liveonearth: (Default)
 

The long emergency is coming to pass.  So many people are dying, will die, that we can become numb to it.  We may already be numb to it.  I find myself not numb yet.  When I read that 900 are dead and 180,000 displaced in Pakistan, I cry.  I have crises here that take my meager resources and time, but this huge disaster is far beyond the suffering that I endure.  We won't be able to save all the people. Will we try to save something for those who survive? Staying sane while the world's marbles roll may be too much to expect.


the news today:
FLOODING IN PAKISTAN DISPLACES 180,000 PEOPLE 8/27/22

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-floods-force-tens-thousands-homes-overnight-2022-08-27/

 

Pakistan floods force tens of thousands from homes overnight

By Jibran Ahmad and Mohammad Yunus Yawar

August 27, 2022

9:18 AM PDT

Last Updated a day ago

Asia Pacific

Pakistan's massive floods bring more grief

 

PESHAWAR/KABUL, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people fled their homes in northern Pakistan on Saturday after a fast-rising river destroyed a major bridge, as deadly floods cause devastation across the country.

 

Powerful flash floods in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa caused the Kabul River to swell, sweeping away a large bridge overnight, cutting off some districts from road access.

 

Downstream, fears of flooding around the river banks prompted around 180,000 people in the district of Charsadda to flee their homes, according to disaster officials, with some spending the night on highways with their livestock.

 

Historic monsoon rains and flooding in Pakistan have affected more than 30 million people over the last few weeks, the country's climate change minister said, calling the situation a "climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions". 

 

The military has joined the country's national and provincial authorities in responding to the floods and Pakistan's army chief on Saturday visited the southern province of Balochistan, which has been hit heavily by the rains.

 

"The people of Pakistan are our priority and we won't spare any effort to assist them in this difficult time," said army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

 

Pakistani leaders have appealed to the international community for help and plan to launch an international appeal fund. The foreign affairs ministry said Turkey had sent a team to help with rescue efforts.

 

"The magnitude of the calamity is bigger than estimated," said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in a tweet, after visiting flooded areas.

 

In neighbouring Afghanistan, the Taliban administration also appealed for help after flooding in central and eastern provinces. 

 

The death toll from floods this month in Afghanistan had risen to 192, disaster authorities said. Thousands of livestock had been killed and 1.7 million fruit trees destroyed, raising concerns over how families would feed themselves going into the cooler months while the country deals with an economic crisis.

 

"We ask the humanitarian organisations, the international community and other related organisations and foundations to help us," Sharafudden Muslim, the deputy director of Afghanistan's disaster ministry, said at a press conference, adding more than a million families required assistance.

 

Reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul; Writing by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Ros Russell

liveonearth: (Default)
 Copied from a friend (on fb).

This is utterly brilliant. I wish I could take credit for writing it, but no.

British wit to help get you through the nightmare:

"Someone on Quora asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote this magnificent response.
A few things spring to mind.
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever.
I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.
Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.
And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.
Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.
He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.
He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.
That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman should, would, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority - perhaps a third - of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
* Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
* You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.
He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws - he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:
'My God… what… have… I… created?
If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

liveonearth: (Default)
There were formerly horizons within which people lived and thought and mythologized. There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. It is as when dividing panels are withdrawn from between chambers of very hot and very cold airs: there is a rush of these forces together. And so we are right now in an extremely perilous age of thunder, lightning, and hurricanes all around. I think it is improper to become hysterical about it, projecting hatred and blame. It is an inevitable, altogether natural thing that when energies that have never met before come into collision—each bearing its own pride—there should be turbulence. That is just what we are experiencing; and we are riding it: riding it to a new age, a new birth, a totally new condition of mankind—to which no one anywhere alive today can say that he has the key, the answer, the prophecy, to its dawn. Nor is there anyone to condemn here (”Judge not, that you may not be judged!”). What is occurring is completely natural, as are its pains, confusions, and mistakes.

~ Joseph Campbell, Myths To Live By

liveonearth: (Default)
 A day will come in your lifetime
when the Earth, your mother,
will beg you, with tears running,
to save her.
Ho, if you fail to help her,
you and all people will die like dogs.
Remember this.


~~Hollow Horn (Lakota), 1929,
as recounted in Black Hills, White Justice:
The Sioux Nation versus the United States,
1775 to the Present (1991)

liveonearth: (Default)
 "The world
will be saved
by the western woman." 

