disasters

For many years and decades and in the most vulgar manner, plane crashes have been exploited by mass media. As if lives lost at 30.000 feet above the ground or the surface of oceans were more valuable than those that were interrupted ‘on the surface’ by calamities, misery, hunger or preventable diseases, especially in the poor neighborhoods and in the slums.
Air Asia flight QZ-8501, lost en route from Indonesia’s second largest city, Surabaya, to Singapore, brought unprecedented outpouring of sorrow in all corners of this sprawling and socially collapsed archipelago.

As European flights lay freezing in airports across the capitals, with various de-icing procedures being implemented, the news about missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 began to makes its own way through the various channels. That sent a different sort of chill through discussions about air safety. The flight in question, with its 162 passengers, lost contact with air traffic control after take off on Saturday over the Java Sea heading to Singapore from Surabaya.

And the radioactive waste from Fukushima goes to: Fukushima!

Think about the last time you reached the top of a mountain one mile high. Now think about descending that distance below the surface of the earth, foot by dark foot, far below all life, light or oxygen. You go down there to dig.
What you’re digging for, deep in the hot, fetid bowels of the earth is carbonized life forms, millions of years in the making, turned to a type of rock that ignites and burns; one that your prime minister and energy analysts tell you will help the economic future of your country.

Governments find it hard to do the right thing for their people – why?

Have you ever been caught tapping a friend’s phone calls? Called out for the exploitative maltreatment your employees? Are you a multi-billionaire prone to going through the pockets of black youth in the hopes of finding marijuana?
Consider talking about your concern for the environment, particularly the effects of climate change. Leading governments, corporations, and political figures under fire for civil and human rights violations are giving it a whirl.
Greening Injustice

She was holding on to a supporting beam of her timeworn and now badly damaged house. Her name is Ibu Pinarti, and she is most likely over 80 years old, although perhaps she does not even know her real age, as so many women in Indonesian kampungs, villages, do not know.

And here we go again! It is January 2014, but somehow it all feels like last year, or the year before last… or ten years ago. Jakarta is under water; people are trying to save all they can, but their houses are being ruined… some men, women and children are dying… Tens of thousands are sick, suffering from typhoid, and diarrhea.
As I plunged into flooded areas, my friend, a medical expert from Yogyakarta, sent me a text message: “Please be careful in Jakarta… Leptospirosis, typhoid and other infectious diseases…”

The derailment of a 101-car CSX freight train on a bridge in a densely-populated part of Philadelphia this past week should be yet another warning to politicians who have become cheerleaders for oil and gas fracking.

Last month, the ruling Japanese coalition parties quickly rammed through Parliament a state secrets law. We Americans better take notice.
Under its provisions the government alone decides what are state secrets and any civil servants who divulge any “secrets” can be jailed for up to 10 years. Journalists caught in the web of this vaguely defined law can be jailed for up to 5 years.