History of Fireworks reviewed in Vietnamese!

My book 'A History of Fireworks from their Origins to the Present Day' (Reaktion Books) appears to have been reviewed in Vietnamese! (It's written in English.) Apparently, the headline reads 'Fireworks - from entertainment to divisive and political intrigue'.  

Pháo hoa - từ giải trí đến mưu đồ chia rẽ và chính trị - Xuất bản - ZNEWS.VN

Apocalyptic floods in religions

The story of Noah is one of the best-known in the Bible – the universal flood, the warning to the one righteous man to save his family, the ark, the dove that goes out to find land, the sacrifice to God, the re-population of the earth.

But dozens of religions in different parts of the world have their own tales of apocalyptic deluges - perhaps a reflection of the fact that floods are the natural disaster most commonly suffered by humanity.

A story from the Middle East even older than Noah’s, The Epic of Gilgamesh, shows striking similarities. It relates how, as human beings grew in numbers, they started to make so much noise that the gods decided to destroy them all, apart from a solitary good man and his family who were tipped off, enabling them to escape in a huge boat.

Apart from the Middle East, tales of apocalyptic floods are also found in Greece and India, in south-east Asian countries such as Burma, Vietnam, and Indonesia; in New Guinea and Australasia; in many South Pacific Islands, the Philippines, Taiwan, the Kamchatka peninsula of Far Eastern Russia, Lithuania, Transylvania, and all over North and South America.

*For the full story, see my new book, Flood: Nature and Culture (Reaktion Books) ISBN 978 1 78023 196 9. It also includes chapters on the deadliest floods in history, how floods have been portrayed in literature, art and films, how some of the most ambitious structures ever built by humans have been erected to protect against flooding, and how climate change may now be making humanity more vulnerable than ever to the waters.

More fireworks explosions

Fireworks can be spectacular, but following last month’s explosion at a Vietnamese fireworks factory that killed more than 20 people (see my blog of Oct 28), now there's news from China that 11 have died with another 17 injured at a fireworks factory at Cenxi in the southern region of Guangxi.

Two businessmen are reported to have been arrested. Controls on China’s fireworks industry are lax, and there have been a number of deadly incidents in recent years. In 2010, 19 people were killed in a blast in the southern province of Guangdong, and a similar number in an explosion at Yichun in Heilongjiang province.

India too is plagued by firework factory accidents. A blast in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu province on Friday killed nine people. The plant made high-decibel bangers and rockets.

And last month, two children lost their lives when a stack of fireworks exploded at a house at Dalowal in Pakistan. The blast was followed by a fire, and neighbours said the roof then collapsed before they could go in to help.

Firework accidents

Earlier this month, more than 20 people were killed in a huge explosion at a fireworks factory in Phu Tho province, northern Vietnam.  The blast blew off roofs and blew in windows in nearby houses, and could be heard 6 miles away.

Traditionally, home-made firecrackers were used in Vietnam to celebrate weddings, but the government banned them in 1994, and decreed that fireworks manufactured in state-approved facilities should be used instead.

In 2008, about 20 people were killed in an explosion at an unlicensed fireworks factory in Istanbul, while 8 years earlier, a similar number perished in a blast in a depot at Enschede in the Netherlands, which specialised in importing Chinese fireworks for use at events like pop concerts.

Fireworks were also in great demand in London in the nineteenth century, and in 1854, a house in Westminster where a Mrs Coton made them, blew up, killing her husband and a boy who worked there. Mrs Coton had the house rebuilt, but four years later, it blew up again, killing five people, including, this time, Mrs Coton herself. Two years later, the government clamped down on firework manufacture.

·         Thanks to this Spanish Wikipedia entry for putting my Historia Mundial de los desastres as ‘further reading’. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desastre_natural

Boat people

The deaths of at least 28 people, and possibly many more, in the shipwreck on Christmas Island is a reminder of the lengths to which people desperate to leave their country will go. A flimsy wooden boat carrying suspected asylum seekers from Iraq and Iran was dashed onto jagged rocks in very high seas.

More than forty people have been rescued, but it may be that the boat was carrying more than 100. It is believed it may have been on its way from Indonesia to Australia. The engines seem to have failed, and the craft was quickly smashed to pieces. It seems to have managed to evade detection and the alarm was raised only when local residents heard screams from the passengers.

Perhaps the biggest unofficial exodus by sea ever mounted was by the Vietnamese boat people. During the late 1970’s, an estimated 2 million fled South Vietnam as the Communists took over.

Apart from the usual hazards of taking to the ocean in small and often unseaworthy vessels, they had to run the gauntlet of pirates, and even if they made it to refugee camps, they were often ill-treated there too. An estimated half million died.

