Month: September 2010

Source: In These Times

In the exceptionally cold and rainy spring of 2009, April 18 was a bright and warm Saturday, and in Bucks County, Pa., about 2,000 people filled the fields of Washington Crossing Historic Park. George Washington had launched the Christmas Night attack across the Delaware River that proved the resolve of the fledgling nation in 1776, and now, it was the site of the first Bucks County Tea Party. People brought lawn chairs, tiny American flags and bold yellow banners with the “Don’t Tread on Me” image from the Revolutionary War. read more

Source: IPS News

(IPS) – When, following months of hype, ministers and negotiating teams arrived in Copenhagen last December for a summit on climate change, the expectations for what could be accomplished were unrealistic and made the successes that did occur seem less important than they were, says the climate chief of Mexico, which will host this year’s successor to the Copenhagen summit.

Luis Alfonso de Alba is doing what he can to ensure that the summit, starting in late November in Cancún, will avoid those expectation traps and instead focus on specific goals that can be accomplished and which can lay the groundwork for a more ambitious, legally binding treaty several years down the line. read more

Source: The Independent

Originally published on August 26, 2010

To many people, the “war on drugs” sounds like a metaphor, like the “war on poverty”. It is not. It is being fought with tanks and sub-machine guns and hand grenades, funded in part by your taxes, and it has killed 28,000 people under the current Mexican President alone. The death toll in Tijuana – one of the front lines of this war – is now higher than in Baghdad. Yesterday, another pile of 72 mutilated corpses was found near San Fernando – an event that no longer shocks the country. read more