Andrea Varnava - The Guardian

The Guardian

Tsunami Victims Still Waiting for Promised Billions

“$6.7 billion pledged $3.5 billion has not been spent”

“Tens of thousands still homeless two years on”

The newspaper I looked up was the New York Post. My search was extremely limited because of the issue with the Archives. What I found was three extremely short articles; the first was a memorial piece, the second was on Nate Burrows a designer on Oprah’s show and then lastly a recent earthquake mentioning the 2004 tsunami. So as you can see that wasn’t very much. Then I read an article from the Guardian huge difference with just the first glance. It had more then just a few lines mentioning it and it was much more educational piece. It had to do with the victims of the tsunami still waiting to get money to rebuild their lives. The Guardian reported that “of the $6.7 billion pledged about $3.5 billion has not been spent” and “Tens of thousands are still homeless.” Lots of money has been promised but very little is barely any has been seen. The Guardian also reports “The IRC defended its actions yesterday A spokesman said it was impossible to complete all the projects quickly. We said a few weeks after the tsunami that for us this was a five year effort. Anyone who talked about it being completed in two or three years was totally unrealistic. I understand Mr. Clinton’s frustration…but I think that most people will live in houses towards the end of next year.” Could these be more empty promises? We don’t know only time will tell.

Questions:

1) The audience seems to be geared to people that have donated money as well as people who would get upset and appalled and then hopefully make something happen. There are many quotations throughout the entire article that indicates the audience. A couple of them are about the bureaucracies poor planning and the cynical withholding of money, and then Bill Clinton is also mentioned about his concern that only 30-35% of people have been put back into permanent housing.

2) The “villains” in the story seem to be the bureaucracy and the IRC (International Red Cross). Even though it is a natural disaster they have become the “villains” by holding back and not spending the pledged amount causing many people to still be homeless after the disaster.

3) There aren’t any clear cut heroes in the story. Obviously the people who donated are heroes but not everyone is seeing that money, but Bill Clintons is also helping out by raising awareness and hopefully getting things to continue moving.

4) The main differences were that they were from different times. These were more recent while the NY Times which I will be writing about next was from the day after everything had happened.