I have been really fudgeing pissed today, because CNN and FOX have largely to completely ignored the Padang earthquake, and it makes me sick. There it was, big letters and horrifying pictures on Al-Jazeera's front page, but ignored except in the sidebars of sidebars on CNN and FOX.
So, the entry (warning: ranty)
QUOTE (My Blog)
link
Why am I posting this on my blog, and not in General Chat, you ask?
Because I want to fudgeing rant about this.
Here we are, in the United States, the richest civilization in fudgeing history. We all b**** and moan about all our problems. I'm as guilty of it as any, I confess. But this has made me think. Who the fudge do we think we are? God? Holy fudge. Who's sending help? fudgeing Switzerland. A country so small, but rich, monetarily. We're the fudgeing United States. With the help of others, we defeated three tyrants in thirty years. We single-handedly won our independence from what was at the time the world's most powerful nation. We built our economy almost independently. We can go HURRRR SPREAD DEMAHKRUSSY but we can't help some poor fudgeing people because we can't get off our fudgeing asses and do something?! What the fudge, America. I almost want to agree with Jeremiah Wright when I see this FUDGEING BULLSHIZZLE. This is so fudgeing pathetic. Why can't we do something? Why is CNN covered with bullshizzle stories like "surprising first products from 14 companies", "this beer rains from the sky", "zombies prey on our fears, brains", etc.?! Why does FOX only mention the story buried under shizzleloads of...shizzle? Oh, CNN has one story related. To the AMERICAN SAMOA QUAKE. Which almost doesn't even count to me...American Samoa is a US territory, same as the Philippines. So we can be all crying and generous with American territories but GOD FORBID WE HELP OTHER PEOPLE.
Is this what I'm meant to do? Should I go present my less offensive views to the United States as a politician, sprinkling these things in? If we want to help people, fudge condoms, fudge "AIDS prevention", fudge "foreign aid", fudge all this FUDGEING BULLSHIZZLE that has been our foreign policy for the last 54 FUDGEING YEARS.
Just...man...I almost come to the point of saying "fudge America" but I can...barely hold that back.
I can't believe this college is letting me stay alive. They'd be pissing themselves if they read this.
QUOTE
More than 3,000 people may still be trapped under rubble nearly two days after a powerful earthquake devastated western Indonesia.
Rescue workers in the earthquake-devastated Indonesian city of Padang have been stepping up the hunt for survivors in the rubble of collapsed buildings, although hopes of finding many of the thousands missing still alive are beginning to fade.
As of Friday afternoon, almost 48 hours after the quake hit the Sumatran city, only a handful of survivors have been pulled from the wreckage.
The United Nations has said it believes more than 1,000 people have been killed, although the latest Indonesian government death toll stands at 777, with hundreds more injured.
With foreign aid teams and more heavy lifting gear arriving on the scene, Marlis Raham, the deputy governor of Indonesia's West Sumatra province, told Al Jazeera he was still hopeful more survivors would be found.
"I don't think it's too late, there's still hope that some of the people trapped can be saved," he said.
Raham said more than 15,000 buildings in Padang had collapsed in the powerful magnitude 7.6 quake.
Al Jazeera's Veronica Pedrosa, reporting from Padang, said that among the collapsed buildings were several schools, where parents have gathered hoping that their children will be pulled out alive.
She said that at Ambacang hotel, where as many as 200 people were thought to be buried, rescuers had managed to find eight people alive.
"[They] managed to get a mobile phone call out to say, 'Please stop the heavy equipment. We are still alive; you're going to kill us if you keep going on.'"
The devastation has already raised questions over lax building standards and whether buildings such as schools were strong enough to cope with a known earthquake zone.
'A lot of corpses'
One Padang school reduced to a pile of twisted iron and rubble had been hosting dozens of students attending after-school lessons when the quake struck.
