Couldn't agree more, Donuel. Considering the number of Muslims in the area hit by the quake and tsunamis, it would certainly behoove the US & Britain particularly, to be a bit more forthcoming with cash AND compassion, or we'll have signed our own death warrants in Asia as well as the Middle East.

14% of India's population is Muslim. 100% of the population of the Maldives is Muslim. Only 7% of Sri Lankans are Muslim, but a whopping 88% of Indonesia, the country hardest hit, are Muslim, along with 60% of Malaysians.

And the whole Muslim world is certainly watching the US & Britain right now, and the EU & UN to a lesser extent.

One need only look at the levels of aid the international relief community has poured into Iraq in the last year and half to see just how skewed relief efforts have been in the imperial Shrub II era.

Gerhard Schroeder is wisely advocating for debt relief for the hardest hit countries like Indonesia, just as it was given to Iraq, after the US and Britain strong armed their allies into it earlier this year. Billions of dollars in international & US aid money has been dumped down the bottomless pit that is Iraq in the past year and half, and all the US can scrounge together for the entire south Asian region is a measly $35 million bucks.

Read the overview about the politics of disaster relief aid in the other thread, match it up with the news that is already out there (like Schroeder's suggestion that some debt relief be given to the region, comments by UN officials about the niggardly response from the world's wealthiest nations, etc) and it all begins to add up to our US government's intentions to do as little as it possibly can to extend aid, comfort and assistance to the region, much less our compasssion.

Why the very idea of the US being a compassionate nation has become a cruel and bitter joke around the world, and the predicatably despicable Bush administration response is the exact reason why more and more people around the world view the US government and it's "aid and development" agencies and arms with such contempt.