Tsunami in the Indian Ocean

I’m staggered, amazed, baffled, stunned, writhing with shame. I went to try to watch the news about the disaster on US tv – and it’s not there. The all-news all the time cable channels are talking about Martha Stewart, Mick Jagger, other odds and ends. I stood there with my mouth open, with my lower jaw scraping the floor, going fruitlessly from 44 to 45 to 46 to 47 to 48. Nothing. Networks – nothing. C-Span – nothing. Back to CNN and the others – nothing.

I waited until the half hour, thinking surely they would at least mention it then. Yes. There was about 5 minutes of coverage on CNN – followed immediately by (I am not making this up) a report on snowy weather in North Carolina.

Jeezis! I know we’re famously parochial and insular and ignorant and fucking not interested in anybody but ourselves – but is there no limit?

Well, apparently not.

It is often intensely embarrassing to be an American. This here is one of them times.

And CNN US is covering it almost non-start. Hell and damnation.

Interesting, my instinct was to start looking around online, not to bother with TV. (I’m not excusing that they are ignoring the coverage, I guess I’m just not that surprised.) I headed to cnn.com, nytimes.com and then started looking at the various sources on news.google.com. One source (I forget which) had a direct link to the US Geological Survey’s site. Of course, all of this is mostly of use to those of us in the 20% of households (in the US) with high-speed connections.

actually it strikes me that this will have a u.s. spinoff, and a worldwide spinoff, as i expect that there will be some economic side effects.

Yeah, I suppose I’m a bit silly to be surprised, but I never ordinarily watch tv news, so their plummet-level keeps getting ahead of my attention-level.

And of course I realize the Internet is better, but since tv is the great mass medium – well it’s just despair-inducing, that’s all. The people who elect the most powerful human on the planet have this unbelievable mess for their main source of ‘information.’ The people who elect the most powerful human on the planet are apparently this indifferent to global human disasters (at least the tv executives seem to be assuming so, or they would be covering the damn disaster).

Peter, yes I’m checking, I didn’t post on this until after I’d watched the damned things, just as I said. CNN is the only station I could find that covered it at all (the others probably had a headline at the top of the hour that I missed while watching the CNN coverage, but they didn’t have extended [i.e. five minute or so] coverage like CNN’s, I did check that). CNN’s coverage was staggeringly brief, and went directly (without even the transition of an ad) into trivia – snow in North Carolina a few hours ago, heavy holiday traffic at airports twenty minutes ago. Brilliant. Ten thousand people dead so far in Asia, and busy airports in the US – good link.

I tend to agree with Peter. The story is being covered on both CNN and Fox — from what I have been able to see. Not nonstop, to be sure, and always with a U.S. angle (i.e. how many Americans reported dead: three at this writing), but covered nevertheless. Canadian news channels (CBC/Radio-Canada, CTV and TVA) are (not surprisingly) doing a more complete job, but to say that the story is being shunted to the “back pages” on American news channels is rather unfair.

I said it was being covered on CNN. For a very few minutes on the hour and half hour, followed instantly by a remarkably trivial story and then a lot of stories, some trivial and some not, to fill in the time until the next hour or half hour. I didn’t say anything about back pages, but I do think that’s pretty pathetic coverage (actually, I think it’s ridiculously pathetic coverage) for a disaster of this magnitude. I really think they could leave out the stuff about Mick Jagger, and Martha Stewart, and the football player, and airport traffic, and even (gasp) snow in North Carolina, for the time being.

11,300 dead according to this Australian story.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/I-could-see-dead-bodies-all-around/2004/12/27/1103996463532.html

It seems as if a pattern is emerging here: the early coverage was spotty but it had become more continuous by the time I tuned in the mid-afternoon (what can I say? One pinot noir too many on Christmas night). This suggests an explanation: it is very likely that, early on, the cable news networks did not have either the on the scene footage or ready subjects for the on air interviews that form the backbone of their coverage. But I think we can all agree that this reflects more than anything else a defect in their intrinsic news delivery model: without that sort of stuff, they really have nothing to say. It’s not so much that they don’t care about events abroad but (far worse) the idea that if there is no gory footage, it obviously didn’t happen.

Holy crap.

An uninformed comment: I wonder why so many of the casualties were in Sri Lanka and India, thousands of miles away from the quake, while so few (relatively) were in Indonesia – which was much closer to the epicenter?
Something I don’t know about tsunamis maybe? Populated areas further from coasts in Indonesia maybe? Or just a lack of reports from Indonesia so far, suggesting that the casualties will be much higher…

I’m curious why there have been no reported effects in Bangladesh.

Now, perhaps there’s some offshore reefs or something that would mitigate the wave, but it’s my impression that Bangladesh is pretty much at sea level.

The BBC’s map “At a glance: countries hit” has every nation in the region highlighted. Except Bangladesh, smack in the middle.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4126019.stm

Apparently, a 1991 tsunami killed over 100,000 Bangladeshis. Maybe they took effective steps to prevent it from happening again?

Here in Australia, the SBS network was taking a BBC World feed until early this morning, but the commercial networks were all business as usual. More at mine.

