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Is Our Vegetation On Siege? Wildfires The New Pandemic

2020 has solely experienced the deadliest wildfire disaster.

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Klamath National Wildfire

Wildfires can have devastating effects on the ecosystem. Did you know that 2020 has experienced the deadliest disaster to inhabitation in the wild due to wildfires? Unfortunately, while the world is struggling to put up with the health crisis, the world should be woke for wildfires- the new slayer in the wild. In 2020, wildfires have been seen to break out across different regions of the world. As a matter of fact, the Americas, Australia, Asia, and Africa have had to battle the raging wildfires this year.  Shockingly, some like the mystical Amazon rainforest, have barely cooled off.

What are wildfires?

In a nutshell, wildfires are fires that start in grasslands, bushes, or forests, and as they grow, they spread out to larger areas becoming highly uncontrollable. Geologists also refer to them as forest fires or wildland fires.

Whenever they occur, Wildfires put danger to the community as they change the ecosystem by killing flora and fauna. Bush fires are also responsible for the extinction of certain forest species, fill the air with smoke and debris from the fire making it hard to breathe an on reaching people’s settlement they destroy property and sometimes deaths. Most important, forests are a major impact on global climate; forest fires are a contributing factor to the ongoing global climate changes

The ability to control or contain a wildfire depends on what fire experts call elements of a fire triangle (fuel, oxygen, and heat). Forest fires thrive on these elements and supporting environmental conditions such as winds, dry atmosphere. Firefighters manage forest fires by disrupting and or eliminating one or all of the elements of a fire triangle; the heat can be eliminated by water, oxygen by dirt.

Types of wildfires

Crown wildfire or canopy wildfires

These fires burn the whole length of the forest trees from the trunk all the way up the canopy. These are dangerous since they are easily spread by wind and can change the direction of burning at any time. Canopy fires are often difficult to contain since they can jump from one tree or forest to another. They leave most damage in the forest as they burn everything on their way.

Surface wildfires

These are fires that only burn forests, short vegetation, and dead plant material. It is easy to extinguish and does not cause a lot of damage to the forest.

Ground wildfires

 Ground fires are also known as underground fires or subsurface fires. They are slow-moving wildfires since they burn below the duff and litter. During dry times they can be difficult to put out due to lots of dry matter that can lead to the fires blazing survival on a warm winter that can reemerge to fire during spring.

What causes forest fires?

While there are many suspect causes of wildfires, it has always proved cumbersome to isolate a single cause of wildfires. A wildfire could bloom from a simple cause just for the spread to be facilitated by other natural factors such as the winds. The cause of wildfires can however be classified into two”

  • Naturally bloomed wildfires
  • Wildfires as a result of human activities

Naturally occurring forest fire

Natural forest fires are mostly caused by hot lightning bolts that strike earth a little longer than usual, emitting sparks that ignite dry accumulated forest duff and litter. These are hard to detect since they may occur far from human settlements and parks. They are also difficult to manage since they may be ignited at many points in a forest or region.

Additionally, the natural heat from the sun in times of drought may equally spark dry matter or surface of the forest leading to a fire. On rare occasions, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes may also result to these life ending fires in the wildlands.

Wildfires resulting from Human activities

According to a study by national geographic, 90% of wildfires are caused by human activities. These activities include Prescribed forest fires mostly done when clearing lands that end up going out of control and become wild, and reckless disposal of smoldering cigarette remains and filters. In other cases, wildfires will start from garbage fires that are left unattended may spread on to nearby vegetation leading to huge fires.

Where we have Electricity surges, any damage to power lines that may cause sparks in the forest. Again Recreational activities such as campfires left unattended, fireworks sparks, and other combustion sparks. Lastly, military exercise and agricultural activities.

What to do in the event a wildfire occur near you

In the unfortunate event of a wildfire, here are some practical precautionary measures you can take to ensure you come out alive:

  1. If you are out and a forest fire catches up to you, try not to run because you may not be able to outrun the flames. Instead, try covering your mouth and nose with a wet fabric to avoid suffocating from the smoke.
  2. Make sure to call for help and let the authorities know your whereabouts.
  3. Follow the local news to know how close the fires are to your home, updates regarding evacuation routes, and other evacuation information.
  4. Wear protective clothing to protect you from excess heat and the smoky air.

Ways of preventing wildfires

The slow death of the rich natural vegetation will soon endanger the human life if concerted efforts are not take to control and prevent wildfires. Since the natural habitat for wild animals are destroyed, they may hit back and encroach our homes. Again, the dynamic climatic conditions will even worsen with the continued wearing off of the forest cover. That means the whole world years to come may turn into a desert. Before that happens, here are some ways in which wildfires can be prevented.

