Hurricane Havoc Continues as Hanna & Ike Move In

(AP Photo Mississippi during Gustav)

Fay flooded Florida after making landfall four different times, each visit filled with water wrung out of the the sky as if it were a sopping dish cloth. It was enough that Fay as a Category 1 hurricane made people move with a bit more alacrity to protect life, limbs and property when Gustav roared into the Gulf after wreaking havoc throughout the Caribbean. Over 600,000 people are in need of help with just over 200,000 still trapped by floodwaters in Haiti.

Haiti and Cuba took a lashing and up came Gustav, devastating Haiti in ways most cannot appreciate. The poorest nation in the western hemisphere has no trees to stop the erosion of hillsides as mud tumbled onto the meager amount of arable land burying their food supply. The people of Haiti are slowly starving to death while water borne diseases could reach epidemic levels. Bodies are floating Katrina style in the rivers created from the floods. The Red Cross & Red Crescent are moving in with some supplies but it is nowhere near enough for the amount of people in need. It is heartbreaking as even children are going days without food or fresh water, especially as the floods remain and Ike could cause more catastrophic damage to the flooded port city of Gonaives. (AP Photo above, American Red Cross just below)

"I am worried because the soil is completely impregnated with water and there is no way for the rivers to take more water," said Max Cocsi, who directs Belgium's mission in Haiti of Doctors Without Borders. "We don't need a hurricane -- a storm would be enough."

Cocsi, who arrived in Gonaives on Thursday, told The Associated Press that no one knows how many have been killed. The focus now is on reaching the living, not recovering bodies.

Late Thursday, a few blocks from where U.N. peacekeeping troops stopped to dish out cooked rice from their own food supplies to a small crowd of hungry orphans, a woman's corpse in a floral dress was floating in a submerged intersection.

Hanna is going to blow into South Carolina and leisurely make her way up the eastern seaboard sprinkling buckets of rain over the weekend. Hanna is being taken a little more innocuously, much like rainmaker Fay that tied Florida in flood insurance knots. Maryland upgraded from a Storm Watch to a Tropical Storm Warning with expectations of beach erosion and flash flooding along Chesapeake Bay.

In Charleston, Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said there was no reason to flee, but urged residents to stay inside when Hanna blows through with wind gusts that could reach 65 mph.

"Stay home, protect yourself, look out for your neighbors and we will get through this just fine," he said.

Several counties in both North and South Carolina opened shelters, and hotels further inland offered discounts to those fleeing Hanna's path. But on the thin barrier islands that make up North Carolina's Outer Banks,
vacation home owner Joe DiStefano checked out the forecast early Friday and said Hanna appears to be moving too quickly to cause much damage.

Ike blew up to a category 4 monster then shrunk to a major category 3 hurricane with winds sustained at 125 mph as it chases Hanna across the ocean seas. Ike looks like it won't mess with an already drenched and miserable Haiti, but just drying out Florida residents will be a bit more uneasy. Ike means no respite for the hurricane weary over the next week.




Chris Mooney gives insight into the links between global warming and the scope and scale of storms in Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics and the Battle Over Global Warming. This book is a bargain at Amazon in hardback chock full of storm research and

World Rioting Over Food Prices

The UN World Food Program counts 37 countries in dire straits over the unrestrained wildly rising cost of food staples. Part of the global issue is escalating fuel costs, a volatile oil and energy market that continues climbing plus the immense amount of grains being sold to the highest bidders who are biofuel manufactures causing scarcity, which is then reflected in the market as local farmers shop their sought after crops to the highest bidders, not the neediest people. People are taking to the streets venting anger and frustration across the globe stretching the UN's blue helmeted troops to the max.

"I'm surprised I have not been summoned to the UN Security Council, since many problems discussed there do not have the same consequences for peace and security in the world and the human rights of people who need to be fed," Jacques Diouf told a news conference in Rome.

At least five people have died in violent protests against high food and fuel prices in Haiti's capital, while similar disturbances have rocked Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries in the past month.

In Pakistan and Thailand, army troops have been deployed to avoid the seizure of food from fields and warehouses.

