OT: Can we do something for the Tsunami victims ?

[AdamJay]

What really made me sick is what they showed on german TV yesterday. Western tourists continuing their holidays, I dont know if the fat white male sipping cocktail next to Thais cleaning the debris ( sitting on his plastic chair few yards away) was a German but they interviewed some families, you know people who look like a bank clerk or a school teacher, they continue the holidays and seem to have no problem doing it next to debris and dead bodies. These were not some uneducated brutes, sextourists who come with so called "bumsbomber" (fuck bomber) but absolutely "civilised", educated people. TV said tha all german tourists have the right to leave immediately, the tourist agencies pay it but many of them are staying because they want to. I know that many Germaqns have a religious obsession with thier "Urlaub" - holidays but THIS goes too far for me. How they can be so indifferent, so heartless, thick skinned ?

I haven't been watching TV, but i'm sure once the initial shock of the great number of dead has settled in, here in the US we'll see plenty of magazine stories like "World's Largest Natural Disaster Doesn't Keep San Francisco Doctor from Enjoying His Vacation in Thailand" from the likes of Fox News or CNN or MSNBC, etc. etc.

Call me crazy but if i was in that region for anything, work or play, during this widescale horrorific last week, i think i would be either A) trying to leave (dont have the best immune system and i hear their healthcare infrastructure is at about 5% operable compared to 1 month ago), B) helping in whatever way i could, or C) dead like the countless others.
But one thing i would not be is going on with whatever it was i was doing there in the first place. I cannot believe people.

[Amberience]

All governments are lying scummy sons of Angelic sluts - no exception.

I will donate some money when my student loan comes in. It wont be much, but it will be something.

edit: All people are lying scummy sons of Angelic sluts too - with a few exceptions.

[rikhyray]

The weird thing is that when I saw that report I was sure they were going to show how people stay to help, since the other day they showed german scuba school owner risking his life diving, searching a pond full of corpses of humans and animals. Obviously he lives there so feels for the people. The holiday resorts tourism is a weird thing anyway, I played such places and mostly hated them, so boring, the locals being only people worth talking to. They are always well isolated from the local reality but disaster of such scale should make tourists aware that the "natives" are human too. Obviously not.

[forge]

Just like to throw my spanner in the works.....

I was shocked and deeply affected by the Tsunami like everyone, but while this tragedy shocked everyone into giving more than ever before, something that really concerns me is that the number of people who died as a result of this natural disaster die EVERY 3 DAYS worldwide as a result of UNNECESSARY poverty, many of them children. This is not a one off freak of nature but an on going result of greedy human behaviour that can actually be changed but isn't. The thing that concerns me is that it seems to take a major shocking headline worthy event to prompt any action - we should actually be responding like this to world poverty itself.

Might sound like an odd thing to say but had you the choice would you rather be in the places where the tidal wave happened or a poor villager in the Sudan where people are routinely tortured and intentionally raped by AIDS infected soldiers - and this is AS WELL AS conditions of terrible poverty, malnutrition, poor education etc etc. Somehow I just think it would be easier to rationalise a natural disaster than it would be to be the victim of sheer evil from other human beings while the governments who are in a position to do anything about it are spending enough money to solve world poverty on invading Iraq to steal their oil. Obviously I would rather not be either, I'm just trying to say that the tidal wave grabbed the headlines and I'm hoping alot of people who have given generously to that don’t now feel they've done their good deed for the year and leave it at that.

as has been touched on in other responses here - this is our wake up call. We are at a point in history where governments have now proven beyond any shadow of doubt (with Iraq more than anything) that human interests are bottom of their agenda - the events of recent times are the call out to us in the comfortable west to snap out of it and really sort ourselves out. The unnecessary suffering on this planet is so far beyond acceptable it is surreal - after growing up thinking myself a decent person in a supposedly decent society I now realise that it's not enough to just care any more, action is needed.

Dont know if anyone in the UK saw the Vicar of Dibley NYD special, but Dawn French really hit the nail on the head - although I have been giving alot of thought to the fact that it really is in the hands of the people to change things anyway - especially since the sheer horror of the Iraq invasion and then watching with sheer bewilderment when GWB got voted BACK IN????!!!!. If governments aren't held accountable by people showing their disgust they have proven they cant be trusted to do anything decent - it really is up to us to make change happen. They got the guns but we got the numbers...

So for those who didn’t see the vicar of dibley she was talking about MAKING POVERTY HISTORY

www.makepovertyhistory.org

My girlfriend and I have ordered 20 of the wristbands – we would have got more but we’d at least like to try to get others to take the initiative themselves – as it says on the websites you can wear them on your trainers, lapel or on your rear view mirror, even on your website! doesn’t have to be your wrist the important thing is to just wear them – the idea being the more it spreads so does the awareness and the more strength it gathers.