1.      Handle fire with care else you may bloom a wildfire

Here, avoid spilling flammables haphazardly and store them away from any ignition or appliances that may emit sparks. You can use prescribed fires to clear out the forest floor from time to time to prevent too much accumulation of dead dry plant material easily sparked by lightning and other ignition sources. This will also reduce fuels that may cause a fire to be unmanageable.

2.      Dispose fire and flammable material appropriately to avoid wildfires

Always be carefully dispose of smoking materials e.g. matches and cigarettes. Never leave any fire unattended campfire to garbage fires. When you are done using fire or burning charcoal and other fuels carefully dispose of them when they are completely safe or as instructed by authorities. Again, contact the local authority immediately you notice an attended fire.

3.      If your property is near areas with wildfire-prone areas, safeguard your property.

Sometimes forest fires can reach people’s property and home areas nearing forests. Ensure you have safeguarded your home area to prevent forest fires from reaching your property. This can be done by:

  • Prune any vegetation hanging around; flammable vegetation and clean debris that may fuel a fire around your house and other buildings in your compound to make a fireproof zone in your homestead.
  • Do not store firewood any other material that may fuel a fire in your fireproof compound.
  • Use fire-resistant building material for the roofing.
  • Make sure that the local fire authority can access your house by clearing your driveway for easy accessibility. Additionally, make sure that your house is well marked so that authorities can know where to find you.
  • Ensure that you have an escape plan and practice drills in case a fire occurs.
  • Follow burning laws by authorities.
  • Monitor outdoor fires until they have completely died out or until they are safe.

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MZEMO

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Jewish Nazism is reality not fiction

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Jewish Nazism

I realize that the title of this article might offend and provoke many people, especially those adhering to the Judaic faith. I do know that Jews, like everyone else, are not carbon copies of each other. There are many conscientious Jews who believe in fairness and basic human equality regardless of color, race and faith, and strongly reject racism and chauvinism in any form. Also, I will no longer be using euphemistic language in reference to Jewish Nazism especially in light of the latest Dresden-like bombing of Gaza by the Judeo-Nazi state also known as Israel.

Read Also: No forgiveness for Jewish Nazism

These people I salute for their rectitude, humanity and morality. They are our natural partners for peace and a better tomorrow for our children and their children.

But there are numerous other Jews who don’t believe in human equality and justice for all. Indeed, there are many Jews, e.g. followers of the hateful Chabad sect, who don’t even ascribe full humanity to people who are not members of the Jewish faith.

Needless to say, the venomous ideology adopted by these racist fanatics has much in common with Aryan Nazism.

Read Also: The futility of counting on the U.S. to pressure Israel

What else can be said to describe an ideology that teaches adherents that the life of a non-Jew has no sanctity and that goyem can be murdered without the slightest compunction or feeling of guilt?

The shocking reactions by the Israeli government, rabbis, and community leaders to the latest abduction, murder and subsequent burning of a Palestinian kids in Gaza are very telling.

In a certain sense, these reactions and attitudes can be compared to the reactions and attitudes of many Germans to the pogroms carried out against Jews by the Nazis prior to and during the Second World War.

The gleefully despicable embrace of the brashly hideous crime by the bulk of the Israeli Jewish society underscores the fact that millions of Jews in Israel and abroad do harbor certain Nazi tendencies, especially against the Palestinian people. These tendencies are too real and too tangible to be overstated.

However, we must call the spade a spade, even at the expense of upsetting the huge Zionist propaganda machine which habitually alters the black into white and the blatant big lie into a “truth” glorified by sheepish westerners who have long been brainwashed into believing that Israel is a modern, civilized and democratic state.

In the final analysis, when Jews (or anyone else) think, behave and act like the Nazis thought, behaved and acted, they simply become Nazis. Pure and simple.

Today, there are numerous Jews who openly call for the physical annihilation of Palestinians as retaliation for the abduction and killing of three Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Saber-rattling rabbis speak menacingly of the need to adopt “the Biblical way” to combat the Palestinians.

For those not versed in Jewish phraseology, “Biblical way” is euphemism for genocide.

Today, the Israeli media reported that some army personnel openly appealed to the government to “give us the green light to annihilate them.”!!!

Just read what thousands of Jewish youths have been writing on their Facebook pages! It is outrageous, disgusting and sheer evil.

To put it in a nutshell, Nazism is being regurgitated and exuded all over Israel. This is happening in broad daylight while professional liars like Binyamin Netanyahu are filling the ether with all sorts of shameless lies about Israel being victimized by the Palestinians.

