more than 24000 people dead ...

This quake affected the earth orbit :shock:
Taken from this article: http://web.mid-day.c...mber/100362.htm

"[...] made the Earth wobble on its axis, Hudnut said."

Scary

http://www.networkfo...nami122604.aspx

You can donate to a big list of the different charities involved in the relief effort here...

Pretty cool site actually from what i can tell... allows you to search non profits via "cause," as well as providing pretty detailed information and documentation on the organizations themselves. They do use 3% of donations for operation and distribution costs, which seems reasonable.

This is getting worse and worse. It was 24000 dead when i started the thread. Now it's reached 130,000. DAMN.

Excerpt from an votenowar.org email.....

The world has witnessed the greatest natural disaster in the lifetime of most of the people now living. The expressions of human solidarity, stretching across countries and continents, is the one bright light. But even that light is dimmed by the reports and images of growing human suffering and loss that nearly defies the imagination.

President Bush, after days of silence, emerged from his Texas vacation to issue a brief statement. Following a public rebuke and the worldwide reaction of utter contempt, the initial aid offering of the Bush administration was raised from $15 million to $35 million. More is to come, Bush officials promise, as they jockey to have a U.S.-led "coalition" take the leadership of the relief effort away from the United Nations.

Many have commented on the paltry, really disgraceful U.S. aid offer. The U.S. spends approximately $270 million each day for the occupation of Iraq. The cost of one F-22 Raptor fighter jet is $225 million.

The Bush-Cheney Presidential Inaugural Committee intends to raise $40 million in the next few weeks to host its gala parties and the inaugural parade.

This year, the Bush Administration provided a total of $13.6 billion in emergency funding to Florida (it was an election year) in response to the four hurricanes that caused so much destruction in the state. The death, suffering and property destruction was great. More than 100 families lost a loved one. But in the last week more than 100,000 people in South Asia have died. 5 million are now without access to the basic requirements of life - water, food and sanitation. In Indonesia (the largest Muslim country in the world) and in Sri Lanka and India whole villages and towns have been entirely wiped out.

Building human solidarity, especially at a moment of great crisis, is the cornerstone of the new world movement that opposes militarism and war, racism and globalized exploitation.

The Bush administration is shameless. Endless funds for limitless violence to take over Iraq is one thing (it is well over $150 billion in the last 21 months). Money to meet human needs and to alleviate suffering, however, that will only come as a consequence of political pressure and radical change.....

_

"The world has witnessed the greatest natural disaster in the lifetime of most of the people now living."

That's not right. The Tangshan earthquake in China, 1976, killed about 250,000 people. The Communist government of China at the time witheld the casualty count if I remember correctly, so the world only learned many years later how awful things really were.

http://history1900s..../a/tangshan.htm

i dont think america really cares that much about muslim nations, unless theres a profit it in there somewhere. a lot of what drives this country can be found in the middle east (literally).

its really easy to blame bush for another thing.. not enough funding for this, to much money put towards that.. we already know the problems and i think it'd be in poor judgement to start helping out with money that doesnt even exist. we all know the war is fucked, but theres nothing we can do about it.. this should not be another excuse for the ultra left to start bitching.. i think the election shouldve been a lesson in that

I think it'd be in poor judgement to start helping out with money that doesnt even exist.

Riiight...after all, we still need to protect ourselves from Iraq. THAT money exists. Besides, this tsunami thing isn't THAT important.

We all know the war is fucked, but theres nothing we can do about it.

Riiight...we should just trust that the government's got it all under control - nothing to worry about.

This should not be another excuse for the ultra left to start bitching

Riiight...

Wave's over, let's hit the beach!
http://www.theadvert...255E911,00.html

What was the Moz lyric in the sunbather inspired Every Day is Like Sunday?

Something like...
"Come Armageddon, come Armageddon, come."

see.. america upped it to $350million.. now we have nothing to worry about. i didnt mean to say money for iraq exists.. i just feel like yet again, theres less money being spent on schools, arts programs, city maintenance, police force.. obviously atleast this time the money is going somewhere to a place that needs it..