Next to the relevance to this forum:

As Rikhray said – there are a lot of passionate people here and Spiderprod was talking about getting together a compilation for US to make money, but in light of all this I would much rather contribute a tune to a fundraiser compilation – ABLETON LIVE AID!!!! Lets do it guys, there’s loads of talent round here and I’m sure we can come up with something and I personally would do what I can to get it off the ground!

[Amberience]

The good Christian-moralled people of the world ought to try reading their Bibles again. Rather than torturing little children, raping OAP's of their pension money, spending all their ill gotten money on Mercedes Benz', they should probably be trying to help out the weak - rather than doing what they currently do, take advantage of them.

[forge]

The good Christian-moralled people of the world ought to try reading their Bibles again. ...

nah, not enough any more - there was a program recently on the history channel called 'who wrote the bible' all about the various chapters of history when various leaders took out or inserted bits and reworded other bits in what was their times version of political spin. I also studied it a bit at school and sadly I dont think alot of what the good bloke that was Jesus really did is that easy to get a hold of these days - you know the old chinese whispers thing!

but I dont want to take away from the genuinely good acts of those few christians who do bother to look into it - but when I went through my christian phase in my teens I knew alot of people who didnt know very much at all about their so called religious beliefs.....If religion doesn't benefit humanity then it's of no use, and the fact that Bush is an evangelical says it all.

[Amberience]

but when I went through my christian phase in my teens I knew alot of people who didnt know very much at all about their so called religious beliefs.....If religion doesn't benefit humanity then it's of no use, and the fact that Bush is an evangelical says it all.

Same conclusion here. I went through an anti-Christian phase, and I discovered much the same phenomenon.

[mcconaghy]

One of the sad side effects of this tragedy is that now, Darfour has been forgotten (Not that it was ever front page news here in the US anyway). There we have a humanitarian disaster, with Millions displaced, under constant attack from their own government, their humanitarian aid either not getting through or plundered by soldiers, and now there's not even a thought wasted on them. Granted, before it was a mess, the US blocking UN aid distribution because they want to supply the planes, but don't want to hand them over just yet, and nobody being able to guarantee the safety of UN and charity workers in that region, but what now, that the world is looking at the tsunami disaster?
Thanks to TV we've become a society of one-track minds, I can only hope that the aid organizations will still focus their efforts in that region, too, even though it's not the "popular" crisis.

[forge]

One of the sad side effects of this tragedy is that now, Darfour has been forgotten (Not that it was ever front page news here in the US anyway). There we have a humanitarian disaster, with Millions displaced, under constant attack from their own government, their humanitarian aid either not getting through or plundered by soldiers, and now there's not even a thought wasted on them. Granted, before it was a mess, the US blocking UN aid distribution because they want to supply the planes, but don't want to hand them over just yet, and nobody being able to guarantee the safety of UN and charity workers in that region, but what now, that the world is looking at the tsunami disaster?
Thanks to TV we've become a society of one-track minds, I can only hope that the aid organizations will still focus their efforts in that region, too, even though it's not the "popular" crisis.

save the children has now pulled out of Sudan because 4 of there workers were murdered in the last 2 months and it's no longer safe....

[Amberience]

If groups who are supposedly "fighting for their freedom" or whatever they call it kill people who are trying to help them, then they don't deserve any help.

I say we concentrate our efforts on the tsunami disaster. Forget the ungrateful people who kill aid workers.

[mcconaghy]

If groups who are supposedly "fighting for their freedom" or whatever they call it kill people who are trying to help them, then they don't deserve any help.

I say we concentrate our efforts on the tsunami disaster. Forget the ungrateful people who kill aid workers.

The problem is Sudan is that the aid workers are being hindered and killed by the government forces, not by the freedom fighters. We could easily protect them with UN forces, but our governments have been squabbling about that for months now, because of some minor bureaucratic kinks, like "Who gets to fly the soldiers to Sudan?"

[Amberience]

Hence my previous comment on governments.

My mistake, I thought you meant the freedom fighters were killing the aid workers. If the government forces are killing aid workers, surely that is an act of war??

Like we need another one of them

[forge]

Hence my previous comment on governments.

My mistake, I thought you meant the freedom fighters were killing the aid workers. If the government forces are killing aid workers, surely that is an act of war??

Like we need another one of them

yeah but that's the most terrible thing about the whole lot- that actually would be a genuine humanitarian war - Tony Blair stood up and blatantly lied to the whole country about Saddam and his potency to justify that stupid war yet they completely ignore complete travesties of human rights all over Africa. It's nothing short of obscene

[Amberience]

They don't care, the politicians I mean. They sit around calling people like you and me liberal bedwetters. They just want to make money and sit in their nicely built bulletproof limousine's.

So how do you make right-wing fuckers like these people care without resorting to terrorism?

[forge]

So how do you make right-wing fuckers like these people care without resorting to terrorism?

that's a question people have been asking for a long time with very few answers. Problem is, if you or I had the same kind of wealth and power we might even find over time it starts to matter less - power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely!