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Tuesday, December 28, 2004

How beauteous mankind is!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t

William Shakespeare The Tempest V:1


http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaking-News/Tassie-quake-linked-to-Asian-
disaster/2004/12/27/1103996493148.html?oneclick=true

One seismologist believes the Tasmanian quake earlier set the recent chain of events in place. I am so grateful for the Net and am experiencing a way of communicating which is so different. For a start, people on forums mobilise themselves quickly to locate and share information. Forumites understand we need to be informed, reassured, we need to pool our information and observations. It both reassures and creates a positive domino effect. I wish I had kept the url of the site which said we needed a Ministry of Peace and not a ministry of war. We need the military to manage and demystify chaos and catastrophe, not to create it. As a planet we can mobilise ourselves more effectively than ever to relieve pain and suffering if we are kept informed and told what we can do. So I’m sorry, the thing about the seismologists knowing there was a tsunami coming and they had no one to contact just doesn’t wash with me. Not today. I know I can get on the Net and find what I want and contact whomever I wish. Seriously, what would you do if you knew there was a tsunami coming? We warn each other about all sorts of things. We have traffic reports, accident reports, mobiles, the Net, phone lines and phone books. We can mass mail. We can SMS and the addresses of the hotels are all on the Net. More likely a classic case of denial. Fear – Forget Everything And Run. You know how you get when you put the heater on and it doesn’t work? You try it again…and again. The more severe the trauma, the more pronounced the denial. Human. We are human…and, thank God, because we are all doing what we can, even if it’s just sitting caring. When we are told what to do, planet earth will get in there and do its best. More than ever. If you doubt the power of our capacity to rally our thoughts fast in this day and age in the most amazingly lucid fashion:



Larry Mosqueda
put this together on Sept 15th 2001


and Martin Ball put together a very succinct piece about our political situation in Australia over his Christmas lunch . It’s at theage.com.au under Opinion but you have to sign in. Fairfax seems to like you to sign on for news. That’s the amazing thing about the current events. News stations here have brought us the news from people’s video cameras, people’s mobiles and the real people have really held themselves together to give us real news in spite of their fear and trauma. People are everything.

seismic map


Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe,grows beyond his work,walks up the stairs of his concepts,emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath.

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