Monday, 27 December

As the death and damage from yesterday's great wave becomes obvious, I am wondering whether the message is getting across that we in the Western world have much more important things to do with our resources than bomb people.

Nature has come along and dealt a devastating blow to a massive population. And in the past 18 months, the United States and England have deployed hundreds of thousands of troops and nearly a quarter billion dollars making a fraudulent war. Imagine what we could do with all those resources and troops in terms of providing relief to the countries devastated in this disaster.

Imagine what we could do with all the helicopters and ships, medical doctors and nurses, engineers, soldiers and administrators who could be deployed to the devastated region.

This should also be a wakeup call on global warming. We have seen the kind of devastation that can be created in coastal regions by a small, temporary increase in sea level. Multiply that by every coastal region in the world; how, then, would we do with that? How would we deal with that?