Olympic's control-room computers crashed Olympic's control-room computers crashed Olympic's control-room computers crashed Olympic's control-room computers crashed Olympic's control-room computers crashed Olympic's control-room computers crashed Olympic's control-room computers crashed Olympic's control-room computers crashed

If you haven't started prepping, start NOW. GO. YOU DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME. Please read this and then take it to heart. You can't trust anyone in corporate america to watch out for your life. They don't care a whit.

Olympic's control-room computers crashed, and a valve failed to divert a surge of pressure that raced through the pipe until it ruptured at a weak spot, according to the NTSB.

The response also said a final report on the computer problems won't be done until Aug. 6.

Ok, now read that again slowly and think it through.

For Educational Research Use Only: Posted at 10:51 a.m. PDT; Thursday, July 29, 1999

Olympic's inaction angers nation's top pipeline regulator

by Brier Dudley Seattle Times Eastside bureau

The nation's chief pipeline regulator is frustrated with Olympic Pipe Line for taking too long to respond to her call for safety improvements after its Bellingham accident.

Kelley Coyner, administrator over the federal Office of Pipeline Safety, said the company has been less than forthcoming and slow to respond to a "corrective-action order" her agency issued June 18.

"The process of getting information from them has been a slow and torturous one," said Coyner, who is in charge of the Department of Transportation division that includes OPS.

After receiving the June 18 order from the OPS, Olympic requested three extensions for a hearing, then on Tuesday filed what Coyner considered an inadequate response.

Until Olympic convinces the federal office that it has corrected whatever caused the June 10 accident, it won't be able to restart the pipe through Bellingham or restore flows to full capacity elsewhere in its system.

"We really need the company to step up to the plate and regain public confidence in the integrity of the line," Coyner said. "It's really the responsibility of the company to disclose information."

The order forced Olympic to suspend shipments of fuel through Bellingham, reduce pressure 20 percent elsewhere in its system and address factors in the accident, which spilled 277,000 gallons of gasoline and killed three people.

Olympic spokeswoman Maggie Brown said the company was surprised at Coyner's comments.

"We felt that we filed a fairly comprehensive response to the corrective-action order a few days ago," Brown said. "I guess we're a little surprised we're being considered uncooperative. We're certainly trying hard to be cooperative."

In its response, Olympic said it will retest its pipe, has upgraded computers that failed just before the rupture, is installing more valves to control the pipeline around Bellingham and is checking valves elsewhere.

Olympic also noted that it used a computer model to simulate the rupture conditions and concluded that the pipe didn't exceed its maximum allowable pressure.

However, the company's response said the surge analysis must be redone. Brown said the model needs tweaking to be more accurate.

The response also said a final report on the computer problems won't be done until Aug. 6.

"It's as though you're doing a jigsaw puzzle and instead of getting all the pieces, you're getting one piece at a time, and you don't know what the picture is," Coyner said.

Coyner's comments came a day after her agency was excoriated during a congressional hearing. Critics accused the agency - which oversees, inspects and regulates all interstate pipelines - of being too close to the pipeline industry and failing to implement safety recommendations that may have averted the Bellingham tragedy.

"This is a woman under a fair bit of pressure, as you know," Brown said.

Exactly what happened June 10 won't be known until the National Transportation Safety Board completes its investigation in six to nine months, but here's what the agency has disclosed:

Olympic's control-room computers crashed, and a valve failed to divert a surge of pressure that raced through the pipe until it ruptured at a weak spot, according to the NTSB.

The rupture occurred in Whatcom Falls Park, in the vicinity of defects the company had known about since 1996. The NTSB is still studying whether the rupture was exactly where the defects were.

Contractors working for the city of Bellingham excavated within a foot of the pipeline in 1994 and 1995, and the ruptured stretch of pipe had markings that could be from a backhoe, but there's no evidence that contractors hit the pipe.

Also yesterday, the state Department of Ecology reported Olympic has spilled 820,711 gallons of fuel in 43 incidents since it began operating in 1965. Most of that was in 11 large spills totaling 777,304 gallons. Another eight spilled 1,000 to 10,000 gallons, and 24 spilled less than 1,000 gallons.