"We have pulled out 38 children since the quake. Some of them, on the first day, were still alive, but the last few have all been dead," Suria, a rescue team leader, told Reuters news agency.
"There are still a lot of corpses in there. You can smell it. They are towards the back where we can't reach. The problem is a lot of buildings around here weren't very well built."
Other buildings brought down by the quake include scores of businesses, hotels, shopping malls and mosques.
As rescue teams from Switzerland, Australia, Japan and the US arrived in Padang, the Indonesian government has appealed for further international aid, including medics and medical supplies to treat the hundreds of wounded.
"We need help from foreign countries for evacuation efforts. We need them to provide skilled rescuers with equipment," Siti Fadilah Supari, the Indonesian health minister, told reporters in Jakarta.
"Our main problem is that there are a lot of victims still trapped in the rubble. We are struggling to pull them out."
Fuel rationed
Al Jazeera's Pedrosa said that food supplies were also beginning to run short in the city, as were supplies of clean water and fuel, which was being rationed.
Telephone links and other communications with many districts around Padang remained difficult on Friday and officials have said the number of dead was likely rise yet further as the full scale of the disaster emerged.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia's president, flew to Padang himself on Friday to oversee the relief effort.
He told emergency services to be prepared for the worst, saying it was "better to overestimate than to underestimate".
Yudhoyono pledged $10 million in emergency relief funds would be put to work fast to help recovery efforts.
"No more red tape," he said. "This is an emergency, the race is important."
The powerful undersea earthquake struck on Wednesday evening, about 50km from Padang and caused buildings to sway in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, 940km away, and the Malaysian city of Kuala Lumpur.
Dozens of aftershocks followed, as did a 6.8 magnitude earthquake that struck on Thursday morning, about 225km southeast of Padang, causing widespread panic and badly damaging houses but causing no casualties in Jambi, another Sumatran town.
Padang, the capital of Indonesia's West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world's most active fault lines along the so-called Ring of Fire.
A massive magnitude 9.2 quake on the same fault in 2004 triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India among other countries.
Padang itself was badly hit by an 8.4 magnitude quake in September 2007, when dozens of people died and several large buildings collapsed.
Rescue workers in the earthquake-devastated Indonesian city of Padang have been stepping up the hunt for survivors in the rubble of collapsed buildings, although hopes of finding many of the thousands missing still alive are beginning to fade.
As of Friday afternoon, almost 48 hours after the quake hit the Sumatran city, only a handful of survivors have been pulled from the wreckage.
The United Nations has said it believes more than 1,000 people have been killed, although the latest Indonesian government death toll stands at 777, with hundreds more injured.
With foreign aid teams and more heavy lifting gear arriving on the scene, Marlis Raham, the deputy governor of Indonesia's West Sumatra province, told Al Jazeera he was still hopeful more survivors would be found.
"I don't think it's too late, there's still hope that some of the people trapped can be saved," he said.
Raham said more than 15,000 buildings in Padang had collapsed in the powerful magnitude 7.6 quake.
Al Jazeera's Veronica Pedrosa, reporting from Padang, said that among the collapsed buildings were several schools, where parents have gathered hoping that their children will be pulled out alive.
She said that at Ambacang hotel, where as many as 200 people were thought to be buried, rescuers had managed to find eight people alive.
"[They] managed to get a mobile phone call out to say, 'Please stop the heavy equipment. We are still alive; you're going to kill us if you keep going on.'"
The devastation has already raised questions over lax building standards and whether buildings such as schools were strong enough to cope with a known earthquake zone.
'A lot of corpses'
One Padang school reduced to a pile of twisted iron and rubble had been hosting dozens of students attending after-school lessons when the quake struck.
"We have pulled out 38 children since the quake. Some of them, on the first day, were still alive, but the last few have all been dead," Suria, a rescue team leader, told Reuters news agency.
"There are still a lot of corpses in there. You can smell it. They are towards the back where we can't reach. The problem is a lot of buildings around here weren't very well built."
