Workers World March 9, 2000: Meager U.S. response to deadly floods in Africa<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../ui/styles/top.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="../../ui/script/ie5.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.workers.org/ui/script/DropDownMenuX.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> window.onload = function() { var ddmx = new DropDownMenuX("menu1"); ddmx.type = "horizontal"; ddmx.delay.show = 0; ddmx.delay.hide = 400; ddmx.position.level1.top = 0; ddmx.position.level1.left = 0; ddmx.position.levelX.top = 0; ddmx.position.levelX.left = 0; ddmx.fixIeSelectBoxBug = true; ddmx.zIndex.visible = 500; ddmx.zIndex.hidden = -1; ddmx.init(); } </script> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#483d8b" vlink="#2f4f4f" alink="#a52a2a">  <table width="65%" border="0" cellpadding="10" align="center"> <tr> <td height="911" align="left" valign="top"><table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td colspan="2"> <a href="http://www.workers.org/"><img src="../../images/wwlogo.png" alt="Workers.org" width="600" height="58" border="0" /></a></td> </tr> </table> <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" id="menu1" class="ddmx"> <tr> <td> <a class="item1" href="http://www.workers.org/">Home</a></td> <td> <a class="item1" href="javascript:void(0)">Books</a> <div class="section"> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/index.html">Selected works of Sam Marcy</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/sambol/index.htm">Bolsheviks and War</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/samtech/index.htm">High Tech, Low Pay</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/samsoc/index.htm">Soviet Socialism: Utopian or Scientific</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/indonesia/index.html">Indonesia 1965</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/cm/empire.html">Expanding Empire</a> </div></td> <td><a class="item1" href="javascript:void(0)">Subscribe</a> <div class="section"><a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/email.php">Email list</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/orders/index.php">Print edition</a> </div></td> <td> <a class="item1" href="http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php">Donate </a></td> <td> <a class="item3" href="http://www.workers.org/mo/index.html">Noticias en Español</a> </td> </tr> </table> <print> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="3"><tr> <td width="19%" align="left" valign="top" bgcolor="#E2E2E2"> <p class="caption">Support<br /> anti-war,<br /> anti-racist<br /> news </p> <p class="caption"><a href="http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php">:: Donate now ::</a></p> <hr /> <p class="caption"><print><a href="http://www.workers.org/cgi-bin/mailww/mailww.cgi"><img src="http://www.workers.org/graphics/email.gif" width="21" height="20" border="0" alt="Email this article" />Email this article</a> </print></p> <p class="caption"><print><a href="/print.php"><img src="http://www.workers.org/graphics/printer.gif" width="21" height="20" border="0" alt="Print this page" />Printable page</a></print></p> <hr /> <p class="caption"><a href="mailto:letters@workers.org">Email the editor</a></p> <form method="get" action="http://www.workers.org/cgi-bin/search/search.pl"> <input name="Terms" id="fdse_TermsEx" size="12" maxlength="255" class="email" /> <input type="submit" value="Search" style="align: center; padding: 1px 2px 1px 2px; background: #DCDCDC; color: darkslategray; font-size: 9px; border: solid #696969 1px;" /> </form> <p class="caption"> </p></td> <td width="81%"> <blockquote> <div align="right" class="translate"><a href="http://www.faganfinder.com/translate/ref.php?from=en" title="click here to translate this page into any language, using the Fagan Finder Translation Wizard" target="new" hreflang="en">Translate this page</a></div>  <h4><u>Global warming?</u></h4> <h1>Meager U.S. response to deadly floods in Africa</h1> <P><b>By G. Dunkel</b></P> <P>Mozambique, one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, has been devastated by floods since early February. Some 300,000 people have lost their homes, cattle, crops and livelihood. Maputo, the capital and a city of a million people, has been cut off from the rest of the country by the floods.</P><P>Thousands of people are clinging to treetops and small patches of high ground. If helicopters don't get to them, they are going to drown.</P><P>Health experts have run out of medicine and supplies and because roads have been cut, they can't be resupplied unless there is a massive airlift. They warn that even if the waters quickly recede, malaria, cholera, typhoid and a whole host of other water-borne diseases are going to put millions of people, particularly children, at risk.</P><P>Mozambique is the worst hit, but Botswana, Zimbabwe and northern South Africa are also suffering from major floods.</P><P>What is particularly disheartening for the people of Mozambique is that after years of war, which started in the late 1960s, first against the Portuguese colonialists and then against a proxy for South Africa's apartheid regime called Renamo, they had managed to pull the country and the economy together. For the past two years, Mozambique's economy has had one of the fastest rates of growth in the world.</P><P><b>U.S. reaction to this catastrophe</b></P><P>The official U.S. response has been meager: 140 tents, 6,900 blankets, 6,000 water cans and 160 rolls of plastic. Not much more than a small truck load. It certainly doesn't address the deep needs for medicine, health providers and repairing the roads, wells, water systems and public buildings that have been washed away.</P><P>Few newspapers have given much coverage to this tragedy, although the flooding has been going on for three weeks as of this writing.</P><P>Many climatologists believe that the warming trend in the climate, often called "global warming," is responsible for the increasing volatility of the weather. There is more energy in the atmosphere, which means more wind, more rain and more drought.</P><P>While the degree to which industrial pollution contributes to global warming is disputed, there has been enough agreement to adopt some international conventions, such as the Kyoto Protocol. But the United States government has spent much more effort obstructing these agreements than it has to the suffering of the Mozambican people.</P><P></p><P></p>  <p>This article is copyright under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">Creative Commons License</a>.   <br /> Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011<br> Email: <a href="MAILTO:ww@workers.org">ww@workers.org</a><br> Subscribe <a href="MAILTO:wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net">wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net</a><br> Support independent news <a href="http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php">http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php</a>)  </p> <p class="caption"><a href="http://www.workers.org/">HOME</a> :: <a href="http://www.workers.org/us/">U.S. NEWS</a> :: <a href="http://www.workers.org/world/">WORLD NEWS</a> :: <a href="http://www.workers.org/editorials/">EDITORIALS</a> :: <a href="http://www.workers.org/orders/">SUBSCRIBE</a> :: <a href="http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php">DONATE</a></p> </blockquote> </body> </html>