East Palestine, Ohio.
Once, as a teenager, I switched channels on the TV, and there was a movie. A caption appeared on screen: “Rhode Island”.
“Nice!” I thought. “I always like movies set in cultures that are very foreign to mine.”
As the movie went on, I was increasingly confused, as those Greeks, or Turks, seemed very similar to US Americans, and the setting appeared to be the USA. (It was dubbed in French, so I couldn’t tell from the language)
I soon figured that it must be a location in the USA named after an Old World location.
New England has two types of place names. Old English colonial names and Native ones. Like a river called Woonasquatucket from the very same state you mentioned, Rhode Island.
That should be clear. Palestine is a nation, but not a location.
Edit: I don’t know why people are so upset. This is a factual statement, not meant to discredit Palestine, and is a very important part of Israel’s oppressive leverage. As a direct result of their displacement, Palestine is a people. The nation is wherever the Palestinians live. The land they govern is only defined by their occupation.
Palestine is recognized by the UN as self-determined nation of people. It is not a country with internationally recognized borders. That is why their land is referred to as Palestinian territory and not the country of Palestine. It’s also why Netanyahu wants to evict them for easy circumvention of international law prohibiting settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/the-right-of-the-palestinian-self-determination-19-dec24/
not a location
…what?
Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in the southern Levant region of West Asia. It encompasses two disconnected territories — the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the Palestinian territories — within the larger region of Palestine.
People outside of the US probably don’t know about the train wreck in Ohio. It never hurts to add a little clarification.
It’s both. Just like any other nation. If you go to France, your location is France and you’re also in the nation of France.
Same with Palestine.
But it’s not. If Palestinians leave territory, that land is no longer considered Palestine. Palestine is where the Palestinians live. Their nation has territories defined by residence, but is not a country with borders. I wasn’t slighting Palestine. It’s just the unfortunate state of their international recognition.
A. it’s both.
B. This is the United States where we regularly question why the FBI isn’t stopping Russian influence in the Georgian Parliament.
It’s not according to the UN. Their occupied land is Palestinian territory. If they vacate, it is no longer theirs, leaving it available for Israel to claim. It’s a large part of the occupation problem that Palestinians face.
In contrast, Ukraine has internationally recognized borders. The currently Russian occupied towns and cities are still Ukraine, not Russia.
You don’t appear to know the difference between a country and a location.
Palestinians do not care much that they do not fit your arbitrary Western definition of a country.
I’m referring to their UN designation of a self-determined nation-state. If the UN would recognize them as a country with established borders, it would assist them in defending against Israel’s occupation.
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/the-right-of-the-palestinian-self-determination-19-dec24/
I’m so glad that Norfolk Southern is going to pay for all of the necessary remediation. Really a very considerate, and socially/ enviromentally conscious company. Bravo!
What are you talking about? Some politician grimaced as he took a sip of water and another one put it to his lips without actually taking a sip. Everything is fine!
It took me a minute to remember that this happened in Ohio and not the Middle East.
It would be a shame if all those states sued the train company for damages.
It’s 2024. Why are trains still derailing? Surely there’s a better engineering design than this.
Rail workers do not have the proper time to fully inspect cars and arrange them in the proper order due to understaffing and the high volume created by maximized rail schedules that prioritize profits over safety.
That’s a huge reason why rail workers wanted to go on strike before there was bipartisan cooperation led by Biden to take away their labor rights.
led by Biden to take away their labor rights.
Yet if I criticize him, I’m accused of refusing to vote against Trump and told that I’m the problem.
That’s only because you individually have been made responsible for the election. Every one else was at the meeting and didn’t want the job. Good luck, and don’t choose wrong!
The engineering is fine, great even. Executives have demanded that the trains run at the red line, for maximum profit. With no safety margin, when something goes wrong it goes really really wrong. That’s why it was so important to hold them accountable and so fucked that we didn’t. It’s just a matter of time until the next accident.
It’s effectively impossible to engineer around knowingly unsafe operation. The trains are fine, it’s the railroads operating them unsafely and the state and federal governments refusing to maintain infrastructure that is the problem.
i wish the govt was in charge of maintaining the infrastructure, and i wish the govt owned the infrastructure then prioritized passenger traffic over freight so we could get some semblance of a working regional rail system.
prioritized passenger traffic over freight
Technically that’s already the law. But freight lines don’t care because the law isn’t enforced
I dunno. You never hear about high speed rail in Japan derailing, or the monorail at DisneyWorld going off the track. There was some crazy invention ages ago where a train with a gyroscope actually traveled on a single rail. We’ve got to do better than this.
Yeah, because they actually care about safety and put money into maintenance.
Most derailments happen due to operational error such as too much speed for the track (preventable with ATC), equipment failure (preventable with better inspection and maintenance) or external factors like a car on the tracks (not really preventable without major gate upgrades).
The only real technological innovations are automated train systems, but that technology already exists, we just don’t use it in the US because the private rail operators make more money by cutting corners, not spending on upgrades.
In 2005, 106 passengers were killed and more than 500 injured.
Boats still sink, planes and cars still crash. Fundamentally, transportation will fail. The question is are these failures within an acceptable rate due to unforseen issues, or is this a problem with the system that operates and profits off of these devices, letting safety slip to maximize profit?
