fotoFRONTERA
( Now, I don't speak Italian : but I do know what 'Felice Navidad' means. )
Creekside
Harper says "very comfortable" with being led by the US
After the United States hammered out an agreement with 19 other major powers at an emergency meeting in Copenhagen to which Canada was not invited, Harper said Canada had been represe...
Solving border pollution woes
A recently dug city of San Diego pilot channel saved ranchers in the Tijuana River Valley from being hit by mudslides caused by the Department of Homeland Security’s massive earthen border barrier. Mayor Jerry Sanders and Councilman Ben Hueso had the foresight to secure emergency permits to save valley homes, farms and ranches from the damage associated with the inexpert earthen border barrier engineering.
One of the growing problems that plagues the Tijuana River Valley after it rains is the glut of thousands of used tires that wash across the border.U.S. agencies should support the efforts of the city of Tijuana and the state of Baja California Norte to expand their new system of low-cost sewage treatment and water reclamation plants. At a cost of between $10-15 million each, these plants represent the best hope for stopping the flow of wastewater across the border and into the ocean. Additionally the International Boundary and Water Commission and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can help Mexico finance efforts to permanently stop the flow of treated sewage into the ocean at the San Antonio de los Buenos site six miles south of the border.
DEANASA Report Highlights Need to Retire Drainage Impaired Land in California
Stealing Water from the Future: California's Massive Groundwater Overdraft Newly Revealed
Underused Drilling Practices Could Avoid Pollution
Canadian Cities Leading the Charge Against Bottled Water
Damning New Evidence Raises Concerns About Threats to New York's Water from Gas Drilling
What the Frack? Poisoning our Water in the Name of Energy Profits
Good Cod Almighty, We've Got a Global Fishing Crisis
25 Years Since the Bhopal Disaster, We've All Become Victims of the Chemical Industry
Bailed-Out AIG Forcing Poor to Choose Between Running Water and Food
The War on Soy: Why the 'Miracle Food' May Be a Health Risk and Environmental Nightmare
Mystery of World's Worst Mass Arsenic Poisoning Finally Solved
The culprit are tens of thousands of man-made ponds excavated to provide soil for flood protection.
On November 10th, the AMA reversed its long-held position that marijuana has no acceptable medicinal value and adopted anew policy position favoring medical marijuana. The AMA called on the U.S. government to reconsider its current classification as a Schedule I substance. (The government categorizes drugs into “Schedules.” Four of the five actually regulate the use of substances, but Schedule I drugs—such as marijuana, heroin and LSD—are completely banned.)
However, a week after the announcement of this historic reversal, the DEA still hadn’t removed mention of the AMA’s old, anti-medical-marijuana position from its website.
So, the advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization of cops, judges and prosecutors calling for the legalization and regulation of all drugs, created anaction alert asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to order the DEA to scrub the bogus statements from the web.
After just one day of emails from activists, the information disappeared. One might conclude this quick response was the handiwork of Obama’s tech-savvy team, if it weren’t for the other government websites still spreading misinformation about the AMA's position on medical marijuana. Both the White House "drug czar's" office and the DEA's “scare the children” youth website still contain inaccurate statements about AMA's position on medical marijuana.
Facing an epidemic of drug-related overdose deaths and disease transmission from dirty needles, the Portugal government took a bold step in 2001 and decriminalized the personal use and possession of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. The police were told not to arrest anyone found taking any kind of drug. In 2009, the results of Portugal's decriminalization were released, and the results were striking: Drug-related problems, including the transmission of diseases, deaths from drug overdoses and incarceration, all decreased dramatically, while drug use did not go up. Portugal's experience is instructive; it showed the world that the sky did not fall with decriminalization and took the debate from theory to practice.
For all the recent progress, drug policy reformers are under no illusion that the drug war will end any time soon. We know that drug prohibition and our harsh drug laws - fueled by a prison-industrial complex that locks up 500,000 of our fellow Americans on drug-related offenses - are poised to continue for some time wasting tens of billions of dollars a year and leading to the deaths of thousands of Mexicans and Americans every year due to prohibition-related violence. But we are clearly moving in the right direction, toward a more rational drug policy based on compassion, health, science and human rights. We need people to continue to join the movement to end this unwinnable war. If the people lead, the leaders will follow.
- December 18, 2009
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$57,077.60 -- That's What We're Paying Each Minute for the Occupation of Afghanistan
Jo Comerford, Tomdispatch.com
World: The $30 billion cost of Obama's surge alone would place the US in the top-ten for global military spending, sandwiched between Italy and Saudi Arabia.
8 Things We Love That Climate Change Will Force Us to Kiss Good-Bye
Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Environment: We face losing everything from 50,000 species a year to the world's best wines. How to put it all in perspective?
Banks Get into the Unemployment Biz, and Quickly Start the Rip-offs
Barbara Koeppel, Consortium News
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: As states pay unemployment benefits with bank debit cards, the jobless are seeing their fees add up.
Randall Robinson
AnUnbroken Agony
Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President
On February 29th, 2004 the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forced to leave his country. The twice elected President was kidnapped, along with his Haitian-American wife, by American soldiers and flown, against his will, to the isolated Central African Republic. Although the American government has denied ousting Aristide it was clear that the Haitian people’s most recent attempt at self-determination had not been crushed by Haitian paramilitaries as Washington claimed.
