As usual the Bush adminstration is giving away your hard earned money to countries that don’t need it. I know Indonesia was hit hard by the earthquake/tsunami’s . They are also one of the richest countries on the earth (ever hear of the Sultan of Brunei?) they pump billions of gallons of oil. Where are all the Muslim countries? They all hate the USA, but everyone want the Americans to bail them out.
They are also one of the richest countries on the earth (ever hear of the Sultan of Brunei?)
Indonesia and Brunei are two separate nations. Furthermore, Brunei borders Malaysia and not Indonesia.
Are you for real, or are you being sarcastic? I don’t hang out in these forums enough to know…
[quote]JLDucote wrote:
They are also one of the richest countries on the earth (ever hear of the Sultan of Brunei?)
Indonesia and Brunei are two separate nations. Furthermore, Brunei borders Malaysia and not Indonesia. [/quote]
Indonesia is made up of over 1600 islands. It is the largest Muslim enclave in the world.
As of right now, we’ve pledged around $35 million. That is tax dollars pledged. There’s no telling how much more individuals have contributed privately.
Contrast that with the French’s pledge - a whopping $128K.
Part of me agrees with you, we shouldn’t be expected shoulder the burden of every disaster. But at the same time, there are over 52,000 dead, and surely many more to follow.
Maybe there will be a time for pissing contests later, but right now there are a lot of folks who need help. I’m sure they could give a shit less where the help is coming from.
Here’s a map of the area in question for the geographically retarded:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/id.html
as you can see Brunei is nowhere close to the islands of Indonesia.
just thought you should know. and do we really want to start on the mishandling of tax dollars? this is good marketing for the US…especially since that part of the world hates us.
[quote]lifter82 wrote:
Here’s a map of the area in question for the geographically retarded:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/id.html
as you can see Brunei is nowhere close to the islands of Indonesia.
just thought you should know. and do we really want to start on the mishandling of tax dollars? this is good marketing for the US…especially since that part of the world hates us.[/quote]
And seeing how they hate us, why don’t we let them rot. Maybe Osama Bin Laden can help them. Or any of the other godless countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria et al. None of these countries seem to be running too fast, only the great Satan (their description!).
I for one am glad the US goverment is giving some money to them because as it stands there are approx 250 million people living there and just a hop skip and jump from there is Australia with only 18 million people.
I served in the Australia armed services and know much Australia is concern in re to what goes on there, i for one am glad we are with the USA because if it does hit the fan, Australia will go quickly without the help of the USA.
The paper this morning says that now there are over 58,000 dead. Holy shit.
It is over 60,000 at last count, and climbing. It is projected to double if not triple due to coming diseases, most of which can be prevented by getting clean water to everybody.
That being said, this is a tragedy, and should not be politicized.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
The paper this morning says that now there are over 58,000 dead. Holy shit.[/quote]
I just heard a TV news update that said it was up to 70,000 and looks like hitting 100,000+!
At least we are using money to HELP people instead of KILLING them!!
Maybe karmatically or something it will balance out all the bullshit we’re doing now…
It’s a massive disaster, people worldwide are helping. It’s simply the right thing to do.
[quote]vroom wrote:
It’s a massive disaster, people worldwide are helping. It’s simply the right thing to do.[/quote]
vroom is right on. I don’t want to be known as the nation which cares more about dollars than about human suffering!
It is the right thing to do – we do what we can, and luckily our economy is strong enough to allow us to provide a significant amount of aid.
Bush Announces Coalition
To Coordinate Tsunami Aid
Associated Press
December 29, 2004 10:54 a.m.
President Bush said Wednesday the U.S., India, Australia and Japan have formed an international coalition to coordinate world-wide relief and reconstruction efforts for the Asian region ravaged by a deadly earthquake and tsunamis.
“We will stand with them as they start to rebuild their communities,” Mr. Bush said from his Texas ranch in his first comments on the disaster Sunday that so far has killed more than 67,000.
