[Swprograms] Re: NYTimes.com: Shortwave Radio Days

[John Figliozzi <jfiglio1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well said, Dan.  Very well said.

John Figliozzi

On Sunday, March 20, 2005, at 09:19  PM, Daniel Say wrote:

>> Someone forwarded this to the BBC, right?
>>
>> Alan Johnson
>> _______________________________________________
>
> 	Oh, I think they got it.
>
> 	Theroux's former wife is a BBC radio producer of
> several decades.
>
> 	Still, the article is about going to sw-full areas
> not the dangerous ports of America.
>
> 	You get the frisson of BBC's aid when you get the
> messages of BBC calling on all 'citizens and ... , please
> contact the British Embassy in .... Flights out will be arranged
> from the ... airport on 17th April.
>
> 	When I was in deep China in June 1989, everyone was
> listening to shortwave during a crisis.  (Though Radio Australia,
> in those expansive days, was much, much better than BBC for coverage
> accuracy on the English language side)
>
> 	In Canada on 11 09, the BBCWS was doing a much better
> job than our domestic service in the initial hours of the
> NY towers crashes.
>
> 	The BBCWS has been taken over by cheap bureaucrats.
> See the warnings by ex-director John Tusa in his collection
> of essays "A world in your ear : reflections on changes" /by John Tusa.
> (Published London : Broadside, 1992.) on dropping services
> to any area and the difficulties, beyond technical, on believability
> and usage in restoring SW services during a crisis.
>
> 	The Labor politicians of Australia are advocating
> expansion of RA service to Indonesia as a quiet but constant
> arm of diplomacy and relief effort in Banda Acheh and other
> regions.
>
>  	It is very cheap for the use that will be made of it.
> I'm sure that the ease of the British Army mission in Iraq
> was enhanced by years of the BBCWS in the local languages,
> and English.
>
> 	Same when America is losing millions of people to
> Bird Flu and can't keep communications going in the face
> of quarantines etc. etc.
>
> 					Daniel Say
> 				now listening to CRI in Vancouver, Canada
>
> -------------
> X-URL:
> http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/travel/tmagazine/ 
> 20TRADIO.html?ex=11119860&oref=login
>
> Shortwave Radio Days
>
>    By PAUL THEROUX
>    Published: March 20, 2005
>
>    A few years ago, during my ''Dark Star Safari'' travels in Africa,
>    almost everything I had was stolen. Intending a foray into a dodgy
>    part of Mozambique, I had left the valuable stuff in safekeeping and
>    took with me only my notes, my passport and a few odds and ends. I
>    returned to Johannesburg to find myself a pauper, owning only the
>    clothes I stood up in. My plight was hard to dramatize in a country
>    with an annual murder rate of about 20,000 and reported rapes at
>    around 53,000. Still, I missed my things and was faced with a
>    difficult decision: What do I replace first?
>
>    Eventually, I did replace the bag itself, a Patagonia MLC -- Maximum
>    Legal Carry-On -- as well as the bruised Glaser Designs briefcase  
> I'd
>    prudently padlocked inside it. But the first thing I bought was a
>    shortwave radio: the exact model that had been swiped, a Sony
>    ICF-SW07. I wouldn't take a serious trip without it.
>
>    In 1963, when I began a stint in the Peace Corps in Africa, I bought
>    my first shortwave; and over the years, as the radios have become
>    smaller and more efficient, I have traded up. I avoided election
>    violence in Africa by listening to foreign shortwave stations; I was
>    alerted to a wave of kidnappings on an outlying island in the
>    Philippines where I happened to be; and, traveling through the  
> former
>    Soviet Union in 1986, I heard the first news of Chernobyl on the BBC
>    World Service.
>
>    Nights can be very long for the solo traveler in a remote place,  
> where
>    the only evening pleasure is listening to the radio. It so happens
>    that no good signal is audible on Christmas Island (now Kiritimati),
>    1,500 miles south of Hawaii, but there is hardly anywhere else where
>    you can't find something on a shortwave radio to cheer you in the
>    darkness.
>
>    When I travel, it's my only electronic indulgence. A computer is a
>    millstone, a pager is a joke and a cellphone to me is a secular form
>    of purgatory -- merely a subtle, more nagging version of the
>    electronic ankle bracelets that perverts and felons have to wear.  
> But
>    a shortwave radio is instant access to the wider world. It's
>    enlightenment, security and amusement.
>
> ------
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