Thursday, August 31, 2017

1,200 Die as “Devastating” Climate Change-Linked Floods Submerge Parts of South Asia






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVpKA2J1xfE
























































South Asia floods: India counts cost of severe monsoon season




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lAoM2PGW8c

























































South Asia floods: Mumbai building collapses as monsoon rains wreak havoc
















Flooding across India, Nepal and Bangladesh leaves parts of cities underwater as storm moves on to Pakistan





At least 21 people are dead and more than a dozen others trapped after monsoon downpours caused a building to collapse in Mumbai.

The four-storey residential building gave way on Thursday morning in the densely populated area of Bhendi Bazaar, after roads were turned into rivers in India’s financial capital. The city has been struggling to cope with some of the heaviest rainfall in more than 15 years.

Rescue workers, police and residents helped pull 13 people out of the rubble and were looking for those buried beneath. Authorities have advised people living in an adjacent building to evacuate after it developed cracks following the collapse. 

The death toll could have been much worse, officials said, because the building, which houses a nursery school, collapsed half an hour before children were due to arrive at 9am.

Thousands more buildings that are more than 100 years old are at risk of collapse due in part to foundations being weakened by flood waters.

Across the region more than 1,200 people are feared to have died and 40 million are estimated to have been affected by flooding in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Vast swaths of land are underwater in the eastern part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where more than 100 people have reportedly died, 3,097 villages are submerged and almost 3 million villagers have been affected by flooding, according to officials. Army personnel have joined rescuers to evacuate people from the area.

The storm reached Pakistan on Thursday, lashing the port city of Karachi, where at least 14 people have died, and streets have been submerged by water. The country’s meteorological department forecast that the rains would continue for three days in various parts of Sindh province, where authorities closed schools as a precaution.

Up to 97mm (3.8in) of rain has been recorded in some areas of Karachi, filling the streets with muddy water, sewage and rubbish.

Among the dead was an eight-year-old boy who was crushed when a building belonging to the Federal Investigation Agency collapsed. Most of the dead were electrocuted, leading the city’s energy provider, K-Electric, to cut power to certain areas.

“Some feeders have been switched off in view of safety concerns in areas with waterlogging, and restoration work will be expedited in affected areas as soon as standing water is wiped out,” Sadia Dada, the director of marketing and communication for K-Electric, told Dawn newspaper.

About 6,000 villagers are threatened with flooding after the rains breached the Thado dam on the Malir river. The army has been called in to help with evacuation, and has also provided Karachi’s city administration with water extraction pumps. 

Windstorms and rain are also expected in the Balochistan and Punjab provinces. The meteorological department said rains were also expected in the capital, Islamabad, and in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir.

One third of Bangladesh was believed to be underwater and the UN described the situation in Nepal, where 150 people have died, as the worst flooding in a decade.

The floods have also destroyed or damaged 18,000 schools in the south Asia region, meaning that about 1.8 million children cannot go to classes, Save the Children said on Thursday.

The charity said hundreds of thousands of children could fall permanently out of the school system if education was not prioritised in relief efforts.

“We haven’t seen flooding on this scale in years and it’s putting the long-term education of an enormous number of children at great risk. From our experience, the importance of education is often undervalued in humanitarian crises and we simply cannot let this happen again. We cannot go backwards,” said Rafay Hussain, Save the Children’s general manager in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

“We know that the longer children are out of school following a disaster like this the less likely it is that they’ll ever return. That’s why it’s so important that education is properly funded in this response, to get children back to the classroom as soon as it’s safe to do so and to safeguard their futures.”

Floods have caused devastation in many parts of India. Unprecedented rainfall in Assam in the north-east has killed more than 150 people. About 600 villages are still underwater even though the torrential rain began earlier this month.

Rhinos in Assam’s Kaziranga nature reserve had to flee to higher ground. “We get flooding every year but I have never seen anything quite like this in my life,” Ashok Baruah, a farmer, told journalists.

