Environmental Degradation, Catastrophic Consequences

"We went running out, and we saw all the debris and the building was just gone."

"We heard a couple of people yelling, 'Help, help, please!" 

Alexis Watson, 21, Texas vacationer

 

"It's hard to explain. This doesn't happen in America. It's doesn't happen in Miami Beach. It doesn't happen in our homes. And it's very difficult to comprehend how it's possible."

"I have to tell you, when I walked past ground zero, there was row after row after row of firefighters who are literally waiting to rush into a building that could fall at any time."

Rabbi Eliot Pearlson, Temple Menorah, Bal Harbour, Miami

 

"You always hold out hope. Until we definitively know, we are trying to stay hopeful. But after seeing the video of the collapse it's increasingly difficult, because they were in that section that was pancaked in, in the first section that fell in, and then the other building fell on top of it, so it's not easy to watch."

"It was just a comment she made offhand, that's why she woke up, [his mother said that creaking noises woke her up in the building the night before the collapse], and then she wasn't able to go back to sleep afterward -- but now in hindsight, you always wonder."

"We are praying for a miracle, but at the same time trying to be as realistic about it as possible [whether he will see his mother and his grandmother again]."

"Until we definitely know, there is hope. It's just dwindling by the minute." 

Pablo Rodriguez, Surfside, Miami

This aerial photo shows part of the 12-story oceanfront Champlain Towers South Condo that collapsed early Thursday, June 24, 2021 in Surfside, Fla. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

A professor in the department of earth and environment at Florida International University produced a study in 2020, that found the building that partially collapsed in Surfside, Florida  early Thursday morning had been steadily sinking since the 1990s. The 12-story oceanfront condominium building had been built on what can be seen in hindsight was an unstable foundation. Built on what has been euphemistically called 'reclaimed wetland'. Reclaimed wetland is wetland that had been degraded and had then been restored to its natural functionality.

Wetlands have important -- vital -- environmental properties that are normally considered off limits for tampering with. They represent nature's way of helping to absorb excess moisture; with a rising ocean attributed to climate change, the wetland's critical function is to act as a protective barrier between the ocean and the land. What happened to that wetland was that it was destroyed for the purpose of 'reclamation', a spurious term, whereby infill, construction garbage and detritus and soil from elsewhere was dumped to destroy the wetland and create a building site.

Land is valuable for the construction trade in areas where demand is high for accommodation in a tourism-industry geographic area. Where moderate weather  calls out to winter-weary residents of other geographies with harsh winters, along with the prospect of beach-and-sun leisure making for a situation that adds tourism dollars from visitors from abroad, to the state coffers. Where entrepreneurs and construction companies can persuade a municipality to issue building licenses in areas that should be under environmental protection.

 

Residents of Surfside, Florida, not far from Miami Beach had a rude awakening before 2:00 a.m. on Thursday when the building they were in was shuddering, and then part of it collapsed. In the shock of the collapse, surrounded by smoke and debris, screams resounded, heard by other residents living in nearby buildings that remained intact. "It is just overwhelming to see when we opened the door and saw that the building had collapsed", one woman recounted after she was rescued from her balcony. 

The bodies of four people who were killed outright when the northeast corridor of the 12-story Champlain Towers condominium collapsed is only the beginning. An estimated 150 people are unaccounted for. In the building lived a wide mix of people, from Latin America, from the Jewish community. Unaccounted for is the sister and brother-in-law of the first lady of Paraguay. Unaccounted for are entire family units. 

 

Rescue workers look through the rubble of Champlain Towers South in the Surfside area of Miami. Photograph: Lynne Sladky/Associated Press

 

Rescuers evacuated dozens of people from the building with its 136 units. Fifty-five of the total units were entirely destroyed. A wing of the building is seen in footage captured by nearby security cameras, suddenly collapsing with an immense dust cloud erupting over the collapse. A witness spoke of seeing people trapped within, making use of their phone flashlights signalling desperately for rescue. Rescuers pulled a few people from the rubble and firefighters rescued other tenants from balconies in the part of the tower that remained standing.

"He was yelling, 'Please help me!' It was sheer panic", said Nicholas Balboa who lives right next to the condo, of a boy's hand he saw waving through the rubble, while he helped in his rescue. The building had passed inspection just one day before the collapse. Engineers were on the scene the day of the collapse 'examining' what might have caused the collapse, according to the vice mayor of Surfside. "It's a tragic day. We still have hope to be able to identify additional survivors", said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Rescuers reported initially they could hear banging and knocking within the rubble, of people desperately trying to indicate their presence, to be rescued. Later, first responders spoke of their confidence that all survivors had been rescued. "Everyone who is alive is out of the building", director of Miami-Dade Emergency Management, finally stated. "It's hard to imagine how this could happen. Buildings just don't fall down", said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett. "Unless someone literally pulls out the supports from underneath, or they get washed out, or there’s a sinkhole or something like that, because it just went down."

 

On all of Miami Beach towns are built on a barrier island, building sites that climate scientists and geologists long have given warning of the islands' instability, made up of a loose mixture of sand and mud, nature's protection for the shoreline, which cannot responsibly be developed. "These are very dynamic features. We didn’t understand that these islands actually migrate until the 1970s", explained professor emeritus of geology Orrin Pilkey. Professor Pilkey has studied sea-level rise and the coast's overdevelopment. "As sea level rises, they move back."

