Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

Source: The Nation

by Johann Hari
March 4, 2010

Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests–and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as “unworkable” and “unrealistic,” as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?

At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted “brands” in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters–and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed. Read the full story

El artículo fue publicado originalmente en Con Nuestra América, publicación electrónica de la Asociación por la Unidad de Nuestra América-Costa Rica, y se publica en Amauta con permiso del autor

Graffiti de Oscar Arias (Foto tomada por: andresmh / flickr)

El pragmatismo del señor presidente Oscar Arias lo ha llevado a protagonizar una política que podría catalogarse de oportunista y de doble cara.

por Rafael Cuevas Molina

Cada vez que el señor presidente de la República de Costa Rica, don Oscar Arias Sánchez, habla, moraliza. Habla con el tono de quien alcanzó la sabiduría suprema y alecciona a los demás sobre el rumbo que deberían darle a lo que hacen.

La última Cumbre de Estados de América Latina y el Caribe, realizada en la Riviera Maya, fue el último escenario internacional en la que ejercitó tales dotes. Aleccionó a los presentes sobre lo que es la democracia, el papel que juegan las elecciones en ella, y anatemizó a quienes se salen del libreto que el considera el adecuado y pertinente. Read the full story

Article published with permission from the author

Source: Common Dreams

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: hansvandenberg30, The U.S. Army)

by Tom Gallagher

With the September 11, 2001 attacks thrust back into the news by the controversy over trying their alleged masterminds in New York City, it’s not terribly shocking to hear legislators calling for the death penalty in the killing of innocent civilians these days. But there’s one cry for capital punishment making the rounds that might pull a few people up short: A group of Afghan legislators has backed the execution of those responsible for the deaths of Afghan civilians. And the perpetrators they have in mind are American military personnel. No, these legislators are not members of some Taliban shadow government calling for death to their enemies; they are representatives sitting in the elected parliament of Afghanistan, the very government the U.S. has put in place and maintains through massive force of arms.

Following the latest incident of civilian deaths – 27 killed in an air strike by “US-led coalition forces” in a border area between Daikundi and Uruzgan provinces – the Afghan news agency, Pajhwok Afghan News, reported that Hamidullah Tokhi, member of parliament from Uruzgan, declared the Afghan government was currently doing little more than issuing routine condemnation statements following each incidence of civilian deaths and that henceforth, “Anyone killing an ordinary Afghan should be executed in public.” Another representative, Fatima Aziz of Kundiz, agreed, because, she said, foreign troops “time and again … killed innocent people.” Maulvi Abdul Wali Raji, senator from Baghlan province, added, “Being a Muslim, I would suggest Qisas (killing in retaliation) for such killers.” Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

(DoD photo by Sgt. Freddy G. Cantu, U.S. Marine Corps/Released)

by Ramzy Baroud

Washington and its willing mouthpieces in the media have for years been trying to sell us the preposterous war in Afghanistan. While they attempt to convince us that the war is predicated on a faultless military logic and moral wisdom, it remains in fact a tragic adventure with no decipherable objectives, and involving several countries, private contractors, and all sorts of firms seeking to make a quick buck.

The intellectual cowardice of some should not blind the majority to the fact that the war in Afghanistan is morally indefensible and militarily unwinnable. Read the full story

Artículo publicado en Amauta con permiso del autor

HoMbre de Barro, por Marigela Pueyrredon (mpueyrredon.blogspot.com)

por Álvaro Montero Mejía

¿De dónde vendrá ese símil tradicional y tan frecuentemente usado por nuestro pueblo, cuando se les endilga a algunas personas tener “cara de barro”? En efecto, una cara de barro no puede ser otra cosa que una máscara de arcilla y por tanto, inmutable, con una mueca impasible, congelada y fingida, que no revela, de ningún modo, el verdadero gesto del rostro que la máscara oculta.

Tener “cara de barro”, es poner de manifiesto la capacidad para decir una enorme mentira, o expresar con aparente convicción algo en lo que del todo no se cree y decirlo, además, con absoluta tranquilidad y desparpajo. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch and the author

Source: TomDispatch

(Image: Troy Page / truthout; Adapted: Ian B. Line, jumpinjimmyjava)

by Tom Engelhardt
February 21, 2010

Explain something to me.

