From "Photographing an Indelicate but Deadly Subject" (NYT). Excellent and important photography at the link. Working for National Geographic, Bruce documents the problem of open defecation around the world:
“It almost seemed so ridiculous that I had to do it,” Ms. Bruce said. “But once you start researching you realize that it’s among the most important issues today, affecting nearly a billion people. If you don’t have proper sanitation, you don’t have clean drinking water, and then you don’t have a healthy population.”
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In India, 80% don't use toilets.
You need a smart enough population to keep the sanitation system working. It's an ongoing engineering problem.
Haiti has huge wastewater treatment plants, but not working.
"Since the earthquake in 2010, international groups have spent millions of dollars on a plan to build eight open-air sewage treatment plants across Haiti. Seven years on, only one of the eight is operational."
Most importantly, where do the transgender women in India defecate? Do they have readily available Target bathrooms in India for transgenders?
Blogger rhhardin said...
"You need a smart enough population to keep the sanitation system working. It's an ongoing engineering problem."
Sort of like the drinking water wells US aid groups build in Africa?
Tommy Duncan, right out of the gate you won this thread.
Shrug.
If Feminists care, they can raise their own money and labor and fix this themselves. American Standard will be happy to take their money.
Other than that, it is a 'not my country' problem and since American Feminists spend more ink on the nearly non existent pay gap, they clearly don't give a non-rapey shit either in comparison.
Just to note: Iraqi and Afghan girls were getting schools, electricity AND toilets, but Feminists were against it.
My shits have already been given. It is on the Girls now.
If they felt it was a priority they would make it one. It all begins with a hole in the ground and social norms pushing you to dig, and then cover, that hole. We call this hole in the dirt...progress.
Plus, if you’re carrying a spade you have a weapon to fight off the rapists.
But the Left tells us the global warming is the number one problem facing the Third World.
And this story proves that Trump was right. Again.
Is San Francisco included?
Leave San Francisco Alone!
Read the first two words of the post title and assumed this would be about San Francisco. I was wrong: it is about other third world countries.
The NY Times has been writing the same basic Third World article for 40 years. It can't help but be somewhat compelling, but after the third decade it begins to feel exploitative.
So, do American girls ALSO go to the bathroom in packs to fight off rapists as well...or are they just gossipy busy bodies who like to chat in private?
Seems that 'bathroom pack' mentality is ingrained and this lady just wants to create a dark and sinister issue out of a pretty common female predilection.
World ends (or, at least, gets shit on!)
Women, minorities hardest hit
We could fix the problem, but it would require lots of plastic and concrete. I would say education as well, but I know are universities provide education to people from these countries. However, we incentivize them to stay rather than encourage them to return home and improve the area where they were born. If we go there ourselves, it is called imperialism. So societies that have existed long before us don't modernize.
It doesn't fecal matter to me.
our universities...
Keep your sphincter clenched. A White man will be along presently.
Excellent and important photography at the link.
Sure. I think well enough in the abstract I'll skip the pictures, thanks though.
"World Ends: Women and Minorities Most Affected"
Who stepped in and solved those sanitation problems for our culture? It’s been so long I’ve forgotten.
Leave San Francisco out of this. They are doing the best they can.
No mention of the culture issue in India, something I read was outdoor was seen as cleaner.
Reference:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-12/india-access-toilets-remains-huge-problem-worst-all-women-and-girls
Snark:
With the amount of money spent in Haiti, plus the heroic efforts of the Clinton foundation, why is there still a problem there?
Third world shit hole?
Shit hole, in any case.
San Francisco does not count.
Nobody there digs holes.
OK, that's enough of the NYT for today.
Nobody there digs holes.
Only metaphorically, such as deep financial holes.
Who stepped in and solved those sanitation problems for our culture? It’s been so long I’ve forgotten.
Same people who wiped out malaria in Cuba, “They Who Must Not Be Named.”
The fist-bump was invented by sewermen
Far Far Far more important than Global Warming -- and there are clear technological and political fixes.
But they sort of require capitalism, in order for the locals to get out of poverty, and so many elites hate capitalism, and even success for businessmen.
It's not that they like or dislike poor people, it's just that they prefer not to really think about how the ancestors of capitalists were so poor, too -- until capitalism allowed private property to be respected and allowed so many workers to escape the grinding poverty of history.
Why anyone born in the USA should be thankful, regardless of the privations of their ancestors in the 17th-19th Centuries.
Who gives a shit about inequality when you can't take a shit in safety?
This is happening in Seattle, too: stop to smell the roses?
But, then, Seattle has always been only one step behind San Francisco.
DrSquid says: OK, that's enough of the NYT for today.
That's enough of the NYT. [FIFY]
"once you start researching you realize that it’s among the most important issues today, affecting nearly a billion people. If you don’t have proper sanitation, you don’t have clean drinking water, and then you don’t have a healthy population.”
