rigorousintuition.ca

Wombaticus Rex » Thu Sep 03, 2015 1:19 pm wrote:All controversial sci-fi novels become foreign policy problems eventually. Currently on deck: The Camp of the Saints.

Up next, either The White Plague or Canticle for Leibowitz.

Here's a guided tour of all nine circles of the current global crisis:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015 ... .html?_r=0

We're a decade out from seeing refugees from California and Florida here in the US.

Seeing Canada get settled with a Kurdish diaspora community would be a fascinating experiment.

Luther Blissett » Fri Sep 04, 2015 3:32 pm wrote:Stupid question but my query is all keyword-hijacked. What is the state of the drought in Syria now? Did agriculture ever recover at all? I don't imagine that it's in the state it was pre-Civil War, but I imagine it's still bad.

Her 85-year-old father lives four kilometres from the border of Ukraine.

Can you guess what the summer weather has been like the last -oh, I don’t know, let’s say- two summers? Not. A. Drop. Of. Rain. “James, let me tell you…” she tells me. She calls me James because it turns out fat Anglo gays (fanglo gays?) look identical in the eyes of Slovakian women of a certain age and so she has never been able to distinguish between myself and my partner. In her defence, he’s the one who always calls her and I’m usually the one who’s home of a Friday. This has been going on for just over three years and it has gotten to the point that James and I hope that at least one of the three of us dies before/rather than having to explain what has been going on. For further information on such extreme levels of social awkwardness, see this twitter account.

“James let me tell you… everyone has…ahh, English… in the yard” (makes very obvious sign for a well or masturbating an enormous penis). A well? I ask. “Well, yes. All dry. Never before. No rain. In summer in Slovakia it is 25 degrees but feels like 35 because we have no…” (waves arms around my kitchen) “…ocean. This year and last year. It is Africa. Nothing grow in my father’s yard. I plant for him many things, beans, tomatoes. Nothing grow.”

My mind goes immediately to that theatre of war everyone in mainstream media has not been talking about. My mind goes to the former Japanese minister who said the Americans caused their most recent tsunami with a geo-engineering weapon. My mind goes to the string of highly suspicious earthquakes and droughts in Iran. My mind goes to the 1970s admission of both the CIA and American Air Force that their goal is to ‘own the weather’. My mind goes to the World Economic Forum agendas of recent years that discuss rogue geoengineering. My mind goes to this complete asshole, who is the home-grown, home-brand Australian equivalent of skinny former-defence-contractors-in-bow-ties who show up on controlled media to dispense teh scienze.

“I’m suspicious, [cleaner’s name], of these weather patterns. I find them suspicious. The same thing happens everywhere the Americans want to go to war.” My cleaner pauses. She unshoulders her bag. “James, let me tell you… growing up… I have seen everything. I no like Russia but I like Russians. I no like America but I like Americans. Of course they do this. I have seen everything. I have seen spies from this side and that side. I have seen alien spies who look like human spies (Gordon: told you we would have been mates!). I have seen everything. Everyone at father’s party know… this is not normal. This is Americans. Everyone say.”

82_28 » Fri Sep 04, 2015 12:01 am wrote:There is only one man who can save Earth that I can think of.

RT

Worst refugee crisis since WWII
LIVE UPDATES

Published time: 3 Sep, 2015


Migrants sleep near the Keleti railway station in Budapest, Hungary, September 3, 2015. © Bernadett Szabo / Reuters

Europe's refugee crisis has been dubbed the worst since WWII with a record number of 107,500 asylum seekers crossing the EU's borders in July. Tens of thousands of people are fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and North Africa to start a new life in Europe, but many meet a tragic end there.

Rory » Fri Sep 04, 2015 6:15 pm wrote:Worst crisis since WWII?

What about Vietnam? Kampuchea? Korea? Iraq? South and Central America during every decade since WWII?

DrEvil » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:55 pm wrote:

82_28 » Fri Sep 04, 2015 12:01 am wrote:There is only one man who can save Earth that I can think of.

OK, so I have no idea who that guy is, but that picture is from where I live.

kool maudit » 04 Sep 2015 12:58 wrote:This crisis marks an interesting development in the coverage of humanitarian catastrophe: it is being treated as a natural disaster. The refugees are running from a force of nature rather than policy and the only question is how Europeans will respond.

It is sort of a new paternalism, a tacit acceptance of the fact that we can somehow leave the policy and geopolitical decisions that create such crises alone so long as we in the West are Good People when it all gets too desperate.

I have not heard the name "Assad" once, not even "ISIS".

"Nobody knows what happened! They just started coming! This is a test from God to be dutiful and kind..."

It's a sort of progressive fatalism.

Jerky » Sat Sep 05, 2015 3:31 am wrote:

kool maudit » 04 Sep 2015 12:58 wrote:This crisis marks an interesting development in the coverage of humanitarian catastrophe: it is being treated as a natural disaster. The refugees are running from a force of nature rather than policy and the only question is how Europeans will respond.

It is sort of a new paternalism, a tacit acceptance of the fact that we can somehow leave the policy and geopolitical decisions that create such crises alone so long as we in the West are Good People when it all gets too desperate.

I have not heard the name "Assad" once, not even "ISIS".

"Nobody knows what happened! They just started coming! This is a test from God to be dutiful and kind..."

It's a sort of progressive fatalism.

Are you aware of the full history of the crisis? It IS a climate-based crisis at its core.

This is as good an explanation as I've yet to find. And it's a comic!

http://www.upworthy.com/trying-to-follo ... -5-minutes