4/27/15

Today and for the last several days the leading story has been the tragic earthquake in Nepal.  This last Sunday the country of Nepal was struck with a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake. The epicenter of the earthquake was fifty miles away from Kathmandu, the countries capital, and largest city. The unstable infrastructure of the country was put to the test and was not able to withstand the shaking. A thousand were pronounced dead with countless more injured on the first day. Today, the death toll has risen above four thousand. Massive rescue operations are still underway trying to find people trapped under rubble. Helicopters and rescue teams have been deployed all over the country including to Mount Everest were many climbers remain stranded and eighteen have already been confirmed dead. Nepal’s infrastructure has suffered an estimated five million dollars worth of damage. Coverage of the disaster has been the same throughout. The two words that have been thrown around most are desperate and chaos. Nepal was clearly not prepared for this disaster despite many warnings that a large-scale earthquake would be coming at some point. Villages closest to the epicenter have suffered the worst and have seen nothing in terms of the relief effort. Landslides have made these rural areas impossible to access even for the countries military. Media access has also been severely limited and thus it is difficult to fully assess the damage to the country or the death toll. The death toll was estimated to rise to about ten thousand but I think it will far exceed this when all is said and done because not enough is being done to access.

-Update, the death toll continues to rise and it is extremely hard to find an exact death toll. I am extremely saddened to hear that many expect that up to fifteen thousand lives have been lost in this disaster. More people are going to be lost if the United Nations and other relief groups are unable to reach the hard to reach areas with supplies, medical relief, food, and water. There are good signs of life, however. People are beginning to return to life and start up again, street vendors, and shops have reopened and roam the streets again. It is extremely sad to see the videos and pictures of people who are cut off from their families and are unable to reach their families.

4/28/15

The Police’s treatment of African Americans has been about as hot of a story over the last year as any story ever has. Most recently, the death of Freddie Gray, an African-American Baltimore man who died in police custody has been in the media. Gray was seen in a video being dragged screaming by police officers. He did not receive immediate medical attention despite serious damage to his spinal cord and resultantly died in police custody. All week peaceful protesters took to the streets of Baltimore to address this serious issue and speak out against what was wrong. Yesterday was Grays funeral and the protests took a drastic turn for the worse. The youth took to the streets and protests turned into riots. Cars were destroyed, liquor stores, malls, and CVS were looted and trashed and rioters through cinder blocks at passing cars. Fans exiting the Orioles game at Camden Yards were attacked and trashcans can be seen in videos being thrown. To me, the actions of these protesters shed a negative light on a good cause. They are protesting a good and righteous cause that seriously needs to be addressed. But they are going about it an absolutely horrific way. There is absolutely reason to be mad and reason to want to throw trash cans and reason to want to riot lay siege to the city will help absolutely nothing and any single person who thought what they were doing would know that. That being said, many people did. The people that spoke out against the violence such as the man in the skull shirt who blocked protesters from attacking police and any and all religious and political leaders. There were also lots of great moments of human integrity that I read about. Rival gangs laying their differences aside in order to fight for a cause and to maintain peace and help save their city.

Today after months of facing international criticism over its plans to execute eight prisoners accused of smuggling heroin into Indonesia, the country executed seven of them. Indonesia used these seven, as an example to try and quell the drug problem that their country is currently experiencing. Though I don’t agree with the death penalty as a general rule and disagree with the severity of the punishment compared to how bad the actual crime was. That being said, Indonesia’s drug problem is something that they said they were going to put their foot down and they are making an example of these people. It’s not right that they are doing it by taking away their lives, but all the same the countries drug policies needed changing and a statement needed to be made and they did just that. Once again, not condoning their actions.

5/3

Last night was the much-hyped Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. It brought many of the world’s celebrity’s to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas where a traffic jam occurred from private planes flying in from all over the world. The fight, however, was not as flashy as the audience as Mayweather spent much of the fight bouncing away or on the ropes. However, Mayweather was never really on the ropes in terms of being in trouble and it was obvious from relatively early on that he was going to win the fight. The real highlight of the fight, however, was watching Jimmy Kimmel hopping with Pacqaio’s camp into the fight.

