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‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

theguardian.com

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Re: ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

#61

Post by mymac »

pjc50 wrote: post #40
nonrandomstring wrote: post #5

Heartbreaking. The tone of all observers is that this is as much a failure of governance as an environmental catastrophe. As everyone who was at Burning Man learned, plumbing and drainage is the basis of civilisation. Letting it go to rack and ruin is storing up misery, so it worries me that in the UK we've had 20 years of government that has effectively "washed its hands" of water management.

It was remarkable how one of the first movements after withdrawing from the EU was to change the rules so water companies could dump sewage and render watercourses unsafe and polluted.

The price for that will be felt decades from now. It also tells you something about how the anti-EU lobby was financed.

Re: ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

#62

Post by logicchains »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #47
themgt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "EU and America" didn't assassinate Gaddafi. Right. "We came, we saw, he died! [lol]" Gaddafi was "assassinated" because there was a full-on civil war and the EU and America bombed the massive convoy he had sent to crush the rebellion in Benghazi and enforced a no-fly zone otherwise Gaddafi's planes would obliterate the rebel forces and the civilians living in those cities This is just revisionist nonsense. There…

>>>>>>>> Because our foreign policy is run by utter amoral hypocrites and liars. No. Don't assume malice where ineptitude will be sufficient. Our Foreign Policy is run by armchair, master-degree wannabe-generals in suits and ties, some dark triad, some not, but always away from real bullets, to instead being preoccupied with their own advancement, protecting their friends, and increasing the size of their portfolio,…

>to instead being preoccupied with their own advancement, protecting their friends, and increasing the size of their portfolio, justifying their grand aims with real (or imagined) claims of good intentions

This is the essentially same thing the person you're replying to said: amoral hypocrites and liars.

Re: ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

#63

Post by ganglandfee »

2devnull wrote: post #55
themgt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "EU and America" didn't assassinate Gaddafi. Right. "We came, we saw, he died! [lol]" Gaddafi was "assassinated" because there was a full-on civil war and the EU and America bombed the massive convoy he had sent to crush the rebellion in Benghazi and enforced a no-fly zone otherwise Gaddafi's planes would obliterate the rebel forces and the civilians living in those cities This is just revisionist nonsense. There…

This is almost the offensive realist viewpoint were it not for the intense American exceptionalism. Great powers are going to do what they do. Accept this and everything becomes more hopeful. Otherwise, the world will always seem to be ruled by terrible amoral people and nihilism and despair are all you will ever have. There is no glorious future without rulers or parties, therefore wars and competition. Our western…

Hah. You realize you just said facts are facts and that facts are just that, they are neither right or wrong, hypocritical or amoral or immoral.

Hmmm. That’s tough to argue against when you put it like that.

Another way to put it is that many facts can be true at the same time. Superpowers are gonna Superpower, but they are also hypocrites operating on a double standard.

Re: ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

#64

Post by aaplok »

themgt wrote: post #37
PedroBatista wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already see there is no point in continue this conversation. I notice your standards for US/EU intervention are very very high and basically nobody should ever being killed. Why don't you apply the same reasoning to Gaddafi's regime and Syria/Russia/Al-Qaeda? You seem to have every problem existing in the Universe when the evil West does something ( and also a problem when it doesn't, also a problem that the West e…

Why don't you apply the same reasoning to Gaddafi's regime and Syria/Russia/Al-Qaeda? What reasoning? First of all I'm an American citizen, so I concern myself more with what my country does with my tax dollars than what other countries do, especially within their own borders or in situations that don't directly affect American citizens. I don't believe America's job is global law enforcement. It's like asking an Ame…

Small correction. Bongo is (was) the ruler of Gabon, not Niger.

