Hurricane María took a huge toll on the mental health of Puerto Rico
▻https://massivesci.com/notes/hurricane-maria-mental-health-effects-puerto-rico-youth-stress-depressio
On September 20th, 2017, Hurricane María devastated the island of Puerto Rico. A a...
Who Maps the World ?
Too often, men. And money. But a team of OpenStreetMap users is working to draw new cartographic lines, making maps that more accurately—and equitably—reflect our space.
“For most of human history, maps have been very exclusive,” said Marie Price, the first woman president of the American Geographical Society, appointed 165 years into its 167-year history. “Only a few people got to make maps, and they were carefully guarded, and they were not participatory.” That’s slowly changing, she said, thanks to democratizing projects like OpenStreetMap (OSM).
OSM is the self-proclaimed Wikipedia of maps: It’s a free and open-source sketch of the globe, created by a volunteer pool that essentially crowd-sources the map, tracing parts of the world that haven’t yet been logged. Armed with satellite images, GPS coordinates, local community insights and map “tasks,” volunteer cartographers identify roads, paths, and buildings in remote areas and their own backyards. Then, experienced editors verify each element. Chances are, you use an OSM-sourced map every day without realizing it: Foursquare, Craigslist, Pinterest, Etsy, and Uber all use it in their direction services.
When commercial companies like Google decide to map the not-yet-mapped, they use “The Starbucks Test,” as OSMers like to call it. If you’re within a certain radius of a chain coffee shop, Google will invest in maps to make it easy to find. Everywhere else, especially in the developing world, other virtual cartographers have to fill in the gaps.
But despite OSM’s democratic aims, and despite the long (albeit mostly hidden) history of lady cartographers, the OSM volunteer community is still composed overwhelmingly of men. A comprehensive statistical breakdown of gender equity in the OSM space has not yet been conducted, but Rachel Levine, a GIS operations and training coordinator with the American Red Cross, said experts estimate that only 2 to 5 percent of OSMers are women. The professional field of cartography is also male-dominated, as is the smaller subset of GIS professionals. While it would follow that the numbers of mappers of color and LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming mappers are similarly small, those statistics have gone largely unexamined.
There is one arena where women’s OSM involvement, specifically, is growing, however: within organizations like Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and Missing Maps, which work to develop parts of the map most needed for humanitarian relief, or during natural disasters.
When women decide what shows up on the map
HOT has worked on high-profile projects like the “crisis mapping” of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, and on humble but important ones, like helping one Zimbabwe community get on their city’s trash pickup list by highlighting piles of trash that littered the ground. Missing Maps is an umbrella group that aids it, made up of a coalition of NGOs, health organizations like the Red Cross, and data partners. It works to increase the number of volunteers contributing to humanitarian mapping projects by educating new mappers, and organizing thousands of map-a-thons a year.
In HOT’s most recent gender equity study, it found that 28 percent of remote mappers for its projects were women. And in micro-grant-funded field projects, when organizations worked directly with people from the communities they were mapping, women participants made up 48 percent.
That number dwarfs the percentage in the rest of the field, but parity (or majority) is still the ultimate aim. So in honor of International Women’s Day, Missing Maps organized about 20 feminist map-a-thons across the country, including one at the American Red Cross headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., led by Levine along with a team of women volunteers. Price spoke as the guest of honor, and around 75 people attended: members of George Washington University’s Humanitarian Mapping Society, cartography enthusiasts, Red Cross volunteers and employees. There were women and men; new mappers and old.
I turned up with my computer and not one cartographical clue.
The project we embarked on together was commissioned by the Tanzanian Development Trust, which runs a safe house for girls in Tanzania facing the threat of genital mutilation. Its workers pick up and safely shelter girls from neighboring villages who fear they’ll be cut. When a girl calls for help, outreach workers need to know where to go pick them up, but they’re stuck in a Google Maps dead zone. Using OSM, volunteers from all over the world—including girls on the ground in Tanzania—are filling in the blanks.
When it comes to increasing access to health services, safety, and education—things women in many developing countries disproportionately lack—equitable cartographic representation matters. It’s the people who make the map who shape what shows up. On OMS, buildings aren’t just identified as buildings; they’re “tagged” with specifics according to mappers’ and editors’ preferences. “If two to five percent of our mappers are women, that means only a subset of that get[s] to decide what tags are important, and what tags get our attention,” said Levine.
Sports arenas? Lots of those. Strip clubs? Cities contain multitudes. Bars? More than one could possibly comprehend.
Meanwhile, childcare centers, health clinics, abortion clinics, and specialty clinics that deal with women’s health are vastly underrepresented. In 2011, the OSM community rejected an appeal to add the “childcare” tag at all. It was finally approved in 2013, and in the time since, it’s been used more than 12,000 times.
Doctors have been tagged more than 80,000 times, while healthcare facilities that specialize in abortion have been tagged only 10; gynecology, near 1,500; midwife, 233, fertility clinics, none. Only one building has been tagged as a domestic violence facility, and 15 as a gender-based violence facility. That’s not because these facilities don’t exist—it’s because the men mapping them don’t know they do, or don’t care enough to notice.
In 2011, the OSM community rejected an appeal to add the “childcare” tag at all. It was finally approved in 2013, and in the time since, it’s been used more than 12,000 times.
So much of the importance of mapping is about navigating the world safely. For women, especially women in less developed countries, that safety is harder to secure. “If we tag something as a public toilet, does that mean it has facilities for women? Does it mean the facilities are safe?” asked Levine. “When we’re tagging specifically, ‘This is a female toilet,’ that means somebody has gone in and said, ‘This is accessible to me.’ When women aren’t doing the tagging, we just get the toilet tag.”
“Women’s geography,” Price tells her students, is made up of more than bridges and tunnels. It’s shaped by asking things like: Where on the map do you feel safe? How would you walk from A to B in the city without having to look over your shoulder? It’s hard to map these intangibles—but not impossible.
“Women [already] share that information or intuitively pick it up watching other women,” Price said. “Those kinds of things could be mapped. Maybe not in an OSM environment, but that happens when cartography goes into many different hands and people think of different ways of how we know space, classify space, and value space.”
That’s why Levine believes that the emphasis on recruiting women mapmakers, especially for field projects like the Tanzanian one, is above all else a practical one. “Women are the ones who know the health facilities; they know what’s safe and unsafe; they know where their kids go to play; they know where to buy groceries,” she said. “And we have found that by going to them directly, we get better data, and we get that data faster.”
