Which is one good reason for not writing too much about the tsunami. I don't trust myself not to be cheap.
But there's just this one thing I want to say: the public mood has changed. For the past couple of years it's been Them and Us and War against Terror and ugly, ugly, ugly, and now, suddenly, it's Brotherhood of Man. Westerner and Easterner, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, believer and secularist- we're all in this together.
And wonderful things have happened. Pakistan sent aid to its old enemy India, national leaders have discovered that there are votes in being kind and the warplanes and warships are being used to carry food and medicine and water.