Michigan pantiloons

[Homicidalheathen]

http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2009/01/...ping-up-as.html

http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/733...-toll-shames-UK

brrrrrrrr

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncate..._100132896.html

I posted this because its hurricanes...tornados...earthquakes and fires that usually get all the press.

http://www.wsoctv.com/weather/18333337/detail.html

A lot of people don't realize how many are lost to cold.

Eight freeze to death in Europe's coldest winter night

Quote

[link to www.terradaily.com]

snip

Warsaw (AFP) Jan 7, 2009

A cold wave claimed seven more lives in Poland and one casualty in Belgium as temperatures across Europe plunged below freezing overnight in what weather officials Wednesday dubbed the coldest night of winter.

Polish police said the latest victims who froze to death Tuesday included a 68-year-old homeless man found in an abandoned house in the southeast town of Jozefow, and a 51-year-old man who lived alone in central Eligiow and died a few steps away from his home.

Temperatures in Poland dropped as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit).

According to Interior Ministry data, hypothermia has been blamed for 76 deaths in Poland since November 2008.

A Belgian man, in his 30s, also froze to death overnight Tuesday according to police as temperatures plunged to minus 20 degrees Celsius, the country's coldest snap for 10 years.

He was found by school children and their teacher Wednesday morning in Louven public park, roughly 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Brussels, police added.

Snowfalls disrupted air traffic around Europe shutting down airports in Italy for several hours and paralysing TGV high-speed trains in France.

Milan's two airports Malpensa and Linate, as well as the airports in Turin and Bergamo, were closed all morning after snow reached up to 30 centimetres (one foot).

The French weather service called it "the coldest night of winter" so far with temperatures ranging for minus nine degrees Celsius in Paris -- the coldest since 1997 -- and minus 20 degrees Celsius in the northern Ardennes region.

The rare sight of snow was seen in the southern Mediterranean port of Marseille, closing the local airport and leaving some 12,000 households in the region without electricity.

Some 550 drivers were stranded for hours on highways outside the port city, emergency services said, as snow fell through the morning to form a coat 12 centimetres (five inches) thick for the first time in 20 years.

Caught off guard, regional officials closed all highways to traffic, while Marseille city hall suspended bus and tram services and advised residents to stay at home. High-speed rail lines to and from Marseille were also cut.

Demand for power for heating throughout France has soared and raised the risk of power cuts, especially in Brittany and the southeast.

Heavy snow has forced the closing of the mountainous French-Italian border since Tuesday night.

In Germany, where earlier this week a 77-year-old mentally ill woman froze to death, temperatures plummeted overnight with many areas recording record lows.

The coldest place was Dippoldiswalde-Reinberg near Dresden in the east where the mercury plunged to minus 27.7 degrees Celsius (minus four degrees Fahrenheit) during the night.

"Temperatures like this suggest that in certain places in the region the lowpoint must have been under the minus 30 mark," the German weather office said in a statement.

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Freezing to death in a cold system

On January 23, a homeless man named Larry Andrews was found frozen to death in an alley in Detroit. Andrews had constructed a makeshift shanty out of cardboard and blankets to protect himself against freezing weather. Detroit was in the middle of a three-week frigid period in which the high temperatures never reached above freezing, and many nights were near zero. The temperature on the day Larry Andrews froze to death never got above 20 degrees.

This was only the latest in a series of deaths from the cold in Detroit and other northern cities. After Andrews' death, the media reported that homeless shelters and warming centers are filled to overcapacity and have had to turn people away.

It's an outrage that this society, with all its wealth, can't even provide a place for homeless people to go so they don't freeze to death. But warming centers and charity are only bandages on what is an open, gaping wound.

Homelessness is a social problem resulting from the way this society functions. There are estimated to be over 6,000 homeless people in the Detroit area. Certainly, many of the homeless have mental health problems. That, in itself, shouldn't lead to homelessness. But in Michigan, 10 out of 15 state psychiatric hospitals have been closed during the last decade. Another one, Northville Psychiatric Hospital is slated for closing in July.

Some of the mentally ill thrown out when hospitals closed wound up in prison. The number of new state prison inmates in Michigan reporting past mental health care rose from about 6,200 in 1990 to almost 12,000 in 2002. Many others wind up on the streets, when they can't really take care of themselves and have no family to provide care. They are simply waiting to be victimized.

But that's only part of the problem. Over the last thirty years we have seen a lowering of wages for working people at the same time that the cost of living has increased. This can only mean that some people lose their homes and have no money to afford new living arrangements – even while working and even more if someone loses a job. Today we see whole families living on the street, even when someone in the family is still working.

This is the other side of the picture of a country in which great wealth is accumulated in the hands of a few people at the very top.

It's outrageous to have people living in cardboard shanties in a society of such great wealth! A rationally organized society, if it used this wealth to address social problems, could provide jobs for its people. It could make treatment available for those with mental illness. And it could provide housing to everyone who needs it.

This capitalist society doesn't do that.

http://www.the-spark.net/np696602.html

http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A...METRO/901150400

wanna make a difference?

http://www.drmm.org/