Awful, just awful

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Still taking in all that footage from the Indian Ocean. It's awful.
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And without fail, as usual, the UK media has displayed its astonishing chauvinism by coming out with lines like 'hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by the tragedy including many British tourists'.
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This may be a personal thing, but at times like this I for one don't rate a British tourist's life higher than any other human being. It shouldn’t matter where the victims come from and it shouldn’t cross a reporter's mind, not for a second, to distinguish between them when covering such a story.
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The other thought that strikes me is that, in the scheme of things, this particular wave wasn't very large. The last 100 years or so have been relatively benign when it comes to natural catastrophes and MUCH larger tsunami's have hit the Indian Ocean during the span of human history. People have the most peculiar habit of settling in large numbers slap bang on top of potential disaster zones; on the margins of the Indian Ocean, along the San Andreas fault, across the Ganges Delta and on the slopes of Vesuvius. Sooner or later, all of these places will be creamed and creamed badly; Los Angeles, Naples, Bangladesh, Japan, very possibly in our lifetime. There are some places that people just aren’t meant to live. For some reason, Nicaragua comes to mind; earthquakes, hurricanes AND malaria. People just don’t seem to get the hint.
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Of course nobody expects it to happen to them. I'm a smoker. I understand.
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