That includes a 1988 spill of 168,000 gallons of diesel fuel at Olympic's Skagit County pumping station and a 1986 spill of 80,000 gallons of mixed fuels near Renton.

Brier Dudley's phone message number is 206-515-5687.

Copyright ) 1999 Seattle Times Company

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Copyright ) 1999 Seattle Times Company

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), July 31, 1999

Answers

This should break your heart. America why do you care more about some wacko who shot his wife and kids than this? Why spend hours poring over JFK Jr. coverage when these boys got nothing from you? It's mainly because you suck. You've become media idiots. Incapable of rational deductive thought. As long as you've got your 401k and some twinkies, you're a happy camper. Good luck in the new millenium you losers.

For educational and research purposes only: Copyright ) 1999 The Seattle Times Company

Local News : Wednesday, July 28, 1999

In search of answers, parents of boys killed in pipeline blast sue

by Jim Brunner Seattle Times Snohomish County Bureau BELLINGHAM - When the end came, the boys' mothers could caress only their feet.

At Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, 10-year-olds Wade King and Stephen Tsiorvas lay critically burned after they were engulfed in the June 10 pipeline fire that raged down Whatcom Creek.

Doctors said the boys would not survive, so the parents did what they could to ease their final moments.

"I held his feet, because those were the only things that were really him any more. His little fingers were all icy and stiff . . . his little ears, you knew they would fall off if you touched them," said Katherine Dalen, Stephen's mother. "I don't know if he heard me tell him how much I loved him."

Nearly two months have passed since a fuel pipeline ruptured here, sending 277,000 gallons of gasoline into Whatcom Falls Park. An ensuing fire killed the two boys; recent high-school graduate Liam Wood, 18, was overcome by fumes while fly-fishing and drowned.

Today, the families of the two young boys were expected to file lawsuits in Whatcom County Superior Court against Olympic Pipe Line, several company executives and employees. Equilon Enterprises, which jointly owns Olympic with Arco and GATX, is also named in the lawsuits.

The parents are frustrated over the refusal of some Olympic employees to answer accident investigators' questions, and over the company's plans to restart the pipeline as soon as possible.

"I'm not going to let my son die for no reason," said Frank King, Wade's father. "I want them to explain to me what happened and stop it from ever happening again."

The identical lawsuits allege the deaths were the result of negligence and "failure to exercise reasonable and ordinary care," according to a draft of the court papers. Wood's family, which could not be reached for comment yesterday, has not announced plans to file a lawsuit.

The families seek unspecified damages against the companies for the loss of their children and for the pain and suffering of family members who witnessed their deaths.

Corporate `death penalty' sought

The lawsuits also ask for additional punitive damages against Equilon, the Houston-based company formed from the merger of Shell and Texaco last year. Equilon is also owner of the Anacortes refinery where six workers died in a November explosion.

As a player in the refinery and pipeline accidents, the lawsuits argue, Equilon should be subject to punitive damages that include the corporate equivalent of the death penalty - the forfeiture of all profits or the surrender of its license to do business in Washington state.

Punitive damages are not allowed under current state law, said Seattle attorney David Beninger, who is representing the families of King and Tsiorvas. But Beninger said he hopes to argue for a new interpretation of the law on appeal if the punitive-damage portion of the lawsuit is dismissed.

Beninger also represents the families of six workers killed in the Anacortes refinery explosion, four of whom have lawsuits pending in Skagit County Superior Court.

Olympic spokeswoman Maggie Brown said she has not seen the lawsuits, but said the company is cooperating with investigators to understand the cause of the pipeline rupture.

And Brown defended Olympic's overall safety record, noting that the pipeline safely transported 4.9 billion gallons of refined fuels last year.

At a news conference last week, Olympic said Bellingham city contractors may have damaged the pipeline during construction at a water-treatment plant. A 1996 company inspection of the pipe found small defects near the site of the eventual rupture, but the company deemed the markings insignificant and did not dig up the section for further inspection.

Eight employees refusing to talk

Other factors that have emerged in the ongoing investigation include a pressure surge and computer crashes at the company's Renton command center, where operators monitor the 400-mile system of pipeline that transports gasoline, jet and diesel fuel from Bellingham to Portland.

