Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Matt Damon for Myanmar
Despite the fact that Cyclone Nargis destroyed much of Myanmar well over a month ago, aid is still only trickling in and relief has been hard to come by for the vast majority of those who have been left homeless and hungry. Not On Our Watch is an organization headed up by several celebrities including Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Matt Damon and they’ve launched a new ad campaign to try to drive help into Myanmar.
They took out a full page advertisement in the Jakarta Post, an Indonesian newspaper. The ad reads, “Burma’s neighbors have the power to help victims who remain desperately in need.” The hope is that with more countries pushing aid forward, more will be able to get into the country despite its militant regime.
You can find out more about Brad’s involvement in Not On Our Watch by checking out their website and you can learn how to help as well.
Photo used with permission: Newscom
(Source)
Technorati Tags: brad pitt, george clooney, matt damon, not on our watch, myanmar, burma
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POSTED IN: Activism, Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt's Friends
13 opinions for Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Matt Damon for Myanmar
Natasha
Jun 25, 2008 at 8:14 am
People.com has this news aritcle about Brad going to a Radio Head Concert. I found this 4 second video on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaU0r3wVilw
cassie
Jun 25, 2008 at 8:16 am
brad has a guy friend its a little weird expeshilly cause there bffs
ligaya
Jun 25, 2008 at 3:48 pm
BRAVO, LOS TRES AMIGOS! On top of this, the JPs just donated $1 Million to Iraqi & U.S. kids for educational & other needs. I posted the article & URL on the “phone interview” thread.
isacutie
Jun 25, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Hopefully, this ad will help in bringing more help into Myanmar.
irma
Jun 25, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Myanmar needs all the help, glad that Brad, George & Matt are spearheading to help. I hope, the aids reach the people in need, their govt. declined help from other countries including the United States. People are suffering.God bless them.
On the lighter note, Jerry Penacoli from Extra talked about Angie’s movie ‘Wanted”, he seems a very nice guy. Looking forward to Friday.
pat rogers
Jun 25, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Just a personal observation…as I watched the news coverage of the massive flooding in the Midwest with over 100 blocks of the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa under water, levees breaking, and the attention now turned downstream for when this massive amount of water hits the Mississippi, what amazed me is not what we saw, but what we didn’t see…
1. We don’t see looting.
2. We don’t see street violence.
3. We don’t see people sitting on their rooftops waiting for the government to come and save them.
4. We don’t see people waiting on the government to do anything.
5. We don’t see Hollywood organizing benefits to raise money for people to rebuild.
6. We don’t see people blaming President Bush.
7. We don’t see people ignoring evacuation orders.
8. We don’t see people blaming a government conspiracy to blow up the levees as the reason some have not held.
9. We don’t see the US Senators or the Governor of Iowa crying on TV.
10. We don’t see the Mayors of any of these cities complaining about the lack of state or federal response.
11. We don’t see or hear reports of the police going around confiscating personal firearms so only the criminal will be armed.
12. We don’t see gangs of people going around and randomly shooting at the rescue workers.
13. You don’t see some leaders in this country blaming the bad behavior of the Iowa flood victims on “society” (of course there is no wide spread reports of lawlessness to require excuses).
Re: Iowa vs. Louisiana :
Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for
help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?
Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal
government hasn’t solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and
trailers) are?
Why isn’t the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels
in Chicago ?
When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees
that failed in Des Moines ?
Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?
Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen
television sets?
When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a
“vanilla” Iowa , because that’s the way God wants it?
Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of
cannibalism?
Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural
people?
How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever
again?
BlessBrangelina
Jun 25, 2008 at 10:57 pm
That’s a great thing they did!
Rach
Jun 26, 2008 at 4:56 am
Yet more wonderful things from the two most wonderful celebrities. I love them so much.
ligaya
Jun 26, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Pat, well, you’re providing a lot of fodder for discussion. I don’t have the time to respond fully now, but in general I emphatically disagree with your assumptions & conclusions. IMHO, you are sadly misinformed & are spreading myths & lies just like the 8ters spread about the JPs.
My husband is from Peoria, IL. We’ve visited many parts of the Midwest many times. The people I met were more generous & understanding than you seem to be.
