"... a great disruption in the Force."  Here's update on the Tsunami, growing numbers of dead and places where you can contribute $$ for assistance.  There are a number of prayer-efforts going on ... one at FaithfulAmerica.org, and most spiritual organizations.  What a way to end '04 ... one Hell of a year. Jude Political Waves Moderator UN Warns of Possible Epidemics in Quake-Hit Asia Robert Evans http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7183891 GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations warned on Monday of epidemics within days unless health systems in southern Asia can cope after more than 15,500 people were killed and hundreds of thousands left homeless by a giant tsunami. Aid agencies round the world rushed staff, equipment and money to southern Asia after huge waves, triggered by a massive underwater earthquake, pummeled and swamped coastal communities in at least six countries Sunday. "This may be the worst natural disaster in recent history because it is affecting so many heavily populated coastal areas ... so many vulnerable communities," the U.N.'s Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland told CNN. "The longer term effects may be as devastating as .... the tsunami itself," said Egeland. "Many more people are now affected by polluted drinking water. We could have epidemics within a few days unless we get health systems up and running. "Many people will have (had) their livelihoods, their whole future destroyed in a few seconds." Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia suffered the highest death tolls but Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar and Bangladesh were also hit by the surging walls of water. Government officials estimate in Sri Lanka alone, 800,000 people were forced from their homes. Experts said the top five issues to be addressed were water, sanitation, food, shelter and health. "ROTTING BODIES" "We've had reports already from the south of India of bodies rotting where they have fallen and that will immediately affect the water supply especially for the most impoverished people," said Christian Aid emergency officer Dominic Nutt. Some affected areas have had communications cut. Others are so remote it is impossible to know the extent of the damage. "This is a massive humanitarian disaster and the communications are so bad we still don't know the full scale of it. Unless we get aid quickly to the people many more could die," said Phil Esmond, head of Oxfam in Sri Lanka. The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking an immediate $6.5 million for emergency aid funding. "This is a preliminary appeal. It will be revised after exact needs are evaluated," said Simon Missiri, head of the federation's Asia Pacific department. Earlier, the federation released $870,000 from its disaster relief emergency fund to get assistance moving to the region. "The biggest health challenges we face is the spread of waterborne diseases, particularly malaria and diarrhea, as well as respiratory tract infections," said the Red Cross Federation's senior health officer Hakan Sandbladh. The federation said it would send an assessment and coordination team to Sri Lanka, and had on standby several emergency response units specialized in water and sanitation as well as field hospitals. The United States said it would offer "all appropriate assistance" to Asian countries, with some aid already on its way to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. "We're prepared to be very responsive," said State Department spokesman Noel Clay. The European Union pledged an initial three million euros ($4 million) and local news agency Belga said Belgium had allocated its own 500,000 euros in emergency aid to be distributed by Red Cross bodies and the EU. Britain said it had offered what it called practical help. "What we don't know is the number of people who've been displaced, and what infrastructure has been affected. That's the critical point," said Titon Mitra, emergency response director for the CARE aid agency in Geneva. ++ TSUNAMI RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS & FOREIGN OFFICE CONTACT NUMBERS http://blog-me-no-blogs.blogspot.com/2004/12/tsunami-hits-south-asia.html Corpses Piled on Asian Coasts After Tsunami Kills 23,200 1 hour, 39 minutes ago World - Reuters Chamintha Thilakarathna http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=3&u=/nm/20041227/wl_nm/quake_dc COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Rescuers scoured the sea for missing tourists and fishermen in Asia Monday and fears of disease grew as emergency services struggled with rotting bodies from a devastating tsunami that killed more than 23,200 people. The disaster spared no one. Western tourists were killed sunbathing on beaches, poor villagers drowned in homes by the sea and fishermen died in flimsy boats. The 21-year-old grandson of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej was killed on a jet-ski. "We have a long way to go in collecting bodies," said Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who expected the 866 death toll in his country to go much higher. One Thai official estimated up to 30 percent of the dead were foreigners. Hundreds were buried in mass graves in India while hospitals and morgues in Sri Lanka and Indonesia struggled to cope with injured and bewildered victims and bloated corpses. "It smells so bad ... The human bodies are mixed in with dead animals like dogs, fish, cats and goats," said