However, the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board has been hampered by the refusal of eight Olympic employees to answer investigators' questions. The employees have hired criminal defense attorneys and invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

The family's main motive behind the lawsuits, they said, is to pry answers from company officials - to understand exactly why their children died. Their lawsuits ask that the workers now refusing to talk be forced to explain what happened.

`You worry about cuts and stings'

As they prepared yesterday to announce their lawsuits, the families gathered in the King home. Tears flowed uncontrollably at times as they recalled the day of the pipeline leak and fire.

On the afternoon of June 10, Frank King left his car dealership to check on carpet being laid at home. Wade, who was playing with a skateboard in the driveway, asked his father to take him to the bike store.

"I said, `I can't, little buddy, I have to go right back to work soon,' " Frank King recalled.

Wade left soon after to play with Stephen, whose nearby house is at the edge of Whatcom Creek. The two scampered down to the cottonwood- and fir-lined stream, where they'd played hundreds of times before.

While the boys played, Stephen's mother, Katherine Dalen, was driving his older brothers to buy new shoes. She sometimes worried about Stephen playing down by the creek.

"You worry about them slipping and hitting their heads. You worry about them swinging on that tree branch that's too weak. You worry about cuts and insect stings," Dalen said.

"You don't worry about the water burning them to death," she said.

"Or the sky exploding," Mary King added.

Dalen didn't find any shoes, and they were back in the car when she first saw the black smoke billowing thousands of feet into the air. Dalen immediately headed downtown to pick up her husband, Edwin "Skip" Williams.

Traffic was awful - sirens were starting to wail and no one in town knew what had happened. Dalen picked up her husband and headed home. They tried to call the house on a cell phone, but the circuits were busy. Their daughter got through just long enough to tell them Stephen had been burned. Then the phone went dead.

"I thought, `Oh, maybe they were making popcorn and he burned himself,' " Dalen said.

No hope of survival

Frank King was still at the house when he saw the towering plume. "You find Wade. Find him!" Mary King told her husband.

"There wasn't a scared bone in my body," he recalled. "I didn't think Wade was involved in this thing."

But one of the boys had inadvertently ignited the gasoline fumes with a fireplace lighter. Stephen and Wade were burned over 90 percent of their bodies. Stephen's brother, Andrew, and teenaged friend Tyrone Francisco heard their cries and carried them from the creek.

Though burned, the boys were able to speak at first. Wade tried to hide from his mother, embarrassed and sorry that he'd allowed himself to be burned. He asked his father if he'd have scars.

"I told him we all have three layers of skin, and so he'd be all right," Frank King said.

The boys were taken to a local hospital and airlifted to Harborview's burn unit later that night. The families drove the two hours to the Seattle hospital; once there, a burn specialist told them their sons were going to die.

The boys' bodies grew cold as they lost the ability to retain fluids or heat. Frank King told his son it was OK for him to pass on.

"I said there's a ball game going on in heaven, little buddy, and they need you up there," he said. "Pretty soon, he went."

Stephen died a few hours later.

Nearly two months after the tragedy, Mary King can barely speak about the accident before sobs force her to leave the room.

They all hope the tragedies will lead to changes - such as stricter safety regulations - so no parent will have to endure what they have endured.

"We will make a difference," she said, her teeth clenched and her face wet with tears. "We will make a difference."

Jim Brunner's phone message number is 425-745-7808.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), July 31, 1999.

Gordon, you really are an asshole, and what does this have to do with y2k? Talk about making great leaps of logic.

-- (3(@.)), July 31, 1999.

Gordon, thanks for posting these updates.
To read the news while this event was occurring, see:

Explosion in Bellingham, Wash

xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), July 31, 1999.

"Gordon, you really are an asshole, and what does this have to do with y2k? Talk about making great leaps of logic."

Here's a validating example of why we're doomed. The general population cannot connect the dots, news like these don't make sense to them, so they stick to "entertaining" news of JFK crash and mass murder/suicides.

-- Chris (%$^&^@pond.com), July 31, 1999.

