This enlightened lady has already raised minimum wage by 27% in her country and now she is moving her nation towards a rational drug policy. It's sad that we can't get this kind of progressive leadership from anybody in Washington these days. Hopefully that will soon change.

Let's Legalize Drug Use: Argentine Prez

(Newser) – Argentina's president is seeking to legalize drug use and a crack down on dealing and trafficking, CNN reports. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's plan follows similar moves by European and Latin American nations, where decriminalization has not increased drug use, one expert said.

An article by Dee Boersma in this month's edition of BioScience details an alarming decline in the populations of different species of penguins.  The journal, referenced at EurekAlert, tells the story of how not just climate change, but also "oil pollution, depletion of fisheries and rampant coastline development" has led to massive drops in penguin populations.  The population of Adelie and Chinstrap penguins, which reside on the Antarctic peninsula, has been cut in half since 1970.  The colonies of Magellanic penguins on the coast of Argentina has also been cut in half.  African penguins suffered a much larger hit, over time, dropping from 1.5 million pairs one hundred years ago to just 63,000 pairs today.  Boersma indicates "penguins are sounding the alarm for potentially catastrophic changes in the world's oceans."

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Police Break Up Saturday's Protest

This past Spring (Fall in Argentina) Argentina's president, Cristina Kirchner, decided to raise export taxes on grains. This has led to more than three months of bitter protests by farmers, essayed here, and to shortages of meat, oil, flour and fuel.

Please join me in Gualeguaychu.

EcoNoticiario # 5 covers a broad range of topics: health of forests and wetlands in Spain and Cuba, a whole range of environmental news from Colombia, the effects of drought, rising energy costs and volcanic eruptions in Chile, and the ongoing farmers' strike in Argentina.

[I have been writing about the Spanish water crisis in a separate series of diaries. For the latest news see my recent diary: Ten Things America Can Learn From Spain's Water Wars.]

Your environmental word of the week:

sequía-drought

[As always: All translations are mine.]

So I look through this morning´s paper at breakfast in Buenos Aires in a futile attempt to improve my terrible Spanish.  FAO report on the world food situation (bad), survey of Latin America on energy (rich nations need to do more), the propspects for an end to the smoke from the grass fires on the Pampas (maybe soon), and the surprise opposition victory in Paraguay.

On the back page are the comics, in color.  The lead comic is four scenaria for climate change in the coming years, and the words are ¨cambio climatico.¨  One is snow (last year Buenos Aires saw snow for the first time in a long, long time), another is tornados, a third is meteor showers (a 4x4 crushed in its parking space), and the last is continual fog (¨This wouldn´t have happened if Menem was still President¨).

On the editorial page was a series of questions for the next US President from Gerhardt Schroeder, former PM of Germany.  Somewhat wider vision here in the smaller countries.

Now I have to think about tango class.

Crossposted on Blog de Ford.

I’ve been reading snippets about the international grain crisis here and there, but it hasn’t yet sunken in to the consciousness of American news consumers (probably because we’re too busy watching the Hillary and Barack show). It really should be a real concern to all of us as we think about our candidates, the policies they propose, our nation’s place in the world and our own lives.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles and docuDharma

Argentinian Farmers Protest

Argentinian farmers, whose strike for more than two weeks has crippled the country, have agreed temporarily to break off their strike, to negotiate with the government.  

Join me in BA.

Please note this is an issue diary. It doesn't contain the name of a democratic candidate, nor bitter whining or intense concern about either one of the choices we are left with.

Please click here if you have accidently arrived at a non-candidate diary and are reeling in horror.

Thanks.

Actual candidate-free issue on the flip.

The Daily Pulse is a regular survey of editorial content you might not usually see.  We don't look at the New York Times or the Washington Post.  You already have those saved in your Bookmarks. Instead, we look at The Bolivar Commercial or The New Haven Ledger.  Why?  Because those editorials, local columns, and letters to the editor tell you what real people are thinking about and talking about.  And sometimes, we wander past our borders to see what OTHER people are thinking about and talking about.  Today, The Daily Pulse goes north and south of the border, looking at (English language) editorial pages.

We are also looking for contributors.  I would give a minor body part for somebody willing to do a weekly survey of American Spanish-language papers, interpreting the highlights with some commentary.  Also, a European survey, an Asian survey, perhaps alternative papers (GLBT, African American, Jewish, Lithuanian, etc.).  Let me know if you're interested.  And, without further ado, the Pulse across our borders.

More evidence with what is wrong with democracy...it's dynastic politics...

Violent death is horrifying.  This may be a time to assess the import of having the same surnames over and over again in the top leadership of many countries - India, United States, Argentina, Singapore and Pakistan come to mind.  In 2000 Andrew Sullivan decried the importance of branded names in American politics- where access to money and name recognition trump experience, potential and talent (and here in Illinois we have this problem at all levels of government).

