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To: LindyBill who wrote (94658)	1/11/2005 5:42:08 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793707

Tsunami Relief: Some More Good Guys By Diplomad The Diplomad has gone soft: two postings in a row with good news from the tsunami front (The Diplomad is a copy cat of the Great Chrenkoff? You can copy worse.) This comes from State Department press guidance re the USA's tsunami relief effort, with data accurate as of January 9. It details American contributions over and above the $350 million officially pledged, thus far, by the US Government: -- Americans have responded generously. The Chronicle of Philanthropy estimates $324 million have been donated by American citizens and corporations. -- More than 14,400 U.S. military personnel and $20 billion in military assets are involved in Operation Unified Assistance at a cost of $5 to $6 million a day. -- Almost 6 million pounds of relief supplies and equipment, including water, food and medical supplies (non-medicine), have been delivered to the region. -- 25 ships, 37 cargo aircraft, 8 patrol aircraft and 51 helicopters are involved in the relief effort. U.S. aircraft have flown more than 835 sorties. -- Approximately 150 USAID personnel are on the ground. USAID’s Disaster Assistance Response Teams and the U.S. military continue to conduct needs assessments and provide supplies and essential logistic support. Those are impressive numbers, showing a solid US commitment to saving huge numbers of lives. But, as The Diplomad has written before, just as important as the commitment to saving lives in bulk, is the demonstrated commitment to alleviate the suffering of individuals. Below we present some emails which show how US personnel have touched one life in Banda Aceh. 1) This email is from an FSO who just returned from several days in Banda Aceh: The sailors on the Lincoln also put together their own money to buy toys and stuffed animals from the ship's store, which they brought to the USAID/IOM tent. They were given to children who were brought in. An IOM worker pointed out one 15-year-old girl hugging one of the stuffed bears. The worker explained that she had no one to hug, as she had lost all of her family, but at least she could hug the bear. We went over to talk to her for a while. Attached to the bear was a note: "With love, from YN2 Arellano, USS Abraham Lincoln" I hope that Yeoman Arellano knows that through this small act, he has brought some measure of comfort into a young girl's life. 2) This email comes from an officer on board the Lincoln addressed to a USAID worker in Banda Aceh: I feel the need to convey our thanks for the support you gave to our efforts in Banda Aceh to move supplies to those in need. As you witnessed, we have a group of people who fully commit to a mission - this one being extremely urgent in nature. I am proud of the way our people have worked under difficult conditions and only hope we are making a difference. I am not prone to emotional outbreaks, but the extent of the devastation has opened my eyes and often I found myself choking back tears. These people need help,and though the task seems overwhelming, I reminded my people to focus on the good we are doing- one box of food, one bag of rice, one box of water at a time. Before you left for Jakarta we spoke about boxes of stuffed animals and toys that my wife and friends are collecting for the children who have suffered a great loss. They have been touched by this tragedy and I suppose my emails home describing the loss has fueled a grassroots response. If you can help in any way point us in a direction, point of contact or place we can have these shipped to it would be most appreciated. If we stay long enough I will certainly be looking forward to going ashore and continuing our mission. Despite losing a helicopter today we are still resolved to providing whatever assistance we can. Again, my personal thanks to you, xx, xx and all of the others. Glad to report that all the crewmen on the damaged SH-60 are OK. The rest of the choppers keep on going. The UN keeps on issuing press releases. I am out of here soon.

To: LindyBill who wrote (94658)	1/11/2005 5:58:18 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 793707

does any one have email addresses of these clowns: moonves - bladder - mapes - heyward ?? feedback at CBS.com is useless - let mass email them asking for bladder head

To: LindyBill who wrote (94658)	1/11/2005 5:59:28 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793707

Funny! - Varifrank A review of ‘State of Fear’ Somewhere in a bar in West Hollywood sits a “Big Time Media Agent” drunkenly explaining to his bartender how screwed he is. It seems that he’s Michael Crichton’s Agent, and he didn’t vet his clients most recent book before publishing, assuming as any of us would, that its automatically “Hollywood gold” because of course, “Michael Crichton wrote it”. Then someone drops the bomb and tells him the book has two evil protagonists First, an Environmentalist Lawyer and second and far worse, A bloviating actor who “plays the president on a weekly TV show” and drives with great pride, an electric car! Worse still, most of what is made out as laughable by the author is the idiocy that makes up the sanctimonious liberal ‘for a cause’ culture that makes up much of the free time of the Hollywood elite. Lawyers always suffer at the hands of Michael Crichton, if you’ll remember the scene in Jurassic Park where “The Lawyer” while sitting in a toilet, is eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I remember the scene because the audience I was with, clapped. You can make a movie or have a TV show about lawyers, it happens all the time. You can generate thousands of miles of footage about the evil “military industrial complex”, you can have all priests portrayed as pederasts, all cops as crooks and all ex-military types are Nutcase-Rambo-Time-Bombs, but you cannot under any circumstances make fun of “Hollywood Actors” as they go about making the world safe for us common people to live in. I applaud Michael Crichton for writing a book that dares Hollywood to make it into a movie. However, if there’s a buck in it, they will try, only they will do to him what they did to Tom Clancy on “Sum of All Fears” where they changed the evil characters into safe to hate “Neo-Nazi’s” from the politically incorrect ‘Palestinian Terrorists’. Clearly the potential loss of market share in the middle-east vs. the potential loss of market in Hayden Lake Idaho had something to do with this decision. This book is guaranteed to really piss some people off. If you are someone who takes the doctrine of environmentalism seriously, you might try reading something less inflammatory, like Ann Coulter instead. There is simply nothing for you in this book as there is nothing in the Da Vinci Code for the serious Catholic. This is a book of heresy to the followers of the holy church of “mother earth” and my Birkenstock brothers are likely to take after Mr. Crichton with a pitchfork the way they did to Bjorn Lomborg.