Herewith, a gripping first-person account from a Washington Post reporter who just happened to be swimming off the coast of Sri Lanka.

It’s curious that the casualty figures for Burma are so low. A Times editorial notes: “Burma, too, has no doubt suffered damage, but reports emanating from this military-run country were less than sketchy last night. It is a measure of the arrogance of the regime that it is secretive even when the country’s people need assistance.”

DSquared – Regarding coverage, I’m not sure what you mean when you suggest that it would have taken much longer for news to reach the Midwest (you meant US?) than the East coast. The Midwest gets pretty much the exact same coverage as the East coast, at the same time. In fact, here in the Midwest, you have to get used to calculating an hour off the times they advertise for shows because it’s always East coast time (the usual approach: “9pm, 8 Central” if they even bother).

For what it’s worth, I’ve noticed the same national focus (ie. more attention to news affecting the tourists from that nation) that dsquared was referring to about the BBC in other European news channel (German, Italian, French). Since I remember that’s always been the case for such events. I don’t particularly like it myself, but after all in each country even the government gets involved in checking how many British/German/Italian/French etc. were affected and reporting about it, so I would’t read too much into it.

bob macmanus – out of curiosity, why did you link that ‘Lisbon 1755’ page?

“bob macmanus – out of curiosity, why did you link that ‘Lisbon 1755’ page?”

I am not sure, really. The Lisbon event (and Port Royale) I remembered as famous for being used to advance various moral, religious, and political rhetorical strategies at the time. I saw much of the same kind of activity occurring around the web this time, from this thread about the media to comparisons with casualties in Iraq and implications about SE Asia governance (warning systems).

I have been feeling pretty pessimistic and despairing lately, which is not the same as indifferent or blase or or angry or even accepting. Just sad.

My amateur opinion on why burma and bangaladesh got off so ligtly is that the fissure ran north south from Aceh. The waves would therefore probably be stronger in the east west direction.

Another point that has been made was that it was a full moon last night so the severity of the waves would depend on which countries were at the high tide mark when the waves struck.

Theres a good picture of how the wave spread here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2004_Indonesia_Tsunami.gif

Theres a good picture of how the wave spread here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2004_Indonesia_Tsunami.gif

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/video/tsunami-indonesia12-2004.qt

CNN did do vastly better on coverage yesterday evening – so perhaps my fury was a little hasty or overheated. Then again – I don’t know – even if they didn’t have any tape or interviews yet…it just seemed so weird to see coverage of triviality blandly continuing as if nothing had happened. Not appropriate. They could have had, I don’t know, newsreaders wearing black armbands, keening, swearing, smiting their brows. Paying attention. Something. Everyone, that is, not just CNN; CNN was actually the best of the lot by Sunday evening.

I noticed the Europe-centered thing too. Heard someone, on the World Service or something, say the quake hit at the height of the tourist season, so couldn’t possibly have been a worse time. Huh?!

I appreciate the Lisbon link, was going to google Lisbon quake. I’ve been thinking about it too. Of course, the world has been so richly endowed with Lisbons in the past decade or so – but still. This is a Lisbon.

Ah – okay, thanks Giles. The way it was worded, I thought the reporter was talking about European tourists – and probably didn’t really mean that, but just kind of blurted it out. In other words it just sounded a little like ‘Oh bad timing because so many of our friends were there’ – which anyone might blurt out while worrying about friends, but then wish unsaid a minute later.

tiredofthis wrote: “Ah, but see, the tsunamis aren’t Muslim extremists. If we find out Al Queda is somehow involved, you’ll see plenty of coverage, I’m sure.”

There you go, quicker than you can say Al Qaeda, someone in that vast area 51 that is right wing blogdom put to words that very concept, and unlike you, they weere not being sarcastic:

bq. The entire world can share in the grief and horror of the thousands dead in Asia. Thousands dead in an act of violence is different. The grief and horror of 9/11, for example, was not shared by everybody. Some people wanted 9/11 to happen. Some people celebrated the toppling of the towers. We all remember seeing Palestinians dancing in the streets that day. And we remember those who said we deserved it.

bq. Some people hope to repeat 9/11. They have our undivided attention. (At least they have the undivided attention of some of us.) If someone had managed to trigger tsunamis in Asia it would be much the same.

Can you believe the nerve.

I think that you’re being a little obtuse. What the post actually says is that deaths from Acts of God somehow seem to be human unifiers e.g. Bam earthquake – when every one, even Iran’s enemies chipped in.

By contrast Acts of Man – ie violence is a divides since, in most cases it separates the world into the camps that support and the camps that don’t support the perpetrators motive.

Sounds like you people need to watch Fox news more. Here at my sister’s house you would have heard nothing but tsunami news for almost the whole day.

Isn’t it kind of sad that we are talking about the news reporting of the event more than the event itself?

J-Walk computes the US relief effort at 79 minutes of Iraq war spending.

