. At any time, four to five Hercules transport planes, several from Australia, bring in food and take refugees out. Just offshore lies the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Many airports in Indonesia are now bursting with emergency supplies. But a logistical nightmare looms in distributing them through areas where roads and bridges have been washed away, Aly- Khan Rajani, CARE Canada’s program manager for Southeast Asia, said in Jakarta.
With files from the star’s wire services
[Illustration]
Gabriel Piper U.S. Navy Reuters U.S. naval air crewmen carry an injured woman to a helicopter yesterday for transportation to Banda Aceh, where medical teams from USS Abraham Lincoln and the International Organization for Migration have set up a triage site.
Credit: REUTERS NEWS AGENCY
Dean Yates
I disagree. Dean Yates is not like despicable vermin. He is despicable vermin. A despicable vermin that writes despicable lies for Reuters.
Take a look at this, from the article he wrote recently, “Discontent Grows in Iraq Over New National flag.”
Despite writing article after article on Iraq, he is apparently not familiar with Saddam’s genocide of the Kurdish people. He writes
“Kurds associate the old flag with Saddam’s genocidal Anfal campaign against them in the late 1980s in which tens of thousands of people were bombed, shot and gassed.”
According to the UNPO,
“This campaign led to the disappearance of over 180,000 Kurds.”
Additionally, the campaign was not “genocidal”, it was genocide. An article from the BBC in 2005 reported that “A court in The Hague has ruled that the killing of thousands of Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s was an act of genocide.”