The Devastation Is So Lovely This Time Of Year

[Rspaight]

Our Senate Majority Leader:

A group of homeless men at the camp expressed frustration with government-led relief efforts, complaining that the local Red Cross had only set up their clinic, complete with flags and banners, a few hours before the U.S. senators visited. Red Cross officials said their mobile clinics were treating patients at hundreds of camps.

"They talk as though they do everything here. Many people come here; they just take photographs, but we don't get anything,'' said Ramzan Mohideen, a man in a Muslim cap and gown who lost his jewelry business.

[...]

Just before his helicopter lifted off, Frist and aides took snapshots of each other near a pile of tsunami debris.

"Get some devastation in the back,'' Frist told a photographer.

Ryan

[Rspaight]

And, proving Americans don't have a monopoly on inexplicably stupid reactions to calamity:

India's untouchables denied aid and shelter
(Filed: 07/01/2005)

India's untouchables, reeling from the tsunami disaster, are being forced out of relief camps by higher caste survivors and being denied aid supplies.

More than 6,000 people, including 81 Dalits or untouchables in India's rigid caste hierarchy, died when tsunamis struck southern India's coastal district on December 26.

The ferocious wall of sea water destroyed swathes of farm land and the Dalits, who were daily wage earners working in agricultural lands, no longer have any employment.

At Keshvanpalayam, the Dalits had only flattened homes to show while survivors elsewhere enjoyed relief supplies such as food, medicines, sleeping mats and kerosene.

No government official or aid has flowed into the village which houses 83 Dalit families.

Cranes and bulldozers cleared the debris of a neighbouring fishing community, but they are yet to reach the Dalit village.

Chandra Jayaram, 35, who lost her husband to the tsunami, said her family had not received the promised government compensation of 100,000 rupees (£1,211 ).

"At the relief camps we are treated differently due to our social status. We are not given relief supplies. The fishing community told us not to stay with them. The government says we will not be given anything as we are not affected much," Jayaram said.

S. Karuppiah, field coordinator with the Human Rights Forum for Dalit Liberation, said in some of the villages the dead bodies of untouchables were removed with reluctance.

"The government is turning a blind eye," he said. "When Dalits bury the dead they are not given gloves or medicines but only alcohol to forget the rotten stench."

Another activist, Mahakrishnan Marimuthu, who heads the non-governmental Education and Handicraft Training Trust, said tsunamis dealt a double blow to the caste.

"They lost their jobs, houses and relatives. On the other hand the social discrimination is proving to be worse," he said.

The government denied the allegations and said it was providing relief to every tsunami-affected family.

"There is no intention of closing down any camps and we are providing relief to each and every family. We will provide temporary shelters as these relief camps are getting overcrowded," said Veerashanmugha Moni, Nagapattinam's senior government administrator.

The United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF said government, relief agencies and aid workers did not discriminate against the Dalits but the caste issue always exists.

"All the aid going in is distributed the same way to all survivors. The social discrimination has been there during normal times," said Amudha, who heads a team of UNICEF volunteers in Nagapattinam.

"After the disaster happened it is still continuing. That is nothing new," she said.

[Rspaight]

Stuff like this is why I don't read the paper first thing in morning -- otherwise, I'd be in a pit of misanthropic despair all day. What a shame that this clown has to sully this article, otherwise filled with news of genuine good works by other churches.

(For the non-locals, Clays Mill Baptist is notorious for this sort of thing. They sponsored a 4th of July "I Love America Patriotic Rally" in 2002, in which they told foreigners to go home and bashed everyone who wasn't just like them.)

Bolding by me.

Churches sending tsunami relief

By Karla Ward

HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER

While tsunami cleanup continues in South Asia, some Kentucky churches and religious organizations are planning to send people overseas to help, and many others are sending donations for the effort.

Lexington's Southland Christian Church plans to partner with Southeast Christian Church in Louisville to send skilled workers, such as doctors, nurses, plumbers and electricians, to the area this spring.

"I have had quite a few calls of people that want to go," said Mark Perraut, missions director at Southland.

He said the churches expect to wait a few months before sending people. The attention of the world will likely have wavered by then, but the region will still need assistance.

"These people are still going to be living in tents, laying in the mud," Perraut said.

Southland is also taking up offerings for Food for the Hungry, an Arizona-based organization that is helping victims of the disaster.

The Kentucky Baptist Convention is taking a similar approach, said Larry Koch, disaster-relief coordinator for the convention.