Well, I was wrong to think you can’t sink any lower. While writing my comment, Jim Birch overcame his own feelings of helplessness and found the time NOT to see if there was any way he could help, but to calculate and report triumphantly how many deaths in Asia equate with how many Marine-dollars in Iraq. Could anyone de-humaise himself more completely?

Meanwhile, while this thread has attracted 50+ comments, Jon Mandle’s posting on this same site about Red Cross / Red Crescent Donations has drawn in – six of you.

And what do you bet there is not a contrite heart among you? No doubt you will ignore these comments or savage them!

C.Bourne-
Ophelia Benson’s tone-setting statement of subjective dismay at the initially non-existent coverage by US media was delivered in a much larger context than the disaster itself – what that non-existent coverage reveals about the nature of the media and our increasing need for its services at the same time it disappears into the maw of greed and lunacy. The background to her dismay is the increasingly clear betrayal of responsibility by corporate media.
Servile, craven barkers for the grotesque carnival politics in the US has become.
My point, not hers.
Her main point -“Jeeziz!…Is there no limit?” is germane, while yours, “There are over 50 comments here, and all but one or two demonstrate an extraordinarily callour[sic] obsession with US political power.” is not.
Aside from earthquakes and volcanoes, which are unpredictable generally, the two main forces of doom in our lives, all our lives, right now, are global climate disruption and nuclear war. Both of these forces have been not only unopposed by the Bush administration and its eminences grises but welcomed, abetted, augmented – all to a chorus of smarmy cheerleading rah-rah-rah from the media Ms. Benson castigates.
Whereas you castigate people about whom you know nothing, and urge them to volunteer their own finances to aid the unfortunate in South Asia, news of whose tragedy had to await the official okay before we could even hear about it.
Speaking for myself, I live on less disposable income than most people spend on car payments, and while I’m sure sending $20 to the governor of Tamil Nadu would be a nice thing – and if 3 million of us did that you could call it “matching funds” – it would make me feel like a chump, knowing my own government is spending $1000 a second to kill innocent people in Iraq.
I don’t know what Kant had to say about prediction and expectation, but there’s a long line of philosophers who have counseled us to heed the warning signs of villainous intent before it becomes too late.
Benson’s first sentence in this thread was,

“I’m staggered, amazed, baffled, stunned, writhing with shame.”

To which you reply somewhat obliquely,

“You should all hang your heads, and be thankful you have not been the victim of a disaster like this.”

I’m sure all of us, regardless of our positions on the craven networks and their masters, are grateful to have been spared this particular, or any, disaster.
The larger point is the media is complicitous and no longer to be trusted.
There seems to be covert approval – in your earnest plea for voluntary charitable response to the South Asian Tsunami – of the media, the President, the war in Iraq, and the men behind them. That’s shameful.
–
It was me on the Marines thing there, not Jim Birch.
I’d like to add that I have no doubt whatsoever that the Marines on the ground in Iraq would be proud to be on the front lines of relief and rescue in this or any other disaster, if that was their brief.
Imagine how that would feel, to be an American and have your military devoted to helping people.

It is being reported that ‘scientists’ knew about the tsunami an hour ahead of time, and thousands could have been saved by moving to higher ground, but the scientists didn’t know how to send out a warning. Really? DId they even try? A telephone call to the BBC World Service might have been a start.

Charlie Bourne, what makes you think you can stand on a soapbox going on about how others are using this disaster for purposes of US internal political polemics when you are doing exactly that? I don’t know what your problem with Ophelia’s comments is, she was talking of the initial coverage. Regardless of how right or wrong her impressions were (I have no way of knowing that since I don’t live in America and don’t watch American news; the only US-based news channel I get is CNN international, which has been covering this non-stop for three days now, with only brief looks at other news), coverage is what she was focusing on. I don’t see why that kind of observation should be considered offensive or irrelevant. It doesn’t mean that US news coverage of the earthquake is all that mattered to her about it, doh. Ditto for the aid, again, regardless of how premature it may be to criticise the US for not sending enough money, seeing that funds are being set up like in many other countries. This is a blog with comments, not a direct link to each poster’s every thought and action. You don’t know a thing about the people posting here and how they are affected by the disaster, directly or indirectly, personally or less personally, via acquaintances or friends or simply by the obvious human reaction of _empathy_ in tragedies. Does that even need spelling out?

A “proper alert system” exists in the Pacific, because tsunamis are common in the region. They are very rare in the Indian Ocean. I suspect there are far more pressing problems to take care of in South Asia (and far more ready solutions) than to set up an “alert system” (the simple name belies its complexity and the cost of its implementation) for events that occur so infrequently.

“Europe in the 18th century had the intellectual curiosity and independence to ask and answer such questions. But can we say the same of 21st-century Europe? Or are we too cowed now to even ask if the God can exist that can do such things?” …Martin Kettle, Observer

Okay, that was close to what I had in mind. I will leave the “How can God let bad things happen to good people?” argument to Ophelia and her opponents, tho I might jump in.

