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Tsunami Aid: Norway Number 1

Based on the stats in my earlier-posted list, here’s the per capita ranking for selected nations and their government contributions to the tsunami relief effort (it would be interesting to do the nation-by-nation stats on private contributions, too, but I need to get off my butt and so something resembling real work at some point today). And yes, that number for Norway is correct. The government in Oslo raised its initial pledge of 100 million Norwegian kroner (about $16.3 million) to 1.1 billion kroner ($180 million) (as reported in the English edition of Aftenposten). Norway’s population is just 4.6 million, so the per capita figure exceeds that of even the sparsely populated Number 1 donor in total aid, Australia). If the United States made a commitment at a similar rate to Norway’s, its aid figure would come to a little more than $11.5 billion.

(Just for fun, I’ve thrown in each country’s world ranking in per capita GDP from the CIA World Factbook; the rankings are in parentheses after each country’s per capita aid figure in U.S. dollars).

–Updated on 1/5/04 to reflect new aid commitments from Australia and Germany.

–Updated on 1/8/04 to reflect new aid commitments and add Kuwait, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland.

–Updated on 1/8/04 to add Finland and the Netherlands and update French aid total.

–Updated on 1/9/04 to reflect increased aid commitment from Finland.

–Updated on 1/11/04 to reflect increased aid commitment from Canada.



1. Norway: $39.13 (Per capita GDP rank: 2)

2. Australia: $37.82 (14)

3. Qatar: $29.76 (36)

4. Denmark: $14.11 (8)

5. Canada: $13.24 (11)

6. Switzerland: $13.00 (7)

7. Finland: $12.56 (22)

8. Sweden: $8.33 (24)

9. Germany: $8.17 (21)

10. United Arab Emirates: $8.00 (32)

11. Kuwait: $4.35 (47)

12. Japan: $3.91 (17)

13. Taiwan: $2.21 (31)

14. Netherlands: $2.09 (16)

15. Spain: $1.69 (34)

16. New Zealand: $1.68 (35)

17. United Kingdom: $1.61 (19)

18. European Union: $1.36 (26)

19. United States: $1.19 (3)

20. Saudi Arabia:$1.17 (69)

21. France: $1.05 (20)

22. China: $0.05 (120)

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Tsunami Bucks (Per Capita Edition)

Just because it appears to be a subject of interest based on searches reaching the information-laden Infospigot site, here’s a quick listing of some of the notable government tsunami aid pledges and how they break down into per capita amounts. I don’t have time to write a table, so the numbers are presented in a sort of unattractive (but still useful, I hope) fashion: The country name (with a link to a news source) is followed by the current announced aid commitment stated in U.S. dollars (I calculated exchanges using an online calculator at XE.com). The number in parentheses is the initial aid pledge, if known. The rest is self-explanatory: national populations are stated in millions and are linked to national government statistics sources where possible.

One conclusion I’m inclined to draw from the numbers is that most governments around the world, including ours, simply underestimated the magnitude of the disaster the region was dealing with. I’d say Japan and Norway were the early exceptions to that: Japan, perhaps, because of its familiarity with tsunamis and their effects and Norway because it was mindful of how many of its citizens were in the region. The sense that the event wasn’t initially seen as the catastrophe it was is reinforced by reading the transcript of Colin Powell’s State Department press briefing on Monday morning, more than 36 hours after the tsunamis struck. He actually led off with the head of USAID talking about the $15 million the United States was contemplating committing to the relief effort. But the reporters on hand were more interested in talking about Iraq and other subjects and never, as far as the record shows, asked any questions critical of the amount suggested.

–Updated 1/5/05 with increased aid commitments from Australia and Germany.

–Updated 1/8/05 to add statistics for the European Union, Kuwait, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates.

–Updated 1/8/05 to add statistics for Finland and the Netherlands and update France’s aid total.

–Updated 1/9/05 to update Finland’s aid total (thanks, Tuomas).

–Updated 1/11/05 to reflect new Canadian aid (thanks, Jordon).

Australia: $764M ($15.6M). Population: 20.2. Per capita: $37.82

Canada: $425M ($3.3M). Population 32.1. Per capita: $13.24

China: $63M ($2.6M). Population: 1,300. Per capita: $0.05

Denmark: $76.2M ($1.8M). Population: 5.4. Per capita: $14.11

European Union: $618M ($30M). Population: 456.3. Per capita: $1.36

Finland: $65.3M ($4M). Population: 5.2. Per capita: $12.56

France: $64.6M ($0.135M). Population: 61.7. Per capita: $1.05

Germany: $674M ($1.35M). Population: 82.5. Per capita: $8.17

Japan: $500M ($30M). Population: 128. Per capita: $3.91

Kuwait: $10M. Population: 2.3. Per capita: $4.35

Netherlands: $34M ($2.6M). Population: 16.3. Per capita: $2.09

New Zealand: $6.9M. Population: 4.1. Per capita: $1.68.