The problem with dynasties is that they crowd out better talent and they degrade political discourse.  Sure Benazir had the best of western education and presumably learned much at the knees of her father, but for what effect?  What happened during her tenure in office?  Is it just the impossible situation in Pakistan, a country born on false promises teetering between militarism and religious extremism?  Or is it partly because political cultures that defer to pedigree are bound to fail more often than not?  For example, has India prospered and become more dynamic inspite of the Gandhis?

Uncle Miltie Friedman wrote in 1982

Only a crisis⎯actual or perceived⎯produces real change.  When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.  That, I believe, is our basic function:  to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

This is the statement that lies at the heart of what Naomi Klein calls "The Shock Doctrine" in her new, brilliant, courageous and genuinely frightening book on Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys’ repackaging of feudalism.  Shape shifters, she calls them.  (I've been a fan of Klein's gift for wording things since I discovered her in 2004.)  From the atrocities in Chile that began on September 11, 1973 to Iraq to the Tsunami to Katrina, Friedmanomics has shape shifted, Klein says, into "disaster capitalism".  But whatever shape it takes it remains committed to the unholy "policy trinity" of "the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending."

Burma has taken to using Bush Administration tactics to "get actionable intelligence" out of people.

A Myanmar opposition leader who was arrested during last month's mass protests against the junta died due to torture during interrogation, an activist group said on Wednesday.

Imagine you're being tortured, held captive by your own government, brutalized by soldiers wearing the flag of your own country. In that hell, a priest arrives offering solace. There's just one catch: the priest is working with the bad guys..

A court in Argentina has convicted a former Roman Catholic police chaplain of collaborating in murders during the country's military rule.

Christian Von Wernich, 69, was convicted for involvement in seven murders, 42 abductions and 31 cases of torture during the 1976-83 "Dirty War".

As he was sentenced, Father Von Wernich showed no emotion. Protesters torched his effigy outside the court.

Von Wernich denied any guilt. The jury didn't buy the lies and the torture priest was sentenced to life. Watch the You tube video, the monster is defiant; the families of the victims, ecstatic.

Greetings, literature-loving Kossacks! Last week we danced with the Dame of Amherst and found that she had a few crafty tricks up her embroidered sleeve.  This week we'll continue with our theme of mind-twisting literature, but we'll first relocate to a slightly warmer climate:

The setting is Buenos Aires, the time is the 20th century.  A blind seer is guiding us around the labyrinthine National Library, spinning yarns on everything from gauchos to Gargantua.  But how much of it is true, and how much of it is a devilish game?  Have we been wandering around a library with no exit?...

Follow me below through the twisted paths of Argentina's most famous fabulist.

A couple weeks ago, there was a lot of controversy stirred up when Mike Stark confronted Bill O'Reilly at his home, posted embarressing placards around his neighborhood, and provided his neighbors with transcripts of O'Reilly's sexually harassing 'falafel fantasy.'

My gut reaction was that harassing people at their homes is an unacceptable tactic.  Still, I asked myself, is there some point along the spectrum of political activism in which this tactic might be acceptable?

Mike Stark and his supporters believe O'Reilly, by using his program to goad listeners into a potentially dangerous hatred for progressives, has already passed that point.  I'm not convinced...and yet, a form of protest used in Argentina over the past ten years does have me pondering where my limits are.

Please join me below the fold for a look at the 'escrache,' in which young activists hold mass demonstrations at the homes of military and police officials who were responsible for--but never punished for--the torture and deaths of 30,000 people during the dictatorship of the 1970s.

This is a bizarre time to be living in isnt it?

In the US, the country directly below me there is much speculation as to where this constitutional crisis will end up.

I’m a Canadian. OH Gawd! you may say, another friggin Canuck opening her mouth? Don’t they have like socialized medical care and don’t they apologize for like EVERYTHING? I can only answer to any Americans reading this; that the path you are on, the path of destruction, is not so very far off or farfetched for many other countries, including my own formerly gentle and hopefully soon to be again gentle and sane? country, Canada

A rogue government.

In the US they have taken control step by step. From getting a leader through appointment and invading a sovereign nation, to spying on their own citizens. From abandoning any international conventions and laws, to just bald faced lying. If the sky is blue, they will tell you it is night. Do not believe you own lying eyes. We are the truth, we are the good, the righteous, they say. A big talking head proclaims that anyone who disagrees, is an enemy of the HOMELAND.

They call themselves "permanently pregnant."  They've been pregnant now for thirty long years.

It's not what the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo imagined for themselves in 1977.  Back then, they were just a small group of frightened housewives, wanting nothing more than to know where their children were.  Most of them knew little about politics.  Many of them had never before even ventured out of  their tradition-bound, working class neighborhoods.  But now, here they were, trembling in front of the Government House in downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina, demanding that the military dictators tell them where. their children were.

I first met the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo twenty years ago, during a four month stay in Buenos Aires, and my involvment with them then remains one of my most powerful experiences.  Back then, in 1987, they'd come a long way since those frightened first meetings ten years earlier.  In the twenty years since, they've traveled a remarkable political journey.

Please join me below the fold for a look at this remarkable group of women, and for some thoughts on motherhood and politics...