The Worst Things Happen in the Poorest Places...

Here is something that Rex Murphy, a notable weekly commentator on CBC's The National, had to share on Wednesday, December 29th, 2004.

The worst things happen in the poorest places to people in the weakest circumstances.

Hearing and watching the news over the last few days has left most people numb. However many tens of thousands will have been killed following the earthquake-tsunami, there will be tens of hundreds of thousands more in mourning, houseless, stricken with disease and wracked with pain.

It is a monumental misery being endured by those peoples in the ring of countries where the devastation was most concentrated.

It should remind us here on the heels of Christmas in ways that are far too numerous to count that we, in what we call the West, are always on the top side of fortune's wheel. That whatever are the miseries or contentions of life, say, here in Canada, most of our misfortunes and conflicts are by comparison contracted and trivial. We're lucky, if that's the right word, to live in a part of the world where it's news if an airport is shut down because of a storm or there's a rash of fender benders after the first snowfall.

It is an axiom of this world that the worst things happen in the poorest places to people in the weakest circumstances. If you were born in the West, you've won the only lottery that really counts from the very first moment you take air. It's very early in the response to the calamity now unfolding, but not too early to ask what our country plans to do.

A natural disaster is a miserable combination of words, but a natural disaster does come with one single benefit... it is free of all the fogs of politics. There are just thousands and thousands of truly innocent people living a nightmare of pain, want, and dislocation. We Canadians like to cherish the notion that we are a right-feeling nation. Our present government has given signals that it sees itself and the country it governs as being an agency, a source of international conscience. This week's news is going to test that reputation. Are we going to be one of the countries which waits for others to propose response and action? Are we ready to deploy troops and money, both in substantial amounts, to do the charity - and that's the right word - that this monumental disaster calls for? Do we have them?

The Prime Minister has had photo ops with Bono, the tinsel of do-goodism lies over this government. Canadians themselves surely pride themselves on the idea that they, we, are a force for good in the world. After the news this week, only two things can happen... we will hear all the right noises from our government, all the low-voiced mumbling of concern and sympathy, the verbal equivalent of tearing up in public for the benefit of the world's cameras, or we will leap far beyond all conventional response and see in the catastrophic misery that is unfolding on the other side of the world an extraordinary responsibility for a country of our wealth and prosperity to make a response proportional to that wealth and that responsibility.

It may be the wrong end of the telescope to look at it this way, but the disaster and death that have visited the world in the interlude between Christmas and New Year's should be or must be the dread stimulus for the First World to begin paying some homage to the perpetual plight of those caught in the Third. There's still enough of the Christmas spirit left to remember 2004 for something more than its orgy of Boxing Day sales. And if an earthquake and a tsunami can't wake us out of the slumbers of complacency and prosperity, well then there's nothing that can.

Thank goodness we have Rex.

Death toll exceeds 124,000

Words and numbers seem meaningless now to describe what has happened to our neighbors in South Asia. The death toll always seems to double at every few hours and I wonder now if a God does exist. It just further reaffirms we are all just tiny little beings on earth, all at the mercy of events beyond our control. We are not that great afterall...

10,000 and more dead in South Asia

What terrible terrible news to wake up to, the morning after Christmas.
I'm so glad my mum came back from Thailand before this.
I hope and I hope not all is lost... poor families..

Jakarta — The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years struck deep under the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Sumatra on Sunday, triggering tidal waves up to six metres high that obliterated villages and seaside resorts in six countries across southern Asia. Nearly 10,000 people were killed in the devastation.

Tourists, fishermen, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water that rolled across the Bay of Bengal, unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake. The tsunami waves barrelled nearly 4,800 kilmetres across the ocean to Africa, where at least nine people were killed in Somalia, witnesses said.

At least 4,185 killed in Indonesia, the country's health ministry said.

In Sri Lanka, 1,600 kilometres west of the epicenter, more than 3,000 people were killed, the country's top police official said; that number, however, does not include the unconfirmed 1,500 deaths reported by rebels who control part of the country.

Elsewhere, about 2,300 were reported dead along the southern coasts of India, at least 289 in Thailand, 42 in Malaysia and two in Bangladesh.

But officials expected the death toll to rise, with hundreds reported missing and all communications cut off to towns in the Indonesian island of Sumatra that were closest to the epicenter. Hundreds of bodies were found on various beaches along India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, and more were expected to be washed in by the sea, officials said.

The rush of tsunami waves brought sudden disaster to people carrying out their daily activities on the ocean's edge. Sunbathers on the beaches of the Thai resort of Phuket were washed away. A group of 32 Indians — including 15 children — were killed while taking a ritual Hindu bath to mark the full moon day. Fishing boats, with their owners clinging to their sides, were picked up by the waves and discarded.

"All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Mr. Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth's rotation.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at a magnitude of 8.9. Geophysicist Julie Martinez said it was the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound Alaska in 1964.

The epicenter was located 250 kilometres south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province on Sumatra, and 10 kilometres under the seabed of the Indian Ocean. There were at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 and 7.3.

On Sumatra, the quake destroyed dozens of buildings — but as elsewhere, it was the wall of water that followed that caused the most deaths and devastation.

What is this?

This is the beginning of my world news blog. I don't know what suddenly kicked me into action (having backlogged this for 2 years now), but with the new year but a mere skip and a hop away, I really would like things to change. I would like to commit myself to doing things I intended and are intending to do. I am even more adamant about using this site to update myself and others who wish to read about the world and its happenings as time unfolds.