Norway: $180M ($16.4M). Population: 4.6. Per capita: $39.13

Qatar:$25M. Population: .84. Per capita: $29.76

Saudi Arabia: $30M ($10M). Population: 25.6. Per capita: $1.17

Spain: $68M ($1.35M). Population: 40.3. Per capita: $1.69

Sweden: $75M ($0.75M). Population: 9. Per capita: $8.33

Switzerland: $96.2M. Population: 7.4. Per capita: $13.00

Taiwan: $50M ($5). Population: 22.6. Per capita: $2.21

United Arab Emirates: $20M. Population: 2.5. Per capita: $8.00

United Kingdom: $95.1M ($1.3M). Population: 59.6. Per capita: $1.61.

United States: $350M ($15M). Population: 295.2. Per capita: $1.19

(Source for statistics on earlier/initial aid offers are mostly from “Reuters Factbox: Nations pledge aid after Asia tsunami disaster” (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/110433536336.htm). Most press sources are now giving the initial United States commitment as $35 million, but they’re incorrect. The initial total offered by the State Department was $15 million and is detailed in a transcript of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s press briefing, along with the head of USAID, on December 27.)

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Sunday Satire

Pancakes

It’s another rainy day in Infospigot’s neighborhood. What better way to pass the time than with the Sunday papers, an occasional glance at TV football, and a plate full of pancakes (Kate was inspired by watching Alton Brown explain the history and science of flapjacks on the Food Network; you think I’m kidding, but the picture above is included to show I’m not). I struggled through The New York Times crossword. I read the obits in the Chronicle. And I happened across an awful opinion piece in the Chronicle’s Sunday “Insight” section.

The column, by former Wall Street Journal reporter G. Pascal (Greg) Zachary, is titled “India, Indonesia didn’t prepare for the worst.” It ventures to lecture India for spending money on developing nuclear weapons and Indonesia for diverting profits from its oil industry away from one of the provinces stricken by the December tsunami. That’s all fine. I guess governments everywhere could have more enlightened priorities. But gee, Mr. Zachary, where do you or any other American get off giving someone else a hard time for their weapons obsessions or economic greed or for ignoring their people’s vital needs? Naturally we’re the smartest, best (and best-looking!) people on Earth. But I’d think the Iraq fiasco, the national missile defense folly, the Enron scandal, health-care and pension crises and the incipient collapse of public education for the poor would lend us a sense of humility.

I was bugged enough that I wound up writing a letter to the section’s editors:

Editor:

G. Pascal Zachary’s piece (“India, Indonesia didn’t prepare for worst,” Jan. 2, 2005) almost fooled me. What I took at first to be hypocritical carping about the irresponsibility of Asian nations hit by the December tsunami turns out to be satire almost too subtle to contemplate. Zachary scolds India for, among other things, diverting precious resources into an arms race. He wags his finger at Indonesia for its greed in dividing the spoils from its oil industry. He indicts both governments for failing to adequately care for their citizens. Wow. Really hard-hitting stuff. For good measure, he throws in a swipe about India stealing U.S. jobs. As a contrast to such short-sighted selfishness, he offers us Americans, who “naturally … can see past their narrow self-interest.”

Of course, you have to look past a literal interpretation of Zachary’s words to glimpse their Swiftian brilliance. What Zachary’s really getting at is how India and Indonesia are merely aping the example of the United States (and other powers of South and Southeast Asia’s glorious imperial past) when they waste treasure on weaponry, put profits for the wealthy ahead of citizens’ welfare and pursue policies that say to their own people and the rest of the world “we couldn’t care less what you think.”

Congratulations on a masterpiece.

We’ll see if it runs. I’m sure my note is just one among many.

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It’s Here

It’s taken me 23 hours and 49 minutes (and counting) to take official notice of the seemingly inevitable development that unfolded time zone to time zone across the world in the last x number of hours: 2005 has arrived. I spent a good deal of the first day of the year outside, walking along the Emeryville shoreline (that’s Emeryville, California, if you’re not a San Francisco Bay Area local) with Kate and our neighbors Piero and Jill and Marie. Later, Kate enticed me to go to a New Year’s party that some friends were throwing up in the hills by offering to walk there. It was a great hike, under clearing early evening skies, but the surprising feature of the foray was seeing several acquaintances from my earliest days in Berkeley whom I hadn’t seen or talked to in 20 years or more. How is that possible?

That’s it really. Maybe I’ll talk resolutions for 2005 and reflections on 2004 later. Maybe.

