If you'd like to toss a few bucks toward folks who had little and now have nothing, this would be a good time.

    I've never been to Java, but in my one brief visit elsewhere in Indonesia I was treated with more friendliness than I knew how to react to. (Some of this, no doubt, was because I was a relatively     well-off tourist, and thus a possible source of income, granted. But I do think a great deal of it was just general human decency.)

    I've put a long list of reputable charities currently active in helping out the people of Yogyakarta at left. You can scope these out or find others via the Charity Navigator, and find out more—including videos and photos—at the Indonesia Help Blog.

    General human decency is a pretty cool thing.

    Let's use some.

PS -- Alert reader Jim points out correctly that Charity Navigator, by itself, isn't a sufficient indicator of whether a charity can be trusted. It currently gives four stars to Operation Blessing.

    Well, crap. So much for Charity Navigator.

    For those who came in late, Operation Blessing is closely aligned with Pat Robertson, the man of questionable god who claims to be able to leg press 2000 pounds while calling for the killing of foreign leaders he doesn't like. I like to imagine that in private he does these both at the same time.

    In the past, Operation Blessing aircraft have been used in a for-profit mining venture under the benevolent eye of Mobuto Sese Seko, the Saddam-plus genocide-supporting scumbag who used to run Zaire. This is when Pat wasn't occupied with his other hobby, a similar mining venture in cooperation with Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, now awaiting trial on a 650-count indictment for war crimes.

    Which leads me to ask: WGWCWJGIAMVW? (What Genocidal War Criminal Would Jesus Go Into A Mining Venture With?) Perhaps there should be bumper stickers. And HMCJLP (How Much Could Jesus Leg Press), anyway?

    The single biggest recipient of gifts from Operation Blessing in 2004? According to the New York Daily News, it was Pat Robertson's own TV operation.

    My best guess is that the Charity Navigator people just don't know all this; they seem to be mostly concerned with number-crunching the efficiency of charities in converting donations into throughput. This would seem a decent enough system for detecting internal wastefulness, but not so robust for picking up on—putting it politely—closed-loop fundraising.

    So, donor beware. Do not just rely on the Charity Navigator. I considered it a helpful tool. I suppose it probably still is. But not by itself. My bad.

    For what it's worth, however, bottom line: some nice folks in Indonesia are still screwed, and they still need our help; the vast majority of charities are actually charities, so don't go all cynical; and I'm personally happy to give money to the specific charities I've listed, at least. If that means anything.