The article which I quoted to in my earlier piece has since been republished in a couple of places, including Serendipity, which has a fine collection of links, including this article, published in 2003 by the BBC.
The page I mentioned on Serendipity also includes a very interesting passage which I will quote here:
'Why did the US State Department remain mum on the existence of an impending catastrophe?,' author Michel Chossudovsky pondered.
'Probably because fishermen in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand don't have multimillion dollar communications equipment handy,' one respondent said as readers posted angry replies."
Ah, but of course they do. Fishermen have cell phones, which gives them access to multimillion dollar communications networks. The cellphone penetration throughout the whole area of the disaster was such that if SMS messaging had been used to give a warning, tens of thousands of lives might have been spared. The U. S. had enough time to notify its naval base on Diego Garcia. Why did it not make even the slightest attempt to notify anyone else? Even a partly successful attempt would have saved many lives, particularly in coastal cities and resorts. The advantages of the tsunami to the United States:
1. it further weakens the 'Asian tigers', countries whose success was an embarrassment to the American rapacious model of world development;
2. it provides lots of opportunities for friends of the Bush Administration to enrich themselves in lucrative 'emergency' supply contracts for the rescue mission;
3. it gives American ships an excuse to be in places they would not otherwise have an excuse to be, and plenty of opportunity to unload whatever cargo they might later find useful around the Indian Ocean; and
4. it provides the chance for an ostentatious show of American goodwill which can be used in the propaganda campaign to restore the image of the United States in the world.
I still don't think the whole story has come out, but I still have my ear to the sea, so to speak. I will keep you posted.