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That must be one of the main reasons, in addition to perhaps trying out some experimental treatments.

People are complaining about them being flown in now, but give it enough time and they would have found a way to blame the Obama administration for not helping these heroes. Imagine the accusations that they deliberately left them to die because they were conservative Christian missionaries. The mid-terms are coming up in November.

Call me cynical, but this is the best thing that's ever happened to Samaritan's Purse. They're a VERY controversial organization whose president is known for saying that the Obama administration has the “the spirit of Anti-Christ" and for supporting Putin's anti-homosexuality bill. A lot of their work involves using people's needs to try to convert them to Christianity. They're one of the few large organizations that have never signed the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief. Everyone else has: secular ones like Doctors without Borders or Save the Children, but also all the large faith-based organizations (World Vision, Caritas, UMCOR, Norwegian Church Aid, etc.). It's actually cost them money since some organizations require that they become signatories before they grant them money, so it's a deliberate decision. Probably because it requires that "aid will not be used to further a particular political or religious standpoint", which is the main reason why Samaritan's Purse exist.

Until this week, when people heard "Samaritan's Purse", they thought "sending evangelical tracts to children in developing countries". Now they'll think "heroic missionary who risked his life/died for the poor". If you check out their website, you'll see that their PR machine is in full motion. Even the statements from the family were obviously written by a professional PR person and are all about how their faith means that they're all fine and happy regardless of what happens, the wonderful support that their God from their church, etc.

Spoken as a true ignorant. Lemme check the website. Nope! I don't see Taliban listed anywhere. I see the League of Arab States, but the Taliban aren't Arabs. It seems the Red Cross are training Taliban. *awkward cough* *tumbleweed*

Your first link is to the site of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, i.e. they are essentially interchangeable. GP was answering your point that it would be awkward for the Taliban to use the Red Cross, but it is no more ignorant to say they use the Red Crescent than the Red Cross.

As for your second statement, the job of the Red Cross is to help save lives, not decide that some are more worthy than others. An injured Taliban fighter has as much right to medical assistance as a US soldier.

Spoken as a true ignorant. Lemme check the website. Nope! I don't see Taliban listed anywhere. I see the League of Arab States, but the Taliban aren't Arabs. It seems the Red Cross are training Taliban. *awkward cough* *tumbleweed*

While I have a certain sympathy for the hackers if you really want to help in Lebanon donate money to the Lebanese Red Cross/Red Crescent.
Bank details can be found via the list of national sites http://www.ifrc.org/address/rclinks.asp - Lebanese Red Cross Want To Help
AUDI BANK
BAB IDRISS
Account Nb: 841500
SWIFT: AUDBLBBX

I've provided the complete HTML trail so people can check that this is not fraudulent.
Regards Brian

An epidemic merely is a disease that is occuring at a rate far more prevalent than it's long term rate in a region. AIDS easily fits that definition on every continent in the world (excluding Anartica). For example, the Center for Disease Control, the International Red Cross, the World Health Organization, and the US Census Bureau all call it a pandemic. It's not just a matter of semantics either. For example, in the US, death from AIDS or related illnesses is among the top ten causes of deaths in people aged 20-54 (see this CDC report).

I don't see how the MS - Linux competition has anything whatsoever to do with Bill and Melissa's charitable work. I'm no fan of Microsoft and I do avoid using MS products wherever possible, but the comparsion here should be with other of the worlds wealthy. How do Larry Ellison's charitable contributions stack up, for example?

Not everything about Bill Gates is a Microsoft vs Linux issue.

Personally, I think that my use of free-as-in-beer alternatives to commercial products does increase my charitable donations because I have more disposable income available to me. In theory it means that Bill et al have less available to them to donate to their favourite charity, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over that.

In case you are wondering what to do with the money you saved from using free software, here are some of my preferred charities. Enjoy:

• Samaritans
• RNLI (Lifeboats)
• International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

This is one of the reasons that the Red Cross now has a fund selection, be it tsunami relief or measles innoculations. I didn't donate to Doctors Without Borders because they didn't have the option for me to put my funds only into tsunami relief. Instead I donated to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. The problem is solved. Your money will go to tsunami relief minus administrative costs that any nonprofit organization has. This situation is not really similar to 9/11 moneywise, since every victim's family isn't going to be able to get $1M. The Red Cross is more likely to come up short on money than to have too much to compensate.

I normally don't email around appeals to people, but the magnitude of this disaster is so large that I have emailed my friends informing them how to donate online.

I pointed people towards the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which as well as accepting donations online, also provides a convenient listing of Local Red Cross / Red Crescent which are probably better for donating through. For instance, I gave through the Canadian Red Cross since the Government of Canada is going to be matching private donations through them.

I normally don't email around appeals to people, but the magnitude of this disaster is so large that I have emailed my friends informing them how to donate online.

I pointed people towards the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which as well as accepting donations online, also provides a convenient listing of Local Red Cross / Red Crescent which are probably better for donating through. For instance, I gave through the Canadian Red Cross since the Government of Canada is going to be matching private donations through them.

UNICEF (www.unicef.org) Donation page:

Doctors Without Borders (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/index.shtml) Donation page:

International Federation, Red Cross and Red Crescent (http://www.ifrc.org) Donation page:

That's 15 million to the UN for aid, and that's for "starters". Forget that we contribute over 20% of the UN's budget, and in the past few years have actually paid in the billions.

With the oil for food fiasco, the UN is not the logical place to put all the money for this, unless you want it horribly mismanaged.

Personally, I think groups like the Red Cross/Red Crescent would be able to make better use of the funds.
Links:
American
International/Red Crescent

I'd call the draining of the aral sea a catastrophe. It could be argued that this was not due to individuals but mostly due to public works and aqueducts draining the sea...

The landslides in the Philippienes, however, were directly caused by deforestation done by individuals who used the wood for fuel.

I would also call the elimination of a food source a disaster, and there have been several species of fish and game that were eliminated by overfishing and overhunting.

I don't know how you can think that the actions of a large base of individuals doesn't result in widespread negative consequences...

The most famous famine in recent history, in Ethiopia, was engineered when it was a colony of the USSR. The USSR is gone, and so is socialism in Ethiopia. The famine there is long over as well.

Wow, the number of errors in these short sentences is astounding. Ethiopia has never been colonized. It is currently suffering another terrible famine that began in 2000. This calamity has less to do with government than with drought, like the famines currently gripping Zambia and Malawi.

Ethiopia did flirt with Marxist-Leninist ideas in the 1980s under the "Workers' Party of Ethiopia," but as I understand it, it was still just the same kind of top-down authoritarian big-man system as it was under Haile Selassie, as it still is today.

There are many better explanations for any African famine than politics: bad land use, bad weather, tribal rivalries, extortionate taxation, short-sighted local planning, and devouring corruption independent of political affiliation. To attribute any African country's troubles to socialism is to miss a really large forest by concentrating on one outlying tree.

Software as morals is decadant, selfish, and immature. Face it, it, RMS, and you are irrelevant.