Mr. Bush pledged a multifaceted response from the U.S. that goes far beyond the $35 million initially pledged, including U.S. military manpower and damage surveillance teams in the short term, and long-term rebuilding assistance. He also called on Americans to donate cash to relief organizations to augment the response.
“This has been a terrible disaster. It is beyond our comprehension,” the president said.
Mr. Bush said he talked to the leaders in the affected region and was working to target initial relief efforts to the things those leaders most needed. The president also said he was concerned the Asian region wasn’t prepared with a warning system that foretold the massive tsunami and that he supported creation of a world-wide warning system.
“It makes sense for the world to come together to develop a warnings system to help all nations,” he said.
The president also pointedly dismissed a United Nation official’s suggestion that rich nations like the U.S. have been “stingy” in relief efforts. “I felt like the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed,” Mr. Bush said.
U.S. Agency for International Development chief Andrew Natsios said Tuesday that the $35 million aid package has drained his organization’s emergency relief fund, forcing it to ask Congress or the White House for more money. “We just spent it,” Mr. Natsios said. “We’ll be talking to the [White House] budget office.”
The State Department said Tuesday that 12 Americans had died in the disaster – seven in Sri Lanka and five in Thailand. Hundreds of Americans remain missing.
Mr. Bush said U.S. officials were working hard to locate many more Americans who remain unaccounted for and to provide assistance to those who were injured or displaced in the region. “Our prayers go out to those who have lost so much to this series of disasters,” he said.
The State Department, meanwhile, encouraged all American citizens traveling in any part of the countries hit by the disaster to telephone family members to let them know how they are doing. If the travelers need help they should get in touch with U.S. diplomatic posts, the department said in a statement.
Red Cross Calls Disaster Unprecedented
Meanwhile, the international Red Cross said Wednesday that the death toll from the disaster could rise to more than 100,000.
“We’re facing a disaster of unprecedented proportion in nature,” said Simon Missiri, Asia Pacific chief at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The agency said its current death-toll estimate is 77,000, but it fears that could rise. The official death toll, based on figures provided by each affected country, is around 68,800, said the federation’s Operations Support chief, Peter Rees. More than 32,500 are reported dead in Indonesia; 22,000 in Sri Lanka; 12,500 in India; and 1,538 in Thailand, Mr. Rees said. A total of 285 are reported dead in Bangladesh, Kenya, Malaysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, the Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania, he said.
An Associated Press count based on official reports from the 12 affected nations put the toll at 67,700 – with the main differences from the Red Cross coming from India and Indonesia.
Germany Seeks Debt Relief
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Wednesday called for a debt repayment moratorium for Indonesia and Somalia, two countries hit by the quake-sparked tidal waves.
Germany will propose the measure at a meeting of the Paris Club of creditor countries in January, Mr. Schroeder said. “Of the affected countries, Indonesia and Somalia have international debt obligations with the Paris Club,” he said.
“That is why Germany will propose … helping both countries in the short term with a debt moratorium,” he said. Mr. Schroeder said he couldn’t give details of how much money the two nations owe.
Paris Club Secretary-general Emmanuel Moulin also was unable to give details, but said that other countries affected by the disaster, such as India, Thailand and the Maldives, owed little to the Paris Club.
He said Germany was boosting its emergency aid to affected countries to ?20 million ($27.2 million), from an initial ?2 million.
“This is a disaster of truly world-wide dimensions,” Mr. Schroeder said. “We have to ask ourselves how we can help the affected and countries in the medium and long term.”
Copyright ? 2004 Associated Press
Just dealing with the dead is going to be a tremendous challenge, let alone beginning a rebuilding project.
