El macrismo abandonó a los pacientes del Borda | Tiempo Argentino

El macrismo abandonó a los pacientes del Borda | Tiempo Argentino Nota sobre la falta de gas para calefacción, empleados, recursos financieros, que afectan este invierno al hospital bonaerense para personas con discapacidades cognitivas José T. Borda. El gobierno encabezado por Mauricio Macri ha contribuido a una “política de desfinanciamiento y abandono”.

Forest can breach the global carbon gap(1)

Reforestation has emerged as an emergency solution to combat global warming. But the issue of financing is complex, especially since there is a lack of consensus on how to value forests and, at an even more basic level, what a forest is.

As global greenhouse gas emissions rise instead of decreasing, forests play an even more crucial role in fighting global warming, since experts believe it will be impossible to prevent a disastrous increase in global temperature without drastically curbing deforestation.

Despite the vital importance of forests, 13 million hectares are destroyed every year, fact that led the United Nations to make forests the focus of this year’s World Environment Day, on Jun. 5.

Global carbon emissions in 2010 were five percent higher than in 2008, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported in late May, making the international target of limiting the rise in global temperature to two degrees Celsius increasingly impossible to achieve.

Through photosynthesis, trees capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then store it for as long as they remain alive, a process referred to as carbon “sequestration”.

"We need forests to bridge the carbon gap," said Stewart Maginnis, head of the Forest Conservation Program of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Carbon emission reduction commitments made by countries in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord will not be enough to keep global temperatures near two degrees of additional warming. Scientists believe that an increase of more than two degrees would lead to climate change impacts of disastrous proportions.

Deforestation accounts for roughly 17% of total annual emissions. "There is no 'Plan B'. We desperately need forests and reforestation to sequester carbon," said Maginnis.

Forests were the focus of this year's World Environment Day not only for their role in storing climate-altering carbon, but also because they generate oxygen and supply water to 50% of world's largest cities.

Forests are home to more than half of land-based animals, plants and insects. Moreover, some 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Yet global deforestation continues at an alarming rate: every year, 13 million hectares of forests, an area the size of Nicaragua, are destroyed for wood products and by conversions to cash crops and cattle ranching.

UNEP, IUCN and many other organizations believe the best chance, and maybe the only chance, to change this is through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programs that are a key part of the new green economy.

Countries and industries looking to reduce their emissions of carbon can either reduce their physical carbon emissions or purchase carbon credits to offset those emissions under REDD or REDD+ programs.

REDD+ refers to REDD programs that go beyond maximizing carbon storage to ensuring protection of biodiversity and livelihoods of local people and communities.

"REDD+ strategies of various types are the only way to mobilize enough funds to deal with the drivers of deforestation," said Maginnis.

However, according to Bram Büscher of the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, REDD and other market-based mechanisms to protect forests simply will not work.

"Making money will always trump the ecological benefits of forests in a capitalistic economic system," Büscher said. "It's simplistic to say everyone wins with REDD. There is nothing win-win under capitalism. It's all about winners and losers," he added.

"Capitalism is inherently unecological. We're trying to rig the system to make it work for the green economy. It's a sham," Büscher maintained.

The United Nations and other institutions are pushing countries to “green their economies” through a shift to renewable energy and by dramatically reducing their resource use, wastes and pollution while meeting the needs of the poorest people.

Forest can breach the global carbon gap(2)

Capitalism, and particularly the neoliberal version of capitalism, created the multiple crisis we now face, and it is unrealistic to believe it will also be the solution, said Büscher, who has spent more than a decade working in Africa.

"REDD is a new kind of colonialism. The real changes that urgently need to be made are in the rich countries," he stressed.

Rich countries need to make major reductions in their energy and material consumption but "we're not willing to do so," Büscher noted.

Europeans have widely protested a proposal to build a road through Tanzania's Serengeti National Park. China wants to build the road to mine rare earth metals for use in electronics like mobile phones.

"Who in Europe wants to give up buying the latest smart phone?" Büscher asked.

Maginnis insists that REDD is not an excuse for rich countries to do nothing, but just the opposite: rich countries need to make major emissions cuts and ante up a lot of cash to conserve forests and grow new ones.

"We have to get REDD right and that excludes unfettered, market-based versions. It also means ensuring proper land tenure and rights for local people,” he said.

Deforestation is usually the result of economic pressures imposed from outside the forests, so not dealing with those dooms efforts to conserve forests and slow climate change, concluded a study involving 60 of the world's top experts on forest governance, “Embracing Complexity: Meeting the Challenges of International Forest Governance. A global assessment report", released in January.

