Dec 22 2009
Yemen the Next Front in the “War on Terror”?
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Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation, could become the next frontline in the so-called War on Terror. Last week a series of bombings targeted suspected Al Qaeda training sites. While the US was initially blamed for the attack, Yemen’s government took responsibility. The New York Times reported that the US had given the greenlight however, and supported the strikes with intelligence and hard ware. Yemen sits just south of Saudi Arabia, the US’s richest and most oil-rich Arab ally, and just north, across the Gulf of Aden, from Somalia, one of the world’s poorest and most conflict-ridden nations. Yemen’s government has been facing an increasingly strong Shiite rebellion in the North, and a secessionist movement from Southern Yemenis. Earlier this year, militant Saudis and Yemenis announced they were uniting under Al …
On Sunday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry informed international activists planning to enter Gaza for a march that its border with the Palestinian territory would be closed. Citing a “sensitive situation,” Egypt cautioned that activists defying the closing would face the enforcement of its laws. Organizers of the international Gaza Freedom March set to take place on New Year’s Eve have responded to the Egyptian government by publicly re-stating their intention to break the siege. Nearly 1,400 activists from over forty-two countries have already pledged to travel to Cairo en route to the war-devastated Palestinian territory in an effort aimed at commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Israeli assault on Gaza and demanding an end to the ongoing blockade. Delegates include the Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, Filipino Member …
Despite the work of hundreds of thousands of delegates, environmental activists, and ordinary citizens in Copenhagen Denmark over the past several weeks, the final 12-paragraph draft accord on Climate change involved only 5 nations including the US and China. The New York Times described it on Saturday as a “statement of an intention to act rather than a binding pledge to begin doing so.” While many smaller and poorer nations, and most environmental groups considered the talks a failure, Copenhagen is being heralded a success by the Obama administration. In fact, Obama headed to Copenhagen last week with a shockingly low offer of 4% emissions cuts by 2020. A pledge of $100 billion in aid to developing nations to cope with the real effects of global warming is the only potential …
A new study released Friday has found the death penalty system in the United States to be in decline over the past decade. In the end of the year report compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, death sentences handed down across the nation reportedly reached an all-time low since 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated executions. In total, a hundred and six prisoners were condemned to death row in 2009. The DPIC report’s author, Richard Dieter, has stated that the statistics his organization charted for the year reflect a general downward trend over the course of the past decade. In terms of executions, only eleven of thirty-five states in the union who still have the death penalty at their disposal actually utilized it. The total number of executions …
Last Wednesday a bill was filed that would put fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables onto the menus of school cafeterias nationwide. The bill allocates $20 million for the purchase of salad bars, $20 million towards grants for “farm-to-school” partnerships, and $100 million to upgrade cafeteria equipment. The bill dovetails with an overhaul of the national food lunch program that is expected to begin in 2010. Some 31 million students each lunch at school each year, and there is agreement that most of those meals are actually bad for their health. My guest today is Lisa Bennett, co-author of Smart By Nature: Schooling for Sustainability. It is a handbook that students, parents, and school staff can use to put farm-fresh-foods onto lunch plates, and gardens into playgrounds. It explores …
