Long before colonialism brought slavery to the Caribbean, the native islanders saw hurricanes and storms as part of the normal cycle of life.
The Taino of the Greater Antilles and the Kalinago, or Caribs, of the Lesser Antilles developed systems that enabled them to live with storms and limit their exposure to damage.
On the larger islands, such as Jamaica and Cuba, the Taino practiced crop selection with storms in mind, preferring to plant root crops such as cassava or yucca with high resistance to damage from hurricane and storm winds, as Stuart Schwartz describes in his 2016 book “Sea of Storms.”
But then colonialism changed everything.A French advertising card from around 1900 depicts colonial power in Guadeloupe, with a trader sitting comfortably among sacks of cotton, cocoa and coffee while islanders work in the field. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The current disaster crisis that the Caribbean’s small islands are experiencing as hurricanes intensify did not start a few decades ago. Rather, the islands’ vulnerability is a direct result of the exploitative systems forced upon the region by colonialism, its legacies of slave-based land policies and ill-suited construction and development practices, and its environmental injustices.
Rather than growing crops that could sustain the local food supply, the Europeans who began arriving in the 1600s focused on exploitative extractive economic models and export cash crops through the plantation economy.
They forced Indigenous people off their lands and built settlements along the coast, which made it easier to import enslaved peoples and goods and to export cash crops such as sugar and tobacco to Europe – and also left communities vulnerable to storms. They also developed settlements in low-lying areas, often near rivers and streams, which could provide transportation for agricultural produce but which became flood risks during heavy rains.
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Homes built to the water’s edge in Saint-Martin, an overseas collectivity of France, were devastated when Hurricane Irma hit in 2017. Helene Valenzuela/AFP via Getty Images
Today, more than 70% of the Caribbean’s population lives along the coast, often less than a mile from the shore. These coastlines are not only highly exposed to hurricanes but also to sea-level rise fueled by climate change.
Legacies of slave-based land policies
Colonialism’s legacy of land policies has also made recovery from disasters much harder today.
When colonial powers took over, a few landowners were given control of most of the land, while the majority of the population was forced onto marginal and small areas. The local population had no legal right to the land, as the people did not possess land certificate titles or deeds and were often forced to pay rent to landlords.
After independence, most island governments tried to acquire land from former plantations or estates and to redistribute it to the working class. But these efforts, mainly in the 1960s and ’70s, largely failed to transform land ownership, improve economic development or reduce vulnerability.
One colonial legacy perpetuating vulnerability to this day is known as crown land, or state land. In the English-speaking Caribbean, all land for which there was no land grant was considered property of the British crown. Crown land can be found in every English-speaking island to this day. https://www.youtube.com/embed/YTckM-cNeII?wmode=transparent&start=0 How colonial powers controlled the Caribbean over time.
For example, in Barbuda, all land is vested in the “crown in perpetuity” on behalf of Barbudans. This means that an individual born on the island of Barbuda cannot individually own land.
After emancipation from slavery, freed people had no right nor access to land. To build houses, they were forced to lease land from the former enslavers who at a whim could terminate their employment or kick them off the land.
This led to the development of a particular type of housing structure known as chattel houses in countries such as Barbados. These houses are tiny and were constructed in a way in which they could be easily taken apart and loaded onto carts, should the residents be forced out by their former enslavers. Many Bajans still live in these houses today, although quite a few have been converted to restaurants or shops.
In Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, owned by the Dutch, slave huts were built along the coast, on land not suitable for agriculture and easily damaged by storms. These former slave huts are now tourist attractions, but the colonial patterns of settling along the coast has left many coastal communities exposed to hurricane damage and rising seas.
The vulnerability of such houses is not only a result of their exposure to natural hazards but also the underlying social structures.Slave huts were built on the coast in Bonaire, where they were vulnerable to storm surge. Leslie Ket via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
In many islands today, poorer residents can’t afford protective measures, such as installing storm shutters or purchasing solar-powered generators.
They often live in marginal and disaster-prone areas, such as steep hillsides, where housing tends to be cheaper. Houses in these areas are also often poorly constructed with low-grade materials, such as galvanized sheeting for roofs and walls.
This situation is made worse by the informal and unregulated nature of residential housing construction in the region and the poor enforcement of building codes.
Due to the legacy of colonialism, most housing or building standards or codes in the Commonwealth Caribbean are relics from the United Kingdom and in the French Antilles from France. Building standards across the region lack uniformity and are generally subjective and uncontrolled. Financial limitations and staffing constraints mean that codes and standards more often than not remain unenforced.
Progress, but still a lot of work to do
The Caribbean has made progress in developing wind-related building codes to try to increase resilience in recent years. And while damage from torrential rain is still not properly addressed in most Caribbean building standards, scientific guidance is available through the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology in Barbados.
