Hurricane Katrina + Rita hit New Orleans and Gulf Coast

[Antony]

Great news about our friend - Mr Jay Garcia. He absconded to Longview, Texas and is in good shape.

Mr Jay Garcia said he absconded with his clothes, his computers, a dog, and important documentation. His wife also escaped the disaster.


Apparently, Mr Garcia is holding a fund raising again.

SillyDog701 would like to inform anyone who wishes to donate... do not donate your hard earned money to any third person or untrusted organisations. There are always people trying to rip other people off after major disasters.

If you wish to donate to Red Cross, please donate to Red Cross directly (or through iTunes) or any qualified organisations directly. Do not donate to any third person. (Your hard-earned money might simply go into someone's private pocket... not the ones needed most.)

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[Edward]

If anyone wishes to donate to organizations like the American Red Cross or the The Salvation Army, it's best to contact them DIRECTLY, or make the donation directly via their respective web sites. I have included direct links to their web sites in this message.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

[Antony]

It's interesting to note that the effects of Katrina can also be seen online in other areas besides relief and news. According to DirectNIC, HOLYCOW.org's nameservers were located in New Orleans, and only have a day or two of diesel fuel left to power the generators. Of course, I have the IP address of the server (which isn't in New Orleans), so I can still read my e-mail, but all browsers of HOLYCOW.org won't be able to get in . . .

I just had a quick check, DirectNIC is online, so is holycow.
Hence I don't think customers of DirectNIC should be worried.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[Antony]

Google has posted special post-Katrina satellite images on their popular Google Maps website. From the "regular" satellite images and the special post-Katrina ones, people can see the damage caused by Katrina.

post-Katrina satellite images of New Orleans (Google Maps)

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[Antony]

If you want to donate cash then I am coordinating this through my PayPal account (censored by antony). All fuinds made to my account will be distributed to The Red Cross and other agencies depending on the amount of the donation.

SillyDog701 would like to inform everybody,
if you wish to donate to hurricane relief, please donate directly to registered charities, or through authorised channels.

Fact: PayPal cannot transfer money to The Red Cross.
PayPal has exclusive charity relationship with United Way of America. (reference)

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[Antony]

Updated news from Mr Jay Garcia:

SillyDog701 is thrilled to learn our good friend Mr Jay Garcia is safe and his house is completely undamaged in the Hurricane Katrina event.

This whole thread was mainly about our deepest concern about Mr Garcia's safety.

One member of SillyDog701 informed me about Mr Jay Garcia's response about my recommendation on donating method.

However, it seems to me, our good friend is not so open minded, he read no where but only my recommendation to users who wish to donate to donate money directly to registered charities. I made no accusations to Mr Garcia at all. I still stand correct on my recommendation.

Mr Garcia doth protest too much, methinks.

We received over $5000 for the Sunami victims for instance for which I provided matching funds in the name of The UFAQ.

And as in the past, my books are open to anyone who makes a donation. In light of Antony's incredible nonsense I am withdrawing the PayPal route and I am asking users that wish to donate cash to please email me for instructions to ***@*********.***

(Jay Garcia's email address is removed to help Jay Garcia not being spammed.)
I believe Mr Jay Garcia meant to say "Tsunami". and it was true that Mr Jay Garcia did make a plea that encourages people to click his advertisement, he never stated the exact income he generated and he never stated the reference of his donation. In fact, what Mr Garcia breached the agreement by asking people to click his Google Ads. Please note, what Mr Jay Garcia used with his Google Ads income is purely up to him, but asking/begging people to click advertisements (in any manner) is completely unethical and against the agreement with advertising agent.

It is good to know that Mr Garcia is now withdrawing his PayPay funnelling. For everybody who has PayPal account, there are ways to donate money to registered charities directly.

For any relief donation, it would be everybody's interests to ensure that all the money is donated to the registered charities directly and get yourself tax credit for your hard earned money. Donation is not gambling, by donating directly to registered charities, there's no need to worry about if the money would actually be distributed to the ones who needed most.

Again, SillyDog701 is thrilled to learn our good friend Mr Jay Garcia and his house are safe and well in the Hurricane Katrina event.

SillyDog701 would also like to urge everybody who wish to donate, please donate your hard-earned money directly to the registered charities, and making sure those who needed the most get the support.

SillyDog701 also wishes all victims can have their lives back to normal.

Yours sincerely,
Antony Shen.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[Antony]

The good news is...
The relief effort had a boost with news that the flooding in New Orleans would be drained in 40 days instead of 80.

and
The American Red Cross has announced it needs 40,000 extra volunteers to help deal with the "unprecedented impact and scope" of Hurricane Katrina.

Red Cross call for storm workers

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[khimkhoykhi]

I don't think Mr. Antony Shen insinuated, attacked or meant harm to anyone with his warning. From what I've read, he was just informing everyone who wishes to donate that there are authorized channels for this. He did not say that we should not donate thru Mr. Garcia because he can't be trusted, I think he was just giving us another option if ever we want to donate. I really don't think there is any harm on that.

That is my two cents.

Thanks and peace to everyone!

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[Antony]

How to help Hurricane Katrina victims
News-Record has an article on how to help Hurricane Katrina victims.

[i]American Red Cross

Accepting money to provide shelter, food, counseling and other assistance to those in need. Call (800) HELP NOW or (800) 257-7575 (Spanish). Contributions to the Disaster Relief Fund may be sent to your local American Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013. Internet users can make a secure online contribution by visiting www.redcross.org.