One of your own editors-in-chief wrote an editorial against comparing the Midwest floods with Katrina’s devastation. I’ll post it some time today.
ligaya
Jun 26, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Cassie, do you have girlfriends? So what’s wrong with guys having guy friends? ;-)
Sherry
Jun 26, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Hee I agree Ligaya. My husband would be most surprised to discover it’s unusual for him to have guy friends. :D
ligaya
Jun 26, 2008 at 12:54 pm
http://media.www.dailyiowan.com/media/storage/paper599/news/2008/06/20/Opinions/Despite.Framing.Iowa.Flood.No.Hurricane.Katrina-3383852.shtml
Despite framing, Iowa flood no hurricane Katrina
Emileigh Barnes - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 6/20/08 Section: Opinions
“This is our version of Katrina.”
That’s what Johnson County Emergency Management spokesman Mike Sullivan told the Chicago Tribune. Mike Sullivan should be ashamed.
As a transplant from Mississippi, I’ve known both natural disasters intimately. In both, water rose, ravaged. People were affected. That’s where the comparison ends.
For Hurricane Katrina, the death toll is still unknown. Sourcewatch.org argues that, because of the disaster’s lasting effects, it’s still rising. Some counts put it higher than 4,000. And how many people have died in Johnson County?
No doubt exists whether this flood has been catastrophic, has changed lives, has altered our view of the world. I was there with you all. I sandbagged, worried, evacuated my own newsroom by hand in the pitch black when electricity was cut. I cried as I read stories from our newspaper and others. I prayed for those affected. I’m still waiting for the water to recede, and I hope just as much that the damage is minimal.
Meanwhile, for those of you who weren’t there, I’d like to tell you a little about Katrina:
When Katrina ravaged my Mississippi as well as Louisiana, I watched on the DI television, and I was helpless. My mother relayed to me via the telephone which coworker had lost a husband and baby, who had drowned in their attics as they tried to break through the roof to escape rising waters.
I watched the death toll rise, the government not send aid for days.
People were angry; they were forgotten. They died. And even after they died, they were still forgotten. One news story recounts a woman who tried to flag down police as she stood next to the corpse of her husband. Their advice to her was how to effectively move the smelly body as far away from the road as possible.
At that time, I was in my first semester here in Iowa City, and I knew I couldn’t get back until Christmas. When I did visit to the coast in December with a church volunteer group, entire cities were still gone. Most of the highways were closed, and we wove in and out of back streets, among FEMA trailers and volunteer tents. For miles on each side of them lay only slabs and leafless trees, which were decorated with an array of home furnishings that had been lifted in the wind and placed onto their branches: couches, wallpaper, plastic bags.
We passed several blocks of houses that had made it through the storm, upright, and in various forms of disrepair. Some had X’s spray-painted on the door. A family friend explained, the first slash of the X was painted as a tally of how many bodies needed to be removed, the second slash as a mark that someone had picked them up. More houses had only the first slash painted on, bodies still rotting inside. My friend Ryan warned me things would be bad. He had spent the many weekends shoveling sludge from houses. “Careful,” one bedraggled homeowner had told him as he scooped mud from her kitchen into a wheelbarrow. “My dog is in there somewhere.” Those memories, vivid, acrid, will always be with me. I can still smell the cool coastal breeze, feel it as it felt on my neck when I bent over a pile of rubble and removed from it a glass tea-light holder, intact save a few bistre flecks of mud. All of these things tug at me, years later, and in that disaster, I was only part of the periphery.
Right now, Iowa City is in a time of worry. Many business owners may have lost their livelihoods, but that’s not the same as lives. People have lost their homes, but that’s not the same as families.
I am a reporter. I know a thing or two about media framing, or the way stories are organized. I also know that we’re deeply influenced by the way our sources present information to us.
A quotation such as “This is our version of Katrina” is a powerful one, hard for a writer to pass up. See how it affected me? At the same time, any death related to flooding is a tragedy. It cannot be diminished or comprehended. My heart is broken to see homes and lives in disrepair.
But to compare one disaster to another is wrong. It needs to stop right here. Instead, I charge you (both press and people) to create our own frames, our own stories.
[Ligaya here: My husband & I visited New Orleans last October & can attest to the above writer’s experience. We also visited friends in Mississippi & Alabama who had their own horror stories.]
ligaya
Jun 26, 2008 at 1:09 pm
http://media.www.dailyiowan.com/media/storage/paper599/news/2008/06/20/Opinions/Despite.Framing.Iowa.Flood.No.Hurricane.Katrina-3383852.shtml
Despite framing, Iowa flood no hurricane Katrina
The Daily Iowan Fri, 20 Jun 2008 5:30 AM PDT
“This is our version of Katrina.” That’s what Johnson County Emergency Management spokesman Mike Sullivan told the Chicago Tribune. Mike Sullivan should be ashamed.
…
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