A Tragedy in Asia Affects All Corners of a Closer World
By CRAIG S. SMITH
PARIS, Dec. 28 - The tsunami that struck over the weekend spread a ring of destruction through nearly a dozen countries. Those are the places most directly affected, and on a calamitous scale. But the disaster has rippled far beyond South Asia, making it truly a tragedy felt across the globe.
Among the tens of thousands of people missing or dead, thousands are believed to have come from outside the region, including many who were spending their holidays at Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian beach resorts.
Reported deaths now cover at least 40 nationalities, reaching from South Africa to South Korea, with surprising concentrations of people still unaccounted for from European countries.
Those still missing include 1,500 from Sweden and 700 to 800 from Norway, 300 from New Zealand, more than 200 each from Denmark and the Czech Republic, 100 from Germany, 100 from Italy and 188 Israelis.
The disaster's reach is an unsettling reminder that globalization has brought the world closer together in unexpected ways so that people now share the pain as well as profit from far-flung places. Even for people who have never left home, otherwise abstract calamities in distant lands now frequently have a familiar face....
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/international/worldspecial4/29europe.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
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