Marine Colonel Buyung Lelana, head of an evacuation team in Indonesia's Aceh province on the island of Sumatra. Sri Lanka was hardest hit by the tsunami -- a wall of water triggered by the world's biggest earthquake in 40 years with a magnitude of 9.0 that erupted off the northern Indonesian coast. The death toll in Sri Lanka nearly doubled Monday to 10,200 with 200 foreign tourists feared dead. The final toll could be much higher, even double, officials said. Other areas worst affected by Sunday's tsunami were southern India, where more than 7,100 were listed dead, northern Indonesia with nearly 5,000 drowned and Thailand's devastated southern tourist isles and beaches. With at least seven Asian nations and one in East Africa counting the human and economic cost of the tragedy, Western nations pledged aid and geologists asked why warning systems that could have saved thousands of lives were not in place. CATASTROPHE UNPRECEDENTED Struggling with destroyed communications, power outages and swamped and debris-strewn roads, emergency workers were shocked by the sheer scale of the catastrophe. "We are used to dealing with disasters in one country. But I think something like this spread across many countries and islands is unprecedented," Yvette Stevens, a U.N. emergency relief official, said in Geneva. "We have not had this before." Families around the world anxiously sought news of loved ones on Christmas holidays whose dreams of sunshine in the east were turned into scenes of disaster. Calls from worried relatives swamped hotlines set up by ministries and tour firms. "Our paradise turned into hell," said American tourist Moira Lee, 28, who was on Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand. The earthquake triggered a tsunami of up to 10 meters (33 feet) high, sometimes traveling as fast as an airliner, flattening houses, hurling fishing boats onto roads, sending cars spinning through swirling waters into hotel lobbies and sucking sunbathers, babies and fishermen out to sea. In Sri Lanka alone, 1.5 million people were homeless and authorities in other countries said vast numbers of people had been displaced and had to search for shelter. Deaths were reported in Bangladesh, Malaysia, the Maldives, Myanmar and Somalia where 38 people were killed by swollen seas. Smaller tremors followed Sunday's earthquake, the world's biggest since 1964 and the fourth-largest since 1900. The tsunami had echoes of another apocalyptic seismic event that originated in Indonesia when the island volcano of Krakatoa erupted in 1883 causing a tsunami that killed 36,000 people. Indonesian rescue workers pulled hundreds of bodies from treetops, rivers and wrecked homes in Aceh province, desperate to clean up before disease could spread from rotting bodies polluting water supplies. Typhoid, diarrhea and hepatitis epidemics now pose the gravest threat to survivors, international relief agencies said. Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the death toll in Aceh could rise to 10,000. Deaths were previously put at 3,000. "I am hoping there are still enough coffins available," said Mustofa, mayor of Aceh's Bireuen regency. In the city of Banda Aceh, dozens of bodies were scattered on streets, while masses of debris, a mix of mud, ruined trucks and cars, and wood from shattered houses, had yet to be cleared. FLOWER PETALS ON THE SEA Hundreds of Indians scattered flower petals at sea and sacrificed chickens to pray for the safe return of those carried away by the sea as aftershocks hit some areas. While some Indians held on to fading hope, others broke down as they discovered loved ones among the loads of dead ferried to hastily erected open-air morgues and authorities gouged out mass graves to bury bodies already rotting in the tropical heat. At a hospital in the town of Thazhanguda, a group of women already consoling the mother of one victim broke down when the body of the daughter of another was brought in. "Anasuya, Anasuya. Talk to me, talk to me, it's your mother," one wailed, hugging the sand- and weed-covered body. Police say at least 3,000 have died and a similar number are missing in the low-lying Andaman and Nicobar islands close to the quake's epicenter off Sumatra. Coast Guard crews reported flying over hundreds of bodies off India's east coast. In Sri Lanka, homeless people fearing another wave sheltered in temples, schools and on high ground. Among those killed in Sri Lanka were nine Japanese tourists who were watching elephants in a park when the tsunami hit. "The scale of the tragedy is massive ... this is a grave tragedy which we have not been prepared for," Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga told the BBC. Weeping relatives scrambled over hundreds of bodies piled in a hospital in the town of Karapitiya, shirts or handkerchiefs held over their noses against the stench of decaying flesh. "We are struggling to cope. Bodies are still coming in," said Dr H.G. Jayaratne at Karapitiya Teaching Hospital. Thailand evacuated injured survivors from its southern beaches. Britons, Danes, Swedes, Swiss, Australians, Italians and at least one New Zealander and an American were among the dead on Phuket, where at least 130 people were killed. On Phuket's Patong beach, hotels and restaurants were wrecked and speed boats rammed into buildings. Many foreign tourists, some evacuated in bathing costumes, were left destitute, possessions and passports lost to the sea. It emerged that U.S. officials who detected the quake