--The Dalai Lama

liveonearth: (business dance)

What's distinctive about Sanders is not (or not simply) that he's an ideological purist who refuses to think pragmatically but that he just doesn't know or care very much about the details of how the world works, how to affect concrete change, and what the possible unintended consequences of major changes is likely to be. He'd rather rally the troops and give a rousing speech.
--Damon Linker in the Week, here:
http://theweek.com/articles/617065/bernie-sanders-hollow-aspirational-politics

I share this quote because I disagree.  I think that Bernie sees the writing on the wall, that this crash will either happen sooner and in an intentional way, or later in an even more devastating way.  Take apart the banks, or watch them take us apart.  Re-establish human decency or take care of just yourself.  This crossroads leads one way, the other way is inconceivable.  You just can't change directions when there is so much momentum.  Not without a crash.  Bernie knows that many people will die in the process, that poor people will loose the game, and that over generations rich people will be able to relocate to wherever they need to go to survive and propagate.  Idiocracy will come to pass if tRump is any indication of wealthy breeding.

I thought since the beginning that this polarity between tRump and Bernie is representative of the deepest cultural fissure in this nation.  It has been fascinating to watch it play out.

To assert that Bernie doesn't know how the world works is a pretty low blow.  He knows.  His heart broke a long time ago.  Now he's trying to do something to change it.  I appreciate his efforts and I wish that he'd team up with my old buddy Ron Paul (he's not too old) and connect the political circle.  If anybody knows what's going on, it's these old dudes.

liveonearth: (moon)

When I look back on all these worries,

I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed

that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,

most of which had never happened.

– Winston Churchill

liveonearth: (Volume 11 spinal tap)

Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change.
When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken
depend on the ideas that are lying around.
That, I believe, is our basic function:
to develop alternatives to existing policies,
to keep them alive and available
until the politically impossible becomes
the politically inevitable.

--Milton Friedman

liveonearth: (old books)
Foresight isn't
a mysterious gift bestowed at birth.
It is the product of particular ways of thinking,
of gathering information,
of updating beliefs.
These habits of thought can be learned and cultivated
by any intelligent, thoughtful,
determined person.

--Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner on page 18 in
Superforecasting; the Art and Science of Prediction
liveonearth: (Kiva)

There is a great deal of difference
between loss, change, and transformation.
A loss is a step backward;
a change is an opportunity;
transformation is a step forward.
The common denominator in these three realities
is the fact that one must
give up something.
It is possible for both loss and change to lead to transformation,
but it is not possible for transformation to occur unless
something is lost and something is changed.

–Anthony Padovano

liveonearth: (urban sitter)
Sounds like the planet's overall temperature increased by a whole degree in one year.  It may be time to stop trying to stop global warming, and start making plans about what to do about rising seas, receding ice, and the other direct impacts to people's lives.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/un-weather-agency-reports-2015-is-hottest-year-on-record/

(**tag note: merged "global warming" into "climate change")
liveonearth: (dancer romani)
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.


--Howard Zinn
liveonearth: (Homer Simpson "D'oh!")
Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.
--Lily Tomlin
liveonearth: (critter 2)
It's simple. All we have to do is let Ebola decimate the human population.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/04/doctor_doom_eric_pianka_receiv002118.html
We are not the only or most important species, but we think we are.

Somehow it helps me to keep the big picture in mind. We live, then we die. Our species rises to dominance, then fades. The planet goes on. The Universe goes on.
liveonearth: (critter 2)
That's a lot of people who can't shower in or cook with the water coming from the faucet. The solution to this pollution is said to be dilution, same as ever, which means people have to wait until enough good water has run through the system to wash out the chemical. The wildlife get no such warning. The symptoms are nausea and vomiting. I haven't found anything about longterm toxicity yet.

Events like this are manageable for populations wealthy enough to purchase bottled water or travel to cleaner digs. For impoverished folks and for the creatures and plants of the land, this is a true crisis.

The leak was a foaming agent used to wash coal, and it went from a 48,000 gallon storage tank straight into the Elk River. The primary component in the foaming agent that leaked is the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (CH3C6H10CH2OH). It has been patented as an air freshener and has a slightly minty odor (another good reason not to use air fresheners). It is used in ~20-25% of coal plans, mainly for "coking coal" which is used for metallurgical purposes, but not for making coal burned to make electricity ("steam coal") which is the lion's share of total coal produced.

The biz owning the leaky tank is called Freedom Industries, and it distributes mining reagents for WV, VA, PA, OH, MD, MN, KY, and MI. In 2008, Freedom Industries was specially selected by Georgia-Pacific Chemicals as a distributor of G-P's Talon brand mining reagents for the states already mentioned. Georgia-Pacific Chemicals is, of course, a subsidiary of Georgia-Pacific, which was acquired by Koch Industries in 2005. Koch is big biz, and should be penalized to assure that they will take better precautions in all their plants in the future.



