Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-10-Speech-3-978"
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"en.20100210.25.3-978"2
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"Mr President, I voted in favour of the resolution on Haiti. The human distress caused by the Haiti earthquake is on a massive scale: hundreds of thousands are dead or injured, and Port-au-Prince is almost completely destroyed. The number of those in need of outside assistance is estimated at two to three million.
While the sympathies of Europeans are with the relatives of the victims, there is a need to act. The largescale and prompt commitments in the form of assistance from the EU are obviously vital. The tardy reaction on the part of the new foreign affairs administration has provoked amazement, with good reason. It is obvious that the EU High Representative must be responsible in future for ensuring that the Union reacts faster and with greater coordination. Haiti will need help for a long time. Its wounds need tending and its homes need building one by one.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein proposed the idea that no distress can be greater than what a single person can suffer. I imagine that he meant something like this: there is no greater unit of consciousness in the world than the consciousness of a single individual. You cannot tot up pain. There is no aggregate consciousness that would suffer more distress than a single one. The distress of the masses is always the distress of the single person. Therein also lies hope. Mother Teresa is reported to have said that if she had ever considered the masses, she would not have achieved anything. If I succeed in helping one person, I will be helping the greatest possible unit: one person’s entire world."@en1
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