Construction standards can help the islands build resilience. But work remains to be done to overcome the legacy of colonial-era land policies and development that have left island towns vulnerable to increasing storm risks.
The Bridge is a section of the STM Daily News Blog meant for diversity, offering real news stories about bona fide community efforts to perpetuate a greater good. The purpose of The Bridge is to connect the divides that separate us, fostering understanding and empathy among different groups. By highlighting positive initiatives and inspirational actions, The Bridge aims to create a sense of unity and shared purpose. This section brings to light stories of individuals and organizations working tirelessly to promote inclusivity, equality, and mutual respect. Through these narratives, readers are encouraged to appreciate the richness of diverse perspectives and to participate actively in building stronger, more cohesive communities.
Hollywood Legend Rob Reiner and Wife Found Dead; Son in Custody
Renowned filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their Los Angeles home in a reported homicide. Police have arrested their son in connection with the case, and tributes are pouring in.
Director Rob Reiner participates in a discussion following a screening of the film LBJ at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas on Saturday October 22, 2016 On Saturday evening October 22, 2016, the LBJ Presidential Library held a sneak peek of Rob Reiner’s new filmÊLBJ, starring Woody Harrelson as the 36th president. The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, chronicles the life and times of Lyndon Johnson who would inherit the presidency at one of the most fraught moments in American history. Following the screening, director Rob Reiner, actor Woody Harrelson, and writer Joey Hartstone joined LBJ Library Director Mark Updegrove on stage for a conversation about the film. LBJ Library photo by Jay Godwin 10/22/2016
Hollywood Legend Rob Reiner and Wife Found Dead; Son in Custody
December 15, 2025
Renowned filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, 68, were found dead in their Brentwood, Los Angeles home on Sunday, authorities say. Emergency responders were called to the residence Sunday afternoon, where both were discovered with fatal wounds consistent with a stabbing. Police are treating the case as a double homicide.
Los Angeles police arrested the couple’s 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, in connection with the deaths. He is being held in custody as investigators continue to piece together the circumstances surrounding the incident.
2016 SAMHSA Voice Awards
Reiner was one of Hollywood’s most influential figures, known for his work as a director, producer and actor. His career spanned decades, from early television fame to directing beloved films that shaped American cinema.
Friends, colleagues and public figures have begun sharing tributes and reactions to the news as the investigation is ongoing.
More details will be updated as they become available.
FDA’s COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Claims Lack Solid Evidence—Why Overreaction Could Harm Public Health
COVID-19 vaccine safety: The FDA’s claims about COVID-19 vaccine deaths in children lack strong evidence and could restrict vaccine access. Learn why experts say VAERS reports aren’t proof, and how overreacting may harm public health and trust in vaccines.
The death of children due to an unsafe vaccine is a serious allegation. I am a pediatric cardiologist who has studied the link between COVID-19 vaccines and heart-related side effects such as myocarditis in children. To my knowledge, studies to date have shown such side effects are rare, and severe outcomes even more so. However, I am open to new evidence that could change my mind. But without sufficient justification and solid evidence, restricting access to an approved vaccine and changing well-established procedures for testing vaccines would carry serious consequences. These moves would limit access for patients, create roadblocks for companies and worsen distrust in vaccines and public health. In my view, it’s important for people reading about these FDA actions to understand how the evidence on a vaccine’s safety is generally assessed.
Determining cause of death
The FDA memo claims that the deaths of these children were directly related to receiving a COVID-19 immunization. From my perspective as a clinician, it is awful that any child should die from a routine vaccination. However, health professionals like me owe it to the public to uphold the highest possible standards in investigating why these deaths occurred. If the FDA has evidence demonstrating something that national health agencies worldwide have missed – widespread child deaths due to myocarditis caused by the COVID-19 vaccine – I don’t doubt that even the most pro-vaccine physician will listen. So far, however, no such evidence has been presented. While a death logged in VAERS is a starting point, on its own it is insufficient to conclude whether a vaccine caused the death or other medical causes were to blame. To demonstrate a causal link, FDA staff and physicians must align the VAERS report with physicians’ assessments of the patient, as well as data from other sources for monitoring vaccine safety. These include PRISM, which logs insurance claims data, and the Vaccine Safety Datalink, which tracks safety signals in electronic medical records. It’s known that most deaths logged only in VAERS of children who recently received vaccines have been incorrectly attributed to the vaccines – either by accident or in some cases on purpose by anti-vaccine activists.
