Firstly, kudos to all the rescue teams - fabulous effort guys.
Secondly, congratulations to the miners for 'keeping it together' for so long.
Thirdly, to the families, I feel your joy.
It is a great human achievement of rescue.
33 men did not die - it's truly fantastic to see people rally around.
Now, to the hard points..
There must have been at least 500 hundred rescuers struggling to get the 33 men out. drillers, engineers, the Chilean navy, support services etc. etc.
That amounts to the efforts of 15 rescuers per trapped miner.
What happens if we compare this to the Pakistan flood?
How many millions would have had to go to Pakistan to equal the effort expended on retrieving these miners?
At the disasters peak, 20 million people needed care and attention.
20m needy X 15 rescuers = 300 million people would have had to pour into Pakistan for the same human effort to have been expended.
While it illustrates the point, it would have been completely impractical, so let's talk about the cost, difficult to do as the full amount has not yet been released, but let's go with a conservative $2,000,000
That's a bit more than $130,000 per miner!
Multiply that by 20,000,000 displaced people, and the funds which poured into Pakistan should have totaled
£2,666,666,666,666.00 which I think is £2.6 trillion dollars
(three times the UK debt from the banking crash!)
The last headline I saw for the actual amount donated to the Pakistan flood appeal was around 30 million dollars. For a country facing a rebuild cost of multiple billions!
About a buck-fifty per person!
That's less than you'd pay to buy a stranger a beer!
So why such an embarrassingly vast difference?
Is it racist, religionist?
Now, I suspect that, there is an undercurrent of anti-Taliban feeling which will have reduced the donations, and the recent banking crash will have had a bearing, but I think the overarching discrepancy in aid is simpler.
The rescue was an extraordinary event.
Having taken proper safety precautions the miners, became trapped in a seemingly inextricable location. Their highly unusual plight was brought to the attention of the world by our constantly drama hungry media.
Whereas, a big flood in a country that is annually battered by monsoon and the subconscious reaction is...
"Well, you know it rains hard, why didn't you prepare better?"
So might one tentative conclude, "We don't react too well to stupidity or irresponsibility"?And finally,
My blood boiled when I heard the first miner say that he 'knew' god would save him!
It's tantamount to saying,
"The efforts of the rescuers were unnecessary. If no attempt had been made, god would have got me out!"
How deeply embedded is a delusion to produce such arrogant disregard for reality.
ALL the credit goes to the technical expertise of the human rescuers.
God did fuck all, this is not a miner miracle.
If you believe god's control on reality was what rescued you, you must also accept that his control on reality was what trapped you in the first place.
Following that point... If your god's prime action was to trap you then rescuers must therefore be seen to have thwarted your god's original will.
If you want to thank god for anything...
Why don't you thank him kindly to keep his nose out of your life?
PEACE
Crispy
Crispy
Please leave a comment - Anything will do
The best communications are often,
THREE WORDS OR LESS
OR ONE OR MORE FINGERS!
The best communications are often,
THREE WORDS OR LESS
OR ONE OR MORE FINGERS!
