400 Bali Volunteers, Americans - Swallow your US credit card. Options

[Ben]

A great letter in the New Scientist by Richard Flax:

http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opletters.jsp?id=ns24617

[Guest_Guest_codelion--]

A great letter in the New Scientist by Richard Flax:

http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opletters.jsp?id=ns24617

Bali Bombing To
Response to Macattack - To put the record straight : He calls me a lunatic and says I was lucky not ot be arrested

Dear Ben ,

Thank you for removing the viscous character assassination on me Richard Flax posted by the unnamed “ Macattack” in the NGO’s postings in response to your posting ( which I was unaware of )
on Perth,Perth.com

I stumbled across the posting recently in the perth.perth.com and found to my horror that it had been there since 2004 ! . He calls me a lunatic and says I was lucky not to be arrested amongst other things.

As it is probable that many people in Perth read this please allow me to put the record straight.
This cowardly character has obviously got a lot to loose if the truth of what actually happened in Bali during the First Bali bombing ever came out. It is really a pity when someone like him can place slander like this on an upstanding public forum like perth.perth.com

Well enough is enough, for the record :

The first evacuation plane (which I organised) we co-ordinated with the Royal Perth Hospital to receive the victims. This was done with the full backing of Canberra who paid for the plane. We then continued with a range of activities co-ordinating the ongoing effort. The Royal Perth Hospital cleared all the Perth hospitals for a major inflow of injured, who we were going to fly in on a chartered DC10 that we set up and Canberra had agreed to. In the event they decided to use a plan that they had for the evacuation of Timor and flew all the injured to Darwin in Hercules transports. So Royal Perth eventually received 29 serious burns victims.

Macattack says in the most derogatory manner “He was head of a one man team , himself “.

In the early hours of Sunday morning a team came together in my house, by 0900 hours there were ten people , co-coordinating a massive stream of information coming into my house from all the volunteers in the hospitals, and handling requests from across the globe from relatives and also numerous agencies with assistance. We held and still have the most accurate data of the first 24 hours. We were able to locate victims and tell relatives where and how to get in touch with their loved ones.

I was thrust into this role because the entire community including the clinics and hospitals and Consuls are aware that I have been assisting in this area for many years. They told every incoming call to contact us. The flow developed we received 1300 phone calls in 24 hours and were able to feed the consulate with all the data coming in and work very closely with them, we were the community acting as one.


Some months after the first bomb, I was invited to meet with a really high level delegation from Canberra and the Embassy in Jakarta. I actually met with the man who made decisions based upon my recommendations during the first 24 hours. The Canberra team for the first time, knew this all to be true, because I told them things that could only be known by the person who facilitated them (me with the assistance of the team of 10). These recommendations were made to the Consul here, he passed them on apparently without telling them who he was working with. When I sat there and told the top men the real story, a lot of faces went red!

To cut a long story short when the subject of recognition arose I indicted that there were 400 hundred heroes in Bali (who's story remains untold to this day). From children of 12 years of age to old people, all of them taking care of people with horrendous injuries and all of them with no medical training. I felt it appropriate that each of them was recognised for their amazing efforts. Everyone eventually received a letter from John Howard

Subsequently, resultant of these actions I was invited to Head the Bali Response team by YKIP.org .
I remain to this day actively involved in a series of measures to make Bali more secure with other Bali organizations and local government.

I wager that this “macattack” character is one of those who entered into the disgusting rush to be recognised. It was absolutely incredible to watch as various individuals jostled and positioned themselves to be recognised and made sure that others were not.

There is much more to this, but to return to the issue, the point is, perhaps people should think twice before making nasty allegations which have no basis in fact and discredit people.

As a request to any readers does anyone know if legal action can be taken against individuals such as “macattack” to inhibit this kind of internet identity slander?

FYI : I am presently chairman of www.mumbali.org . We are building kindergartens in the earth quake affected areas south of Jogyakarta in Java and run an orphanage for children at risk here in Bali

Yours


Richard Flax