Jesse Mohr from rev967.com has quite the strong opinion about Linkin Park's ongoing relief efforts for the Tsunami victims in Japan. You can read his post below. I wanna make clear, that I so don't agree with that!
1. Of course there are a million places, where people need help, but you got to start somewhere and Linkin Park have also supported and organized relief stuff for Haiti and tons of other regions that were hit by natural disasters. Also, we really shouldn't forget that millions of people will suffer from the after effects of the Tsunami in Japan for decades!
2. The point that people should invest their "hard-earned" money in their own countries first really pisses me off! When do we finally realize that we are ONE people on ONE earth? Everybody should decide for themselves which relief organisations they want to support, and in my opinion you should just listen to your heart instead of sorting people and their problems into hierarchies. For example, I have donated to Save the Children, MFR, Donate Life and I am an online volunteer for UNHCR, but that doesn't mean that I think other issues are less important, I just had to make a decision eventually.
You can discuss Jesse's opinion in the comment section!
Here's his post:...
Health minister Ghulum Nabi Azad says homosexuality is a "disease" © Demotix
GENEVA, July 5 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency is concerned about the high incidence of malnutrition among Somali refugees flowing into Ethiopia and Kenya amid a devastating drought in their conflict-racked country.
The relentless violence, compounded by drought, has forced more than 135,000 Somalis to flee so far this year. In June alone, 54,000 people fled across the two borders, three times the number of people who fled in May.
"UNHCR is particularly disturbed by unprecedented levels of malnutrition among the new arrivals – especially among refugee children," UNHCR's chief spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, said in Geneva on Tuesday. "More than 50 per cent of Somali children arriving in Ethiopia are seriously malnourished, while among those arriving to Kenya that rate is somewhat lower, but equally worrying – between 30 to 40 per cent," she added.
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SHIKA, Japan — Near a nuclear power plant facing the Sea of Japan, a series of exhibitions in a large public relations building here extols the virtues of the energy source with some help from “Alice in Wonderland.”
“It’s terrible, just terrible,” the White Rabbit says in the first exhibit. “We’re running out of energy, Alice.”
A Dodo robot figure, swiveling to address Alice and the visitors to the building, declares that there is an “ace” form of energy called nuclear power. It is clean, safe and renewable if you reprocess uranium and plutonium, the Dodo says.
“Wow, you can even do that!” Alice says of nuclear power. “You could say that it’s optimal for resource-poor Japan!”
Over several decades, Japan’s nuclear establishment has devoted vast resources to persuade the Japanese public of the safety and necessity of nuclear power. Plant operators built lavish, fantasy-filled public relations buildings that became tourist attractions. Bureaucrats spun elaborate advertising campaigns through a multitude of organizations established solely to advertise the safety of nuclear plants. Politicians pushed through the adoption of government-mandated school textbooks with friendly views of nuclear power.
The result was the widespread adoption of the belief — called the “safety myth” — that Japan’s nuclear power plants were absolutely safe. Japan single-mindedly pursued nuclear power even as Western nations distanced themselves from it....
Ishinomaki Coast Road
Today is the one-month anniversary of the Tohoku quake and tsunami disaster, but my flat is still rattling from aftershocks (I counted three today, but I’m sure there were more). Last weekend was actually the first I’ve spent at home in Tokyo since March 11, when the big one hit. Much of the last month I’ve been up north, looking for my in-laws, ferrying supplies to relief organizations, and being a guide for foreign television crews looking to get close to ground zero in the first days after the disaster....