[back]Asian Tsunami

Asian Tsunami: Natural Disaster? Or Nuclear Test?

by NATIONAL BUSINESS REVIEW

[Removed] http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=11043&cid=1&cname=Media
7-Jan-2005

 During his press conference at the Jakarta summit, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland took time to address a rumour -- apparently rife in the Arab world -- that the Boxing Day earthquake had been triggered by an Indian nuclear experiment.

While conspiracy theories generally abound in the wake of any large scale disaster, this one appears to have sprung from the Arab press -- or, at least, to have been given credibility by it.

Israeli news outlets, which keep close tabs on Arab language news outlets, have reported sightings of the story in Arab newspapers.

Both the Jerusalem Post and Arutz Sheva report that a prominent Egyptian weekly -- identified variously as Al-Osboa and Al-Usbu -- claims that India, in its heated nuclear race with Pakistan, has lately received sophisticated nuclear technology from the United States and Israel.

The paper claims, according to these reports, that India has been experimenting with this technology -- and other nuclear devices -- in the region of the Indian Ocean known as 'the Fire Belt,' which housed the epicenter of the earthquake.

It said that both Israel and India are conducting nuclear tests in the Indian Ocean, and the United States has recently decided to carry out similar tests in the Australian deserts, which, it said, is also part of the Fire Belt.

Abutz Sheva said the paper reported: "The three most recent tests appeared to be genuine American and Israeli preparations to act together with India to test a way to liquidate humanity.

"In the most recent test, they began destroying entire cities over extensive areas. Although the nuclear explosions were carried out in desert lands, tens of thousand of kilometers away from populated areas, they had a direct effect on these Asian areas," according to the weekly.

The JPost said the paper reported a history of failed attempts at intervention by Islamic states.

JPost said the paper reported: "Last year only, Arab and Islamic states have asked the United States to stop its nuclear activities in that region, and to urge Israel and India to follow suite."

JPost said:

Although Al-Osboa' does not rule out the possibility that the tsunami could have been caused by a natural earthquake it speculates however that, "while it has not been proved yet, there has been a joint Israeli-Indian secret nuclear experiment [conducted on December 26] that caused the earthquake."

Arutz Sheva notes that:

The article also claims that last year "Arab and Islamic countries intervened more than three times in the U.S. to stop this joint nuclear activity."

The Times of India also reports this rumour but lumps it in with many others it discovered.

Among them:

# The earthquake was caused by testing of "eco-weapons which can trigger earthquakes and volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves;"
# The earthquake was a side effect of an experiment to try and correct the "wobbly rotation of the Earth;"
# Aliens did it.

Meanwhile, back in Jakarta, Mr Egeland said he would like to stop the rumour mill "here and now."

"The seismic surveillance people around the globe know exactly what happened. This is a fault line," he said.

The UN is concerned that such rumours -- and the even more widely circulated contention by Islamic clerics that the catastrophe was divine retribution -- are impeding fund raising efforts in the Arab world.

Arutz Sheva reports that one cleric on Saudi television gave a sermon in which he said:

"The problem is that the (Christian) holidays are accompanied by forbidden things, by immorality, abomination, adulterers, alcohol, drunken dancing and…revelry. A belly dance costs 2,500 (English) pounds per minute and a singer costs 50,000 pounds per hour, and they hop from one hotel to another from night to dawn. Then he spends the entire night defying Allah.

"Haven't they learned their lesson from what Allah wreaked upon the coast of Asia, during the celebration of these forbidden? At the height of immorality, Allah took vengeance on these criminal (and) Allah struck them with an earthquake. He finished off the Richter scale. All nine levels are gone."