“What’s important is that the action took place, when everybody believed it to be unthinkable. If it took place this time, it can happen again…”

Jean-Paul Sartre, 1968

Soaring gas prices, food shortages, earth quakes, cyclones, floods, fires, war on terror, global warming…. human toll mounting

Food riot, 1917

During World War I, wartime inflation severely taxed the limited budgets of working-class families. Although wages also rose during the war, they could not keep up with prices. On February 20, 1917, after confronting pushcart peddlers who were charging exorbitant rates for necessities, thousands of women marched to New York’s City Hall to demand relief. The “food riot” precipitated a boycott campaign that eventually forced pushcart prices down. Women in Boston and Philadelphia took similar action.

Food riots of the 21st century

US Food Prices Spike Upward

Sticker shock at the supermarket

Families struggling as bills begin to bite

Preparing for the end of food?

Food riots will spread – USA & the World will suffer similar pain. More families cannot afford the gas to drive to a store to buy inflated groceries. Although many will become creative to provide food and hygiene for their families, many more don’t have the resources to get by. In America, the nature of infrastructure, places families in the suburbs and several gallons of fuel away from safety. Urban populations can walk or bike to food, but that food will be expensive because transportation costs are over the top. Wages cannot keep up because the cost of doing business is also over the top. People may be forced to steal food … people may be forced to do unthinkable things just to survive.

Frustration and desperation does that to people. This places disconnected leaders at risk. No government can survive the desperation of its people without becoming totalitarian and deadly. Look at Myanmar, Darfur and Zimbabwe. These governments elect to suppress and disenfranchise rather than address the suffering of their populations. The Bush administration has prepared this country for a similar treatment … the constitution and people’s rights have been breached for fictitious justifications.

This is a spiral. The hot air filling the inflated human ego is leaking out, and the victims will fall back to earth, some may survive. Those survivors, not caught up in the blame game, will adapt and prolong their survival.

This is the human reality check! Modern humans have departed from the respect for nature that our ancestors held. Mother Earth has no regard for human politics, human dogma, or personal egos. Religion and politics have distracted the human race from the reality that we occupy a planet. This planet does what planets do, it changes and evolves. It does not care what religion you adhere to or what explanations you have accepted. Truth is what the natural progression of planets follow, putting the mask of religion on earthly events acts as a blindfold. The only truth remaining is that this planet is going through another cycle and humans are as clueless as the dinosaurs. You would think that human intellect would anticipate these events and prepare for survival … but NO! Humans are so self absorbed that their potential for planning is retarded by ego and selfishness. Learning to live with the earth’s natural processes appears to be beyond the human ego. Nearsightedness has guaranteed the infamous Armageddon that too many religious zealots are anticipating. Those seeking the Rapture have condemned the rest of humanity. They trash the planet and wait for GOD to reward them by relocating them into a heaven, fresh and clean, for them to trash all over again.

This planet, EARTH, will follow the evolution of planets and solar systems. Issac Assimov once described ENTROPY, in The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956

“Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?”

“Can entropy ever be reversed?”

UN raises Burma cyclone estimate

The UN has sharply increased its estimate of those severely affected by Burma’s cyclone to 2.5m people.

The figure was revised up from the 1.5m previously thought to be in need, following the storm 12 days ago.

Since Cyclone Nargis struck, hardly any foreign aid workers have been allowed into Burma to hand out relief supplies.

Latest Burmese official figures put the death toll at almost 38,500 with 27,838 more missing but the Red Cross warned as many as 128,000 could be dead.

‘Food is not the problem. Right now, it’s clean water’

Red Cross: Up to 128,000 may have died in Myanmar

Monsoon predicted in Myanmar delta

Aid Trickling In to Myanmar

International disaster assistance experts are still having trouble securing visas, despite ongoing negotiations. There is great concern about the possibility of disease among the many, now homeless, survivors, but no outbreaks have been reported yet.

