Month: December 2012

Source: Truthout

Even for New York, this was WEIRD.  There were a half-dozen Santa Clauses on Second Avenue getting a sermon from a Midwestern preacher who looked like a cross between televangelist Jerry Falwell and a white-haired Elvis.

The Santa crew and their mini-skirted elves were on their way to get drunk (drunker?) with another thousand Santa impersonators at “SantaCon,” an annual gathering of St. Nicks. But they were willing to let the Reverend Billy attempt to save their souls. read more

Source: Yes Magazine

The nation is grieving after yet another fatal mass shooting. Aren’t there ways to curb this ongoing national tragedy?

The mass shooting in a Connecticut elementary school has once again turned the public spotlight on the epidemic of gun violence in America. Gun violence takes the lives of 30,000 Americans each year, and injures an additional 70,000, but victims’ families and friends, and, indeed, all of us are touched by this ongoing national tragedy.

Massacres like the one in Connecticut and daily shootings around the country compel many to ask, “Can’t we do something about gun violence in America?” The answer, of course, is yes—beginning with changing the weak federal laws that allow almost anyone access to a wide variety of deadly weapons. read more

Source: Pro Publica

Friday’s deadly rampage [3] at a Connecticut elementary school marked the 13th mass shooting in the United States this year [4]. Among the 11 deadliest shootings in U.S. history, more than half took place in the last five years [5]. During the same period, states have often relaxed their gun laws, making it easier for individuals to obtain guns, extending the places where concealed guns are permitted, or giving gun owners more robust protections.

We take a closer look at some of the more striking measures: read more

Source: Al Jazeera

President Obama’s crass comments about newly-elected Chavez only serve to further alienate himself from Latin America.

President Obama went too far in throwing gratuitous insults at President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela on Friday, in an interview in Miami. By doing so, he not only offended the majority of Venezuelans, who voted to re-elect their president on October 7, but even many who did not. Chavez is fighting for his life, recovering from a difficult cancer operation; in Latin America, as in most of the world, this wholly unnecessary vilification of Chavez by Obama is a breach not only of diplomatic protocol but also of ordinary standards of civility. read more

Source: Inter Press Service

(IPS) – The United Nations climate talks in Doha went a full extra 24 hours and ended without increased cuts in fossil fuel emissions and without financial commitments between 2013 and 2015.

“This an incredibly weak deal,” said Samantha Smith representing the Climate Action Network, a coalition of more than 700 civil society organisations.

“Governments came here with no mandate for action,” Smith said in a press scrum moments after the meeting known as COP 18 ended and the 195 parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) approved a complex package called “The Doha Climate Gateway”. read more

Source: Counterpunch