(Cartoon by Justin Bilicki)
HO HUM IN RIO: ANOTHER FAILED WORLD SUMMIT ON “SUSTAINABLE PRINCIPLES.”
(Counterpunch)
This is Alexander Cockburn’s assessment of the just-completed conference in Rio de Janiero. Like over-hypped conferences before it, this one degenerated into the most toothless resolutions of “resolve” of the conferees to work toward that goal, without any actual agreements to work in that direction. But wait, says Cockburn, there were “winners” in this as in those other “green” festivals: they were wonderful for the “hospitality industry” of hosting countries and for the promotional interests of the NGOs who show up at participants in such gab-fests.
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IF YOU WERE AN AFRICAN, WOULD YOU RATHER BE….GAY OR A RESIDENT OF A REFUGEE CAMP?
(All Africa)
Blogger Sokari Ekine describes the fragile situation of both groups on the continent. In South Africa and elsewhere, assaults on members of the LGBT community occur with seeming immunity from police prosecution despite constitutional “guarantees” of their rights. In Eritrea and elsewhere, people who have lived abroad for decades because of political turmoil find themselves about to the “repatriated” in “home countries” that are not exactly putting out the welcome mat.
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THERE ARE BATH SALTS AND THEN THERE ARE BATH SALTS.
(Toronto Star)
And salt shop retailers in Toronto accustomed to selling to those intending to use them for the likes of baths in spas are hearing some peculiar questions from would-be customers. They are asking for the “kind that that make you high,” referring to a synthetic narcotic drug in a “face-eating” incident in Miami and suspected of involvement in Toronto itself in a recent violent confrontation between police and civilians. It’s “only a name” for the drug, but the name is producing some headaches for “legitimate” bath salt dealers.
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CENTRAL FLORIDA COMMISSION ON HOMELESS CAN’T SEEM TO HELP THE HOMELESS: SO LET’S NOW “MORPH” INTO AN NGO SEEKING DONATIONS TO A NON-PROFIT CHARITY.
(Orlando Sentinel)
The Commission holds a hearing on this premise, hoping to capture in private charity what it cannot gain from governmental austerity. At its hearing, only a single homeless man appears and wonders aloud whatever happened to a well-intentioned Florida law that required state colleges to furnish tuition-free education to homeless persons.
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Quote of the day…
The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights. Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended.
Former President Jimmy Carter in editorial in New York Times, blasting Obama’s “kill list” assassinations of suspected terrorists.
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Love the Alexander Cockburn piece on the debacle of Rio.
Those of you solemnly nodding your heads at the cartoon might want to actually read the article. Of course the cartoon is totally misleading.
Cockburn, a died-in-the-wool Global Warming skeptic, is making fun of Rio and the fact that “No less that 50,000 attended Rio+20, earnestly mooting ten thousand green schemes in the conference seminars.”
170 countries obediently send delegations to Climate Change/Global Warming/Sustainable Growth shindigs like Rio, Copenhagen, etc. Many of course journey quarterly, as part of the all-important planning process.
Hundreds of delegates per country, all flown around the world to be there. Each with limousines, and grand hotel suites. Imagine the carbon footprints!
Why, exactly?
For twenty years there has been a lot of talk, but little progress towards real sustainability.
Rio was a failure because the politicians are worried about themselves, they don´t want to spend a single dollar to create the international agency. The world is going down on crisis and wars, those politicians think that there´s no time to make the development more human and more sustainable. People went to Rio to show off, and to go to the beach, and not to discuss the future of Humanity.