Libyan Floods

[Arnie]

Hi Yall, I thought you all had gone missing!!

What do you think of the flooding in Libya? No doubt the Climate nutters will be blaming it on, what is the latest title for their Theories, Climate Change? They keep changing the title so often after their predictions NEVER, pan out.
The news here down under is that more rain fell in 24 hours than in the last 40 years 'combined'!
Anyone who remembers Benghazi will remember that when it did rain it bleedin' poured. Apparently, the weather system that caused it circled around the Med for a couple of days, then struck!
I would imagine that the huge loss of life, 10,000 dead or missing, the latest figure I heard, was caused, to a degree, by the fact that very few of the population were able to swim. Preparedness would also have been a factor.
Anyone remember the earthquake that struck Barce while we were there in 62/63? Although about 250 died, they called for volunteers from the Regiment to go and assist. Of the Regiment, at that time with the Troop from AAC attached, numbering approximately 1000 men, only THREE volunteers went. As I understand it they were very disillusioned with the response from the Arabs.
Any way this is a much larger tragedy, so we should all be thinking about how they are suffering.

Keep safe and well.

[Pinky]

Another tragic event.
Sad times all around the world.
May they all RIP.

Pinky

[john kerwin]

Remember Barce well. C SQN, went to the rescue. Mick Burgess could tell you more about this.
Seem to remember, the UN and others supplied tents to shelter those who live there. The number was not very large. But people from all over the country, and even Egypt came to get a freebe. Owt for nowt, like most Arabs.
Strange thing about that area. Most teens and young adults. Had red or blond hair ? Dont think it had anything to do with the Jocks or Germans Who were in this area in WW2. For quite some time, wonder how many are called Hans or Hamish
But still you have to feel sorry for all those killed or made homeless. In this flood.

[Bill Bentley]

Hi all,
yes, in relation to the population of Libya, this truely is a dramatic disaster !
Let us all be aware of our own good fortune at times like this !
l don't believe sending food parcels or tents etc. is of any real help, it just clogs up the system.

As for you Arnie, you are so old that it's rumoured that you were the third person on 'Noah's Arc' and anything less than a 40 days and 40 nights deluge is just a shower ... and has nothing to do with the current 'climate change'.
l guess we shall go to our graves disagreeing about this issue, but l still admire you.
You are right about almost everything else .

l am no great fan of the Arabs or the Moslem culture, but l do believe that they should, within their own countries, be allowed to follow their own beliefs make their own mistakes and bury their own dead.
lt is neither our right nor our obligation to tell them how they should live, or die.

lt would be good if our own leaders would take care of our own people instead of causing problems in other peoples back yards. We wrecked Llbya !

Stop telling others where they are going wrong and fix our own:
National energy supply.
National Water Management.
Home Farming - food sourcing.
Housing supply.
Health Service.
Education System.
Military.
Police Force.
Prison Service.
Fire Brigades.
Home Industry.
International lndustry.
Workers rights.

When all that's honky dorey then perhaps we could give other peoples tips, until then, please just get it right at home !

My thoughts are with those who get a raw deal wherever they might be, today Libya & Marokko, tomorrow ... ???

[Arnie]

Hi Yall,
Bill,
me being an atheist I would agree with you about what you said in para 3. No great love for the Arabs, though at my age, going on 84, I have a tendency to not generalise. There are good and bad in all cultures.
If one looks into the Koran, it's teachings, I think the word is 'demands', all followers to hate all infidels! No ifs or buts. The origin of the beliefs comes from a guy called Mohammed who allegedly went up into a cave on a mountain outside Mecca where Allah spoke to him. He, in turn, came down from the mountain, with it all in his memory, not like some other guy many years before, God gave him some tablets to record "the Word".
Somehow this reminds me of an American guy who had a similar experience, 'up a mountain in a cave' etc, etc., in the 20th Century, Jim Jones.
America, being full of Americans, Jones got a few followers to believe him. Only a few of the Yanks believed him (pity they didn't do the same with L Ron Hubbard). They kicked him out, with about 900 of his followers. They went and founded Jonestown in one of the Central American countries. Long story short when the American congress sent a committee down to investigate 'said' Jim Jones he persuaded/forced ALL his followers to commit suicide. The similarity between Mohammed and Jim Jones is that Jones was not trying to convert uneducated desert dwellers, he was trying to convert 'educated' Americans!!!!
The second line of your para: 3 refers to them, the Muslims, burying their dead.
One episode I can recall proves this to be a mistake. In Benghazi we were housed in Wavell Bks. not far out of the barrack gates a pipeline had been laid. In laying the pipe they had created a 'bund' (with the sand which was now occupied by the pipe). When the smell became unbearable the MTO sent a driver to investigate the source. Behind the 'bund' was a decaying body of an Arab. Apparently he had been killed by being run over, the driver had pulled the dead body behind the 'bund' and driven off. Thereby proving the Islamic belief that Allah will provide!! Nobody looked for him or reported him missing.
Guess again about going to our graves, I am going to contribute to your 'climate change' and be cremated.
Incidentally, regarding the title of this topic, I believe the weather pattern, after devastating Derna and other places in Cyrenaica, went east towards Egypt not west towards Morocco. Just a thought.

