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June 29, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reports this week that US joint special operations forces are intensifying “covert military operations” inside Iran. A US State Dept. spokesperson told CNN that US forces are “not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran”, though he did not deny there were operations organized and executed from inside Iran.
June 29, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Zimbabwe’s 5-term president Robert Mugabe, the only one since liberation from the British nearly 3 decades ago, looks poised to serve a 6th term after holding a “presidential runoff election”, in which his opponent was forced to withdraw due to allegations of constant violence and intimidation from ruling-party supporters and paramilitaries. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had asked his supporters to vote for Mugabe if they felt their safety would otherwise be in jeopardy.
June 27, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Thursday’s 5 to 4 ruling by the US Supreme Court, in the District of Columbia v. Heller case [PDF], overturns a 30-year ban on handguns in the capital, Washington, DC. Gun rights advocates say it vindicates a basic Constitutional right, while gun-control advocates say it distorts the founders’ intentions and endangers innocent civilians. Some now fear a massive increase in violent crime, which had been curbed by increasingly severe gun-control laws in many urban centers.
June 24, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The New Scientist magazine this week heralds a ‘plan B for biofuel’, making the case that starch-based ethanol fuels, like corn ethanol in the US, may drive up food prices, but a new generation of biofuels will sidestep the problem and help ethanol live up to its promise. “The corn required to fill an SUV tank with bioethanol just once could feed someone in Africa for a year” reports the UK-based magazine, but most biomass is not the starch currently being used to create bioethanol.
June 24, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Corn-ethanol, long a fascination for US politicians and for the farm lobby that courts their support for ethanol subsidies, may play some role in remediating the economic fallout of soaring gasoline prices, though it seems unlikely, for a number of reasons. First and foremost is the fact that the numbers work against us: in order to produce more corn-ethanol, we must divert cropland destined for food production to fuel production, and that has a severely negative impact on the availability and affordability of corn for human consumption.
June 23, 2008 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Robert Mugabe has been accused by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, as well as numerous independent observers, of using state-backed and paramilitary violence to intimidate his opponents and “rig” the vote scheduled for 27 June. Now, the MDC’s leader Morgan Tsvangirai has withdrawn his candidacy for the vote, calling the entire process illegitimate. Tsvangirai won more votes than Mugabe in the 1st round of voting, even by the state’s official count, which many believe may have been manipulated in order to force a runoff.
June 23, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
In a speech today in California, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) pledged to create a fund to grant $300 million to anyone who can invent a significantly more powerful car battery, which would make hybrid and electric automobiles more viable as a replacement for petroleum-fueled cars, and promised to give $5,000 tax credit automakers for every zero-emissions vehicle sold. He also demanded that automakers help make every new car “flex-fuel” vehicles, and speed the move away from petroleum powered automobiles.
June 23, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
A fast-unfolding food shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. Over the past half-century grain prices have spiked from time to time because of weather-related events, such as the 1972 Soviet crop failure that led to a doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices. The situation today is entirely different, however. The current doubling of grain prices is trend-driven, the cumulative effect of some trends that are accelerating growth in demand and other trends that are slowing the growth in supply.
June 23, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Democratic and Republican leaders have reached an agreement on legislation that would expand the government’s legal right to wiretap foreign suspects on American soil, including up to 7 days surveillance on Americans, where such a method is deemed necessary to target foreign suspects. Warrants will not be passed over completely, and the bill should bring government policy in line with Constitutional provisions on privacy.
June 23, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
As unemployment has reportedly jumped from 5% to 5.5% in just one month, the single worst increase since February 1986, economists say the US is headed for a deep, “painful” recession. Together with record oil prices, the lending and credit crisis gripping the US banking, consumer and housing sectors, and the sinking value of the US dollar, the outlook for a rapid road back to healthy growth is not a positive one.
June 15, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The US Supreme Court has taken its fourth serious action in limiting the expanded war powers claimed by the administration of Pres. George W. Bush. Observers who favor the president’s views have sought to accuse the court of “liberal” behavior, but 7 of the 9 justices were appointed by Republican presidents. In fact, the Court has moved to scale back revolutionary expansions of legal authority claimed by the executive branch. And, the four rebukes to White House claims in this time of war, are a historic intensification of the Court’s role in protecting the Constitution’s basic principles.