 

Rescue personnel work on the collapsed condo tower Friday, June 25, 2021, Photo: AP

 

Lebanon, a Nation Destroyed

"We have nothing in the port: not an arms depot, nor a missile depot nor missiles, nor rifles, nor bombs, nor bullets, nor nitrate."                                                          Hassan Nasrallah, head, Hezbollah

"We will hang the gallows."                                                                                    "We are anticipating tens of thousands of people to protest in Beirut and other cities in Lebanon on Saturday."                                                                             "We are likely to see a return to the earliest days of the protest movement that began in October. But the anger and devastation wrought by the explosion coupled with the sharp decline in quality of life -- means that the upcoming period is likely to be more violent than before."                                                                                                 Joel Gulhane, analyst, Risk Advisory Group, United Kingdom

"It is a complete disaster."                                                                                     "We are working without water, without electricity -- we have a corrupt government. Now with what happened, I don't believe we can do anything anymore."             "How do we fix the elevators, water supply, electricity?"                                              "[Our family home and business look like] an atomic bomb has gone off."              "If you want to buy aluminum, you want to buy glass, you want to buy paint, you want to buy anything -- you need fresh money ... If you go to the bank, they cannot give it to you."                                                                                                            "I don't think we'll get anything from the government, all we can hope for is money from the international community."                                                                                Yusef Karam, Beirut resident, 230 metres from the blast site

"Lebanon barely produces any glass, so how do we rebuild any of this?"            "I've owned this pharmacy for 35 years, I lived through the war. I have never seen such a moment. Within ten seconds, I lost everything."                                           Paul, pharmacy owner, Gemmayzeh area, Beirut

French President Emmanuel Macron (L) walks with Lebanese President Michel Aoun upon his arrival at Beirut airport, on August 6, 2020 two days after a massive explosion devastated the Lebanese capital in a disaster that has sparked grief and fury. French President Emmanuel Macron visited shell-shocked Beirut on August 6, pledging support and urging change after a massive explosion devastated the Lebanese capital in a disaster that left 300,000 people homeless. Thibault Camus / POOL / AFP

Hundreds of thousands of residents of Beirut struggle with thoughts of the future, unable to visualize how they will ever be able to restart their lives after a catastrophic blast that destroyed Beirut's port, surrounding buildings and thousands of homes, leaving an estimated 300,000 people homeless. An estimated 150 people died in the explosions, which left 5,000 people injured, flooding Beirut's already stressed and overcrowded hospitals at a time when they were coping with COVID-19 admissions.

A country already struggling with a severely depressed economy, begging for loans to keep itself afloat, where a massive unemployment figure reflects the fallout of the global pandemic lockdown hitting an already depressed financial situation, where banks will not release funds to people desperate for cash. The blast that destroyed the warehouse carrying the incendiary ammonium nitrate, all 2,750 tons of it, is considered to have been ignited by fireworks that began a fire in the warehouse they were stored in, where a welder is held to have sparked the initial reaction.

The giant silo next to the warehouses which stored 80 percent of the nation of 6 million's wheat storage means a desperate shortage of food, with its destruction. Rescue teams searching for survivors have discovered a tunnel and underground rooms beneath the destroyed port. Which certainly sounds consistent with the terror group Hezbollah importing/smuggling/receiving munitions shipped through the port and stored subterraneously. Those aware of insider information speak of Hezbollah control of the port.

Certainly, port authorities who had attempted over the six years of the incendiary chemicals' storage to convey to the ruling elite the dangers inherent in storing the ammonium nitrate among a large civilian population, and they were desperate to have the material removed, but their pleas went nowhere. Even so, government authorities claim to have had no knowledge that the material was even stored at the port. Someone authorized their retention and storage from an impounded and finally owner-abandoned vessel.

'There was blood everywhere': Lebanese doctor on trying to save victims amid pandemic

Lebanese have been through decades of war and insecurity, sectarian and tribal suspicion and violence.  Moored in a period of financial strain, coping with a global pandemic, stress between Hezbollah and those who wish them gone, resentment at the manipulative influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, hosting a million Syrian refugees fleeing their government's lethal violence against its rebellious citizens, the people of Lebanon hardly expected that things could get any worse.

Now they're adamant; they want the entire government to resign. This is not a new demand by any means; it began in the third quarter of 2019, and continues, strengthened to the present day, hugely exacerbated by the destructive blast that levelled a third of the city. Searching desperately for someone to blame, President Michel Aoun suggested a missile aimed at the port by a foreign enemy source would have been the catalyst of the two explosions.

He will not agree to an international investigation, insisting the blast could have been caused by "negligence or foreign interference through a missile or bomb", leaving one thinking 'now who could that foreign interference conceivably be?', the question speedily answering itself. When all else fails, place the blame on the Jewish state. That experts have swiftly discounted such a theory in pointing to a fire burning at the port warehouse initiating the explosion, that too is rejected. 

Many foreign countries have offered assistance, ranging from search and rescue special units, to medical professionals to aid in dealing with the crisis, and the government of Lebanon simply has no interest in these offers stating baldly that it will accept cash in aid, keep the rest away. Lebanese leaders quite simply refuse to take any responsibility. And for that the Lebanese population is beyond furious, exacerbating an already tense situation.

One member of the Lebanese parliament and one of its ambassadors has chosen to resign, agreeing with those who claim the blast resulted from decades of corruption and mismanagement. According to Tracy Chamoun who served as ambassador to Jordan, the disaster resulted from corrupt political elites in power since the 1975 --1990 civil war. "They all must go. This is total negligence", she fumed. 

A person draped in a Lebanese flag reacts before the ravaged port of Lebanon's capital Beirut on Sunday. International donors pledged $398.7 million Cdn in emergency aid after the capital was rocked by a deadly explosion on Aug. 4. (Patrick Baz/AFP via Getty Images)

Lebanon's Undoing

Lebanon's Undoing

The huge explosion hit the port of Beirut Tuesday is captured on video. Twitter/various

"Beirut has never seen anything like this before."

"It is a destroyed city, people lying on the streets, damage everywhere."

Beirut Governor Marwan Abhoud

"Preliminary information indicates that there was highly explosive material that was confiscated a while back and stored."