REDD promises to mobilize a great deal of money for conservation to resist those outside economic pressures, but good governance is needed to make sure forests are actually protected on the ground, said Jeremy Rayner, chair of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), which conducted the study.

Even REDD+ programs continue to "explicitly value carbon storage above the improvement of forest conditions and livelihoods," the report concluded.

There is urgency to protect forests, but REDD+ is not the one-size-fits-all solution, Rayner said. "Governance in most regions is not strong enough to handle implementation of REDD.”

Many approaches are needed and market-based systems could have a role in some places, whereas fund-based initiatives would work much better in other areas, he said.

Significant problems remain about how to value forests. Nor is there consensus on what a forest is. "Some argue that an oil palm plantation is a forest because it sequesters carbon," he explained.

"Right now we must experiment and try different mechanisms in an open and transparent manner to learn what works and where," Rayner concluded.

Boy's Death Highlights Crisis in Homes for Disabled - NYTimes.com

Boy's Death Highlights Crisis in Homes for Disabled - NYTimes.com A tragic story of a boy who was abused, and died at the hands of New York state workers at a facility tailored to treat people with cognitive disabilities.

Talk Back: Tobacco labels -- a model for potato chip labels?

Talk Back: Tobacco labels -- a model for potato chip labels?

My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant - NYTimes.com

My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant - NYTimes.com José Antonio Vargas, a journalist born in the Philippines, who shared a Pulitzer Prize winner with fellow reporters at the Washington Post, and his revelation that he’s an undocumented worker in the United States.

Climate of Denial | Rolling Stone Politics

Climate of Denial | Rolling Stone Politics

California Legislature to forfeit pay, Chiang says

California Legislature to forfeit pay, Chiang says

Virgencita de Talpa

Hoy te vengo a pedir
Virgencita de mi alma
Que yo pueda crecer
Con paz y calma

He venido a tu altar
A pedirte que ruegues
Al Señor de los cielos
Por nuestro hogar…

Con toda devoción
Vengo a implorarte
Que pidas al Señor
Para salvarme…

Tu ves todas mis penas
Ruega al Señor,
Que rompa mis cadenas
De pecador…

Y confiado ya en ti
Porque eres mi abogada
Y de Dios madre amada
Ruega por mi…

Por José Santana Díaz.

Study: More college freshmen feel 'above average' - LA Daily News

Study: More college freshmen feel 'above average' - LA Daily News Study on why college students are more self-centered, and feel superior than their elders.

Chevrolet Volt First Drive - Kelley Blue Book

Understanding the 2011 Chevy Volt's Fuel Economy

How a great car works:

Siblings-of-sick-kids

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/28/131644645/siblings-of-sick-kids-learn-a-life-lesson-early

Raid puts Mexican casino mogul in role of victim

Raid puts Mexican casino mogul in role of victim

The Making of the 2011 Chevy Volt

Amazing assembly line...

Fear route in Mexico's peace tour(2)

In San Luis Potosí, Sicilia spoke for the first time of possible acts of civil disobedience: "If we don't manage to transform the heart of the institutions (with the caravan and the social pact), there are other weapons, other legitimate non-violent means, such as a tax boycott or civil disobedience."

On the way out of San Luis Potosí, the caravan learned that the night before, the federal police carried out a raid without a warrant on the offices of the Paso del Norte Human Rights Centre headed by Catholic priest Óscar Enríquez, one of Ciudad Juárez's most prominent organizations.

The news caused tension among the participants as they headed into areas with a heavier presence of organized criminal gangs, and prompted the drivers to demand that the organizers make the caravan more compact and shorten the public events in towns along the way, to avoid driving at night.

The caravan has once again brought together many of the victims' families who took part in the May 8 peace march that marked the start of a new movement organized by people who have lost loved ones in the wave of violence.

In front of the Ángel de la Independencia monument in the Mexican capital, Julián Lebarón from the state of Chihuahua read out a letter addressed to Juan Francisco Sicilia, saying "this collective tragedy has to be capable of bringing us together as never before in history. This time the cause won't be an earthquake or a flood; the cause is a seed of scorn for us, the people of Mexico.

"I am marching to shout that the dead are someone's sons and daughters, they aren't stones or numbers…I don't want to be anyone's anonymous son, I don't want apathy to end up wiping us all away," said Lebarón, who added that the march "is for us to find each other again, on a route of humanity and strength."

The organizers hope that more vehicles and demonstrators will join the caravan as it approaches Ciudad Juárez, where civil society organizations are preparing a welcome. But before they get there, the participants have to drive through dangerous areas where drug trafficking gangs operate and kill – areas where Carlos Sánchez has seen so many horrors.

