Well, first of all -- and here I think I speak for many veteran bloggers -- the line between sanity and insanity lurks around 18/7. Once you near the 20/7 range of news consumption, you're getting beyond the help of medication.
In truth you can't closely follow world news without meeting the Twilight Zone. So a lot of the work of staying sane is finding ways to ignore that zone opening up while you scan news wires. Take this item from yesterday, for example:
Jordan's Queen Rania, speaking on behalf of the U.N. children's fund, called for help to immunize Pakistani children against disease. UNICEF officials say they are planning a measles vaccination program, and earthquake rescue workers also warned that cases of acute respiratory infection and diarrhea have been increasing.Of course there's nothing eerie about asking for donations to a measles vaccination program for child earthquake victims. Until you learn that only 300,000 tents have been delivered thus far to shelter Pakistan's homeless earthquake victims.
About 3 million of those victims are sleeping in the open, during a part of the year in Pakistan when the temperature is plunging and snowstorms are looming in the mountainous regions. People in the worst-affected zones can't take refuge in the existing structures. This is because there are still earth tremors and the structures are very unsound; buildings collapse on a tremor.
So it's down now to a matter of days -- a few weeks if you are a hopeful sort -- before you're looking at a human death toll that could easily reach a half million within hours.
That prospect could have been avoided if Pakistan had been quicker to accept India's offer to fly aid into Pakistan's remote regions. (We're still twiddling our thumbs waiting on November 7, when the red tape will finally unwind enough from the Line of Control to allow for Pak Kashmiri quake victims to enter India's refugee shelters.)
Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf has thrown his weight behind speeding up the process. Today he announced that Pakistan is delaying purchases of F-16 jet fighters from the United States. This is so the projected expense can be diverted to aid Pakistan's quake victims.
Here a reasonable person would ask, "What the hell does a projected expense have to do with the next 72 hours in Pakistan's mountainous regions?"
Pundita is an expert at making the Twilight Zone vanish but I can't help you, if you insist on understanding what's going on in that part of the world. Your best bet is to pretend that Musharraf's announcement is a clever way to twist another billion in cash out of the United States. That makes sense, doesn't it?
It's easier to explain away UNICEF's poor prioritizing. There are uncounted billions of dollars sloshing around in what might be countless UN programs, but the monies aren't fungible. So you can have, say, a Palestine UN committee collecting USD millions to educate Muslims about the threat of Zionism. But no portion of that money can be used to deliver food and tents to Muslims in imminent danger of freezing and starving to death. Go down the list of UN programs to find the same story.
The upshot? Last week the United Nations pleaded for millions USD in donations so they don't have to suspend helicopter relief flights to Pakistan's quake victims.
Without the helicopter flights directed by the US military based in Afghanistan, the estimated 79,000+ death toll in Pakistan from the quake and its aftermath would be much higher. The bad news is that the death toll is galloping toward 100,000 and that's not including projected deaths from weather exposure and starvation as winter closes in.
Meanwhile, it's business as usual at the United Nations.
Pundita will not reveal all her secrets for staying sane. However, I will share a trick if you're a heavy-duty news consumer. I turn over certain stories to the news anchors and Talking Heads at Loony Tunes Cable News and let them have a whack. Recent LTCN offerings:
> Cooking with Tony and Jacques: Making bangers souffle in the microwave.
> Kim Jong-il analyzes news on high level Chinese Communist Party officials "Basically, they're all trying to move to Singapore."
> Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qaddafi, aka Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya ("Just call me Brother Daffy") discusses why Saudi Arabian princes are never seen in public without a headdress. "Less bother than hair straightening preparations." *
> The Yossef Bodansky-Paris Hilton daily report on terrorist activities. [tossing his pen in the air] "Paris, we've been over this before. The Land of Two Rivers is not in Minneapolis."
> The Apprentice for Tyrants. Individuals on two teams compete in tasks to show Robert Mugabe why they deserve to be his top general. Elimination rounds take place in front of a firing squad.
> Remake of Casablanca starring Victor Yushchenko as Rick and Yulia Timoshenko as Ilsa. Ukraine's government a bunch of crooks? Round up the usual oligarchs.
If you want to subscribe to LTCN you'll have to use your imagination. And stay on that 18/7 side of the line, hear?
As to what's really going on in Pakistan, same thing that's been going on for decades. China's military is worried that Pakistan will rejoin India. Pakistan's military is worried that if the US pulls out of the region again, this will leave them facing China's anger if they get too friendly with India.
Will many Pakistani earthquake survivors have to die because of such worries? Many have already died for that reason. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
* For those who have not followed the feud, Qaddafi's embrace of his African heritage has caused discomfit among Arab royalty, particulary the Saudi royals -- much to his glee.
No comments:
Post a Comment