Karma Suitsya: Coroney Capitalism.

Russia had its hottest winter ever recorded.

Wildfires in Siberia are bringing even more misery to an area that is already on lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nine regions have been affected

Wildfires are burning in the Florida Panhandle.

 Last month was the hottest April on record for the globe,

 Arctic temperatures in the last few days have averaged an astounding 9.4 degrees Celsius above normal, and

Heat has also gripped portions of Greenland, where the ice sheet’s annual melt got started two weeks early.

Maximum sustained winds in Typhoon Amphan increased from 75 mph to 160 mph in just 24 hours.

Heavy Rainfall Floods Homes, Streets in Louisiana and Texas as Covington in St. Tammany Parish reports 15.63 inches of rain late Thursday night, and it's still coming down.

Flash flooding has washed out parts of a couple of roads just west of Greenville, South Carolina, this morning.

North Carolina has already dealt with a damaging round of flash flooding in late April when over 3 inches of rain fell in a short amount of time. In this storm, rainfall totals have already exceeded 4 inches as of early Thursday morning.

Two dams in Michigan were breached after days of heavy rainfall, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents. The affected area includes Midland, the home of Dow Chemical, which is now under nine feet of water.

Coastal flooding is expected to peak in Norfolk, Virginia, with Wednesday evening's high tide, according to the National Weather Service.

Torrential rain in the Great Lakes region triggered major flooding in parts of Chicagoland Sunday night.

 Other downpours caused flooding in parts of eastern Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky.

Evacuations are underway as flooding hits Roanoke, Virginia.

Ina Deathgrip.

While a virus spreads like wildfire among us, one system after the other is flooded with the completely predictable outcome: Hospitals inundated, funeral homes buried, crematoria demand on fire, coffin makers unable to keep up with the torrent of corpses; it's as though the River Styx is in spate, creating an algal bloom in the propensity of the US to blame someone/anyone else, thereby clogging vital response with an abundance of slime.

Both plagues and natural disasters were or seemed in retrospect to be, so much more, well, natural, when they were what insurance companies liked to refer to as "Acts of God." Never in the past were they considered to be what they have come to represent in today's world: repercussions from the  activities of man: Scientific Horrorifics as dreams of terror and death come vividly to life in a crucible of HP-enabled Hatecraft, natural processes seem to have turned against us as though they had a will, but it is we who wield a will, one as thunderous as Thor's hammer, one that looses monsters into our midst, invites nightmares to dinner; sits man-made ogres with scientifically-sterilized names down with the ladies that lunch.

How timely it is that TV and movies are replete with dead men walking in search of others' brains to gnaw on, giving new meaning to the term, "Let me pick your brain", while mild-mannered males change into beasts under the charming light of the moon, or vampires flit around just outside our windows, succeeding in enticing the weakest among us to invite them inside, where they feed on the innocent who had nothing to do with letting them in. The perpetrators of crimes are always the first to get out of the way: foreknowledge doesn't just save Senators' portfolios' value, it forewarns them to take to their well-heeled heels and get the hell outta Dodge.

The great leveling our changed climate is delivering has forced India and Pakistan to evacuate millions in the middle of a pandemic as one disaster piles right on top of another like a High School game of rumble while "the indispensable country" unabashedly displays to the world, "Hey, you guys are on your own." Unless, that is, you wanna blow somethin' up, I mean; you know, just drop a line and we'll strike a deal. WE've really revved up our defense industry, finest in the world, BY FAR! And we'll even throw in some Covid-carrying personnel if you need some Special Ops done. These boys can drop in, shed virus, be back in Fort Detrick all before curtain call. Huh? Oh yeah, of course, bugle call, Reverie, I'm in a revellie reverie, fer crissakes. Ok now, what else? WE got it set so we can carry on three conflicts at once, anywhere in the World!, goddammit. Full Spectrum Dominatrix! You betcha: Don't Cry for Huawei, make our 5-G your wi-fi. PZZZZZT!

"Just die for me Venezuela!
The truth is, you're just too Socialist,
You're just like locusts;
So for your oilfields,
We give you Guiado;
Cede Orinoco".

The only blessing, and it is one, that this pandemic has delivered is one whose name no one dare speak, whose obvious implications we'd rather avoid. That the activities, the utter folly of the great preponderance of our activities, the very ones that are cementing in the reality of an increasingly unpredictable climate regime, not one that will arrive at some time in the future, but like the virus itself is upon us now, are all non-essential activities without which the air would be breathable, the CO2 burden placed on it radically abated, and our future extinction delayed. Yet despite the obvious repercussions of ignoring what is staring us in the face even while slappin' us upside the head, we insist we  have no option but to continue to support "the Economy". That same one that is delivering the fruits of labor to a dwindling few, wreaking weather catastrophes that pile up one on top of the other, leaving no recovery time, and spreading a plague around the globe in a  matter of months. Precious months that we dithered away, in exactly the same manner in which we are frittering away the last few years left to "do something" about climate change besides crowding into packed jets by the thousands to soar around the globe to attend meaningless conferences so as to make a grand show of doing something, never caring to notice that that something we are doing is only making the problem worse, irrevocably faster.

So we claim helplessness in front of our own creation. But we are not helpless. We are just obdurate, selfish, our desperate indulgence in folly to feed our vanity unconscionable. But due to our deadly arsenals, unstoppable. We have turned the concept of freedom on its head, so that in its current iteration, My freedom doesn't stop where it impacts yours, oh no, that's so old-school. That's when it really gets started. Now Freedom means that I am free to eliminate you from my path because your freedom, well, I mean, what does that mean when I  have ICBM's? Anyway, we all know that:

Freedom's just another word for, I win and you lose
Loser! You mean nothing honey 'cause you ain't free, not now;
And freedom's feels so good If it's, giving you the blues;
If you're feeling bad that's good enough for me, hmm, hmm,
Good enough for me and this Economy. Uh-huh.
La-di-da, la-di-da, La-di-da da da di dah.

The globalized economy wreaks more harm than the corona virus, killing millions prematurely every single year, a toll we ignore even in these, the OECD nations representing the most developed of the developed economies. And, unlike the virus, the Coroney Capitlaist Economy will not be going away any time soon. There is no team of scientists struggling mightily to conjure a way out of the range of its killing field. On the contrary, every OECD nation endeavors to outgrow every other one; "Eat my dust" triumphalism rules the day. Growth is thus proven to be a mere euphemism for burn more fossil fuel than anyone else. Each Nation struggles to makes their own economy a tourist haven, dismissing the fact it would be crushed like an aluminum can underfoot without jet travel; automobile robofacture, its products using more energy, no matter what it's drivetrain, in its robofacture than it will ever consume in its utilization as a transport module; or agribusiness, that brainchild of the first "Green Revolution" that spawned industrialized farming, dependent on natural gas-derived fertilizers, and so has consumed more fossil fuels, generated more CO2 since its genesis than all the underdeveloped nations' attempt to industrialize has.

 "Developed" meaning, of course, those economies that are creating the lion's share of the excess CO2 wreaking havoc with the predictability of the closed system called the atmosphere. Hence, the more developed the economy, the more atrophied that nation's citizens' sense of responsibility for any other person who suffers from the ramifications of their behavior. Yet we can manage to say "globalized" with a straight face. Stratified and gratified, consumerist and buffoonerish, our highest goal in life to lead an effortless existence (well, on their part. You, however? Get back to your essential work. If yet another workplace danger now lurks invisibly in the very air you breath? Well, you have health insurance. Why do you think it's paid for by your employer? Still think it's a Benefit? Lol. Thank God labor is now so utterly dis-organized and hopelessly stupid). Thus do the economies exhibiting the largest amount of Folly, their Demand engine now ruled by the Avatar of Folly himself, his bloated visage floated iconically all over their Corporate-owned and Iron-fisted-controlled HDTV's and plasma screens, the much-caricatured face of the eye-toon, DJ grins out at us mawkishly everywhere we look. As though this were Syria, or No. Korea, or some other "shithole" country lorded over by a Strongman. It's Our Prince, our Scion; Our End.