Positive seeds grow out of disaster

At around the time of the illegal invasion of Iraq by the "coalition of the chilling", The Jakarta Post kindly printed a letter of mine in which I said in view of Tony Blair's convoluted and mendacious rationale for going to war it was an embarrassment to be British.

Now, I'd like to say just the opposite. The response of the British public to the appeal for tsunami disaster funds has been truly, truly heartwarming. In pubs and clubs up and down the UK collections have gone on as they have in open public spaces, but the biggest response appears to have been either by telephone or online.

Of course the British public is not alone in its gut reaction to this catastrophe. Friends in Indonesia tell me that the ordinary man and woman in the street there has reacted with the same kind of heartwarming generosity, as have the people of Australia, Malaysia, Spain, Germany and, yes, the USA, where the government has been shamed into greatly increasing its own contribution.

In this very human response by ordinary people I find the seeds of something truly positive, a new internationalism that cares little or nothing for the callousness and meanness of the free marketeers such as the Ayn Rand Institute (USA) which urged on its website the Bush administration not to give a single dollar to tsunami victims because "every dollar is extorted from American taxpayers"!

A sense of our common humanity runs in the veins of the Sri Lankans and Thais who selflessly helped the European and Australian victims in their coastal villages, and in the veins of the Birmingham (UK) fireman Roy Phillips who ran repeatedly into the waves at Phuket to drag away swimmers. It beats in the hearts of those who have reached into their pockets to aid those who have lost everything. It may not attach itself to any slogan or agenda but it "knows" to where it must apply itself.

Yes, something positive has demonstrated itself these past days. Now we the public in countries all over the world must not let governments walk away from their obligations to provide long- term assistance to rebuilding efforts everywhere from Sumatra to Somalia.

DAVID JARDINE, Carlisle, UK