When there's crucial, factual, future-clue pointing news on a thread, the trolls come out to try to derail and subvert. Sorry, Time Will Tell and *your* karma will catch up to you.

"Olympic's control-room computers crashed, and a valve failed to divert a surge of pressure that raced through the pipe until it ruptured at a weak spot" ... as was reported on 1st thread.

Completely akin to Y2K and may, after all facts are pulled from the clenched teeth of the pipeline co, be directly caused by Y2K upgrades, remediation efforts, testing, or "teething."

As we posted back last November, gas lines are a major risk to populations in 2000. And sooner.

3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), July 31, 1999.

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

http://www.seattle-pi.com/pi/local/pipe09.shtml

National alert from pipeline accident

Regulators urge review of computer systems

Friday, July 9, 1999

By SCOTT SUNDE

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Breakdowns in the Olympic Pipe Line Co. computer system just before and during last month's deadly accident in Bellingham have so alarmed federal regulators that they have issued a nationwide warning.

The federal Office of Pipeline Safety issued the warning this week to the 2,000 operators of liquid and natural-gas pipelines in the United States. It urged them to make sure that computer systems used to operate and monitor pipelines are working properly.

The advisory details a series of computer failures on June 10 around the time Olympic's 16-inch line leaked up to 277,000 gallons of gasoline into Bellingham creeks. Gasoline vapor later exploded in flames, and two 10-year-old boys and a teenager were killed.

After the accident, Olympic acknowledged that its computer system crashed on the afternoon of the accident. The computer problems may have kept Olympic personnel from reacting quickly to the leak, regulators said.

The computer system is known as SCADA -- supervisory control and data acquisition. Such systems are common in the industry, though they may have been built at different times by different manufacturers.

All such systems go under the generic name of SCADA.

Some companies, including Olympic, add to their computer systems leak- detection equipment. Olympic's uses such information as temperature and pressure to detect leaks.

But investigators with the Office of Pipeline Safety have determined that Olympic's computer system broke down on the day of the accident.

"Immediately prior to and during the incident, the SCADA system exhibited poor performance that inhibited the pipeline controllers from seeing and reacting to the development of an abnormal pipeline operation," regulators said in their advisory.

The Office of Pipeline Safety is part of the U.S. Transportation Department.

Regulators did not name Olympic in the advisory. But Patricia Klinger, a spokeswoman for the Office of Pipeline Safety, acknowledged that the incident mentioned in the advisory and prompting the warning was Olympic's Bellingham accident.

The message to other pipeline operators, she said, is to "take extreme caution."

"We don't want to see this repeated."

Gerald Baron, an Olympic spokesman, said the company believes federal regulators are being prudent in sending out the advisory to pipeline operators.

Baron could not discuss the details of the computer problems and cautioned against focusing on computer difficulties or any other single factor as a cause of the accident.

Regulators believe Olympic's computer system typically operated at 65 percent to 70 percent of capacity.

But on June 10, the system had an internal database error. That error, plus the demands put on the computer by the leak, "hampered controller operations," the advisory said.

"The combination of the database error, the inadequate reserve capacity of the SCADA processor and the unusually dynamic changes that occurred during the upset condition appear to have combined and temporarily overburdened the SCADA computer system," regulators said.

"This may have prevented the pipeline controllers from reacting and controlling the upset condition on their pipeline as promptly as would have been expected."

Regulators also said that modifications made to the computer system after it was installed may have caused it to malfunction.

The Office of Pipeline Safety ordered Olympic on June 18 to find out what went wrong with its computer system and correct it. It also ordered the company to make a comprehensive review of its SCADA system.

Those demands came as part of a corrective order that closed the upper 37 miles of the 400-mile pipeline. Regulators also ordered the company to undertake several safety modifications and reviews.

The Office of Pipeline Safety may soon issue additional orders regarding Olympic's pipeline , Klinger said.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

P-I reporter Scott Sunde can be reached at 206-448-8331 or scottsunde@seattle-pi.com

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 31, 1999.

The "general population" will be quickly and permanently removed from the gene pool, if TSHTF.

As I said on another thread, Darwin would be proud.

153 days remain.

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), July 31, 1999.