Politicians kicked to the curb, may be the start of something worldwide as the runaway price of food keeps sneering at stagnant wages. In the wake of violent food riots in Haïti, a frightened sixteen out of seventeen of parliament's senators sent Prime Minister Jacques Édouard Alexis, president René Preval's BFF, packing immediately after a vote of no confidence. Net result, the Hatian government needs to re-form under new management still without an ability to fix the food resource issue when the last person to hold the job was an agronomist. PM is not exactly a job with career longevity.

The clash with senators came just two days after the president of the country of 9 million people -- most of whom earn less than $2 a day -- managed to persuade rioters to end a week of violence in which at least five people were killed.

Stone-throwing crowds began battling U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police in the south of the country on April 2, enraged at the soaring cost of rice, beans, cooking oil and other staples.

It took just seven mere days in a free market, for a Haitian sack of rice to double in price to an astronomical $70. Now Haiti looks to take $8 off the top price as a sop to an angry populace representing the rickety bottom rung of the economic means ladder in the entire Western Hemisphere. People with nothing left to lose, are becoming more prevalent in the world economy. Many of the riots are occurring in urban setting like Port-au-Prince & Manila leaving conditions in rural locales to the imagination of despair.

In Bangladesh, a mob ten thousand strong, confronted police authorities as they protested rampant food increases. On April 6th, Egyptians made their displeasure heard and felt over the cost of food staples doubling in less than a year. In Sudan, two UN workers delivering food were killed, upping the number to 5 truckers dying to feed the dispossessed.

North Korea is a nuclear beggar nation as they plead for food as their people starve. UN North Korean food experts state they have a shortfall of over 1.5 million tonnes of cereal grains. China, South Korea and the UN try to pick up the slack, but the gap is so large they need additional food suppliers to come to their aid. One million died in the famine of the 1990's and conditions are now beginning to resemble that horror. persistent malnutrition and chronic anemia for nursing moms is prevalent throughout the nation.

Bad weather and its crop destruction, made the UN Food Program issue a warning about Zimbabwe's food crisis as well. Somalia is in full arrest on the humanitarian front, needing aid in numbers not known to much of the western world as the US media especially, focuses on their neverending pursuit of the trivial.

Part of Haiti's continued unrest is outlined in the Pulitzer nominated work from Randall Robinson on Haiti and the Bush administration's 2004 Special Forces coup with now exiled two-time president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. An author presentation of An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of A President on C-SPAN was quite compelling as he was on the line to Haiti when Aristede was removed involuntarily from the country under false pretenses by the US & with French approval.

President for Fifty Years, Fidel Castro Quits

After almost 50 years of his brand of revolution on the island nation of Cuba, President of the Council of State, Fidel Castro, is grabbing his gold watch and exiting the political stage right. No US president from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush made him bow to American pressure. US policy implemented and maintained harsh sanctions that hurt the people of Cuba while cooking up dastardly deeds and stupid assassination plots, to force coup maestro Castro to bend to their will. Soviet and Russian leaders anxious to ensure Castro had the money and tools to withstand American pressure, made him a showpiece client state to spread the virtues of Communism into the Western Hemisphere.

Caught in the tightening vice between geopolitical realities and starvation, Cuban people were jailed, beaten, executed in a willy-nilly fashion while the more fortunate were stripped of ancestral homes and property under Castro's regime, making escape their number one priority with the twin objectives of saving their lives and shaming Castro. Cuba earned its vile reputation for human rights abuses under Fidel Castro's rusty iron fist. Fidel's assumption of the presidency arose from his bloody coup after his Mexican exile.

Famed for firebrand speeches - often lasting several hours, his straggly beard and the cigars he reluctantly gave up for his health, he was the world’s third longest-serving head of state. Born Fidel Castro Ruz on August 13, 1926, he attended Catholic schools before graduating from the University of Havana with a law degree.

He later ran for a parliamentary seat, but Fulgencio Batista overthrew the government and cancelled the election.

An angry Castro assembled an unsuccessful rebel force, but was captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Defending himself at his 1953, Castro delivered one of his most famous speeches. “Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me,” he said.

Pardoned after just two years, he headed to Mexico where he trained a group of revolutionaries called the 26th of July Movement.

Their first invasion of Cuba failed, but Castro’s guerilla war quickly won him many supporters and eventually, on January 1, 1959, Batista fled the island and Castro seized power.