Once you start researching, you realize that most people in most places didn't have proper sanitation or a "healthy population" until, oh, the day before yesterday or so, when mostly white men figured out a better way.
I worked with a woman a few years ago who had family in Haiti. She went back on a visit once because her Mother wanted her to go with her and when she got back she told me that she didn't have the greatest time, partly because she spent most of her time trying not to eat anything so she wouldn't have to go to the bathroom. I didn't ask why, I just figured the facilities were a little basic or something. I grew up at a time when in rural areas there were still outhouses around so I figured that this was what my friend meant, that she didn't want to have to use the outhouse. Which I now understand looking at these pictures from Haiti it's more...outside by the house, any house.
Anyway, it's interesting that in places like San Francisco and Portland, people are willing to abandon their potty training and revert back to what their ancestors did, shitting out in the open. I mean, I'm assuming that the people doing this are not recent immigrants from India or Haiti, they're people who were raised here. Which is what keeps me from making a crack about immigration.
It's bizarre that a group of neighbors or a small community can't get together and deal with their poop disposal issue. It causes me to lose respect for them.
Becoming a shithole country should be an aspiration. At least they'd have a shithole.
Far Far Far more important than Global Warming -- and there are clear technological and political fixes.
But they sort of require capitalism, in order for the locals to get out of poverty, and so many elites hate capitalism, and even success for businessmen.
It's not that they like or dislike poor people, it's just that they prefer not to really think about how the ancestors of capitalists were so poor, too -- until capitalism allowed private property to be respected and allowed so many workers to escape the grinding poverty of history.
And it's all because of Trump.
<
She also photographed the people she sees as the “unsung heroes of sanitation in Haiti,” the “bayakou” who often strip down and climb into pit latrines to clean them out. By hand.
“They only work at night because people throw rocks at them, and even their family members often don’t know what they do,” she said. “They’re like masked superheroes.”
<
Holy shit.
What in the HECK did Hillary spend money on in Haiti?
This is basic shit.
But climate change!!!!!
"Since the earthquake in 2010, international groups have spent millions of dollars on a plan to build eight open-air sewage treatment plants across Haiti. Seven years on, only one of the eight is operational."
Why, was all the money rerouted to Chelsea's wedding?
I feel sorry for this poor guy pictured at the link.
Exilian Cenat has worked as a “bayakou” in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for around 20 years. The job requires him to crawl into pit toilet holes to empty the feces inside by hand and bucket.
And the women have it rough?
Effective sanitation is one of civilization's greatest developments and support system, and as someone above pointed out, keeping it running properly isn't trivial, and there is great evidence that if the infrastructure is gifted to one society by another, it quickly fails because it can't be maintained by the recipient.
Yancey Ward... yes. It works (or rather doesn't) when they're stolen too, rather than gifted. See farms in Zimbabwe, and soon South Africa. And everything ever nationalized in Venezuela.
Illustrates Bjorn Lomberg's central thesis, which is that efforts and money spent on making a fraction of a degree's difference in theoretical future global warming---money needed so that poor Third World people will not be overcome by the effects of global warming---would be so much better spent on clean water, better agriculture, and electricity. I did read about some successful campaigns in rural India to get villages on board with proper outhouses and wastepits.
I'd still choose open defecation over a Defecation Open.
RigelDog said...
Illustrates Bjorn Lomberg's central thesis, which is that efforts and money spent on making a fraction of a degree's difference in theoretical future global warming---money needed so that poor Third World people will not be overcome by the effects of global warming---would be so much better spent on clean water, better agriculture, and electricity.
The same thesis is a two-fer when applied to illegal immigration.
Not only will people moving to the US from the third world on average increase their "carbon footprint" tremendously, the net money spent on income support and social services (perhaps $10-30k per year) for one household if instead spent as foreign aid in in their home countries on public health and sanitation would improve the lives of an entire village immeasurably.
Why would you travel so far to see something so common?
We offered the turban-heads, towel-heads, and other uncivilized people's evil whitey's western-style sanitation, but they rejected it. Let them crap in holes.
We offered the turban-heads, towel-heads, and other uncivilized people's evil whitey's western-style sanitation, but they rejected it. Let them crap in holes.
Sort of like the Romans offered modern sanitation to the Germanic Hordes.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your turd, your poop,
Your huddled masses yearning to crap free,
The wretched refuse of your steaming shithole.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-scat to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden shower!”
This sounds like a job for Laslo!
Everyone should have a hobby.
At the Mexican's house we'd joke about "the shitting fields".
First-world standards of sanitation and security may be out of their reach, but self-moderation and personal responsibility is not limited by poverty. They need to mobilize individuals, families, and communities to improve their quality of life.
spent as foreign aid in in their home countries on public health and sanitation would improve the lives of an entire village immeasurably
That could be part of emigration reform. As you note, it not only helps the people who would have been redistributed through immigration reform, refugee crises, etc., but also the men, women, and children who are left behind. It is a sustainable solution with a comprehensive perspective.
That darn white privilege again.
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