The convention expects some Kentuckians to volunteer to go abroad in the coming months as part of a larger effort by the Southern Baptist Convention.

"Once the CNN effect is over with, we're going to continue working," he said. "Right now, we're just sending money to help the missionaries who are already on site."

A number of denominations have set up relief funds where individual churches can send donations.

Methodists can contribute through the United Methodist Committee on Relief, Episcopalians through the Episcopal Relief Fund, Catholics through Catholic Relief Services and Presbyterian Church USA members through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.

At Crestwood Baptist Church in Oldham County, the entire Sunday offering will be donated to the effort through the International Mission Board.

The board, a Southern Baptist organization, had collected $1.4 million for tsunami relief as of Thursday.

"This is the worst natural disaster ever," said the Rev. Troy Dobbs, senior pastor at Crestwood. "To give half an offering didn't really match with the totality of the devastation."

The church, with attendance of about 1,300, has a weekly budget of $42,000, but Dobbs said he expects much more to be given this Sunday.

"I think we'll get $100,000," he said. "People are excited to respond."

The church doesn't have a plan for making up for the budget hole the donation will leave.

"We're going to trust him (God) that we're going to be OK," Dobbs said.

The Rev. Bob Jones, a traveling evangelist sponsored by Clays Mill Baptist Church, will leave Jan. 17 for a mission trip to India, where he says he thinks the people will be eager to hear his Gospel message.

"People are asking the question, 'Why would God let this happen?'" Jones said. "The Bible has the answer."

He said he will tell them that "God is a loving God. He's a gracious God, but he's also a God of wrath. ... The reason is sort of to wake people up."

Jones was pastor of Lexington's Northside Baptist Church, now known as Heritage Baptist Church, for six years.

He now lives in Chattanooga, Tenn., but is a member at Clays Mill. He has made three mission trips to India over the past three years to preach and distribute Bibles in the language of the region.

He will do the same on his upcoming trip to two cities on the east coast of India that were hit by the tsunami.

Jones will also visit with preachers to determine the region's needs. That could lead to a second trip later this year.

"I want to get there and ... do what I can to help," he said.

Tony Carney, a 1992 Georgetown College graduate, has already been helping.

Carney spent one summer during his college years and two years after graduation working as a missionary in Thailand through the Southern Baptist Convention.

In 1995, he decided to return there to live permanently, and he now works as a television producer for a Thai television network. After the tsunami, Carney traveled to Phuket, where he spent a week translating and helping run the command center for relief workers.

His aunt, Cathy McClung of Georgetown, said he planned to return there again this week.

"The despair, hopelessness and desperation of the survivors, families and relief workers is overwhelming," Carney wrote in an account of his work sent to his family. "However, the prayers of the faithful and the strength sent to us from God as an answer to those prayers is our sustaining force."

[Patrick M]

Stuff like this is why I don't read the paper first thing in morning -- otherwise, I'd be in a pit of misanthropic despair all day.

Ahem.

This isn't *the* Bob Jones, right?

http://www.bju.edu/

I want a shirt that says I went to "BJ U."

[Follow the link and check out the ladies on the homepage.]

[Sound]

Thou shalt not be a weasel.

[Rspaight]

This isn't *the* Bob Jones, right?

Nope, it isn't. It's a different, yet similarly odious, Bob Jones.

[Follow the link and check out the ladies on the homepage.]

Gee. By BJU standards, that's like porn.

Ryan

[Xenu]

It's funny how different sects can manifest such totally different traits. I recently visited Andrews University to do research for my thesis. Andrews is a Seventh-Day Adventist institution, and while I wasn't expecting a lilywhite, Rockwellian campus populated by hand-holding couples, I wasn't necessarily expecting much diversity. And yet everyone was exceedingly couteous, even moreso on discovering I was an outsider. It was really, really lovely. And this is a *sect*?

[Patrick M]

"People are asking the question, 'Why would God let this happen?'"
Jones said. "The Bible has the answer."

And I found it.

that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/ind ... version=31

[chrischross]

It's funny how different sects can manifest such totally different traits. I recently visited Andrews University to do research for my thesis. Andrews is a Seventh-Day Adventist institution, and while I wasn't expecting a lilywhite, Rockwellian campus populated by hand-holding couples, I wasn't necessarily expecting much diversity. And yet everyone was exceedingly couteous, even moreso on discovering I was an outsider. It was really, really lovely. And this is a *sect*?

