Power of the powerless.

Those of us who saw them will never forget the TV images of planes crashing into the World Trade Center in New York, with terrible loss of life.

But perhaps we also recall other images from earlier in the year. The protests at the G8 Summit in Genoa and the ring of steel around the leaders of the rich world. The violent farm occupations in Zimbabwe. The refugees plucked from certain death by the captain of a Norwegian freighter who was then not allowed to land them on Australian soil. The other asylum seekers trying, night after night, to find their way through the Channel Tunnel to Britain, sometimes even on foot.

What do all these images tell us?

They tell us that in a world that has shrunk, through globalization and communications, the two thirds who live in or near poverty now exist cheek by jowl with the third who live in comparative wealth and ease. Furthermore, the powerless too often find themselves humiliated by the arrogant way in which the powerful wield their economic muscle, military might and technological wizardry.

As long as this continues, the problems on our TV screens will not go away, whatever the result of the military campaign. Drinking a cocktail of resentment, envy and desperation, the powerless will exercise what power they can. The terrorist will use means that are cruelly devastating; the landless will occupy land; the migrant will use the only power he or she has--their hands and their feet and their dogged determination to achieve a better life.

And as we go to press, there are other images--bombing raids, more and more refugees, young service people risking their lives, queues being checked for anthrax poisoning....

What can the rich world do? Obviously those who perpetrate acts of terrorism must be brought to book, with the least possible loss of innocent lives--no easy task. But we must also learn to consult and show that we care. This is not soft sentiment, but hard practical reality. The powerless are so often excluded from the councils of the powerful, their fate decided on the other side of the globe. Their envy and hatred--as well as their desperation--stem, in part, from this sense of exclusion and humiliation. As for caring, the Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief pointed the way, by identifying one cause of poverty and working to rectify it.

On a broader front we need to develop respect towards other cultures and faiths and to moderate the excesses of western market capitalism wherever they appear.

What better determination to take into a new and unpredictable year?