03/02/06 - IPS - U.S. President George W. Bush’s proposals to boost government spending on clean energy technologies, like much of the rest of his State of the Union Address, received a tepid reaction from analysts here Wednesday who described the speech as uncharacteristically timid.
While energy and environmental activists applauded his portrayal of the energy problem faced by the U.S. as an "addiction to oil", they said his solution — a 22 percent increase in clean energy research — (…)
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Latin America and the Caribbean
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UNITED STATES - Bush’s Energy Proposals (Jim Lobe, IPS)
5 February 2006, posted by Aurora Scott
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MEXICO - De Facto Amnesty for "Dirty War" Human Rights Violators (Diego Cevallos, IPS)
4 February 2006, posted by Manuela Garza Ascencio
03/002/06 - IPS - The commitment made by Mexican President Vicente Fox to bring to justice those responsible for the torture and murder of activists and dissidents in the late 1960s and 1970s remains an empty promise, and there is apparently little interest among his possible successors in taking up the issue.
"Fox’s promise was a lie, he has not kept it and now it will never be fulfilled," Alicia Camacho, a torture survivor and spokeswoman for the Union of Mothers of the Disappeared in (…) -
COLOMBIA-ECUADOR- Panic Along the Border (Constanza Vieira, IPS)
4 February 2006, posted by Manuela Garza Ascencio
03/02/06 - IPS - "The bullets and shell casings were falling like hail" in the Ecuadorian village of Barranca Bermeja near the Colombian border during a recent incursion by the Colombian air force, said terrified local residents.
The Ecuadorian government, which says the attack was intentional and "premeditated," has issued its third formal protest since November over incursions into its national territory, and announced that it would send warplanes to safeguard its northern border.
The (…) -
URUGUAY-ARGENTINA - Pulp Frictions Threaten Integration (Diana Cariboni, IPS)
27 January 2006, posted by Manuela Garza Ascencio
The Mercosur trade bloc and South American integration are being put to the test by the growing frictions between Uruguay and Argentina over the construction of two pulp mills on the Uruguayan side of a river dividing the two nations.
The protests voiced by environmentalists and other civil society groups in Uruguay for over three years have now given way to a bilateral dispute, with both sides adopting nationalistic stances and increasingly entrenched positions.
As the tensions (…) -
VENEZUELA - WORLD SOCIAL FORUM - Violence Against Women in the Dock (Patricia Grogg, IPS)
27 January 2006, posted by Manuela Garza Ascencio
27/01/2006 - IPS - Women who are victims of various kinds of gender-related violence and discrimination will testify at a "world tribunal", as part of the Latin American phase of the VI World Social Forum, which opens Tuesday in Caracas.
"The idea is to bring to light what the dominant capitalist system is hiding," Humberto Miranda told IPS. The activist is a member of the coordinating group that is organising the "international women’s tribunal against free-market patriarchal violence", (…) -
LATIN AMERICA - Indigenous People Demand More Central Role in the World Social Forum (Diego Cevallos, IPS)
24 January 2006, posted by Manuela Garza Ascencio
IPS - Indigenous leaders from Latin America are overjoyed at the inauguration of Aymara Indian Evo Morales as Bolivia’s new president, which they are celebrating as a victory of their own. They are now hoping that the achievement will help catapult them into a more central role at the sixth World Social Forum (WSF), which opens Tuesday in Venezuela.
"Only a limited number of indigenous people have taken part so far in the World Social Forum, and their debates have not reached the (…) -
BRAZIL - NGOs Move Against Maternal Death (Mario Osava, IPS)
23 January 2006, posted by Manuela Garza Ascencio
17/01/2006 - IPS - The death of a woman in childbirth is a horrific blow to a family preparing for what is meant to be a joyous event, the arrival of a new life. In Brazil, the loss is made even more painful by the fact that over 90 percent of these deaths are preventable.
Carmem Carneiro, a journalist in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, is still grieving the death of her daughter Marina, who died while giving birth in March.
"Her death has torn the whole family apart," said (…) -
LATIN AMERICA - Governments Against Border Fence (Diego Cevallos, IPS)
19 January 2006, posted by Manuela Garza Ascencio
16/01/2006 - IPS - The governments of five countries of Central America, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Mexico met Monday to join forces against the U.S. plan to build a high security fence along portions of its borders to keep out undocumented immigrants, a goal that many U.S. citizens support.
The foreign ministers and other delegates from Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic, meeting in Mexico City, criticised the U.S. (…) -
GUATEMALA - Dismantling the Central American Gangs and Recovering a Lost Generation
Michael Hogan
18 January 2006, posted by Michael HoganCarlos, my driver, was a former federal policeman. He weighed a good two hundred pounds and was well over six feet. He was assigned to me by a local businessman whom I knew in Guatemala City after I explained that I wanted to visit some areas where I could see gang activity. When we arrived at the tianguis or local market, he pulled over the Ford Explorer and opened the glove compartment. He unclipped his automatic from his belt, and put it inside along with his wallet. “Take a few (…)
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ARGENTINA - Torture Still Alive (Marcela Valente, IPS)
16 January 2006, posted by Manuela Garza Ascencio
15/01/006 - IPS - The body of Diego Gallardo, 20, showed 57 injuries caused by savage blows to the head and body. He lay dying for an estimated 15 hours in an Argentine police station where he was brutally beaten by four officers after his arrest.
The atrocity sounds like just another of the thousands perpetrated by the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. But Gallardo was tortured and killed in Avellaneda, a district on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, in 2005, under a fully democratic (…)