Typhoon Haiyan - Unnatural disaster

According to official figures, over 5000 lives have been lost. Over 23.000 are wounded, and billions worth of properties are destroyed. This happened November 8th when the supertyphoon Haiyan entered the Philippines. 44 provinces are affected. Tacloban, a city with 220.000 people, has been destroyed by 80%. Some villages have been totally wiped off the map. There is barely any food or water available. Still many bodies are found under the wreckage of destroyed houses and buildings, or just on the street. Lots of people are wounded while there is still very little medical assistance available. This was no doubt one of the strongest typhoons that the world has known. The wind gusts reached 380 kilometers per hour. This is absolutely a destructive natural disaster. But the intensity of the damage is everything but natural. It is man-made. You cannot prevent natural disasters, but you can prevent the effects. The high death toll was simply unnecessary. The Philippines is one of the countries most exposed to typhoons. A typical year faces 19 typhoons on average. The Government of the Philippines was informed quickly about typhoon Haiyan. There were already multiple warnings from experts about its intensity. But despite of that, the government did not carry out large scale evacuations. The people who were evacuated saw that they were still not safe even in the evacuation centers. People have indeed survived the typhoon, but they still face death due to lack of food and medical assistance. The day before the typhoon, the President said the Government was already prepared to face the typhoon. Besides the aircrafts and ships which were supposed to be on standby he also assured the people that the relief goods were already pre-positioned. But what happened was that the relief goods still did not arrive days after the typhoon. Until now, many people have received nothing. This is just a fraction of the many things that went wrong. Instead of the fast arrival of relief goods, the Government of the Philippines sent armed soldiers and police to suppress the massive discontent... ...and to protect the business of capitalists against what they referred to as "looters". Who were hungry people desperately looking for food to survive. This, while so many corrupt politicians, including the President himself, steal billions of pesos from the people through the scandalous "pork barrel" system. These hypocrites are the real and biggest looters. The people who are affected the most are the poor people. This is not natural. Natural disasters do not choose who to destroy. But it happens because of the concrete social-economic factors which the people face. The population is composed mostly of poor, landless peasants who live in unstable houses. Forests, that used to function as protection, had to make room for large scale mining projects of foreign multinationals. That the majority of the population is poor is also something that is absolutely not natural. Historically, the Philippines was plundered and exploited for hundreds of years by Spanish, and later, American colonizers. After formal independence little has been changed. The wealth of the country, which is more than enough to sustain the needs of the people multiple times, still gets plundered by imperialists and the local ruling class. In the countryside, large landownership remains as the dominant relation while national economic development in the cities gets hindered... ... by the submissive attitude of the Philippine Government towards the economic and political interests of the United States and her allies. After the typhoon, thousands of American troops went to the Philippines to offer so-called help. The TV screens and newspapers were dominated by images of American and Philippine troops who were distributing water and other relief goods. But the priority of the American military is never to offer humanitarian help. Their agenda is to secure the needs of the imperialist United States in Asia. The government is not there for the needs of the people. They use their power to protect the interests of the ruling class. Funds mostly go to corrupt politicians, the army, which is guilty of huge human rights violations, and to forced debt service to the IMF and World Bank. Instead of to social services and to things which are really necessary to the people. Such as, in this case, preperations for large and frequent typhoons. We need to support genuine organizations that are rooted in the people. Organizations, that have been working before, during and after the typhoon. They are not only involved with simply rebuilding destroyed houses, but also with building a better future where the needs of the people stand at the core. Where unnecessary deaths during calamities become only a history. Please donate to www.nafconusa.org to support the victims of typhoon Haiyan through genuine people's organizations.