Asian Disaster

[Polaris]

yes the news....

[bralisk]

oh... i thought you were refering to a living being as "it"

[Armisael]

At least it's good that a lot of people contributed..
May the people who died from this catastrophe rest in peace..

[Polaris]

Oh no... I'm not that evil... no it was hard to se the news... at the begining I didn't even see the news coz of it...

[Kossage]

On another point, i've just had a thought - with these rising water levels caused by global warming etc., perhaps situations like these in the world are going to become worryingly more common? I know that the tsunami wasn't related to this at all, but would there be some kind of change in the behaviour of the oceans? Or at least simply more flooding?

That might very well be the case, unfortunately. I hope some Day After Tomorrow kind of disaster won't ever happen, but who knows. After the tsunami there were some floods at least in Scotland, Sweden and Finland (and surely other places but I was mostly concerned with the floods in Finland at the time), and I guess it was some kind of a late effect cause by the tsunami (I could be wrong though). And if the ice melts from the north and the south, I think it would severly affect the Gulf Stream etc, which would in turn affect weather and possibly result in a new Ice Age or something.

Anyway, it's very shocking how many countries have had losses because of the tsunami. A lot of Swedes are either dead or missing, dozens of Finns who were in the area disappeared and are probably dead (which makes this catastrophe feel closer to me because I'm a Finn) and so on, but the biggest casualties were in the native's ranks. Watching all those videos the media showed about the flood was truly horrible. These kind of disasters really make one realize how nature can be a powerful force, and makes one respect nature even more.

I'm worried that there might be more horrible catastrophes such as this to come (and I'm sure there will be), but if anything I was positively surprised how people (at least in Finland and Sweden, and I'm sure in other countries as well) were willing to donate quite large sums of money to the Red Cross and such organizations or help in some other way in the disaster zone. It made me realize that even though one might think that there world is a cruel and evil place, there are at least some people who still want to help those who are suffering. I'm grateful for all the people who have helped the victims in any way, and I'm grateful for organizations who still care about people and try their best to help them.

[Emerald Aeris]

I think it's great that they're getting help, and that there's such an outcry for help, but my question is this, when millions of children die in the streets of 3rd world countries, why then do we ignore that? Why is it such a tragedy when a tsunami strikes, but not when millions live in poverty their whole lives? Where's the money there? Canada, US, Austrailia, why does the tragedy with cameras from CNN get all the money?

Suddenly everyone cares about one horrible event. It really looks to me like this is a twisted polical thing, as in "who is the most generous?". If it were otherwise, the world wouldn't continue to ignore the tragedies that happen all the time on a much larger scale. Maybe they're just not as glamorous.