I'm suprised a topic hasn't been started about this sooner...well, no time like the present...

It's just an unbelievable tragedy. I don't even know what the death toll is anymore...over 150,000 now? That's terrible...for example just imagine half the population of Victoria, BC was just instantly wiped out.


Here's a great photo essay from Time magazine: http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/tsunami/

....and another:
http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/asia_earthquake/



I strongly encourage all of you to make a donation to help with the relief efforts. Remember, if you do it before January 11th, the Canadian Government will match your donation.

I suspect that it may be an overload of information, so we want to escape from it for a little while.

*********Advertising Plug**********

I actually work for a Canadian NGO/humantarian group.

http://www.globalaid.net/asia.html

My boss are over there doing the recon/determination work right now, so our plans should be in effect next week.

*******end advertising plug******

Personally I have been a supporter of Unicef for some time now. But feel free to donate to many of the other international aid foundations out there as well.

150,000 is an insane death toll. I have never heard of such a death toll due to a natural disaster before. Has anyone else?

just so i don't sound like i'm only plugging my organization...

via globe and mail

Gotta love it when one of recent history's most destructive tidal waves hits some of the most densely populated regions in the world...

Yeah, but most of the worst natural disasters happen in Asia.

Anyways, I've already donated my $20 to the Red Cross. :D

I'm afraid I have no money. Although I probably put $20 or $30 in coin into those Red Cross collection cans we had at school.

yeah, I've already thrown in like 50 bucks that I really don't have so, its pretty hard for me to donate more. However, the long term effects of this should be intersting, in that, these countries have lost most of a generation, a shame really. One of the things that has astonished me about this, is some of the American coverage of this event. CNN had a programs discussing, if I recall correctly, how islamic terrorism ties into this whole event. Now, personally, I can't see how this occurs or why the hell you would be bothering to cover the "terrorist" angle at this point. I mean, isn't there enough stories as it is from this? Just another reason for me to be pissed off at CNN I guess.

Terrorists are big news. And CNN, and Fox, and all those other news stations aren't above digging up non-existent news to get more viewers.

And for interest's sake, I heard this on the news about some charities...

Of every dollar donated:

Canadian Red Cross: 90 cents directly to relief, 10 to administrative fees
Oxfam: 90 cents to relief, 10 to administrative fees
World Vision: 81 cents to relief, 18 cents to admin fees, and 1 cent to future use

:eyebrow:
Yeah, cuz the islamic terrorists now have control over earthquakes....

what, you expect charities to run without overhead? without advertising? without office space or staff? without the ability to send staff overthere?

Whoa, calm down mav....note the "for interest's sake"...I didn't mean anything by it...

sorry, getting cabin fever iThink...

It's okay.

I was actually trying to note how they're higher than usual. The Red Cross bumped up the amount going directly to relief from the usual 85 cents to 90 cents.

Terrorists are big news and CNN is trying to find that angle to give them the edge.

The sad part of the whole situation is that a close friend of mine at work has family in Sri Lanka, and fortunately her whole family is safe and just surviving. The reality is food and water is not getting to all areas due to guerrilla terrorists preventing the releif from getting to specific areas of Sri Lanka. Government doesn't trust the guerillas and the Guerillas don't trust the Gov so they don't let anything in.

Fortunately now they are getting relief.

my bosses just came back from Sri Lanka (NGO plug 11^). They actually went through the Tamil Tiger areas. There's a checkpoint every km or so in their territory, with a gov't checkpoint at either end.

I'm a little cynical about this wave of generosity. Certainly, this was a major tragedy, and the donations (mine included) are sincere and necessary. But, since the earthquake and tsunami hit, the death toll from AIDS in Africa is probably close to double that of the tsunami. This goes on, week by week. As do other great tragedies.

Granted, the problems and solutions are likely to be simpler (though large) when dealing with a single major event. So, aid in this case may well be more effective than in others. And some have argued that this is some kind of turning point in how we deal with crises. I don't believe that, but I'll wait and see.

most of the money donated in the last little while will end up going around the world to all the needy places, not just the tsunami zone.

That's definitely true of Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres, who have stated that they don't need any more, and that future donations will be used elsewhere. I haven't seen similar statements from anyody else.

This is really cool. From what I saw, there's nothing disturbing or gory, but I didn't watch them all. I finally can appreciate how awesome the force of that thing was.

Tsunami Videos

A buddy sent me some pics of the aftermath, bodies everywhere with the caption "What the news doesn't want you to see". It was disgusting. I don't know about you guys, but I don't need to see stuff like that to appreciate what happened. Those vid's are pretty clean though.