Personally, I find it too difficult to donate to a country which persecutes its own people in favour of its military and police, and feeling almost certain that the money won’t go any further than the government departments.

I have scarcely seen a ‘uniform’ anywhere in the media reports helping the victims. Where are they?

I am also struggling to understand why so many children of 2 to 5 years of age have the stunted development (or underdevelopment) of babies. Their condition is not recent and cannot be attributed to the floods.

These people have been neglected by their government for decades, and it is also frustrating to me why such people would have 5 or more children when they knowingly can’t feed them. As the children die of malnutrition, are they then going to endeavour to replace them?

I’m starting to believe that humanitarian work is the culmination of personal development, or at least, close to it. Russell Langfield has pointed-out problems in Pakistan. Why can’t a nuclear power like Pakistan act to save its own population? Could this flood, caused by climate change be the will of Allah, or is Pakistan just unlucky to be in the foothills of the Himalayas? Yes I will donate because I know 50% of that donation will be wasted on administration costs, but the other 50% may help members of the human race.

Reported threats by the Taliban to kill foreign aid workers can’t have helped either.

And, please, none of that childishly simplistic nonsense that if those mad bad Zionist Jews were nicer to their poor put-upon peace-loving Palestinians, the Palistan Talibs would be ever so much nicer to kafir aid workers. (Painless lethal injection, maybe?)

Interesting to read somewhere (can’t recall exactly) that infrastructure development along the Indo-Pakistan border is immensely greater on the Indian side than on the other.

Don’t forget that our outpouring of aid to the Aceh province in NE Sumatra after the December 2004 tsunami was knowingly directed to a decidedly ‘Islamic’, even ‘Islamist’ region, not merely a ‘Muslim’ one.

And please, again, lose the predictable rants about how ‘Islamophobic’ we are.

Re #3
Yes, and you can trust everything the USA says about another country, can’t you? They’ve got a great recent track record.

The match fixing antics of the Pakistani cricket team have done nothing to enthuse the public to contribute to the flood appeal. If corruption and personal greed can so dominate a national cricket team, what does that say about the morality of the ‘educated’ ruling classes of that country?

Comment 5, note this from today’s “Last Post” (the short letters section in The Australian):

“No doubt the Pakistani match-fixer will donate a large proportion of his ill-gotten gains to the Pakistani flood victims.

Kel Joaquin-Byrne, Randwick, NSW”.

And Comment 1 asks “why such people [as the poor in Pakistan] would have 5 or more children when they knowingly can’t feed them”.

The answer is complex, but here are some factors involved:

(i) the average child per woman stat falls as prosperity rises;

(ii) the average child per woman stat falls as the prosperity of women rises;

(iii) freeing women from traditional repressions, such as those associated with misogynistic religious dogmas and cultural practices, has the effect of doubling the amount of creativity, initiative and endeavour in a society, as has been clearly shown in the recent histories of our sorts of societies^; and, therefore,

(iv) newly liberated and prosperous women have other things to do than act as baby machines.

There can be little hope for Pakistan until these developments are well under way.

^ much the same argument can be made for the ultimate futility of Zuid Afrikan apartheid, segregation in the US South, and India’s continuing caste arrangements -  those cultures were / are practising a ‘cut off our left hands’ approach to maximising their nations’ potential. Ultimately, it is just plain senseless -  as senseless as Hawthorn delisting 100-goal-a-season forward Lance Franklin simply because he is a left-footer.

BTW, though, occasionally such moronic racism can have an upside: think of who banned one A Einstein from working on ‘stuff’.

Re #6
Which all goes back to Government responsibility, not religion. Eg: China’s one child policy.

Surely it would be a religious (not just moral) sin to bring children into the world knowingly to be starved for their whole short cruel existence.

Prosperity of a family falls as more children are born to it.

Comment 7, re “Which all goes back to Government responsibility, not religion”, wouldn’t it be a religion’s responsibility if the culture, society, government and adminstration was controlled by a religion?

As it is in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where top clerics have an absolute power of veto over government & bureaucratic decisions.

Or take the Republic of Ireland, where the pre-WW II constitution gave the RC Church special powers & privileges, particularly in areas such as marriage, schooling and censorship -  it took Ireland until the 1990s to join the 20th century.

Re #8
Religions don’t make Laws, Governments do, although one wonders when our Parliament is opened daily with the lord’s prayer. But, once the religious zealouts get into and control Government the Laws are made.