In Bihar, the death toll has reached 514, with people still living in makeshift huts days after the flooding started. However, the flood waters, which turned fields into lakes, appear to be receding.

In Mumbai, the rain forced nurses and doctors at the busiest hospital in the city to wade through wards knee-high in filthy water to move patients to the first floor. Outside the King Edward memorial hospital, a man going to visit his wife who was due to have a caesarean had to wade through flooded streets to reach her. Children swam or paddled down the streets lying on planks of wood.

Flood victims in the city included a doctor who fell down a manhole and another who died after being trapped in his car while waiting for the water to recede. Others living in the low-lying areas most affected by the flooding were swept away into the sea or died when walls collapsed.

As train services ground to a halt, hundreds of thousands of commuters were stranded, unable to go home. 

TV commentators voiced the anger of those caught in the chaos. The TV personality Suhel Seth lashed out at the “scoundrels, rogues, villains, rascals, incompetents and useless fools” in the municipal authority for not being better prepared for the annual monsoon flooding.

The deluge brought back memories of the 2005 floods that killed more than 500 people in the city.

“Why does nothing change? Why are we left to fend for ourselves when they had weather forecasts warning them of extremely heavy rainfall?” asked the author and columnist Shobhaa De.






















Mumbai monsoon flood from National Park flyover boriwali 29th Aug 2017




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbB8xnOZ6xI






















































Hurricane Harvey, Climate Change Denialists and the Wrath of the Right










AUGUST 31, 2017









Natural disasters that are exacerbated by industrialization really bring out the best in people. Especially climate change denialists.


As the Texas-Louisiana Gulf coast drowned in the floods of Hurricane Harvey, Donald Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe in hopes of capturing higher ratings and Ann Coulter, who needs no introduction, took to her Twitter account to express sympathy for the victims. Okay, of course she didn’t, instead the Queen of Darkness blasted out that God’s hatred of homosexuality is more credible than climate science.


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Ann Coulter Retweeted POLITICO Magazine
I don't believe Hurricane Harvey is God's punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor. But that is more credible than "climate change."





What does Coulter believe then? That Harvey is nothing new? Actually, it is, no matter what Coulter tweets. Harvey is now the heaviest rainstorm in US history and was made worse by our warming climate. There’s little scientific doubt about it. As climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe and many others point out, as the world warms, evaporation of water increases, which means there is more water vapor in storms and more rain to dump compared to 70 years ago. In basic terms, warmer air is able to hold more water and hence more rainfall is likely to occur. Hurricane intensity in the future is predictedto increase as our climate warms.


The Gulf of Mexico’s surface temp increased almost 5 degreesFahrenheit as Harvey was building last week. These waters, one of the warmest ocean surfaces on the planet at the time, along with warmer air temps, allowed Harvey to turn from a tropical storm into a cat 4 hurricane almost overnight. Even Coulter’s God couldn’t stop it.


Coulter and her fans probably wouldn’t want the floods to dry up anyway, because when crisis hits there is money to be made and victims to rip off. As
Ken Klippenstein first reported, a Best Buy in Cypress, an unincorporated suburb of Houston in Harris County, began selling packs of bottled water for $42.96. Best Buy later apologized in response to the report, but the Texas AG’s office as of August 29 had received over 550 consumer complaints of price gouging. It’s safe to say Best Buy is just the tip of the iceberg.
Unfortunately, disaster capitalism is the least of concerns for many Houston residents that are losing everything. Survival is their most pressing struggle. As the flood waters recede, far more deaths will likely be recorded — more victims of capitalism and carbon. Sadly it’s a trend that’s going to continue.


No doubt the worse is yet to come for Houston and the surrounding area, even when the rains end. ExxonMobil admits that Harvey has caused damage to two of its massive Houston refineries, releasing hazardous pollutants. The company’s Beaumont refinery, which is the second largest in the country, released at least 1,312.84 pounds of sulfur dioxide after Harvey hit. Many other chemicals also leaked when the sites were forced to shut down. These refineries sit in largely poor, minority neighborhoods that have long been victims of environmental racism — injustices that will continue unabated if Donald Trump has his way and destroys what’s left of the EPA’s Environmental Justice Program.


