Stan

by iosaf Sun Oct 09, 2005 15:59

1400 dead from mudslides in Guatemala.

This story reached your RTE news briefing, but didn't get into the human interest section of the TV or Radio news. Because the peoples of Guatemala, San Salvador, Chiapas in Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua speak spanish.

Stan was a spanish houricane. Throughout the central american states, people talked about the search and rescue operation, the lack of roads, the supply of water and food. The need for aid, as "hourricane e-stan" came.

but in this globalised world of European Union the Irish don't speak spanish. The spanish for their part were looking at African migrants trying to jump a fence on the way to jobs in Barcelona, Paris, London and Dublin. They were dumped in the desert. That story did not reach your RTE news briefing or get into the human interest section of the TV or Radio news, because the peoples of Africa (below the Sahara) speak english.

RTE's attention to natural disasters has gone from New Orleans and Katrina to Texas and Rita to Pakistan and the quake. This is because these places were in the British Empire, the very same British Empire which our ancestors defeated.

Its very a understandable Irish perversion of nimbyism.

Anyway, yesterday the spanish branch of CNN used as their News image on reports of Stan, the exact same image I used for my preview and report on Rita. It meant I thought to return to this article, tell you all that YES a lot of people died.
and YES they were all poor. but NO they weren't african americans. and YES their states and governments found it very difficult to deal with it.
and NO they have no idea of how to rebuild their lives and communities.

and to leave you one image. the image of Stan is different from that of Rita.






Guatemalans and E

this fireman in Panabaj Guatemala is carrying in his arms a dead child one of many after the worst houricane to hit the region in 10 years.

by iosaf Thu Oct 13, 2005 22:39

and 656 official certified dead.
Mexico under Fox suggested the creation of a common emergency fund for the middle and central american countries at the XV iberioamerican conference held this week (in time for columbus day)
On the other side of the electoral trial in Mexico, Marcos of the EZLN and we suppose the wider Zapatista movement weighed into the more local national issue of social services and security, he assured international media that 64 left wing organisations, 118 indiginous organisations, 197 social organisations, 474 NGO groups or collectives and 1,898 individuals had agreed with the "folks up the mountains of chiapas of the good government and long long walk" on 6 key points.

None of this will bring back the dead of Stan.
or shelter next week or tomorrow those evicted by the houricane or the mudslides it caused. Nor can we expect next year's houricane season to spare central America.
€You could think about giving the Red Cross money€ €they seem to need it these days€.
______________________

Houricane Vince just finished. I'm writing under the final rainfall, Vince started in the eastern atlantic turned tropical storm and then houricane off the Azores where Blair and Aznar and Bush smiled. Vince however made no landfall. Just sent rain. Torrential rain which has past from the Atlantic over the parched Iberian peninsula more than 1000km in just a few days. It started raining where I live yesterday at 4pm & as of yet it hath not stoppéd. I reckon its more than half of a big beer glass on the balcony ( not scientific)
Anyway..,
The benefit to the combined reservoirs of Portugal and Spain is less than 0.04% - and they are both on less than 50% normal. This year of houricanes which really did break records saw mostly drought in Europe.

If there are to be more of these storms,
they will soon have greek letters as names.
Already we see male names used, though properly there are supposed to be so few extreme storms a year that only a few alternating female and male names are assigned.

New Weather, the Climate system we won
the War for, and saved so much mortgage for
is Deadly.

by iosaf Tue Nov 29, 2005 12:32

Katrina and Rita affected americans so you might remember them next year, Stan hit the poor of central america, not as newsworthy. But the huricanes didn't stop.
For the first time in history, they ran out of names.
Wilma was the last one. Then for the first time in history they used greek letters. I must admit I wasn't quick enough to tell you who got the "Alpha storm". But I can tell you that "Delta" has just hit the Canary Islands archipelago off of the African Coast, which is as you all know is an autonomous region of Spain.
Last night I spent time "worrying" with a friend whose mother lives there. Because the telephones are down, the flights are cancelled, and the islands are till the storm stops "cut off".
Estimates of deaths are low (7 so far) and over a quarter of a million people are without power. But and this really is the misery of the world, as any week, people were trying to get to Europe and Spain by crossing the 40km from the Moroccan / Western Sahara coast on rafts.
They are lost. They are the unknown dead.
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=164171828&p=y64y7z534

The traditional method of naming huricanes might not last much longer, any storm which causes disaster doesn't see its name used ever again. According to the tradition, there will be no other "Katrina" or "Stan" or "Rita" or "Mitch". In a few years yet more places will get these storms. This is climate change. Its a pity we have not evolved the sort of soceity where we can put those responsible for this crime against the environment in the dock of a show trial.

"you stand accused of angering the winds and coaxing the hoary frost"

http://www.eitb24.com/noticia_en.php?id=108419