Last year, Fidel Castro, 81, underwent life threatening surgery for stomach ailments described as cancer, that made him give temporary custody of the Cuban presidency to his 70-something baby brother, Raul. Previously, Castro fainted during one of his excruciatingly long rambling speeches about Cuba's revolution. One of his bedside well wishers was Castro's Venezuelan acolyte Hugo Chavez with his continuing supply of oil and friendship. Meanwhile in Miami, Florida, Little Havana is throwing a party that will be awash in news photographers from around the world. Castros resignation letter uses his grandiose quote - "I will not cling to office", now would have been a good admission addition.

Fidel's longevity as a bearded political tyrant and head of state, despite coup attempts, the Bay of Pigs, the Soviet nuclear Missile crisis, embargoes trapping the country in the 1950's, the Mariel Boat lift, the deaths of so many attempting to float on capricious and rough waves to America atop the wildest mixes of cardboard, 1950's car parts and patched up innertubes and Elián González, his political antics and dynamics have been sources of deep angst and embarrassments inside the Oval Office. Cuba immigrants have a special plan or entry into the US - "the wet foot, dry foot" policy determining their status.

Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Havana and Miami is an outstanding book that takes a deep look at Cuba in the twentieth century through the eyes of Castro's colorful and fractious family - a few who sit in the US House of Representatives - and its people as told about a seven year old kid washed up on a south Florida Beach starting an international firestorm on custody resulting in a fully armed FBI night raid to return the little boy in his pajamas back to Cuba. All the high drama and reasons are chronicled by the powerful writer, Ann Louise Bardach.

Shrove & Fat Tuesday on International Parade

The Festival of Venice, inaugurated in 1268, and revived in 1980, brings out a collection of rigid masks created by master artisans possessing exquisite details and mystique. En vogue, elaborate Victorian Costumes disguise the wearer since Italy's various rulers got their knickers twisted enough that these celebrations of debauchery in a refined atmosphere caused heartburn and vicious crackdowns. Maybe they were never invited to the grand palazzos.
In the Louisiana French Quarter, Mardi Gras, gorgeous François that translates into Fat Tuesday; is a soulful celebration with mystic krewes and bedecked saints marching in with crowds of swarming tourists wanting to be in any number to grab the gold, green and regal purple plastic doubloons thrown from feathered floats. Haiti brings symmetry with their identical chicken masks.

Brazil's Carnival has a storied samba history audaciously worn to show off skin sparkles in the shimmy parade. Only Japan has more Japanese, as these Japanese-Brazilians get their 2008 dance party on in fine fashion flash. Denmark embraces the slathered buns or delish danish at Fastelavn qnd works them off at parades and parties across Bavaria.

In Sao Paulo, the city with the biggest concentration of the 1.5 million Japanese descendants living in the country, the carnival parade will include a 1,000-strong contingent of Japanese samba dancers -- led by a native Japanese woman, Yuka Sugiura, 36.

He enthused that Sugiara, who moved from Nagoya, Japan to Brazil eight years to indulge her passion for samba, was "a great dancer -- and really beautiful as well."

Preparing for consequences from too much partying in Recife, Brazil; once again, the Catholic Church is scandalized and threatening excommunication at the lack of upholding the missionary position with some of the preparations involving condoms and morning after pills. Rio de Janeiro's mayor,Cesar Maia, got things off to a rollicking start by calling it "Earth's biggest party", other nations and participants may beg to differ.

From "Twelfth Night" it takes 47 full days to get worked up for the final night of circus atmosphere and celebrating mostly the same thing around the world for centuries. In the international spirit, braided rapper and hip hop artist "Coolio" was the master of ceremonies in Venice.



A grand story of fiction around a choice in the election of the Brazilian president makes for a great read with real insight into the nation's culture at every level. Brent Alan James is a new author bringing Carnival King: The Last Latin Monarch to great audience applause.