I was more interested in a more general question about coping mechanisms, and a the need to assign meaning to the tragic events of human existence. It seemed to me to be merely another modern Western response to see the earthquake as a technological problem to be solved in warning systems; or to try and ameliorate our terror in breaking it down to individuals we can help with donations or reconstruction. I am in no way criticizing such efforts, but there are 40,000 people beyond help, and ten times as many irreparably damaged. An inchoate cry of grief or outrage might be in order.

I was also thinking about war, which most here probably don’t think of as a “natural” disaster, but in the past was in that class with plague and famine. Or not? I guess we call Caesar and Temuchin and George Bush or Saddam “bad guys”, and if we can just get rid of the bad guys with guns, we can eliminate war. I am thinking war is as much our nature as building cities and cathedrals.

Whatever. I cope with senseless tragedy with abstraction and intellectual withdrawal. But I too have also cried a little this week.

Thanks, Charlie Bourne, a lot of what you said (not all, but most) needed saying — and that’s from a left-liberal who opposed the war in Iraq (but has no sympathy for the head-chopping “resistance”) and abhors much of what the Bush administration has done. The constant grinding of anti-American axes on CT — certainly in its comments areas — can get highly irritating.

I hope that CT’s server crashes and all the posts are lost. Otherwise I’m going to have explain to my children 20 years from now my role in this discussion-which is becoming an infantile race to the bottom on all sides. 50,000 people are dead. Can you imagine what the survivors would think of all of us if they read this thread? We have used this tragedy as an opportunity to grind axes about:
a. the media
b. the critics of the media
c. conservatives
d. liberals
e. the war in Iraq
f. those opposed to the war in Iraq
.
.
.
This is becoming a really bad Denys Arcand movie. I think its time that we all (yes: including me) make a pact to behave in a more civil fashion and focus on the real story here: 50,000 people were executed by mother nature two days ago, and far more are likely to die in coming weeks, and what we can be doing about it, now and in the future (I salute those who, unlike me, attempted to steer the conversation in that direction).

It’s perfectly possible for people to give money and do what they can to help victims of some horrible event, and also fight over what meaning to assign to it. People on every part of the political spectrum do this all the time and at least some of us really do want to lessen human suffering, or so I assume. I didn’t agree with the breast-beating in this thread, but it didn’t shock me. It just seemed misplaced and a little silly in this instance–the US press usually does a good job covering the suffering caused by natural catastrophes and most Americans usually feel compassion for the survivors. This is because most of us feel compassion for the suffering of others so long as the suffering can’t be blamed on us–if it can, then defense mechanisms kick in and we either ignore the suffering or find some way to shift the blame. That’s not a problem here.

Nic, what you have to understand about Michael Totten is that he has a particular hard-on in his pants over Al-Qaida and terrorism in general. He really is incapable of covering things without looking at the terrorism angle. In fact, he supported a candidate for president with whom he admitttedly disagrees with on just about every social issue because he bought the rhetoric that his choice for president might do better on terrorism. I just wonder what would happen to his so-called writing career if terrorism was not suddenly in the forefront of people’s consciousness?

Yeah – same with me. I was expecting somber anchors urgently telling us everything they could find to tell us, and instead found perky cheery anchors telling us something about Mick Jagger (as well as Ukraine, Iraq, other substantive stuff). That first post wasn’t an axe-grind, it came out of genuine surprise and shock.

But (as I’ve said several times) they are covering it now, and the anchors are appropriately somber. The US cable news channels no longer convey an impression of bizarre callousness, but during the day on Sunday, they did.

So chill, Charlie Bourne.

“Have those of you who are outraged at the media and are changing your Weltanschauung over this been paying attention to, say, the number of Africans dying daily from AIDS or from malaria?”

As a matter of fact, yes.

I ignored your “changing your weltanschauung” part. That hasn’t changed. Seemed to me you were just criticizing those of us who were objecting to the scarcity of the early US coverage.

“People on every part of the political spectrum do this all the time and at least some of us really do want to lessen human suffering, or so I assume.”

Well, one traditional reaction to natural catastrophes is humility. Vail of tears, and all that. Horrible stuff happens, and will always happen, probably in the same proportion as before, though perhaps in a different form. 1984 and Brave New World being imaginative catastrophes of the spirit, for example. These sorts of events have often been accompanied by a religious resurgence, as humans get in touch with a kind of natural desperation. In any case the compassion and humility that naturally arise might give one reticence to judge other’s responses, or lack thereof, as inferior to your own. Most cultures have accepted even a compassionate withdrawal as an option. A new anti-Pelagianism or even anti-meliorism? Not likely.

We live in a secular and scientific era, and both the right and the left will keep trying to make the world a good or better place. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I guess.

But as I watch my country rush headlong to barbarism, and Mother Nature mock us again, I am not in an optimistic mood, and way way down seems like an appropriate place to be for a little while.

“da propitius pacem in diebus nostris, ut ope misericordiae tuae adjuti, et a peccato simus semper liberi, et ab omni perturbatione securi.”

