This book discusses one of the major U.S. disaster events within the past ten years. Scholars from various backgrounds address topics including the social and psychological impacts on Gulf Coast ...residents, the transformation of natural ecological systems, and media portrayals of the Obama administration and its response to this disaster.
It is as yet uncertain how the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will affect the health of clean-up workers and volunteers, residents, and visitors in the Gulf. The IOM recommends that the U.S. Department of ...Health and Human Services focus on researching psychological and behavioral health, exposure information to oil and dispersants, seafood safety, communication methods for health studies, and methods for conducting research in order to better understand and mitigate the effects on human health for this oil spill and for future disasters.
Deepwater Horizon Earl Boebert, James M. Blossom
2016, 2016-09-06
eBook
In 2010 BP's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe spiraled into the worst human-made economic and ecological disaster in Gulf Coast history. In the most comprehensive account to date, senior systems ...engineers Earl Boebert and James Blossom show how corporate and engineering decisions, each one individually innocuous, interacted to create the disaster.
The inside story of the worst environmental disaster in American history.
Blowoutis the first comprehensive account of the legal, economic, and environmental consequences of the April 2010 blowout at ...a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico. The accident destroyed theDeepwater Horizonoil rig and killed eleven people. The resulting offshore oil discharge, the largest ever in the United States, polluted much of the Gulf for months, wreaking havoc on its inhabitants.A former Justice Department lawyer responsible for enforcing environmental laws, Daniel Jacobs tells the story that neither BP nor the federal government want heard: how the company and the government fell short, both in terms of preventing and coping with the accident.All-important details about the cause and aftermath of the disaster have emerged through court proceedings and with the passage of time. The key finding of the federal judge who presided over the civil litigation arising out of the disaster was that theDeepwater Horizonblowout resulted from BP's gross negligence.BP has paid tens of billions of dollars to settle claims and lawsuits arising from the accident. The company also has pled guilty to manslaughter in a separate criminal case. Yet, no one responsible for the accident itself is headed to prison. On the other hand, hundreds of people have been prosecuted for filing false claims against BP, some seventy-five of whom have been sentenced to prison.Blowoutis an important book for readers interested in the environment, sustainability, public policy, leadership, and the consequences of poor risk management.
Since the 1990s, the Middle East has experienced an upsurge of wildcat strikes, sit-ins, and workers' demonstrations. Well before people gathered in Tahrir Square to demand the ouster of Hosni ...Mubarak, workers had formed one of the largest oppositional movements to authoritarian rule in Egypt. In Tunisia, years prior to the 2011 Arab uprisings, the unemployed chanted in protest, "A job is a right, you pack of thieves!" Despite this history, most observers have failed to acknowledge the importance of workers in the social ferment preceding the removal of Egyptian and Tunisian autocrats and in the political realignments after their demise. In Workers and Thieves, Joel Beinin corrects this by surveying the efforts and impacts of the workers' movements in Egypt and Tunisia since the 1970s. He argues that the 2011 uprisings in these countries—and, importantly, their vastly different outcomes—are best understood within the context of these repeated mobilizations of workers and the unemployed over recent decades.
The 2010 earthquake in Haiti was one of the deadliest disasters in modern history, sparking an international aid response-with pledges and donations of $16 billion-that was exceedingly generous. But ...now, five years later, that generous aid has clearly failed. InHumanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti, anthropologist Mark Schuller captures the voices of those involved in the earthquake aid response, and they paint a sharp, unflattering view of the humanitarian enterprise.Schuller led an independent study of eight displaced-persons camps in Haiti, compiling more than 150 interviews ranging from Haitian front-line workers and camp directors to foreign humanitarians and many displaced Haitian people. The result is an insightful account of why the multi-billion-dollar aid response not only did little to help but also did much harm, triggering a range of unintended consequences, rupturing Haitian social and cultural institutions, and actually increasing violence, especially against women. The book shows how Haitian people were removed from any real decision-making, replaced by a top-down, NGO-dominated system of humanitarian aid, led by an army of often young, inexperienced foreign workers. Ignorant of Haitian culture, these aid workers unwittingly enacted policies that triggered a range of negative results. Haitian interviewees also note that the NGOs "planted the flag," and often tended to "just do something," always with an eye to the "photo op" (in no small part due to the competition over funding). Worse yet, they blindly supported the eviction of displaced people from the camps, forcing earthquake victims to relocate in vast shantytowns that were hotbeds of violence.Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiticoncludes with suggestions to help improve humanitarian aid in the future, perhaps most notably, that aid workers listen to-and respect the culture of-the victims of catastrophe.
Following the popular uprisings that swept across the Arab world beginning in 2010, armed forces remained pivotal actors in politics throughout the region. As demonstrators started to challenge ...entrenched autocratic rulers in Tunis, Cairo, Sana'a, and Manama, the militaries stormed back into the limelight and largely determined whether any given ruler survived the protests. In Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, senior officers pulled away from their presidents, while in Algeria, Bahrain, and Syria, they did not. More important, military officers took command in shaping the new order and conflict trajectories throughout that region.
Armies and Insurgencies in the Arab Springexplores the central problems surrounding the role of armed forces in the contemporary Arab world. How and why do military apparatuses actively intervene in politics? What explains the fact that in some countries, military officers and rank-and-file take steps to defend an incumbent, while in others they defect and refrain from suppressing popular protest? What are the institutional legacies of the military's engagement during, and in the immediate aftermath of, mass uprisings?
Focusing on these questions, editors Holger Albrecht, Aurel Croissant, and Fred H. Lawson have organizedArmies and Insurgencies in the Arab Springinto three sections. The first employs case studies to make comparisons within and between regions; the second examines military engagements in the Arab uprisings in Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria; and the third looks at political developments following the cresting of the protest wave in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and the Gulf. The collection promotes better understanding not only of the particular history of military engagement in the Arab Spring but also of significant aspects of the transformation of political-military relations in other regions of the contemporary world.
Contributors:Holger Albrecht, Risa A. Brooks, Cherine Chams El-Dine, Virginie Collombier, Aurel Croissant, Philippe Droz-Vincent, Kevin Koehler, Fred H. Lawson, Shana Marshall, Dorothy Ohl, David Pion-Berlin, Tobias Selge, Robert Springborg.
Bekdash reviews Young Generation Awakening: Economics, Society, and Policy on the Eve of the Arab Spring edited by Edward A. Sayre and Tarik M. Yousef.