Heart-related side effects of COVID-19 vaccines
In his Substack and Twitter accounts, Prasad has said that he believes the rate of severe cardiac side effects after COVID-19 vaccination is severely underestimated and that the vaccines should be restricted far more than they currently are. In a July 2025 presentation, Prasad quoted a risk of 27 cases per million of myocarditis in young men who received the COVID-19 vaccine. A 2024 review suggested that number was a bit lower – about 20 cases out of 1 million people. But that same study found that unvaccinated people had greater risk of heart problems after a COVID-19 infection than vaccinated people. In a different study, people who got myocarditis after a COVID-19 vaccination developed fewer complications than people who got myocarditis after a COVID-19 infection. Existing vaccine safety infrastructure in the U.S. successfully identifies dangers posed by vaccines – and did so during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, most COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. rely on mRNA technology. But as vaccines were first emerging during the COVID-19 pandemic, two pharmaceutical companies, Janssen and AstraZeneca, rolled out a vaccine that used a different technology, called a viral vector. This type of vaccine had a very rare but genuine safety problem that was detected.A report in VAERS is at most a first step to determining whether a vaccine caused harm. VAERS, the Vaccine Safety Datalink, clinical investigators in the U.S. and their European counterparts detected that these vaccines did turn out to cause blood clotting. In April 2021, the FDA formally recommended pausing their use, and they were later pulled from the market. Death due to myocarditis from COVID-19 vaccination is exceedingly rare. Demonstrating that it occurred requires proof that the person had myocarditis, evidence that no other reasonable cause of death was present, and the absence of any additional cause of myocarditis. These factors cannot be determined from VAERS data, however – and to date, the FDA has presented no other relevant data.
A problematic vision for future vaccine approvals
Currently, vaccines are tested both by seeing how well they prevent disease and by how well they generate antibodies, which are the molecules that help your body fight viruses and bacteria. Some vaccines, such as the COVID-19 vaccine and the influenza vaccine, need to be updated based on new strains. The FDA generally approves these updates based on how well the new versions generate antibodies. Since the previous generation of vaccines was already shown to prevent infection, if the new version can generate antibodies like the previous one, researchers assume its ability to prevent infection is comparable too. Later studies can then test how well the vaccines prevent severe disease and hospitalization. The FDA memo says this approach is insufficient and instead argues for replacing such studies with many more placebo-controlled trials – not just for COVID-19 vaccines but also for widely used influenza and pneumonia vaccines. That may seem reasonable theoretically. In practice, however, it is not realistic. Today’s influenza vaccines must be changed every season to reflect mutations to the virus. If the FDA were to require new placebo-controlled trials every year, the vaccine being tested would become obsolete by the time it is approved. This would be a massive waste of time and resources.Influenza vaccines must be updated for every flu season.Jacob Wackerhausen/iStock via Getty Images Plus Also, detecting vaccine-related myocarditis at the low rate at which it occurs would have required clinical trials many times larger than the ones that were done to approve COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. This would have cost at least millions of dollars more, and the delay in rolling out vaccines would have also cost lives. Placebo-controlled trials would require comparing people who receive the updated vaccine with people who remain unvaccinated. When an older version of the vaccine is already available, this means purposefully asking people to forgo that vaccine and risk infection for the sake of the trial, a practice that is widely considered unethical. Current scientific practice is that only a brand-new vaccine may be compared against placebo. While suspected vaccine deaths should absolutely be investigated, stopping a vaccine for insufficient reasons can lead to a significant drop in public confidence. That’s why it’s essential to thoroughly and transparently investigate any claims that a vaccine causes harm.
Tariffs 101: What they are, who pays them, and why they matter now
Learn what tariffs are, who pays them, and why they matter for the U.S. economy. Explore how import taxes impact prices, trade policy, and everyday consumers as the Supreme Court reviews Trump’s global tariffs.
Tariffs 101: What they are, who pays them, and why they matter now
Kent Jones, Babson College The U.S. Supreme Court is currently reviewing a case to determine whether President Donald Trump’s global tariffs are legal. Until recently, tariffs rarely made headlines. Yet today, they play a major role in U.S. economic policy, affecting the prices of everything from groceriesto autosto holiday gifts, as well as the outlook for unemployment, inflation and even recession. I’m an economist who studies trade policy, and I’ve found that many people have questions about tariffs. This primer explains what they are, what effects they have, and why governments impose them.
What are tariffs, and who pays them?
