Solomon Islands Earthquake/Tsunami

At around 01:10GMT on February 6th (6/2/13) a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck of the coast of the Solomon Islands killing 5 and triggering a regional tsunami warning and a small tsunami. I know it sounds an odd thing to say but was actually a really interesting incident.

It started a few hours earlier with a series of small (max2.0) earth tremors in the US state of Nevada. This is of course where Rihanna performed her first show after the para-Olympic closing ceremony. It also featured in my, er, coverage of the US election night 2012 as a wave of support for Obama swept the country. This was one of the themes of last Sunday's Superbowl

The main action though took place close to the Santa Cruz island of the Solomon group in the south Pacific. Although they're pretty much on opposite sides of the world talking about groups of Spanish named islands is quite an easy metaphor for the islands of the Caribbean which was another major theme of the Superbowl especially Brazil's relationship with the island of Hispaniola which is made up of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

As the Solomon Islands are in the Pacific any tsunami warnings cover all the nations involved in Obama's big "Pivot towards the Pacific" policy. Central to that policy is the expanding of US military bases in Australia. This earthquake actually caused something of a row between the US Geological Survey (USGS) and it's Australian equivalent. The Australian's immediately detected an 8.0 magnitude quake and requested an immediate tsunami warning while the USGS being much further away and dealing with the Nevada tremors however mistook one of the 6.3 magnitude aftershocks as the main 'quake and hesitated in issuing tsunami warning. They did though eventually realise their mistake and issue a warning. The Solomon Islands group also contains Guadalcanal scene of a brutal world war two battle between the US Marine Corp and Imperial Japan. One of the big problems with the "Pivot towards the Pacific" is that despite it being a very different world now the US' tactics don't appear to have been updated.

Apart from the obvious threat to the Solomon Islands themselves a tsunami warning in this region automatically places focus on what are known as the Small Island States (SIS) of which Tuvalu and Vanuatu are the largest. The SIS have long played a major role in negotiations about climate change and global warming because the of fact they are very low lying and surrounded by ocean they are particularly vulnerable to the rising sea levels associated with climate change. However because they are absolutely tiny islands with tiny populations in order to participate in the UN process on climate change (UNFCCC) they've had to outsource most of their science and negotiation to larger nations. This has led to them repeatedly being accused of being manipulated in order to fulfil the tactical aims of their sponsors. This does rather touch on the aggressive position the US took at COP18/CMP8 where they claimed they were paying for all the little nations to participate. Given that the US experts had initially being wrong about this 'quake I and a few other people would have found that amusing.

After the tsunami threat to the SIS had passed  the next country under threat was Papua New Guinea which is known by the acronym (PNG). PNG is also the acronym for Persona non-Grata which is the official term for a person who is banned from entering a nation's borders by that nation's government. This rather neatly brings up the issue of someone who is now extremely unwelcome in a vast number of countries - Chris Brown.

The previous day which due to the international date line was only a few hours before Chris Brown appeared in a Los Angles court to face allegations that he had violated his probation. Unusually for a celebrity trial of this sort media coverage was kept to an absolute minimum with an almost complete blackout in place. This was in order to maximise the pressure on the African nations attending the Brussels summit on Mali. The idea being that they would be forced to rely on rumours about the proceedings by over analysing the George Zimmerman case and the Lindsey Vonn crash that the US had put on for just that purpose. It has since emerged that the court accepted that Chris Brown did indeed violate his probation by getting into a fight with Frank Ocean. There is still some debate as to whether Brown threatened to kill Ocean with a firearm which would constitute two further, separate criminal offences.

The main theatre of the hearing though was testimony from investigators who had travelled to West Virginia to see if Brown had actually completed his community service at a children's day care centre. This is of course an issue that has a specific link to Nigeria through the Jessica Tata case and a lever that was yanked prior to Brown's Contra Mundum tour. The investigators found that there was no evidence that Brown had in fact completed his community service with the allegation being that he bribed public officials to lie about it. However rather this being used as a reason to imprison Brown for the original offence (the assault of Rihanna) along with further felonies such as fraud, perverting the course of justice and bribing public officials this is being used to build plausible deniability for Brown. The idea being that we can't expect him to be rehabilitated because he hasn't completed his punishment. This is why the Judge today allowed Brown to walk free from Court with only the order that he must meet with his probation officer within 48 hours and return to Court on April 5th (5/4/13) by which time the Judge will have reviewed the evidence gathered.

This of course is a deeply foolish argument because regardless of the reason why Brown has not been rehabilitated there is only one answer - Chris Brown must be sent to prison. No wonder there's been a lot of talk of people getting their faces burnt off with acid recently.

And to respond more fully to Susan Rice's rather aggressive assertion today that; "we all pledge that our daughters must not be mutilated" (note the possessive). I may have been the one who blew what was as best a poorly planned operation but it is the US that is continuing that operation even though they know full well what the mutilating outcome will be.

(Originally posted) 00:00 on 7/2/13.