Coral Reef Has Just 50 Years Left

Imagine planning the tropical dive trip of a lifetime, putting on your scuba gear or goggles, snorkel and awkward flippers, grabbing the underwater camera in hopes of catching something exotic swimming by. Then splash, as you dive in expecting to find gorgeous coral reefs, instead its a barren watery wasteland. That is the coming attraction horror of the coral reef nearest you in just fifty years according to almost twenty premier marine scientists. Humans are casting so much carbon dioxide, or CO2, into the atmosphere warming everything, destruction, especially the oceans is a foregone conclusion. Coral reefs are an ecological must-have to replenish oceans and make earth a livable planet. Its fundamental to ocean survival.

This is a scientific take on three phases of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. First frame is now, second one is after just one degree rise in ocean temperature and the third is Oceanic Armageddon if the water temp rises another degree. Coral reef destruction will take fifty years, tops and that includes the magnificent array of 27,000 square kilometers of reef in The Philippines. (photo courtesy CRTR)

The faster the carbon dioxide gets into the atmosphere the bigger the increases the amount of acidification in the ocean. Acidification affects every marine animal and increases the amount of calcerous skeletons slowly taking over, like kudzu on land, making thriving areas marine ghost coasts no one will visit. The fish and other sea creatures choke as breathing becomes impossible. Coral diseases and bleaching are becoming more prevalent. Overfishing in certain areas is upsetting the balance needed to maintain the ecosystem. The health of the ocean can be gaged by the condition the coral reefs are in.

"It's vital that the public understands that the lack of sustainability in the world's carbon emissions is causing the rapid loss of coral reefs, the world's most biodiverse marine ecosystem," said Drew Harvell, Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and head of the Coral Disease Research Team, which is part of the international Coral Reef Targeted Research (CRTR) group that wrote the new study.

The rise of carbon dioxide emissions and the resultant climate warming from the burning of fossil fuels are making oceans warmer and more acidic, said co-author Harvell, which is triggering widespread coral disease and stifling coral growth toward "a tipping point for functional collapse."

Global Warming is an Earth emergency with catastrophic effects felt by people who were born in the last year may be the last generation to see the Earth in its present condition. Joshua, May your second birthday and your fiftieth be the Best with a world awash in thriving Oceans for you to visit in Peace. Most Happiest of First Years, Observant One.

Over in the Ocean: The Coral Reef is a widely acclaimed children's book introducing the beauty of the reefs with imaginative verses. Marianne Berks is the author with Jeanette Canyon providing the great illustrations.

Globe's Bottom Has A New Map

No cracks in the new map down under in the nether region, but overall it is highly interactive. British and American researchers worked together to build a map of Antarctica, known as the White Continent. orbiting 400 miles above the Earth is the Landsat 7 satellite under the joystick thumb of NASA image makers, the US Geological Survey team and the British Survey Foundation. The teams then digitally sew or "stitch" thousands of individual shots together to make a holistic map of the polar region. Now Antarctica expedition planners can zoom in to land features the size of a basketball half court to see if ground conditions are right for a camping visit.

"Being able to see where we couldn't see before will lead to new ideas for research. And these new ideas for research will in turn lead to more knowledge about the continent," said Scott Borg, who directs Antarctic science programs for the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va.

Scientists also hope the new image will help the public better understand what is at stake in the world's polar regions as temperatures rise due to human-created global warming.

The new map has high resolution which makes the previous resolutions look positively antiquated. It's the difference in going from the 1960's black and white television sets sans remotes to 21st century color high definition plasma screens in a nanosecond.



Sebastian Copeland wrote a wonderful book graced with a foreword from Mikhail Gorbachev and an afterward from Leonardo DiCaprio named Antarctica: The Global Warning.

Construction Destruction in Dubai

Dubai is a United Arab Emirate's city wonderland with a bustling commercial port, vast wealth defying the imagination and out of this world real estate ventures involving construction of the world's tallest skyscraper and expansive bridges. Yesterday, a bridge connecting developments in the Dubai Marina, collapsed killing at least 7 workers. Dubai relies heavily on procuring manual labor from other nations. Most of the Wade Adams Group workers that perished in this accident were from India. Fifteen other workers have light to severe injuries.

"We tried to put a huge piece of metal in a wall when it collapsed," said Muthu Raj, one of the workers interviewed by the media

"I saw colleagues trapped inside, but I managed to jump back and stepped on the road."

The bridge was being built over a small canal in the man-made marina complex, which is close to the showpiece Palm Jumeirah resort, a massive artificial palm-shaped island.