“Any release of carcinogens (like benzene, 1,3-butadiene) adds to the increased cancer risk for those living near these plants,” said Luke Metzger, director of the group Environment Texas. “[Nitrogen oxides or sulfur dioxide] and other respiratory irritants adds to the respiratory problems people in the area suffer from at high rates.”
In short, Harvey is bad for Houston’s air too, especially for those that reside near these refineries.


There’s more. Harris County is home to a dozen federal Superfund sites, more than any county in the Lone Star State. Currently over 30% of the county is flooded and the EPA admits that as water levels rise, risk of contamination from the sites increase. A chemical plant in Crosby, southeast of Houston, is in meltdown mode. There have been reports of explosions at the plant that is six feet underwater. The facility produces peroxides, harsh compounds that are used in construction and pharmaceutical products. Inhaling fumes from the plant can be very dangerous and the EPA states that peroxides can cause skin and liver damage.


While the impacts of Hurricane Harvey are unprecedented in the US, these types of extreme storms are becoming the new norm, not only for the Gulf Coast, but for many areas of the globe. All the climate change skeptics, especially those with the power to regulate the oil, gas and coal industries, are certainly culpable in the death and destruction these events bring with them.

Right now in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, over 41 million people are being affected by massive, uncontrolled flooding. Over 1,200 have died thus far and millions more have been forced to flee their homes. These monsoon floods are unlike anything they’ve seen, and similar to Houston, are being made worse as temperatures around the world continue to rise.


It doesn’t really matter if Donald Trump believes global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese or if Coulter thinks God’s wrath is more legitimate than climate science. More and more people are finding out that shit’s getting very real and will only get worse as carbon and methane emissions increase in the years ahead.

Perhaps the silver-lining of the unfolding Texas catastrophe is that it will wake up a few climate change skeptics and transform them into advocates for a future free of fossil fuels.

One can hope, anyway, but I’m not holding my breath. I will leave that to all those still underwater in Houston.






























Wednesday, August 30, 2017

What You Aren't Being Told About Kamala Harris





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64XpK-ieJUc













































Mainstream Media Misrepresents Hurricane Harvey's Climate Change Connection






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML5kSJeD8os











































Bernie Sanders Begins Push for His 'Medicare for All' Bill




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Um0-0VJZYM








































NY Times Reporter Smears Bernie





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-QeL419vt0







































Top 10 Companies You Probably Never Realized Had Monopolies




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U42HKyc4PP0








































America's Monopoly Problem

ELIZABETH WARREN IS AGAINST MONOPOLIES, BUT HOW PROGRESSIVE IS SHE, REALLY?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7KZ0M0gc18













































Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Harvey Triggers 'Unbearable' Pollution as Refineries Spew Cancer-Causing Chemicals



















"Air pollution is one of the unseen dangers of the storm."










As the catastrophic flooding brought about by Hurricane Harvey continues to devastate Texas, reports of "unbearable" smells are beginning to emerge from the state, sparking growing concerns of the long-term health effects that could result from toxic waste and fumes being spewed from temporarily closed oil refineries.

"At least 10 refineries on the Texas coast have shut down," notes the Huffington Post's Ryan Grenoble. "And whenever a refinery has to be closed or restarted, especially in emergency situations, its emissions far exceed what's typically allowed."

Environment Texas, a citizen-based environmental advocacy project of Environment America, said in a statement on Monday that Houston oil industry is likely "releasing more than 1 million pounds of harmful pollution into the air, according to its initial reports to Texas regulators."

"Air pollution is one of the unseen dangers of the storm," Dr. Elena Craft, senior health scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, told Environment Texas. "Poor air quality puts the most vulnerable among us, like children and seniors, at risk for asthma, heart attacks, strokes, and other health problems.”

Long before Harvey made landfall, environmental groups and scientists had been warning of the disastrous effects that could result from a massive storm like Harvey hitting Texas, the heart of the U.S. petrochemical industry. Now, judging by first-hand reports from the state, some of these concerns are coming to fruition.

