http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiap ... index.html

And the body count still rising, with tons missing. Jesus freaking christ...that's one hell of an accident. 8.9-9 on the scale of Richter, wohow. Additionally, I somewhat knew one one of the victims. She was walking on crutches and spending time on the beach apparently, when the 10-meter high wave swept her away and smacked her to death. That's one hell of a wrong time to be at the wrong place.

This again kinda proves my thumb rules for travelling:

->do not visit countries south of or near the equator
->do not visit countries where you can disappear without any form of trial
->do not visit countries where guns are a common sight on the streets
->do not visit countries where hurricanes, earhtquakes or the likes are extremely common.


In that order. Incidentally, this rules out pretty much most of the world, which might explain my lack of travelling.

Man, you like to live on the edge huh?

Anyway, yea so the US gives $15 million dollars of relief aid and the UN says we should raise taxes and give more. What a crock of shit.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041 ... -7268r.htm

Check this story out.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004600994,00.html

This girl was diving 50ft below the water and ended up on a hill side.

The situation this morning:

Bangladesh: 2 dead
India: 11.499 dead
Indonesia: 7.042 dead en possibly a 100.000 injured
Kenya: 1 dead
Malaysia: 65 dead en 218 injured
Maledives: 52 dead
Myanmar: 36 dead
Somalia: 38 dead
Sri Lanka: 18.706 dead
Tanzania: 10 dead
Thailand: 1.473 dead and 7.000 injured
TOTAL: 38.954 dead (so far)

Apparently we're giving 1 million € over here (we're 10 million ppl) so I suppose the US could spare some more, and that they will free more funds in a while.

As for living on the edge...that's for ppl with a deathwish. I'm not throwing away the most precious thing I have (me!) for nothing.

Why should the US have to give more?

Jet Li is missing too.

Really? Well, if someone that famous is missing he's prolly long dead. Sucks.





I never said the US should give more, just that they could and that it'd be nice. Besides, where's your Christian spirit 11? Give to the poor, clothe the naked, feed the starving and whatnot...I thought I was the atheist.

lol we are giving 500.000 Eek which is roughly 40.000 dollars (1usd=14EEk roughly)

I never said we shouldnt give any money. I like how the world hates the US until they want our money, then they expect us to just give it all way. $15 million is a lot of money.
"Never mind that we hated your country and your president and pulled out our troops from Iraq, give us your money!"
Sad
I mean damn, we already fund most of the relief aid across the world. What about that isnt christian? The US also surpase all other countries in private funding.

Powell said that the $15 mill was part of a "larger package".

Hell Spain is only giving $1 million. Seriously whos the bad guy here. Spain gets a new douche bag president who pulls out troops from Iraq when a train blows up then turns around and only gives $1 mill to relief. Some great leader they have there.

/end rabbling.

The actual death toll is above 60,000. Though with the unaccounted for included, the estimated total is up at around 120,000 people.

yeah Suga, already 70.000 confirmed and way more to go. Prolly the biggest disaster in decades. I did some fact-finding and it seems that

->the American scientist Kerry Sieh suspects that the world has faltered (couldn't find better word) on its axis for a whileduring the earthquake. The power released by the earthquake is equivalent to one million atomic bombs.

->some islands near Sumatra have shifted 20 meters because of the quake. that's freakishly much, geographically speaking.

->the Tamil Tigers, a group of rebels on the isle of Sri Lanka, may have suffered a huge blow to their organisation on the east coasts of the island. This could change the powerbalance significantly.

->also in Sri Lanka, tons of landmines (they were there because of that civil war), have been swept away from known areas, not to mentions signs indicating minefields disappearing as well.



@11b...no one's doubting the fact that the US spends a lot of money on humanitarian relief. But the fact that more and more countries aren't too fond of the US (or even hate them in some regions) has more to do with pre-emptive strikes (dangerous games that), wars that make no sense, and using, apparently, wrong information to convince the international community. And afterwards admitting it and saying, "oh well". That doesn't make you any friends you know. And right after 9/11, the whole "with us or against us" thing was plain stupid. France, for example, may have had economic reasons for not wanting to invade Iraq, but take little old Belgium: we don't have any particular interest in Iraq (economic or other), but we didn't want to jump head over heels in a war that didn't make any sense (and it turned out that way afterwards), did that make use 'against' the US? Puh-lease. It's mostly a matter of subtilety. I know that the US doesn't need Belgium in the least, military speaking, but point is: more subtilety would have gone a long way. The US can and does play an important role internationally speaking, but with great power comes great responsibility, and that is sometimes lacking. After all, by the logic of pre-emptive striking I could go to the US and blow up a nuclear base, cos I might be afraid that they're used against me.


Anyway, this pic was on the front page of my paper today. I have 2 brothers and parents, too. Fucked up shit. The kid is running around there, apparently, looking for them. And they're prolly dead.

The US isn't doing bad things in general, they just have a very poor PR.
And morons like Rumsfeld should get the axe, the Iraq war itself was a good idea, but the war itself and espescially the aftermath were excecuted very badly, and he set the whole thing up.

Yea this disaster is sad. What wierd is I read a story that exactly 1 year ago to the hour there was a earthquake in the same region that the earth that happened recently started. Talk about wierd. Whats even wierder is they have yet to find any dead animals...


The US is now giving $20 million.

No dead animals found or no reported? Given the fact that there is hardly any farming in the affected area (almost everybody there is fisherman), but there should be dead animals.

No, they have found 0 dead animals. Nothing.

Here's some crazy videos.

http://jlgolson.blogspot.com/2004/12/tsunami-video.html

Hang on, I'm sure I posted on this topic, what happened to it?