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There has been a lot of media coverage on the recent Tsunami tragedy, and the Media industry has swamped us with endless amounts of information and pleas for help. The response by the common person has been overwhelming. This tragedy has seen people open their hearts and wallets to help those in need. This is due to the extensive media coverage it has recieved. The fact that the media coverage has forced us too pay attention is one of the key reasons why we have responded the way we have. If other tragedies are given the same scale of coverage, it would be expected that people would react in a similar way. But the way people have responded is a good sign, and it shows that there is hope for humanity, and we have compassion for our fellow man. If only other causes can be seen in similar light, than there is hope for others in need of help.

Aldon Hynes has brough to my attention a rather amazing challenge by Michele Agnew . Michele has come up with a very creative way of donating money to the Tsunami victims. Here's how it works:

A donation of one dollar for each person who comments [at Michele's blog] will be donated to Oxfam International.

Leave a comment at her blog today!

I had dinner when I came home from a family visit on Dec. 25, then took a quick shower and went to bed just about the time a fault line was rupturing on the floor of the Indian Ocean. As I drifted off to sleep and slept through the night toward my early rise for work, tens of thousands of people were drowning. Word of the earthquake reached my newsroom fairly quickly since we're prompted by emails from the U.S. Geological Survey. Word of the tsunami came much later, and word of how devastating it was later still, and so no one called to wake me and get me in earlier. I drove to work in radio silence, as I often do, and had no inkling of what had happened until I stopped by the second security checkpoint on the way in (the second courtesy of all those anthrax mailings to news outlets) and saw the words "Thousands feared dead" on a monitor on the wall ... the words covering pictures of the kind of complete destruction I've never seen before. It was as if hundreds of Hurricane Andrews swept around South Asia, smashing everything in their paths.

Watch Daily Show Clip: Relief Pitcher

This is hilarious... just watch

Evelyn Rodriguez writes a sobering account of living through the Tsunami on the small Thai island of Phi Phi:

This may seem hard to believe unless you've been reading lots and lots of news reports, but in many places villagers are still terrified. When what was a tranquil sea swallows up people, homes and long-tail boats mercilessly without warning and no one can tell you anything reliable about whether another one is coming, I'm not sure you'd want to come down either.

One of the scariest things about the tsunami that I've not seen mentioned is the complete lack of information.

…No, the Internet is not everywhere. No, television is not everywhere. In fact, electricity is not everywhere - many of the islands we were on prior to the tsunami were generator-dependent after sundown (and that's mainly for the foreigner's benefit).

Originally posted at Thoughts from Kansas.

The crew at Death's Door ask an interesting question, though I'd phrase it more cautiously.

talkin out'a my ass or the line starts here:

But first off let’s put shit in perspective. Like I said the Asian death count stands right now at around the one hundred twenty thousand mark, that’s pretty much the population of Topeka, Kansas. So imagine driving to Topeka, the state capital of Kansas and finding every man, woman, and child dead in the streets. Got that picture in your heads? Ok? So giving aid isn’t the question, but moving on. ... As a nation we’re always helping out some muthafucker’s overseas and shit to the tune of millions, but here in our own country we got kids starving and living on the fucking street. Where’s their fucking aid? What? Oh, you cut it due to lack of funding. ...

Clearly, when entire cities (like Lhoknga in the EarthObservatory image) are obliterated, no one seriously disputes the need to aid the survivors. In the “after” part of that picture, there is still water standing on the towns agricultural fields, salting the earth for generations. The only structure standing is the mosque. I don't think Greg is arguing against aid to areas affected by these earthquakes and tsunamis.

His point is that we haven't done all that we could at home. I think partly this is the difference between a sudden tragedy and the slow, grinding tragedy that is poverty in America.

Another sign of this comes via Juan Cole's Informed Comment :

It really is difficult to say much about the impact of the 26 december tsunami that hit the costal areas of the Indian Ocean | The sheer magnitude of destruction is astounding | Sorrow being almost the least of concerns to survivors just trying to stay alive, much less fathom what has hit them | So I'm left to second guess what the world's leaders can or ought to do in adressing the situation | So here's some thoughts: The USA sending troop ships suggests a potential help; the soldiers could assist in building new housing [assuming, of course, that construction supplies would be readily available] and assisting with urgent medical care needs | The modular home industry could offer up their current supply of unsold mobile homes to send overseas...that ought to be a Christian gesture for all those devout in the Carolinas |

Ted Rall, America's hardest-hitting editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, is an award-winning commentator who also works as an illustrator, columnist, and radio commentator. Check out Ted's latest cartoon related to the tsunami.