Seventy-six years have passed since Kristalnacht. Today Jewish settlers in the west Bank, in close cooperation and coordination, with the Israeli army could very well carry out a huge pogrom against an innocent and helpless community which really finds itself very much in the same precarious and vulnerable position that European Jewry experienced prior to WWII.

I am not a prophet of doom and gloom, but the signs are unmistakably bleak.

A final point, the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are surviving thanks to the good-will of the international public opinion. Should the international community go into a brief slumber, God forbid, Israel and its own Wehrmacht, SS, Gestapo and Hitler Youth might embark on the unthinkable. Don’t you ever say Jews can’t carry out a holocaust against their victims, the Palestinians?

Words can kill; words do kill.

Unfortunately, the chilling words we are hearing from many Israeli Jews these days leave no room for optimism.

Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine

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I’m most definitely Palestinian!

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Palestinian

In-your-face brutality, unending genocide, unending atrocities, mass slaughter directed against one’s people, one’s brethren, causes the most strong and unimaginable reaction, in response to the oppressor’s horrendous and barbaric deeds. The autocratic, despotic, tyrannical Israeli-hand systematically and with pre-planned engineered precision, massacres, annihilates, eliminates the young and the old Palestinian alike – in the most inhumane and most despicable of ways. Slaughters men, women and children in broad daylight. Bares its blood-thirsty intentions, its monstrous objectives in the most unashamed of ways. Mercy to none – not to the living, not to the severely wounded and dying; no mercy even on the dead or their lifeless remains.

The constant fear of being bombed anytime, rained down with missiles and all manner of munitions from within the vast arsenal of the Israeli side; definitely stockpiled high, with enough buffer inventory of munitions, deadly and lethal stockpile, to blow the receiving side multiple times over; so as not to leave a “shred” of evidence of your original physical-self on the surface of the land, which your people, generations and generations of your ancestors, since time immemorial have dwelt on.

Read Also: The age-old Palestinian-fear (of the Israeli thirst)

The inexplicable terror of seeing Israeli drones constantly “floating about” unopposed, in the skies above your unsheltered head. Drones with eyes like that of a greedy dog. Electronic pixels wanting to cast an evil eye, an evil-spell upon your very being. Eyeing upon your existence, wanting to blow-up, tear-up your physical being, seemingly wanting to devour your flesh and body; all by way of a few computer clicks / even the manual computer-clicks now, seemingly, are being replaced by more automated ways of executing these most evil deeds. Software, coded software, written programs to execute on the most Evil-intentions. Evil-intentions of the most evil amongst the human race.

Everybody knows, the Israelis have exterminated with their weaponry, uncountable numbers of Palestinians across a 40, 50km stretch of land, in front of the whole world, over the past so many weeks and months. And retain the capacity, the ability, the power, the means to slaughter, devour many, many more innocent ones, day in, day out.

The Israelis possess American technology, American weapons – the bedrock of their faith, the foundation stone of their belief in their never-ending invincibility. The Palestinians have their faith in Allah; that Allah will redeem his faithful people, from the clutches of these war-mongers, who rain down terror, day and night on the most innocent, the most vulnerable.

Most definitely, the Moslem spirit in me, the Palestinian spirit in me is not defeated; quite to the contrary, it’s rekindled, stronger than ever.

I’m definitely Palestinian, in every sense of the word, and Allah will save us, Allah will have mercy on us, Allah will guide us.

(Note: Azhaar Amayreh is a marketer stuck in war-ravaged Rafah with her child.)The following article is part of a campaign to raise money to help MZEMO contributor Azhaar Amayreh and her family leave Gaza. Please give what you can.

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The futility of counting on the U.S. to pressure Israel

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It is really ludicrous to see how dishonest the U.S “mediators” constantly demand that the Palestinians display more “good will” toward Israel at a time when Israel continues to perpetrate a real Holocaust against the hapless and helpless Palestinaians and steal Palestinian land in broad daylight.

It seems amply clear that the current Palestinian leadership, i.e. the Palestinian Authority (PA)  led by Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, neither learns from its own blunders nor from other people’s blunders. This is really a gigantic disaster befalling the Palestinian people and their enduring just cause.

How else can one relate to the unrelenting illogical insistence of the the whole world on accepting the U.S., Israel’s guardian-ally, as “mediator and honest broker” between us and our murderous tormentors and grave-diggers, Israel?

Read Also: The US and IsraelThe dog versus the wagging tail.