It’s not a “pet obsession”. The whole freakin point is that I am informed and care a great deal about the many thousands of people that die all the time in far away places while, for example, 3K people dying on 9/11 in the US “changed the world”. Is being pissed off about this sort of thing “political”? Why, yes, it is. Does that somehow obscure the individual human tragedy of each of the people killed? Well, for some people who live and think only abstractly, maybe so. I’m not one of those people. I immediately cared a great deal about what was obviously a huge human tragedy on the other side of the world. It’s not “insensitive” and “uncaring” of me that it pissed me off that, on Sunday during the day at least, it seemed the the US media didn’t feel the same way.

I’ll be sure, Chris, the next time you express any concern or moral outrage over a lack of concern about a tragedy on someone’s part, to accuse you of somehow being an insensitive boor who doesn’t have his priorities straight.

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Okay, let’s talk about media coverage. Since I was isolated from the media over the Christmas weekend–apparently thereby being derelict in my duties as a citizen of the world–and first heard about the earthquake 40 hours after it happened, I’ll speak in hypotheticals. Suppose CNN became the all-death-all-the-time network and devoted 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to reporting on death around the world, treating all deaths equally whether that of an American businessman or a Thai subsistence farmer, whether there were a lot or a little information about the victim, whether the death were by car accident, malaria, heart disease, or drowning. There are a little over 150,000 deaths on a typical day–Buck Dharma underestimated a tad–so the current death toll of 63,000 from the recent tsunami would warrant about 10 hours of airtime. How does that compare to the actual amount of time CNN has devoted to the story?

Dear Sir,

The casualties as a result of the tsunami are now approaching those in Iraq. The latter are of course manmade whereas the former are described by insurance companies as ‘acts of God’.

The timing, which occurred while we in the West celebrated the Nativity of our Saviour, was striking and may help to explain the conspicuous silence from our Archbishops who would normally be heard observing that ‘God Moves In A Mysterious Way’.

I mean what are Bishops for, for God’s sake?

Yours truly

George Rees

Where are the US and British soldiers? Where are the US and British fleets laden with supplies to held? Where are the USAF and the RAF with planes and helicopters to drop supplies and airlift survivors?

From cnn.com: “Bush also announced that the Pentagon is “dispatching a Marine expeditionary unit, the aircraft carrier [USS] Abraham Lincoln and the maritime preposition squadron from Guam to the area to help with relief efforts.””

Well, there you go. Now we are starting to get into the “big guns.”

This is in response to comment posted by Nat Whilk.

The comment borders on callous. And I have a right to say as it is MY country that is also affected. Here in India, to the million or so displaced, it does not matter if america or any developed nation, its people its media reports or not. It also does not matter if it cares or not. We think that we can take care of our own and some of our neighbours too. WE feel empathy, and have understanding of pain and loss, whether we understand statistics or not.

To us, we are talking about 10,000 people DYING in a span of an hour, TOGETHER. And our culture teaches us that death, is the ultimate end to every living thing in one life time and then we are reborn again. It is the one truth of life.
But, ask the nature of death to 70 yr old woman, who has lost 3 generation of family at one stroke and then tell her that her son was one of 150000 dying on the day. And that he got covered by CNN.

I would like to echo the sentiments of both Pavitra and Thomas, as I wrote in my first entry, I read with ‘horror and interest’ the other comments here.

The events surrounding the Indian Ocean will affect not just this generation, but generations to come too. We forget in the West how fortunate we are. Westerners returning with family members absent can rebuild their shattered lives. Their families, friends and communities will rally round and support them. Ironically some of them will take a holiday somewhere nice to forget all about it I expect. Over years they will begin to forget the horror they faced. I do not wish to be uncaring towards their loss, but at the end of the day, they HAVE somewhere to come home to.

On the other side of the world however, the communities have gone, the friends have gone, and the families have gone. The tsunami has hit a number of the poorest countries in the world. With the best will in the world these countries cannot rebuild without our help. There are almost no healthcare programmes, no welfare state. These people will never forget what happened, and they will never forget if we do not do everything in our power to help them. We have a moral obligation to assist these people in every way that we can.

I find President Bush’s accusation that the UN’s Head of Humanitarian Aid was “very misguided and ill-informed” utterly unbelievable. Why is he waiting before sending food, water and medical assistance to people? Does he think perhaps its not going to be quite as bad as it looks on the TV at the moment. Perhaps someone could point out that armies have historically been used in the reconstruction of countries, not just the destruction.

Pulling all this back to the original thread though, the sanitised and limited coverage by the US media has in effect condemned probably tens of thousands more to death. Those countries needed immediate assistance from the West, particuarly from the only superpower left on the planet. I hope the US news channels will focus in on the mounting fatalities caused by hunger, thirst and disease over the next few months.

Its about time that those with their heads buried in the sand back home come to realise why the world is coming to hate us. Maybe then next time we will do more to help others in their hour of need.

Nat – in short yes in most cases it can.

Had the world not been made aware of the AIDS pandemic many many millions more would have died.

Had CNN et al given the tsunami a higher profile, more desperately needed immediate aid would no doubt have been forthcoming.

News is all about informing people of what is going on. World news is generally about informing people about what is going on in the world – not just what is going on in the world that affects US citizens.

News was never supposed to be entertainment, to consider it so diminishes its power and its purpose. I suggest that if people want entertainment they tune into Disney.