Recording more women-centric spaces doesn’t account for the many LGBTQ or non-binary spaces that go unmapped, a gap the International Women’s Day event didn’t overtly address. But elsewhere on the internet, projects like “Queering the Map” seek to identify queer spaces across the globe, preserving memories of LGBTQ awakenings, love stories, and acts of resistance. Instead of women’s health centers, the Queered Map opens a space to tag gay bars, or park benches where two women once fell in love, or the street in Oakland someone decided to change their “pronouns to they/them.” It’s a more subjective way to label space, and less institutionalized than the global OSM network. But that’s sort of the point.
Service through cartography
The concentration of women mappers in humanitarian projects is partly due to the framing of cartography as a service-driven skill, Levine said, rather than a technical one. That perception reflects the broader dynamics that alienate women from STEM fields—the idea that women should work as nurturers, not coders—but many women at the map-a-thon agreed that it was a drive to volunteer that first drew them to OSM.
Maiya Kondratieff and Grace Poillucci, freshmen at George Washington University, are roommates. Both of them unexpectedly fell into digital mapping this year after seeing GW’s Humanitarian Mapping Society advertised at the university club fair. They were joined at the Missing Maps event by fellow society member Ethan Casserino, a third-year at GW.
“It wasn’t presented as a tech-y thing; more like service work,” said Kondratieff. “And our e-board is mostly even” in terms of gender representation, she added. One of those older leaders of the group spent much of the night hurrying around, dishing out pizza and handing out stickers. Later, she stopped, leaned over Kondratieff’s shoulder, and helped her solve a bug in her map.
Rhys, a cartography professional who asked not to be identified by last name, graduated from GW in 2016 and majored in geography. A lot of her women peers, she said, found their way into cartography based on an interest in art or graphic design. As things become more technology-heavy, she’s observed a large male influx. “It’s daunting for some people,” she said.
Another big barrier to women’s involvement in OSM, besides the already vast disparities in the tech sphere, Levine said, is time. All OSM work is volunteer-based. “Women have less free time because the work we’re doing in our free time is not considered work,” said Levine. “Cleaning duties, childcare, are often not considered shared behaviors. When the women are putting the baby asleep, the man is mapping.”
As a designer with DevelopmentSeed, a data technology group that is partnering with OSM to improve its maps, Ali Felski has been interviewing dozens of OSM users across the country about how they interact with the site. Most of them, she said, are older, retired men with time on their hands. “Mapping is less community-based. It’s technically detailed, and there aren’t a lot of nice instructions,” she said, factors that she thinks might be correlated with women’s hesitance to join the field. “I think it’s just a communication problem.”
Building that communication often starts with education. According to a PayScale gender-by-major analysis conducted in 2009, 72 percent of undergraduate geography majors were men. At GW, that may be changing. While the geography major is small, it’s woman-dominated: 13 women and 10 men are in the graduate program. Price has taught generations of GW students (including Rhys, who counts her as a mentor), and leads the department with six other women, exactly matching the department’s seven men.
Organizations like YouthMappers, which has 113 chapters spread among 35 countries, are supporting students in creating their own university OSM communities. And a lot of the students who participate are women. An estimated 40 percent of the 5,000 students who take part in YouthMappers are female, and a quarter of their chapters have more than 50 percent participation, said Marcela Zeballos, a research associate and 2009 graduate of GW. The group also champions women’s empowerment initiatives like Let Girls Map, which runs from International Women’s Day in March to International Day of the Girl in October.
I didn’t get to map much at the event, but that night I kicked off the Let Girls Map season snuggled in bed, tagging buildings and drawing roads. I learned to curve paths and square edges, hypnotized by the seemingly endless satellite footage of Starbucks-free woods.
The gaps in my local geographical knowledge, though, were unsurprisingly vast: I didn’t know if the buildings I was outlining were bathrooms or houses or restaurants, and couldn’t really discern a highway from a path from a driveway. And when my “unknown line” is a Tanzanian woman’s escape route, the stakes are high. That’s why HOT projects also depend on community members, some equipped with old-fashioned pens and paper, to hone in on the details.
But map-a-thons like this get people engaged, and OSM-literate. They begin to build the sense of community that DevelopmentSeed’s Felski wished OSM didn’t lack. At an event like this, led and attended by women in the cartography field (or who may soon enter it), it’s easy to forget how few there really are.
Down the table, the undergraduates Kondratieff and Casserino chatted, eyes trained at the rural Tanzanian landscape unfolding on their laptop screens. “You should minor in GIS,” Casserino urged.
“Maybe I will,” she replied.
►https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/03/who-maps-the-world/555272
#femmes #cartographie #cartes #genre #argent #femmes_cartographes
ping @reka @odilon
via @isskein
The Climate Wall: Q&A With Todd Miller | The Nation
▻https://www.thenation.com/article/the-climate-wall-qa-with-todd-miller
Despite the 35-day partial government shutdown, President Trump is still dead-set on his border wall—and he hasn’t ruled out declaring a national emergency to fund it. In such a scenario, the White House has suggested it would divert money from disaster funds intended to help rebuild places like Puerto Rico, which have faced “natural” disasters in era marked by man-made climate change.
In his 2017 book, Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security, Todd Miller argues that there is an inextricable link between border militarization and climate change. I spoke with Miller about how borders are expanding, and how the market projections for the homeland-security industry are projected to be significantly larger than anticipated even two years ago.
Encore une compilation de musique politiquement engagée, un coffret de 4 CDs même, prévu pour février 2019, produit par le Smithonian Institute:
The Social Power of Music
▻https://folkways.si.edu/the-social-power-of-music
From parties to protests to prayer, music is a powerful catalyst for celebration, for change, and for a sense of community. Through making music together, we become bigger than ourselves. Whether singing with our families and friends or with thousands of strangers in an arena, music transforms lives, engages individuals, and connects local and global communities. The Social Power of Music chronicles the vivid, impassioned, and myriad ways in which music binds, incites, memorializes, and moves groups of people. This richly illustrated 124-page book, with 80+ tracks on 4 CDs, invites listeners into musical practices, episodes, and movements throughout the U.S. and beyond. These songs of struggle, devotion, celebration, and migration remind us that music has the potential to change our world.
