Yes, it a terrible event. But it seems small in comparison to what is happening in the Sudan and what happened in the Congo. Why is there so much coverage for the victims of the tsunami and not genocide? Is it because the Tsunami is easier to deal with and we can make ourselves feel better by helping the victims without to join in a bloody dispute?
Because it’s shocking, it’s sudden and it’s very visual. Those sorts of elements are why things get news coverage. Feelings of guilt don’t enter into it.
Because it is the largest natural disaster in living memory. It needs addressing.
The slavery issue involves wholescale civil strife, has the support of the Sudanese government, & therefore it is unlikely to be solved by anything other than many years of effort, or a wholescale war & occupation of the Muslim north.
You might as well send Al Qida a signed invitation. :rolleyes: They’d show up faster than crap scoots through a goose. No lie.
And there’s a good chance that half of Africa would side with the Sudanese government, as they would paint the invasion as an act of colonial aggression.
The West wants no part of a Sudanese intervention, & I for one don’t blame them.
Because it is easy to deal with.
You make a donation and feel good about yourself.
You don’t have to contemplate things like getting people killed by intervening in a war, which people avoid thinking about as much as possible (ie, Sudan, DRC, etc etc). That’s it. Nothing more complex than that it is simple. No one to blame, no debate, everyone agrees it sucks and they should be helped (exept apparently Mr. DeLay). Natural disasters are great uniters of people because they are a very common denominator - it could happen anywhere, any time. Remember how much coverage the hurricane season got this year?
Interesting phrase. But anyway, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. We can’t seem to find them right now.
I have no idea where you got this idea from. The “half of Africa” that would side with them would be the same scum responsible for things like Rwanda and DRC and Cd’I and all the other hell holes in Africa that the West doesn’t give a damn about.
I do. We’re a global society. It’s like saying that the gang wars that kill a dozen people a week the next city over don’t matter.
The ethnic strife in the Sudan and Congo has been going on for many years, whereas the tsunami is a once-in-a-generation event. That’s how the media works. Why did the death of fifteen students in Columbine gets weeks of front page articles while the deaths of thousands in inner city gang-related violence gets virtually none? Because highs schools in Columbine don’t get shot up on a daily basis. Why did the deaths of 3,000 people in the terrorist attacks become a cause for remaking the entire country while the deaths of 17,000 people due to drunk driving each year are mostly ignored? Because al Queda doesn’t kill people every day.
Bingo!
Just the way the media works. Where I live in the US there are quite a few Hmong people. When as a guest many years ago in a Hmong household, I ignorantly asked an elderly family member about what life was like before she came to America? She honestly answered, and told me of how she witnessed the Khmer Rouge genocide. I was unaware about this at the time. And she did this with most of the family present, with a teenage girl family member helping as an interpreter. I reacted quite emotionally to this. The family treated me with all kinds of respect. I discussed this afterwards with a professor at the local college who explained things to me. Asians respect the elders in the family. At that point, unless this elderly woman kicked me out the door, they had no choice. And Hmong traditon is to treat guests well. Eventually I made it out the door. She just wanted to reveal the truth, and let others know. I read up on this history after that, and now know about what she spoke of.
Was there genocide in Sudan and the Congo? If so, until I read your post I never realized this. I confess to a lot of ignorance about what happens on this planet. Seriously. Perhaps I should Google about that. Back in the very early 1980s, I had no such option. That Sally Field movie about this was released later.
It is going on right now in the Sudan. Here is some really good information from Amnesty International:
Hmm…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3991759.stm
“A UN-appointed commission has arrived in Sudan to decide whether genocide has taken place in the region of Darfur.”
“Some 1.6 million people have fled their homes and 70,000 have been killed since the conflict began in early 2003.”
Looks like the UN is still debating whether or not this happened. I guess it probably was like that with the Khmer Rouge long ago. It took a while before the world realized it. 