SOURCES
Fresh Brains sent me this link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/11/west-virginia-chemical-sp_n_4582100.html
National Geographic on the same leak:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140110-4-methylcyclohexane-methanol-chemical-spill-west-virginia-science/
Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/11/1268990/-Freedom-Industries-Has-Ties-to-Koch-Brothers
Koch Industries
http://www.kochind.com/
liveonearth: (moon)
Today on MoveOn they're soliciting for signatures on a petition to make Walmart pay its workers better. Moveon says it's an outrage that Wallyworld employees have to use public services for healthcare because can't afford better. What isn't mentioned is that they spent what they had on vehicles and fuel, guns, alcohol and cigarettes, mobile phones and flatscreens. And a roof over their head.

Minimum wage is law. No company can hire you over the table for anything less. Walmart can pay minimum wage and if people apply for and accept that job, they have made a deal with that company. If they don't like it, they can quit, get another job. If there isn't another job, they can start their own business, or be useful to a family business or take care of an aging elder. They can run for office, start a protest, try and change the minimum wage. There is no shame in doing these things. The shame is in doing nothing. I just don't know how far from nothing this petition is. Having a grievance is not the same as having a solution.

When the economy contracts, families get closer. The resources that we do have get shared with those we care about. The death rate went down in the Great Depression, perhaps for this reason.

I can't get on board with political efforts to increase "jobs" because what "jobs" means is working for large corporations which will strike the best deal they can get for everything including manpower. It's the game, and winning for the 1% means never having to worry about a job. The worker never wins. The worker is a cog in a machine that cares nothing about him and will replace him the moment he begins to crack. The safety net may ease his passage a bit, but it is easy to get caught in.

To be trapped in the safety net is to lose your self respect, to become depressed, to want to die. This may be why so many white American men commit suicide. Middle-aged white guys commit suicide more than anybody else. Perhaps the veterans are driving that statistic.
liveonearth: (hotspring geology rainbow)
They're predicting that in most parts of the world the new "average" will be warmer than the previous "hot" (exceeds bounds of historical variability), beginning between 2033 and 2061 (global average 2047 if we keep going the way we are). Local variations are expected. Tropical regions should get uncomfortable before elsewhere. Even a serious effort to stabilize spiraling greenhouse gas emissions will only stave off these changes until around 2069. The study was published in Nature and included 39 different models from 21 teams in 12 countries, which surprisingly all pretty much agreed.

'Uncomfortable' climates to devastate cities within a decade, study says, John Roach NBC News

Study Abstract
Ecological and societal disruptions by modern climate change are critically determined by the time frame over which climates shift beyond historical analogues. Here we present a new index of the year when the projected mean climate of a given location moves to a state continuously outside the bounds of historical variability under alternative greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. Using 1860 to 2005 as the historical period, this index has a global mean of 2069 (±18 years s.d.) for near-surface air temperature under an emissions stabilization scenario and 2047 (±14 years s.d.) under a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario. Unprecedented climates will occur earliest in the tropics and among low-income countries, highlighting the vulnerability of global biodiversity and the limited governmental capacity to respond to the impacts of climate change. Our findings shed light on the urgency of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions if climates potentially harmful to biodiversity and society are to be prevented.

Detroit

Jul. 29th, 2013 09:58 pm
liveonearth: (moon)
Now that they've officially declared bankruptcy, Detroit can start to turn around. The rest of US cities that haven't found a way to deal with shortfalls, well, they can see the writing on the wall in this article. The big banks are still getting paid. They own us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/opinion/come-see-detroit-americas-future.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
liveonearth: (moon)
It sounds cruel, but survivors laugh and play, and even in the most horrible situations--perhaps especially in those situations--they continue to laugh and play. To deal with reality you first much recognize it as such...and play puts a person in touch with his environment, while laughter makes the feeling of being threatened manageable.

...Laughter stimulates the left prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that helps us to feel good and be motivated. That stimulation alleviates anxiety and frustration. There is evidence that laughter can send chemical signals to actively inhibit the firing of nerves in the amygdala, thereby dampening fear. Laughter, then, can help temper negative emotions.


Laurence Gonzales in Deep Survival, page 41.

Profile

liveonearth: (Default)
liveonearth

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11121314151617
1819202122 2324
25262728293031

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 25th, 2025 07:48 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios