Solar Eclipse

Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You. Closeness requires time, and time has not fallen in cost or risen in quantity.

Israel Is Making the Same Mistake America Made in Iraq
Dr. Bob, 75, Knows Aging’s Toll. He Wonders if Biden and Trump Do. Dr. Bob Ross cares for the aging residents of Ortonville, Minn, even as he wonders whether he, and the presidential candidates, are up to all their tasks......... The conversations at the heart of an election cycle were the same ones unfolding inside Bob’s office: What were the best ways to slow the inevitable decline of the human body? How did aging impact cognition? When was it possible to defy age, and when was it necessary to make accommodations in terms of decision-making or professional routines? These were the questions he asked his patients each day, and also himself....... “If your body’s healthy, that helps keep your mind sharp.” ........ “If you’ve seen one person at 80, you’ve seen one person at 80,” Bob said. “There are a million different versions of growing old.” ....... One of his brothers served 20 years in the Army and then was killed in a motorcycle crash .......... The nephew who once ran a lemonade stand in Bob’s front yard was now a doctor and the hospital’s chief executive; a student he mentored in high school had become his colleague as the first female physician in Big Stone County. He’d delivered more than 1,500 babies over the years, at least 100 of whom had grown up to work alongside him at the hospital. ........... the inevitable reality of what happened to an aging human body. The frontal cortex of the brain started to shrink over time, which led to slower recall, shortened attention spans and difficulty multitasking. Heart valves and arteries stiffened with age, which forced the heart to work harder and increased the likelihood of high blood pressure and heart attacks. Spinal disks flattened and then compressed. The metabolism slowed. Muscles contracted, skin bruised, bones weakened, teeth decayed, gums receded, hearing diminished, eyesight deteriorated — and it was normal. It was entirely and inescapably normal. .......

“My preference would be that Joe’s gone, Trump’s gone and give us two new, viable options,” Bob said.

........ “Our minds and our bodies aren’t built to last forever,” he told Mary. “There’s no use pretending otherwise. We all get our turn. We grow old and we die.”
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Earthquake

१६५ निर्वाचन क्षेत्रमा कुन दलको मत कति?
राष्ट्रपतिको ‘सादगीपन’ माथि प्रश्न ठूलो हात्तीलाई सानो लगामले नसक्ला। सिंहदरबारमा हात्ती धेरै छन्। तपाईं (पत्रकार) हरू पनि हात्ती हो। जे–जे लेख्न चाहनुहुन्छ। ...... म महिला आन्दोलनबाट आएँ। एकातिर एक्टिभिस्ट, अर्कातिर राज्यको बेग्लै जिम्मेवारी। वातावरण मन्त्री भएँ, रक्षामन्त्री भएँ। फाइनल चरणमा यो खालको भूमिका भयो। सामान्य जनताकी छोरीले यो भूमिका पाउँदा गौरव नै लागेको छ।

कांग्रेस प्रवक्ताको टिप्पणी : बालेनलाई हेरेर स्वतन्त्रको लहर चल्नु देशलाई घातक दलीय व्यवस्थाको विकल्प नभएको तर्क

Wake Up Kathmandu! Time For A Regime Change!

Time to come out into the streets like it were April 2006 all over again.

१६ बुँदे ल्याइनु को प्रमुख कारण
१६ बुँदे सम्झौताको प्रमुख कारण

Four months after quakes, Nepal fails to spend any of $4.1 billion donor money

Two months after foreign countries and international agencies pledged $4.1 billion to help Nepal recover from its worst natural disaster, the government has yet to make arrangements to receive the money and has spent nothing on reconstruction. ....... The United Nations estimates almost three million survivors of twin earthquakes in April and May – around 10 percent of the Himalayan nation's population – need shelter, food and basic medical care, many in mountainous, hard-to-reach areas. ........ Govind Raj Pokharel, chief executive officer of the newly created National Reconstruction Authority, said the government was unlikely to start spending the money until October at the earliest because of delays in approving plans and concerns about starting building work in the monsoon season. ....... "The government's response has been slow. I accept that," said Pokharel. ...... Nepal has been criticised for its chaotic response to the quakes that killed almost 9,000 people. The country failed to adequately prepare even though experts had predicted an earthquake was likely. And then the government struggled to cope with relief.Four months later, many partially damaged buildings in Kathmandu are still standing and rubble is strewn across public parks. Tens of thousands of people are living in plastic tents, preyed upon by flies and mosquitoes, with muddy paths and no drains. ....... Maili Pariyar, 50, knitting a purse to sell outside her tent, said she only received food and tent materials from aid agencies. She has not been given anything by the government. ...... "We have lost everything. We are desperate," she said. "How much longer do we have to wait for help?" ........ Pokharel said

the government had failed to spend any money because ministers had still not signed off on rebuilding and aid distribution plans.