In An Unbroken Agony, bestselling author and social justice advocate Randall Robinson explores the heroic and tragic history of Haiti. He traces the history of a people forced across the Atlantic in chains; recounting their spectacularly successful slave revolt against France and the two hundred years of reprisals that would follow. The fate of Aristide’s presidency is tied to this people’s century-long quest for self-determination and his removal from power exposes the apartheid-like forces that frustrate these aspirations even today.
18 nations got together, and decided how to rebuild the country. But they set up a centralized, de-provincialized process which was exactly the opposite of the Marshall Plan after World War II. That was a provincialized, decentralized process, and only recently, in the last couple of years, has that started to change.
We’re planning a show for this Monday on Iran and its global crackdown on dissent, and want to hear directly from Iranians. We invite you to call in to the show while we’re on the air live, and/or to post messages here at our website.
More »( There goes the bullshit...)
China's Hu unveils landmark Turkmenistan pipeline
China's President Hu Jintao on Monday unveiled a landmark pipeline to transport Turkmen natural gas to China, a key victory for Beijing in its drive for access to Central Asian resources.
Hu, together with the presidents of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, turned a symbolic wheel at a refinery in Samandepe in Turkmenistan's vast Karakum desert which opened the pipeline to start the first gas flowing.
"China is positive about our cooperation and the opening of this gas pipeline is another platform for collaboration and cooperation between our friendly nations," Hu told reporters.
The 7,000 kilometre (4,350 mile) gas pipeline is a significant victory for Beijing, marking the culmination of years of lobbying for influence over the region's strategic energy resources, traditionally dominated by Moscow.
It first runs for 1,800 kilometres in Central Asia -- snaking through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan -- before linking up with a further 5,000-plus kilometres of pipeline in China's far-west Xinjiang region.
Abuse of Pregnant Prisoners Goes Beyond Shackling During Labor
We’ve written here at Feministe before about the common practice of U.S. prisons shackling pregnant prisoners in while they are in labor. And despite the increased recognition that such treatment is inhuman, it’s one that has not entirely ceased.
Now an article over at Alternet (originally published at The Nation) gives us awful if not hugely shocking news: shackling during labor isn’t the only atrocious and dangerous treatment that pregnant prisoners are receiving. Rather, many have been undergoing abuse at the hands of the prison system for months:
When women are brought to a hospital in shackles, the pain and humiliation they endure likely caps months of difficulty from being pregnant behind bars, months without adequate prenatal care or nutrition, or even basics like a bed to sleep on or clothes to accommodate their changing shape.
The lack of common sense and compassion with which imprisoned pregnant women are treated is chilling. Three stories illustrate the dangers women face when they cannot get anyone to take their medical needs seriously.
First, some women are not taken to the hospital until after they have already given birth, despite having informed staff members that they are in labor. Women wind up giving birth in their cells with the assistance of a nurse, corrections officer or cellmates. Others give birth in their cells with nobody to help. Both situations endanger the woman and her baby. Nineteen-year-old Terra K. screamed, pounded on the door and asked for the nurse in the Dubuque County Jail in Iowa, only to give birth alone in her cell. Afterward she asked, “How does somebody have a baby in jail without anybody noticing?”
I'm sure everyone has heard about the "War On Christmas." You know, "Jesus Is The Reason For The Season" and "You can't take the Christ out of Christmas," or that if you use Xmas instead of Christmas, you are taking Christ out of Christmas. You should also know I'm a Godless liberal/communist/socialist heathen. Because being liberal means you can't be religious, only Godless. It's true because Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck tells us so. The media also tells us that "political correctness" has taken over. We are all living in fear and it's all the fault of the liberals and PC police. Or so people want you to think. I lost faith in our media a long time ago, but it seems things are getting worse and there are less sources of reliable information out there because now we have media trying to compete with Twitter and Facebook instead of actually doing something like finding out the truth.
Why Do So Many Women Experience the “Imposter Syndrome”?
In an earlier review of fellow PT blogger Susan Pinker’s book The Sexual Paradox: Troubled Boys, Gifted Girls and the Real Difference Between the Sexes, we ponder why it is that so many highly successful women experience the “imposter syndrome” – the persistent feeling that, despite their well-deserved success and accolades, they are somehow frauds and will soon be exposed – while very few comparable men experience it.
We suspect that one reason why so many women but very few men experience the imposter syndrome may be because the definition of success in the evolutionarily novel contemporary society is biased toward males. Nobody recognizes women who are successful in female terms. So part of the problem may be definitional. If we are right, then any man who receives worldwide accolades as a wonderful father or friend should also experience the imposter syndrome, even though we would not expect anyone to receive such recognition, once again, precisely because “success” in our society is defined in male terms.
New Brunswick's electricity rates would be nearly triple current levels if the province had tied power rate increases to inflation 50 years ago, according to a CBC review.
New Brunswick is proposing to permanently tie provincial power rates to inflation beginning in 2015 as part of its deal to sell NB Power to Hydro-Québec.
The move is part of a provincial push to house the homeless during the cold snap. It also comes as the province rolls out its controversial Assistance to Shelter Act, which allows officers to take the homeless to a shelter without their consent.
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