Real Monasterio de Santa Clara de Tordesillas

I agree. Japan's response to the disaster has been significantly more efficient than the other countries you mentioned.

But that's to be expected from a first-world country. First-world countries, Haiti and Turkey are not.

I'm sure we've all heard this before but I'm saying it again:

If the Japs had spent more time building high-tech coastal defences rather than sitting around messing with robots and eating sushi, the casualty toll would have been down by thousands. Thousands.

I agree. Japan's response to the disaster has been significantly more efficient than the other countries you mentioned.

But that's to be expected from a first-world country. First-world countries, Haiti and Turkey are not.

But given the amount of foreign aid poured into those countries previous to their respective disasters, they had to funding and opportunities to advance and improve. The "powers that be" however, chose rather to line their own pockets as opposed to being Public Servants. Call me naive if you wish, but I do believe in the perfectibility of human beings. We Eastern Orthodox call that Theosis in religious terms.

It's free will, the choice a public servant has to either ignore building codes for a little bakshish or enforce building codes for the safety of the populace, to promote business that provide a living wage to citizens or to promote debt slavery and line their own pockets with the extra profits, to live off the labor of others or to labor for the betterment of others, to espouse education for all or to keep people unlettered and ignorant of their rights and the greater world.

Sadly the "developed" first world in cahoots with the elites of third world nations, does little to encourage the positive path, preferring to keep a cheap offshore labor force at the ready and providing food but not farming tools, clothes but not looms and sewing machines, medical disaster missions rather than ongoing training in preventative medicine. ,

I'm sure we've all heard this before but I'm saying it again:

If the Japs had spent more time building high-tech coastal defences rather than sitting around messing with robots and eating sushi, the casualty toll would have been down by thousands. Thousands.

You are an engineer, yes? Thing is that Japan has the most advanced tsunami protection found anywhere., An the good old USofA could have put their resources towards building the bestest perfect high-tech levees at New Orleans rather than messing around in other nations' civil conflicts and eating fully loaded nachos with bacon.