Tsunami’s Aftermath
Has Survivors Coping
With Rush of Burials
Search for Missing Continues
At Makeshift Morgues;
No Money for Cremations
By ERIC BELLMAN in Koggala, SRI LANKA; LESLIE LOPEZ in Phuket, Thailand; and JOHN LARKIN in Khao Lak, Thailand
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 29, 2004; Page A1
Rosmand Wickramanayake buried his father, mother, sister, brother and two nieces on Monday.
He wanted to cremate them but he couldn’t afford the wood. He also couldn’t let their bloated bodies decompose any longer. “We have no money at the moment,” he said. “So we need to bury them.”
In the small tourist town of Koggala, at the southern tip of the teardrop-shaped island nation of Sri Lanka, Mr. Wickramanayake dug a 5-foot-deep grave at the beach near his family’s home. He did his best to mimic Buddhist funeral rituals. He couldn’t wait for a monk.
The 24-year-old Sri Lankan had to search the town for the bodies himself. He found his mother still embracing his sister in death and his brother in a tree. His father was at the edge of an open field more than a quarter mile from his home, where he was when the tsunami struck. “I had to carry them with my own hands,” Mr. Wickramanayake said, turning up his arms to show how he bore the weight of his father’s body.
While he was able to find his family members, thousands of bodies strewn across 11 countries on two continents by Sunday’s tsunami will never be recovered. As the estimated death toll neared 70,000 late yesterday, many of them children, what to do with bodies fished from the sea and trees has fast become a critical public-health issue. What is certain is that many of the dead will be disposed of before those left behind ever get a chance to say goodbye.
The grave next to that of Mr. Wickramanayake’s family holds 20 bodies – Sunday picnickers from another town who will remain nameless. “We don’t know who they are but they had to be buried because of the smell,” said Mr. Wickramanayake.
It is a macabre race against time playing out all over the shores of South and Southeast Asia: Frantic survivors go on looking as officials and local residents, wary of disease as bodies rapidly decay in tropical heat, press for rapid burial.
In Thailand, hospital officials say it isn’t clear how long authorities plan to keep the bodies of the unidentified before burying them in mass graves.
Kurt Ammicht’s search is over. Ignoring deep gashes on his right arm and knee, he stared at a grainy photograph of an elderly woman in a turquoise swimsuit. The image was one of hundreds in a hastily compiled catalog of corpses found on the Thai resort island of Phuket and brought to Patong Hospital.
After several moments, the 73-year-old German tourist wiped his eyes and turned to Poramate Reongsanganotai, a 37-year-old dentist drafted to deal with the rising number of dead bodies left by Sunday’s tsunami. Mr. Ammicht quietly confirmed the photo was that of his wife, Maria. He had nothing more to say.
At Patong Hospital, unidentified bodies were transferred to a basement area. Plywood coffins, unlined and hastily nailed to size, bore computer photos of the dead. No. 89 was a Thai woman with a badly disfigured face. No. 96 was a 4-foot coffin containing a young girl no older than 5. In No. 13, a Caucasian woman lay in a red beach dress.
Things seemed less organized up the coast at a beach town known as Khao Lak, an area popular with middle-age tourists in search of the solitude and serenity that is hard to find in Patong, which draws a younger crowd. Hundreds are believed to have died here.
At Khao Lak Resort, the beach was littered with smashed furniture, deck chairs and personal belongings. “There might also be more bodies under the debris,” said South African tourist Michael Groves, who has volunteered to help with the rescue work.
Rescuers are bracing for more bodies to wash ashore. Those recovered were being taken in trucks to Buddhist temples converted into makeshift morgues. At Wat Lam Kaen, a golden-tipped temple not too far from Khao Lak, bereaved Thais lit incense sticks and tall candles at small shrines set before coffins of dead family members. “This is my Yat,” said a man who identified himself as “Em” after lighting incense at the foot of a coffin.
At a clearing beyond the temple, around 200 bloated bodies, many of them foreign tourists, were laid out in rows. Photographs were taken of the unidentified. Later, these would be displayed at hospitals in various towns in the hope of finding surviving relatives, relief workers said.
