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<DIV><FONT size=4>All,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>There is no doubt that this disaster in SE Asia is horrible,
horrible, horrible.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>The worse may yet to come in several ways. Clean water
and sewage disposal infrastructure have been destroyed. Rotting corpses
abound. This is a recipe for horrible epidemics of fatal and/or
devastating diseases. Further, the destruction of other infrastructure
will have far reaching effects on the economic health and stability and thus on
the quality of life of the region for many years to come.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>It is important that those nations who are prosperous make a
massive effort to deal with this large human tragedy. Several Vision 2020
posters on and off-list have expressed their individual desires to
help.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>That said, some caution should be taken about choosing the
mechanisms to deliver this greatly needed assistance.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>The amounts and kinds of effort needed is gargantuan.
Every little bit helps, but in my opinion the governments of the wealthy nations
alone have the economic and technical means to quickly and to effectively attack
the aftermath of this disaster. One way for all of us to give some help is
to encourage with emails, letters, phone calls, etc. to our congresspersons, the
president, etc. to make an effective, appropriate, generous
response.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>There are many charities that can help also. This is
where discretion and caution is needed. By reading and personal
experience, I know that when disasters strike, many unscrupulous parties collect
money and other items on the promise of helping the disaster victims.
Unfortunately, little, if any of the collections ever reach the
victims.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>Nor are <STRONG>some</STRONG> religious charities exempt from
this kind of fraud. <STRONG>Some</STRONG> Muslim charities have
supported devastating insurgent activities while claiming to be collecting to
aid the poor. <STRONG>Some</STRONG> Christian charities use funds collected in
the name of disaster relief fully or in part for counter-productive,
resentment-generating proselytizing activities.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>Do not be discouraged from giving aid. If you want the
aid to be most effective, however, just make sure you are familiar with and
knowledge-based trusting of the channel(s) of your donations.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>While you are considering giving aid and encouraging our
government to respond appropriately, do not forget about the ongoing disaster in
the southern Sudan where the number of deaths and the misery of native
Africans inflicted by Muslim insurgents and religious extremists
dwarfs almost a thousand-fold the numbers in this latest SE Asia
disaster.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4><BR>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<BR><A
href="mailto:deco@moscow.com">deco@moscow.com</A><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=ron_smith@md7.com href="mailto:ron_smith@md7.com">Ron Smith</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, December 26, 2004 10:39
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> RE: [Vision2020] 12,000 dead in
Southeast Asia</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV id=idOWAReplyText87111 dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr><A
href="http://www.worldvision.org/worldvision/comms2.nsf/stable/erdm_indianoceanquake?Open&lpos=main1photo">http://www.worldvision.org/worldvision/comms2.nsf/stable/erdm_indianoceanquake?Open&lpos=main1photo</A></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> <A
href="mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com">vision2020-bounces@moscow.com</A>
on behalf of Joan Opyr<BR><B>Sent:</B> Sun 12/26/2004 8:32 PM<BR><B>To:</B>
Vision2020 Moscow<BR><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] 12,000 dead in Southeast
Asia<BR></FONT><BR></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>If anyone out there has any information about where to send aid and/or
what might be needed, I hope that you'll forward it to Vision 2020. What
a terrible, terrible thing.<BR><BR>Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment<BR></DIV>
<DIV>Forwarding from The New York Times:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<H5>December 27, 2004</H5><FONT color=#666666
size=-1><STRONG>DISASTER</STRONG></FONT>
<H2>Untold Numbers Are Missing in 6 Countries</H2><FONT size=-1><STRONG>By AMY
WALDMAN </STRONG></FONT><BR>
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<P><IMG height=33 alt=M src="" width=37 align=left border=0>ADRAS, India,
Monday, Dec. 27 - The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years erupted
underwater off the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Sunday and sent walls of
water barreling thousands of miles, killing an estimated 12,000 people in half
a dozen countries across South and Southeast Asia, with thousands more missing
or unreachable.</P>
<P>The earthquake, which measured 9.0 in magnitude, set off tsunamis that
built up speeds of as much as 500 miles per hour, then crashed into coastal
areas of Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Indonesia, the Maldives, and Malaysia as
40-foot-high walls of water, devouring everything and everyone in their
paths.</P>
<P>Its force was felt more than 3,000 miles away in Somalia on the eastern
coast of Africa, where nine people were reported killed. </P>
<P>Aid agencies were rushing staff and equipment to the region, warning that
rotting bodies were threatening health and water supplies.</P>
<P>It took several hours in some cases on Sunday for the waves to build and
reach their targets after the earthquake struck. But none of the most affected
countries had warning systems in place to detect the coming onslaught and
alert their citizens to move away from the coastline.</P>
