Damming the Flood

Damming the Flood PDF Author: Peter Hallward
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789601150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Long before a devastating earthquake hit in January 2010, Haiti was one of the most impoverished and oppressed countries in the world. However, in the late 1980s a remarkable popular mobilization known as Lavalas ("the flood") sought to liberate the island from decades of US-backed dictatorial rule. Damming the Flood analyzes how and why the Lavalas governments led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were overthrown, in 1991 and again in 2004, by the enemies of democracy in Haiti and abroad. The elaborate campaign to suppress Lavalas was perhaps the most successful act of imperial sabotage since the end of the Cold War. It has left the people of Haiti at the mercy of some of the most rapacious political and economic forces on the planet. Updated with a substantial new afterword that addresses the international response to the earthquake, Damming the Flood is both an invaluable account of recent Haitian history and an illuminating analysis of twenty-first-century imperialism.

Damming the Flood

Damming the Flood PDF Author: Peter Hallward
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789601150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

Get Book

Book Description
Long before a devastating earthquake hit in January 2010, Haiti was one of the most impoverished and oppressed countries in the world. However, in the late 1980s a remarkable popular mobilization known as Lavalas ("the flood") sought to liberate the island from decades of US-backed dictatorial rule. Damming the Flood analyzes how and why the Lavalas governments led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were overthrown, in 1991 and again in 2004, by the enemies of democracy in Haiti and abroad. The elaborate campaign to suppress Lavalas was perhaps the most successful act of imperial sabotage since the end of the Cold War. It has left the people of Haiti at the mercy of some of the most rapacious political and economic forces on the planet. Updated with a substantial new afterword that addresses the international response to the earthquake, Damming the Flood is both an invaluable account of recent Haitian history and an illuminating analysis of twenty-first-century imperialism.

Auburn Dam and Flood Control Alternatives for Sacramento, CA

Auburn Dam and Flood Control Alternatives for Sacramento, CA PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Subcommittee on Water, Power, and Offshore Energy Resources
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description


Damming the Osage

Damming the Osage PDF Author: Leland Payton
Publisher: Lens & Pens Press
ISBN: 9780967392585
Category : Bagnell Dam (Mo.)
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
If changed by development, the authors found the present Osage valley landscape expressive. Illustrated with hundreds of color photographs, period maps, and vintage images, this book tells the dramatic saga of human ambition pitted against natural limitations and forces beyond man's control.

Damming the Delaware

Damming the Delaware PDF Author: Richard C. Albert
Publisher: Penn State University Press
ISBN: 9780271027456
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
First published in 1987 and named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book the following year, Damming the Delaware is the definitive study of two hundred years of water management history along the Delaware River. The history of the Tocks Island Dam Project is traced from an early 1783 anti-dam treaty, through the highly emotional environmental controversy in the 1970s, to the historic Good Faith agreement of the 1980s. The story involves the water politics of four states, two major U.S. cities, and the federal government, plus the influence of the environmental movement over major public works projects. In this second edition, the author updates the Tocks Island/Delaware River story to 2005. A major shift in the underlying philosophies of Delaware River management during the intervening years is described along with various successes and failures in water management. A Foreword to the second edition is written by Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper and Executive Director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization that has both successfully fought dam projects and removed existing dams.

Drowned and Dammed

Drowned and Dammed PDF Author: Rohan D'Souza
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199469130
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This book explores the idea and practice of flood control and argues that this is a part of a political agenda, deeply implicated in the social, economic, and political calculations of capitalism in general and colonialism in particular. It argues for a comprehensive reconsideration of the debate on the colonial environmental watershed, its hydraulic legacy, and questions contemporary enthusiasm for flood control in post-independent India. The author argues that the British assembled and deployed the idea and practice of flood control in order to secure their presence in the Orissa Delta. It was principally a political project deeply implicated in the social, economic, and political calculations of capitalism in general and colonialism in particular. Through the function of flood control, colonial rule sought to organize systems of land revenue, institute capitalist private property, and shape the region's hydrology with physical infrastructure such as embankments, canal networks, and inevitably the Hirakud Dam. In seeking to dominate the delta's many rivers, colonial capitalism brought about an unprecedented ecological rupture by transforming the Orissa Delta from a flood-dependent agrarian regime to a flood-vulnerable landscape. This ecological rupture revealed the particularities of colonial capitalism in its relationships with the natural world.

Flood Country

Flood Country PDF Author: Emily O'Gorman
Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
ISBN: 0643106669
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Floods in the Murray-Darling Basin are crucial sources of water for people, animals and plants in this often dry region of inland eastern Australia. Even so, floods have often been experienced as natural disasters, which have led to major engineering schemes. Flood Country explores the contested and complex history of this region, examining the different ways in which floods have been understood and managed and some of the long-term consequences for people, rivers and ecologies. The book examines many tensions, ranging from early exchanges between Aboriginal people and settlers about the dangers of floods, through to long running disputes between graziers and irrigators over damming floodwater, and conflicts between residents and colonial governments over whose responsibility it was to protect townships from floods. Flood Country brings the Murray-Darling Basin's flood history into conversation with contemporary national debates about climate change and competing access to water for livelihoods, industries and ecosystems. It provides an important new historical perspective on this significant region of Australia, exploring how people, rivers and floods have re-made each other.

