Dec 31 2004
tsunamiphuket.wmv
Be sure your speakers are turned on then watch this video (Windows Media format).
Unbelievable.
The death toll is now over 100,000.
Here are some links. Please help if you can…
American Red Cross International Response Fund
AmeriCares South Asia Earthquake Relief Fund
Direct Relief International International Assistance Fund
M餥cins Sans Fronti貥s International Tsunami Emergency Appeal
Oxfam Asian Earthquake & Tsunami Fund
Sarvodaya Relief Fund for Tsunami Tragedy
UNICEF South Asia Tsunami Relief Efforts
(If you know of any others, please add them in comments.)
Before and after…
This is a photograph of a residential area, about one mile from the shore, in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, taken on June 23, 2004…
The same area on December 28, 2004…
Bob Herbert writes in today’s New York Times…
It’s a peculiarity of modern technology that people anywhere in the world can sit back and watch in real time, like voyeurs, the life-and-death struggles of their fellow humans. The planet is growing smaller and its residents more interdependent by the day. We’re fully aware that our planetary neighbors in southern Asia are desperately drawing upon the deepest reservoirs of fortitude and resilience that our troubled species has at its disposal.
What this means is that we’re the supportive community. All of us. This catastrophe would at least have a silver lining if it moved the people of the United States and other nations toward a wiser, more genuinely cooperative international posture.
William Faulkner, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, said: “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”
That’s what Faulkner believed. We’ll see.
