There Are No Countries Anymore (Blaming US for tsunami deaths)

Scoop-New Zealand ^ | January 1, 2004 | Martin LeFevre

[The Loan Arranger]

The end of the year is the only time of the year when reflection is encouraged and expected. However, reflection and resolution are to New Year’s like going to church on Sunday is to religiosity—empty rituals holding less and less meaning in a world accelerating faster and faster.

Reflecting on the past acts as a mirror to the future. A serious, or superficial look back brings an equally serious or silly looking ahead. Personal conditioning and culturally determined narratives, if they are unseen and unexamined, determine and delimit what is seen. One can however, with a single sweep, hold it all in abeyance, and look with unfettered eyes.

More and more people can’t shake the feeling that something greater is happening on this planet than random nature and chaotic humanity. Though I am not a believer, I’m tempted to say that God put an exclamation point at the end of 2004, one which says in language far beyond words: ‘wake up people, there are no countries anymore.’

[The Loan Arranger]

I can't wait for them to blame the asteroid disaster on President Bush's "delaying' full SDI implementation....

[Sofa King]

"Liberals always know exactly what to do just as soon as it's too late"- Ann Coulter

[GeronL]

what the..??

'There are no countries anymore'...

Where does he get that??

[Smokin' Joe]

The human mind has the capacity to respond to scale, but it usually reacts to cataclysm by shutting down.

Case in point.

[shibumi]

I guess it helps to think that there are no countries anymore when yours is an insignificant speck to which no pays any attention, unless they're running short of domestic lamb chops. (Raised, of course, in a nuclear-free zone.)

[endthematrix]

Islam (aka Cat Stevens).

"I hear a whistle; the last train is coming. Get on board, or be left at the station."

Peace train?

"Oh, I've been smilin' lately, Dreamin' about the world as one And I believe it could be; Some day it's going to come

'Cause out on the edge of darkness, There rides a peace train. Oh, peace train take this country. Come take me home again."

"Everyone jump on the peace train."

FORGET IT!

[HolgerDansk]

One also cannot help but reflect, looking back over the year, on how thousands of lives and billions of dollars have been wasted on a “war of choice” that has predictably and agonizingly unfolded in the reeking bog the USA has made of Iraq. The contrast with the million dollars that a few automated tsunami-warning stations in the Indian Ocean would have cost, which would have saved tens of thousands lives, is almost too much to bear.

Too bad the contrast is "too much to bear", because the author has clearly missed the connection. Southeast Asia is improverished because it is ruled by dictatorial regimes like those formerly found in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rather than throw a few million dollars down a rathole, why not free the people so that they can take care of themselves?

[endthematrix]

Saddam's Iraq wasn't a "reeking bog?" I guess he thinks it was a wonderful paradise...like M Moore does.

[Dallas59]

American scientists, monitoring earthquakes around the world, knew within two minutes what was going to happen, but were unable to warn a single nation. The United States, swept up in the madness of macho-militarism, was impotent to lead and prevent a single death as the tsunami spread outward from the quake’s epicenter hour after hour.

I didn't know our Scientists were militaristic and were prevented from warning anyone because of their militaristic obsession. I believe they did warn...but there was no one on the other end to warn.

[Dallas59]

Is the United States the only nation that can monitor earthquakes world wide? Must be the masochism.