Those two boys saved Bellingham from being another Bhopal;The gas was flowing down Whatcom Creek towards a crowded midday downtown. Had the boys not ignited it in the park, someone, ( a smoker or welder perhaps) would have ignited it downtown, with a resulting death toll quite possibly in the thousands......apparently another refinery has exploded in California.....following another last week in Alberta..... and a third four weeks ago, also in California....and the gov'ment has been warning state governors about possible Y2k induced accidents at chemical plants....ala Bhopal.....then there's the nukes........way this is starting to play out, a lot of us going to soon join that little boy in that great ball game in heaven, "little buddy".

-- Ralph Kramden (and@awaywego.com), July 31, 1999.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with some of the sentiment expressed here on this thread, and elsewhere.

I don't think people are assholes for being interested in things like the death of John-John, or some guy who offs his family, coworkers, and self. (as recent examples) I think that I "Get" Y2K as well as anyone else, yet I'm interested in these other things as well. They are signs of the culture. They are symbols of who we are, where we are, and where we are headed.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who approached things like these tragedies as sport. (Maybe one or two.) I think that mostly people are attracted to this stuff, because it brings up deep, almost primal feelings, and that is part of being human. We shouldn't deny these aspects of ourselves, lest we forget that we ARE human.

Certainly, it's as much of a human tragedy when three unknown children are killed in an industrial accident, as when a famous young man, known mainly for his family and his good looks, dives his plane into the ocean. But, I would venture to say that the loss of JFKjr, (which quite frankly disturbed me deeply) or the trend of loonies running around killing people, is a cultural tragedy. And that's why those things get the kind of attention they get, and deserve that attention.

The culture may go through sweeping changes in the next six months or so, in the meantime, it is what it is, (and it will become what it will become) and I would suggest that individuals would better serve themselves by trying to understand the culture as it is, rather than try to rail against it. When one rails, then everybody eventually ends up being an asshole. That's no way live, is it?

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), July 31, 1999.

the modern generations =attitude->no-compassion.JESUS said if you want mercy=be merciful.

-- sadman. (dogs@zianet.com), July 31, 1999.

the modern generations =attitude->no-compassion.JESUS said if you want mercy=be merciful.LINK=www.tentmaker.net

-- sadman. (dogs@zianet.com), July 31, 1999.

"Gordon, you really are an asshole, and what does this have to do with y2k? Talk about making great leaps of logic. "

-- (3(@.)), July 31, 1999.

(3(@.)),

I have never made a personal criticism on this forum before, but you, sir/madam, are an ignorant, insensitive, fucking asshole.

-- Clyde (clydeblalock@hotmail.com), July 31, 1999.

Thank you for your post, Gordon. There will be many, many more incidents in the days ahead similiar to this one in the avoidable (but not avoided) pain and death of innocents. We cannot even expect to know about many of them in a timely fashion, as the media (for what it is worth) and Internet will likely be down, and the government will presumably keep us as informed of bad news as the Soviets did their people.

www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), July 31, 1999.

I was fully aware that these posts would generate some controversy. However, I think it has everything to do with Y2K. Systems can and do break despite multiple failsafes. That was part of my point. I can assure you that the people who work in that control center are good people. I've met many like them on pipeline tours i've been on through my work. They're hardworking detail oriented perfectionists. They try real hard not to make mistakes like this one. That's because they know the consequences of their actions.

Unfortunately, management is not always on the same page. In fact, the Seattle times reported last week that managment may have been doing a "dog and pony show" related to an asset sale at the precise valve which failed! Apparantly they wanted to show the potential investors how the valve worked. Jesus.

I realize that the articles are tough to read. I just had a daughter and I can tell you I would not survive something like this as a parent. It's simply to horrific to comprehend.

And so my point here is that we have this major systems failure which normally would be a Page One event, except for the fact that we're all busy watching John John's plane get dredged up and listening to some Georgia sherriff read a psychotics' suicide note.

Mean time, there's a train heading straight for us on the tracks. No one cares. Very few realize the train will hit them because they're busy consuming morbid fodder spooned to them by a ratings hungry press. Let me say this out there. You reporters refusing to ask the hard questions hold peoples' lives in your hands.