While I don’t mean to downplay the terrible effects of the event on all concerned, if there hadn’t been so many tourists involved I really don’t think we would be seeing nearly the same level of coverage.
While it isn’t the largest natural disaster in living memory (cf. 400,000 dead from earthquake, Tangshan, China, 1976, 500,000 dead from Bhola cyclone, Bangladesh, 1970 - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_toll#Eathquake) it is the most widespread in terms of geographic area.
We are also all living in a much more media saturated world now than even a mere 35 years ago. I remember news coverage of the Bhola cyclone on television, but I don’t remember seeing it live as it happened. The technology has changed so much since then.
Do we have a number of tourists? There were 150,000 people killed, so I really don’t think the fact that a few thousand of them were tourists makes a difference. Nor has the tourist side of things gotten that much attention from what I’ve seen. It’s true that Africa gets ignored big-time when it comes to news coverage, though.
Makes me wonder if he has a point about lots of white tourists being there. Try walking down the street in the US and ask people what they know of the Khmer Rouge genoicide. My guess is all but a few percent would respond with something like “Khmer what?” No white tourists saw that. I’d probably not know about it today if it weren’t for the fact an elderly Hmong woman told me, looking me in the eye, how she witnessed much of her family killed. She didn’t have any pictures of this happening, but her eyewitness account was quite convincing. As this is the “Great Debates” forum, perhaps my own emotional reactions are inappropriate. My reference before to “I reacted quite emotionally to this” was I totally lost it after that, and broke down crying. This elderly woman ended up hugging me, along with a number of other family members (some small children.) The “treated me with all kinds of respect” was they did so until a couple days later in the home. The professor I mentioned commented that 2 days was an insignificant amount of time to this culture. They tend to think in terms of weeks, not days, in such matters.
I found this headline from the Boston Globe today rather heartbreaking:
I think that’s got more to do with the fact that it was a few decades ago and didn’t have much impact on the US. And I think if you asked after The Killing Fields came out, for example, a lot more people might’ve known what it was. I do think there’s evidence that we get more involved in tragedies when Americans are involved, or even Americans or Europeans, but I don’t think the Khmer Rouge is a good example and I’m not sure that’s what is responsible for the response to this particular tragedy. There were very few white people involved and the coverage (and as a result, the reaction) has been huge.
What happened in Congo and Sudan is messy. Someone is to blame, but who? There is political issue to contemplate, there are other things as well. It happened to someone completely remote to us. If we try to help, it’s not clear on who’s to help, and whether everyone among us (who are in the position to help) would agree on the cause and the subject.
The tsunami disaster is so much simpler. Noone to blame; it happened indiscriminately to everyone in the region: People of different background, religion, culture, etc. It could happen to us too. So easier to empathize; so much easier to react to. We helped the needy and they’ll sure remember what we did. There are clear subjects and targets.
A bit sad but altruism comes with parameters and variables.
True, it didn’t involve the US much. However, I Googled for that stats and some sites put the Khmer genocide at a couple million people. Not as bad as the Nazis, but 2 million is hardly an insignificant number.
See http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/asia_earthquake/dead_missing.htm for a list of the dead and missing. Assuming the worst case senario that those still listed as missing are likely to be dead, the foreigners account for about 6000 of the 150,000. While this is just a fraction of a percent, it is still a very large number of mainly white, first-world victims with relatives back home.
I don’t have figures for how many tourists survived the tsunami, but let’s say that the 6000 figure represents a casualty rate of 5%. This suggests that there were about 120,000 foreign witnesses to the disaster.
The OP was why is this getting so much coverage, and I continue to believe that the presence of so many foreign tourists from first world countries is a major factor.
Arrgh… missed the final l in my url - the link is:
http:///www.cbc.ca/news/background/asia_earthquake/dead_missing.html
I know; I didn’t say it was an insignificant number. It just didn’t engage the US much at the time, and it was a couple of decades ago, so people aren’t as aware of it.