"Kerry announces more typhoon aid" by Keith Bradsher | New York Times, December 19, 2013
TACLOBAN, Philippines — After touring miles of roofless homes and shattered shantytowns destroyed by one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, Secretary of State John Kerry announced Wednesday that additional US humanitarian aid would be sent to the Philippines and described the giant typhoon as a warning of future extreme weather in a warming world....
That smells like such bull$hit on the coldest January 7th in recorded history (that is somehow equated to hell? if I be bedeviled)!
Related: PHILIPPINES TYPHOON CAUSED BY US MILITARY WEAPON
US CAUSED TYPHOON TO GET BASES IN PHILIPPINES?
With h/t, and as someone else said we'll give the conspiracists some leeway on that.
Also vanishing was the U.S. and British warships moved into the area under cover of humanitarian aid and relief.
An initial severe shortage of food and clean water in the first two weeks after Typhoon Haiyan made landfall Nov. 8 has largely been alleviated.
That's why the world leads and eventually articles went away.
Call it the Fukushima syndrome because that is the story of our time right now and it is still missing from my ma$$ media and propaganda pre$$. I'm fearing for loved ones out there and anxiously awaiting future snowfalls as the radiation spreads over the planet.
But back to the soon-forgotten Filipinos.
But 4 million people lost their homes to towering storm surge waves or gusts reaching 200 miles per hour, and the effort to rebuild them has barely begun.
The Philippine government raised the official death toll Wednesday to 6,069, with 27,665 injured and 1,779 missing. But local officials say the number of dead will continue to rise as more bodies are uncovered in the debris.
Maybe that's why they stopped covering it; that and other agenda-advancing items to get to.
Running water has been restored in some central areas of Tacloban but is still not available across large areas of devastated Leyte and Samar Islands. Full electricity service will take months to restore.
It's almost unimaginable to me and I -- thankfully -- can't really understand (yet?).
Kerry acknowledged the difficulty of applying climate science to any single meteorological event, but cited the destruction here as a caution about what could happen if the world does not limit emissions of greenhouse gases.
Well, the fart mist soared and we have just gotten colder. If he were really concerned he would stop jetting all over the planet on missions of "diplomacy."
“While no single storm can be attributed to climate change, we do know to a certainty that rising temperatures will lead to longer and more unpredictable monsoon seasons and will lead to more extreme weather events,” Kerry said. “Looking around here, you see an unmistakable example of what an extreme weather event looks like, and a reminder of our responsibility to act to protect the future.”
Meanwhile, the military empire he serves is the worst polluter on the planet -- and is exempt from environmental treaties or control.
Of cour$e, we all know the real rea$ons behind the mythical fart-misting.
Saying that Tacloban still looked like a war zone despite nearly six weeks of recovery efforts, Kerry announced that Washington would donate $24.6 million immediately for typhoon relief on top of the $62 million in aid already supplied by the United States. He said the United States would consider further requests for relief from a reconstruction planning effort now underway in Manila, the capital.
Not that I'm for Filipinos living in misery, but this as our own country falls apart the seams (except for the elite sections, of course).
President Benigno S. Aquino III of the Philippines said in a speech in Manila on Wednesday that the typhoon had inflicted $12.9 billion in damage and economic losses. He predicted that the rebuilding of the devastated region would last through 2017.
As part of a conference in Geneva on Monday that focused mainly on the need for humanitarian relief for refugees from Syria but included other crises around the globe, the United Nations requested $791 million to help typhoon victims, and said it had been able to raise only 30 percent of the money so far. The United Nations and the Red Cross have urgently appealed to foreign countries for 4 million heavy-duty corrugated steel sheets needed to replace roofs.
--more--"
Okay. On to more important matters:
"United States and Manila forging closer ties; Unveil maritime security deal" by Keith Bradsher | New York Times, December 18, 2013
MANILA — Secretary of State John F. Kerry said here Tuesday that the United States would give the Philippines $40 million in maritime security assistance and was negotiating with Manila to rotate more US military forces through the country, the latest signs of the Obama administration’s concerns about mounting pressure from China on its neighbors.
He was just in Vietnam spouting off about that.
Both steps have been months in preparation, and Kerry took pains not to portray them as direct responses to the most recent difficulties in Sino-American relations.
Even so, they signal that the United States may not back down quickly as China becomes increasingly assertive in claiming islands, air space, and large expanses of ocean in the East China Sea and South China Sea.
I've taken to praying to God nothing happens rather than relying on the cooler heads of men at the top of the global power structure. Doing everything they can to start a war anywhere they can as they expand to the next target on their lists of conquests.
“The United States strongly opposes the use of intimidation, coercion, or aggression to advance territorial claims,” Kerry said. “The United States remains firmly committed to the security of the Philippines and the region.”
Unless it's the U.S. or Israel doing it.
Appearing at a joint news conference after an afternoon of discussions, Kerry and the Philippine foreign secretary, Albert F. del Rosario, criticized China’s recent unilateral declaration of an air defense identification zone over the East China Sea, including air space previously monitored mainly by Japan and South Korea.
Did that say East CHINA Sea? Thought so.
“China, in doing this, effectively is attempting to transform an air zone into its own domestic air space, and we think that this could lead to compromising freedom of flight,” del Rosario said.
Kerry reiterated that “the United States does not recognize that zone and does not accept it.”
“The zone should not be implemented, and China should refrain from taking similar unilateral actions elsewhere in the region, and particularly over the South China Sea,” he said.
The latest maritime incident between the United States and China in the South China Sea occurred Dec. 5 but did not become public until last weekend.
Oh, that explains why I didn't see it until Vietnam -- and I stand corrected. They did refer to the near collision again in a vague way.
There was no immediate reaction from the Chinese government.
I wish I could be more like the Chinese when blogging about the Globe.
Not very aggressive of them, is it?
--more--"