5/4

In Garland, Texas two gunmen opened fire on an Anti-Islamist satirical competition. There was a contest of satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. It is very offensive to Islamic people to draw Mohammad. This is the second time in less than a year that Mohammad drawings have drawn attacks from Muslim extremists, the first being the much publicized Charlie Hebdo attack in France. This attack once again brings up the question of what is “ok” to publicize or write about. Obviously, offensive pictures and killing people are on entirely different scales of right vs wrong and the actions of the killers are heinous and inexcusable, but does that make the satire ok? To me, there should be a freedom of journalism. In my opinion, suppressing the right to write what you want is suppressing someone’s freedom. Though words can hurt and be highly insulting by filtering what people are publishing is a slippery slope. By not allowing certain things to be published, I feel that we are opening up Pandora’s box. Censoring the media is a slippery slope and no matter how wrong what people are writing is if they want to write it they should be able to. I feel that if media is censored politicians will have the ability to choose what we read and thus use that to shape us into one large homologous thinking world. To me, America’s many different ideas and beliefs are one of its most admirable traits.

            5/5 Update

ISIS has attempted to claim responsibility for the shooting in Texas. But many experts doubt that it was actually them and I agree. I think that these two extremists had nothing to do with ISIS and ISIS is just claiming responsibility to spread fear to the United States. ISIS survives and thrives on fear so it would make sense for them to take responsibility for something like this.

5/5

            In 2005 when my plane touched down in Caracas Venezuela things were not great. The city held the unfortanate prize of the highest homicide rate in the world. Some of my relatives urged me maybe not to go and the US Government sent us a letter reminding us that it was in the so called “yellow zone,” or somewhere they wouldn’t recommend traveling. All the same my family and I went and had lots of fun. But if I went back today things would be significantly worse then they have ever been. The government is one of the most corrupt in the world and even before the large drop in oil prices, Venezuela was in the midst of an economic crisis. Now, do to corruption and struggling economy the country is struggling to provide its citizens with basic necessities. The corruption is so bad that, Edmee Betancourt, former President of Venezuela’s central bank estimated that twenty billion of the fifty nine billion that went to product imports in 2012 was lost to fraudulent transactions. An article I read today, by William Nueman and Patricia Torres highlights the fraud and explains how it is happening. The problem starts with the fact that Venezuela imports most of their goods. But the importers do not want to deal in the countries inflated Bolivar that is now worth a mere 1/278 of an American dollar. They want to use a more stable currency and thus deal in American money or Euros. So the Government allows this and lets them put the price on the goods once they have entered the country. Importers than bribe officials who allow them to claim that they are importing far more goods than they actually are, if they actually bring any goods in at all.  After this process the importer often ends up with up to 60% of the flat money from the government without doing anything. Other money, is brought to the black market were American money is sold, and then used to by Bolivars and than sold again. This “bicycle” purposely boosts inflation and people are able to make tremendous amounts of money.

In France today the parliament passed huge new surveillance law in response to the increase in radical terrorism in the country. The surveillance allows authorities to look through people’s computers, emails, and other personal data with out almost a judiciary oversight. Some people find this to be necessary in order to eradicate terrorism. Others are adamantly against it and see it as an invasion of their rights. Many businesses are afraid that it will damage them because they are afraid customers will be dubious of their anonymity. I agree that something needs to be done to eradicate terrorism but I don’t think that an invasion of privacy at this level is the way to go.

A few months ago a German flight crashed into the side of the French Alps. It was just the latest in a series of plane disasters. Unlike the others, the cause was relatively straightforward and took almost no time to discover. The pilot, suffering from depressing, had decided that he would take his life, and the one hundred and fifty others on the plane by way of a nose dive into the mountainside. This week, it came to light that he had practiced the rapid descent maneuver that he would use for the crash when the captain was out of the cabin. Flight graphs show the planes he drove going down rapidly and then catching themselves and returning to normal height. I think it should also be taken into consideration that the pilot could have been attempting to do it than and there. He may have been intending to crash the plane and commit suicide but at the last minute, given up and returned to flying