Countries: Algeria; Angola; Argentina; Brazil; Chile; Congo-Brazzaville; Denmark; Dominican Republic; France; Greece; Indonesia; Italy; Korea, South; Lebanon; Mexico; Nicaragua; Poland; Puerto Rico; Republic of Kosovo; Scotland; South Africa; Thailand; Turkey; United Kingdom; United States; Vietnam
101 We Shall Overcome The Freedom Singers 2:09
102 This Land is Your Land Woody Guthrie 2:48
103 De colores ([Made] of Colors) Baldemar Velásquez, Aguila Negra 3:02
104 Union Maid Bobbie McGee 2:13
105 If I Had a Hammer Pete Seeger 1:54
106 Reclaim the Night Peggy Seeger 4:33
107 Estoy aquí (I Am Here) Quetzal 5:21
108 Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) Sammy Walker 4:57
109 We Are the Children Chris Kando Iijima, Joanne Nobuko Miyamoto, Charlie Chin 2:55
110 I Woke Up This Morning Fannie Lou Hamer 2:36
111 I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Country Joe McDonald 2:59
112 El pobre sigue sufriendo (The Poor Keep On Suffering) Andrés Jiménez 3:26
113 Ballad of the ERA Kristin Lems 4:11
114 Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Pete Seeger 2:06
115 Blowing in the Wind The New World Singers 2:32
116 Quihubo raza (What’s Happening, People) Agustín Lira and Alma 3:50
117 Solidarity Forever Jim Jackson 2:30
118 Joe Hill Paul Robeson 3:00
119 Joaquin Murrieta Rumel Fuentes 3:35
120 Which Side Are You On? The Almanac Singers 2:10
121 Legal/Illegal Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger 4:12
122 It Isn’t Nice Barbara Dane, The Chambers Brothers 4:05
201 Amazing Grace The Old Regular Baptists 2:44
202 Come By Here Barbara Dane, The Chambers Brothers 5:33
203 Will the Circle Be Unbroken The Strange Creek Singers 3:38
204 Peace in the Valley The Paramount Singers 3:50
205 Many Eagle Set Sun Dance Song The Pembina Chippewa Singers 2:11
206 Zuni Rain Dance Members of Zuni Pueblo 4:41
207 Calvary Shape-note singers at Stewart’s Chapel 1:27
208 Northfield The Old Harp Singers of Eastern Tennessee 1:58
209 The Call to Prayer / Adhān Ahmad Al Alawi 2:10
210 Zikr (excerpt) Sheikh Xhemail Shehu, members of the Prizren Rifa’i tekke 2:45
Audio Player
211 Buddhist Chants and Prayers Tu Huyen, Hai Phat, Tam Thu, Hai Dat 4:34
212 Kol Nidre Cantor Abraham Brun 5:05
213 Dayeinu Raasche, Alan Mills 1:47
214 Night Chant Sandoval Begay 2:12
215 Hark, Hark Carolers from the Black Bull, Ecclesfield, UK 3:11
216 Swing Low, Sweet Chariot The Princely Players 2:47
217 The Old Rugged Cross The Paschall Brothers 5:17
218 Madre de Dolores (Mother of Sorrows) Hermanos de la Morada de Nuestra Señora de Dolores del Alto 2:56
219 San Miguel (Saint Michael) Francia Reyes 4:11
220 I’ll Fly Away Rose Maddox 2:32
301 Party Down at the Blue Angel Club Clifton Chenier and His Red Hot Louisiana Band 4:51
302 San Antonio Rose Los Reyes de Albuquerque 2:38
303 Jolie blonde (Pretty Blonde) Austin Pitre 2:47
304 Shake Your Moneymaker John Littlejohn 4:19
305 Beer-Drinking Polka Flaco Jiménez, Max Baca 2:25
306 In Heaven There Is No Beer The Goose Island Ramblers 2:32
307 SAM (Get Down) Sam Brothers Five 4:10
308 Golden Slippers / The Butterfly Whirl Lester Bradley and Friends 4:31
309 Sligo Indians / Paddy Clancy’s / Larry Redican’s / The Rambling Pitchfork Tony DeMarco 4:21
310 La entrega de los novios (The Delivery of the Newlyweds) Lorenzo Martínez 3:46
311 Rock Dance Song (Cree/Metis) The Pembina Chippewa Singers 2:20
312 Pow Wow Song Chippewa Nation 2:52
313 Mary Mack Lilly’s Chapel School, Alabama 1:58
314 Johnny Cuckoo Janie Hunter and children at home 1:15
315 Rooster Call John Henry Mealing and group 4:00
316 Joy to the World Elizabeth Mitchell 3:06
317 Oylupnuv Obrutch (The Broken Hoop Song) The Golden Gate Gypsy Orchestra 2:01
318 Liberty Funeral March The Liberty Brass Band 4:51
319 Junkanoos #1 Key West Junkanoo Band 3:07
320 The Star Spangled Banner Unknown orchestra 1:16
321 Mardi Gras Medley (excerpt) ReBirth Jazz Band 4:33
401 Viva la Quince Brigada (Long Live the 15th Brigade) Pete Seeger 3:04
402 Bella ciao (Goodbye Beautiful) Singers of the “Bella Ciao” production of Spoleto 1:35
403 A desalambrar (Tear Down the Fences) Expresión Joven 5:07
404 Muato mua N’Gola (Women of Angola) Lilly Tchiumba 2:34
405 Un gigante que despierta (An Awakening Giant) Luis Godoy, Grupo Mancotal 4:03
406 Hasret (Longing) Melike Demirag 3:10
407 Prisioneros somos (We Are All Prisoners) Suni Paz 2:19
408 Funeral do lavrador (Funeral of a Worker) Zelia Barbosa 1:59
409 Izakunyatheli Afrika Verwoerd (Africa is Going to Trample on You, Verwoerd) South African refugees in Tanganyika 1:52
410 The Boy with the Sunlit Smile Mikis Theodorakis 2:48
411 Hidup di Bui (Life in Jail) Gambang Kromong Slendang Betawi, Kwi Ap 5:34
412 Man and Buffalo (Kon Gap Kwai) Caravan 3:40
413 Why Need We Cry? Cantor Abraham Brun 2:32
414 El palomo (The Dove) Grupo Raíz 4:06
415 Hvem sidder dér bag skærmen (The Roadmaker) Inger Nielsen 3:08
416 Mon’ etu ua Kassule Musician supporters of the MPLA 5:35
417 Le temps des cerises (Cherry Blossom Time) Yves Montand 4:37
418 Chongsun Arirang Singer from Central Korea 4:03
419 The Passport Marcel Khalifé 9:23
420 Inno della Resistenza (Hymn of the Resistance) Choir of FLN fighters 1:28
Je ne sais pas si tu as vu passer ça, donc à tout hasard : ▻https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/dans-la-playlist-de-france-inter/dans-la-playlist-de-france-inter-14-janvier-2019
Oui, j’avais mis ça là :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/734148
("inédites" est exagéré, la plupart ces vidéos avaient été produites pour promouvoir des morceaux et avaient donc été largement diffusées à la télévision à l’époque, c’est juste que #Prince ne voulait pas qu’elles soient sur Youtube...)
