…in Anatolia
Before we humans even existed – and dinosaurs ruled the world – the continents have been drifting apart. One supersized land mass dubbed Pangea – had a southern portion, Gondowana portion, that hit what’re now Eurasia and Asia. Now, when these gigantic portions of hardened Earth’s crust collided with others, it was like an immovable object colliding with an unstoppable force!! Something had to give! Well, over in Asia, we had the Himalayas rippling up to reach the stars when India hit the former!! While, in the underbelly of Europe – in what’s now Turkiye and Syria – the Caucasus mountains were formed when the Anatolian tectonic plate hit Europe.
Now, with these plates floating around on molten lava, you can imagine that standing on “firm” earth takes on a whole new precarious meaning!! In our neck of the woods – so to speak – we know what damages earthquakes can wreak, after several in Haiti. While over in the Himalayas things are fairly stable, in Turkiye and Northern Syria, there have been hundreds of earthquakes in the last hundred years. So, the present disaster unfolding in that region – with at least 20,000 reported dead, and that number rising – is not a complete surprise. There have been previous earthquakes with even greater body counts. Mother Nature can dish out some real “tough love” on occasion.
But mankind has her beat all hands down!! When you add up all the countless millions of men, women and children killed by other men – women and children don’t kill so many – Mother Nature seems like a powder puff!! Look right there in the area of the latest quake. In the Syrian “Civil War”, where each of the big powers had their “side”, and provided weapons etc – between 2011 and 2022, there have been more than 500,000 war dead!! Imagine that!! More than an average of 50,000 Syrians were killed annually for ten years – and almost seven million were turned into refugees!
Over in Turkiye, the Turks had their own Civil War back in the day – with some 600,000 deaths – but, more recently, kept their hand in by massacring over 20,000 Kurds, who just wanted to practise their own culture, which was being suppressed by the Turks. Imagine the Turks telling them they were suffering from a delusion, and they were really “mountain Turks”!! Meanwhile, for good measure, when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) existed a few years ago, about 400,000 Yazidis – an ethnic and religious minority group – were captured, killed, raped, or forced to flee from their ancestral homeland!!
Against that background, your Eyewitness wonders how people in the region value life. Surely a great wave of cynicism must have pervaded their collective psyche! No wonder the Romans said “man to man is a wolf!!”
But hope beats eternal…
…of quick bucks
Used to be Chinese who emigrated to all parts of the world and opened up laundries as a fail-safe way to climb out of poverty. And that hasn’t stopped. Note the success of “Everything Everywhere all at once” – starring laundromat owner Evelyn Wang!! It was nominated for ELEVEN OSCARS!! And the year before, there was that sleeper “Chinese laundry”!
Well, it’s said that if you report “Dog bites man” that’s not news…but if it’s “Man bites dog” that’s gonna lift quite a few eyebrows – and readership!! So it was in that light that your Eyewitness read about SOCU arresting a family of three from Herstelling, who’d been hired by some Chinese businessmen to do their laundry!! OVER FOUR BILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF LAUNDERING!! That’s news!!
As you’d expect, that laundering had nothing to do with clothes and all to do with money!! But even so, when your Eyewitness depots his pittance, he’s grilled by bank clerks.
And $4.1 billion passed through like Epsom salts??
…avoided in Mudland
The earthquake in Anatolia reminded your Eyewitness about Guyanese quick-wittedness. Responding to a Caribbean brother that Guyana was lucky not to suffer from earthquakes and hurricanes, the Guyanese immediately shot back, “But we got Burnham!!”
