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October 9, 2005
WB: Earthquake Relief
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Survivors Sought in South Asia Earthquake
The
United Nations said more than 2.5 million people need shelter after the magnitude-7.6 earthquake along the Pakistan-India border. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Relief said it urgently needed 200,000 winterized tents.
A very, very, very bad EQ disaster
with winter coming and with no food.
Asian Tsunamai x 10. Katrina x 100.
A very dangerous place for Americans.
Posted by: Larry Ellison | Oct 10 2005 8:17 utc | 2
“I’ve also put a semi-permanent link to oldnorthstate’s list in the right-hand column, replacing the hurricane relief link, which I think is probably not needed any more.” Billmon
I must have missed something. Is New Orleans already a safe place for people to bring their families to live? Who got the job done so fast? Or did Billmon just get tired of the “story”?
Posted by: Marjie Colson | Oct 10 2005 13:53 utc | 3
just listened to democracy now, Tariq Ali author of “Bush in Babylon saying what we all know, that Pakistan’s massive earthquake is being hampered by Musharraf’s unwillingness to use military helicopters to help in the rescue of his own people. Tariq Ali, went on to say, that like New orleans, most countries militarys are great at death and distruction, and all but useless in rescue operations.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 10 2005 15:35 utc | 4
@Marjie
“I must have missed something. Is New Orleans already a safe place for people to bring their families to live? Who got the job done so fast? Or did Billmon just get tired of the “story”?”
That’s pretty harsh maybe Billmon figured that most of the people who needed the link to make a donation had done so.
His stats may be showing that few people are hitting on it anymore.
It’s goimg to be very difficult for NGO’s to raise money for the Pakistani horror anyway because apart from ‘citizens of the world’ who have difficulty empathising with foreign cultures and seeing 40,000 Pakistani deaths as being as ‘important’ as 5,000 US deaths people are getting disastered out.
Way back in March NGO’s were observing that people weren’t giving as much to their regular charities this year because they had given so much to the Tsunami victims.
Since then there have been hurricanes, earthquakes, bombings and floods all demanding the attention of increasingly tapped out citizens.
It helps to remember that this earthquake devastated a large portion of Pakistan and that the effects aren’t confined to one area. For example ten of the biggest hospitals spread throughout the nation were levelled on Saturday. That means even if casualties could be evacuated there’s isn’t anywhere much to take them. Apparently this hospital destruction has also meant that a significant proportion of Pakistani health professionals are casualties themselves.
I’ve been doing the channel surfing thing and watching how different media are treating this disaster and I was sad to see some US media centering their story around the length of time it has taken to get resources on the ground in Pakistan.
As well as the country’s infrastructure being knocked out we shouldn’t forget that Pakistan is a developing nation with a much lower per capita income than say the US.
Mainstream Media in the US appears to be trying to say “see it isn’t just BushCo. Mushareff has a cavalier attitude to his citizens too”.
Now apart from the huge diferential in the numbers of casualties, the totality of the infrastructure damage and the large gap in wealth between the US and Pakistan; there is something quite sickening seeing this misery being used in an attempt to rehabilitate BushCo by saying that others are as bad if not worse.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 11 2005 10:14 utc | 5