Word: cataclysmic
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...archival footage, only interviews with death-camp survivors and chillingly bucolic vistas of the camp sites today, is likely to raise apprehensions and even yawns. We have seen all that too many times before; next atrocity, please. And in fact the testimony in Shoah (a Hebrew word for cataclysm) does not justify either the film's extraordinary length or French Director Claude Lanzmann's relentless badgering of some of the victims. Still and all, it is salutary to be confronted, hour after hour after hour, with memories horrifying enough to fill a dozen movies. Subjecting oneself to Shoah is like...
...reawakening of Nevado del Ruiz was the second cataclysm to strike Latin America in two months. In Mexico, the government of President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado was still coping painfully with the aftermath of the Sept. 19 earthquake, which left as many as 20,000 dead and, by some estimates, up to 150,000 homeless. Colombia's volcanic catastrophe seemed especially poignant in a country that has been plagued since World War II by a seemingly endless series of man-made travails: civil war, leftist terrorism and battles with a powerful and entrenched drug mafia. Said Colombian President Belisario...
...news of the cataclysm spread, Colombia was stunned. President Betancur declared the 77 sq. mi. around the volcano a disaster zone. In Bogotá, long lines of blood donors formed outside the local Red Cross building; more than 10,000 pints were collected in less than 24 hours. Residents of the capital streamed to two major collection spots in the city bearing food, blankets, medicine and clothing. By Thursday morning a caravan of 300 trucks carrying thousands of tons of relief material was headed for Tolima department, a five-hour drive over narrow mountain roads...
...recognize global solidarity. Epidemics are simply too slow. And localized catastrophes, such as the mudslides and floods in the U.S. last week or even the Iranian earthquake of 2003, are usually too parochial in their victimization to catch the attention of all humanity. It takes a multicontinental cataclysm--instantaneous, catastrophic, widely spread--to shake the world from its self-absorption. The tsunami that destroyed thousands of lives from Sumatra to Somalia engendered an instant, near-universal outpouring of concern, shared grief and charitable giving. Ronald Reagan once startled the U.N. by suggesting in a speech that humanity would unite...
...recognize global solidarity. Epidemics are simply too slow. And localized catastrophes, such as the mudslides and floods in the U.S. last week or even the Iranian earthquake of 2003, are usually too parochial in their victimization to catch the attention of all humanity. It takes a multicontinental cataclysm--instantaneous, catastrophic, widely spread--to shake the world from its self-absorption. The tsunami that destroyed thousands of lives from Sumatra to Somalia engendered an instant, near-universal outpouring of concern, shared grief and charitable giving. Ronald Reagan once startled the U.N. by suggesting in a speech that humanity would unite...