I blame the Swiss

[chickenfeet]

Watching flame wars break out all over LJstan about who should be donating more or less to tsunami relief I am minded of two thoughts; one entirely cynical and one entirely serious.

1. If the Swiss banks would free up the money they are holding on behalf of politicians or ex politicians from the affected countries and their families, no foreign donations would be needed.

2. In our rush to help the people affected by this latest disaster, let's take a moment to think about how the world could/should be doing more about the long standing humanitarian disasters in, e.g., the DRC and the Sudan which have left millions homeless and which kill thousands every day. I don't want to get into a numbers game but the estimated death toll from the civil war in DRC is three million and the world community is basically doing bupkis.

Comments

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

I think it's also about blame or the lack of it. There's clearly nobody to blame for the tsunami (try as I might to pin it on George W). But when it comes to civil war, I think people are less likely to donate/exert political pressure because they see the tragedy as avoidable (unfair as that is on the victims). Which is why Michael Buerk when reporting on the famine in Ethiopia that kicked off the whole Live Aid effort made a deliberate decision not to say in his report that the cause of the famine was the civil war there.