Indeed, one doesn’t have to be an expert on American foreign policy in the Middle East to know that the U.S represents the problem, not the solution, given its long-standing embrace of Israeli fascism and expansion.  After all, it is the US that not only enabled Israel to actively pursue its lebensraum policy at the expense of its neighbors but consistently shield it from any accountability or international condemnation.

Today, the U.S. administration is criticizing Palestinian “unilateralism” in reference to desperate PA efforts to get the UN Security Council to recognize Palestinian statehood and agree on a deadline for ending Israel’s Nazi-like occupation.

Well, we all know that the U.S. is being pornographically hypocritical when it accuses the virtually vanquished Palestinians of acting unilaterally as if its spoilt nefarious daughter, Israel, were ever acting in full conformity with international law.

Well, Mr. Abbas and Mr. Ereikat: Don’t be too gullible, too sheepish. Ask your American interlocutors, e.g. Mr. John Kerry, the following questions:

Since when did Israel ever behave bilaterally rather than unilaterally?

Was the usurpation of Palestine and expulsion of its indigenous people at the hands of Jewish terrorist gangs hailing from Eastern Europe, a bilateral or unilateral act?

Was the annexation by Israel of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights a bilateral or a unilateral act?

Was the building of hundreds of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as the transfer of 600,000 Jewish settlers to live on a land that belongs not to them a bilateral or unilateral act?

Was the wanton demolition of some 30,000 Palestinian homes by Israel a bilateral or a unilateral act?

Was the annexation of the bulk of the West Bank and East Jerusalem a bilateral or a unilateral act?

And what about this ugly structure, called Separation wall, which resulted in the theft of thousands of acres of private Palestinian land? Was it a bilateral or a unilateral act?

I could go on and on and on listing America’s hypocritical and duplicitous stands on Palestinian grievances and Israeli crimes. Indeed, the U.S dishonest stand on the Palestinian plight has only been consistent in its moral depravity. Indeed, hypocrisy in its most brazen form has always been and continues to be the modus operandi of American policy toward the Palestinian issue. I know it is politically incorrect to speak in this tone. However, truth must not be another victim of the dark evil embrace between the U.S. and Israel.

But morality is not and has never been part of American politics or policies, especially foreign policy. This is why the world looks so ugly, so gloomy and so unjust.

The U.S. is insisting that only a “negotiated” settlement to the Palestinian issue would be acceptable to the U.S.

Read Also: The Palestinian Authority: confused, frustrated and corrupt

In other words, Israel must always have the final say as to any possible peace deal with the Palestinians.

But since Israel would never ever end its occupation or dismantle the settlements, let alone allow for the repatriation of the refugees, it means there can be no negotiated settlement unless the Palestinians agree to surrender to Jewish Nazism. But that will never happen as Muslims, including the Palestinian people, would never allow the Ramallah leadership or any other leadership to commit adultery with the honorable Palestinian cause.

Let’s be honest. The purportedly honest American broker or mediator is neither honest nor a broker or mediator. The proverbial American judge is simply telling the insolent rapist (Israel) and the vanquished rape victim (the Palestinians) to sort it out amongst yourselves. Do we have to be the smartest humans on earth to understand the implications of this brutal ugliness?

It is tantamount to a total American embrace of Israeli fascism. It means that the American stance is actually Israel’s stance. It also means that that the U.S. would never accept or condone any settlement that Israel doesn’t accept.

That is why the Palestinians need to have a moment of truth with themselves.
And the message they need to internalize is that they would have to wait ages if they continued to put their trust in the U.S. to pressure Israel to walk in the path of peace.

Let us face it. Israel will never walk in the path of peace unless it is pressured and bullied to do so. However, Israel would never ever walk in the path of peace as long as it continues to receive nuclear submarines from Germany and the most advanced fighter jets from the U.S.

In a nut shell, America can’t and won’t exert any meaningful pressure on Israel to end its N-a-z-i-like occupation. We all know that Israel controls the American government or at least controls those who control the American government. Israel is intoxicated by its arrogance of power and Talmudic insolence. And the U.S., Israel’s guardian-ally, is not in a position to be an honest mediator and to impose a deal on Israel or even convince her to allow for one that would give the Palestinian a semblance of justice.

What should be done?

We must go ahead with our efforts at the U.N. Security Council, irrespective of American threats to veto any resolution favorable to the Palestinian cause. At least casting the veto would embarrass America itself and its treacherous Arab allies (they are not actually allies but cheap slaves and puppets as we all know).

We Palestinians must be confident of our inevitable triumph over Zionism and its evils. Yes, it may take time, but eventually Zionism won’t live forever in a sea where hundreds of millions live.

Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine

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