It CNN wants to immunize itself against critcism, they should try showing the news as it really is. At the moment unfortunately that is undoubtedly, overwhelmingly death and suffering.

News was never supposed to be entertainment, to consider it so diminishes its power and its purpose. I suggest that if people want entertainment they tune into Disney.

Well, this seems to be a matter of semantics, since from its inception CNN made clear that it wanted to devote time to music, movies, sports, fashion, etc. We could maybe make both of us happy by changing CNN’s middle initial, but the dictionaries I’ve consulted indicate that there is warrant for the present one.

It CNN wants to immunize itself against critcism, they should try showing the news as it really is. At the moment unfortunately that is undoubtedly, overwhelmingly death and suffering.

Death and suffering are always happening. Perhaps the New York Times should only print obituaries.

I see the British government have now coughed up $100 million dollars, along with over $50 million in donations from the British people. To quote Ophelia “It is often intensely embarrassing to be an American”

Let’s see: $50 million is about $1 per capita. I suppose I could do my fair share to bring the USA up to par by chipping in $1 in tsunami relief (to supplement the $10 thousand or so of charitable giving I’ve already done this year).

Oooooohhh, taking a little critcism of the US very personally Nat. Don’t believe I’ve suggested at any point that you are responsible in any way for the palty sum the government has decided to contribute. Are you?

The phrase right before your sentence on the embarrassment of being an American referred to the generosity of the British people, not the government. As far as taking this personally, my reaction to all the guilt-mongering in this thread is similar to my reaction to the telemarketers for charities that call me up. They act as if not donating to their specific cause equates to selfishness. Perhaps I should start quoting the number on Line 15 of Schedule A of my tax return to them, too.

I was starting to get the impression that you were cold and unfeeling to the plight of others.

Because I pointed out that those who suffer from causes unrelated to tsunamis are no less deserving of our concern than these tsunami victims?

I have no idea whether you are well travelled outside the US, but if you are, you will no doubt be aware that world opinion of the US has never been lower.

I lived in West Germany for 16 months during Reagan’s deployment of intermediate-range missiles in that country. Are you sure that German dislike for the U.S. is higher now than it was then? (Or, for that matter, than it was during the closing years of WWII when we made their population centers the targets of our firebombing campaigns? Or than after that war when we acquiesced in the Soviet Union’s expulsion of 15 million of them from their homes?)

The Reason the damage was worse in India/Sri Lanka is because that’s the direction the major of the tsunami’s went. The Indonesian’s felt the quake more because the(larger)waves went the other way.

Also – you can’t win. Either people are complaining that there is TOO much news coverage of something or not enough.

wow!
I am not a college educated person as I suspect all of you are, I’m just a waitress who asked jeeves to take me to a site to read about this disaster. Ive’ read some heartfelt opinions and a lot of political nonsense. After seeing photos of some of the dead, and the hope in some of eyes of the suriviors all i can say to all of you is get on your knees and give thanks to whomever your god is that you, nor anyone in your family may never expierence this hell.

I see that you all are arguing and bickering with one another about how “the US Media isn’t covering this, that, and the other” and how bad it is that this whole thing happened. If you want to make things better, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Donate money, send aid packages, blankets, ANYTHING! And for those of you willing to come over and help in the clean-up of Phi Phi and Phuket etc, your help would be much appreciated. These people need our help. Don’t turn your back on a desperate cry for help, for if you do, realise one thing: You have lost what little humanity remains inside of you.

Steve wrote: “When I see the suffering of those affected by this, or any other disaster, the idea of guilt would never even enter my head.”

Whether it enters consciously or not, your response is to condemn others (i.e., attribute culpability to them) if their response is not identical to your own. In this thread, the “others” I’m referring to have largely been the U.S. media, who have been condemned for not giving more (per-death) publicity to tsumani victims than they do to other suffering and dying people around the world.

“I certainly would never consider anyone was trying to make me feel guilt by showing a news report of suffering or canvassing me for donations over the phone.”

Oh, puhleeze. Do they even have telemarketers where you live? In the months immediately following 9/11, shortly after I had sent $500 to the victims’ families, with, as I recall, $250 earmarked for the families of dead NYPD officers, I got a call from some local police-related charity. When I declined to contribute to their particular organization, the solicitor said: “Don’t you want to support your police officers?” When I replied: “I’ll try to support them in spite of not donating to your group.” He replied: “Oh, sure you will.” and hung up the phone. No guilt-mongering there, eh?

“Second point, no one is saying the people suffering and dying following this tsunami are more deserving than those who die or suffer elsewhere.”

They’re not even saying that they’re more deserving of publicity? If not, then why the criticism of CNN? CNN can’t give the amount of time you people apparently want them to give to tsunami victims while at the same time giving equal time to the victims of all the other suffering and death in the world unless they come up with some way to fit more than 24 hours in a day.

“Third point, whilst I dislike and disagree with a number of things you have written here, I am inclined to think that you are not stupid.”