The Cities Leading in #blockchain : #shanghai-Part 1
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-cities-leading-in-blockchain-shanghai-part-1-2f7b1395d63d?source=rss
Dave Tacon/CNNThroughout every metro-city today, you can find a burgeoning blockchain community. This renaissance movement is affecting every major industry, not only technology, but economics, politics, and society. Countries, territories, and states are using this as a chance to find their new identities. Estonia and Malta are vying to become the main “blockchain country”, Puerto Rico is being transformed into a Crypto Paradise, and other countries like China, silently maintain dominance in the space despite heavily publicized bans and regulations .This series of articles will focus on different cities and the communities within. Each will highlight projects, events, services, and personalities that are uniquely shaping each local landscape. At the end, I hope that this series has (...)
A Local Food Revolution in Puerto Rico
▻https://foodtank.com/news/2018/10/a-local-food-revolution-in-puerto-rico
The story of Puerto Rico’s food production is also the story of the island’s own colonial history. Large-scale plantations replaced native farming during Puerto Rico’s days as a Spanish colony, resulting in the consolidation of agricultural land and landholding, as well as the number of crops being grown on it. When the United States took over the island in the wake of the Spanish-American War in 1898, economic restructuring meant that the remaining agricultural activity focused only on cash crops like sugarcane and coffee.
Then, in the 1940s, Congress launched Operation Bootstrap, a campaign to overhaul the Puerto Rican economy that focused on manufacturing and tourism—moving even further away from agriculture. Subsequent tax breaks and economic initiatives to encourage investment in these sectors solidified these moves. Deliberately, over the course of years, an import-driven food system was put in place in Puerto Rico, and all other farming fell by the wayside.
“Puerto Rico’s economy has always been categorized by being an import economy: we produce things we do not consume but then we have to import things we do consume, especially in agriculture,” notes Gladys González-Martínez, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Puerto Rico.
Still, Puerto Rican local farming had been experiencing the beginning stages of a renaissance even before the storm hit, spurred by the economic crisis of 2006. According to statistics provided by the governor’s office, farm income grew 25 percent from 2012 to 2014, while the number of acres under cultivation rose by 50 percent between 2012 and 2016, generating at least 7,000 jobs.
Venezuela : arrivée à La Guaira du navire hôpital chinois Hé Píng Fāng Zhōu (ou Arche de la Paix)
Buque Chino llegó a Venezuela para «iniciar operación estratégica»
▻http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/politica/buque-chino-llego-venezuela-para-iniciar-operacion-estrategica_252868
Este sábado arribó al Puerto de La Guaira, estado Vargas, el Buque Hospital chino «Arca de la Paz».
“Bienvenidos. Sigamos estrechando nuestros lazos de amistad y cooperación, para la paz”, escribió Vladimir Padrino López, ministro de Defensa, en su Twitter.
El ministro detalló que el “Arca de la Paz” atenderá a personas de todas las nacionalidades, incluyendo a 1.200 colombianos.
“La visita de este buque hospital también se inscribe en una operación defensiva estratégica. Va a ser muy satisfactorio tener este buque en Venezuela”, precisó.
El Ministerio de Comunicación e Información detalló que el buque tiene 500 camas, 35 unidades de ciudados intensivos y 12 quirófanos.
«Sus equipos permiten atender problemas cardiovasculares, ginecología, odontología, oftalmología, pediatría y medicina interna, entre otros», informó el Ministerio en su página web.
Pour l’opposition, ce sont les conseils communaux qui désigneraient (" choisiraient ") les patients à traiter à bord du navire chinois.
Le ministre de la Défense répond qu’il va (même !…) soigner 1200 Colombiens…
Rocío San Miguel : Consejos comunales « escogerán » pacientes del buque chino
▻http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/politica/rocio-san-miguel-consejos-comunales-escogeran-pacientes-del-buque-chino
Rocío San Miguel, abogada y defensora de Derechos Humanos, denunció este sábado que los consejos comunales «escogerán» a los pacientes que recibirán atención médica por parte del buque hospital chino «Arca de la Paz».
Durée du séjour non précisé dans l’article. Lors de son escale à Papeete fin août, il était précisé qu’il repasserait à Tahiti le 22 décembre.
Le He Ping Fang Zhou a accosté au port de Papeete | La Dépêche de TAHITI
▻http://www.ladepeche.pf/he-ping-fang-zhou-a-accoste-port-de-papeete
Le navire hôpital chinois, He Ping Fang Zhou, était attendu mardi dans la rade de Papeete. Il a finalement accosté ce vendredi matin dans le port de Papeete, après avoir passé près de trois jours au large de Tahiti, pour des raisons administratives. Cependant, le bâtiment militaire ne va pas s’attarder dans nos eaux. Il repartira dès 20 heures ce vendredi soir, après avoir refait le plein en carburant. À noter qu’un retour du navire est prévu le 22 décembre prochain, selon le calendrier des arrivées du Port autonome de Papeete.
Pour rappel, cette « arche de la paix » a déjà pris en charge 90 000 patients, et intervient principalement dans les zones de guerre, peu équipées ou nécessitant une aide humanitaire. Le navire comprend à son bord une pharmacie, une salle de radiothérapie, un scanner, huit salles d’opération, un laboratoire d’analyses, une salle d’examens, une zone de stérilisation des instruments, des services gynécologiques, stomatologie, ophtalmologie, pédiatrie, médecine interne,…
Pas facile de repérer ce navire-hôpital de numéro de coque 866 mais pourvu d’un double nom…
岱山岛, Dai Shan Dao ou Île de Dai Shan (nom militaire)
et
和平方舟, He Ping Fang Zhou ou Arche de la Paix (nom de temps de paix…)
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_hospital_ship_Daishan_Dao
Double nom, double lecture évidente : #soft_power ou #bâtiment_de_soutien_d'assaut_amphibie.
Mystery Chinese Hospital Ship : What’s It For ? | WIRED
(article de novembre 2008)
▻https://www.wired.com/2008/11/mystery-chinese
Late last month, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) accepted its first purpose-built floating hospital, the 10,000-ton “Ship 866.” While seemingly innocuous on the surface, ships like this are windows into an evolving military strategy for an emerging world power. Hospital ships can be used for a wide range of missions, from supporting full-scale amphibious assaults against heavily defended targets, to humanitarian “soft-power” expeditions winning hearts and minds.
The question is: what is Ship 866 intended for? I asked two leading naval analysts for a new piece in World Politics Review.
• It’s for #soft_power, contends Bob Work, from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He says Ship 866 has its roots in the 2004 tsunami. Many world powers sent ships to help out in the aftermath of the storm, which killed more than 200,000 people in countries bordering the Indian Ocean. But not China: the PLAN didn’t have any ships capable of assisting. “The tsunami embarrassed them,” he says. “The Chinese respond to embarrassments in very focused ways.” In this case by building a hospital ship.