As The New Republic's Emily Atkin noted on Monday, "residents of Houston's industrial fence-line communities are reporting strong gas- and chemical-like smells coming from the many refineries and chemical plants nearby." On several occasions, as reports late Monday indicated, Texans have been ordered to "shelter in place" amid reports of chemical leaks.

One resident—Bryan Parras, an activist with the environmental justice group TEJAS—told Atkin that he has been smelling the fumes "all night," and that some Texans are already experiencing symptoms: "headaches, sore throat, scratchy throat, and itchy eyes."

In an interview on Democracy Now! Monday, Parras added that you could see "the black smoke" emitted by the refineries as "excess chemicals" were being burnt off. 

"Unfortunately," Parras concluded, "that adds thousands of pounds of cancer-causing chemicals to the air."


Houston, the so-called "energy capital" of the U.S., has been the source of the more worrying anecdotes.

Nayeli Olmos, a Houston resident, told the local Houston Press that she first began noticing the smell Saturday night, around 24 hours after Hurricane Harvey made landfall. She initially thought the stench "would go away on its own, but this morning it was still here, and it feels like whenever it rains the odor gets stronger."

"Our neighbors were all talking about it and then I saw people from different neighborhoods talking about it on social media," Olmos added. "That's when I realized it's not just us this time. It's all over East Houston."

Public Citizen's Stephanie Thomas corroborated Olmos's experience, describing the "powerful" smell as "like burnt rubber with a hint of something metallic thrown in."

These reports have been met with serious alarm by scientists and environmentalists, who have concluded that the pollution resulting from Hurrican Harvey will have lasting effects.

"This pollution will hurt public health in Houston," said Bakeyah Nelson, executive director of Air Alliance Houston. "When petrochemical plants prepare for storms, they release thousands of pounds of pollutants into the air...It is a stark reminder of the dangers of living near industry. We urge everyone to stay safe."


































Flouting International Law, Netanyahu Says West Bank Settlements Will Remain 'Forever'




















"Israel finally admits it will never remove illegal settlements from occupied West Bank."









Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a speech on
Monday that Israel's settlements in the occupied West Bank will remain "forever," remarks many critics characterized as an explicit statement of a longstanding commitment to maintaining and expanding settlements that have been deemed illegal under international law.

"There will be no more uprooting of settlements in the land of Israel," Netanyahu said. "We will deepen our roots, build, strengthen, and settle."

"Israel finally admits it will never remove illegal settlements from occupied West Bank," wrote AlterNet reporter Ben Norton in response to Netanyahu's remarks, which were made during an event "commemorating the 50th anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank."

Others argued that, given Netanyahu's public remarks and actions, any hope that a two-state solution is a viable option is badly misplaced.

"The 'two-state solution' is a blatant and obvious farce that has no purpose other than to allow liberals to justify their support for Israel," concluded The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald, pointing to Netanyahu's speech.

Many reacted to Netanyahu's comments similarly on social media:

eventually journalists will have to start using the word apartheid, or they will be abetting endless occupation http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.809444 …


The 2-state solution is dead. Time to fight for equal rights for everyone between the Jordan river & the sea http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.809444 …



What a partner for peace that Bibi is. http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.809444 …



Netanyahu's remarks come as Israel has in the past two weeks destroyed or seriously damaged at least three schools for Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank.

"Just when they were due to return to the classroom, Palestinian children are discovering that their schools are being destroyed," said Hanibal Abiy Worku, a director of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an independent humanitarian organization. "What threat do these schools pose to the Israeli authorities? What are they planning to achieve by denying thousands of children their fundamental right to education?"

Sami Mruwwah, the Palestinian director of education, vowed to have the schools rebuilt and to "resist against the occupation."

"What happened against the school and its students violates human rights and childhood in particular," Mruwwah concluded. "It is inconceivable for this world to remain silent in the face of the crimes of occupiers against education in Palestine.