Puerto Rico

Nearly 6,000 Died in Puerto Rico From Hurricane Maria — 70 Times Official Count

(CD) — A study published Tuesday in The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that nearly 6,000 people died in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, with a survey indicating the mortality rate is likely more than 70 times the highly contested official death toll of 64. Researchers with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center surveyed […]

May Day Repression Reveals Savagery of U.S. Colonialism, Resilience of Puerto Rico’s People

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO — Puerto Rico’s capital was the site of massive scenes of brutal repression as police clamped down on an International Workers Day march using overwhelming violent force, scattering thousands of protesters who gathered to resist austerity measures and anti-worker attacks on the people of the U.S colonial territory.

Police Unleash ‘Brutal Attacks’ on Protesters in Puerto Rico

(CD) — Police in Puerto Rico deployed tear gas and fired rubber bullets to shut down May Day protests as thousands of people took to the streets of the U.S. territory, which is still battling the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria—and a debt crisis that preceded the storm. While people worldwide demonstrated Tuesday to demand improved labor conditions on International Workers […]

How the US treats its own: Puerto Rico still in the stone age 8 months after Hurricane

For all those peoples around the world, who worship America as the land of milk and honey, and believe that adopting its principles and aligning their political policies with those of America will somehow mean that they will suddenly experience a comprehensive national renaissance, or that America will reward them by exporting to them massive prosperity, just take a look at how America treats its own. Let’s take a brief look at Puerto Rico.

‘Total Failure of Governance’: Island-Wide Blackout Deepens Puerto Rico Crisis

(CD) — After struggling for nearly seven months to rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid, which was destroyed by Hurricane Maria, the U.S. territory experienced an island-wide blackout on Wednesday—its first since the storm struck last September. As meteorologist Eric Holthaus put it, “This is still a humanitarian emergency.” Puerto Rico, Day 210:—The entire island (>3,000,000 people) is w/o power for […]

The True Stories That Fake News Tells: The Forced Sterilization of Women

I am constantly amazed in this day and age where Americans have a President who touts anything he doesn’t agree with as “fake news” that is the moment that people grow cynical of the term.   Despite Donald Trump’s ability to shun astute critique of his politics, the term does carry currency in terms of how true or false news stories are.  But it is not just American media that is stuck within this paradigm of readers never knowing what is or is not true, the British who have a n

Publicly funded private Island – Puerto Rico, taxes, and profits

Puerto Rico, by and large, still looks and operates much as though it were still stuck in the dark ages, and at night, it definitely is, as the power grid, damaged by Hurricane Maria, remains an unreliable public infrastructure all these months later. The water situation isn’t much better as the citizenry must additionally filter the water that comes from the tap, since its quality can’t be taken for granted.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by NoahBack on Monday, Señor Trumpanzee revealed the latest of his money-grubbing scams; i.e. his plan for repairing the nation's infrastructure. It's a scam sure to be loved by fellow grifters Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. After all, it's a plan designed to maximize the potential for kickbacks through privatization of all things dealing with the nation's infrastructure.

Helping in Puerto Rico

From January 28 to February 7th my wife and I were in Vieques, Puerto Rico, helping as best we could with recovery from Hurricane Maria, which hit on September 20th, almost five months ago.  Help is very much still needed. I don’t think I realized how much that is true until I got home to New Jersey and experienced all of the things I didn’t experience during those 10 days:

FEMA Contractor Seeks $70 Million After Failing to Deliver Hot Meals to Puerto Rico

(TMU) — A contractor facing acrid backlash over a scathing report detailing the delivery of just 50,000 of a promised 30 million self-heating meals to desperate Puerto Ricans recovering from Hurricane Maria has now come forward to defend her actions after FEMA had no choice but to terminate the contract “due to late delivery” — but Tiffany Brown’s response smacks of […]