He said

the government made an error by attempting to pass a contentious constitution

that will create a new political system and divide the country into new regions, a decision that has led to deadly clashes. The government argues the overhaul will help reconstruction in the long run by creating greater stability.........

"We would have liked it if they concentrated on the reconstruction first," Pokharel said. "That would have been better."

..... Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Nepal, said the government had been sluggish...... "The government needs to get going," he said. "The next big challenge is to ensure that people living in tents are prepared for the winter."After a two-month wait, Pokharel was appointed to head the reconstruction authority two weeks ago. He is now based in a government office that oversees printing because the earthquake damaged other buildings."We have lost time and now we need to catch up," he said.

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A Looming Disaster

The monsoon is going to be tough.

 

one month after the disaster the situation in the affected areas is an unimagined nightmare...... 70 Village Development Committees (VDCs) have received no relief ..... These VDCs are administrative units, each covering several square kilometres and including perhaps 1,000 households, and many thousands of people. They have very little food or shelter. ....... the mess that Nepal was already living with. ..... Many of the worst affected areas received little, or almost nothing, in terms of government or donor-driven support even before the earthquake. ..... There has always been an incompetent administration and political class, which is obsessed with control of resources, but callous in its lack of urgency in providing for needy rural people. ...... the army's top leadership has displayed its undue power over the civilian government, and its chauvinism, by blocking the deployment of British Chinook helicopters which would have been invaluable to the relief effort. ....... Western donors, who are perceived to want to undermine the status of the dominant sections of society. ..... The donors were providing over $1bn a year to Nepal before the disaster, around 70 percent of it channelled through the government system. But, while the donors behave like they have all the answers, they've never been able to deliver on their rhetoric. ....... They are, in fact, as deeply entangled in the dysfunction, and as much a part of the mess as everyone else. The complete failure of the multimillion dollar "earthquake preparedness" schemes of recent years is only one obvious and topical example....... The government is seeking $10bn in reconstruction funds........ One major scheme of the past decade - designed to fund infrastructure construction - was called the Local Government and Community Development Programme. This delivered hundreds of millions of dollars through complex, donor-designed systems. In the absence of an elected local government, committees of unelected politicians called "All Party Mechanisms" misused vast sums intended for the poor, for the benefit of themselves and their cronies. There is once again talk of reviving All Party Mechanisms now. ....... One of the NPTF's programmes was intended to provide compensation to victims of Nepal's conflict. In practice, many genuine victims received nothing, while district-level politicians and administrators gave the money to local supporters. This is worth remembering now when it comes to earthquake victims. ......

Giving reconstruction funds directly to survivors could cut out a great deal of corruption and administrative waste, and give true meaning to the rhetoric of "transparency" and "empowering beneficiaries"

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The Chinook Mistake Was An Impeachable Offense

And if the Nepal Army had anything to do with it, I think that criminal act negates 50% of the good work they have done in the aftermath of the earthquake. The Chinook was so badly needed. This is not a time to emphasize the chain of command. This was and is the time to take relief supplies from the Kathmandu airport straight to the villages. The Chinook deliberate mistake is enough reason for Sushil Koirala to resign. How dare the Nepal Army play asinine politics with the best relief helicopters money can buy at this time of tragedy?
 

In a town called Dhap, so many animal carcasses were trapped in wrecked buildings that the whole stretch of road reeked of decay, and people jogged by with handkerchiefs clamped over their mouths. ...... The families from Dhap were huddled in a schoolhouse, their eyes wide: If they even approached the rock piles that had been their homes, flies swarmed around them in such numbers that they turned back. Here I saw, for the first time in Nepal, something like despair. As we passed that town, I saw a woman sitting on a hillside, staring into empty space, as if part of her had already left this earth.

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Whiskey In The Time Of Tragedy

As I worked, filing reports every night from a hotel room, the details nagged at me. Her mother, Japa Tamang, was living in an open-sided shed once used to store grain, in hills still shuddering from aftershocks. My husband had the idea of giving her a ride back to Kathmandu and a plane ticket to Delhi, and this idea cheered me up greatly. But when this offer was conveyed to her, she said no, thank you. She did make one request: Could I bring her a bottle of whiskey?

