Hurricane Harvey

Reasonably serious discussion
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Hurricane Harvey has so far claimed eight lives, 30,000 people have been displaced, blanket coverage right across British media as a natural disaster of epic proportions. Rolling updates across our TV, radio and print press. The greatest natural disaster in living memory according to many respected pundits.

A couple of months ago another natural disaster of ‘epic’ proportions, floods, mudslides, hit Sri Lanka. More than 200 dead, 600,000 displaced, yet no more than a couple of minutes on the BBC news, nothing at all in the printed media. Even though there must be far more British citizens who have family in Sri Lanka than in Texas. Why is this? I suspect that a disaster is only of ‘epic proportions’ when the victims are Westerners, preferably white, people we can identify with. The populations of these so called third world countries could be excused for shaking their heads in wonderment at our hysterical reaction to something that happens once in a blue moon to us, but happens on a yearly basis to them. Our ‘natural disaster’ is the greatest in living memory. Theirs is just shrug your shoulders, so what? The exact same mindset that doesn’t bat an eyelid when women and children are blown to kingdom come by Western bombs in Afghanistan, Syria yemen et al, yet howl in indignation when we receive some blowback in our cities. Is this naivety or arrogance?

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Remember the alternative title for “Drop The Dead Donkey”?

“Dead Belgians Don’t Count”

Satirical but an old media thruth. :lou_sad:

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But media couldn’t blame Trump for Sri Lanka so easily…

Have a mate in Austin by the way #safebutworried

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Slightly tangential to your point, Nottarf, is the slow annexing of the UK as the 50-nth state of the US.

I was watching Sky News last week and their coverage of the US coast-to-coast eclipse made me seethe.

WTF?

Why the wall-to-wall coverage of an event that is surely only interesting if it happens in the country WHERE YOU FUCKING LIVE or maybe even only if it goes dark WHERE YOU FUCKING ARE.

They even sent one of their anchors - Kay Burley to cover it live in some random US field.

Why did they think this was worthy of coverage via a UK news channel?

I guess because it’s a slow news August, and they assume that we, the viewing public, no longer make the distinction between ourselves and the US in the ever smaller, global society we live.

I did note that if it had happened in the UK there would have been a polite ripple of applause and not the whooping and hollering that our cousins to the West gave us. I swear at ‘totality’ I heard someone shout “Whoooa. Get in hole, Tiger”. Maybe not.

Anyway, I guess the same thought process that put a part of the earth going dark for a bit on our screens, is the one that covers Houston but not Sri Lanka.

Cunts.

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Hollywood execs will be ‘frothing’ at the upcoming film possibilities. Flood Hard with a vengeance. I wish I was joking

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There is some justice in the world. The floods have destroyed the home of Tony Perkins, the President of the controversial Christian group Family Research Council, who preached that God sends natural disasters to punish gays. I wonder how he will explain this to his congregation? Nice one God!

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Edit

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Agree with the OP. I feel that the Texas Flood is better than the Sri Lanka flood, but I couldn’t exactly explain why. Maybe it just has a better publicist.

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Health professionals in the US are reporting that since the eclipse they are treating people complaining of pain and irritation after putting sun cream in their eyes to watch it. I am not making this up. I assume that they will be Trump voters.

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The little faith that i had in humanity, has just been diminished even more(not something i thought possible).

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I guess you’re following this 24x7

Mumbai floods…

I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it: Mumbai flooding causes transport chaos - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41085606

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And this one 11 million affected. 1/3rd The country flooded

I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it: Deadly South Asia floods affect 16m people - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-40975232

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there are more complex psychological aspects to all this such as how we compartmentalise such disasters in areas that seem so remote and removed form our daily lives - why do we continue to find it acceptable that 5mil plus children will die this year from preventable disease? Etc, we have always sucked on the Great Yank Cock… language and familiarity with their culture helps… it’s why the whole historical mass outpouring of ‘Diana grief’ was so fucking ridiculous. Where is the grief over those 5 mil children? In both cases we do NOT know them personally, yet for some inexplicable reason, so many felt compelled to mourn a women they did not know as if she was some form of saint… how many mourned Mother Theresa by the way?

The media reporting is in my POV the same shit, a focus on stories that appeal to the British sense of what life is valuable and what we can conveniently place on ignore

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Even the BBC weather forecast on Breakfast was about the damn thing.

Ffs, what’s wrong with our good old British weather? Where else can you get the sort of snow, for instance, that shuts the country down if its more than half an in deep. That’s proper snow ,not like parts of Europe where you get over a meter and everything still runs like clock work.

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Hurricane Irma inbound.

Jeez

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Last there in 2016…no news from Barbuda as they’re in the middle of it at the moment. :lou_sad:

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Got mates in Florida & Carolinas. They’ve been through storms before but even they are now getting jittery

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Fuck.

I have a very good mate who lived in Venice Beach and now lives at Jackson Beach South Carolina. In a waterfront Condo.

All night he and his pals across Florida have been posting updates. His daughters’ house in Miami survived a falling tree by a matter of inches, some of his friends have simply gone dark in Key Largo, and Venice Beach / Sarasota upwards just sounds like carnage - they were not told to evacuate until it was too late.

Even though my mate is out of the “Eye Wall” they all talk about, the Sea wall in Jackson Beach is 10 feet above High Tide level. The water just came over the top.

It is absolutely horrific what is happening to so many only a couple of weeks after Texas was hit

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I heard an interesting (to me at least) programme on the radio the other day about the relative cost of hurricane damage. They reckon Harvey will be the most expensive ever (circa $180 billion). The thing is that the US introduced a system of subsidising and underwriting flood insurance. This means that people simply build wherever they like in the knowledge that they’ll get a mortgage because their property will be insured. So, develops build in flood prone areas. Apparently, this is compounded in Houston which already has very lax planning laws.

They had an example of a house in Houston that had been flooded out sixteen times in thirty years. They reckoned the cost of the insurance payouts over that time was about $800,000 whilst the house had a value of about $150,000.

EDIT: Just remembered where I heard this bit of information. It was on one of my favourite radio programmes: More or Less.

This is a very good programme, but scroll through to about 19 minutes if you want to hear about the cost of storm damage.

(also, interesting piece, directly afterwards, about the number of sexual partners each person has).

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Wet fart Aileen leaves thousands without power

I bet the people of St Martins (95% of houses blown away) would be incredulous that this is news

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