Sep 2017 – Page 5

41 Million hit by unprecedented flooding as Climate Chaos takes off

You may have heard that Harvey killed more than 30 people in South Texas, but you’d be very lucky to find out that more probably died in the Yemen flooding in Taiz on the same day, in a starving besieged city in a country blockaded, with US support, by sea , land and air, and a worsening cholera epidemic of over 500,000 people

Millions worldwide hit by unprecedented flooding as climate change becomes a deadly reality

by Claire James at The Ecologist .. Floods in Sierra Leone. Floods in India. Floods in Yemen. Floods in Saudi. Floods in Nepal. Floods in Bangladesh. Officials now estimate 41 million people have been affected. And of course there have been floods in Houston, Texas. We knew climate change would bring more flooding, so is this what the future holds, asks CLAIRE JAMES

And although the US is a rich country, even there, for those who have least, it is hardest to get it back.

We knew this was coming. This August the rains have come with a vengeance. But we knew something like this was coming. In 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its summary of the expected impacts of climate change. In dry, academic language, the report sets out the evidence: climate change will bring extremes of precipitation: more droughts and more deadly floods.

Early in the morning on 14 August, heavy rains in Freetown, Sierra Leone triggered a mudslide. Muddy rubble cascaded down the hillside, destroying homes and burying people inside them. The official death toll from this tragedy has now risen to over a thousand.

At the same time, monsoon rains were causing deaths in India and Nepal. In Himachal, two buses with their passengers were swept into a gorge in a landslide. Fatalities from flooding are not uncommon in the summer monsoon season, but this time the heavy rains just kept coming, leading to extraordinary flooding in Nepal, northwestern Indian states and downstream Bangladesh, where the floods submerged over a third of the country.

A storm was brewing

By 24 August, official estimates were 41 million affected across the three nations of India, Nepal and Bangladesh and at least 900 killed. The next day the reported death toll had risen to 1200. And yet this catastrophe was barely reported in the western media. Continue reading “41 Million hit by unprecedented flooding as Climate Chaos takes off”

American Ecocide: Dicamba mega toxic Herbicide escapes Control

This miracle weed killer was supposed to save farms. Instead, it’s devastating them.

By Caitlin Dewey

BLYTHEVILLE, ARK. — Clay Mayes slams on the brakes of his Chevy Silverado and jumps out with the engine running, yelling at a dogwood by the side of the dirt road as if it had said something insulting.

Its leaves curl downward and in on themselves like tiny, broken umbrellas. It’s the telltale mark of inadvertent exposure to a controversial herbicide called dicamba.

“This is crazy. Crazy!” shouts Mayes, a farm manager, gesticulating toward the shriveled canopy off Highway 61. “I just think if this keeps going on . . .”

“Everything’ll be dead,” says Brian Smith, his passenger.

The damage here in northeast Arkansas and across the Midwest — sickly soybeans, trees and other crops — has become emblematic of a deepening crisis in American agriculture.

Farmers are locked in an arms race between ever-stronger weeds and ever-stronger weed killers. Image result for Dicamba nightmare kills everything

The dicamba system, approved for use for the first time this spring, was supposed to break the cycle and guarantee weed control in soybeans and cotton. The herbicide — used in combination with a genetically modified dicamba-resistant soybean — promises better control of unwanted plants such as pigweed, which has become resistant to common weed killers. Image result for Dicamba nightmare kills everything

The problem, farmers and weed scientists say, is that dicamba has drifted from the fields where it was sprayed, damaging millions of acres of unprotected soybeans and other crops in what some are calling a man-made disaster. Critics say that the herbicide was approved by federal officials without enough data, particularly on the critical question of whether it could drift off target.

Government officials and manufacturers Monsanto and BASF deny the charge, saying the system worked as Congress designed it. Continue reading “American Ecocide: Dicamba mega toxic Herbicide escapes Control”

Spanish police hand over Juana’s kids to a Country condemned for Sexist Violence

Spanish ”justice” delivers the children of Juana Rivas to an abuser in a country condemned by StrasbourgDespite dozens of support demos juana was forced to finally come out of hiding and hand over her children to her abusive ex partner, and still faces probable prison for defying the courts. The children, aged three and 11, were forcibly handed to their father, Francesco Arcuri, of Italian nationality who was sentenced in 2009 for mistreating the mother of the children.

By Natalio Blanco, translated from Kaos en la Red.. (updated) with thanks

Italy, the European Union country in which the Spanish justice wants Juana Rivas’ two youngest children to be recalled, has been condemned this past March by the European Court of Human Rights for its inefficiency in the fight against the sexist scourge.

**”Juana is hiding in my house” proclaimed hundreds of women when Juana went into hiding with her children to prevent them being handed over to her abusive ex partner.**

Italy has frightening statistics on everything related to gender violence, even more lacerating than the data that have been registered in Spain successively year after year despite the recent state pact signed in parliament by the main political groups.

The children, aged three and 11, were forcibly handed to their father, Francesco Arcuri, of Italian nationality who was sentenced in 2009 for mistreating the mother of the children.

This judge has not taken into account at any time that the children of a victim of gender violence, with which her father was convicted in 2009 by the head of the Criminal Court 2 of Granada, María Luisa Roldán, should also be considered victims.

Arcuri acknowledged before the judge that on the morning of May 7, 2009 he repeatedly “hit” his partner at the home they shared with his three minor children in the capital of Granada after asking him to explain where he had been that night. Juana Rivas needed medical assistance for the blows received.

Rate of Italian Femicides TRIPLES even that of Spain.

The head of the Court of Instruction number 2 of Granada made the decision contrary to what was dictated only two days before by another judge to Juana Rivas in Granada, after reappearing after almost a month of being in hiding with her children. Continue reading “Spanish police hand over Juana’s kids to a Country condemned for Sexist Violence”