[Arnie]

Hi Yall,

Bill, sorry about the last line about Morocco in my last. Just watched the timeline and got the update on Libya.
Apparently Morocco was hit by 2(?) earthquakes on Friday the 8th Sept not floods. Again many people were dead, injured, or missing.
On the 12th Sept Libya was struck by devastating flooding in Cyranaica (Eastern Libya), mainly, the city of Derna was the most heavily hit.
According to the News I was watching the death toll might be as high as 20,000.
To minimise the stories being circulated by our friends of the Green persuasion, the most damage and the majority of the chaos and death was caused by 2 dams which burst. The water released by the dams went into the large Wadi that splits Derna into 2 halves, greatly increasing the devastation and so the huge number of casualties.
These dams were first started to be built in 1972, 3 years after Ghadaffi toppled King Idris. Because Ghadaffi was from Sirte, on the border between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, he therefore ID mainly with Tripolitania, hence his ruling of the country from Tripoli. It is understood that the two populations were at loggerheads from way back when!!! In fact a civil war has been raging between the two provinces ever since the overthrow of the Ghadaffi regime in 2011 or 2012.
It is acknowledged that the dams were very poorly maintained before his overthrow and assassination, simply because of his animus to Cyrenaica. Also after the overthrow and because of the conflict continuing between the two factions NO maintenance had been carried out on them, despite repeated warnings of the danger they constituted.
Hence, the huge rainfall was a natural, regularly, occuring event and NOTHING to do with Global Warming or Climate Change which happens every year.
Ask any survivors of the 8th Army or even the Afrika Corps, or even the Regiment who spent a bit of time there!

Bill, I daren't ask, are we still friends?

P.S. Your comment about "We wrecked Libya" I have to doubt? Mussolini wrecked Libya, we, unfortunately, inherited it from the Italians after the War. Libya was the start of Mussolini's plan to resurrect the "Great Roman Empire", hence his subjugation of Libya, Ethiopia and other smaller East African countries. He promised the Italians he would turn the Mediterranian Sea once more into Italy's 'swimming pool'.

[JOHN LYALL]

Hello Arnie and all,

Don't worry be happy, as this idiot Trudeau would say!
The world is a real mess, and getting worse.

Trudumb is trying his hardest to obtain the U.N. seat from Guterres, however, Modi has other plans. HAHA!
It's a shame the destruction of those floods and earthquakes in Morocco, and the loss of life. These I believe are natural disasters.

[Bill Bentley]

Hi all,
l read some years ago that, world wide, more dams are built than schools or hospitals !
There seems to be no limit to the amount of water that the ever increasing human population requires.
Dams also wreck nature, often preventing fish from returning to their natural breeding grounds. Dams prevent mountain errosion being washed all the way down to the seas and oceans. This in turn prevents sand being replaced where nature intended it to be and this causes coastal errosion elsewhere. ln fact there is a world wide shortage of building sand because of man made dams.
In some forward thinking regions they are removing old dams to avoid such disasters like in Libya.
lt is amazing how quickly nature reinhabits the land and water ways returned to her, creating places that most humans see as paradice ... as it was before we ruined it !

All of these dams are, in due course, also a considerable danger to those humans living down stream of them; oh damn !

Arnie of course we are still friends, l got my father in law into bee keeping when he was about your age, he's 90 now and it's this hobby that keeps him going. lt's never too late to do the right thing ... or see the light !

[Pinky]

Howdy
Bill: Royal Air Force tried to assist in the removal of dams in the Ruhr Valley in WW2, seems mankind has always had a close knit thing with beavers!!



Pinky

[Bill Bentley]

Damm busters and Ball breakers