Interior Minister Mahdmoud Fehme

The blast, according to Prime Minister Hassan Diab, was a "major national disaster". And that description -- of a country that underwent a violent civil war, that has been since then rife with assassinations and conflicts, that is harbouring a million Syrian refugees, that is undergoing a financial crisis, and trying to cope with its part of a global pandemic, while its citizens face hardships in a country that must import 80 percent of the food required to feed an entire population, even as it struggles to pay for that food, begging for loans it may never pay back -- may be seen as an understatement.

This is an Arab nation of historic past efforts to deal with its sectarian divides. Where the decision to include the major representatives of Sunni, Shia, Christian, Druze in a shared government worked very well -- for a while. A country with more than its share of problems, but an equally large share of geological grandeur in natural beauty, admired as a Mediterranean Eden. A popular tourism attraction for the Middle East, in a forward-looking country able to deal effectively with disparate demographics and sectarian and tribal differences.

Wealthy Gulf states with the wherewithal to aid Lebanon financially, will not. For the simple enough reason that they fear any financial aid will end up benefiting the terror group Hezbollah, the Party of God, that has been responsible, along with Iran's al-Quds branch of the Republican National Guard Corps, in ensuring that Syrian oppression of its Sunni citizens where over a half million such citizens have died in an uncivil insurrection, targeted by barrel bombs and chemical weapons, continues.

Hezbollah, the Party of God that owes allegiance to the Islamic Republic of Iran, has gifted Lebanon to Iran. The fiction that Hezbollah has a military wing and a political wing is one that also helped to propel it into government in Lebanon, where assassinations of its detractors are just a reflection of how matters are settled in the Byzantine byways of the Middle East, to leverage its way to manipulating, then managing the government of Lebanon.

Lebanon has been a wan shadow of its former self for decades. It becomes less and less of a nation, its health as a country deteriorating year by year. That Hezbollah uses the country as a cache for its voluminous munitions depots is no one's secret. Nor is it any secret that Hezbollah will eventually be involved in a pincer strategy along with Iran and Syria and Hamas to try once again to contest Israel's existence in the Middle East.

In preparation for that great adventure, Hezbollah, like Hamas, stockpiles the munitions and weaponry that gives them confidence they can carry out their sacred mission of genocidal obliteration. Their shared habit of stockpiling missiles, rockets, munitions within crowded civilian enclaves to ensure their safety, deliberately oblivious to the safety of civilian populations among whom these stockpiles exist guarantees that eventually and occasionally accidents will occur.

As one such did yesterday when a vast stockpile of ammonium nitrate housed in Beirut's dock area next to a warehouse of fireworks among which some may have spontaneously erupted in sparks to set off a major conflagration when the ammonium nitrate exploded, once, twice, cratering that part of the city and sending repercussions as far as Cyprus. Killing over a hundred civilians, wounding four thousand, rendering 300,000 people homeless.

Lebanese soldiers search for survivors after a massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, August 5, 2020.(AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

The Soul of a Nation

"Notre Dame, by the fullest standards of human achievement, is remarkable. Longevity was at play even in its building, a common endeavour over 300 years, and its existence -- beyond time's decay or external ravaging -- near 900. Centuries cluster around that building, and thereby the motions of history, events great and small enacted so to speak within the great shadow of its long presence. People coming to view the cathedral are by it put in mind of the great flow of history, the accumulation of events, achievements, sorrows and joys of art and life, that played out around the magnificent towers, and within its vast ornamented spaces."
"We in the West are obliging amnesiacs of our greatest achievements. And it takes something like the jeopardy to Notre Dame to remind us of our common cultural and artistic heritage. That through literature, painting, sculpture, music and all the attendant arts the West has brightened and deepened the experience of life, and put in possession for generations past and to come creations that widen our souls. It is good, too, and of the essence of the near tragedy in Paris, to be reminded that from the power of religion in the so-called dim light of the Middle Ages, by the labour of hands and minds of a whole people, something as transcendent as the great vaults and towers of Notre Dame was given over to the world."
Rex Murphy, National Post

The Gallican French Church can assimilate all the vagaries of human nature; it is the ultimate worldly church. Some of its 20th-Century theologians, such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Maritain, were among the most influential in the world. And Notre Dame, beyond all other buildings in Europe, has been in the seminal moments of the history of Europe through most of the Middle Ages, and through all the complexities of the history of France as one of the world's greatest nation states, which it remains."
"When Henry IV won the civil war and in order to unite the country under him, became a Roman Catholic -famously saying: 'Paris is worth a mass'], it was in Notre Dame that the mass occurred. All the kings of France from Philip Augustus in the 12th Century were frequent communicants here."
Conrad Black, National Post

"A small number of specialized insurers, notably Lloyd's of London, are often willing to accept the risk of undertaking such valuations, but the resulting premiums are very high."
"The insurance business operates by spreading risk over a large number of similarly situated insured parties, and obviously in the case of unique assets, there is not a large pool!"
"The cost to them [France or any nation-state] of financing the occasional repair or replacement of unique asset, they may calculate, will be lower than the sum of the insurance premiums. Thus I would doubt that Egypt has purchased a comprehensive insurance policy for, e.g., the Pyramids of Egypt."
Bruce Huber, professor of law, University of Notre Dame, Indiana

travelcaffeine.com

While it is beyond difficult to evaluate a priceless loss such as an incomparable work of art of ancient heritage, it is possible to imagine the price that the building and artistic professions such as architects historians and artisans' meticulous work involved in restoring the 850-year-old Notre Dame cathedral in Paris after the devastating and mysterious fire consumed its architectural integrity as a medieval-era landmark, to be in the neighbourhood of billions of dollars.

When catastrophic events cause untold damage, usually insurance can be relied upon to help defray most of the costs associated with reconstruction. But not in this case. The French state is the owner of Notre Dame and the artworks displayed within, and it and they were not insured, leaving the government of France responsible for restoration and rebuilding costs. National monuments are not generally insured; the cost would be monumental even if a valuation reflective of their inestimable worth were to be agreed upon.