Vietnam storms

Tropical storm Mirinae has caused the deaths of at least 40 people in Vietnam as it dumped 13 inches of rain on the country, bringing widespread floods. Soldiers have been sent in to rescue people trapped by the rising waters.

Just a month ago, Vietnam was hit by typhoon Ketsana, which killed more than 160 people, as well as 300 more in the Philippines, Laos and Cambodia. (see my blog of Oct 2). It was Vietnam’s deadliest storm in years, but typhoons are a constant danger.

In 2006, the assailants were typhoons Xangsane and Durian. Xangsane killed 71 people and destroyed or damaged more than 300,000 homes, while from Durian, the death toll was 98, and nearly 900 fishing boats were sunk.

Two years earlier, typhoon Muifa brought torrential rains that destroyed crops over 500 square kilometres, and floods and landslides caused about 80 deaths.

Mass murder - a tale of two sentences

So Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, got his release, to cries of outrage from the United States government. It was “absolutely wrong”, said Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.

Then in a bizarre coincidence, up popped former US army officer Lt William Calley – not much heard of since the 1970’s when he was convicted of the mass murder of 500 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. Yesterday Lt Calley offered his first public apology for the crime.

Back in 1971, he was sent to gaol for life. And what was the reaction of the US government? The unbending determination that it would be “absolutely wrong” to release a mass murderer before he had served his full sentence? No, actually President Nixon quickly cut his punishment to three years’ house arrest.

And there were no doubts about Calley’s guilt unlike that of Megrahi (see my blogs of July 27 and Aug 16), nor was he dying of cancer. Double standards, anyone?

Boat people 2009

The Libyan navy has called off its search for 250 or more migrants feared drowned after their flimsy boat sank in the Mediterranean. The vessel had made barely 30 miles from Sidi Bilal, near Tripoli, before it was capsized by strong winds. Designed to carry 50 people, it had on board nearly 300, all hoping to make new lives in Italy. Only 23 survivors have been found.

Another boat carrying 350 lost engine power and was drifting helplessly when it was spotted by an Italian tug and towed gingerly back to Tripoli. Migrants pay out about £1,000 each to make the hazardous crossing and 13,000 are estimated to have died during the last ten years. Many of the bodies are found by fishermen in their nets. Passengers on the rescued vessel came from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Somalia, Eritrea, Ghana, Nigeria, Tunisia, Algeria and Morrocco.

There is usually a lull in the winter months, but this year observers say that, with the recession biting, the sailings have gone on all year round, and 31,000 people are estimated to have crossed from North Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2008 alone.

During the 1980’s, the name “boat people” entered the language to describe those who fled South Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. More than half a million tried to escape in similar flimsy boats. Often they fell victim to Thai fisherman turned pirates. From 1981 to 1983 alone, more than 750 were killed, and a further 600 disappeared. More than 800 women were raped.

Bird flu

Egypt has just reported its third case of bird flu in humans this year, while China says that four people have died from the disease in 2009 – the latest a 31 year old woman in the Xinjiang Uygur region in the north-west of the country. China has also been accused of covering up an outbreak of the disease in poultry after more than 20 dead birds were washed up on beaches in Hong Kong. At least three have tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus.

The World Health Organisation reported 348 cases of the disease in humans up to January 2008 across 14 countries. Two hundred and sixteen of those infected had died. That represents a death rate of more than 60% - stoking fears that if the strain ever did manage to pass from human to human it could threaten us with a pandemic on the scale of that of 1918 in which perhaps 70 million died, including a quarter of a million in Britain (see A Disastrous History of the World and A Disastrous History of Britain).

So far, mercifully, there has been little evidence of transmission of H5N1 from human to human apart from isolated cases in Thailand and Vietnam.

End of a tyrant

Thirty years ago today, Pol Pot was deposed by the Vietnamese, ending one of the most murderous regimes the world has ever seen. He and his Communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas had taken control of Cambodia in 1975. Inspired by Chairman Mao, they drove millions of people – some still in their hospital beds – out of its cities into the country.

“Bourgeois” professionals like lawyers, doctors and teachers were killed along with their families. Even wearing glasses was enough to put your life in danger. In addition to those deliberately murdered, thousands of others died from the hardships and hunger of Pol Pot’s labour camps so that by the time he was driven from power, 1.75 million out of a population of 8 million were dead.

As Israel today continued its bombing and bombardment of Gaza for a twelfth day, it is interesting to note the key role played by the US bombing of Cambodia from 1969 onwards in bringing Pol Pot to power. One Khmer Rouge leader remarked: “Sometimes the bombs fell and hit little children, and then their fathers would be all for the Khmer Rouge.” Assaults designed to destroy resistance often have the opposite effect.