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

[Daniel Say <say@xxxxxx>]

> 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

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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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