This sucks...

Remember the big 2004 tsunami at Aceh, Indonesia? Did you give money (we did)? Guess what the money is going for -- from The Sunday Times Online:

Tsunami survivors given the lash
Disaster donations help Islamic vigilante force impose punishments on women

When people around the world sent millions of pounds to help the stricken Indonesian province of Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, few could have imagined that their money would end up subsidising the lashing of women in public.

But militant Islamists have since imposed sharia law in Aceh and have cornered Indonesian government funds to organise a moral vigilante force that harasses women and stages frequent displays of humiliation and state-sanctioned violence.

International aid workers and Indonesian women�s organisations are now expressing dismay that the flow of foreign cash for reconstruction has allowed the government to spend scarce money on a new bureaucracy and religious police to enforce puritan laws, such as the compulsory wearing of headscarves.

Some say there are more �sharia police� than regular police on the local government payroll and that many of them are aggressive young men.

�Who are these sharia police?� demanded Nurjannah Ismail, a lecturer at Aceh�s Ar-Raniri University. �They are men who, most of the time, are trying to send the message that their position is higher than women.�

In one town, Lhokseumawe, the authorities are even planning to impose a curfew on women � a move that social workers warn will force tsunami widows to quit night-time jobs as food sellers or waitresses and could drive them into prostitution.

So wrong on so many fucking levels and yet, the "international community" is just standing there, wringing their hands and going tsk, tsk, tsk and fervently wishing that all this nastiness would just go away. And yes, Bush is a moron. I ask -- what constitutes a "Call To Action" for these people? It was 9/11 for me. What is it for them or are they so self absorbed and clueless that WW3 could start and finish while they were prattling on about the need for free-trade rutabagas from Somalia. Joseph Stalin called them Useful Idiots while he was murdering several hundred million people. The term "Useful Idiots" does seem appropriate...