Tsunami effects on US image

Returning the favor.

Some mean spirted quarters have specualted that the only reason America is helping out the tsunami victims is to boster its' military image around the world. America has always been at the forefront of disaster assistance.

But do people who are helped remember the kindness of the American military?

Some do.

In an ironic twist of fate, a young Filipino girl is rescued by the US Navy from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo (I've been there before it erupted) and returns as a member of the US Navy to rescue tsunami victims.

ABOARD THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (AP) - Standing in the hangar bay of this mammoth aircraft carrier, Seaman Joviena Kay looks across the waves toward the devastated coast of Sumatra, remembering a time 13 years ago when she huddled on the same deck with evacuees from another great Asian disaster.

Joviena was 6 years old then, a refugee from a volcano. The Filipino-American eventually joined the U.S. Navy, and she is serving on the ship that rescued her as its sailors help the survivors of an earthquake and tsunami.

``It's horrible, what happened to those people out there,'' she says of the tens and tens of thousands of Indonesians swept to their deaths by huge waves.

It was horror of a different kind that descended on Joviena and her mother in 1991. A gigantic eruption of Mount Pinatubo rained crushing volcanic ash on their home in the Philippines. More than 700 people died.

But be warned, this is after all, an article in the Guardian and they use this story as a wedge to get their anti-American digs in. For example:

After nearly a year in the United States living with grandparents, she and her mother returned to Olongapo City, where her mother owned a bar frequented by sailors. But U.S. forces were pulling out, Joviena's father had died, education costs were rising and the prospects of a job were dim.

The Guardian fails to inform you that the pull out was at the request of the Philippine government. Proof that America is not an imperial power.

Joviena, who hopes to finish her college degree in the United States, says she works up to 14 hours a day, and in some ways doesn't live as well as she did as a little evacuee, when she ate in the officers' mess and slept in their quarters. She has a narrow bunk in a crowded room shared with 12 other sailors, and the daily call for ``Happy Hour'' means it's time to scrub the decks and sweep the floors.

What a crock of shit! Sorry folks but I just about lost it on that one.

First of all, the Guardian informs us she "hopes" to finish her college degree in the US. Morons. She can take college courses right on the ship and the Navy pays for her degree.

And unless things have changed when I was in the Navy, you work 12 hours on 12 hours off at sea. She might be working a little longer during this disaster.

Doesn't live as well as an evacuee?? Would she have been better off left on the island? What bullshit. And what's this she ate in the officers' mess? You just said she had " a monotonous diet of sandwiches. " Well then she must have ate what the officers ate, right?

And get this, "She has a narrow bunk in a crowded room shared with 12 other sailors". Oh, that "crushing volcanic ash on their home in the Philippines" was a better place? Welcome to the Navy pal.

And the Guardian wants you to know what kind of bondage this young girl has been sold into.

``Happy Hour'' means it's time to scrub the decks and sweep the floors

Now remind me again who we are talking about. Seaman Joviena Kay. Right, got it. Perhaps the Guardian prefers the Captain of the ship does these chores, I'm sure that's the way it's done in the British Navy.

Assholes.
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