tried frantically to warn Asia the deadly wall of water was on its way but there was no official regional alert system to contact. Iran Monday sent condolences to Asian countries struck by a tsunami a year to the day after an earthquake killed 31,000 people in the Iranian city of Bam. ++ Editor's Note | t r u t h o u t reporter J. Sri Raman lives in a fishing village in Chennai, India, an area devastated by the tsunami. Below is his eyewitness report on the suffering caused by Sunday's tragic event. - smg Deaths by Water - and Environmental Degradation J. Sri Raman Monday 27 December 2004 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122804X.shtml   Chennai, India - Selvaraj, 38, sturdy and ebony-dark, set out on the catamaran, the ancient Tamil raft of tied logs, a little past six in the morning. He did not return. Some eight hours later, rescuers found his body washed ashore, like the bodies of scores of other fishermen.   Kannan, 14, went out a little later that Sunday morning to the Marina Beach, the pride of this South Indian city, its little piece of paradise. He carried his cricket bat, with a sticker of Sachin Tendulkar, the star of the game, on it. He, too, did not return home. His frail, little body was also found hours later on the once inviting sands. Search was still on, though, for the bodies of the other members of his team and their opponents who were to play a weekend match on a field with a backdrop of waves.   Krishnamurthy, 67, had driven there for a brisk morning walk along the long beach line, as had been his wont for a couple of years. They found his car, smashed and upturned.   Survivors in the fishermen's hamlets close to the Marina count Selvaraj and others like him lucky indeed. Even the bodies of many, many other fishermen, who had gone into the sea for their morning catch, have not been found. Officials put the number of missing fishermen at no less than 5,000.   The best-known public hospital in this capital of the south Indian State of Tamilnadu, one of the worst-hit areas in the widespread Asian tragedy of December 26, has lined up scores of salt-smeared bodies for possible identification by their bereaved kin. Quite a few are still lying unclaimed - an indication that killer waves may have devoured whole families on the fringe of the city and survival.   People, especially the poor, are prepared for the worst - but the worst they can imagine. Down here, they were not prepared for this particular disaster, wrought by quake-generated waves (tsunamis, their Japanese name a household word here already) rising to a tidal height of 15 to 40 feet before crashing to kill. They were not prepared, and not only because they had fished only in a gentle sea and played or walked only on soft sands.   True, the balmy Bay of Bengal had held no terrors for them before. There is a more basic reason, however, why the tremors and the resultant sea turbulence (claiming a toll of over 2,500 human lives) have taken Chennai and Tamilnadu totally unawares. The public here has been kept in the dark about a dire environmental threat that has been growing at a great pace over the past decade or so.   What holds good for Tamilnadu does so as well for the rest of coastal India to reel from the impact of the calamity - the States of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, and West Bengal.   In the wake of the tragedy, Tamilnadu is witnessing a series of helicopter surveys of the misery in cities, towns and marooned villages by ministers. The opposition and the ruling party are raking up disaster-related issues to fight over. Funds for relief operations can also become an issue between the State and federal governments in the coming days. Official statements and steps reveal no recognition of the role of environmental degradation in the making of the disaster.   The calamity highlights, more than anything else, the callous neglect of environment protection along the entire coastal belt of India, including Tamilnadu. A handful of environmental activists have been crying themselves hoarse over the issue, but the powers-that-be have preferred to dismiss them as cranks. At the core of the issue lies a corporate-political mesh of corruption that seeks to thrive on human misery and lives.   India, by law, has a coastal regulation zone (CRZ), where building activities are supposed to be strictly regulated. In Tamilnadu and elsewhere, as old lawyers would put it, the rules and regulations have been observed more in breach than in observance. The rapacious rich, callous corporates, and a state flush with the 'free market' spirit have indulged in impermissible real-estate activities in the allegedly protected zone.   A concrete chain of residential colonies, star hotels and entertainment spots has robbed the land of all coastal protection from the once friendly sea. It is mainly the poor who have paid - with their lives - for this crime against the coastline.   When the dead have been cremated or buried, it will be time to tell the people that environmentalism is not elitism, as self-serving seekers of political power have taught them. At stake in the protection of India's coastal environment are the lives of not merely Olive Ridly turtles but the millions to whom it is not a money-spinning means. ++ It is not enough to be compassionate; you must act. -- The Dalai Lama (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.) ++ PLANET WAVES ASTROLOGY http://PlanetWaves.net/ The Sun. The Moon. News of the World. ++