social revolution – Page 1106

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”

54 Saharawis on hunger strike at Madrid airport after Asylum denial

54 Saharawis are hunger strike at Barajas airport for not receiving asylum. Sahara was the Spanish colony of Western Sahara which they abandoned in 1975. It was illegally taken over by Morocco and has been in dispute ever since Related image

54 Saharawis started a hunger strike after their asylum applications were rejected by the Spanish authorities./Ph. Eldiario

They had applied for asylum in Spain ten days ago, and the hunger strike is inside Madrid-Barajas airport detention room, a spokesman of those affected told Eldiario Spanish online newspaper.

By Insurgente The group started the hunger strike following the denial of the asylum request of 41 of the applicants and the return of one of them “by obligation,” the spokesman said.

Image result for 54 saharauis en huelga de hambre

“Many of them are students who prefer to be on hunger strike, even if they have a bad time and are arrested in Spain, rather than risking their lives and being returned to Algeria, where most are threatened,” Asman said.

They have been assigned a lawyer, without giving them the option of choosing counsel, and have been a translator of Moroccan origin, who did not specify the individual situations of the majority of asylum seekers.

Upon arrival in Barajas, foreigners not admitted as well as the asylum seekers are transferred to rooms authorized for this purpose that are located at terminals 1 and 4 of the facilities. They are owned by AENA, the airport authority, and are guarded by the National Police and private security guards.

Image result for 54 saharauis en huelga de hambre

«We are 54 Saharawis who have been on hunger strike without food and without water», stated Saad Asman, one of the asylum seekers who raised worries regarding the health of some of people who started feeling dizzy as they suffer from diabetes. Continue reading “54 Saharawis on hunger strike at Madrid airport after Asylum denial”

Harvey Partly Due To Climate Change.. Partly caused by Texas Capitalists

For every extra degree Celsius in warming, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water. This tends to make rainfall events even more extreme when they occur. Another element that we can mention with some confidence is the temperature of the seas. “The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are about 1.5 degrees warmer above what they were from 1980-2010,” Sir Brian Hoskins from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Climate change fueling extreme weather

It’s a fact: climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly | Michael E Mann

“That is very significant because it means the potential for a stronger storm is there, and the contribution of global warming to the warmer waters in the Gulf, it’s almost inevitable that there was a contribution to that.” Researchers are also quite confident in linking the intensity of the rainfall that is still falling in the Houston area to climate change. “This is the type of event, in terms of the extreme rainfall, that we would expect to see more of in a warming climate,” Dr Friederike Otto from the University of Oxford told BBC News.

Nature’s ironic ‘revenge’: Harvey hits the heart of the Fossil Fuel empire.. but also strikes the Poor and uninsured…

Ecocidal Houston Oil Mafia Reap Whirlwind of Climate Change’s Hurricane Harvey….. Exxon Knew for decades and Profited while paying none of the costs

Exxon may lose billions.. Serves Them Right!.. you say. Only that the criminal billionaires scooping the loot from the great fossil fools nightmare will still have their mansions, private islands, yachts and offshore fortunes safely stashed away.

It’s the ordinary six and a half million of us in Houston, only one on six of whom have flood insurance, who will have their lives ruined.

The great irony is that fracking for gas and tight oil is both the greatest promotion of EXXON TEXAS and probably the greatest new addition to runaway climate chaos, though that can’t be proved since Trump abolished methane measurement.

But does the Texas fossil fuel industry cause Climate Chaos? Of course it does, though you can’t prove a specific case ”Harvey benefited from unusually toasty waters in the Gulf of Mexico. As the storm roared toward Houston last week, sea-surface waters near Texas rose to between 2.7 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit above average. These waters were some of the hottest spots of ocean surface in the world. The tropical storm, feeding off this unusual warmth, was able to progress from a tropical depression to a category-four hurricane in roughly 48 hours”. see footnote 1

Climate change made every stage of Hurricane Harvey more horrific .

Okay so the sea is much too hot, but there’s evidence Harvey’s weird stalling out on the coast may also be connected to climate change. Because of man made devastation and galloping desertification inland south Texas produces a semi permanent anticyclone which blocks entering storms. see footnote 2 Continue reading “Harvey Partly Due To Climate Change.. Partly caused by Texas Capitalists”

Anarchists Fight For a Collective, Sustainable Society Not a Power Vacuum

extraneousthinker Perhaps clearing up misconceptions is due to the G20 disruptions a la Black Bloc in Hamburg. Regardless, this misunderstanding is largely propagated from the flimsy coverage in the mainstream media.

Mr Robot, for example, showcase a collective of leftist hackers who erased the debt and crippled the financial system in their universe. Fight Club similarly, bombed the capitalist financial centers by infiltrating the security of buildings. V for Vendetta also bombed Great Britain’s political centers in a symbolic meaning of a new society. Even a kid’s show of Nickelodeon in Legend of Korra featured an evil airbender, Zaheer, who believed that the natural order is “disorder.” He eventually killed a queen and ensued a period of chaos and banditry.

It’s no accident then that when anarchists show up on the news or elsewhere, the first thing people believe that anarchists fight for is a power vacuum – no power, no structure, nothing in it’s place.

The proof is in the pudding. Even with it’s problematic inception as an ideology in Europe, anarchism never was for vacuum. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wanted to replace the system of private property with collective ones.

He attempted this by encouraging a semi-reformist mutualist institutions. Yet others, like Emma Goldman and Errico Malatesta, believed that an organized society would have to fight in revolution to achieve anarchist aims. This tendency won out. Continue reading “Anarchists Fight For a Collective, Sustainable Society Not a Power Vacuum”