We start with a story from Sunil Sharma, who runs one of two quality, companion list-servers, the other being R.A.I.N. from So. Africa. Give his service a try, I hope you'll like it as much as I do - and he's usually very funny. But first, a special note. The Marlon Brando special was postponed until today, at 5pm. Here's what I sent you a week ago:
Today, 12/24 (now 12/31)at 5 PM, KPFK 90.7 fm, do not miss: Marlon Brando: A Revolution Unto Himself A 60 minute special on the late illustrious actor which will focus on both his fabled career, his political causes--Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, King--and how they influenced each other. An entirely pre-produced documentary featuring clips and music from: Last Tango in Paris, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Burn!, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Ugly American and many more. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sunil Sharma/Dissident Voice" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Ed Pearl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 3:49 PM Subject: Re: Disaster in Context Thanks Ed, I also posted a few articles about the disaster on Dissident Voice. My mother, who lives down in San Luis Obispo, and some of her sisters (all from Sumatra) happened to be vacationing in Phuket, Thailand when the quake and tsunamis hit. They're all okay. My mother was ill that day and stayed back at her hotel rather than go to the beach as originally planned. Her sisters went off instead. At the last minute, they decided to go to the beach later, when my mother was feeling better and opted to go to James Bond Island (higher and safer ground) instead, unbeknownst to my mother. The first two tsunamis took my mother, as everyone else, by surprise. She grabbed as many children who were separated from their parents or who had wandered in from the streets as she could and went to the top of the four story hotel she was staying at. The people who gathered there then learned a third tsunami was an hour away and debated whether to stay put and hope the hotel could ride out the waves or make for higher ground two miles away. She opted to leave and managed to get out safely on the last bus. She made the right call -- the 3rd tsunami took out the hotel. She doesn't know what happened to the people who remained. All the while, she assumed her sisters had gone to the beach and were probably dead, the sisters thinking the same of her as they watch from higher ground the destruction that ensued in Phuket. They fortunately were reunited later that afternoon. She is now in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, terrified of another quake and shell-shocked. I was able to get her flight back to the US bumped up to January 1 rather than the original January 3rd arrival time. Her sisters will return to Sumatra soon as well. They were all extremely lucky. The rest of my family in Medan, the capitol of Sumatra, are okay. However one of the sisters who was vacationing with my mother is from Aceh further up north, scene of the worst devastation and killing thus far, and she has yet to hear any word of her family there. Judging from the gruesome news coming out of Aceh, it doesn't look good. Best, -- Sunil *** Five million people in 11 countries lack the basic requirements for life By Cahal Milmo and Stephen Khan in Colombo The Independent (UK) 30 December 2004 The death toll from the south Asian tsunami is likely to surpass 100,000, aid agencies warned yesterday as the first consignments from the biggest relief operation in history began to arrive to help survivors in the devastated region. The United Nations said at least £1bn in emergency aid was needed after it calculated that the Boxing Day disaster left up to five million people across 11 countries without access to the basic requirements for life - water, food and sanitation. Other aid agencies said that four days after the earthquake deep under the Indian Ocean, it was clear that the international community must now cope with death on a vast scale. Simon Missiri, head of the International Federation of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the Asia Pacific region, said: "We're facing a disaster of unprecedented proportion in nature. We're talking about a staggering death toll." Scenes in the remote areas such as the west coast of Indonesia's Aceh province, closest to the quake's epicentre, were apocalyptic. Authorities there said it was now apparent that the entire population of some towns had been lost. A UN official warned that up to 80,000 people in the province could have been killed amid reports of convoys of trucks dumping 1,000 bloated bodies at a time into open graves. Major General Endang Suwarya said: "The damage is truly devastating; 75 per cent of the west coast is destroyed and in some places it's 100 per cent." Officials at the United Nations in New York said an appeal would be launched this weekend after relief assessments had been completed across the disaster zone. In London, the British Government pledged £15m in immediate aid while the US President, George Bush, announced an international coalition with India, Japan and Australia to co-ordinate relief. Tony Blair said in a New Year statement from Egypt, where he is on holiday, that Britain would do anything it could to help the affected countries. "This New Year the world is united in sorrow for those affected by one of the biggest natural disasters in our lifetime," he said. "Our thoughts are with those who have died, those who have lost loved ones and friends and those whose lives have been destroyed by this terrible catastrophe." Stung by criticism from one UN official that the financial contribution of major nations was "stingy", Washington said it was more than doubling its initial donation to $35m (£19.4m). Mr Bush said the eventual US response would far outstrip that sum: "We will prevail over this destruction," he said. The World Health Organisation said the number of unburied bodies in the affected countries, from the five-star resorts of Thailand to impoverished villages of Somalia, along with the destruction of basic infrastructure, had left millions vulnerable to disease, which was likely to break out within three days. David Nabarro, the head of the WHO's health crisis team, said: "Perhaps as many as five million people are not able to access what they need for living. Either they cannot get water, or their sanitation is inadequate or they cannot get food." UN officials warned the eventual total required in relief funding was likely to outstrip the $1.64bn (£911m) raised for Iraq last year. But as pledges flooded in, there were signs of a large gap between the requirement and reality. The total pledged by governments around the world last night stood at £126m. Across the world, the public were also