First day back at work today after new years. it's never quite as bad as i think it's gonna be, but i'd still rather be at home.
the tsunami deathtoll goes up, but i expect that. what i was really shocked about is the allegations of paedos kidnapping kids for use in the sex trade. that is the real tragedy, that people could be that evil. If Dubya's war is really of "good" vs "evil", why are these people not the targets?
The front of the Independent asked today if the massive relief effort is the start of a new better world.

I must say I am impressedwith the US-donated several hundred million dollars. when put into perspective however, it pales into insignificance compared with the 1.5billion dollars offered to one State (Florida) alone for destruction to homes and property after a series of hurricanes last year. And I'm not even going to begin to talk about how much has been spent by the US on invading and occupying Iraq. Speaking of which, now it's 2005 it's starting to become quite scary to think that the invasion was in 2003 and the whole country is still a complete mess.

Anyway, back to the Independent's question, I did wonder for a while whether this all would change things. I do not believe for one minute that the US is now a generous country, or that it has interests other than it's own at heart. but what i did consider is that maybe they will see the benefit in generosity to themselves. Disregarding the conspiracies for one minute (I'll come back to those later!), the US suffered a lot for being hated (i.e. the 9/11 attacks), so maybe the benefits of not being hated are started to be seen by the neo-cons.
That was my thought at the time, however I'm now not so sure the US did suffer so much from being hated. sure, the citizens did, but the country itself? i'd say defin itely stronger. I'm not gonna go on about this now cos im sure there'll be more rats like this later!

Anyway, enjoy this, probablyu the longest blog i'll ever make. it's still a novelty for me!