Tag Archives: territory

Hurricane Maria has crushed Puerto Rican farmers.

by Charmai90K Posted on September 25, 2017

The devastation wiped out 80 percent of Puerto Rico’s agricultural production, according to Puerto Rico’s agriculture secretary, Carlos Flores Ortega. The New York Times visited farmer José A. Rivera after the winds flattened his plantain, yam, and pepper fields.

“There will be no food in Puerto Rico,” Rivera, told the Times. “There is no more agriculture in Puerto Rico. And there won’t be any for a year or longer.”

Food prices will surely rise on the island, although the loss of crops will not necessarily mean people will starve. Puerto Rico imports about 85 percent of its food. Even so, the storm damaged the infrastructure used to distribute imported food, like ports, roads, and stores.

On CNN, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló pleaded for aid from Congress. “We need to prevent a humanitarian crisis occurring in America,” he said. FEMA and the Coast Guard are working in the territory.

Flores, the agriculture secretary, appeared to be looking for a silver lining. This may be a chance to rebuild the island’s agriculture so that it is more efficient and sustainable, he told the Times.

As climate change accelerates, we can expect the rate of disasters like this to accelerate as well.

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Hurricane Maria has crushed Puerto Rican farmers.

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On a scale of 1 to 10, Fort McMurray’s air pollution is a 38

by TLZThanhlvamof Posted on May 17, 2016

On a scale of 1 to 10, Fort McMurray’s air pollution is a 38

By on May 17, 2016 5:00 amShare

Nearly two weeks after a wildfire first tore through Fort McMurray, the Canadian oil town’s air pollution index is off-the-charts at 38 — on a scale of one to 10.

The air quality scale measures contaminants, smoke, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide, none of which is good to be breathing in. The fire has forced 90,000 people to leave their homes, and as of Monday, thousands more had to evacuate an area north of the city.

The poor air quality could be a problem for days, affecting when residents can return.

“This is something that could potentially delay recovery work and a return to the community,” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said, reports the Ottawa Citizen.

Karen Grimsrud, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, told a Canadian radio station that the combination of warmer weather and wind conditions today — compared with cooler weather and more favorable winds last week — had “resulted in the air quality deteriorating significantly.”

Rescue workers currently are wearing respirators. Officials said they hoped to have a timeline for Fort McMurray residents at the end of next week. But air quality concerns affect a larger swath of territory than the evacuated areas. Air quality alerts have been issued for the city of Edmonton, more than 200 miles away from Fort McMurray.

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On a scale of 1 to 10, Fort McMurray’s air pollution is a 38

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Quote of the Day: "That Could Have Been Any One of Us"

by CasimirSavoy Posted on December 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Michelle Conlin of Reuters, who interviewed 25 active-duty and retired black NYPD police officers, nearly all of whom said they themselves had been treated harshly by fellow cops when they were out of uniform:

At an ale house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn last week, a group of black police officers from across the city gathered for the beer and chicken wing special. They discussed how the officers involved in the Garner incident could have tried harder to talk down an upset Garner, or sprayed mace in his face, or forced him to the ground without using a chokehold. They all agreed his death was avoidable.

Said one officer from the 106th Precinct in Queens, “That could have been any one of us.”

It shouldn’t be too hard to hold two thoughts in our minds at once. Thought #1: Police officers have an inherently tough and violent job. Split-second decisions about the use of force come with the territory. Ditto for decisions about who to stop and who to keep an eye on. This makes individual mistakes inevitable, but as a group, police officers deserve our support and respect regardless.

Thought #2: That support shouldn’t be blind. Conlin reports that in her group of 25 black police officers, 24 said they had received rough treatment from other cops. “The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.”

Respect for the police is one of the foundation stones of a decent and orderly society. But police work as a profession is inherently coercive, and police officers have tremendous amounts of sometimes unaccountable power over the rest of us. Thus, it’s equally a foundation stone of a decent and free society to maintain vigilant oversight of professions like this, and to deal vigorously with the kinds of systemic problems that the routine exercise of power and authority make unavoidable. Belief in the latter does not exclude belief in the former.

