20041230
ghosts
watching sri lanka recover from a tsunami generated six miles under the sea several time zones ahead of them reminds me of a box of matches spoiled by falling into a pool of water: none of the sticks are recoverable. the 11 affected countries will need all the help they can get to get back on their feet. organizations listed here and here will need all the help you can give them.
CNN recently featured a family in an island group in the indian ocean, off the coast of thailand, belonging to that nation. the reporter described how aid workers had to enlist the help of recipients to unload their plane full of provisions; that's how much help is needed, they're short even of volunteers. the families then will board the empty plane to move to the city. hopefully they will find work and a chance to start life there. the sea has swallowed their life on the island.
or perhaps volunteers are overflowing and centers haven't yet started fully organizing efforts. the cities are scrambling to catalogue, line up, identify, list, dig graves, and build coffins for, bury or burn the dead. not all coastal areas are tourist spots - most of them will be remote small towns that are virtually inaccessible but by dirt road or boat. there are bulletin boards for the missing, western faces smile from posters assembled as if shortly after the sept. 11, 2001 new york terror attacks. there are worries of cholera outbreaks and disease flourishing. there are concerns of finding whole towns dead, festering under the hot sun.
the news then turned to banda aceh province in indonesia, nearest the earthquake's epicenter. my sister studied abroad for a time in amsterdam. "what about the dutch? are they sending aid to their former colony?"
"maybe their aid's merged with the european union's contribution," my other sibling said.
"indonesia's situation is pretty much the same as ours - when something happens to us, spain doesn't rush over to help out. we're completely cut off," i said. i didn't bother to mention about the u.s. the u.s. continues to wreck havoc on the world in strange ways that are beyond my capacity to explain sometimes.
the u.s.' influence on the world could be compared to the tsunami - so powerful, that when it slams into you, you are left with almost nothing.
nature does as she will. said an indian village leader to a london reporter, "it is the will of nature and of the lord. they work in mysterious ways. but do not worry, the people will recover. they must. life will go on. it is cruel, terrible, but life is terrible everywhere, is it not?" sometimes when you're beholden such grace amid tragedy, all you can offer are witness and affinity.
---
Bush announces 4-nation aid coalition [ The Baltimore Sun ]
The latest in damage control.
---
'The water kept rising -- and rising'
by Gemunu Amarasinghe
Associated Press Writer
Posted online by The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
Dec. 27, 2004
AMBALANGODA, SRI LANKA (AP) -- The twisted limbs of the frail girl in a blue dress were caught in a garden fence by the sea. She may have been dead already, but no one stopped to check. There was too much tragedy going on all around, as the water kept coming.
Before the waves hit southern Sri Lanka, I had gone to the seaside to drop off my parents at the shrine in Ambalangoda for a Buddhist ceremony. Sunday was the "Poya," or a full-moon day. We Buddhists believe that Buddha was born, attained enlightenment and died on a full-moon day, so they are a time for reflection.
As I was driving back to the capital, Colombo, I got a message on my cell phone that some parts of coastal Sri Lanka had been hit by unnaturally big waves.
I didn't need the message. People were running everywhere, and the first waves hit the road. They were not huge, not too destructive. They brought fish to the shore, and people rushed to collect them. [ more ]
---
Our Planet, and Our Duty
By Bob Herbert
Columnist, The New York Times
Dec. 31, 2004
One moment the kids were laughing and skylarking on the beach, yelling and chasing one another, sweating in the warm bright sun. The next moment they were gone.
The world is used to horror stories, but not on the stupefying scale of the macabre tales coming at us from the vast and disorienting zone of death in tsunami-stricken southern Asia. Einstein insisted that God does not play dice with the world, but that might be a difficult notion to sell to some of the agonized individuals who have seen everything they've lived for washed away in a pointless instant. [ more ]
---
Are We Stingy? Yes
The New York Times, Dec. 30, 2004
The controversial editorial given 30 minutes' panel on CNN, Dec. 31, for its proffers.
President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.
We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities. [ more ]
---
Asia, united by grief, remains free of any Western-style recrimination
The London Telegraph
Editorial, Dec. 31, 2004
Reprinted and posted online in The Sydney Morning Herald.
There is universal acceptance that nature is cruel and that life must go on, writes Mihir Bose.
As the death toll continued to rise in the worst disaster to hit South Asia for 40 years, I sat on a sand dune in Rajasthan's Thar desert, 2000 kilometres away, and asked a village leader what he thought of this calamity.
He said: "Sir, it is the will of nature and of the Lord. They work in mysterious ways. But do not worry, the people will recover. They must. Life will go on. It is cruel, terrible, but life is terrible everywhere, is it not?"
If this sounds strangely passive to a Westerner, bear in mind that he spoke with a great deal of quiet dignity. He went on to remind me that not long ago there was an earthquake in the neighbouring state of Gujarat which killed many people, and that his own region - always parched - had a dreadful drought 25 years ago, bringing death and destruction from which the land has recovered so well that it is now a noted tourist attraction.
Living with capricious, cruel nature is something most people in South Asia have long had to come to terms with. It helps that religion is so much part of their everyday lives, be they Hindus, Muslims, Christians or Buddhists.