It's all part of the plan -- be kind and courteous to newcomers, and then the next thing you know, you're on the low protein diet and chanting non-stop.

Your music collection will be put to the torch in lovingkindness.

[Xenu]

(PHOTO) A volunteer from the Church of Scientology directed refugees
seeking assistance in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. The organization is using
massage therapy, which it calls ''nerve assists,'' to treat
survivors of the tsunami. (Globe Staff Photo / Essdras M. Suarez)


In Indonesia, some groups mix relief, religion

By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | January 16, 2005


BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- In a tent near the center of town, under a
banner that reads ''trauma center," volunteer ministers from the Church
of Scientology administer their brand of grief counseling to tsunami
victims, which includes massages.

In another tent, at a mosque several miles down a main road, members of
a militant Islamic group known for attacking bars and nightclubs during
Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, prepare to give thousands of homeless
people a heavy dose of religious counseling.

In yet another corner of the city, a Christian evangelist from
Wisconsin says the people of the overwhelmingly Muslim province of Aceh
''need Jesus." Other Christian groups were spearheading an effort to
take orphans from Aceh to be raised in Christian orphanages in Jakarta,
Indonesia's capital.

Weeks after the Indonesian government welcomed all groups to come and
assist following a devastating tsunami, several organizations are
competing for the hearts and minds of the estimated 400,000 people
displaced by the disaster and living in temporary camps in northern
Sumatra.

While large, secular aid organizations address the physical needs of
survivors, some controversial religious groups have found a niche
attending to the emotional needs of people such as Mukhlis, 25, a bus
conductor's assistant who lost his parents, brother, and nephew.

Mukhlis, a shy, lanky man in a blue shirt with a butterfly collar, did
not know whether the Scientologists were doctors or ministers when they
invited him to lie on a cot for a two-fingered massage in a basement
room of the mosque where he camps out.

''I didn't have any thought about them," he said. ''They asked people
who don't feel very healthy to go to their place. After I got that
[massage], it soothed my mind so that I could be a little bit more
relaxed about what happened, that I lost my family and my home."

In a small room at the Darussalam mosque east of the city center,
foreign volunteers from the Church of Scientology have taken on the
role of grief counselors, using many of the tactics that have made the
group a target of critics around the world who liken it to a cult.

About 60 volunteer ministers from the Church of Scientology -- 20 from
the United States -- will soon be providing counseling in the area,
many with only a few hours of training, according to Greg Bromwell, 47,
of the International Scientology Assist Team in Perth, Australia. Often
confused with medics or the Red Cross, they offer the back massages,
known as ''nerve assists," to tsunami victims and aid workers -- as
well as an introduction to the philosophy of self-improvement that
makes up the backbone of the religion.

Bromwell insists that his group is ''not interested in converts."

''This is a Muslim community, and we respect that," he said, adding
that six Muslim clerics had come from Jakarta to help provide the nerve
assists. ''We're actually, believe it or not, here to help the people."

Still, a website connected to the group appealed for donations to pay
for printing and distributing a million copies of a booklet on morality
written by the group's founder, the late L. Ron Hubbard, to areas
affected by the tsunami.

Militants' vow of faithAcross town, in the yard of a different mosque,
another group was making plans to minister to tsunami victims' state of
mind.

The Islamic Defender Front, a militant group best known for Ramadan
attacks in a Jakarta neighborhood popular with expatriates, intends to
bring 3,000 members to Banda Aceh from across Indonesia to work with
displaced people, providing spiritual guidance to ensure that they do
not lose faith in God.

''I see people moving away from religion, questioning, 'Why us?' " said
Hilmy Bakar Almascati, head of the Islamic Defender volunteers in Banda
Aceh.

That is unacceptable, he said, because Aceh was the first place in
Indonesia to be touched by Islam, in the 13th century. ''For the
Indonesian community, Aceh is very special; we call it the veranda of
Mecca," he said.

To prevent a loss of faith, the group intends to concentrate on
reconstructing ''not only buildings, but teaching from the Koran," he
said.

Another radical Islamic group, known as the Indonesian Mujahideen
Council, or the MMI, which was founded by a cleric affiliated with Al
Qaeda who is now on trial for crimes related to inciting terrorism,
also has set up a relief operation here. But their arrival was not
without controversy.

The Free Aceh Movement, a rebel group fighting for independence from
Indonesia, issued a statement that said the organizations were not
welcome, and that their arrival was a plot to shift the allegiance of
Acehnese away from the rebels and toward Muslims allied with the
government.