GPA in secondary school: 4.00. ACT Composite: 34. SAT: 1510. National Merit Scholar. GPA in college: 4.00. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. M.S. Ph.D. PostDoc. National Science Foundation Basic Research Grant. Associate Professor at a Carnegie Doctoral/Research University-Extensive. You make the call.

“BUT in the name of God are you so blinkered that you believe what you wrote in that last paragraph? . . . US popularity has deteriorated sharply in the last years.”

I may be stupid, but at least I know that “ha[ving] deteriorated sharply” and “never [having] been lower” are not the same thing. How convenient that you failed to address any of the three specific examples I gave of other times of American unpopularity.

Catm wrote: “After seeing photos of some of the dead, and the hope in some of eyes of the suriviors all i can say to all of you is get on your knees and give thanks to whomever your god is that you, nor anyone in your family may never expierence this hell.”

What makes you think that neither we nor anyone in our families have experienced this degree of suffering? My father is bedridden with Parkinsonism and finds the pain unendurable without heavy doses of pain medication, and thanks to accompanying dementia is essentially noncommunicative. Because of the latter fact, my mother (my father’s primary caregiver) has recurring nightmares that my father hates her. What does looking at photos of the tsunami dead tell you about how the victims’ suffering compares to my father’s, or how the victims’ relatives’ suffering compares to my mother’s?

Gary Davis wrote: “Don’t turn your back on a desperate cry for help, for if you do, realise one thing: You have lost what little humanity remains inside of you.”

There are desperate cries for help all the time from all over. If failing to respond to this particular one makes one subhuman, does the same go for failing to respond to all the other cries for help? Gary: How much money have you personally contributed to help malaria sufferers in Africa? AIDS sufferers in Africa? The hungry in your local community? Battered spouses? War orphans? I’ll be chipping in $100 for tsunami victims this Sunday over and above my regular contributions, but not because of the overblown rhetoric I’ve read here.

Nat wrote “me me me me me me me”
No doubt there a few more people hating the US after reading your little diatribe.
The suffering caused by the tsunami is something we can all do something about. I hope that we all are trying to do so in all ways possible.

Nat – reading back you have tried to out do everything and every one on here. “Look! I’m better qualified!”, “Look! I give more money to charity!”, “Look! My family is suffering more!”
I’m inclined to believe that nothing you have written is true. You are probably a very lonely person sitting at home all alone, craving attention.
At then end of the day, no one he is remotely interested in you. People have joined the debate because they have an interest in what is happening to the victims of the tsunami.
It has been suggested already that you are bitter and guilty. To me quite clearly you are lonely. A very lonely person.
A positive way of trying to get out of this frame of mind, might be to consider other people a bit more, rather than revelling in your own self pity.
Rather than making up stories on the internet, why not try to do something to help the suffering of those affected. It might help you feel a little better about yourself.
It is terribly sad how the victims of the tsunami must be feeling now, but in a different way, its terribly sad the way you are feeling too. At the moment though, my thoughts are with the tsunami victims and I have no time for the likes of you.

Laetitia

Many people have commented as part of this blog. Some comments I agree with, some I do not. All have been worth reading. All that is with the exception of yours. You have consistently shown yourself to be blinkered, small minded and mean spirited.
You comments are almost exclusively self-centred, self-orientated and just plan selfish.
You have translated comments that the US media has not done enough into YOU have not done enough. You have translated the US government has not done enough into YOU have not done enough.
Its all YOU, YOU, YOU. Stop bringing every single comment made on here back to you. No one is focussing on you. No one wants to focus on you. People are trying to focus on other more important issues at the moment.
I understand that this is you way of dealing with your problems, but can you not find another way that does not involve all of us?

Laetitia, who previously had said that she had no time for the likes of me, somehow found time to write: “You have translated comments that the US media has not done enough into YOU have not done enough.”

Wrong. I’ve critiqued comments about the US media by asking why the media should feel obligated to give more time to tsunami victims than to other sufferers (since there doesn’t appear to be a way to give that much time to them all). My comments about whether I have given enough were not responses to comments about the media but responses to statements about (a) the wonderful generosity of the British people and the embarrassment of being an American and (b) the subhumanness of failing to donate to tsunami relief. Both arguments do, however, deal with the concept of opportunity cost. Would you care to make a substantive comment about the role opportunity cost has to play in the context of (i) tsunami publicity or (ii) tsunami relief?

This has really, really become a sad, sad excuse for an intelligent discussion. Laetitia, Nat was simply responding quite reasonably to a challenge to his intelligence. It was Steve that made it an issue. I cannot believe how this has degenerated. Steve: your pontificating is just disgusting. You have single handedly driven me away from CT.
Good bye.

