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Turning Activists Into Voters in Uruguay: Frente Amplio and José Mujica

Benjamin Dangl December 3, 2009 Benjamin Dangl

Mujica with Madres of Plaza de Mayo
Torrential rain didn't keep voters away from the polls on Sunday, November 29th when José "Pepe" Mujica was elected president with 52% of the vote. The 74-year-old Agricultural Minister spent 14 years in jail for his participation in the Tupamaro guerilla movement, and has pledged to continue the policies of his predecessor, current left-leaning president Tabaré Vásquez. Mujica also promised that while president, he would return to his farm outside the capital city at least 5 hours a week to tend his flowers and vegetables.

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How To End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future

Al Huebner December 2, 2009 Al Huebner

In his new book on climate change, Now or Never: Why We Must Act Now To End Climate Change and Create A Sustainable Future, eminent scientist and author Tim Flannery refers to two vital concepts. The first is "tipping point." The climate tipping point is the point at which the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere reaches a level sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change. The second is the "point of no return." This is reached when the concentration of greenhouse gas has been in place sufficiently long to give rise to an irreversible process.

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Never-Ending War: Obama Makes the Afghanistan War His Own

David Corn December 2, 2009 David Corn

Source: Mother Jones 

President Barack Obama is surging a war to end it.

That’s how he’s selling his decision to expand the mess in Afghanistan he inherited from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. In a much-anticipated speech Tuesday night that followed weeks of high-level deliberations, Obama announced what had already been purposefully leaked by the White House: that he has ordered another 30,000 American soldiers to Afghanistan. This deployment-in keeping with the request put to him by General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO troops-will raise the total number of US troops to nearly 100,000 by next summer, ten times the force level in 2003. But speaking before an auditorium of cadets at West Point, Obama contended that the boost in troops will be temporary, a means to "create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans" for securing their own country and, most important, keeping the Taliban and al Qaeda at bay. read more

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Honduras: U.S. Criticised for Recognising Post-Coup Poll

Matthew Berger December 1, 2009 Matthew Berger

Source: IPS News

(IPS) – On a sunny Sunday afternoon in Washington, DC’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, about 50 protestors lined up outside a polling station where voting was taking place to help select the next leader of a country almost 3,000 kilometres away.

Monday, in Foggy Bottom, the controversial U.S. policy of recognising the results of the Honduran elections remained unchanged.

"We recognise that there are results in Honduras for this election…We recognise those results," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela told reporters Monday. read more

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Report From Honduras: Elections As Coup Laundering

Jesse Freeston and Tamar Sharabi November 30, 2009 Jesse Freeston and Tamar Sharabi

The Honduran Coup regime rode police state repression into the November 29 elections hoping for clean slate. Only the governments of Taiwan and the United States sent international observers, and the delegation funded by the US State Department arrived at the Electoral Tribunal at the same time the leaders of all six independent human rights monitors in Honduras were delivering their request that the elections be suspended.