Pope_Viper said:
All horrible, horrible stuff.
I also wish those who might have friends/family in the affected areas my best wishes, as it appears there was no warning whatsoever.
I'm reading 80,000+ fatalities so far. Good grief.
I agree, and to those who might have families or friends there, my sympathies.
The numbers I am seeing says close to 100K. Pessimistically I would say that the numbers are going to exceed that. It seems most of the current death count are of those who were swept away in the wave. The numbers will increase with Cholera, typhoid, and all sorts of diseases begin to take hold. With so many dead, and the destruction of the basic infrastructure, this is inevitable. It is usually disease and malnutrition that does most of the killing in the war zones of Africa.
100K. The numbers, after awhile, can´t be fully comprehended. This is like 100K Japanese vaporized in a fireball over Hiroshima. And saying that I recall worse- famines in Somalia, Ethiopia, genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, former Yugoslavia, and god knows how many natural disasters.
But perhaps it´s only news.
You guys are perhaps getting distracted by whether it was more `evil´ as a natural disaster or ´terrifying` as a natural event. But I think what matters is ´who´.
This is sad, but maybe it´s how we see things. 1000 + Scandinavians? I hear it´s almost 3000 Europans, but maybe that´s a preliminary figure. I have no idea how many Americans.
For most of you these are just fisherman living on some tropical beach- and perhaps they don´t matter as much. It was also a lot of vacationing tourists, but probably a small number in comparison.
Maybe the WTC was more shocking to Americans because it was Americans being killed. A tidal wave wiping out the coast of France, or California, killing 100K people would be more ´important` for a lot of people.
I just finished Aiden Hartley´s book about his life as a coorespondent in Africa during the 1980s-90s (Rwanda, Somalia, Ethiopia) and the thing is that, for the most part, people don´t care because those who die are of a different culture, different religion, different color.
At one point he says that 1 american or european was worth about 25 in the middle east, 50-100 in Africa, and I think he was being generous. Case in point, the Europeans and the UN were all caught up in the tangle of the collapse of Yugoslavia, and they convenient ignored or pulled out of Rwanda´s massive genocide until being guilted back in by the UN Secretary General who asked if black Africans were worth the same as white europeans. Millions die in Congo´s wars over the past ten years, and the world doesn´t blink- it´s just another in the black hole of Africa.
This has been happening for years. A disaster strikes, for the charity agencies it becomes a feeding frenzy, the relief machine slowly grinds up, and by the time it gets there to offer relief, little can be done but to bury the bodies.
And maybe that´s the real, mundane, evil- our apathy or disinterest in the suffering of others, and the way we judiciously afford our attentions.