The Red Cross is also looking for volunteers to travel to the Gulf Coast for people support. Volunteer training classes will be held at many Triad-area Red Cross chapters this weekend and next week. For more information, call your local chapter: Greensboro,
333-2111; High Point-Thomasville, 885-9121; Rockingham County,
349-3434; Northwest North Carolina (serving Forsyth, Stokes, Davie and Yadkin counties), 724-0511.

The Salvation Army

Monetary donations: $100 donation will feed a family of four for two days, provide two cases of drinking water and one household cleanup kit. Monetary donations may be sent to your local Salvation Army earmarked “Disaster Relief.â€

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[Antony]

The donation link on top of SillyDog701 Message Centre pages has changed from a link to iTunes (donating via iTunes) to a direct link to The Red Cross.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[Lorraine]

Perhaps you don't want this brought up again, however I too thought you insinuated when asking people, not to send money to third parties in your reply.
I responded earlier, but I haven't read this thread for several days and just read the continuation tonight.

I don't want to take sides, perhaps it is because your first language isn't English, I don't know. But nevertheless, it sounded to me like you were insinuating Jay was the third party.

Antony wrote

Please note, what Mr Jay Garcia used with his Google Ads income is purely up to him, but asking/begging people to click advertisements (in any manner) is completely unethical and against the agreement with advertising agent.

Well Antony, I believe you mentioned , to 'click' on the Google ads. In fact, perhaps you had it written on the Sillydog701 flash page, on the right hand side, altho' on that I am not sure. I know I was looking for Google ads in Sillydog but never found any:)
I take that back, I just found one, the maps

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

[Lorraine]

As this thread is about Jay Garcia and he said his office was in Kenner, well on my website there is a picture of me swimming in the St. Lawrence River, at Flat Rock which is in LaSalle which is the twin city of Kenner.

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/7368 and click on BIO.
LaSalle is part of Montreal.
I swam in LaSalle often, even as a teenager.

I started that webpage in '96 or '97 and I know it isn't very good but it is made with Netscape 4.0 I think. Possibly 3.0 as I was using Windows 95 then and WBS
and my own fancy HTML

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

[Antony]

Perhaps you don't want this brought up again, however I too thought you insinuated when asking people, not to send money to third parties in your reply.

Let me put it clear. This thread is about SillyDog701's deepest concern about our good friend Mr. Jay Garcia, who is the proprietor of The Unofficial Netscape FAQ (UFAQ.org). In fact the original title of this thread was "SillyDog701 cares about Jay Garcia's safety."

SillyDog701 would like to express our concern about the safety of Mr. Jay Garcia, and his good pal, DrDean.

To our knowledge, Mr Jay Garcia is a resident of New Orleans, and SillyDog701 is thrilled to know Mr Garcia escaped the disaster, is safe, is healthy, and his house is undamaged.

Sadly but undeniable, Mr Garcia conducted a remarkable and unethical cybersquatting attack on SillyDog701. I briefly stated this (as part of mentioning who Mr. Garcia is) in this thread, and clearly stated that SillyDog701 and I hold no grudges. I have no idea why people get offended by short statement.

As for donating money, I've read a lot of reports on people got ripped off by other street charity workers, and a number of fund raising particular after disaster event. (They don't just taking the cash you give, but also credit cards or direct debiting from bank accounts.) I am trying to help everybody who wishes to donate to have his/her money distributed to the people who really need money. By donating directly to registered charities, people can ensure the money gets to the right destination, and people can get tax rebate for their hard earned money.

In this complicated world, there are just too many small things we have to be aware of. I strongly believe most of you would agree with me that we should not feed those who pretend to help the victims but making profit after disasters. (NOT referring to our good friend, Mr Jay Garcia.) It seems to me reminding people the right thing (or correct channel) is not an easy job.

I found Mr. Garcia failed to read our deepest concern about his safety which is the key point of this thread, but somehow got upset by my general reminder to people about the proper way to donate. Methinks he protects too much.

Again, SillyDog701 is thrilled to learn Mr Garcia is safe and well, and SillyDog701 and I hold no grudges from Mr Garcia's unpleasant attack on SillyDog701.

Let's all wish other Hurricane Katrina victims can be settled down quickly and the area can be recovered quickly.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[Antony]

CNN.com has an interesting report on Katrina and racial issue.

White and black Americans view Hurricane Katrina's aftermath in starkly different ways, with more blacks viewing race as a factor in problems with the federal response, according to a newly released CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. More blacks than whites said they were angry about the government's response to Katrina, 76 percent to 60 percent, and President Bush is one target of their ire.
...
On the question of whether Bush cares about black people, 67 percent of whites said they believe the president does care, but only 21 percent of blacks agreed.
...
Poll results indicated that issues related to the Katrina response are likely to have more staying power in the black community, with 71 percent of blacks paying close attention to the story, compared with 56 percent of whites.

I guess Martin Luther's dream still far from reality.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[profman]

Jay: Thanks for the update on your status and the interesting automotive story. You know that somebody is watching over you when an automotive dealership treats you with such kindness and generosity (not to take away the human kindness shown by the individuals involved).

I hope that the recovery of the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina goes well and is swift.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.11) Gecko/20050728