This monsoon, the southern state of Kerala in India has seen rains and flooding of unprecedented and calamitous proportions. Subin Dennis puts it in perspective (via Facebook):
Most people in India would find it difficult to really understand how heavy the rainfall that has occurred in Kerala during this monsoon is.
Kerala, even in “normal” years, gets the highest amount of rainfall among all major States in India.
The average annual normal rainfall for Kerala is nearly 3000 millimetres – 2924.3 mm, to be exact. (Hence the verdant green you would see in a satellite image of the State.)
By contrast, neighbouring Tamil Nadu gets 912.4 mm rainfall. Karnataka gets 1147.1 mm, Andhra Pradesh 890 mm, and Telangana 942.6 mm.
Haryana gets a mere 554.7 mm, Delhi gets 747.1 mm, and Uttar Pradesh, 965.3 mm. West Bengal gets 1795.8 mm and Assam gets 2296.8 mm. Maharashtra gets 1151.1 mm, while Madhya Pradesh gets 1048.4 mm.
This is the “normal” (the long-term average of 50 years).
But this year, from 1 June (the onset of the South-West monsoon in India) to 15 August 2018, Kerala has received excess rainfall of 30%. The normal rainfall in this period should have been 1606.5 mm. Instead the State has received 2086.8 mm. The rains and floods are the heaviest since 1924.
Ernakulam district has received 21% excess rain, while Thiruvananthapuram district has got 37% excess rain. Kottayam and Malappuram districts have received 41% excess rain each.
Idukki district, which has major dams such as the Idukki-Cheruthoni-Kulamavu dam complex and the Mullaperiyar dam, has received a whopping 70% excess rain. As expected, the district has seen many landslips and casualties.
The situation in the State is extremely serious.
The shutters of 35 out of 39 dams in Kerala have been opened to release water. Red Alert has been issued in all 14 districts. Scores of people have lost their lives. Tens of thousands of people are living in relief camps. More people are being evacuated from their homes as torrential rains haven’t stopped and flood waters continue to run riot.
There are several ways to contribute. You may donate to the Kerala Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund (CMRDF). The account details are:
Account Number: 67319948232 Bank: State Bank of India Branch: City Branch, Thiruvananthapuram IFS Code: SBIN0070028
You can also visit their website and make a tax-exempt donation through their payment portal; all major credit cards are accepted, and there are multiple payment gateways:
For Indian citizens donating from within India, your donations are exempt from Income Tax. For those donating from outside India, your contributions are welcome and exempt from the FCRA 2010 Act.
This website – https://keralarescue.in – has also consolidated relief and volunteer efforts, for those within India/in proximity to Kerala.
Please, please donate as much as you can to Kerala – a state that many may be familiar with as tourists, or via family (as I am). Please signal-boost this and urge your networks to do the same.
Bear in mind that ambulance companies aren’t diverting EMTs away from a heart attack or traumatic amputation to answer your call. They’re much more likely to be diverting EMTs from:
Sitting in an ambulance station or a random parking lot playing Words With Friends and/or developing elaborate company-wide romantic intrigues
Sitting in a hospital EMS room doing giant stacks of paperwork no one will ever read while trying to make dinner entirely out of saltines and condiments
Routine transports of people who have to travel by stretcher, who maybe are not happy to be late, but are hardly going to die from it
Transports which are technically emergencies, but are stuff like vomiting or a sprained ankle where the urgency factor is more like “yeah, you should get that seen” than like “STAT CODE RED CODE BLUE CODE POLKA DOT STAT STAT STAT.”
So if you think you might need an ambulance, call one. You are not going to single-handedly take down the EMS system by daring to use it.
I’m reblogging it but I would be that person wondering “Do I need this enough” until I died.
I have legitimately done this. Please, take care of yourselves.
Furthermore, guys, we have dispatch. Dispatch makes sure that we’re all where we need to be, so you’re not taking an ambulance away from someone who “needs it more.”
Let dispatch worry if an ambulance needs to be somewhere else. You just worry about taking care of yourself.
Most of them time we’re passing the time at the station by trying to find where the firefighters hid the remote /this time/ and listening to scary stories on YouTube. Your safety and health is not an inconvenience.