Meantime, it’s started raining again as the clock ticks toward January 2. More later.

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Break in the Rain

Codornices

It’s really winter here now. You can tell by the daily rain (it began last Sunday and has been going ever since). We’ve had about 10 inches in December, and half of that or more in the last six days. The creeks that run down from the hills and cross the Berkeley flatlands to the bay are rushing full and loud (sometimes in the open, like Codornices Creek, above, just below Live Oak Park; mostly in culverts, so most people don’t suspect they have a small river running right through the middle of their block in the rainy season).

But this isn’t a winter without respite. We always see breaks between storms, hours when the weather clears. This morning, for instance. The clouds blew off to the east, and suddenly it was sunny and warm. Everything started to dry out. The air was washed and clear. I walked past a spot where Kate and I sometimes go to sit and talk and drink coffee on Saturday mornings, the yard behind the big middle school up the street, and you could see clear across playground, the town, and the water to the Golden Gate.

Schoolyard

The clouds closed in again late in the afternoon, and it started to rain just before dark. The forecast for tonight, tomorrow, and the next several days is the same: Rain. More rain. And then some more after that. I’ll be looking for the breaks.

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Still Prevailing After All These Years

When our handsomely paid, and ruggedly handsome, White House resident-in-chief interrupted his vacation at the ranch in Crawford the other day to announce that the United States would be generous as heck in responding to the tsunami’s aftermath, he ended by saying, “We will prevail over this destruction.” More than just another run-of-the-mill knot-headed Bushism, the president has used one of his trademark phrases to signal that he’s identified the tsunamis and the plate tectonics that spawned them as evildoers. Now that he’s busted Saddam Hussein and built a model democracy in Iraq and shown Osama bin Laden who’s boss — well, one out of three ain’t bad — he’s gonna treat nature like the terrorist it truly is.

Just for old time’s sake, here’s a small sampling of the president’s earlier “we will prevail” declarations:

“Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others. Because this is America. This is who we are. This is what our enemies hate and have attacked. And this is why we will prevail.” — Weekly radio address, September 15, 2001. (Checking the White House site, this looks like the first time Bush uttered the phrase. Ari Fleischer, Bush’s press secretary, had used it the day after the September 11 attacks in a briefing: “As the President also said in his remarks, this battle will take time and resolve; and, make no mistake, we will prevail.”

“If war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military — and we will prevail.” — State of the Union, January 28, 2003

“Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures, and we will accept no outcome but victory. My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail.” — Announcing Iraq war had begun, March 19, 2003

From the beginning, we have known the effort would be long and difficult, and that our resolve would be tested. We know that sacrifice is unavoidable. We have seen victories in the decisive defeat of two terror regimes, and in the relentless pursuit of a global terror network. Yet the war on terror goes on. We will not be distracted, and we will prevail.” — Discussing progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, July 1, 2003.

“All nations of the world face a challenge and a choice. In continued acts of murder and destruction, terrorists are testing our will, hoping we will weaken and withdraw. Yet across the world, they are finding that our will cannot be shaken. Whatever the hardships, we will persevere. We will continue this war on terror until all the killers are brought to justice.And we will prevail.” — Weekly radio address, Aug. 23, 2003

“We’re going to prevailbecause, well, one we got a good strategy to deal with these killers. Two, I believe, by far the vast majority of Iraqis do understand the stakes, and do want their children to grow up in a peaceful environment, and do want their children going to a school, and do want to be able to live a free life that is prosperous. That’s what I believe. And I — recently, I was told by — for example, Bremer was telling me about a survey done by an American firm in Baghdad, for example; and it said that by far the vast majority of people understand that if America were to leave and the terrorists were to prevail in their desire to drive us out, the country would fall into chaos. And no one wants that.” — White House remarks, November 13, 2003.

“We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins. (Applause.) We will prevail. We will win because our cause is just. We will win because we will stay on the offensive. And we will win because you’re part of the finest military ever assembled. (Applause.) And we will prevail because the Iraqis want their freedom. (Applause.)” — Thanksgiving speech to troops in Baghdad, November 27, 2003.

“And we are working to advance liberty in the broader Middle East, because freedom will bring a future of hope, and the peace we all want. And we will prevail.“Nomination acceptance speech, September 2, 2004

“I also want to say to the American people that we’re at war with these terrorists and I am confident that we will prevail.” Responding to bin Laden statement, October 29, 2004

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Tsunami Bucks

The Amazing Tsunami Aid Turnaround continues: After embarrassing itself earlier this week by announcing the U.S. would commit $15 million to tsunami relief — equivalent to what we spend every 100 minutes on Iraq — the Bush administration upped the number first to $35 million (about four whole hours of Iraq money) and now to $350 million. OK, I won’t bother to translate that into Iraq terms, since doing that is an exercise in context and irony. Realistically, no one can yet put a price tag on just what recovery in southern and southeastern Asia will take. Lots of the money is going to come straight from ordinary folks who are moved to reach into their own pockets. You may or may not have a favored aid organization in mind. In this case (as in earlier disasters) Kate and I have given through the American Red Cross (which is also collecting for tsunami relief through Amazon, which says it has raised about $9.5 million from 125,000 individual donors so far).

