AGUACATE, Nicaragua — As Olman Fuzez turned over a bucket of millet, an old fan on full blast separated out small leaves and rocks. Nearby stood a small rusty silo that once stored maize. “It has been empty for three years,” said Fuzez. “We didn´t eat millet before, but now we have no choice.”
For two years straight, Fuzez has lost his entire corn crop due to a prolonged drought. For dinner his extended family of six will eat millet tortillas with a small portion of beans — they have enough beans to last only three more months, and not enough money to buy seeds for the next planting season.
Like the Fuzez family, hundreds of thousands of small farmers in Central America are facing a food crisis. They live in the Dry Corridor of Central America, which stretches from the low areas of the Pacific through the foothills of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and parts of Costa Rica.
As its name implies, the area tends to have a deficit of rainfall. But the last few years have been particularly dry as a result of El Niño, a weather phenomenon related to the abnormal warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Late last year, NASA warned that the El Niño phenomenon would continue into 2016, threatening to become the worst year on record.
I detect a possible increase in immigration here as people flee the drought ravaged countries.
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Just now they are escaping Central America for another reason.
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And end up being warehoused by Corrections Corporation of America.
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The Latter Days of a Better Nation
Everyone should read this article! I posted it in my news feed AND saved it where I can get it fast when I need ammo to use on some stupid, republican voter.
Damn, that was such a good read!
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No Repug will be POTUS unless they assassinate both Dems, It’s an act, that is why it sounds so crazy, Ole Hill will be the Head of the Beast, Sanders is toast.
We have been taken over by corpocrats, they call the shots now not the people, Ole Hill is feeding at the corpocrat trough like a hungry badger.
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Ole Hill likely to lose to The Donald.
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Just cruisin’ through…
Dr. B is right, IMO, but I’d scratch the “likely”
— *when* Trump gets the nomination, if his opponent is Hillary, he will crush her. To his supporters (and many others), she is an entitled elitist. She protects her own. Trump will drive the message home, “you are in the group that fucked up our country.”
(this message is not in support of Trump…just my opinion)
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That was really something, read the entire piece.
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Read it every week in The Nation.
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I think we may have got 4 inches of snow! I used our new RAV4 all-wheel drive SUV this morning to tamp down the driveway. It was a breeze for that vehicle! WOW!! Jill’s Brian was going to bring her 4 wheeler over to plow, but why bother when you have a RAV4 all-wheel drive SUV!
Wish the RAV could have shoveled for me. That was the hard part, I had to keep resting to get the old heart to settle back down. Plenty of sun today and what I shoveled melted off and even dried. This has GOT to be the last of the snow, and it should melt fast. It will be 40ish by Saturday.
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You need to start blood pressure medication. I have a BP meter and check almost daily.
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@ the Birch & Barley after 58 minutes; via Wadell & Reed, downtown, and then the optometrist’s office neatby, which was closed until Tuesday. Having blackened catfish dinner with a porter.
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Then another 26- minutes back to Sloan.
Day 5: 178+58+26=262 minutes. My feet!
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Home from the graduate student of composition concert. The world premiere of 4 short works. I surely enjoyed the last 2. Still going through my head.
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