It also helps that, in times of terrible tragedy, grief is openly expressed in all its raw, brutal form. The television screens have been filled with images of women beating their breasts as they mourn loved ones, or of fathers wailing as they identify a child snatched from them by an inexplicable phenomenon.
The images are shocking but they must also, in a way, be cathartic.
Western television has shown images of the dead in a less stark fashion than Indian television, as if viewers need protection from human grief. Indian television clearly feels viewers have no need of such nannying.
But this tragedy is also showing how the region is changing. The very nature of the disaster has brought home to people how closely related they are to each other. The epicentre was in Indonesia; the quake's shockwaves spread to Thailand, Sri Lanka and India and as far as the eastern seaboard of Africa.
One particularly terrible image was of people strolling along the beach in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. They had heard of the earthquake in Indonesia, could not imagine it would have any effect on them and then suddenly saw the sea rising as if the world were coming to an end.
For various historical reasons - and reflecting the long European dominance of this part of the world - the countries affected by this tragedy have their sights trained on lands far away rather than on their neighbours. So Indonesia and Thailand look to Australia while India and Sri Lanka still look to Britain - indeed the Sri Lankan President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, was on her way back from London when this tragedy struck.
Now these countries are beginning to realise nature has bound them together and, if this is a cruel way to learn this lesson, it is still an important lesson.
The other big difference from previous tragedies that have afflicted this region is that it is probably the first one to be beamed into millions of South Asian sitting rooms by television. The small screen is bringing home the suffering in a way unprecedented in any previous disaster.
Also, the catastrophe has come in the middle of the great holiday season. December is often the best month in this part of the world. Although Christmas is not celebrated as in the West, schoolchildren are on holiday and, with growing prosperity, there is a lot of internal tourism, increasingly greater than the number of Western tourists.
This means that, in comparison with past disasters, this one has not been confined to just one bit of the region, neither in terms of impact nor in its coverage. To an extent, this is the first cataclysmic tragedy in which the entire region is a shocked spectator.
As happens in the West, this tragedy will lead to calls for greater accountability and questions about why the region does not have a better early warning system.
There was an hour and a half between the earthquake in Indonesia and the first onslaughts to hit Sri Lanka and India. Had these countries been on the list at the Pacific Ocean's tsunami warning centre, which covers 26 countries, there might have been some action taken to mitigate the effects.
In the absence of this, and given the poor infrastructure of the region, the people have been forced to fall back on their own resources and have shown exemplary courage and initiative.
For the moment, though, there is none of the anger and finger-pointing that would have become quickly evident in the West. Instead there is an acceptance that nature is cruel and life must go on. ¶ 12/30/2004 03:10:00 AM
CNN recently featured a family in an island group in the indian ocean, off the coast of thailand, belonging to that nation. the reporter described how aid workers had to enlist the help of recipients to unload their plane full of provisions; that's how much help is needed, they're short even of volunteers. the families then will board the empty plane to move to the city. hopefully they will find work and a chance to start life there. the sea has swallowed their life on the island.
or perhaps volunteers are overflowing and centers haven't yet started fully organizing efforts. the cities are scrambling to catalogue, line up, identify, list, dig graves, and build coffins for, bury or burn the dead. not all coastal areas are tourist spots - most of them will be remote small towns that are virtually inaccessible but by dirt road or boat. there are bulletin boards for the missing, western faces smile from posters assembled as if shortly after the sept. 11, 2001 new york terror attacks. there are worries of cholera outbreaks and disease flourishing. there are concerns of finding whole towns dead, festering under the hot sun.
the news then turned to banda aceh province in indonesia, nearest the earthquake's epicenter. my sister studied abroad for a time in amsterdam. "what about the dutch? are they sending aid to their former colony?"
"maybe their aid's merged with the european union's contribution," my other sibling said.
"indonesia's situation is pretty much the same as ours - when something happens to us, spain doesn't rush over to help out. we're completely cut off," i said. i didn't bother to mention about the u.s. the u.s. continues to wreck havoc on the world in strange ways that are beyond my capacity to explain sometimes.
the u.s.' influence on the world could be compared to the tsunami - so powerful, that when it slams into you, you are left with almost nothing.
nature does as she will. said an indian village leader to a london reporter, "it is the will of nature and of the lord. they work in mysterious ways. but do not worry, the people will recover. they must. life will go on. it is cruel, terrible, but life is terrible everywhere, is it not?" sometimes when you're beholden such grace amid tragedy, all you can offer are witness and affinity.
---
Bush announces 4-nation aid coalition [ The Baltimore Sun ]
The latest in damage control.
---
'The water kept rising -- and rising'
by Gemunu Amarasinghe
Associated Press Writer
Posted online by The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
Dec. 27, 2004
AMBALANGODA, SRI LANKA (AP) -- The twisted limbs of the frail girl in a blue dress were caught in a garden fence by the sea. She may have been dead already, but no one stopped to check. There was too much tragedy going on all around, as the water kept coming.
