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[machadinha]

[I posted this yesterday but maybe in an inappropriate thread, it's gone now. I'm hoping this is the right thread, if it disappears again, all my best to you all the same & I won't bother you again with it]

At Indymedia.nl http://www.indymedia.nl/ there is an article with
a lot of additional links to further information. Find it at http://www.indymedia.../12/24072.shtml .

The article itself is in Dutch but if you scroll down you'll find tons
of links to articles in English and some other languages (partly
gathered here, thanks people :-) regarding possible funds and grassroots
organizations, as well as news less commonly covered by the mainstream
media.

Good luck everybody.

[sriracha john]

As expected, the inevitable happens and Thai entrepreneurs have their tsunami follow-on. Same as the 9/11 follow-on that occured here:


Thailand's tsunami-hit Phuket island offers gory souvenirs

Mon Jan 17,11:05 PM ET World - AFP
PHUKET, Thailand (AFP) - A macabre souvenir industry is emerging on Thailand's resort island of Phuket, with tsunami VCDs, t-shirts and gory pictures of bloated corpses floating in the sea being snapped up by both local residents and tourists.

The island's tourism industry has been hit by the calamity, which has killed more than 5,300 people, half of whom are Western holidaymakers, but photo shops, bookstores and souvenir shops are doing brisk business.

The largest photo shop in Phuket town centre offers prints of at least 30 different scenes of devastation in the southern coastal provinces battered by the December 26 earthquake and giant waves.

"This is the bestseller," a staffer at the Kodak Express shop told AFP, pointing to a picture showing scores of blackened bodies buried among a large pile of rubble of a collapsed building in Khao Lak.

He said the shop started selling the pictures on the afternoon of December 26, with stocks supplied by local photographers and from navy officers.

"We have sold thousands of copies of these pictures. Business is good because people out there want to see what is really happening on the ground," he said, asking not to be identified.

The prints cost 20 baht (50 cents) each, and are bought by both locals and foreigners, he said, adding that it was a legal business.

Some of the pictures depict scenes commonly seen in newspapers, showing people running from raging waves, the magnitude of destruction along the coastlines and shops submerged in deep water.

Others offer a rare glimpse of the search and rescue work.

One is a picture of officers pulling in a string of dead bodies from the sea during a night operation, and another had bloated bodies of naked foreigners floating face up in the open sea.

Tsunami VCDs and posters in the Thai language are also on sale at the photo shop as well as in bookshops around Phuket.

A staffer at the Seng Ho Bookstore, the largest in town, said their stock of some 100 VCDs, priced at 120 baht (three dollars) each, were sold out to mainly Thai residents.

"I don't know why people are interested to see this sad tragedy," she said, adding that she has not watched a video.

The VCD, apparently produced by an enterprising Thai photographer, is a one-hour production compiling scenes in newspapers and television of tsunami-battered areas, and heart-wrenching interviews with local villagers displaced by the disaster.

T-shirts are also on sale in a local market and shops in Phuket.
A young Thai woman was spotted at Patong beach wearing a black round-necked shirt with a picture of giant blue waves in the front, and a line listing the provinces hit by the tsunamis.

"I bought this at a local market for 99 baht (2.50 dollars). I just want a memory of this painful disaster that had affected Thailand," she told AFP.

[machadinha]

I just got sent this:

TsunamiVolunteer.net (Khao Lak, Takua Pa District, Phang-Nga Province, Thailand):
http://www.tsunamivolunteer.net/
See especially
http://www.tsunamivo....net/action.php
Volunteer Opportunities for Tsunami Disaster Relief in Thailand
For those so inclined.

I was also told there should be a good and lengthy article in today's Bangkok Post's http://bangkokpost.com/ "Outlook" section but I couldn't find it online.

[machadinha]

For the Bangkok Post article about TsunamiVolunteer.net see http://www.bangkokpost.com/en/250105_Outlo...n2005_out10.php . Their deeplinks tend to go down fast, too bad.

The group also has a donations call at http://www.tsunamivo...et/donation.php .

[Spee]

Yesterday I was speaking with a colleague who has a brother working on an oil tanker that makes runs between several ASEAN ports.

He said they were 170 miles offshore from Indonesia and all of the sudden they starting seeing 100's of bodies and various types of furniture, refuse and other debris just floating along in the current.

The ship's captain stopped the vessel and radioed in to various authorities to ask what they should do. The authorities basically told them to take as many pictures as possible, take as comprehensive count as possible, but to not attempt to do any recovery because the bodies were in such bad shape.

It is so sad that these victims will never be identified because of the conditions of their bodies. There was nothing anyone on the ship could do. His brother said that it was just an awful scene.

It also makes one wonder that if this ship found so many bodies so far offshore, then how many more victims are simply lost at sea, never to be seen again. It also goes to show more of the power of the tsunami riptides and the undersea currents.

Positively horrible!