Nat, in my humble opinion the US media, in line with that of other countries with a ‘free’ press should be obliged to inform people of what is really going on in the world. The US media is notorious around the globe (but not apparently where you live) for failing to do this. Their failure to pick up on the significance of this huge disaster earlier being a case in point.
The very valid point has been made that had they done so, people in the US would have started to contribute more earlier. You appear to disagree. News channels outside the US appear to agree with me, and who every said it on here initially, and not with you.
You seem to be twisting a comment that was made to you, which in fact was later clarified, but you still seem to be hell bent on twisting. British people and those in other countries gave more earlier because they were made more aware of the situation through their media. There is nothing more to it than that. It irritates me that you keep pulling this back to how much you can give, do give, or will give. You are only one person. Clearly the US would have given more by now, if they had been made aware of the suffering by the media.
Those of us looking in from the outside, find it odd that there were some many other things going on in the US that warranted one of the largest natural disaster in centuries being relegated to a minor item on the news.
No one has mentioned anyone being sub-human. There has however been enormous criticism internationally of the US government’s failure to contribute more, more quickly than it has. I am not aware of anyone here or elsewhere criticising the America people for failing to contribute more, so again maybe you could drop the feigned indignation on this one too. As Steve has just pointed out, international headlines are that the US has been shamed into increasing its aid.
Would I care to …. no, in short I wouldn’t.
The head of crisis operations at WHO, David Nabarro, stated, “Unless the necessary funds are urgently mobilised and co-ordinated in the field we could see as many fatalities from diseases as from the actual disaster itself …. The tsunami was not preventable, but preventing unnecessary deaths and suffering is.”
The Detriot News argued that Bush “blew an opportunity in his relatively slow response to the disaster,” to “to improve America’s ugly, arrogant image abroad.”
I really don’t understand your position or your arguments. Your country has handled this all very badly. That can’t be changed now. Don’t waste your time arguing the unarguable. Learn from it and try to do what you can to make sure that it doesn’t happen again in the future.
Perhaps that way you can help your country win back some of the respect it has lost across the globe.

Thoughts after pondering the meaning of the Great Asian Tsunami of 2004

by The Zenman (with a bow and a nod to Voltaire in 1775)

In 20 minutes, immense tidal waves, or ”tsunami”, as the Japanese call
them, wiped out over 500,000 people living or vacationing along the
seashores of the vast Indian Ocean. The Great Tsunami of 2004 will go
down in history as one of the greatest natural disasters ever
witnessed by the postmodern world, where digital cameras, videos,
websites, blogs, TV camera crews and newspapers told the tragic story.

What does it all mean? Is there a God who caused all this human
suffering? Was the Earth angry at us for the way we have treated her
the last 100 years, producing vast clouds of pollution everywhere,
cutting down her forests and depleting her coal, oil and gas reserves
for our homes, our cars, oun airplanes and our vacations in exotic
locales? Was all this predicted by Nostradamus long ago, or within the
mysterious pages of that book titled The Bible Code?

The answers to all the above questions are no, no, no and no. There is
no God, and it’s time to get over it. Earth is not a concious living
thing that gets angry or smiles or lauhgs or coughs. Nostradamus was a
French poet and a quack doctor, forget about him. And as for The Bible
Code, what a bunch of crock!

This tragic event, seen worldwide this time via TV and video, the
Internet and blog websites, was just the way things happen. From time
to time, there are powerful earthquakes on Earth that do immense
damagge. From time to time, there are floods, typhoons, tsunamis,
tornadoes, hurricanes, ice storms, draughts. We can prepare for them,
and we can use technology to be prepared for them.

But one thing we must keep in mind, as the events of the Great Tsunami
of 2004 are replayed in our minds over and over again, is that we
humans are mere evolutionary guests here on Planet Earth. We evolved
from the earliest forms of organic life, and now we have arrived at
the point in cosmic history where we are. But we did not create Earth,
and there is no God or gods who created the Earth either. The Earth
was here long before we were ever here, and it will remain here long
after we are gone, and even after all forms of human life are gone in
the future.

I think the Buddhist teachings have it right: there is suffering in
the world, in life, and we must lean to accept it, and then get on
with our lives as best we can, working together to lessen the
suffering and the pain. That is one lesson we can all take from the
footprints left on the beaches of South Asia by the Great 2004 Tsunami
in the Indian Ocean.

I was reading the story of a young 16 year old Sri Lankan girl who
miraculously survived the tsunami in her village, but lost many
members of her own family. She said: “It’s hard to bear this tragedy,”
she said softly to a CNN camera crew, “but I have to.”

One of the greatest natural catastrophes in generations was just
another milestone on the trail of this shy girl’s ill fortune. It’s
hard for all of us to bear this tragic event, that killed nearly
500,000 people — innocent people, young and old, black and white and
brown and yellow, from over 40 nationalities — but we have to.

We must go on, we will go on, supporting one another in the best ways
we can, and as human history evolves, seesawing from tragedy to
tragedy, we are slowly understanding our place in the vast scheme of
things.

It is our place to be born, to live, to dream, to suffer, to
experience joy and bliss, to write and to dance and to paint and to
make music and to hold hands, watching sunsets and sunrises, and while
there is no supernatural God of the Bible or the Koran, and no Hindu
or Shinto or Taoist gods, we do have each other to rely on, and there
is where our real strength and power lie. Use it. Let us hug one
another and rise up from this indescribable natural calamity and
become one with the world we are part of. Let us endure, let us
persevere, let us move forward.