Notations On Our World (Special Edition): On the Aftermath of the #Iran Earthquake

Our team has been assessing the aftermath of the 7.3 Earthquake that has wrecked havoc in Western Iran with an estimated 400 people dead, thousands injured and an estimated hundreds of thousands who are currently homeless.  Today is a National Day of Morning in Iran. 

The Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, has gone to the region to assess the situation with key Ministers.  From the reporting we have seen so far, Iran has in essence gone on a war-like footing to deal with the aftermath of this calamity.

This courtesy of the team at HelloGiggles is a nice primer on opportunities to help victims in both Iran and Iraq.  

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Notations From the Grid (Weekly Edition) : On Our World.....

In our quest to share thoughts & ideas on an on-going basis, we wanted to feature this from the Journalist and Author Marc Cooper who wrote this on his Facebook Wall in the aftermath of the Tragedy in Texas.    As America mourns (and here in California Flags are at half-staff), The President noted that the tragedy in Texas was not a "Guns Issue" but a "mental health" issue--as it appears that yet again nothing will be done:

Here are his comments:

30 people were mercilessly shot to death today in Texas. It's an outrage. Another 25 or so will be shot to death in other states and we will not know their names because they are mostly young and black and poor. Another 70 or so people will commit suicide with guns today because they are alienated and depressed. About TWO HUNDRED will die just of opioid overdoses during these 24 hours because they are hopelessly addicted and even if they wanted rehab there are not enough beds (or jobs). Some 120 will be killed in automobile accidents because all of us have cars that are 5-10 times more powerful than they "need" be (even a Prius has surplus power) and weigh two to four times more than they need to. More than 1300 Americans died today of tobacco. And about 300 or so will perish from alcohol. Believe it or not, another 300 or so will die from infectious diseases they contracted while IN the hospital for something else (not sure what you can about that but would like to know).

We have some very very deep social dysfunctions in this country that nobody does anything about, doesn't care about, doesn't lift a finger to solve and chooses not to know about.

Worse, the social insurance programs supported by some degree even by conservative administrations in Europe and that really do save millions from degradation and desperation are looked upon in America as welfare giveaways and evil "entitlements."

I am not underestimating or downplaying the barbaric murders in Texas by any means. But...the problem with the gaping hole opened by round the clock cable news is that it radically distorts our perspective and does nothing to help us understand the real world around us. Nor does it contribute to any solutions as it feeds off fear, ignorance and sensationalism.

If we didn't spend a trillion dollars a year on the military (and that's a conservative estimate) and instead invested just 20% of that yearly in urban hotspots and rural no mans lands, you would see most of the above numbers begin to drop. Good luck with that.