Before the waves hit southern Sri Lanka, I had gone to the seaside to drop off my parents at the shrine in Ambalangoda for a Buddhist ceremony. Sunday was the "Poya," or a full-moon day. We Buddhists believe that Buddha was born, attained enlightenment and died on a full-moon day, so they are a time for reflection.
As I was driving back to the capital, Colombo, I got a message on my cell phone that some parts of coastal Sri Lanka had been hit by unnaturally big waves.
I didn't need the message. People were running everywhere, and the first waves hit the road. They were not huge, not too destructive. They brought fish to the shore, and people rushed to collect them. [ more ]
---
Our Planet, and Our Duty
By Bob Herbert
Columnist, The New York Times
Dec. 31, 2004
One moment the kids were laughing and skylarking on the beach, yelling and chasing one another, sweating in the warm bright sun. The next moment they were gone.
The world is used to horror stories, but not on the stupefying scale of the macabre tales coming at us from the vast and disorienting zone of death in tsunami-stricken southern Asia. Einstein insisted that God does not play dice with the world, but that might be a difficult notion to sell to some of the agonized individuals who have seen everything they've lived for washed away in a pointless instant. [ more ]
---
Are We Stingy? Yes
The New York Times, Dec. 30, 2004
The controversial editorial given 30 minutes' panel on CNN, Dec. 31, for its proffers.
President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.
We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities. [ more ]
---
Asia, united by grief, remains free of any Western-style recrimination
The London Telegraph
Editorial, Dec. 31, 2004
Reprinted and posted online in The Sydney Morning Herald.
There is universal acceptance that nature is cruel and that life must go on, writes Mihir Bose.
As the death toll continued to rise in the worst disaster to hit South Asia for 40 years, I sat on a sand dune in Rajasthan's Thar desert, 2000 kilometres away, and asked a village leader what he thought of this calamity.
He said: "Sir, it is the will of nature and of the Lord. They work in mysterious ways. But do not worry, the people will recover. They must. Life will go on. It is cruel, terrible, but life is terrible everywhere, is it not?"
If this sounds strangely passive to a Westerner, bear in mind that he spoke with a great deal of quiet dignity. He went on to remind me that not long ago there was an earthquake in the neighbouring state of Gujarat which killed many people, and that his own region - always parched - had a dreadful drought 25 years ago, bringing death and destruction from which the land has recovered so well that it is now a noted tourist attraction.
Living with capricious, cruel nature is something most people in South Asia have long had to come to terms with. It helps that religion is so much part of their everyday lives, be they Hindus, Muslims, Christians or Buddhists.
It also helps that, in times of terrible tragedy, grief is openly expressed in all its raw, brutal form. The television screens have been filled with images of women beating their breasts as they mourn loved ones, or of fathers wailing as they identify a child snatched from them by an inexplicable phenomenon.
The images are shocking but they must also, in a way, be cathartic.
Western television has shown images of the dead in a less stark fashion than Indian television, as if viewers need protection from human grief. Indian television clearly feels viewers have no need of such nannying.
But this tragedy is also showing how the region is changing. The very nature of the disaster has brought home to people how closely related they are to each other. The epicentre was in Indonesia; the quake's shockwaves spread to Thailand, Sri Lanka and India and as far as the eastern seaboard of Africa.
One particularly terrible image was of people strolling along the beach in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. They had heard of the earthquake in Indonesia, could not imagine it would have any effect on them and then suddenly saw the sea rising as if the world were coming to an end.
For various historical reasons - and reflecting the long European dominance of this part of the world - the countries affected by this tragedy have their sights trained on lands far away rather than on their neighbours. So Indonesia and Thailand look to Australia while India and Sri Lanka still look to Britain - indeed the Sri Lankan President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, was on her way back from London when this tragedy struck.
Now these countries are beginning to realise nature has bound them together and, if this is a cruel way to learn this lesson, it is still an important lesson.
The other big difference from previous tragedies that have afflicted this region is that it is probably the first one to be beamed into millions of South Asian sitting rooms by television. The small screen is bringing home the suffering in a way unprecedented in any previous disaster.
Also, the catastrophe has come in the middle of the great holiday season. December is often the best month in this part of the world. Although Christmas is not celebrated as in the West, schoolchildren are on holiday and, with growing prosperity, there is a lot of internal tourism, increasingly greater than the number of Western tourists.
This means that, in comparison with past disasters, this one has not been confined to just one bit of the region, neither in terms of impact nor in its coverage. To an extent, this is the first cataclysmic tragedy in which the entire region is a shocked spectator.
As happens in the West, this tragedy will lead to calls for greater accountability and questions about why the region does not have a better early warning system.
There was an hour and a half between the earthquake in Indonesia and the first onslaughts to hit Sri Lanka and India. Had these countries been on the list at the Pacific Ocean's tsunami warning centre, which covers 26 countries, there might have been some action taken to mitigate the effects.
In the absence of this, and given the poor infrastructure of the region, the people have been forced to fall back on their own resources and have shown exemplary courage and initiative.
For the moment, though, there is none of the anger and finger-pointing that would have become quickly evident in the West. Instead there is an acceptance that nature is cruel and life must go on. ¶ 12/30/2004 03:10:00 AM