• John Pike from Globalsecurity.org disagrees. He says Ship 866 is probably intended to support the growing Chinese amphibious fleet, which in turn is meant for enforcing China’s claim to South China Sea oil reserves. It’s a far cry from humanitarian soft-power missions.
Of course, intentions are only intentions. Regardless of the original motive, the PLAN now has a ship capable of both humanitarian missions and supporting amphibious assaults. The Chinese are still decades from matching the U.S. Navy’s huge amphibious and humanitarian fleet, but it’s a start.
Pour mémoire, la marine états-unienne dispose de 2 navires-hôpitaux (3 fois plus gros)
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Mercy_(T-AH-19)
La France ne peut se payer ce luxe et utilise ses navires de soutien amphibie (à coque grise donc) pour ces missions humanitaires, les 3 BPC de la classe Mistral qui ont succédé aux 2 TCD de la classe Foudre.
cf. Irma en septembre 2017
Ouragan Irma : première mission humanitaire | colsbleus.fr : le magazine de la Marine Nationale
▻http://www.colsbleus.fr/articles/10267
A la fois bâtiment amphibie, porte-hélicoptères, bâtiment de commandement et navire hôpital, le bâtiment de projection et de commandement (BPC) présente une polyvalence exceptionnelle dont le déploiement du Tonnerre aux Antilles a montré une nouvelle fois. Mis en alerte le 8 septembre, après le passage de l’ouragan Irma, le Tonnerre a appareillé, avec un préavis très court, dès le 12 septembre, pour apporter son soutien aux populations de l’île sinistrée de Saint-Martin. Retour sur cette mission.
Le module de rétablissement sommaire sur la plage à Saint-Martin
Tiens, d’ailleurs, après l’ouragan Maria à Porto-Rico en septembre-octobre 2017…
Navy Hospital Ship USNS Comfort Will Deploy to Colombia to Care for Venezuelan Refugees - USNI News
(article du 20/08/2018)
▻https://news.usni.org/2018/08/20/35918
The Navy’s hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) is being deployed to Colombia this fall to provide medical care to a growing regional humanitarian crisis, as Venezuelans steadily pour over the border to escape a deteriorating health and political climate.
While visiting Colombia late last week, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced he was sending Comfort at the request of Colombia’s government. The hospital ship will assist the Colombian medical services network in providing medical care to what has been reported as an influx of more than 1 million Venezuelans into neighboring Colombia.
“The plan is for that hospital ship, USNS Comfort, to deploy this fall,” Col. Robert Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, said during a Monday media briefing. “The details are being worked out as far as a detailed timeline.”
A departure date has not been set, and medical staffing needs aboard the ship are still being determined, Manning said.
Le USNS Confort est arrivé à Riohacha en Colombie, El Nacional (opposition vénézuélienne) s’enthousiasme sur les soins qu’il procure à la population locale avec, parmi elle, des immigrants vénézuéliens…
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/739251
Opinion | Local Girl Makes Good - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/opinion/sunday/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-maureen-dowd.html
WASHINGTON — At dawn on the day after the election that rocked her world and her party, working on three hours of sleep, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez walked out of her Bronx apartment building.
“A sanitation truck pulled up,” said the 28-year-old with the contagious smile and an energy that impressed even the dragon-energy president. “The driver reached out his arm to give me a high-five. What that moment tells me is what we did was right. We are touching the hearts of working people. Democrats should be getting high-fives from sanitation truck drivers — that is what should be happening in America.”
It has been a heady few days for Ocasio-Cortez. After failed attempts during her campaign to get a Wikipedia page because she was deemed not notable enough, she now has one. After being told by her family when she was growing up that The New York Times was too expensive to buy and being told by her teachers that the paper was too advanced for her, now she keeps landing on the front page, a metamorphosis she calls “thrilling.”
Her mother, a Puerto Rican native, flew in from her home in Florida for the last three days of the campaign. “I think she thought I was running for a City Council seat. She’s like, ‘O.K., that’s cute, go for it,’” Ocasio-Cortez said.
But when reporters knocked on their door, the proud mother proffered that her daughter wants to be president.
Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria | NEJM
▻https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1803972
This household-based survey suggests that the number of excess deaths related to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico is more than 70 times the official estimate.
Harvard study estimates 4,645 people died in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria. The official toll is 64. - Baltimore Sun
▻http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-puerto-rico-hurricane-death-toll-20180529-story.html
▻http://www.trbimg.com/img-5b0d716c/turbine/ct-puerto-rico-hurricane-death-toll-20180529
At least 4,645 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria and its devastation across Puerto Rico last year, according to a new Harvard study released Tuesday, an estimate that far exceeds the official government death toll, which stands at 64.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that health-care disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the chronically ill had significant impacts across the U.S. territory, which was thrown into chaos after the September hurricane wiped out the electrical grid and had widespread impacts on infrastructure. Some communities were entirely cut off for weeks amid road closures and communications failures.
Un père horrible - le fils de Hunter S. Thompson raconte
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKxgSqS8ep8
Who Was Hunter S. Thompson? His Private Life - Biography (2016)
Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author, and the founder of the gonzo journalism movement.
Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author, and the founder of the gonzo journalism movement. About the book: ▻https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030... The film Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) depicts heavily fictionalized attempts by Thompson to cover the Super Bowl and the 1972 U.S. presidential election. It stars Bill Murray as Thompson and Peter Boyle as Thompson’s attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta, referred to in the movie as Carl Lazlo, Esq. The 1998 film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was directed by Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam, and starred Johnny Depp (who moved into Thompson’s basement to “study” Thompson’s persona before assuming his role in the film) as Raoul Duke and Benicio del Toro as Dr. Gonzo. The film has achieved something of a cult following. The film adaptation of Thompson’s novel The Rum Diary was released in October 2011, also starring Johnny Depp as the main character, Paul Kemp. The novel’s premise was inspired by Thompson’s own experiences in Puerto Rico. The film was written and directed by Bruce Robinson.[77] At a press junket for The Rum Diary shortly before the film’s release, Depp said that he would like to adapt The Curse of Lono, “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved”, and Hell’s Angels for the big screen: “I’d just keep playing Hunter. There’s a great comfort in it for me, because I get a great visit with my old friend who I miss dearly.”[78] Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision (1978) is an extended television profile by the BBC. It can be found on disc 2 of The Criterion Collection edition of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The Mitchell brothers, owners of the O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, made a documentary about Thompson in 1988 called Hunter S. Thompson: The Crazy Never Die. Wayne Ewing created three documentaries about Thompson. The film Breakfast with Hunter (2003) was directed and edited by Ewing. It documents Thompson’s work on the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his arrest for drunk driving, and his subsequent fight with the court system. When I Die (2005) is a video chronicle of making Thompson’s final farewell wishes a reality, and documents the send-off itself. Free Lisl: Fear and Loathing in Denver (2006) chronicles Thompson’s efforts in helping to free Lisl Auman, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the shooting of a police officer, a crime she didn’t commit. All three films are only available online.[79] In Come on Down: Searching for the American Dream[80] (2004) Thompson gives director Adamm Liley insight into the nature of the American Dream over drinks at the Woody Creek Tavern. Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film (2006) was directed by Tom Thurman, written by Tom Marksbury, and produced by the Starz Entertainment Group. The original documentary features interviews with Thompson’s inner circle of family and friends, but the thrust of the film focuses on the manner in which his life often overlapped with numerous Hollywood celebrities who became his close friends, such as Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro, Bill Murray, Sean Penn, John Cusack, Thompson’s wife Anita, son Juan, former Senators George McGovern and Gary Hart, writers Tom Wolfe and William F. Buckley, actors Gary Busey and Harry Dean Stanton, and the illustrator Ralph Steadman among others. Blasted!!! The Gonzo Patriots of Hunter S. Thompson (2006), produced, directed, photographed and edited by Blue Kraning, is a documentary about the scores of fans who volunteered their privately owned artillery to fire the ashes of the late author, Hunter S. Thompson. Blasted!!! premiered at the 2006 Starz Denver International Film Festival, part of a tribute series to Hunter S. Thompson held at the Denver Press Club. In 2008, Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side) wrote and directed a documentary on Thompson, titled Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. The film premiered on January 20, 2008, at the Sundance Film Festival. Gibney uses intimate, never-before-seen home videos, interviews with friends, enemies and lovers, and clips from films adapted from Thompson’s material to document his turbulent life.
Diaspora Blackness in the Caribbean: A Radical Resource
▻https://medium.com/@janelane_62637/diaspora-blackness-in-the-caribbean-a-radical-resource-55ccb65ad6de
The following resources and media are not by any means exhaustive, but an attempt to hold Black millennials in the Western hemisphere accountable for developing a complex, internationalist analysis as Afro-descendants. Resources will be given on Puerto Rico, Barbados, Martinique, Guyana, Haiti, Suriname, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, the Virgin Islands (U.S.), Jamaica, and Trinidad.
The Spark - The Latest Editorial : Climate Change Bombs the World
►https://the-spark.net
The country has been hit by extreme weather yet again.
For two weeks, extreme cold swept over the eastern United States, from Minnesota with temperatures of 30 below zero, all the way down to Florida, where “frozen iguanas” were falling out of trees. This long cold snap culminated in a “bomb cyclone,” a winter storm that moved up the east coast, hitting Georgia with freezing rain and South Carolina with half a foot of snow before dumping several feet of snow on New England.
Some people (including, of course, Donald Trump) may say that “global warming” can’t be real if such cold weather reaches the American South. In fact, these extreme weather events, even the ones bringing unusually cold weather, can indeed be attributed to human-caused climate change.
Climatologists explain that while no single weather event can be attributed to climate change, the increase in the frequency of extreme weather events can be. And we’ve seen a very rapid increase in that frequency. Over the course of the last 30 years, the average number of “billion-dollar weather events” in the U.S. had been 5.5 per year. For the past five years, the average jumped up to 10.5. Last year? Fifteen! These events took place all over the country, from drought in the northern Plains states, to raging wildfires in California, to several extremely powerful hurricanes in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.
There are not only more extreme events, but the events themselves are more extreme. Higher average temperatures mean greater moisture in the air, which translates into heavier rain. Higher temperatures also mean higher sea levels and higher storm surges and more flooding. These changes in temperature and moisture also have an effect on the Jet Stream, making these air currents less stable and more “wobbly” – meaning that cold air can more easily spill down from the Arctic, while warmer air moves north and takes its place. And sure enough, while the Southeast has had record cold temperatures, Alaska has been experiencing record warm weather.
These changes in the Jet Stream also mean that weather patterns can “stall” in one place for longer – contributing to record rainfall and flooding when Hurricane Harvey stalled over Houston, for example, and unbroken drought and more extreme fires in the West.
While the earth’s climate has changed in the past, getting both warmer and colder than it is now, those changes used to happen over much longer periods of time – thousands or even tens of thousands of years. But today’s changes, brought on by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, have been squeezed into just over 100 years. That’s far more quickly than human societies are used to reacting – especially a society based on the production of profit above all else.
Changes that rapid demand rapid response and reorganization from a society – both to reverse the problem and to deal with the consequences of those changes. And there ARE things that can be done, right now, to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and start repairing the damage. But this capitalist system, and the people who run it, are not about to jeopardize the profit of their top corporations by completely rearranging how energy is produced, how transportation flows, where people live, how food is produced. It is not even going to rebuild homes and cities to be able to withstand these more extreme events that carry more risk to the general population. If profit will not be made, these corporations, and the governments that represent them, are completely uninterested.
And ordinary working people, with no other options and nowhere else to go, will be the ones to suffer disproportionally. Just ask the working class people of Houston, of Puerto Rico, of the fire-swept areas of California – and the frozen cities of South Carolina.
Capitalism is completely unequipped to deal with the climate change that it has brought about. If humanity is to survive – if life as we know it is to continue on this earth – it is up to the working class to sweep capitalism aside.
Center for International Earth Science Information Network
▻http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/hrsl
The High Resolution Settlement Layer (HRSL) provides estimates of human population distribution at a resolution of 1 arc-second (approximately 30m) for the year 2015. The population estimates are based on recent census data and high-resolution (0.5m) satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe. The population grids provide detailed delineation of settlements in both urban and rural areas, which is useful for many research areas—from disaster response and humanitarian planning to the development of communications infrastructure. The settlement extent data were developed by the Connectivity Lab at Facebook using computer vision techniques to classify blocks of optical satellite data as settled (containing buildings) or not. CIESIN used proportional allocation to distribute population data from subnational census data to the settlement extents. The population data have been developed for 18 countries: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ghana, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Rwanda, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, and Uganda. Read more about the project here.
ici une image de Cape Town :
Nearly 1,000 More People Died in Puerto Rico After Hurricane María - Latino USA
▻http://latinousa.org/2017/12/07/nearly-1000-people-died-puerto-rico-hurricane-maria
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO – It’s official. In the 40 days after Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico, at least 985 additional people died, when compared to the same period in 2016.
