(Tim is now in maroon)
First off, a couple of things. My heart goes out to the people in Japan. I can't imagine what it would be like to witness such devastation and hope never to have to. I also realize that there is need in Japan. They are a massive economy but even massive economies are going to suffer under such a high level of disaster.
However, the reason that I will not donate money to Japan is because there are plenty of other places that need money more than Japan. In an ideal world, we, as US citizens would have done all we could for the world with our overly large portion of the world's financial resources. Of course, money can only do so much, but we have not even come close to reaching the limit of the good we could do if didn't hold onto our "earnings" so tightly. The point is, if we had done all we could for other parts of the world, I would say, absolutely donate money to Japan. But there are people in a lot more need who do not have a powerful and relatively wealthy government to back them up.
So donate, and donate freely, but think twice before you specify that Japan receive the money you donate to the Red Cross. Either do the research to see where money is needed the most (Haiti or sub-Saharan Africa might be a place to start) or if not, why not just donate to an aid organization without specifying a destination and rest assured that someone who really needs that money will get it.
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