Properties like monuments or religious relics defy valuation in any event since they are a product of not only great art but sentiment and heritage. These cultural artefacts are known the world over and become a magnet for pilgrimages. The choice when it comes to such priceless objects is to self-insure. Which is to say the unspoken but glaringly obvious esteem in which they are held bespeak their value, and the owners of such properties understand that they are obliged to history, culture and world heritage to protect and insure their existence.

The fire that destroyed much of the Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris is a tragedy that is irreparable. Even if the cathedral is rebuilt, it will never be what it was before. (Photo by Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)

The investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing, and will continue for some time. That initially, that is directly upon the outbreak of the fire official assurances went the rounds through the news media that the cause was inadvertence, an unfortunate accident, ascribed to the relatively modest $6.75-million project to renovate and strengthen its roof. Since at this juncture the public hopes and the authorities promise that the cathedral in its former glory is to be restored, public figures of great celebrity and wealth have responded by pledging a billion dollars to date, as a start.

According to U.K.-based Ecclesiastical Insurance, in business for over a century, such structures as churches, owing to their age, are complicated to insure where buildings recognized for their great historical value must by law be restored in the very same manner as originally built. Sourcing appropriate materials and artisans to reproduce the work of medieval times is expensive because both are rare. According to specialist Paul Humphris of Ecclesiastical, if portions of Notre Dame appear physically insecure "a certain element of violence" will be required to eliminate the danger of collapse.

"If the fire really was an accident, it is almost impossible to explain how it started. Benjamin Mouton, Notre Dame's former chief architect, explained that the rules were exceptionally strict and that no electric cable or appliance, and no source of heat, could be placed in the attic. He added that an extremely sophisticated alarm system was in place. The company that installed the scaffolding did not use any welding and specialized in this type of work. The fire broke out more than an hour after the workers' departure and none of them was present. It spread so quickly that the firefighters who rushed to the spot as soon as they could get there were shocked. Remi Fromont, the chief architect of the French Historical Monuments said: "The fire could not start from any element present where it started. A real calorific load is necessary to launch such a disaster."
Dr. Guy Millière, professor, history, culture, University of Paris, author of 27 books on France and Europe

So, is there any reason to distrust or question the continued assertions made by French authorities respecting the cause of the fire, and their insistence of the disaster being the result of an unfortunate accident? None whatever, if there were no precedents in such declarations in the aftermath of horrific terrorist attacks in France. Distrust does not come from nowhere; it is the result of credible authorities deliberately steering the public away from the truth, motivated by a wish to have calm prevail by masking the truth.

Eventually, as on previous occasions, it is likely that the truth will prevail, that private investigative sources or enterprising investigative journalists seeking out the truth, whether it validates the official statements or contradicts them as it has in the past -- may unearth incriminating evidence of a malign source of the 'accident' that set about with great deliberation to torch and destroy a magnificent edifice of ancient heritage because of unreasoning hatred for symbols of the West, Christianity and the values of civilizational norms.

In this April 15, 2019 photo, flames and smoke rise from the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Thierry Mallet/The Associated Press

Offending Sociopathic Neighbours

"[A criminal investigation had been opened.] A person, a woman, who lived in the building has been arrested."
"At this stage, with what we know, the incident appears to be criminal … This person was arrested in the night not far from the fire [and] she is in custody. [The woman had a history of mental health problems]."
Paris prosecutor, Rémy Heitz

"She had tried to break my window and door in revenge … when I came across her she told me good luck and said I was a fireman so I must like flames."
"Then I smelled something burning and I realised she’d set the whole floor alight."
"[I later saw the woman outside], trying to set fire to two dustbins."
Off-duty Paris firefighter, resident, apartment building

"It was a particularly violent fire."
"The fire has damaged the structure of the building and until we can check, we can’t rule out the risk of it collapsing."
Capt Clement Cognon, Paris fire service

"I climbed across several balconies, with nothing beneath, and then was backed into a corner."
"There were people climbing hand-over-hand to get to where I was and escape the flames."
Claire, building resident

Should anyone, aware that something isn't quite right about a neighbour, risk alienating and offending them beyond what any sane person could imagine, if their behaviour impacts on your own quality of life, living in a shared structure like an apartment building? People do have an obligation of courtesy to others, not to infringe on the comfort and quality of life of other people through indulging in acts that will impact others, and noise is certainly one of those offences.

In this instance, a young firefighter who lived in an apartment building, approached a neighbour, a 40-year-old woman who didn't appreciate his complaint that loud music emanating from her apartment was disturbing and making it very difficult for him and his girlfriend to enjoy the comfort of their own home, much less enabling them to get a good night's sleep. Who could imagine that a request for consideration of others would result in a deadly fire set in malicious spite?



A fire deliberately set to teach a young man a 'lesson' against impinging on the sensitivities of someone living in close proximity whose own sensibilities were obviously set in opposition to any reasonable request to tamp down night-time noise levels. The lesson was that ten people lost their lives when flames engulfed the nine-storey apartment building, causing panicked residents to clamber dangerously over and around balconies and climbing to the building's roof in a risky attempt to escape the flames.

The fire that ensued represented the deadliest fire in over ten years that the city of Paris has had to contend with. The responding fire crews unfurled their rescue ladders bit by bit to hook them to the structure, risking their own safety in a bid to rescue residents from the building's burning upper floors. No fewer than 50 people were secured and taken to safety by emergency personnel, the firefighters who saw their obligation as saving lives in a catastrophic fire that took five hours to bring under control by over 250 firefighters deployed to the scene.

Neighbours later recounted overhearing the woman and her off-duty firefighter neighbour arguing over the loudly intrusive music coming from the woman's apartment prior to the fire. Police were called and in responding to the dispute were informed by the young man that he and his girlfriend were leaving the apartment to find peaceful sleep somewhere other than in their apartment. They felt the neighbour had lost her mind, they added, and one day an accident would occur because of her behaviour. That 'accident' wasn't long in coming.

