The cost of America’s inefficient sprawl

By William Fulton, Special to CNN

Editor’s note: William Fulton is vice president for policy and programs at Smart Growth America, and a former mayor of Ventura, California. The views expressed are his own.

July 31st, 2012

Earlier this month, Global Public Square addressed a critical issue at this moment in American history, as towns and cities nationwide look to bounce back from the recession.

Mexican Victims of Violence Take Aim Against U.S. Firearms

By Emilio GodoyReprint| |Monday, August 13, 2012

MEXICO CITY, Aug 11 2012 (IPS) - “The United States should stop producing so many weapons, which cause us so much harm. That country also suffers from so much violence, as billions of dollars go into manufacturing guns.”

That is the message that anti-crime activist Fernando Ocegueda will take to the public in the United States, during a one-month visit to that country by the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, made up of 70 family members of victims of violence in Mexico.

ALEC feels the heat from anti-corporate campaigns

Press Release, Grand Council of the Crees, August 9 2012.

Waskaganish, Eeyou Istchee, (August 9, 2012) ---The James Bay Cree Nation has declared a Permanent Moratorium on uranium exploration, uranium mining and uranium waste emplacement in Eeyou Istchee, the James Bay Cree territory. The permanent moratorium was enacted unanimously by the Annual Cree Nation General Assembly in Waskaganish.

http://www.gcc.ca/newsarticle.php?id=281

Council of Canadians backs voters who want 7 MPs' election wins overturned

By Laura Payton, CBC News

 Aug 9, 2012 2:28 PM ET

Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, says seven Conservative MPs whose 2011 election wins are being challenged in Federal Court by a group backed by her organization want to see a $250,000 deposit on costs in case the challengers lose. (Juan Karita/Associated Press)

Minister's office says revised tender will 'ensure review is done properly'
Aug 9, 2012 9:47

The Public Works secretariat now tasked with reporting back on its review of the costs associated with the federal government's planned F-35 fighter jet purchase missed its June deadline. Now a revised tender for audit services appears to further delay its work. (Lockheed Martin handout)

Critics of climate change are losing their PR battle

Stephen Maher, Postmedia News August 10, 2012 8:12 PM - University of Calgary Prof. Barry Cooper wrote a funny piece for the Calgary Herald on Tuesday, in which he humorously derided BritishColumbians for their opposition toward a pipeline that would carryAlberta bitumen to the B.C. coast.

British Columbia is full of “sybaritic scatterbrains,” Cooper wrote,“soft consumers and rent collectors, drinking lattes in the rain. Manybelieve in spirit bears and water sprites and require grief counsellingwhen trees blow down in Stanley Park.”

tp://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Critics+climate+change+losing+their+battle/7073763/story.html

Humanity Should Not Live Under Nuclear Threat

For years now, the major producers of weapons and oil, both essential to the world’s “great powers”, have been seeking a confrontation with Iran, just as they did years before with Iraq, resorting to falsehoods and bogus arguments. It is no coincidence that Iran’s oil reserves are as large as and possibly even larger than those of Saudi Arabia.

International Day for the Rights of Indigenous peoples
9 August 2012
United Nations Headquarters
New York

D
Photo Credit: Mr. Xaisongkham Indouangchanthy

ington Puts Its Money on Proxy War

The Election Year Outsourcing that No One’s Talking About

Nick Turse - In the 1980s, the U.S. government began funneling aid to mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan as part of an American proxy war against the Soviet Union. It was, in the minds of America’s Cold War leaders, a rare chance to bloody the Soviets, to give them a taste of the sort of defeat the Vietnamese, with Soviet help, had inflicted on Washington the decade before. In 1989, after years of bloody combat, the Red Army did indeed limp out of Afghanistan in defeat. Since late 2001, the United States has been fighting its former Afghan proxies and their progeny. Now, after years of bloody combat, it’s the U.S. that’s looking to withdraw the bulk of its forces and once again employ proxies to secure its interests there.

http://www.tomdispatch.<WBR>com/blog/175580/

Energy admission: wind, solar to be cheapest by 2030

Giles Parkinson of RenewEconomy - The Australian government’s chief energy forecasting body has published a dramatic revision of its cost estimates, predicting that onshore wind and solar PV will deliver the cheapest forms of energy by 2030 — with solar PV dramatically cheaper than all other energy forms by 2050.

http://www.crikey.<WBR>com.au/2012/08/01/energy-<WBR>admission-wind-solar-to-be-<WBR>cheapest-by-2030/

Neocons vs. the ‘Arab Spring’: Back on the Warpath

Ramzy Baroud - The neoconservatives are back with a vengeance. While popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and other Arab countries had briefly rendered them irrelevant in the region, Western intervention in Libya signaled a new opportunity. Now Syria promises to usher a full return of neoconservatives into the Middle East fray.

Trailer Trashing as South Africa Considers Outlawing Bicycle Trailers

By Gail JenningsReprint| |

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Aug 7 2012 (IPS) - The road between Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls and Livingstone, in Zambia, is a well-traversed one, criss-crossed by bicycle riders towing trailers of bread and other supplies, with their bicycle spokes reinforced to bear the extra weight.

“If you have a bicycle, you can be rich,” said one cargo cyclist on the road just beyond the falls, as he abandoned pedalling and pushed his wheeled load. “This is how we trade.”

Although they are low-tech, the trailers are skilfully designed and often neighbourhood- manufactured, have two wheels and are attached to the bicycle via a hitch behind the saddle. They can carry up to around 200 kilogrammes of goods, water or, less often, people. These are significantly greater weights than what can be transported by head load, handcart or backpack.

Zambulances – bicycle trailers with a mattress, privacy curtain and basic medical equipment – have replaced walking or being pushed in a wheelbarrow for many ailing rural people who live some distance from healthcare centres. Credit: Gail Jennings/IPS

Papua New Guinea's seabed to be mined for gold and copper

Government approves world's first commercial deep-sea mining project despite vehement objections over threat to marine life
Oliver Milman guardian.co.uk, <TIME datetime="2012-08-06T12:16BST" pubdate="">Monday 6 August 2012 12.16 BST

Nautilus minerals team taking rock samples during a deep sea mining exploration drill. Photograph: Nautilus Minerals

A "new frontier" in mining is set to be opened up by the underwater extraction of resources from the seabed off the coast of Papua New Guinea, despite vehement objections from environmentalists and local activists.

Canadian firm Nautilus Minerals has been granted a 20-year licence by the PNG government to commence the Solwara 1 project, the world's first commercial deep sea mining operation.