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About Resettling Some People In The Terai

Map of the districts of Narayani Zone (wp-EN) in Nepal. Created by Rarelibra 19:33, 18 September 2006 (UTC) for public domain use, using MapInfo Professional v8.5 and various mapping resources. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most people, the overwhelming majority, want to stay put. Home is home. They don't want to move. And I expect enough relief work to be done over the next few weeks that staying put might make sense for over 90% of the earthquake victims. But relocating should be kept as an open option. That might impact about 5%. That might be somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 people.

Some of them could be resettled along the Pokhara-Kathmandu highway, some in Chitwan, some in some other parts of the Terai.

Resettling people is one of many options. It should be in the arsenal. I don't think anyone is suggesting that is the only option.

After all, resettling is not just about moving bodies. They will also need livelihoods. Finding land is challenging enough, building new houses is challenging. Finding them livelihoods is a challenge. Resettling is not easy to do. But that might be the only option for about 50,000 of the earthquake victims.

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Shifting The Capital To Chitwan

English: Map displaying Village Development Committees in Chitawan District, Nepal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just read on Facebook, and I like the idea. Chitwan/Narayanghat is ideal for capital city.

Kathmandu must be rebuilt, but the rebuilding has to be as a cultural city. Kathmandu has historic importance. And the heritage must be preserved.

But this tragedy has given the country a very real option to build a new capital city for itself. And I do think Chitwan/Narayanghat is most suited for it.

It has a central location. There is no drinking water issue there. There is no land issue. There is no air pollution issue there. It might be cheaper to build new buildings in Chitwan than to rebuild many of the damaged government buildings in Kathmandu.

Relief and reconstruction are not enough. The country has to seek resurgence from this terrible tragedy. This can also be a point of new departure for the country.

If the state is restructured for federalism, the federal government will be smaller in size, and fewer buildings will be needed.

Most buildings in Kathmandu deemed uninhabitable or unsafe following quake

More than three-quarters of the buildings in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, are uninhabitable or unsafe following the 7.9-magnitude earthquake nine days ago, a new survey has revealed. ...... Assessments of 2,500 buildings carried out by more than 1,000 local engineers during the last four days have revealed that a fifth are no longer habitable and three-quarters need repairs before they can be considered safe....... “The sample is a random one and so representative of the city as a whole. The damage is bad. We are still discovering its extent and will have to do a full and thorough final assessment at some point,” said survey coordinator Drubha Thapa, president of the Nepali Engineers Association (NEA). ....... The new assessment indicates a much greater number of buildings will need repairing than previously estimated by the Nepalese government. Local officials have so far counted 153,000 buildings that are in ruins across the country, with another 170,000 damaged. The government of Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries, has already said post-quake reconstruction may cost more than £6.5bn ($10bn). ...... Aftershocks continue to shake Kathmandu, convincing tens of thousands of people who are living under tarpaulins on open spaces that it is still too dangerous to return home. ...... “We have hardly met 20% of the demand of the people. We are having difficulties reaching affected areas due to a lack of vehicles and helicopters,” said Krishna Gyawali, the most senior bureaucrat in Sindhulpalchowk district. ...... “People are furious they haven’t anything,” said Uddhav Timilsina, chief district officer of Gorkha. However tensions have emerged between the international community and Nepalese officials. Major donors and western nations are frustrated by infighting within the deeply divided Nepalese government. .....

“It’s all about control, not coordination. They are not coming together to do the best they can for the people of Nepal,”

said one senior western aid official in Kathmandu. ....... Western officials have repeatedly forced the Nepalese prime minister, Sushil Koirala, 75, to overrule suggestions by ministers seeking to centralise the distribution of aid funds under government control. ...... There has also been a battle for overall responsibility for the disbursement of aid money between Ban Dev Gautam, the minister for home affairs, and the prime minister’s office. There are widespread fears that corruption too may weaken the relief effort....... “Everything is politicised, including many local NGOs,” the western official said. ..... The UN said eight million of Nepal’s 28 million people have been affected, with at least two million people needing tents, water, food and medicines over the next three months.

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Kiva And The Nepal Earthquake

@Kiva And The Nepal Earthquake http://t.co/G0A5vZWaNQ

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) May 15, 2015

The question is not just of food, medicine and housing. There is also the question of livelihood. Perhaps Kiva can put a focus on Nepal for the next six months so as to help people get small loans, so as as to help people with their livelihoods in a sustainable way.

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