Parisians firefighters in action after a fire broke out at an apartment in the 16th district of western Paris, France, 05 February 2019.     EPA/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON

The 22-year-old firefighter recounted returning to the building shortly afterward around midnight, in hopes that the woman herself had left the building. He ran into her in the stairwell, where smoke was already becoming evident. "She wished me good luck, telling me that I loved flames", he recalled. Later yet, another resident informed the young man that the woman had placed paper and wood in front of his apartment door to create a fire.

After he had come across the woman on her way down the stairwell as he ran to the upper floor where his apartment was located, he attempted to evacuate the building, alerting people to the fire. An off-duty police officer, another apartment resident, rang doorbell after doorbell, hoping to alert as many people as possible to escape the building as fire spread and chaos broke out among the residents. "I couldn't save everyone, I can't forgive myself", the man said of the smoke and flames that kept him from climbing beyond the fourth floor.

"I want to salute the huge mobilization of the Paris firefighters. More than 250 people arrived immediately and, throughout the night, saved over fifty people in truly exceptional conditions."
Christophe Castaner, French Interior Minister

The Paris fire service says 10 people have been killed and at least 28 injured in a fire in a residential building.
Benoit Moser/BSPP via AP

World's No. One Headliner

"I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools. My first day, it gets signed, OK? My first day. There's no more gun-free zones."
"[The] two million criminal aliens now inside of our country? We will begin moving them out day one. As soon as I take office. Day one, my first hour in office, those people are gone. They're going out. They're going out fast."
"I love it [waterboarding]. I think it's great. [That American general a century ago in the Philippines who slaughtered 49 terrorists, sent the 50th] back to your people, and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years, there wasn't a problem, OK? Twenty-five years, there wasn't a problem."
"When the students poured into Tienanmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it [the protest] down with strength. That shows you the power of strength."
"I would bomb the shit out of them [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant]. You have to take out their families when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families."
"When they [Iranian naval vessels] circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water."
Donald J. Trump, Republican candidate for U.S. presidential election

The problem is that ALL of the people in the United States of America have no wish to be represented by this monumentally inappropriate charlatan. That some Americans see their way clear to voting for this unabashed and unregenerate buffoon, racist, misogynist, braggart, liar, is quite beyond comprehension. Even granted that Americans are fed up with an administration that appears to have bungled every international situation of grave moment it has turned its attention to, and has been equally incapable of internally administering the affairs of the nation instead of alienating the expectations of the citizenry and failing to diplomatically achieve a measure of bipartisan cohesion, the situation is utterly inexplicable.

The democracy that has led the way for the rest of the world to feel secure in their choice of political will appears to have collapsed inward upon itself. Both Republicans and Democrats have done inestimable harm to their political reputations. The liberties and freedoms that the United States exemplifies has left it free to remain obliviously ignorant of what constitutes reliable leadership both from within and without. It is unspeakably inane, frighteningly so, that this great country, so long a beacon of the free world, has been unable to field candidates of merit and trust to represent the nation and instead is prepared to elect one of two inadequate, unreliable, morally bankrupt candidates sends shivers of apprehension down the spines of foreign onlookers.

On one hand there is a crude exhibitionist who is convinced that every fatuous word he utters represents divine wisdom, and that he is entitled to behave in a manner that would never be countenanced in civil society were it not for his acquired and inherited wealth and his 'celebrity' status among the easily led and gulled. And on the other there is an equally entitled egotist whose capacity for bald-faced denials is readily identified as similar to Trump's. Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill, a former president who shamed the White House with his uninhibited sexuality, preying on women from the height of his status, again the equal of Trump, offer little comfort as the solution preventing Trump from sitting in the Oval Office.

John Sommers II/Getty Images, BNN edit

Hillary Clinton used her executive office as a conduit to enrich herself and her husband by clandestinely offering access to the State Department for political hearings bought through generous contributions to the Clinton Charity, which appears to be a nominal charity, one that has served to benefit a high-flying couple who hadn't the financial wherewithal they craved for, even as he held the highest office in the land. Access bought and paid for is responsible for the Clintons' net worth of an estimated $150 to $200 million. The emails she so zealously filtered away from access to information requests by not using the official, secure server were hers to dispose of as she chose.

Labelled a liar and skirting criminality consequences for her lies under oath, unequivocally identified as such by the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who chose not to prosecute the candidate for the presidency, leaving her free to win by the default of an electorate thankfully -- when all the chickens come home to roost -- squeamish enough to backtrack on their deadly fascination with Trump, come the new year she will be inducted into the presidency of the United States.

Gotcha! 

Seth Wenig/AP

City-Ravenous Flames of an Unstoppable Wildfire

"We still have some people hanging around and we are trying to ensure everyone's safety. Right now we have special tactical operations inside the city looking to make sure that there is nobody left behind."
"They [people insisting on remaining in the evacuated city of Fort McMurray] are not giving us a reason. They are just refusing to go."
Sgt. Jack Poitras, Alberta RCMP tactical team

"We're still here, we're still battling. The beast is still up. It's surrounding the city, and we're here doing our very best for you."
Darby Allen, regional fire chief

"Let me be clear: air tankers are not going to stop this fire. It is going to continue to push through these dry conditions until we actually get some significant rain to help us."
"I expect this fire to continue to grow over the next number of days."
Chad Morrison, Alberta Forestry

Jonathan Hayward / Canadian Press   A giant fireball is seen as a wildfire rips through the forest 16 

kilometres south of Fort McMurray, Alta. on Saturday.

The firestorm that has ravaged Fort McMurray, sending almost 90,000 people in a desperate rush to escape the flames continues to defy all human efforts to douse its ferocious path, consuming all before it. And those fleeing the wildfire have the eerie feeling it is following them. Climate change is being pointed out as part of the problem in dry conditions feeding the flames, while forestry protocols to douse small natural fires to protect houses built at the forest's edge, leaving behind tinder-dry forests stacked with the fuel for those wildfires are also to blame.