And if the entire months of September and October are included (since Hurricane Irma also passed through the island days before María), the figure rises to 1,065 deaths—despite the fact that Puerto Rico would have lost over 100,000 inhabitants due to migration this year, according to estimates from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies of The City University of New York.
Since September 20, the day when the historic Category 4 storm struck the entire island with 155-mile-per-hour winds that left Puerto Rico without power, the average daily death rate increased by 43% with peaks of about 80% on days like September 21 and 25. In October, deaths increased by 23.3%.
This new data confirms the findings of a September 28 CPI investigation, revealing that at that time there were dozens and possibly hundreds of deaths linked to the hurricane, contrary to the official government death toll, which remained at 16 victims during the first two weeks of the emergency. Today, more than two months after the catastrophe, the official death count stands at 62, due to the poor methodology being used to analyze and account for cases, according to reporting by the CPI.
The revelation of this new data also coincides with accounts from relatives’ reports of victims that point to problems with essential health services such as dialysis, ventilators, oxygen, and other critical circumstances caused by the lack of power in homes and hospitals throughout Puerto Rico.
Demographer José A. López, the only person at the registry in charge of analyzing this data, said in an interview with the CPI that the trend of increase in deaths in the first two post-Maria months is significant. He also said the government’s inability to link more deaths to the hurricane shows that the current process to document causes of death in a disaster is not working and must be reformed. Last week, as part of an investigation of the failures in the process of accounting for deaths linked to María, López and the Department of Health appeared before Puerto Rico’s Senate to request that a dialogue begin about this issue and that they lead the process to change the system.
Why are so many new and expectant mothers dying in the US? — Quartz
▻https://qz.com/1108193/whats-killing-americas-new-mothers
▻https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/2210808485_6e579919f2_o.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1600
one of the US’s most shameful statistics. With an estimated 26.4 deaths for every 100,000 live births in 2015, America has the highest maternal mortality rate of all industrialized countries—by several times over. In Canada, the rate is 7.3; in Western Europe, the average is 7.2, with many countries including Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Austria showing rates around 4. More women die of childbirth-related causes in the US than they do in Iran (20.8), Lebanon (15.3), Turkey (15.8), Puerto Rico (15.1), China (17.7), and many more.
When it comes to pregnant women, this manifests itself in a focus on the child, at the cost of a focus on the mother, as highlighted in a recent investigation by NPR and ProPublica into the issue. Health-care professionals spend their time and energy on the baby. This was the experience of the Logelin family—in the end, it was a case of the woman not being fully seen or heard by the US medical system.
Newborn Maddy Logelin.
Newborn Maddy Logelin. (Photo courtesy of Matt Logelin)
Jen Albert, a communications professional from Philadelphia who nearly died after developing polyhydramnios (excess of amniotic fluid) and being induced, says her experience taught her that “no one expects that someone could die in childbirth.” The only potential risks that are taken seriously, she says, are the child’s, while “the mother is only a vehicle to bring the baby.”
Crowdsourced Maps Are Helping Puerto Rico Recover From Hurricane Maria - CityLab
▻https://www.citylab.com/environment/2017/10/how-open-source-mapping-helps-hurricane-recovery/542565
▻https://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/citylab/2017/10/Red_Cross_map/facebook.jpg?1508972816
Almost three weeks after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, the island is in a grim state. Fewer than 15 percent of residents have power, and much of the island has no clean drinking water. Delivery of food and other necessities, especially to remote areas, has been hampered by a variety of ills, including a lack of cellular service, washed-out roads, additional rainfall, and what analysts and Puerto Ricans say is a slow and insufficient response from the U.S. government.
UN Special Rapporteur attacks “international regime of impunity” over migrant deaths - World | ReliefWeb
▻https://reliefweb.int/report/world/un-special-rapporteur-attacks-international-regime-impunity-over-migrant-
“Mass killings of refugees and #migrants constitute an international #crime whose banality in the eyes of so many makes its tragedy particularly grave” said Ms. Callamard, urging States to prioritize investigations into all practices that endanger the lives or safety of the #migrants and refugees, and to collect and share data on the dead and missing. “All people’s lives should be equally protected and all unlawful loss of life should be investigated, regardless of #migration status.”
Editorial on Crimes against Migrants - SPIEGEL ONLINE
▻http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/editorial-on-crimes-against-migrants-a-1175239.html
Callamard spells out the practical implications: “The International Criminal Court should consider preliminary investigation into atrocity crimes against refugees and migrants where there are reasonable grounds that such crimes have taken place and the jurisdictional requirements of the court have been met.” It is particularly out of the ordinary for a UN body to recommend to the International Criminal Court what cases it should consider, but that is exactly what Callamard has chosen to do
[...]
Make no mistake, the effort to move international criminal justice from war to migration is not yet another attempt to expand the gamut of a cash-strapped and inefficient court. It is, rather, an attempt to shift political priorities, in the Court and outside of it, away from looking for “monsters” committing spectacular violence and towards addressing increasingly normalized suffering. The very “banality” of these crimes, we argue, is a testament to their gravity and the necessity of their prosecution.
Nor should this shift end with the focus on crimes committed against migrants. With the results of climate change recently made visible in Puerto Rico and California, the fight of those hit hardest by climate change-inducing emissions is only beginning. A failure to address these new priorities today will be extremely dangerous, and reinforce the darkest of narratives for the 21st century.
To paraphrase sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, it will invite a reality in which one part of humanity will cast another part’s lives to waste. On the other hand, new priorities, including accountability on migration issues, will better reflect the International Criminal Court’s basic mandate: to punish crimes “of interest to the international community as a whole.”
Puerto Rico’s streets crawl with heavily armed, masked mercenaries bearing no insignia or nametags
▻https://boingboing.net/2017/10/15/katrina-rerun.html
Though Puerto Rican law prohibits ownership and bearing of most long-guns and especially semiautomatic weapons, the streets of the stricken US colony now throng with mercenaries in tactical gear bearing such arms, their faces masked. They wear no insignia or nametags and won’t say who they work for, apart from vague statements in broken Spanish: “We work with the government. It’s a humanitarian mission, we’re helping Puerto Rico.”
Rosa Emilia Rodríguez, head of Puerto Rico’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office, initially dismissed reports of the mercenaries, then, after reporters from the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo pressed her she said she’d “check it out.”
After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Erik Prince’s Blackwater mercenaries flooded the city again, turning it into an “armed camp”, after Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force announced “This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”
Erik Prince is now reportedly considering a senate run as a Trumpist candidate in Wyoming. His sister, Betsy Devos, has used millions from her husband’s pyramid-scheme fortunes to fund efforts to destroy public education, and now serves as Trump’s Secretary of Education.