being implored to dip into their pockets. Today The Independent launches an appeal urging readers to contribute to the vast amount of aid urgently required. The appeal is backed by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who said: "Whatever the Government can do, there is always an important role for personal donations and commitment." The Independent appeal is being launched in association with the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of 12 British-based charities, which said last night that £5m had been raised over 24 hours even before the official launch. The charities under its umbrella are ActionAid, the British Red Cross, Cafod, Care International, Christian Aid, Concern, Help the Aged, Merlin, Oxfam, Save the Children, Tearfund and World Vision. Yet the relief effort seems to have been slow in coming. Across Asia, local volunteers were doing their best to provide help for the estimated five million left homeless while they waited for the much-needed international assistance. As the aid operation began to swing into top gear with four plane loads of aid arriving in Sri Lanka from Britain, Germany and Japan, the need for the relief in this truly global disaster became ever more clear. The official death count across Asia and Africa stood at 76,682 but aid officials made it clear that number would rise significantly as remote areas were reached, including India's Andaman and Nicobar islands, where one official said 10,000 were dead on one island alone. Peter Rees, the ICRC's operations support officer, said: "The figure's going to be absolutely enormous. I would not be surprised that we are over 100,000 dead." As the grim tally mounted, the Foreign Office said 26 Britons had been confirmed dead. That number was likely to increase beyond 50 after the Thai authorities said they were aware of at least 43 British nationals among 473 foreign tourists killed in its resorts. Sweden, whose citizens have long viewed Thailand as a winter refuge, said 2,000 of its nationals remained missing. Germany said 1,000 tourists were unaccounted for. But it was those living around the Indian Ocean who were dealing with the worst of the disaster. According to ICRC estimates, there are 500,000 injured people across the region, 200,000 with serious injuries. In Sri Lanka alone there are a million people without shelter. One aid worker for Cafod described the scene in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, as: "Corpses, corpses and more corpses. Walking on foot in the streets, it is all corpses. There is a rotten smell everywhere. Because people drowned, their stomachs are full and today they started to tear open. "Right now there are many traumatised people. People scream 'water, water' while running. But there is no water. We can see people eating quietly next to dead bodies that are rotten and smelly. Many people cry hysterically." The Indonesian government said one of its main shortages was providing sufficient body bags to contain the dead as the first aid supplies - 175 tons of rice and 100 doctors - reached Aceh province. In Thailand, the government admitted it had been ill- prepared for the disaster and that it had been too slow to provide search equipment and refrigerated containers to store decomposing bodies to combat the spread of disease. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=596807 *** The New York Times - December 30, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/opinion/30thu2.html EDITORIAL Are We Stingy? Yes President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said. We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities. The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent. Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe. Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar. Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we've now pledged "is only the beginning" of the United States' recovery effort. Let's hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company *** >From S. Culver, in Santa Barbara: today Rep. John Conyers announced that he will challenge the electoral college vote in Congress on Jan. 6th! [see link at bottom of this message] He needs a senator to stand with him. the reason I am emailing is to invite you to a press conference being held outside of Senator Boxer's office at 1700 Montgomery Street in San Francisco this Monday January 3rd at noon. A delegation representing signatories and concerned voters will hand deliver the thousands of petitions we have gathered directly to Boxer's staff during an arranged meeting noon Monday while participants outside listen to evidence of voter irregularities from respected leaders and activists in our community. Guest speakers include: Dolores Huerta, the co-founder of United Farm Workers Union and civil rights leader Walter Riley, a labor and civil rights attorney from East Bay Votes Margot Smith of the Grey Panthers TIM PAULSON, Executive Director, San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO; Michael Eisenscher of the US Labor Against the War Max Anderson from the Berkeley City Council And Don Goldmacher from the Wellstone Voting Rights Task Force Hawaii, Vermont and Oregon have taken statewide actions. Your presence is a valuable message to Senator Boxer. She is expecting us and we hope to make a lasting impression, one that may result in her standing up on January 6th to officially challenge this presidential election. We have 12 members of the House who have commited to do so. We need ONE senator! Please join us at noon this Monday January 3rd at 1700 Montgomery Street in San Francisco. the cross-street is Chestnut, one block from The Embarcadero street. there is a flyer for the rally posted at http://www.usvip.org If you care to research this issue, we suggest the following websites: http://www.Nov2truth.org http://www.Shadowbox.i8.com http://www.electiledysfunction.org/ We hope you can make it. If you are unable to participate in person, perhaps you can call her office that morning at 1-415-403-0100. Every voice is a vote. Let her office know that you are a California voter who cares deeply about the legitimacy of our voting system. Request that Senator Boxer stand up for us on January 6th! Peace and spread the word! PS. If you want to meet with others and walk up to Barbara Boxer's office from the Embarcadero BART station, people will gather there at 11 AM to walk together and hand out flyers along the way. Alternatively, there is a bus that goes up The Embarcadero and stops close to Chestnut. PPS: Sunday 12/2, 2 pm in Berkeley: there will be a panel on the election problems at Cedar & Bonita, Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists. Your opportunity to ask questions [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. 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