The province has announced the intention of the government to provide immediate financial relief to the 90,000 evacuees who have suddenly been deprived of all their possessions. Adults will receive $1,250 each and dependents $500, at an estimated final cost to the province of $100-million. But that cost is relatively little compared to the lost GDP from the fire impacting on oil extraction and business placed in abeyance.

Scott Olson / Getty Images    Smoke from wildfires drifts across the night sky on Saturday near Fort 

McMurray.

Add that to the monumental cost of rebuilding, replacing everything that has been lost and it's a staggering loss to an economy already at a monumental low point as a result of the collapse in oil prices.  Over 20,000 residents of the city displaced by fire evacuation orders have found haven north of the city, in oilsands work camps after the fire cut the main road through Fort McMurray causing residents to flee both north and south.

Hotel, campgrounds and friends' homes have served to temporarily house many of the evacuees who went south instead of north. Last Wednesday the number of structures in the city that were destroyed by the wildfires was put at 1,600, and there has been no update since. This will not, it seems, be the last Alberta will hear about wildfires in this year of 2016. The official fire season for the province has six months left to go.

Convincing Enough

"I don’t think we know yet. Whenever you’ve got a plane crash, first of all you’ve got the tragedy, you’ve got — making sure there’s an investigation on site. I think there is a possibility that there was a bomb on board. And we are taking that very seriously."

"We are going to spend a lot of time making sure our own investigators and our own intelligence community figures out exactly what’s going on before we make any definitive pronouncements. But it is certainly possible that there was a bomb on board."

U.S. President Barack Obama

"As a result of that review we have concluded there is a significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft." 

"Passengers who are on the ground in Sharm el Sheikh will be returned to the U.K. We are working with the airlines, and the Egyptian authorities put in place emergency procedures and additional screening and additional security [to get those travelers home]."
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond

"All those interested in the matter are welcome to participate in the investigation."

"When there is propaganda that it crashed because of Isis (IS), this is one way to damage the stability and security of Egypt and the image of Egypt. Believe me, the situation in Sinai - especially in this limited area - is under our full control."
Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi

So there they are, all the Brits who decided to take their holidays in Egypt, stranded, marooned, but not for very long. It's just that Britain has decided, based on what they see as the evidence before them, not to risk courting another disaster. After all, they too are engaged in fighting Islamic State, part of the international engagement in the U.S.-led air strikes in Iraq and Syria. What befell Russia, newly entered into the arena on its own terms and reversing the gains made by the U.S. team, could happen to other enemies of Islamofascism.

So the Brits will get to go home, with hand luggage, their other belongings to follow, all in good time. Now France believes that Britain's move is good enough for them as well, and they too have suspended all flights of their national airlines in and out of Sharm el Sheikh. The Netherlands and Belgium have decided to follow suit. They are all awaiting guarantees on airport security. A pity that Egypt has been brought to this state of assault against its tourism.

The conflict it has had to deal with in the Sinai Peninsula for years just will not evaporate. If Egypt did indeed have everything under control it would be enabled to rout the Bedouin Salafists, Hamas brigades, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Islamic State-linked Sinai Province out of its sovereign territory completely, allowing some semblance of normalcy in the country without the constant threat of attacks. But that, sadly, is not the case.

 Germany's Lufthansa has announced that its subsidiaries Edelweiss and Eurowings also are in the process of stemming flights from Zurich and Dusseldorf to Sharm el Sheikh as a purely "precautionary" measure. They too will have to make arrangements to rescue their nationals providing return flights to accommodate their need to return home. Russian planes, however, confident in their mission, both in Syria and in Egypt, are continuing flights in and out of the resort in Sinai.

Julian Bray, an aviation security analyst states that it is "highly probable" that a relatively unsophisticated group like Sinai Province could procure a bomb and place it on a jet leaving the resort, as they imply they did. "It is unlikely a passenger would be able to stow it on board the aircraft, but it is quite likely it could have been taken into somewhere like the cargo shed and then into a container in the plane."

"All passenger aircraft nowadays carry cargo as well, which often comes as a complete sealed unit, and the concern is that at airports like Sharm security is lax around cargo. A lot of the airports in the Far East and Middle East are running on a shoestring and they have to turn round aircraft and cargo as fast as possible", he stated with an expert's measure of confidence. Despite which no concrete evidence has yet been uncovered pointing to a bomb attack.

However, as US media reported that a military satellite had detected a "heat flash" over Sinai at the time of the crash, it is certainly suggestive of an explosion, although officials have not ruled out the possibility of a technical malfunction having taken place. For its part, Sinai Province reiterated its claim of responsibility in an audio recording circulated on social media, refusing to give any details about the method used.

"We brought it down by God's help, but we are under no obligation to reveal the mechanism we used. So search the wreckage of the plane, and find your black box and analyse it." According to Dr. HA Hellyer, an expert on the Middle East with the Royal United Services Institute, an attack of some kind by Islamic State was expected. The scale of the Metrojet attack would however, came as a surprise: "I don't think anybody expected an attack on a plane, maybe on a hotel or a kidnapping ... but nobody expected something this large."

"I don't think it will surprise anyone such a radical and extremist group has targeted civilians, but certainly the nature of this attack is very dramatic." There are, of course, infamous precedents, which no one expected of al-Qaeda. If confirmed, the attack would represent a propaganda victory for Islamic State, according to Dr. Hellyer: "It would mean that they've taken out a huge number of civilians at once, and struck a blow against two of their enemies at once, Russia and Egypt."

"If it turns out that they didn't do it, that is still a victory in a sense. We are having this conversation now. They have managed to dominate the discussion, and that in itself is a communications victory."