>>america upped it to $350million.. now we have nothing to worry about.<<

For reference, the war in Iraq costs 270 million a day.

i know.. i sort of backed myself into a corner last night when i made that stupid reply.. i think i was just semi agitated by something but ya.. damn that edit button.. i think i basically just meant to say that its pretty obvious where the presidents interests lie.

For reference, the war in Iraq costs 270 million a day.

i didn't know that govinda and i guess they [votenowar.org] didn't either i just hope thier statement remains factually inacurate by the time the disaster's after effects are finished being felt by the people in the region.

the thing that interested me most about the email was the sence of contrast you get when you stack all the numbers beside eachother... aid offered vs. the daily "budget" in iraq vs. cost of the inaugural parade and parties. It all just seems so absurd. This absurdity is no new revelation, and not unique property of any party or ideology, politicians have been guilty of it plenty in the past on both sides. But many have done much better jobs at putting a better "spin" on it through strength of speech and at least some feign of concern. Bush just doesn't do this well, never has, probably never will.

I don't think it's about blaming bush for another thing. It is pretty hard to defend his snail-paced responce to a tragedy of this magnitude. I'm glad they raised the figure to 350, so at least things are moving in the right direction, but taken in context of other current government costs [iraq] and previous aid [florida] scenarios, there still seems to be quite a bit of room for improvement. I just hope the plan is to keep aggressively exploring options for aid.

http://www.surfersvi...p?Id_news=15298
some newly released photos.
With everyone here talking it about in such detail, especially about the money side of things, has anyone made a donation yet?

www.redcross.org.au
www.unicefusa.org/tsunami
www.msf.org.au/support/sa.shtml
www.worldvision.com.au/secure/tsunami_form.asp

I know this are just Australian based sites, but someone said earlier they were looking for donation sites.
And I am not trying to make this a 'oh i donated this much' its just anything helps at the moment, regardless of how much the donation is. Dig deep people, at the moment we all have a lot more then those directly affected by this tragedy.

affirmative.

Some interesting numbers:

Number of deaths due to four Florida hurricanes in 2004: 117
Number of deaths due to Aceh earthquake and tsunami in 2004: 140,000+
Homeless due to Florida hurricanes: 11,000
Homeless due to Aceh earthquake/tsunami: 5,000,000
US government aid to help Florida hurricane victims: $2.04 billion
US government aid to help Aceh earthquake/tsunami victims: $350 million [after the initial offer of $35 million]
Estimated cost of George Bush's upcoming inauguration celebration, not including security costs: $40 million
US government direct cost, per hour, of the US war in Iraq: $9 million
Yearly rate of al Qaeda expenses in Iraq, according to Osama bin Laden - $14.1 million.
Tsunami aid initially pledged by Denmark - $15.5 million.
Taypayer funds paid by Florida's Governor Jeb Bush for state's new 'People First' payroll software that can't calculate 2004 overtime pay owed to state employees until 2005 - $350 million
Halliburton's income from US government contracts alone in 2003 --$4.2 billion.
Amount of US money given away to Iraqi ministries by the US that cannot be accounted for - $8.8 billion.
Amount of Iraq's prewar debt US seeks to persuade other nations to forgive - $120 billion.
US Costs of Iraq War to date - $147.6 billion and rising.
US projected Costs of the Iraq War per month beyond 2004 - $4 billion.

NY Times article about former Bush and Clinton to lead private fund raising effort...

"The announcement came as the White House has been scrambling to repair an image battered at home and abroad by perceptions that U.S. aid for the tsunamis lagged behind other countries -- especially considering the outpouring of support for America from other countries in the hours and days immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Bush faced criticism for waiting until three days after the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami to interrupt his holiday vacation and make his first personal comments about the deadly disaster. Other countries also were quicker to commit large amounts of aid money, and Japan has outpaced the U.S. total of $350 million pledged so far."

*sigh* does anyone have any figures on how much vacation time this guy actually takes? this is going to be the longest 4 years ever...

No fucking shit.

it's just amazing how powerful water-masses can be. seeing these amateur-videos of different places and how the water takes everything with it and cars with people in it which turn around and get squashed by other big obstacles...

these people have way other problems than we. i hope they can find some peace soon.

I know this thread has been flogged to death but...
This is a journal/article from a guy who flew over to help, it's quite interesting.
Just thought i'd share it.

http://www.transworl...1018737,00.html