How do you sleep at night?

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), July 31, 1999.

I agree, pshannon: We are attracted to these stories because they bring up "deep, primal feelings."

Our "culture" is all about keeping away from feelings. You can do the analysis yourself, but a machine can't afford its cogs having unproductive feelings. And yet, for us to fathom y2k and ACT TO PREPARE for it, we need to break through the general constriction on feelings.

As a father of a 3-year old, I get teary reading about the burning deaths of those children. I indulge in reading it, yes, and I imagine, and I get mad. And I go get one more prep detail done.

It's amazing how bogged down I am sometimes even though I know better, and I think it's that emotional whitewash we've been given. I know I'm part of the herd in most ways.

It sounds like a cliche, but there's a big gap between parents and non-parents. "You just don't know until you're one."

Gordon is a little over-the-top in his rhetoric, but I'll go him one better.

"America why do you care more about some wacko who shot his wife and kids than this?" said Gordon.

America why do you care more about celebrity deaths as infotainment than about the 40,000 children who die each day (12 million a year) from starvation, starvation-related disease, or easily-treated diseases?

Answer: It's because they are not white. They don't look like us. And therefore those parents could not possibly feel as deep a loss as we "enlightened" white parents do. Why, they're almost like animals, aren't they?

Did I get it right? Maybe we'll find out just how far above animals we are in the years ahead. Maybe we won't. I think we're already far below what "humans" ought to be, given our potential in intellect and technology. It's moral evolution we have failed in.

If I was going to issue a general "fuck you" to America, it would have to be for this holocaust ignored. The opportunity to do good in the world, at next to NO COST. (Probably for less than we spend on DOG FOOD.) To make a difference in this short lifetime. You bastards.

The shame is probably too great to face directly. I pray your still- innocent children do not reap what you have sown, that they will be able to hear the cries of others who suffer, and that they will forgive you your ignorance.

-- jor-el (jor-el@krypton.uni), July 31, 1999.

species die-back is natural.

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), July 31, 1999.

species die-back is natural.For compassion,look to Lord Buddha.

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), July 31, 1999.

" This should break your heart. America why do you care more about some wacko who shot his wife and kids than this? Why spend hours poring over JFK Jr. coverage when these boys got nothing from you? It's mainly because you suck. You've become media idiots. Incapable of rational deductive thought. As long as you've got your 401k and some twinkies, you're a happy camper. Good luck in the new millenium you losers. "

That was what Gordon said, and I'M the asshole? Ya, uh huh, right. Totally non Y2K related bullshit and he has the nerve to call anyone cares about a guy who shot his wife and kids a loser. Assuming of course the Good Old Gordo is so much smarter and lucid than us "sheeple". Well screw him and everyone who sides with him.

Batter up... Y2K Doom Zombies, your turn is coming up.

-- (a@$.'), July 31, 1999.

Missed it again butthead. I too am saddened by the deaths of the people in Atlanta. However, if we continue to get sidetracked like this, we're gonna lose a hell of a lot more people. Yes that's a pretty cold assessment.

You wrote: "Totally non Y2K related bullshit and he has the nerve to call anyone cares about a guy who shot his wife and kids a loser."

Nope, completely Y2K related. A computer failure killed a bunch of kids. Do you understand systems? My concern is that a larger set of computer failures are going to kill a lot more people than 12 innocents. Shouldn't we be more concerned about that? And the poster above is completely correct in her assessment. Unfortunately, there will most likely be many, many more deaths like the ones she mentioned.

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), July 31, 1999.

"America why do you care more about celebrity deaths as infotainment than about the 40,000 children who die each day (12 million a year) from starvation, starvation-related disease, or easily-treated diseases? Answer: It's because they are not white. They don't look like us."

Wrong. We have sent many millions of dollars in aid to those "not-white" countries. They're still a horrendous mess, & people still starve in squalor & die of diseases there despite our help, because of their own bad management & unbelievably corrupt governments. That we should do all we have done to help them & still feel guilty when they fail is absurd. It's possible to feel compassion for others' misery while acknowledging that WE are not actually responsible, & in fact have done all we could to help.

-- and we're (off@topic.again), August 01, 1999.