The 1980 Nobel prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, an Argentinian who joined Sicilia’s movement, sent a letter to media outlets asking to avoid stigmatizing the death and their families.

“The ‘It was for something’ or ‘What was he into? are classic sentences in the kidnapping and forced disappearance of tens of thousands in Latin America,” said Perez Esquivel. He also asked the international community to help find alternatives to stop "the genocide.”

Fear route in Mexico's peace tour(1)

Carlos Sánchez knows a lot about the fear faced by Mexican society today, because he crisscrosses the country in his job as a bus driver. But he feels that now he has begun to help fight it, driving one of the vehicles in the Peace and Justice Caravan headed by Mexican poet Javier Sicilia.

Sánchez, 45, said he was happy that the head of the private bus company he works for asked him to drive one of the buses in which the peace caravan is heading northward to Ciudad Juárez on the U.S. border.

"The violence and crime are terrible in this country, and it's good that people are doing something," he said as he drove, before launching into a lengthy description of the horrors he sees in his job: bodies on the roadside, shootouts, armed assaults – day-to-day scenes of which he is an invisible and mute witness.

"No justice has ever been done for the innocent victims. In Reynosa (in the northern state of Tamaulipas) you can see the fear in people's faces," he says, before adding almost to himself: "This isn't a safe job anymore. What future lies ahead for my kids?"

The "caravan of solace", as Sicilia has dubbed it, is a winding ride by 13 buses and 25 cars carrying peace activists and relatives of victims from around the country through a number of the cities that have been hit hardest by the drug violence that has spiralled in this country over the last few years.

The caravan set out on Saturday June 4 from Cuernavaca, capital of the central state of Morelos, where Sicilia's son, Juan Francisco, and six other young people were tortured and murdered Mar. 28, allegedly by drug gangs.

From there it headed to Mexico City and Morelia, capital of the west-central state of Michoacán, where the La Familia drug cartel is based. In Morelia, eight people were killed in 2008 when grenades were thrown into a crowd of people celebrating Mexico's Independence Day.

Sunday night it stopped in San Luis Potosí, capital of the state of the same name, where a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was killed in February.

On Monday they continued through the neighbouring states of Zacatecas and Durango, where mass graves containing the remains of at least 200 people have been found since April.

Tuesday's stop is Monterrey, capital of the northeastern state of Nuevo León, which went from being the country's most prosperous industrial city to a battleground of the drug cartels. From there it will head to the adjacent state of Coahuila and after that on to Chihuahua, where the participants will stay the night Wednesday in the state capital.

By the time it reaches Ciudad Juárez, the most violent city in Latin America, Thursday the caravan will have travelled 3,000 kilometres and will have offered solace in exchange for dozens of stories of pain shared in gatherings that bring together families of victims, to show them that they are not alone.

In Ciudad Juárez a social pact will be signed calling for an end to the militarisation of the country, the strategy followed to fight the drug cartels since conservative President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006.

Since the government's "war on drugs" began, there have been at least 40,000 drug-related murders.

The social pact will call for militarization to be replaced by a model of law enforcement and public safety based on the reconstruction of the social fabric and on respect for human rights.

In a packed public square on Saturday, Sicilia heard the accounts of people from Cherán, an indigenous village where the people have mounted blockades and taken security into their own hands since Apr. 15 to keep out illegal loggers allied with drug traffickers.

One of the women who spoke was María Herrera Magdalena, who said four of her sons have disappeared since August 2008. "Every night I imagine their faces, hoping to see them again," she said, in one of the most moving moments since the march began.

On Saturday, when the caravan was setting out, the army arrested Jorge Hank Rhon, a former mayor of Tijuana who belongs to a powerful family that is generally considered "untouchable."

The arrest of Rhon, a leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), pushed news of the start of the peace tour off the front pages of the newspapers in Mexico.

It also overshadowed the second anniversary of a fire in which 49 children were killed in a public day care centre in Hermosillo, capital of the northeast state of Sonora – a tragedy for which no one has been held responsible, despite clear signs of negligence found by a Supreme Court inquiry.

Probation officer stole $14,000 meant for former foster children - LA Daily News

Probation officer stole $14,000 meant for former foster children - LA Daily News On stolen money from foster care young adults by a Los Angeles County probation officer who recently died.

Supreme Court allows California to grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants

Supreme Court allows California to grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants

States make their own tuition rules for undocumented students

States make their own tuition rules for undocumented students