THE devastating natural disasters in Burma and China illustrate the difference between having a competent government and an incompetent one.

The Burmese military, unlike the Chinese, has done little to help its people, of whom more than 100,000 are already dead. The Burmese Government’s reluctance to allow foreign aid in will condemn many more tens of thousands to unnecessary deaths.

Optimistic analysts in Southeast Asia and in the West hope the appalling suffering in Burma may lead to the collapse of the military junta and its replacement by a government led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

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China quake toll close to 15,000

Nearly 15,000 people died in the devastating earthquake that hit China’s Sichuan province, the official Xinhua news agency has reported.

More than 25,000 are still trapped in the rubble two days after the 7.9 quake struck, flattening homes, schools and entire villages and cutting roads.

Soldiers have begun to reach the isolated epicentre by helicopter and on foot, bringing much needed supplies.

The government has meanwhile downplayed fears about the stability of a dam. No damage has been reported to the massive Three Gorges Dam, also in Sichuan province, but there were concerns about dozens of smaller dams closer to the epicentre.

Troops sent to repair quake-hit Chinese dam

Some 2,000 Chinese troops were sent today to repair “extremely dangerous” cracks in a dam upstream of an earthquake-hit city where 500,000 people live.

Officials warned that Dujiangyan “would be swamped” if the Zipingpu reservoir were to breach the hydroelectric dam, five miles upstream of the south-western city.

Earlier, engineers released water from the reservoir to relieve pressure on the dam, after cracks appeared on its surface.

Speaking to Reuters, He Biao, the deputy Communist party chief of Aba prefecture, said: “If the danger intensified, it could affect some power stations downstream. This is an extremely dangerous situation.”

Yesterday authorities pointed out that the earthquake had not damaged the huge Three Gorges dam, which is still incomplete. The quake registered a magnitude of four in the dam area, which is 600 miles from the epicentre of the quake, where it registered 7.9.

The Three Gorges dam is designed to withstand earthquakes up to seven in magnitude. However, one of the many criticisms made of the dam was that its sheer size could trigger earthquakes.

China’s deadly quake: Is the Three Gorges dam to blame?

Though the deadly Wenchuan earthquake was the result of tectonic stresses, experts are concerned that the filling of the Three Gorges dam’s enormous reservoir may have induced or exacerbated the earthquake.

Engineers have already linked the massive weight of water behind the Three Gorges dam to increased seismic activity since its filling began in 2003.
“Whether reservoir-induced seismicity is behind this week’s earthquake should be urgently investigated before the Three Gorges reservoir is filled to its maximum height,” says Patricia Adams, executive director of Probe International, a Canadian group monitoring the Three Gorges dam since the 1980s.

The deadly month of Dis-May! Burma’s Junta makes matters worse by adding human greed to a costly natural disaster. This despicable ruling Junta is confiscating the ‘cream’ of humanitarian aid for their own use. They continue to impede foreign aid workers from participating and organizing effective relief efforts. All this band of hoodlums want is the goodies. To Hell with their people … It is time for pre-emptive intervention to save lives, prevent outbreaks of disease and assist in rebuilding infrastructure.

China is not ready to admit the Three Gorges Dam project could have led to the devastating earthquake. No one listened years ago when there were protests mounted on scientific evidence that because Three Gorges sits atop two great fault lines, there could be heavier seismic consequences.

Again, accountability and forward thinking appear to be mere irritants to today’s world governments. When the bottom line is money, power and image, consequences become someone else’s responsibility. Let the next generation worry about the consequences, “we live for today” … where have we heard that before? Oh yes, that old hippie song …

Let’s Live For Today by The Grass Roots, 1967

When I think of all the worries people seem to find
And how they’re in a hurry to complicate their minds
By chasing after money and dreams that can’t come true
I’m glad that we are different, we’ve better things to do
May others plan their future, I’m busy lovin’ you (1-2-3-4)
Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today
Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today
And don’t worry