My God, 13,000+ died today and america just blinks

"The Streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight..."
~President Bartlet, West Wing


May God be with the families of those killed. :cry:

The Red Cross is probably on it's way as we speak.

This country does have the biggest heart... Everyone tries to help out where they can.

Hours ago.

It takes time to get everything together. Showing up without the proper equipment/supplies would be stupid.

Too bad Rummy can't figure that one out.

Good one

is absolutely amazing, one of the best things this country has created.

over 130 years ago. It's not an American invention.

an American invasion, but the American Red Cross does a major share of international Red Cross work, and it was founded by an American nurse named Clara Barton.

after a bloody battle in Lombardei. With four other Geneva citizens he founded a "comittee of the five" which evolved into the International Committee of the Red Cross.

as soon as i read your post, the lightbulb went on and i remembered it's "the INTERNATIONAL Red Cross"

its just that whenever you hear that its moving into an area, it usually comes from the United States.

And when they help somewhere they coordinate/organize it at the place which is the best for this purpose. For instance: "The International Federation will send medical supplies for 100,000 people into Sri Lanka, the country hardest hit by the disaster, tomorrow, from Copenhagen, Denmark." As to the National Red Crosses/Red Crescents there are 178 of them.

I think all 178 of them do very good work :) and I respect the Red Cross/The Red Crescent immensely.

A bunch of poor brown people died. We don't care about that -- kind of like we don't care about Rwanda and Darfur. Not to mention 100,000 Iraqis.

But I'd expect that even more won't give a damn, and will just be annoyed if their football games or reality shows are pre-empted by news of this disaster. And I can't help thinking about how 3,000 people were killed on 9/11, and we act as if that was the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the whole world -- even though at least three or four times as many have been killed in this earthquake. Of course you can say that 9/11 was qualitatively worse because it was done intentionally, but what I'm getting at is there does seem to be an unfortunate tendency among many Americans to think that whatever happens here is more important than anything that happens anywhere else, especially in third-world countries populated by non-white people. For example, I suspect that one reason we responded to the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans while pretty much ignoring Rwanda had a lot to do with the fact that the people in Bosnia and Kosovo looked like most of "us," and the Rwandans didn't.

Look at the positive. So many people will do something.

White tourists died, too! I just read on CNN that this guy whose on Oprah regularly was on vacation when he and his friend got hit with a tsunami. The friend's missing, but the Oprah regular is fine. So, you know, I'm sure a special on Oprah is forthcoming.

Plus, 13,000 people? VERY hard to wrap one's mind around. Anyone else disturbed that reality is beginning to look more and more like disaster flicks from the 90s?

Earthquakes around the so-called "Pacific Rim" tend to follow one another in relatively short times, so there may be one soon a little closer to home. And the media can talk about "underdeveloped countries" all they want, but a 9.0 quake is going to be devastating anywhere :(

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1100836
Edit:
Or this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1100784

I find it interesting that they recognize the Red Cresent, but not Magen David...

Because of their incompentence they helped infect quite a few people with tainted blood in the middle of the aids epidemic

and please don't forget how they wouldn't release the funds for the 9/11 victims for quite some time after the event...

that region of the world, I fear the death toll is going to be MUCH higher than is currently published.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001439.html

When 9/11 happened, my daughter was only six. We didn't know how much she knew or how much to tell her but it was obviously impossible to escape news of it altogether and one day several days after it happened, I was watching a news segment about all the families looking for their loved ones and my daughter turned to me and said "Heaven's really crowded right now, isn't it?"

Oh geez. That really got me.

in the mind of around half of America, I'd suspect. Sad.

It was a little blip in the news compared the Petersen trial (or how ever you spell that). I've been too sickened by cable news to watch it.

and it only got a little article in my local newspaper and i do remember CNN BARELY covering it.

Sad topic but I just wanted to say hi.

:hi:

Did you have a good Christmas?

:hi:


hehe, yes it is a sad topic, but a necessary one.


I had a wonderful christmas! great dinners, great presents, hehe, great times! how was yours??

so I've been adopted by my friend's family and we go there every year. It was really good food...I cooked a lot myself as well. We ate too much and then played Cranium which was really fun.

tht you were able to find such awsome people. haha, cranium is a great game, lots of fun!

I've started two threads in different areas of forums I go to and I barely have gotten any responses. It's like... so what. I will keep bumping it in their faces until they pay attention. This is global and will effect us all before it's over.

will be hit with at least a hundred foot wall of water. we will have not much over a couple of hours notice. pleasant thought isn`t it.

the west coast is jolted into the Pacific?

And yep - it's scary. Even to this landlocked MidUh-murkin.

recall, there was a lot of "I can't believe it," and "This is unimaginable" when the WTC went down, even though many of us saw the footage of people jumping from the upper floors until CNN decided that was too depressing to show. People have an idea about how many people fit in an airplane and many had visited the towers so Americans could visualize that a bit better than this.

By tomorrow, perhaps the media will have more information, more video of the devastation, and Americans will know more about this disaster. As a nation, we do tend to tell ourselves that "life is cheap" in other parts of the world and believe that our lives are more valuable but perhaps that's just a defense mechanism. No one likes to think about thousands of lives being wiped out in minutes. And we do have a history of helping in relief efforts. I was surprised Bush** hadn't made a statement yet, though, having read that various European leaders had.

or dollars?

Seven minutes devoted to the death of Reggie White, and this story disaster gets only a 30 second blurb.

He went to college at the University of Tennesse at Knoxville... so we got almost a full 10 minutes of it.

The terrible loss of life in Asia? Only a little over a minute.
Disgusting!

I hate this country more and more every day.

all the deaths occuring day-in-day out. My condolences goes out to the family and my wishes that the mass murdering ends ASAP!