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Quote of the Day: "That Could Have Been Any One of Us"

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Rich Doctors Like Republicans; Sorta Rich Doctors Like Democrats

by ElizaTSK Posted on June 4, 2014

Mother Jones

We jabber a lot these days about how the real action in income inequality lies in the 1 percent. That is, the big increases haven’t really been between the earnings of, say, teachers and computer programmers, but between computer programmers and Wall Street traders. And rising inequality is even more apparent within the 1 percent: The super rich in the top 0.1 percent are pulling away from the merely rich in the top 1 percent at an astonishing rate.

Today, Sarah Kliff points us to a kinda sorta related chart that’s pretty eye-opening. As high earners, you’d think that doctors would be more likely to contribute money to Republicans than Democrats. But it turns out that isn’t true. A new analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine shows that merely well-off doctors—your allergists, your pediatricians, your pulmonologists—favor Democrats. It’s only when you get into the territory of medical royalty—your surgeons, your urologists, your radiologists—that political contributions start to heavily favor Republicans. Even within one of the best paid professions in the country, there’s a class divide, with the haves favoring Republicans and the have-nots favoring Democrats. That’s fairly remarkable.

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Rich Doctors Like Republicans; Sorta Rich Doctors Like Democrats

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How ExxonMobil may cause a civil war in Iraq

by Myrna Posted on December 18, 2012

How ExxonMobil may cause a civil war in Iraq

By Philip Bump

When George W. Bush decided that the United States (and its “allies”) were going to invade Iraq, there was some small amount of outcry. Opposition focused on three areas: speculation that Bush only wanted to open the country’s oil markets, concern that an invasion would spark civil conflict, and some displeasure that the administration lied about Iraq’s arsenal of weapons. (In retrospect, these critiques were pretty fair.)

Atef Hassan / ReutersA policeman stands guard near a pool of oil that leaked from a damaged pipeline in Basra province.

So it’s with some anguish and a sense that the cosmos has again rearranged itself that we report another hiccup in Iraq’s already turbulent passage to stability. At the center of it: one of the oil companies for whom several hundred thousand American troops kicked open the door.

From the Washington Post:

With their opposing armies massed on either side of the contested border dividing southern and northern Iraq, leaders in Baghdad and the semiautonomous Kurdistan region are warning they are close to civil war — one that could be triggered by Exxon Mobil.

Although leaders on both sides are negotiating a walk back from the brink, they also say their armies could easily be provoked into battle. …

“The prime minister has been clear: If Exxon lays a finger on this territory, they will face the Iraqi army,” said Sami Alaskary, a member of parliament and close confidant of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “We don’t want war, but we will go to war, for oil and for Iraqi sovereignty.”

ExxonMobil is not the first company to attempt to walk the line between Kurdistan and Iraq proper. Earlier this year, Chevron announced a deal with the Kurds and was black-listed by Iraq. Exxon’s leases are closer to the informal border with Iraq, raising the government’s ire.

Tensions rose last month when Iraqi forces tried to arrest a Kurdish fuel seller, who appealed to Kurdish troops, the pesh murga, to protect him. Gunfire erupted.

The Baghdad military officer said the Iraqi army would open fire under three scenarios: if the pesh merga fire first, if the pesh merga advance beyond their current positions, or if oil companies begin working in disputed areas.

“If they do this, it’s a declaration of war,” the officer said. “They will have started it.”

Exxon hopes to begin drilling (with the U.S. government’s tacit blessing) next summer. Assuming that, in the interim, it doesn’t spark an armed conflict centered on the land where it hopes to drill.

We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s come to this. The last time a Texas-based fossil fuel interest wanted to get more oil out of Iraq, the results were about the same. At least we’re not pretending it’s about WMDs anymore.

Source

In Iraq, Exxon oil deal foments talk of civil war, Washington Post

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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