June 13, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The United States Supreme Court has ruled 5 to 4 that individuals held in detention at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, can appeal their detention in US civilian courts. The ruling cites the intended permanence of Constitutional safeguards and their relevance to all US government prosecutions. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy explains “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times”.
June 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The ‘hard truths’ are those that make us cringe, that give us pause and drive us to worry that we must ignore the truth or conceal it or find the most adequate disguise, even before our most intimate relations. They are a powerful driver of human behavior, and they often come into everyday conversations about the need to deal with problems or to assimilate a difficult emotional burden. The problem is: they don’t exist.
June 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Federal Communications Commission has been asked by leading members of Congress to investigate revelations about a Pentagon program to use retired military personnel, some working for defense contractors and arms manufacturers, to deliver “talking points” on US television in the months before the Iraq war. The viewing public was not informed of these officials’ special relationship to their former employer or of their ties to military contractors who stood to profit from the war.
June 8, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Top aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign began telling the press that she intended to officially concede defeat, withdraw from the campaign and endorse Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, as the Democratic party’s nominee, as early as the morning after the final primary votes. She scheduled a farewell gathering for campaign staffers and supporters on Friday, the date pushed back to allow more people to attend. And on Saturday, she followed through and gave a rousing speech to supporters, officially endorsing Obama and calling on her supporters to follow suit.
June 7, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There is a more than notable tendency among human beings to adopt profound attachments to other human faces, even if those faces are known not as flesh but only as patterns of light. In the much-seen, or much-envisaged, visage, there comes an air of the familiar, almost the attachment of identity. The face celebrated either by adoration or by derision can have the effect of assisting in a psychology whereby the individual sees him or herself in the face of another.
June 7, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In a not-too-thinly-veiled effort to rig the outcome of the 27 June runoff election, in which Robert Mugabe (Zanu-PF), incumbent with 28 years in power, will contest Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC), the Mugabe regime has attacked foreign diplomats looking into charges of state-sponsored violence, banned all NGOs from the country, cracked down on foreign press, and beaten and detained members of the opposition. Tsvangirai has been detained twice in the last week.
June 4, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Illinois senator Barack Obama has won the race for the Democratic party’s nomination for the US presidency. He is the first African-American to become a major-party candidate for president in the US. Obama spoke to 18,000 supporters in St. Paul, Minnesota, and dedicated the celebration of his achievement to his grandmother, telling supporters, “Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another.”
June 2, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The human rights group Reprieve has accused the United States government of using military ships as offshore prisons, to hold an unknown number of individuals detained in the war on terror (ranging from Africa to south and central Asia, and possibly southeast Asia). It names two specific vessels as likely involved, and suspects as many as 17 have been used in this way. The group has called on the US administration of Pres. George W. Bush to name all individuals held, their location, condition, reason for detention and to permit a normal criminal defense.
June 2, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Recién inaugurada en el Palais de Tokyo, en París, Francia, ‘Superdome’ explora el sufrimiento humano vinculado con situaciones donde el desastre se sigue con transformaciones socio-económicas de escala casi incomprensible. La exposición concentra su atención temática en la situación que encontraron los habitantes de Nueva Orleans, cuando el huracán “Katrina” y su consecuente desintegración cívica los desplazaron hacia un caos tormentoso, su entorno físico devastado, forzados a llevar el peso extraño de ver cómo se borró la geografía económica de su ciudad para ser reemplazada por algo desconocido.
June 2, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a force to be reckoned with, a political entity with a nationwide support network that outstrips nearly all rivals and most past icons, with the added weight of her husband’s legacy and immense popularity among key constituencies. But, she has made her case for the presidency at a time when another Democrat has achieved even greater success and has rallied hundreds of thousands of new voters, and at present, she is, in fact, in second place, with one day to go.
June 2, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has won the primary vote in Puerto Rico, over rival Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) by a “2 to 1″ margin, as reported by the New York Times. She claims that this most recent victory is evidence she should be the candidate in the fall: the problem, however, is that she trails in both popular vote and pledged delegates, and faces the near mathematical impossibility of surpassing Obama, who long ago had wrapped up a majority of possible primary victories, including the deep south, Texas and rural plains states.
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