In recent months, unless you were insensate, you couldn’t help running across someone talking, writing, speaking, or pontificating about how busted government is in the United States.  State governments are increasingly broke and getting broker.  The federal government, while running up the red ink, is, as just about everyone declares, “paralyzed” and so incapable of acting intelligently on just about anything.

Only the other day, no less a personage than Vice President Biden assured the co-anchor of the CBS Early Show, “Washington, right now, is broken.” Indiana Senator Evan Bayh used the very same word, broken, when he announced recently that he would not run for reelection and, in response to his decision, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz typically commented, “The system has been largely dysfunctional for nearly two decades, and everybody knows it.” Voters seem to agree.  Two words, “polarization” and “gridlock” — or hyperbolic cousins like “paralyzing hyperpartisanship” — dominate the news when the media describes that dysfunctionalism.  Foreign observers have been similarly struck, hence a spate of pieces like the one in the British magazine the Economist headlined, “America’s Democracy, A Study in Paralysis.” Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

Source: The Guardian

(Image: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: EssG, Ericskiff Sirkullay)

by Mark Weisbrot
February 18, 2010

In a visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia this week, Hillary Clinton said that Iran “is moving toward a military dictatorship,” and continued the administration’s campaign for tougher sanctions against that country.

What could America’s top diplomat hope to accomplish with this kind of inflammatory rhetoric? It seems unlikely that the goal was to support human rights in Iran. Because of the United States’ history in Iran and in the region, it tends to give legitimacy to repression. The more that any opposition can be linked to the United States’ actions, words, or support, the harder time they will have.

Second, it is tough for anyone – especially in the region – to believe that the US is really concerned about human rights abuses. In addition to supporting Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza, Washington has been remarkably quiet as the most important opposition leaders in Egypt were arrested as part of the government’s preparations for October elections. Amnesty International stated that the arrestees were “prisoners of conscience, detained solely for their peaceful political activities”. Read the full story

Source: Salon

(Art: antiwarart.co.uk)

by Glenn Greenwald
February 19, 2010

Yesterday, Joseph Stack deliberately flew an airplane into a building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas, in order to advance the political grievances he outlined in a perfectly cogent suicide-manifesto. Stack’s worldview contained elements of the tea party’s anti-government anger along with substantial populist complaints generally associated with “the Left” (rage over bailouts, the suffering of America’s poor, and the pilfering of the middle class by a corrupt economic elite and their government-servants).  All of that was accompanied by an argument as to why violence was justified (indeed necessary) to protest those injustices: Read the full story

Fuente: Página/12

(Imagen: AFP)

por Juan Gelman
18 de febrero, 2010

Hay de todo últimamente en el reino del armamento nuclear. El presidente Obama acaba de dar vía libre a la construcción de dos reactores centrales, los primeros desde que un accidente la cesó en 1979. Su finalidad es pacífica: proporcionar un tipo de energía que no agrave y tal vez solucione el problema del calentamiento global. Irán se ufana de tener capacidad para elevar el enriquecimiento de su uranio del 4 al 20 por ciento y dice que lo hará también con fines pacíficos. A Washington le creen, a Teherán, no. Hillary Clinton ha declarado la intención estadounidense de imponer sanciones duras al régimen represivo que preside Mahmud Ahmadinejad. En tanto, por gracia y obra del Pentágono, varios países de Europa tienen un arsenal nuclear no declarado. Read the full story

Fuente: La Jornada

por Editorial (La Jornada)
9 de febrero, 2010

En respuesta a la decisión de Irán de emprender procesos de enriquecimiento de uranio a 20 por ciento, comunicada por Teherán al Agencia Internacional de Energía Atómica (AIEA), el gobierno de Francia, por boca de sus ministros de Defensa y Exteriores, Hervé Morin y Bernard Kouchner, anunció que intensificará, junto con Estados Unidos, las sanciones económicas contra la República Islámica. “El único camino que nos queda ahora es el de la presión”, dijo Kouchner, y exhortó a la comunidad internacional a “trabajar unida” contra el gobierno iraní. Read the full story