Democracy Now! (6/6/18)
We look at Puerto Rico as it continues to recover from Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island last September. Researchers at Harvard recently revealed the death toll from Hurricane Maria may be a staggering 70 times higher than the official count. The official death toll still stands at 64, but the new study estimates a death toll of at least 4,645, with some projections topping 5,700.
The Harvard study found that “interruption of medical care was the primary cause of sustained high mortality rates in the months after the hurricane, a finding consistent with the widely reported disruption of health systems. Health care disruption is now a growing contributor to both morbidity and mortality in natural disasters.”
We speak with Naomi Klein, author, journalist and a senior correspondent for The Intercept. Her new book is titled “The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes On the Disaster Capitalists.” We also speak with Katia Avilés-Vázquez, a Puerto Rican environmental activist and member of Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica, and Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE and co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance.
Link to Story, Transcript and 18-Minute Video
(Commoner Call graphic by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to wwwthecommonercall.org )
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Timothy Snyder: The Ultimate Security Threat? Climate Collapse.
Climate Security Is National Security
Timothy Snyder Speaks, Episode 10: Pompeo or Pompeii? (5/6/18)
No matter what issue we think matters in the preservation of basic American interests, from Syria to Mexico, climate matters intensely. To deny climate change is not only to practice the politics of the big lie, it is to doom the country to irrelevance, impotence, and tremendous suffering. This will be the real test for our new secretary of state: will he continue to be a lobbyist for the energy industry, or will he serve the country?
Timothy Snyder is a historian at Yale University, specializing in eastern Europe, totalitarianism, and the Holocaust. His books have received widespread acclaim. His most recent book, “The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America,” tells the whole Russia story, from beginning to end, in a way that makes sense and reveals the big picture. He is also the author of “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” which explores the everyday ways a citizen can resist the authoritarianism of today.