The United Nations has announced that security operations attacking Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, a country located northwest of Thailand, are enacting a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” The military in Myanmar are steadfast in their claims that they are solely targeting Rohingya militants, not civilians. However, Zeid bin Ra’ad al-Hussein, the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the UN, has identified these terrorist attacks as cruel military operations.

The Rohingyas, a stateless Muslim minority, are residing in Rakhine, where Buddhism prevails as the dominant religious doctrine and where the government deems all Rohingyas as illegal immigrants. The contention between the two ideologies reached a turning point on August 25, 2017, when Rohingya militants attacked and killed 12 security personnel in northern Rakhine.

The response against average Rohingyas has been excessively disproportionate to the attacks carried out on the state by Rohingya militants. Mr. Zeid revealed that the Myanmar government has refused to be transparent with human rights investigators. Still, through information obtained through satellite imagery, the UN is able to conclude that there are “security forces and local militia burning Rohingya villages, and consistent accounts of extrajudicial killings, including shooting fleeing citizens” and burning down villages.

Refugee camps in nearby Bangladesh have accommodated the nearly 300,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar. The refugee camps have started registering new arrivals in hopes that such efforts will help the governments of both Bangladesh and Myanmar in the ensuing diplomatic actions relating to Rohingya Muslims’ futures.

The reporting done on the Rohingya crisis on American local news and cable news networks pales in comparison to the plethora of information presented daily. While there are current issues concerning the future of American soil—be it North Korea’s omnipresent nuclear threats or our president’s continued condemnation of “bad dudes” who resist the rise of white supremacy—one must consider the increasing complacency Western governments harbor towards overseas refugee crises. We have seen this pattern presented throughout history, most recently involving Syrian refugees. We know what is happening. We know how this could end. If after a month of attacks the UN is recognizing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, how much longer will it take before empathetically assisting displaced individuals from a third-world country known for being one of the most repressive regimes in the world?

Photo from CNN.

Photo from CNN.

Photo from CNN.

All quotes are from the BBC’s reporting on the refugee crisis from September 11, 2017.

–Salvatore Casto

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Unstable Ground

This past Tuesday September 12^th, an 11-year-old child and his parents died after falling into a pit of the Solfatara crater, in the Phlegraean volcanic field (Campi Flegrei) in Pozzuoli, Italy, near Naples. They were visiting popular tourist area from Meolo, near Venice. According to an Italian news agency, the boy is thought to have wandered into a restricted area, and the ground to have collapsed beneath him; though the volcano is dormant, it “still emits jets of steam with sulfurous fumes,” and according to the Campania Civil Protection Department, was filled with “boiling-hot mud.” It’s unclear whether it was the gases and/or the mud that proved deadly. After the boy had fallen in, his parents went to try to get him out, but ended up falling into the 10-foot-deep pit as well. Their other son, who is seven years old, was nearby and is currently with his grandparents.

The area is privately owned and managed, and is open year-round to tourists. Its last eruption was in 1538, and geologists “constantly monitor the area’s temperatures and gases”; it was reported last year as becoming “increasingly restless,” with ground deformation and low-level seismic activity becoming more frequent, which goes along with patterns of similar volcanoes before their eruptions. The caldera of the volcano itself was likely formed by a “prehistoric outburst” about 40,000 years ago, contributing to a volcanic winter in the Northern Hemisphere and probably hastening the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

We can see the instability of the ground we ourselves walk on in a thankfully non-tragic video posted recently, showing a man’s leg falling into the asphalt as he crossed the street. He remained stuck in the sinkhole for five to ten minutes before being rescued.

“Smaller” tragedies and larger environmental catastrophes remain indelibly linked.

— Lora

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A Mission For The Ages

There’s a plethora of political controversies clouding the picturesque spectacle that is the human; from the lunacy that defines number 45, to the yearn for power that defines foreign nationals. Unlike the pernicious ripples on the medium that is media, NASA ruffles the sea of politics by presenting an unfamiliar and novel dream to us all. On the 15th day of the 10th month of the 97th year of the 20th century, NASA launched a space probe named Cassini. Cassini was developed and launched in order to conduct several missions on not only Saturn, but also on its moons.

One of the first images Cassini took of Saturn

On the 30th day of the 6th month of the 4th year of the 21st century, seven years later, Cassini arrived to Saturn’s system of orbits. Once here, Cassini began it’s sole job… to help all of humanity learn.

We, as a species, learned many things about not only the planet and its moons, but about ourselves in this system of neighboring planets. We learned that there are roughly 60 moons orbiting Saturn. We learned that Enceladus,

Enceladus

one of these many moons orbiting Saturn, is one of the most probable places in the solar system to be potentially harboring life. We learned that Titan, also one of Saturn’s moons, has an internal liquid water and ammonia ocean. We found evidence that Dione, another of Saturn’s moons, could have an ocean of water under its icy crust. All of these discoveries, made by a single space probe sent during the late 1990s, have surely assured many scientist and civilians alike that there is an ever increasing probability that humans aren’t as special as they make themselves out to be. With a single mission, and in our very own solar system, we discovered three “heavenly” sources that could be harboring life.

(Plumes of water shooting off Enceladus)

Originally destined to explore the stars for a mere 13 years, her life took a different course after the many discoveries she made. Sadly, on the 15th day of the 9th month of the 17th year of the 21st century, after an adventurous 20 years, Cassini’s way of life came to an inevitable end. Her jets no longer had fuel to continue her remarkable dance with the many cosmic partners that took her by the hand. She was going to fall into Saturn, she was going to have one last dance – this time with death, and it was going to lead.

Last series of imagines Cassini took of Enceladus

Even as she tumbled and lost her rhythm with life, her burning body gave us insight into the chemical buildup of Saturn’s atmosphere. It took only one minute for her to burn up, and a couple of seconds for her body to give. Cassini might’ve lost her footing in this last dance, but at least it was to the music of her choosing, the music of hope and inspiration for all of humanity.

Here lie humans,

Saturn on the left, what we call home on the right

as a single spec, engulfed in a cloud darkness – surrounded by the sparkling silence of space.

Mandatory photo of Cassini.

Mandatory photo of my liking.

~Richard Gonzalez