Re: ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

#65

Post by mymac »

logicchains wrote: post #60
legutierr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Lybian forces were on the verge of committing war crimes and killing thousands, then "intervention" would be an appropriate word to describe what the Western powers did. They "intervened" to prevent an imminent atrocity, if you believe them. And I am inclined to believe them, not because of what Western governments have said, but because the whole Arab Spring played out in real time on social media. I agree that w…

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Re: ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

#66

Post by mymac »

hnbad wrote: post #59
nonrandomstring wrote: post #5

Heartbreaking. The tone of all observers is that this is as much a failure of governance as an environmental catastrophe. As everyone who was at Burning Man learned, plumbing and drainage is the basis of civilisation. Letting it go to rack and ruin is storing up misery, so it worries me that in the UK we've had 20 years of government that has effectively "washed its hands" of water management.

There's a dead comment here about how it was "actually a dam collapse, not a flood" and how no news source is reporting on that. From what I can gather, at a glance, at least the AP, The Guardian and Al Jazeera all state that the flood was the result of two dams collapsing and the cause of the collapse was the storm. Even the article itself states that the two dams were poorly maintained and the collapse is the resul…

Root cause analysis is complex for a reason. Separating out contributing causes from root causes is difficult and sometimes even impossible.

Would this dam have failed eventually? Probably yes, on a long enough time-scale. Would it have failed now if not for that storm? Probably no.

Note that even in the developed West there are plenty of pieces of infrastructure at risk because of climate driven extremities.

Re: ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

#67

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

Ugh, first I'm hearing of this. Some of that is my fault; I'm using Marl's* news aggregator which craps up the default feed with celebs and sportsball. I've had it set to National to avoid drowning in fluff-poo.

I need to invest in a better news supplier.

*ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37509507

Response to the disaster is slow, partially due to disaster response being sucked into the massive need of Morocco earthquake zone.

I wish the West was set up where we could volunteer family members to relief efforts (without loss of income > homelessness).

Re: ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

#68

Post by Majromax »

thriftwy wrote: post #36
Majromax wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would be needed is an intervention force that takes over the entire country and stabilizes it An occupation force is not tenable in the modern era. Per a Washington Post article from 2004[1], the post-WW2 occupation of Germany had an initial force ratio of one occupying soldier per 40 civilians. At that level, occupying forces could assume direct command of civil structures, without needing to sign deals with…

Then stop toppling governments[1]. Where you can't do anything, you do not need to want anything. 1. Perhaps one can say that this is already done, since we do not hear of any recent examples. Still, this was not very far back.

> Then stop toppling governments.

Not necessarily. A total prohibition there would give free reign to tyrants to oppress their own people or even invade their insufficiently-allied neighbours without fear of consequence. The second world war is widely regarded as a just conflict (on the balance), even if it did topple the governments of the Axis powers.

However, my thinking above raises cost-estimation from a practical problem (can we afford the war?) to a moral one. An optimistic belief in a 'short victorious war' gives the intervenor at least partial culpability for the harms of state failure following insufficient occupation and reconstruction.

Re: ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

#69

Post by saiya-jin »

In Crete currently, just across the sea some 300km away. We had a brush of storm Daniel, just a week of high wind and occasional rain. Nothing like what poured down there.

There are probably hundreds of bodies swimming in the sea right now just south from me. Sad, crazy, and probably a glimpse of new normal, as usually the poorest are most hit.

Re: ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

#70

Post by sebazzz »

mymac wrote: post #66
hnbad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a dead comment here about how it was "actually a dam collapse, not a flood" and how no news source is reporting on that. From what I can gather, at a glance, at least the AP, The Guardian and Al Jazeera all state that the flood was the result of two dams collapsing and the cause of the collapse was the storm. Even the article itself states that the two dams were poorly maintained and the collapse is the resul…

Root cause analysis is complex for a reason. Separating out contributing causes from root causes is difficult and sometimes even impossible. Would this dam have failed eventually? Probably yes, on a long enough time-scale. Would it have failed now if not for that storm? Probably no. Note that even in the developed West there are plenty of pieces of infrastructure at risk because of climate driven extremities.

> Note that even in the developed West there are plenty of pieces of infrastructure at risk because of climate driven extremities.

Wasn't there a failure in Scandinavia recently?

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