Tariffs are taxes on imports of goods, usually for purposes of protecting particular domestic industries from import competition. When an American business imports goods, U.S. Customs and Border Protection sends it a tariff bill that the company must pay before the merchandise can enter the country. Because tariffs raise costs for U.S. importers, those companies usually pass the expense on to their customers by raising prices. Sometimes, importers choose to absorb part of the tariff’s cost so consumers don’t switch to more affordable competing products. However, firms with low profit margins may risk going out of business if they do that for very long. In general, the longer tariffs are in place, the more likely companies are to pass the costs on to customers. Importers can also ask foreign suppliers to absorb some of the tariff cost by lowering their export price. But exporters don’t have an incentive to do that if they can sell to other countries at a higher price. Studies of Trump’s 2025 tariffs suggest that U.S. consumers and importers are already paying the price, with little evidence that foreign suppliers have borne any of the burden. After six months of the tariffs, importers are absorbing as much as 80% of the cost, which suggests that they believe the tariffs will be temporary. If the Supreme Court allows the Trump tariffs to continue, the burden on consumers will likely increase. While tariffs apply only to imports, they tend to indirectly boost the prices of domestically produced goods, too. That’s because tariffs reduce demand for imports, which in turn increases the demand for substitutes. This allows domestic producers to raise their prices as well.
A brief history of tariffs
The U.S. Constitution assigns all tariff- and tax-making power to Congress. Early in U.S. history, tariffs were used to finance the federal government. Especially after the Civil War, when U.S. manufacturing was growing rapidly, tariffs were used to shield U.S. industries from foreign competition. The introduction of the individual income tax in 1913 displaced tariffs as the main source of U.S. tax revenue. The last major U.S. tariff law was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which established an average tariff rate of 20% on all imports by 1933. Those tariffs sparked foreign retaliation and a global trade war during the Great Depression. After World War II, the U.S. led the formation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, which promoted tariff reduction policies as the key to economic stability and growth. As a result, global average tariff rates dropped from around 40% in 1947 to 3.5% in 2024. The U.S. average tariff rate fell to 2.5% that year, while about 60% of all U.S. imports entered duty-free. While Congress is officially responsible for tariffs, it can delegate emergency tariff power to the president for quick action as long as constitutional boundaries are followed. The current Supreme Court case involves Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to unilaterally change all U.S. general tariff rates and duration, country by country, by executive order. The controversy stems from the claim that Trump has overstepped his constitutional authority granted by that act, which does not mention tariffs or specifically authorize the president to impose them.
The pros and cons of tariffs
In my view, though, the bigger question is whether tariffs are good or bad policy. The disastrous experience of the tariff war during the Great Depression led to a broad global consensus favoring freer trade and lower tariffs. Research in economics and political science tends to back up this view, although tariffs have never disappeared as a policy tool, particularly for developing countries with limited sources of tax revenue and the desire to protect their fledgling industries from imports. Yet Trump has resurrected tariffs not only as a protectionist device, but also as a source of government revenue for the world’s largest economy. In fact, Trump insists that tariffs can replace individual income taxes, a view contested by most economists. Most of Trump’s tariffs have a protectionist purpose: to favor domestic industries by raising import prices and shifting demand to domestically produced goods. The aim is to increase domestic output and employment in tariff-protected industries, whose success is presumably more valuable to the economy than the open market allows. The success of this approach depends on labor, capital and long-term investment flowing into protected sectors in ways that improve their efficiency, growth and employment. Critics argue that tariffs come with trade-offs: Favoring one set of industries necessarily disfavors others, and it raises prices for consumers. Manipulating prices and demand results in market inefficiency, as the U.S. economy produces more goods that are less efficiently made and fewer that are more efficiently made. In addition, U.S. tariffs have already resulted in foreign retaliatory trade actions, damaging U.S. exporters. Trump’s tariffs also carry an uncertainty cost because he is constantly threatening, changing, canceling and reinstating them. Companies and financiers tend to invest in protected industries only if tariff levels are predictable. But Trump’s negotiating strategy has involved numerous reversals and new threats, making it difficult for investors to calculate the value of those commitments. One study estimates that such uncertainty has actually reduced U.S. investment by 4.4% in 2025. A major, if underappreciated, cost of Trump’s tariffs is that they have violated U.S. global trade agreements and GATT rules on nondiscrimination and tariff-binding. This has made the U.S. a less reliable trading partner. The U.S. had previously championed this system, which brought stability and cooperation to global trade relations. Now that the U.S. is conducting trade policy through unilateral tariff hikes and antagonistic rhetoric, its trading partners are already beginning to look for new, more stable and growing trade relationships. So what’s next? Trump has vowed to use other emergency tariff measures if the Supreme Court strikes down his IEEPA tariffs. So as long as Congress is unwilling to step in, it’s likely that an aggressive U.S. tariff regime will continue, regardless of the court’s judgment. That means public awareness of tariffs – and of who pays them and what they change – will remain crucial for understanding the direction of the U.S. economy. Kent Jones, Professor Emeritus, Economics, Babson College This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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