Episode 150 - Climb Goes Horribly Wrong, and Black Lives Matter in Israel?

A sigh of relief for Ukraine and the rest of Europe, A Missing Climbing team recovered, and Israel has it's own black lives matter moment.  On today's hot zone.

 

Hi folks!  Well if you missed episode 144 - about the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster you should really go back and watch that one.  And watch it, don't just listen to it.  If you are catching our podcast on itunes or soundcloud, why don't you head over to Opslens.com and watch the show?  You'll get a lot more out of it when you see what you've been missing. 

 

We're getting a lot of new subscribers so for their sake let me take a minute and explain my purpose for this podcast.  There are lots of amazing stories from crisis areas around the world that don't make it into the lineup at most news outlets, simply because they're too busy with celebrity gossip, sports or worst of all, politics.  For example, did you hear about the floods in Siberia that killed 20 people this week?  there wasn't much of anything about that in the news in the United States.  Look, America is so divided partially because the news spends so much time covering the divisions.  Well I want to fill you in on those stories that really are news - out-of-the ordinary events from around the world and then spend enough time on them to help you really understand what's happening and why.  And when we come across people who are hurting because of war or disaster - I want to leverage the new technologies at our disposal to empower you to not just watch the crisis, but get involved and do something about it, by reaching through the podcast to help the people being affected.  

 

So last week I did a whole episode about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and talked about my novel, called Meltdown, in which terrorists plan to blow up the reactor and create a new nuclear holocaust much worse than the first one in 1986.  By the way if you haven't read any of my books - why not?  All nine of them are available on Amazon, or, if you want to support the podcast I'll send you copies of my books for free.  Anyway, in the novel I wrote about it, I pointed out that Chernobyl was a huge security risk for all of europe because the original sarcophagus which was hastily built to contain the reactor after it blew was crumbling.  And there were millions of gallons of highly radioactive water inside the reactor.  All it would have taken was for a terrorist group to drive a car bomb into the reactor, which would not have been that hard to do, and they could have made much of europe uninhabitable.  

 

Well we can all breathe a little easier now.  I'm glad to say that the european community came together and helped build a gigantic new sarcophagus to contain the reactor.  it was under construction when I was there in 2016, and now it's been finished and installed.  New video footage was released this week from inside the sarcophagus, which is essentially a giant lead-lined aircraft hangar that was built next to the reactor and then rolled on rails over the old structure.  The tour inside the completed building shows the old building inside.  And this is why you want to be watching the podcast right now, because I'm showing you the footage of the tour of the new superstructure.  

 

In other news, did you hear about the team of climbers that went missing on a remote mountainside in the himalayas?  An international group of climbers led by veteran British mountaineer Martin Moran went missing on May 26 when they got caught in an avalanche.  The team was comprised of  four Britons, two Americans, an Australian and an Indian, and they were attempting to scale Nanda Devi East, a very difficult and dangerous climb.  In June their bodies were spotted from a helicopter and June 14 two teams set out to find and recover their bodies.  On Tuesday seven bodies were recovered, but a police spokesperson on Wednesday said the search for an eighth climber had been abandoned.

 

Vivek Kumar Pandey, of the Indo-Tibetian Border Police, said the search had been halted after seven bodies were evacuated by helicopter from the mountain in northern India.

 

[quote]

 

The bodies were first spotted on June 3 at a height of more than 16,400 feet from a helicopter.

 

The seven bodies recovered were handed over to the local district administration for identification and collection of DNA samples.

 

Pandey said it was possible that the 8th body was hidden by deep snow and it was not feasible at the present time to continue with the search.

 

Let's move on now to Israel.  There are over 100,000 Ethiopians living in that country who claim jewish heritage.  That claim goes all the way back to Exodus, when it's said some of Moses' sons led a group from the tribe of Dan to Africa.  There are still a small group of Ethiopian jews in Africa today.  

 

I went to ethiopia several years ago to report on the ark of the covenant, and the belief by some that it resides in the northern ethiopia city of Axum.  It was one of the most interesting trips of my life.  Check this out:

 

[ethiopia package]

 

But many of those ethiopians who made the move to Israel claim they are discriminated against because they are black.  Those feelings boiled over into violence this week after an eighteen year old ethiopian youth was killed by an off-duty police officer.  Ethiopian jews took to the streets to protest, burning cars and blocking roads, and injuring 47 police officers who went to handle the riots.  

 

Now there are a few small facts that need to be pointed out about this story.  The man who was shot, his name was solomon teka, was reportedly part of a group of youths who started throwing rocks at the cop, who saw them loitering in a park and I guess asked them to move along.  I love how the LA times reported that the youths were "unarmed", but then buried in their own story report that they were throwing rocks at the officer.  So if they were throwing rocks, they weren't unarmed.  

 

Now look, there may very well be some systemic racism among the authorities in Israel.  I don't know.  But if you were throwing rocks at the police, you don't get to claim you were shot because you were black.  You were shot because you were stupid.  And that's not racism. I feel like this is something the media has done a terrible job of pointing out during the black lives matter protests in the United States as well.  If  a young man gets shot by a cop, and he was, for example, shooting at said cop when the incident occurred, then his race at that point is basically irrelevant.  If you are attacking a cop and he shoots you, you don't get to play the race card.  In my experience, the vast, overwhelming majority of cases like that which have sparked riots over the past five years would fit in this category.  I've actually done quite a bit of reporting on the subject.  Check this out.

 

[package]

 

So again, there may in fact be some systemic racism that needs to be addressed in the US.  But rioting in the streets, burning and destroying the work of other men's hands, is neither honorable nor effective at bringing change.  It's stupid, cowardly and really kind of ironic, in that it sort of proves the point you are claiming is false.  You don't make the assertion that you aren't criminals by going out and performing criminal acts.  

 

Okay that's all I have for today folks.  Thanks for all your prayers and well wishes for my mom as she navigates this cancer diagnosis.  I appreciate all of you who have sent messages of encouragement.  

 

I'm chuck Holton, and I'll see you back here tomorrow on the Hot Zone.

 

End notes:  https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-israel-solomon-teka-ethiopian-20190702-story.html