That’s just one option, clearly. Network for Good has what looks like an excellent list of organizations participating in both immediate and long-term response to the disaster.

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AirBlog: LAX and After

6:40 p.m. PST: Exclusive coverage of the delay of American Airlines Flight 1519, nonstop service from Los Angeles to San Francisco, brought to you from seat 4A of a Boeing 737 (sorry, I don’t know the tail number. I can probably find it, though).

We’re parked in what I heard one of the cabin crew people refer to as “that remote area” of Los Angeles International Airport. The reason: Stormy weather up around the Bay Area has caused inbound flights to back up. So air-traffic control had American load this plane, then pull it away from the gate (which was needed to debark passengers from another flight). The pilots drove it over to this “remote area” — actually, we’re alongside a runway and taxiway and see a steady stream of planes passing — to sit for an hour or so before taking off for tne north. (Part of the problem during stormy or foggy weather around San Francisco International, as anyone who uses the airport or lives in the area knows, is that the airport must close one of its two parallel runways. Normally, planes land side by side, separated by about 250 yards when they reach the runways. That’s too close when visibility’s poor. The solution to this is building additional runways, but that’s proven to be expensive, time-consuming, and fraught with environmental controversy. I’m not complaining about the delay or the runway configuration myself. I figure it’s something of a miracle that planes can fly through storms at all, let alone find a runway through clouds and fog and actually land on it.

***

One last thing about the trip: As I think I mentioned somewhere before, I wound up with something of an accidental first-class ticket. I like it. I’m not jammed in with the rest of the poor saps apprehensively trooping to the rear of the plane. Uniformed persons are solicitous of my welfare. They’re anxious to hang up my jacket, bring me food and drink, laugh at my jokes, and hear my life story (well, the jacket and food and drink parts are true). I dread my next flight, when I go back to being one of the poor saps.

***

One other thing last thing: We finally landed in San Francisco at 9:15 p.m., about an hour and a half later than scheduled. In addition to getting grounded in Los Angeles, we also happened to arrive in the Bay Area at about the same time as a very intense weather front, and got put in a very bumpy holding pattern. I looked out the window the whole way. Occasionally the moon would break through the clouds as we jolted along, then we’d plunge back into a blinding combination of what looked like snow and rain. It was one of those situations you just know the only way the flight’s viable is because the planes got real good navigation technology on board; in the olden days, I think the option would have been to bail on the airport socked in by rough weather and land somewhere else. Anyway, we kept circling, and after 20 or 30 minutes of that, they told us we were cleared to head to the airport. The only alarming thing was that the weather got wilder the closer we got to the airport, so that the wings were rocking and the plane was pitching all the way down to the runway. The landing itself was the hardest one I’ve ever been aboard for, though no oxygen masks fell down and the window shades stayed up (Dad talks about a flight he took once that ended with such a heavy landing that all the shades slammed down and oxygen masks dropped).

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Word of the Day: Rendition

The Washington Post published a fascinating account Monday of how the CIA has used a Gulfstream V executive jet and a non-existent front company operated by non-existent people to ferry terrorism suspects from various locales around the world for “rendition.” The article explains that rendition is an extralegal process in which the agency transports “captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation.” In practice, this involves taking some suspects from countries that don’t condone torture to those that have no qualms about it in order to get intelligence information.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story was the role of amateurs — bloggers and citizens plane spotters around the world — in tracking this plane’s movements.

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AirBlog: O’Hare

A quick word before getting on my plane to Los Angeles, to connect to another plane to San Francisco, on my way home to what we fondly refer to as B-town in our gangsta way.

I’m in a small food court here in the American Airlines terminal. Its crowded. Lots of laptop computing going on. Starbucks is doing a good business. So’s Cinnabon and the place across the way that’s selling Michelob Ultra. An older (than me) middle-aged couple sits across the table from me with their coffees, unwrapping a couple of sweaty and deflated-looking sandwiches from Subway. “That looks like salami to me,” she says to him. They swap. I’m not letting them in on the fact they’re being quoted, for the record.

Behind them, a bearded young guy in a black hooded sweatshirt, black-and-white do-rag, black roadster cap and a stud in his lower lip sits with ear buds in place, sipping from his Michelob and reading a paperback. He looks focused.

That’s all for this post. Time to get on the plane.