Damming Grand Canyon

Damming Grand Canyon PDF Author: Diane E Boyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In 1923, America paid close attention, via special radio broadcasts, newspaper headlines, and cover stories in popular magazines, as a government party descended the Colorado to survey Grand Canyon. Fifty years after John Wesley Powell's journey, the canyon still had an aura of mystery and extreme danger. At one point, the party was thought lost in a flood. Something important besides adventure was going on. Led by Claude Birdseye and including colorful characters such as early river-runner Emery Kolb, popular writer Lewis Freeman, and hydraulic engineer Eugene La Rue, the expedition not only made the first accurate survey of the river gorge but sought to decide the canyon's fate. The primary goal was to determine the best places to dam the Grand. With Boulder Dam not yet built, the USGS, especially La Rue, contested with the Bureau of Reclamation over how best to develop the Colorado River. The survey party played a major role in what was known and thought about Grand Canyon. The authors weave a narrative from the party's firsthand accounts and frame it with a thorough history of water politics and development and the Colorado River. The recommended dams were not built, but the survey both provided base data that stood the test of time and helped define Grand Canyon in the popular imagination.

Concrete Revolution

Concrete Revolution PDF Author: Christopher Sneddon
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022628445X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Water may seem innocuous, but as a universal necessity, it inevitably intersects with politics when it comes to acquisition, control, and associated technologies. While we know a great deal about the socioecological costs and benefits of modern dams, we know far less about their political origins and ramifications. In Concrete Revolution, Christopher Sneddon offers a corrective: a compelling historical account of the US Bureau of Reclamation’s contributions to dam technology, Cold War politics, and the social and environmental adversity perpetuated by the US government in its pursuit of economic growth and geopolitical power. Founded in 1902, the Bureau became enmeshed in the US State Department’s push for geopolitical power following World War II, a response to the Soviet Union’s increasing global sway. By offering technical and water resource management advice to the world’s underdeveloped regions, the Bureau found that it could not only provide them with economic assistance and the United States with investment opportunities, but also forge alliances and shore up a country’s global standing in the face of burgeoning communist influence. Drawing on a number of international case studies—from the Bureau’s early forays into overseas development and the launch of its Foreign Activities Office in 1950 to the Blue Nile investigation in Ethiopia—Concrete Revolution offers insights into this historic damming boom, with vital implications for the present. If, Sneddon argues, we can understand dams as both technical and political objects rather than instruments of impartial science, we can better participate in current debates about large dams and river basin planning.

Haiti's New Dictatorship

Haiti's New Dictatorship PDF Author: Justin Podur
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745332574
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In 1804 Haiti became the world's first independent black Republic following a slave revolution. 200 years later, ravaged by colonialism and violence, it was placed under UN military occupation.Haiti's New Dictatorship charts the country's recent history, from the 2004 coup against President Aristide to the devastating 2010 earthquake, revealing a shocking story of abuse and indifference by international forces. Justin Podur unmasks the grim reality of a supposedly benign international occupation, arguing that the denial of sovereignty is the fundamental cause of Haiti's problems. A powerful challenge and wake-up call to the international NGO and development community, Haiti's New Dictatorship is essential reading for anyone concerned with justice in the global south and progressive development policies.

The Water Kingdom

The Water Kingdom PDF Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022647092X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
From the Yangtze to the Yellow River, China is traversed by great waterways, which have defined its politics and ways of life for centuries. Water has been so integral to China’s culture, economy, and growth and development that it provides a window on the whole sweep of Chinese history. In The Water Kingdom, renowned writer Philip Ball opens that window to offer an epic and powerful new way of thinking about Chinese civilization. Water, Ball shows, is a key that unlocks much of Chinese culture. In The Water Kingdom, he takes us on a grand journey through China’s past and present, showing how the complexity and energy of the country and its history repeatedly come back to the challenges, opportunities, and inspiration provided by the waterways. Drawing on stories from travelers and explorers, poets and painters, bureaucrats and activists, all of whom have been influenced by an environment shaped and permeated by water, Ball explores how the ubiquitous relationship of the Chinese people to water has made it an enduring metaphor for philosophical thought and artistic expression. From the Han emperors to Mao, the ability to manage the waters ― to provide irrigation and defend against floods ― was a barometer of political legitimacy, often resulting in engineering works on a gigantic scale. It is a struggle that continues today, as the strain of economic growth on water resources may be the greatest threat to China’s future. The Water Kingdom offers an unusual and fascinating history, uncovering just how much of China’s art, politics, and outlook have been defined by the links between humanity and nature.