Many thanks to balbulican for getting a post on the page for donations the other day while we were traveling to see family just outside of Toronto - our donation is on the way and we hope that others who check in at stageleft now and again will heed the call and do what they are able to do to help out as well.

… and now, on to the the the rest of this.

Dependent on which website or news source you check the number of dead from the recent tsunami in Asia is anywhere between 60 and 80 thousand people, and growing with every passing hour. Turn on any news cast on virtually any TV station and you will see row upon row of dead bodies in public places where survivors look for friends and family, portions of bodies not yet recovered from underneath the wreckage of what might have been a home, a place of business, or the building where the hapless person sought cover and safety; and, in one case, an arm reaching up from a mass of rubbish, branches, and trees - the fingers splayed and seemingly grasping for something, anything, to grab onto.

It is the stark face of tragic human death by natural forces shown to us time, and time, and time, and time again by the major networks….. and while seeing those images, listening to the commentary, and having the intended feelings of sympathy and compassion evoked by them, I couldn’t help but wonder why it is ok to show this type of image when nature kills man, but not when man kills man?

Think about it for a little bit. In the case of the genocide in Sudan we heard of the human tragedy where untold tens of thousands of people have been killed, we’ve heard about the starvation, and disease, and how over a million people have been rendered homeless - but we actually saw little of it, certainly not to the extent that we see it as a result of the tsunami in the Asian region.

Rwanda? Same thing.

Afghanistan? Same thing.

In Iraq additional tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed during the invasion and occupation, absolutely huge numbers are homeless - we’re creeping up on two years now in that country yet the coverage of that loss of life is positively insignificant compared to what we have seen in the last 3 days.

Why is that? Is coverage of human tragedy limited to those that nature kills because nature is not the president of a super power? Because nature is not an oil rich country? Because nature does not have voting rights at the UN or a veto in the Security Council? Because nature does not give money to other countries?

Or is it because it’s not ‘politically correct’ to show us killing ourselves because those deaths are the result of actual physical people who we may have voted for, or who might be one of us^(tm), or who it might be in our best economic interests not to anger, or maybe it’s because they happened in some inconvenient spot on the globe that is economically unimportant to us?

…… and if that is the case, as I believe it is, what does it say about us?