TELL THAT TO THE MARINES

Viewing the news may induce you to think of many things. Political commentaries may stir you to heights of displeasure or otherwise depending what and where you are. What with the current setting and uncertainty, leadership turmoil and challenging voices, one cannot help being perturbed and distrustful. It has been two months since 8 March 2008, yet the leadership has yet to show significant headway. Incidents of road accidents, robbery, murder and abandon new-born stir you to much uneasiness.The latter being quite too often in the news, certainly seek urgent focus. The poor young girl,traumatized by the early conception, carrying a new life within out of wedlock, loss without the comfort and blessing of her family and sympathizer could only decide the simplest and best alternative to her grieve: abandon wherever and whenever.

On the other extreme disasters that hit the world from time to time may leave such predicament as a small spec in the world calamities. Only a few days ago the cyclone that devastated neighboring Myanmar carried in its wake total annihilation of the Irrawaddy plain killing almost 100,000 by conservative estimates. Rescue and aid facilities are farther blocked by the military junta government, multiplying the increasing sufferings.

In its simplest situation, imagine the time you are inundated with flood waters that crept into your home slowly and yet allowed you time to move whatever belongings to higher ground. For several nights you are left in the dark as the electricity has been cut and you suffered the enormity of going without fresh water too. You freaked and complained. Yet you and the family had the greatest pleasure of wading and splashing in the knee-height flood water. A the end of it all, you still received, monetary assistance from the government. The luckier one got compounded by their insurance companies. That would be the closest we in Malaysia come to seeing flooding excepting when 'tsunami' hit parts of the north-west shores.

So telling about great disasters, that incessantly struck Indonesia, the Irrawaddy Delta, the Hwang Ho Basin to the larger majority is likely to be passed as natural and without qualm.

Wait until we see it in its true identity. So give a prayer to those who are suffering from the latest natural calamity so near to home too.