Dimensionally Barrett

It’s been nine years since floods broke out on the Nepal-India border , and four since Kathmandu was hit with an earthquake in June of that year, and now, most recently, the country is faced with devastation from floods in Rasuwa, the effects of which have rippled outward from the region. It’s difficult to visualize or put into words what this means, so I am deferring to reporting from my friend Hemraj Dangal in Kathmandu, who has been organizing relief efforts. What follows is a timeline from the initial flooding of 26 August. I asked Hemraj to send me this to give some idea of the scope of the disaster from someone on the ground as well as to shine some light on those relief efforts and how others can help. Hemraj and his team have been concentrating on helping the displaced in    Bidur Ward 5. Bridges have been washed out in surrounding wards and overland travel is still precarious. The broader scope is that over 84,000 people have been affected and to date, 1400 deaths hav...

Photo credit: United Nations Like so many, I’ve been attempting to process the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. As a friend of mine messaged me yesterday, “We have been suffering like this for forty years.” Not that our presence assuaged any of that suffering, but withdrawing they way we are certainly isn’t helping. I haven’t looked at polls to see how this is tracking with American citizens but I do understand that Republicans are pig-piling on Biden for the mess that this exit is. Frankly, in terms of the actual mechanics and operational aspects, I wouldn’t expect anything else. Our departure from Vietnam wasn’t exactly elegant. I would argue that this is far worse, though. For humanitarian reasons alone, leaving behind a country to deal with the Taliban and now, ISIS-K, is a horrible failure of policy and a miserable act of bad faith. We are not going to be able to grant everyone safe harbor or for that matter, a guarantee of safely making it out of the country. Releasing names ...