The organizations' words and actions ''contradict Islamic teachings and
the tolerance and faith of Acehnese Muslims," read the rebels'
statement, issued from the group's office in Stockholm.

But if Muslims were divided over which faction should be allowed to
operate in Aceh, they were unanimous in their opposition to Christian
evangelizing in the province, which has been closed off to foreigners
for much of the past decade because of the civil war with separatists.

An outspoken voiceAlthough most Christian groups keep a low profile and
go out of their way not to mix their humanitarian mission with a
religious message, one evangelist -- Mark Kosinski, of Wisconsin -- has
been outspoken about his mission. ''These people need food, but they
also need Jesus," Kosinski told the Associated Press last week. ''God
is trying to awaken people and help them realize that salvation is in
Christ."

Several US and Indonesia-based Christian groups have launched
fund-raising campaigns based on the idea that they would adopt Acehnese
orphans and raise them in Christian homes so as to ''plant the seed" of
Christianity early. Yesterday, the Indonesian government announced that
one such group, the Virginia-based WorldHelp, was no longer welcome in
Aceh after the group claimed it had been given permission to airlift
300 children from Aceh to Jakarta to be raised in Christian homes.

On Friday, the country's most influential group of Islamic clerics, the
Indonesian Council of Ulemas, warned that Christians must not
proselytize or take children out of the province.

So far, the Indonesian government has not hindered the work of the
Scientologists. Founded in 1954 by Hubbard, a science fiction writer,
the group takes as one of its sacred texts his book ''Dianetics: The
Modern Science of Mental Health," which eschews most elements of
mainstream therapy.

Over the years, senior members of the group have been accused of
defrauding members of tens of thousands of dollars by aggressively
pushing the church's expensive self-help courses as well as
examinations on a machine called an electropsychometer, which the group
says measures the human psyche.

Over the past few decades, the Church of Scientology has shown up after
earthquakes and disasters around the world, including the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, where the group largely operated under a
different name, and in Beslan, during the hostage crisis at a school in
the Russian city. In Beslan, the local government swiftly asked law
enforcement to shut down the group's operation, arguing that its
psychological tactics could be harmful for hostage survivors, according
to Russian news reports.

But in Banda Aceh, the Church of Scientology is so unknown and trauma
from the tsunami so widespread that it has made swift inroads, giving
massages to the Indonesian military and training university students
and large groups of volunteers.

Scientology's major foothold in Indonesia seems to be a company called
Criminon, which teaches Hubbard's texts to juveniles in Indonesian
prisons.

Under a banner that reads ''Penanganan," which means trauma center in
the local language, the Scientologists have set up tents with cots
where they administer nerve assists and an exercise they call a
''locational," during which a volunteer minister points to an object
and asks a tsunami survivor to look closely at it.

The last stage of the counseling, Bromwell said, is called ''the
technology," where survivors close their eyes and run through details
of the disaster over and over again.

''It discharges and it lessens and lessens and lessens it," he said.

Seeking solaceOn a recent day, in a gymnasium-like room in a museum
down the street from the governor's residence, 70 Indonesian volunteers
reclined on mats, eating dinner and smoking cigarettes amid a stack of
body bags. A frustrated Scientologist tried to demonstrate the nerve
assist to those who were listening.

After the demonstration, Dr. Mohammad Taufik, a 41-year-old Indonesian
gynecologist, said he thought the exercise might be useful to relieve
stress.

He himself was stressed, faced with trying to reopen Banda Aceh's only
mental hospital in a matter of days, with only one psychiatrist, a few
clean consultation rooms, and nearly an entire population traumatized.

He held a short, handwritten list of people and organizations that
might help the hospital get back on its feet. High on the list was
Criminon.

''They are welcome to come," he said of the Scientologists, although he
acknowledged that he knew nothing about them.

''We still have to confirm with the head of the mental hospital. We are
still learning about them," he said, but added, ''we have to work with
whatever we have."

[Rob P]

Good article. I had suspected evengelical influence in the tsunami disaster, but not Scientology. The guy who represents Scientology must realize they can't recruit anybody in this region of the world, considering the religious fanaticism exhibited by the local Islamic rebel organizations.

Please excuse my obviousness, but the people of Banda Aceh need all the help they can get right now, whether it be of legitimate or dubious origin.

[Xenu]

The help of dubious origin will just set up problems down the line.