Tsunami

A few good links to info about the SE Asia disaster.

Arthur Chrenkoff has a list of good news. Some highlights:

"Afghans donated blood on Wednesday for the victims of last week's devastating tsunami, and the government asked the US military to help it send war-hardened doctors to the disaster zone. About a dozen medics and a planeload of medicine and equipment would leave for India and Sri Lanka as soon as possible, the defense Ministry said. 'We have our own problems, but we are part of the family of nations,' said ministry spokesman Gen Zaher Mohammed Azimi. 'The people of Afghanistan are saddened by this disaster'."Just goes to show that you're never too poor or troubled not to show some charity and human spirit.

"The United Nations and international donors on Thursday faced an unusual problem as they sought to rally help for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami: not a shortage of money, but a surfeit - or at least far more promised cash than they can use in the coming months."An outpouring of public donations and government pledges from around the world has created an embarrassment ofriches.

The $5bn promised amounts to about $1,000 for each of the estimated 5m people affected, much more than the typical annual income of a Sri Lankan fisherman or an Indian villager, let alone an African peasant. [emphasis added]"UN officials do not want to stop the money flowing, but they admit that it poses some unexpected challenges, not least because the pledges are already five times greater than the $977m appeal launched on Thursday by Kofi Annan, UN secretary general, for emergency tsunami relief efforts over the next six months."

Also is a link to this list of donations from "stingy" American's.

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this "human" interest story to come out of the disaster.
I have trouble believing that all this effort couldn't be better used on something else. But scrappleface has a great story about the stranded fish. (I know its not really a fish, duh!)

Finally, since I don't have cable, or a TV that even gets reception, I hadn't gotten a good feel for how huge the waves were. I have heard the number of dead, and seen some pictures of the carnage, but hadn't seen how powerful and enormous the waves were. A Foxnews and MSNBC video shows the incoming wave, shot from a second story, shows a little boy out in the beach, getting swallowed by the tsunami. It's disturbing, but it opened my eyes to the horror that this disaster was.