<P>"I just couldn't believe what was happening before my eyes," Boree
Carlsson, 45, of Sweden, told Reuters from a hotel in the Thai resort of
Phuket. "As I was standing there, a car actually floated into the lobby and
overturned because the current was so strong." </P>
<P>A tsunami - the term is Japanese - is a series of waves generated by
underwater seismic disturbances, in this case the interface of the India and
Burma tectonic plates. Seismologists with the United States Geological Survey
said the ocean west of Sumatra and the island chains to its north was a hot
zone for earthquakes because of a nonstop collision occurring there between
the India plate, beneath the Indian Ocean seabed, and the Burma plate under
the islands and that part of the continent. </P>
<P>The India plate is moving at about two inches a year to the northeast,
creating pressure that releases, sporadically, in seismic activity But this
was an especially devastating earthquake, the fourth most powerful in 100
years. </P>
<P>Television images showed bodies floating in muddied waters. Cars went out
to sea; boats came onto land. Snorkelers were dragged onto the beach, and
sunbathers out to sea, Simon Clark, a photographer who was vacationing on Koh
Ngai Island in Thailand, told The Associated Press.</P>
<P>Indonesia reported nearly 4,500 dead, most in the Banda Aceh area of
Sumatra, an area that has been the site of a continuing civil war. In Sri
Lanka, at least 4,500 were dead. In India, an estimated 3,200 died, with at
least 1,700 confirmed dead in Tamil Nadu, the southern state that is home to
this coastal city of Madras, officially known as Chennai.</P>
<P>At least three American were reported killed, two in Sri Lanka and one in
Thailand, according to Noel Clay, a State Department spokesman.</P>
<P>The death toll is expected to climb, and world leaders, from President Bush
to Pope John Paul II, expressed grief and called for aid for the victims.</P>
<P>Many areas from the atolls of the Maldives to the Nicobar Islands of India
were simply out of reach, with communication lines snapped. Thousands more
people in those places are feared marooned or dead. India's home minister,
Shivraj Patil, said there was no communication with 45,000 residents of the
Nicobar Islands.</P>
<P>On Marina Beach here in Madras, women selling fish and children playing
cricket, morning walkers and tourists savoring the salt-scented air all died
as the sea suddenly turned enemy. The water came with no warning, said S.
Muttukumar, a fisherman.</P>
<P>"We see the sea come forward," he said, describing how he ran and then swam
from the 40-foot wave, grabbing onto catamarans for life support. "Everybody
was running, but God saves little." </P>
<P>In the lanes of his village across from Marina Beach, four middle-aged
women, all fish sellers who had been unable to outrun the waves, lay embalmed
in refrigerated glass cases, prepared for cremation on Tuesday.</P>
<P>Here, Mr. Muttukumar said, the water had come up off the beach an extra 500
yards to the main road, lingered for about 10 minutes, then receded as if it
had never been there at all, leaving the fishermen to fish for corpses. Early
Monday morning, the beach was still littered with fishing boats and upended
hand carts.</P>
<P>At the decrepit Madras General Hospital, a board listed 38 dead. Twelve
were unknown; the rest ranged in age from 4 to 87.</P>
<P>The waves struck tourist resorts from Phuket in Thailand to Bentota in Sri
Lanka at the peak of the tourist and holiday season, meaning that livelihoods
will be devastated long after the count of lost lives is done. </P>
<P>Whole fishing villages were washed away along coastlines, and thousands of
fisherman who unknowingly put out to sea in the morning are missing. An Indian
Air Force base on Car Nicobar Island was virtually washed away, according to
television reports, and late reports suggested that at least 1,000 could be
dead on the Nicobar Islands.</P>
<P>The airport in Male, the capital of the Maldives, was closed, stranding
foreign tourists overnight at the airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital,
after much of Male was submerged.</P>
<P>The casualties spread across southern India: at least 200 dead in Andhra
Pradesh state, 80 in Kerala, and 280 in Pondicherry.</P>
<P>Sri Lanka, the island nation to India's south, was battered on both its
east and west coasts. . </P>
<P>The Sri Lankan government declared a national disaster, and the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the rebel group that controls swaths of northern and
eastern Sri Lanka, said it would declare its own national emergency.</P>
<P>The Tamilnet Web site cited reports from the Tamil Relief Organization that
1,000 bodies had been brought to hospitals in the north and east, with the
toll expected to rise. </P>
<P>Reuters reported looting in Sri Lanka, and officials said that at least 200
prisoners had escaped from a prison in Matara, about 100 miles south of
Colombo, after it was damaged by the tsunami.</P>
<P>In southern Thailand, at least 300 people were dead, according to wire
reports. Among them were foreign tourists who had come to vacation at the
area's popular beach resorts. Emergency workers rescued about 70 Thai and
foreign divers from the famed Emeral Cave, and dozens were evacuated from
around other islands, Reuters reported. Two Thais were killed at Emeral
cave.</P>
<P>India, reeling from its own casualties, found itself trying to assist its
smaller neighbors. It sent five naval warships to Sri Lanka loaded with relief
supplies and fielded an offer for similar help from the Maldives. </P>
<P>The Indian government also issued a warning that residents should stay at
least one kilometer, or six-tenths of a mile, away from the sea for the next
two days for fear of aftershocks and more tidal waves.</P>
<P>But even without further calamity, the devastation will take weeks to
unfold and years to repair. Officials in some areas expressed concern that
saline water could contaminate drinking water and ruin arable land. Hundreds
of thousands of people are homeless, crowded into unsanitary temporary
shelters, and bodies are likely to wash up for days.</P></DIV></DIV><BR
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