A spokesman for the Wade Adams Group, NM Naushad, told the Associated Press that the company would compensate the families of the dead with a total of 10 years wages each.

He estimated the workers earned on average 9,600 dirhams ($2,615; £1,240) a year.

Dubai's ongoing labor issues are causing project delays and cost overruns, even at the record setting Burj skyscraper. The government is ordering its own ministers and construction companies to review and adopt minimum wage guidelines and other safety measures for its laborers. South Asia is a popular recruiting region for low wage jobs in Dubai, the fastest growing city on earth. Strikes are becoming more prevalent and lasting longer as wages shrink and on the job safety risks expand.

The 40,000 Asian workers vowed not to leave the 26 labor camps scattered around seven semiautonomous Emirati states until their salaries are raised by at least $55 a month. The company pays unskilled workers $109 a month while skilled ones get $163.

The workers also complain of delayed salaries and randomly deductions from their pay for transportation, vacation or sick days.

"We are fed up with these conditions. We need an immediate pay raise," said Mohammed Aslam, 28-year-old worker from Bangladesh.

Dubai is built on the coast and surrounded by a blazing hot blowing desert sands with no natural body of fresh water. It is now an ultra chic Middle Eastern luxury resort fulfilling the needs for indoor skiing, manmade urban developments in the sea that are seen from space and outdoor air conditioned frolicking spots without peer in many developed nations. Tourists flock to the city to see the famous sailboat hotel and wealth on display in vast sums. Into that comes a desperate worker not understanding why the wealth is not shared with those who risk life and limb to do the work that makes Dubai possible.


Dubai's amazing architecture is on display on the cover and images contained in this excellent design and history book from daab entitled, Dubai: Architecture & Design. It captures the history of design in the Middle East. The cover is from the famous hotel buit in the form of a sailboat that is even more impressive in person - but have a megaton of cash with you. The indoor fish tank is well, spectacular.

Cat 5 Hurricane Felix headed to Honduras & Belize

The warm waters of the Caribbean hosts its second Category 5 Hurricane in two weeks. Hurricane Felix is already at the top of the Saffir-Simpson Scale as a 5 with nothing to do, but replenish itself and soak up the heat from the water. A dangerous amount of water is in Felix causing landslides and flooding in Trinidad & Tobago, disruptions in Aruba and one death in Grenada. That was before Felix stretched into one of eight category 5 hurricanes in the past 5 years.

The Yucatan Peninsula is bracing for a direct hit with hurricane hunters predicting a weakening to a category 4 before hitting land. Over the weekend the storm changed course, wobbling enough to upset its predicted path.

Belize, Nicaragua and Honduras expect to greet Hurricane Felix, currently packing 165 mph winds by Wednesday.

As Hurricane Felix approached in the Caribbean, Honduras issued a hurricane warning from Limon on the north coast to the border with Nicaragua, and a watch was placed from Limon westward to the Guatemalan border. The Bay Islands were placed on red alert, and the regions of Gracias a Dios, Colon, Atlantida, Olancho, Cortes and Yoro were put on yellow alert, according to the Honduras Permanent Commission of Contingencies Web Site.

Farther north, Jamaica and Grand Cayman were under a tropical-storm watch, while to the west, Guatemala and Belize issued hurricane watches for their Caribbean coastlines.

Felix is the second hurricane of the June-to-November Atlantic season. Dean last month killed at least a dozen people in the Caribbean, on a course that was north of Felix's predicted track. (photo courtesy NWS)

Central America braces as international oil markets prices creep up. Crude Oil inventory at the end of summer in America are low. Meteorologists are reviewing upper level wind patterns to narrow the Hurricane's predicted path. The eyewall is overfed by the heated waters and high pressure systems over the US affect the storm's direction and power. No one knows by exactly how much though.

Hurricane! is a 2007 release from Anne Rooney outlining facts and case histories for the weather phenomenon.


Bill Henry Paul makes the salient point about a variety of factors that affect energy prices and everyone on the planet consuming energy. Future Energy: How the New Oil Industry Will Change People, Politics and Portfolios is a 2007 release.



The National Hurricane Center has up to the minute reports on Hurricane Felix.