September 8, 2017

At 9:49 p.m. last night, an 8 plus magnitude earthquake began somersaulting in the Chiapas region of Mexico, and shuddered and rippled for hundreds of miles both north and south, killing at least 32 people. Unlike the earthquake in Mexico in 1985, which caused over 400 buildings in Mexico City to collapse and took at least 5,000 lives, the epicenter of this quake was far enough away from the capital that it only led to widespread, through brief, pandemonium in Mexico City in which those asleep in buildings dashed out of their apartments and down to the sidewalks. Their trepidation was encouraged by electrical generators bursting like ripe seed pods. Reports include testimony that the Angel of Independence statue in Mexico City began to sway. The earthquake also extended into rural areas of Guatemala, resulting in an unknown amount of damage.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Irma is bearing down on the eastern coast of Mexico and is due to hit the state of Veracruz and the city of Xalapa, where I read this past spring. The hurricane will be arriving with less force than has hit several Caribbean islands, though apparently Haiti was spared the worst of its recent passage. The state of Florida is expecting to be pummeled by Irma in the next few days in a manner similar to the devastating storm that engulfed Houston at the end of August.

Some of the people affected by both the hurricanes and the earthquake will become “internally displaced people,” which is to say that they will be little better off than refugees in their own country.
http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-mexico-earthquake-20170908-story.html

Other hurricanes on this planet are caused by human perfidy. Both Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai, as recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, have called upon Aung San Suu Kyi to do more than stand in front of television cameras and deny that ethnic cleansing is taking place in Myanmar. Suu Kyi is fully aware of what is taking place, and she has to take responsibility for authorizing these atrocities. Is this what house arrest for many years taught her to plan for when she achieved power?

The Angel of Human Sanity is beginning to sway.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/08/rohingya-muslims-170831065142812.html
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/08/asia/rohingya-myanmar-refugees-drowning/index.html