Other buildings brought down by the quake include scores of businesses, hotels, shopping malls and mosques.
As rescue teams from Switzerland, Australia, Japan and the US arrived in Padang, the Indonesian government has appealed for further international aid, including medics and medical supplies to treat the hundreds of wounded.
"We need help from foreign countries for evacuation efforts. We need them to provide skilled rescuers with equipment," Siti Fadilah Supari, the Indonesian health minister, told reporters in Jakarta.
"Our main problem is that there are a lot of victims still trapped in the rubble. We are struggling to pull them out."
Fuel rationed
Al Jazeera's Pedrosa said that food supplies were also beginning to run short in the city, as were supplies of clean water and fuel, which was being rationed.
Telephone links and other communications with many districts around Padang remained difficult on Friday and officials have said the number of dead was likely rise yet further as the full scale of the disaster emerged.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia's president, flew to Padang himself on Friday to oversee the relief effort.
He told emergency services to be prepared for the worst, saying it was "better to overestimate than to underestimate".
Yudhoyono pledged $10 million in emergency relief funds would be put to work fast to help recovery efforts.
"No more red tape," he said. "This is an emergency, the race is important."
The powerful undersea earthquake struck on Wednesday evening, about 50km from Padang and caused buildings to sway in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, 940km away, and the Malaysian city of Kuala Lumpur.
Dozens of aftershocks followed, as did a 6.8 magnitude earthquake that struck on Thursday morning, about 225km southeast of Padang, causing widespread panic and badly damaging houses but causing no casualties in Jambi, another Sumatran town.
Padang, the capital of Indonesia's West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world's most active fault lines along the so-called Ring of Fire.
A massive magnitude 9.2 quake on the same fault in 2004 triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India among other countries.
Padang itself was badly hit by an 8.4 magnitude quake in September 2007, when dozens of people died and several large buildings collapsed.
Why am I posting this on my blog, and not in General Chat, you ask?
Because I want to fudgeing rant about this.
Here we are, in the United States, the richest civilization in fudgeing history. We all b**** and moan about all our problems. I'm as guilty of it as any, I confess. But this has made me think. Who the fudge do we think we are? God? Holy fudge. Who's sending help? fudgeing Switzerland. A country so small, but rich, monetarily. We're the fudgeing United States. With the help of others, we defeated three tyrants in thirty years. We single-handedly won our independence from what was at the time the world's most powerful nation. We built our economy almost independently. We can go HURRRR SPREAD DEMAHKRUSSY but we can't help some poor fudgeing people because we can't get off our fudgeing asses and do something?! What the fudge, America. I almost want to agree with Jeremiah Wright when I see this FUDGEING BULLSHIZZLE. This is so fudgeing pathetic. Why can't we do something? Why is CNN covered with bullshizzle stories like "surprising first products from 14 companies", "this beer rains from the sky", "zombies prey on our fears, brains", etc.?! Why does FOX only mention the story buried under shizzleloads of...shizzle? Oh, CNN has one story related. To the AMERICAN SAMOA QUAKE. Which almost doesn't even count to me...American Samoa is a US territory, same as the Philippines. So we can be all crying and generous with American territories but GOD FORBID WE HELP OTHER PEOPLE.
Is this what I'm meant to do? Should I go present my less offensive views to the United States as a politician, sprinkling these things in? If we want to help people, fudge condoms, fudge "AIDS prevention", fudge "foreign aid", fudge all this FUDGEING BULLSHIZZLE that has been our foreign policy for the last 54 FUDGEING YEARS.
Just...man...I almost come to the point of saying "fudge America" but I can...barely hold that back.
I can't believe this college is letting me stay alive. They'd be pissing themselves if they read this.
Are we just being stuck-up pricks, as the United States, or are we doing all we can?
Come to think of it, that is a rhetorical question.
Well, I'm glad Australia's helping out.
