2 posts tagged “human”

Steven Speilberg has announced that he will not participate in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, due to China's relationship with Sudan with the ongoing Darfur crisis.  I am very critical of any country that continues to support an oppressive regime or ignore an ongoing humananitarian crisis,  but it seems as if American reporters are being a but forgetful and unreflective here.  America is a one of the greatest supporters of oppressive regimes.  

Keep in mind that there were no US celebrities protesting in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics-- even when it was clear by 1996 that the 1994 NAFTA Act was only stimulating the US economy and elite business owners in Canada and Mexico,  while completely collapsing the Mexican economy.  To this day, NAFTA still has a lasting impacts of destabilizing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans.  This was not called a humanitarian crisis.  

It was also during this time period that the US government knew about the ongoing Rawandan genocide that started in 1994 that then lead to the 1996 civil war with Congo's American-backed oppressive president, Mobutu Sésé Seko.  The US government kept that all from the American public.  Also, there were no celebrities protesting the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics when US President Bush initiated US's unilateral decision to begin the War on Terror in the winter of 2001, despite vocal criticism from countries around the world.  This was not called a humanitarian crisis either.  It's all a matter of how something is spun.

Natural wildfires regenerate the soil with nutrients and burn away potentially super-dangerous brush.  Some tress, like pines, depend on fires to spread their seeds in their cones! Stephen J. Pyne, an ex-firefighter and Prof. of Ecological History - is a specialist on the social mis-management of fires in the US.  He has written extensively about different societies over time have used actively used controlled fires to develop the land or to practice cultural rituals.   From national geographic: 

"Today's fires can grow unusually fierce because Smokey Bear went overboard. For decades, the well-meaning policy of suppressing all forest fires allowed too much fuel—dead wood, underbrush, small trees—to build up on public lands, especially in the fire-prone West. What might have once been a minor grass fire now turns cataclysmic, like last year's Hayman Fire in Colorado." 

 This is also a chance for us to think about how much control we have over nature - people build homes right in the middle of forests and lands that are prone to fires. Is there anything logical to that? When we don't let natural fire happen, suburban homes on the edges become the unnatural barrier.  I hope these San Diego fires get people  to think more about ongoing fire management than fire suppression.  


I took this picture this morning of the fire at UCSD  - 8am and it's fire sky already.  In the meantime - I am safe from the fires.  The air is just horrific though - my eyes, nasal passages and throat burns.  I worry about those who have asthma. 

You can read my other thoughts about the racial class politics of San Diego fires here, National news coverage of SD fires here,  distortion of wildfires here, emphasis of LA over SD here, and what a Sociologist would do during a fire here.    this was photo overlay was created by tim