MSNBC links
: Here are links I plan to use on MSNBC on Friday:
EYEWITNESS BLOGGERS
: Evelyn Rodriguez posted very personal and heartfelt moments from Phuket at Crossroads Dispatches. A commenter now tells me she just arrived back home. She tells of sitting next to people whose lives are thrown apart: a boy who has lost his family, a man who lost his wife, another man who found his wife after their children back home told the father he'd just seen the mother on TV looking for him.
: Mark is another blogger who just arrived home. He found that he and his girlfriend made news as her father told the Scotsman he was praying for her safety. They are safe.
: Rick Von Feldt writes an amazing blog about everything he saw in Phuket.
: Fred blogs from Sri Lanka at Extra, Extra.
: From ChiensSansFrontiers, one of the more remarkable blogs:
The first thing I saw in Mullaitive town was a board hanging outside a battered building. I aksed our guide what the board said. He said says Senthalil Children's Home.
The Home was home to 150 war orphans. They had lost both their parents to the war or had been abandoned or separated from their parents during the fighting. When the Government and the LTTE signed the ceasefire agreement 3 years ago it looked like at least some of these children were going to get a good deal in terms of their future.
Now only 5 of them are alive.
A wroung iron bed that was wrapped around a mango tree was for me the most telling thing about the force of the wave. I can't even imagine the force required to bend something like that. It looked like a straw wrapped around a bottle of coke. I tried to bend it back. I couldn't even move it.
: Stuart Lock writes about his
honeymoon at the disaster.
: Scott Raderstof gives us an incredible moment-by-moment recollection of how he and his family survived the wave.
: Good roundup of eyewitness blogger quotes in the Guardian (some reduntant).
NEWS BLOGGERS
: Blogger and journalist Kevin Sites has left Iraq to cover the tragedy in Thailand; he is blogging it here.
: Many good articles on the impact of this -- on, say, fishing -- at WorldChanging.org.
: JavaJive writes about media coverage, local and international, and wonders why Thailand is getting more attention (so far) than Sri Lanka.
: Insignificant Views says the Sri Lankan prime minister and delegation met with protests while the PM's office made no mention of it:
Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksha and leaders of the Sinhala nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna visited Jaffna Thursday amidst strong protests by refugees from the Tsunami destroyed coastal villages of the peninsula. Jeering refugees, demanding relief from Colombo, got into a tussle with the PM’s delegation at the Puloly American Mission School near Pt. Pedro. Earlier, the PM and his entourage were turned back by refugees in Valvettithurai protesting against Colombo for not sending relief or medicine to them since the Tsunami devastated their villages four days ago.
Meanwhile a press release by the Sri Lankan government Thursday states: “Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse travelled to Jaffna today (30 December) and met many people who have survived the tidal waves. The purpose of his visit was to formalise the distribution of essential the distribution of essential items in Jaffna”.
Meanwhile, a Sri Lankan online paper
says the protesters were terrorists acting as locals.
: Wikipedia has a new and comprehensive entry on the earthquake and its aftermath.
HELP
: The ever-more-amazing SEA-EAT blog has no end of helpful suggestions. The latest: Where to donate your airline miles to charities helping in South Asia.
: The Amazon gift page is up to $6 million tonight. The Red Cross reports that as of noon Thursday, the total from Americans was $18 million.
More figures about the generosity of people around the world here.
The Times of London says Britons gave 20 million pounds in 24 hours.
: Here is the Red Cross Family Links page where people are trying to find each other. Here's a Phuket forum where people are posting notices. They're doing likewise at travel site Lonely Planet.
: The Times of London gives us a chart showing what nations of the world have pledged to disaster relief.
: Apple, like Amazon, hands over its home page to raising funds for relief. Microsoft does. Walmart does not. What other companies are following suit?
VIDEO AND PHOTOS
: Video bittorrents here. More mirrors here.
: Punditguy got hit with a #1,000 bandwidth bill for showing the videos. Help if you can.
: A comprehensive list of videos and photos.
: Flickr photos under the tags tsunami, earthquake, Thailand, Phuket, disaster.
SMS
: SMS messages at ChiensSansFrontiers:
: We can pray later. Keep the food, water, clothes and medicine going. SAVE LIVES NOW!PRAY LATER! Pass this on. Message phones, word of mouth, any way.
: All those who can help SHOULD help. All of us working to provide aid let's not waste time at religious ceremonies tomorrow. Praying's not going to help anyone right now. Let it not disrupt our work. EVERY MOMENT COUNTS! Saving lives IS god's work. We can pray later! Keep the food, water, clothes, and medic *SOME TEXT MISSING*
: The Holy Family Convent, children's home and school are completely destroyed. Debris covers the entire compound and the stench of rotting flesh is everywhere. There are obviously bodies under the rubble. There's no one to remove them. Mother Superior Ambrosine covers her nose as she tries to salvage what she can. She hasn't slept in 3 days.]
: Mullaitivu: The central college, about a km away from the coast is almost completely gone. Only 2 buildings remain. Children were home because of the holidays, but out of the 1100 students, over 400 are dead says principal Antony Jeganathan. His house is between the school and the beach and he survived by hanging onto a tree as he was being swept away
MORE...
: I'm seeing stories from around the world saying in one way or another that having a big New Year's party would be poor form so soon after this tragedy. A story from London here.
The Jakarta Post reports that New Year's parties are turning into charity events.
: The founder of Lonely Planet says tourists should continue go to go these nations.
This report says tourists are doing just that.
And here are pictures from the German paper Bild showing tourists sunning themselves amidst the debris in Thailand. UPDATE: A commenter corrects me; I mistook an earlier story at Bild as connected to these photos; they are not from after the wave. Thanks for the correction.
: Thailand's The Nation reports that Thai officials are implanting chips in the bodies of the dead to make identification easier.
: Thailand's the Nation joins The New York Times in editorializing against and excoriating America for its "meager" response.
: An Indonesian paper reports problems with disease and anger over the lack of food.
: And the crackpots come out of the woodwork: Astrologists say it's the end o' the world: "Top astrologers in the country are hinting that the tsunami strike might indeed be a step towards Nostradamus' prediction - End of the world in 2010."
LATER....
: From MSNBC, I'll add links as I can, more randomly....
: There are local sites popping up to serve local audiences. The web is, after all, local at heart. See Waves of Hope, One Thailand, and a Penang site.
: JerseyEric says Jeb Bush is starting his 2008 presidential campaign in south Asia.
: Evelyn Rodriguez is interviewed in the Mercury News. She needs someone near San Jose to help her set up a wireless router so she can keep her tsunami-injured leg elevated. Volunteers?
: Walmart update: They now have up a link to the Red Cross and good for them. MSNBC asked me a question opening the door to criticize Walmart and I didn't; it's a holiday week and it takes time for people to get these sorts of things to happen. Good on all those who do.
That's Wikipedia, not Ickypedia
: I've gotten lots of email from folks trying to figure out the address of Wikipedia after I plugged it on MSNBC and clearly said a confusing word unclearly. These poor folks are all looking for an Ickypedia. Sorry, folks. That's Wikipedia.org.
...