EPA:  Debris from the plane was spread over a wide area, indicating it broke up in mid-air

Year 'Round Russian Season in Egypt

"My mother begged me to cancel the trip, but we were waiting all day and dreaming of the sea for so long so we went anyway."
"This place [Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt] is wonderful for the weather."
Ekaterina Ivanova, 34, St.Petersburg, Russia

"You have to speak Russian here, they're most of our customers and they don't necessarily speak English.
"They come for diving, snorkelling, and of course, the parties... We love Russia and make many friends and connections with them."
Mustapha Abdel-Hakim, 26, cafe owner: "La Rousse", Sharm el-Sheikh

"They are all over Sharm, they buy all sorts of souvenirs, King Tut statutes and carved wooden objects but especially Arabic water pipes -- this is number one for the Russians."
Raymond Michael, souvenir shop vendor

"I created entertainment in Sharm to be an international clubbing destination and here we are twenty years later."
"We have sunshine all year and open-air parties all year, what's not to love."
Adly el-Mestekawy, "Sheikh of Sharm, club Pacha

A view of visitors at the beach at the Mediterranean city of Marsa Matrouh, northwest of Cairo, Egypt © Amr Dalsh / Reuters

It's not only Russian nationals who are drawn to the sun and sand and sea of the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, for Gulf Arabs, British, and Germans travel there as well. There was a time when Jews from Israel flocked to the Sinai; it had been their favoured vacation spot before it was handed back to Egypt in a peace agreement. But terrorism and endemic lawlessness conspired to convince Israel that Jews should avoid their former playgrounds.

Now, it is no longer Hebrew heard so commonly at the resorts, but Russian, with 60% of the tourists coming from Russia. Vacationing families lap up the sun and the sand, the restfulness and the beauty, and when evening falls they withdraw and in come the 20-somethings to party the night away. The very day of the catastrophic crash of Flight KGL9268 headed to St.Petersburg, the show, as all such entertainments tend to, continued on.

The clubbing nights last until sunrise, a draw for Russians to Red Sea tourism. "I would like to once again express my condolences to the families and relatives of the victims. Without any doubt everything should be done so that an objective picture of what happened is created, so that we know what happened", Vladimir Putin assured Russians of the "dreadful tragedy". An objective picture precludes any suggestion that Russia's military incursion in Syria is responsible.

Ekaterina Ivanova, despite her mother's pleas that she remain home and not jet off to the Sinai for holiday, decided, after having just missed taking the ill-fated flight, to continue on regardless. She -- among the three million Russians who came as tourists to Egypt last year represent a third of all visitors -- simply could not imagine missing out on the fun to be had in the southern Sinai.

It is all, after all, fairly distant from the insurgency fought by Islamic militants against the Egyptian army in the northern Sinai Peninsula. And so, the tourists come in Russian droves, willing to take their chances.

Passengers line up to depart from Sharm el-Sheikh Airport hours after a Russian aircraft carrying 224 people, including 17 children, crashed about 20 minutes after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh, a Red Sea resort popular with Russian tourists, in south Sinai, Egypt, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2015

Well, Then: Next Step?

They were fairly specific in their report after the Dutch Safety Board investigated the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 which crashed over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. All 298 people aboard the airliner were killed. The five key findings serve to validate what those in authority already believed had happened. And, just as Moscow denied any involvement by Russia, let alone by the ethnic Russian Ukrainian rebels whom they support when the catastrophe occurred, their denials will be no less emphatic now.

• The Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by "a 9N314M warhead carried on the 9M38-series missile installed on the Buk surface-to-air missile system."
• The missile exploded less than a metre from the upper-left-hand side of the cockpit, bombarding the plane with fragments at speeds of up to 9.000 km/h.
• The ensuing blast killed the two pilots in an instant, ripping the front of the plane off. 
• The territory in which the launch took place was within an area in the hands of the separatists.

Those knowledgeable of the Russian military speculated that a Russian-made Buk caused the catastrophic crash of the Malaysian passenger liner. A reporter in fact, noted that he had seen a Buk launcher being transported close to the presumed site of the launch, and had taken a photograph which was later reproduced to confirm his sighting.

According to the report, missile fragments in the cockpit crew's bodies along with paint traces and the spray pattern of the blast indicated consistency with a Buk missile.

Dutch examiners discovered over 350 contact points where recovered fuselage had been punctured or dented. They concluded that there were over 800 strike points in total, finding bow tie- and cube-shaped fragments of unalloyed steel which appeared to be "pre-formed", the operation bearing some resemblance to the much cruder, similarly effective barrel bombs used by the Syrian regime against rebel enclaves, simply in reverse action.

The report ventured its opinion that passengers may have been semi-conscious in the 90 seconds that passed before their bodies struck ground after the concussion exploded the Malaysian jet, but that full awareness of what was occurring eluded them with their brains starved for oxygen in the freezing chaos around them.

There was no effort specifically ventured regarding who was responsible for launching the missile. The report did identify an area of 320 square kilometres where the launch must have taken place, identified as territory, according to daily maps maintained by the Ukrainian National Security Council, that was consistently held by the rebels, between Donetsk and Lohansk.

"Our investigation showed that all parties regarded the conflict in eastern part of Ukraine from a military perspective. Nobody gave any thought of a possible threat to civil aviation", concluded Safety Board chairman Tjibbe Joustra.

The Russian manufacturer of the missile has taken grave exception to the findings. A separate report of its own was released bringing into dispute the suggestion that a Russian Buk was involved in the tragedy. The Buki manufacturer, Almaz-Antey's head Yan Novikov stated: "We have proven with our experiments that the theory about the missile flying from Snizhne is false." 

Two experiments were conducted by them; one that detonated a Buk missile beside an airplane nose similar to that of a Boeing 777, which they claim disputes the findings of the report since the aircraft's remains indicated a far different pattern of damage than that seen on what remained of MH17.

Evidence, according to Mr. Novikov, indicates that had the plane been hit by a Buk, it was fired from Zaroshenske, a village which Russia claims was at that time under Ukrainian control.

