Twenty million people displaced ... that's about 2/3 the population of Canada and 1/3 the population of the UK. A worldwide effort of provide help and relief is needed but will it happen? Whatever the reasons, mother earth doesn't seem positively disposed toward her residents this year.
Michael,
Glad to greet you!
When Hurricane Katrina, a man-made tragedy, swept away much of New Orleans, the White House bumbled and blustered but allowed the mayhem and flood to work it's own fury.
That was merely reaction to poor Americans citizens!
In Darfur, where perhaps a million people have been driven from their homes, brutalized by murders, massacres, intimidation and rapes as well as slaughter of livestock, we have mounted no meaningful response. Ahmad Harun, the very man accused of engineering, fostering, recruiting, inspiring, funding and arming the gangs of Arabs to attack the Black Darfur villagers is now the "Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs" in the Sudanese Government in Khartoum. I wouldn't want to prejudge the man, but the human carnage and suffering is the worst ongoing genocide of the 21st Century and it is not addressed with any sense of urgency and power.
Now we do have oil dependence on Sudan's allies, so perhaps that's why we don't land 1500 Marines to bolster the toothless Pan African force there to eradicate the marauders!
So after all this unresponsiveness nearer to home, why would I expect more attention to 20 million souls flooded-out, exposed in the open elements in far away South East Asia?!
And where are the eloquent voices of Canada, Germany, Holland, France and so forth that cry selective tears for their pet revulsions de jour? If it is not their "poster people for pain", epic suffering does not even register more than a 20 second news blip!
It is customary to cry over some people’s pain and not others. There is one sure way to make the honors list for the selective outrage of civilized nations. Obviously, the blacks in Louisiana, the blacks in Darfur and the Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in South East Asia should have oil wells before they have their next disaster!
Asher
How stupid for the New Orleans population not to control their share Gulf of Mexico off-shore oil bounty flowing from New Orleans to the rest of the USA! So I guess, it's just their own damn fault!