Friday, August 12th, 2011
TIM JOHNSON, - McClatchy Newspapers
Stephan: All of this arises from the Drug War and it is a trend that leads only downward. The Drug War finances the budgets of a dozen government agencies that are no less committed to the continuation of the Drug War than the drug traders, who exist because of the profits assured by the product's illegality. The profits and the influence that buys has corrupted the Mexican government, and resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. This trend continues because it is so very profitable for all concerned. The fact that it has destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans because of draconian sentencing, or the open warfare it produces is just a cost of doing profitable business. The effects on Mexico are no less severe as this report makes clear.
ARRIAGA, Mexico — One of Mexico’s most powerful criminal gangs has muscled into the migrant-smuggling racket, changing what had been a relatively benign if risky industry of independent operators into a centralized business that often has deadly consequences for those who try to operate outside it.
Los Zetas, who earned a reputation for brutality by gunning down thousands of Mexicans in the ongoing battle for drug-smuggling routes to the United States, now control much of the illicit trade of moving migrant workers toward the U.S. border, experts in the trade say.
They’ve brought logistical know-how, using tractor-trailer trucks to carry ever larger loads of people and charging higher prices, as much as $30,000 per head for migrants from Asia and Africa who seek to get to the United States.
They’ve also brought an unprecedented level of intimidation and violence to the trade. Los Zetas or their allies often kidnap and hold for ransom poor migrants who try to operate outside the system. If relatives don’t wire payment, the migrants sometimes are executed and dumped in mass graves or press-ganged into jobs with the criminal group.
Nearly a year ago, Zetas gunmen were implicated in the slaughter of 72 migrants at a ranch near San […]
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Friday, August 12th, 2011
Stephan: SR reader, and Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler has written a notably well-presented exegetic essay, with which I strongly agree, on the reality of nuclear power as a civilian energy source.
he heating of Earth remains the most urgent symptom of humanity’s mismanagement of our technological civilization. Desperately seeking answers for a low carbon energy regime, some observers propose a ‘nuclear renaissance
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Friday, August 12th, 2011
Stephan: This is the latest data I've seen on the food crisis, and its linkage to extreme weather events as a result of climate change. The trend continues moving in the direction of much higher prices, and smaller harvests which is going to prove devastating to millions of people, and to farm animals as well.
Indianapolis
The spring’s heavy rains and the summer’s dry heat are being blamed for production problems Central Indiana farmers are facing as harvest time nears.
According to industry experts, farmers won’t be able to produce as much corn and soybeans as they had hoped for. This is the second consecutive year farmers have been negatively affected by extreme weather patterns.
Farmers are expected to produce about 45 million fewer bushels of corn and about 30 million fewer bushels of soybeans this year.
Experts say the lack of production will mean prices for consumer goods won’t be falling anytime soon.
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Thursday, August 11th, 2011
RICK PEARSON and LIS MASCARO, - San Francisco Chronicle
Stephan: This suggests social progressive programs are at even greater risk than was previously thought. Elections are zero sum games, by the Founders' design. They are bloodless revolutions that occur at stated intervals. In our voting patterns we Americans make clear we are complicit in our own dismantlement.
MILWAUKEE — The setback that Democrats and their labor allies suffered in the battle to reclaim Wisconsin underscores the challenge they and President Obama face as both parties gird for the 2012 election.
Tuesday’s election – an attempt to recall six Republican state senators – was the first test of voter sentiment since the summer’s debate over the national debt and the renewed stalling of the economy. Strategists on both sides were watching the contests as an early showdown on the economic themes likely to propel next year’s campaigns.
After elections in 2006 and 2008 that went heavily to Democrats and a 2010 contest dominated by Republicans, the results provided a snapshot of an electorate in between – highly polarized, closely divided, with hardened political positions. The voting presages a 2012 election season likely to be one of the most hard-fought in a decade.
The recalls drew more than $30 million in campaign spending, an enormous amount for off-year state legislative races, and generated robust turnout on both sides.
The outcome was close and in doubt until the end. Even Republican state Sen. Alberta Darling, whose victory in the Milwaukee suburbs guaranteed that the Republicans would keep control of the state Senate, acknowledged she […]
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Thursday, August 11th, 2011
ERIC W. DOLAN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: This is the latest on this very concerning trend. When you have this kind of disaffection on the part of the governed, those who govern, and the system itself is at risk.
Poll after poll has found that Americans are extremely disillusioned with the federal government, regardless of their political affiliation, after the president signed an agreement over the federal debt ceiling and budget deficit.
According to a Washington Post poll released on Wednesday, just 21 percent of Americans are satisfied with the way the country’s political system is working, down 17 points from November 2009. Forty-five percent of Americans now consider themselves ‘very dissatisfied’ and 33 percent consider themselves ‘mostly dissatisfied.’
Additionally, just 26 percent of Americans believe that the federal government can actually solve the country’s economic problems, down 21 points from October 2010 and down 37 points from February 2002.
President Barack Obama signed a debt ceiling deal into law in the beginning of August. The legislation raised the debt ceiling until 2013 and cut the federal deficit by about $2.1 trillion over a 10-year period. The two-stage agreement, which was criticized by both tea party lawmakers and progressive Democrats, passed by a vote of 269 to 161 in the House and a vote of 74 to 26 in the Senate.
A record breaking 82 percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job, according to a CBS News/New […]
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