IN BRITISH COLUMBIA’S southern interior, on unceded land of the Secwepemc Nation, Kanahus Manuel stands alongside a 7-by-12-foot “tiny house” mounted on a trailer. Her uncle screws a two-by-four into a floor panel while her brother-in-law paints a mural on the exterior walls depicting a moose, birds, forests, and rivers — images of the terrain through which the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will pass, if it can get through the Tiny House Warriors’ roving blockade. The project would place a new pipeline alongside the existing Trans Mountain line, tripling the system’s capacity to 890,000 barrels of tar sands bitumen flowing daily from Alberta through British Columbia to an endpoint outside Vancouver.
On May 29, the Canadian government announced that it would nationalize the Trans Mountain pipeline to assure the expansion would be built, putting up 4.5 billion Canadian dollars ($3.5 billion) to acquire the pipeline and other assets from the Texas-based energy giant Kinder Morgan. The purchase has dramatically raised the stakes of the fight for both the administration of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and pipeline opponents like Manuel.
CHECK YOUR REGISTRATION STATUS. You can usually do it at the website of your local secretary of state, or at Vote.org.
Anyone who follows me from Georgia? If not, pass it on.
sigh.. Actually, let me just add, THIS BULLSHIT RIGHT HERE, THIS IS WHY YOUR VOTE MATTERS. You think they’d be so hot to take away your rights if it didn’t?
If you can register to vote by mail DO SO!!! Not only does it give you more time to research your ballot options, it provides a paper trail, so you can PROVE how you voted, no matter how the Russian hackers massage the electronic numbers.
The Imam of Peace drops a MOAB on the U.K. Trump protestors
Hello rightsmarts, the latest in conservative news. I’m just reblogging this because it’s gotten around to the punk side of things and sometimes it seems like anarchists forget that PR is important in political movements.
(RAICES) to help the children in detention camps. The comparative cost of the balloon is about a quarter of a percent of what was donated to RAICES alone.
You know what’s great about a balloon? It’s ridiculous. It’s got a fun, airy parade feel. You go to a protest with the Trump Baby and you see people who share your values and are equally frustrated with the world – and it’s hard as hell to show a bunch of people having a fun old time with a parade float as dangerous antifa terrorists.
(Also it gets news cameras pointed at protests of Trump, and at this point we should all recognize the value of big stunts that get you free press because Trump sure as hell did.)
That and it gives frustrated, burned-out activists a bit of a laugh. We’ve got to have levity, we’ve got to be able to enjoy things and have a sense of humor. If we’re all grimly grinding away and donating all of our spare change to the ACLU and only ever talking about the horrible things that are happening we’re going to get too exhausted to carry on. Which is exactly what folks like rightsmarts and Imam Tawhidi want.
So a professional pot-stirrer is criticizing activists for spending the equivalent of a quarter of a percent of their donations on a fun balloon that bring out large crowds to protest, creates feelings of solidarity and levity, and is an excellent PR tool.
Yeah, fuck off with your bullshit. People recently crowdfunded a couch for Elon Musk and tried to give Kylie Jenner $100 million so she’d be a round billionaire. Nobody should feel the tiniest bit bad for donating to the construction and display of a protest sign.
The Trump Baby balloon is a good investment on the part of protesters and helped ensure that Trump knows he’s not welcome or appreciated by the people of London.
(hey by the way this criticism of decadence and fun is the kind of puritanical authoritarian shit that you get from the right and from tankies and it’s why nobody likes tankies. bread AND roses, motherfuckers.)
Humans learned to like the flavor of plants that were supposed to be unpleasant to other animals because we constantly crave new experiences and get bored very easily.
Basically, we’ll eat anything that doesn’t kill us and call it food.
And for the boys, no not wanting it doesn’t make you gay, less of a man, or anything to that effect, you’re allowed to say no too, and when she says “am I just not hot enoughy for you” that is an attempt to guilt you into sex.
Reblogging for IMPORTANT addition.
You are allowed to only sleep with people you like & WHEN you want to. Don’t let anyone else tell you different, ever.
Cheloneuniverse 