Though the mercenaries in Puerto Rico won’t identify their employers, there’s good evidence that Blackwater (now called Academi) is or will soon be operating there, as well as other notorious mercenary gangs like Ranger America and the Whitestone Group.
Security firm Academi —known by its former name, Blackwater, which won $21 million contract with the U.S. government to provide security services during the Iraq war in 2003— said that they already have offers from the local and federal government and by the Red Cross to come to Puerto Rico.
“We’re ready to go,” said Paul Donahue, Chief Operating Officer of Constellis, Academi’s parent company, in a phone interview with the CPI. He explained that if the government of Puerto Rico accepts the proposal made by Academi to respond to the government’s offer, they would be providing security services for water transportation. The company already operates in the Caribbean islands of Dominica and St. Martin, where they arrived after Hurricanes Irma and Maria made landfall. This company, described as an army of mercenaries by investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, has changed its name three times since its founding in 1997 by a former Navy Seal Officer (United States Marine, Air and Land Teams.)
Maria’s aftermath in Puerto Rico - The Boston Globe
▻http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/bigpicture/2017/10/12/maria-aftermath-puerto-rico/2nbkd708VRK3rkARFi8ibP/story.html
When I step off the plane in San Juan, eight days after the devastation, I see them. A wall of people trying desperately to get out of the country. They fill the airport — families, people in wheelchairs, people of all ages. Some have been camped out for days. It’s the first of a million long lines I will encounter in six days on the island. People are waiting for things we take for granted: gas, laundry, cash, water, food, medicine, shelter. At first the lines are jaw-dropping. After a while, they just become infuriating. Outside of San Juan, signs of Hurricane Maria are everywhere. A countryside entirely stripped of its foliage, debris strewn about, homes without roofs. Heading west, I spot a couple on the side of the highway carrying a basket of laundry down a steep hill. By the time I turn around to photograph them, they’re down in a stream washing their clothes. A few exits later, in Toa Baja, people are shoveling mud out of their homes. Manuel Albert Ruiz tells me a harrowing story about how he rescued his neighbor as the street began to flood in the middle of the storm. He calls her down to the street and demonstrates how he did it, scooping her up with one arm and tucking her to his side. They’re both laughing even though he’s in the midst of throwing away everything he owns. That night, Manuel’s wife will e-mail me and ask if I can send some of the pictures I shot of his baby photos. The framed photos had been covered in mud, and Manuel was throwing them away. His wife wanted my photos of them for her children. “Thank you! You have no idea what those few pictures mean to us,” she wrote. Reading her note, I wish I could do more. You want to fix things. You press the shutter. You hope, you shoot, you hope some more.
Eminem Rips ’Kamikaze’ Trump Over NFL, Gun Control and Puerto Rico in Shocking Freestyle | Alternet
▻https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/eminem-destroys-kamikaze-trump-over-nfl-gun-control-and-puerto-rico
https://www.alternet.org/sites/default/files/story_images/screen_shot_2017-10-11_at_1.37.01_am_0.png Eminem, the rapper who built a deeply problematic career by portraying a misogynistic villain, is letting the world know via freestyle that he actually “f*cking hate[s]” President Donald Trump and disavows everything the president’s been doing.
The explosive segment comes courtesy of the BET Hip-Hop Awards.
The diss is notable, given Eminem’s huge popularity with the white male demographic that voted for Trump.
Trump’s photo-op in Puerto Rico - World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/04/rico-o04.html
Trump previously denounced Puerto Rican residents for the massive debt owed to the Wall Street banks, which is the result of the island’s colonial legacy, a decades-long economic recession and wholesale looting by financial speculators who control Puerto Rican debt. Rosselló and his predecessors have imposed savage austerity measures, and the island, which declared bankruptcy last May, is currently under the dictatorship of a financial oversight board imposed by the Obama administration.
Hurricane Relief - Where Are The US Army Watercraft ? – gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/hurricane-relief-us-army-watercraft
Why are Army LCUs & LSVs sitting at the dock at Ft Eustis VA and not underway heading to Puerto Rico?
By Michael Carr, US Army Watercraft Master (Ret) – Hurricane Harvey slammed into Texas, then Hurricane Irma collided with Puerto Rico and smashed through Florida, followed by Hurricane Maria devastating Caribbean Islands before decapitating Puerto Rico.
Incomprehensible damage from these horrendous storms, including destroyed infrastructure & lack of transportation capabilities, present conditions for which US Army Watercraft were conceived and designed, i.e. providing logistical support in degraded and unimproved ports, and the ability to land on unimproved beaches.
Only the US Army operates Logistical Support (LSV), Land Craft Utility (LCU), and Landing Craft Mechanized (LCM) vessels. Within the Army inventory there are eight LSVs, 35 LCUs, and multitude of LCMs. These vessels are stationed throughout the world, with a good number here in United States, in particular Baltimore MD, Ft Belvoir VA, Ft Eustis VA, Morehead City NC, and Tampa FL.
Why have they not been deployed to help in relief efforts in Texas, Florida Keys, and Puerto Rico? LCUs in particular, are an ideal platform for relief support. LCUs, at 174 ft LOA, can work independently for 18 days, with a range of over 10,000 miles. They are capable of beach landings and retractions, while carrying in excess of 350 tons of cargo, which can include rolling and tracked vehicles, standard and non-standard containers, fuel bladders, etc.
Pendant que Trump accuse les victimes d’ouragan et les autorités de #Porto_Rico de chouiner et d’être incapables de se prendre en charge…
Trump accuses Porto Rico mayor of poor leadership, she thinks trumps has poor comments
Trump attacks Puerto Rico mayor: ’They want everything done for them’ | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/30/donald-trump-attacks-puerto-rico-mayor-carmen-yulin-cruz
Donald Trump lashed out at the mayor of Puerto Rico’s capital city on Saturday as the row over his administration’s response to a hurricane and humanitarian crisis escalated.
Ahead of his visit to the devastated US territory next week, the president used Twitter to say of Carmen Yulín Cruz: “Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help”.
Trump à propos de Porto Rico : « vous pouvez crever. »
Trump to Puerto Rico : Your lives don’t matter - World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/09/30/pers-s30.html
Trump to Puerto Rico: Your lives don’t matter
30 September 2017
Almost two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, all basic forms of social infrastructure in the US territory have completely collapsed.
Addressing the press yesterday, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said that she watched in horror as Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Elaine Duke called the government’s response to the hurricane a “good news story.”
To the contrary, Cruz warned, “something close to a genocide” is unfolding in Puerto Rico due to the government’s failed response. She “begged” Trump to fix the botched relief effort, adding, “We are dying here.”