One European tourist who didn’t want to be identified paced slowly down a row before stopping at a body he identified as that of his wife. “I just identified my wife. This is very difficult,” he said, before walking slowly away with Thai rescue workers.
In Sri Lanka, the country hit hardest by the tsunami, police are waiving a law requiring autopsies of victims to speed up the burial of decomposing bodies.
Dotted around Koggala cemeteries and beaches are fresh graves – in fresh cement for the richer families, freshly dug sand for the poor. Every other home and car is adorned with a small white cloth, a sign there has been a death in the family. The stench of death is everywhere.
Decaying bodies still lie along Sri Lanka’s southern coast. On the roadside, a bloated male body wrapped in a table cloth attracts gawkers and flies. A woman’s body reaches out from a pile of coconut husks next to an overturned truck. Military helicopters thunder above the beach, bringing medicine and food and picking up foreign tourists who limp along in mismatched shoes.
So far, nearly 22,000 are confirmed dead in Sri Lanka. The death toll is expected to climb much higher.
In nearby India, the government has dispatched 10 naval vessels to the country’s islands. The priority is to dispose of dead bodies to prevent an epidemic. “We are having either mass burials or mass cremations and the process has started,” said Anshu Prakash, the development commissioner for the badly hit Andaman-Nicobar island chains. “We are spreading chlorine and bleach powder.”
Officials worry that rotting corpses could contaminate local water supplies. “Bodies are still floating, and 349 bodies were recovered in one district alone,” said Vasant Kumar Reddy, an aide to the chief minister of the region of Pondicherry in southern India.
He said his administration is conducting mass burials in an effort to prevent disease. The result is that they often have to forgo cremations, the usual funeral custom for India’s majority Hindu population. “It’s a chaotic situation, and we’re unable to locate kin,” he said.
The situation is worse in the rural areas of southern India, where water is scarce and infrastructure poor. Officials in Madras said burials and recoveries are going ahead smoothly. But they worry things could break down in outer districts. “Whole villages have been washed away, but there is nobody to claim the bodies,” said Dr. R. Thirunarayanan, the superintendent of Royapettah Hospital in Madras.
Back on the beach in Phuket, a young Thai woman who identified herself only as Sreepad holds an impatient vigil at the Patong Hospital. She is looking for her brother, who worked at a beach-side cafe and is missing. Corpses, many badly disfigured, bloated and quickly decomposing under a sweltering midafternoon sun, are packed in black body-bags or wrapped in bloody white hospital sheets. “My younger sister is at another hospital” looking for their brother, she said.
Unable to handle the smell, Sreepad pulls her T-shirt over her face and peers over the shoulders of army personnel unwrapping bodies.
–Jay Solomon and Rasul Bailay in New Delhi contributed to this article.
Write to Eric Bellman at eric.bellman@awsj.com, Leslie Lopez at leslie.lopez@wsj.com and John Larkin at john.larkin@wsj.com
Just so you know, I have no problem helping Thailand, Asia, Sri Lanka or anywhere else affected. I just feel the Muslims should help the Muslims. Although, it demonstrates how they really do need the Infidels.
[quote]vroom wrote:
It’s a massive disaster, people worldwide are helping. It’s simply the right thing to do.[/quote]
Has anything like this ever occurred before on this level? I thought getting hit by hurricane after hurricane was bad this year, but at least we lived through it.
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Not everyone in indonesia hates us
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We are giving them aid so they don’t starve and die from disease. Most of the people aid actually helps is children.
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Though I am not very religious it is still an ethical and moral responsibility to help those in need.
[quote]RoadWarrior wrote:
Just so you know, I have no problem helping Thailand, Asia, Sri Lanka or anywhere else affected. I just feel the Muslims should help the Muslims. Although, it demonstrates how they really do need the Infidels.[/quote]
Indonesia is located in southeast Asia.