Mass Immigration and the Undoing of Europe by Vijeta Uniyal August 25, 2015 at 5:00 am http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6370/mass-immigration-europe In Germany, where traffickers are now dropping off illegal immigrants on Autobahns, authorities have reacted -- not by trying to intercept or discourage traffickers, but by putting up new road signs alerting drivers of potential pedestrians on the highway. Last month alone, more migrants landed on the shores of Greece than in the whole of 2014. If the mainstream media keep reminding everyone how the rioting immigrant youths in France or Britain are driven by economic inequality now, imagine the scale of unrest once European welfare states cannot finance "half the planet" anymore and are forced to cut welfare benefits. No one, however, especially the media, blames migrants for their own actions. This is the real tragedy of the unfolding refugee crisis in Europe: apart from those fleeing combat zones, most migrants swarming European borders and coastlines do not appear to be in any real or dire need. With the European Union surrendering its immigration policy to people smugglers, the immigration crisis in Europe keeps reaching staggering new heights. The word has gone out that Fortress Europe is scalable. From Morocco to Turkey, people smuggling has turned into an irresistibly big business. From small-time thugs to the terror outfit Hamas -- for $2500-$3000 per person smuggled -- many evidently want to seize a slice of this lucrative business that was created by the EU's collective inaction. In Germany, where traffickers are now dropping off illegal immigrants on Autobahns, authorities have reacted -- not by trying to intercept or discourage the traffickers, but by putting new road-signs alerting drivers of potential pedestrians on the highway. Even before this year's mass immigration began, Germany was struggling to deal with roughly a quarter of a million asylum applicants -- without even accounting for the illegal immigrants already in the country. The recent wave of migration would push those figures to record heights. The trend in Germany merely reflects the overall scale of the European immigrant crisis. In July 2015, an estimated 50,000 refugees entered Greece, a surge of 750 percent. Last month alone more migrants landed than in the whole of 2014. In Germany, the head of Lower Saxony's Municipal Federation, Marco Trips, told local reporters that the "system has already collapsed." This sentiment is apparently shared by municipalities across Germany. In a historic move, the German federal government has now called in the military to assist in setting up new tent cities and providing basic amenities for ever-rising number of refugees. The majority of those entering Europe illegally seem not to be fleeing armed conflicts, but seeking a better life in a welfare paradise. Europe's answer is to throw money at the problem -- money Europe does not have. Britain's Defence Secretary has suggested that the UK's £12 billion ($19 billion USD) foreign aid budget can "discourage" mass migration. The European welfare system, funded increasingly by governments' debt in recent decades, is showing signs of an impending collapse. There is no end in sight for Greece's debt crisis, despite repeated bailout packages to the tune of €326 billion ($375 billion USD). Slow economic growth, high youth unemployment and an aging population makes the European welfare model increasingly untenable. If the mainstream media keep reminding everyone how rioting immigrant youths in France or Britain are driven by economic inequality now, imagine the scale of unrest once European welfare states cannot finance "half the planet" anymore and are forced to cut welfare benefits. African migrants camp out on the beach in the northern Italian town of Ventimiglia, along the French border, as they wait for the opportunity to cross into France. (Image source: AFP video screenshot) Europe's answer to this imminent financial doom is to create still more welfare dependents or, even better, "invite" them by failing to secure the borders. EU bureaucrats not only refuse to implement basic border controls but rebuke any EU member state moving to secure its borders. European politicians and the mainstream media are up in arms against Hungary's move to erect a border fence along its southern border. American public broadcaster PBS ran a report telling its viewers about Hungary's "new Iron Curtain." The Associated Press quoted unnamed "critics" who compared the Hungarian fence to "Communist-era barriers like the Berlin Wall." The EU bureaucrats in Brussels want to force a single asylum policy on all 28 member states, asking that they take in more migrants. According to this common asylum policy proposed by Brussels, asylum seekers entering EU would be divided among EU members. Hungary, with 60,000 migrant arrivals so far just this year, entering mainly from Serbia, remains the most vocal opponent of the EU's proposed policy. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been virtually ostracized by European politicians and media, for not complying with EU's immigration policy. Contrary to the EU's position, he has called for a "distinction" between EU member-state citizens moving within Europe and non-EU foreigners. "There are economic immigrants who are just in search of a better life... Unfortunately in Hungary we can't give jobs to all of these immigrants," Orbán said, and called the EU's proposal for member states to take in more refugees "absurd, bordering on insanity." Europe, itself reeling under a financial crisis, cannot provide housing, employment and social benefits to the thousands who each day land on European shores and cross over borders. German newspapers are full of countless reports of immigrants disappointed after arriving in Europe, almost always followed by a reporter's plea for urgent action to address the said grievance. These "disappointments" often turn into violent clashes. Police across Germany have their hands full just to keeping rival migrant gangs from turning on each other or on officials. No one, however, especially the media, blames migrants for their own actions. The mainstream media in Germany apparently refuse to connect the dots, so as not to "feed into negative stereotypes." A columnist for Germany's Tageszeitung even wrote of an elaborate government conspiracy that drives immigrants to turn violent -- allegedly just to give them a bad name. Tageszeitung also ran a story lamenting the "alarming conditions" of refugees landing on Greek islands. The article was accompanied by a photograph of smiling, well-fed, sturdy young men, posing for "selfies" on their smartphones while holding cigarettes in their hands. One of them was thoughtful enough to bring along a selfie-stick for his smartphone, to capture the moment he fled a "war zone" or acute "economic misery." This, however, is the real tragedy of the unfolding refugee crisis in Europe: apart from those fleeing combat zones, most migrants swarming European borders and coastlines do not appear to be in any real or dire need. Economic disparity on other continents should not oblige Europeans to open its own floodgates for mass migration. This crisis seems to be one of Europe's own making -- that seems to be the logical conclusion of Europe's debt-driven welfare system and the EU's contempt for national boundaries. Follow Vijeta Uniyal on Twitter