In Tuesday’s address to Congress, President Obama announced that the U.S. will forge a new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This declaration comes shortly after the deployment of 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan and a U.S. Government Accountability Office report stating that the $12.3 billion dollars poured into Pakistan has not worked to boost security.
Senior Pakistani and Afghan military and diplomatic officials are in Washington for talks. Worldfocus talks with The Atlantic Councils Shuja Nawaz to discuss why his organization recommends more investment in Pakistan and likely developments in Afghanistan and on its borders.
Last year, waves of attacks on immigrants swept through South Africa. Now those same immigrants are caught between violence in a country that wants them to leave, and the danger of returning to home countries that don’t want them back.
Worldfocus special correspondent Martin Seemungal explores the ongoing problems faced by South Africas immigrants.
Calling it one of the most important days in country’s history, the Iranian government today began the final round of testing as it prepares to start up the country’s very first nuclear power plant. The head of Iran’s nuclear program also said today that Iran is continuing to add to its ability to create the enriched uranium needed for nuclear weapons.
Michael Levi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and expert on nuclear proliferation, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the threat posed by Iran, whether the country’s nuclear ambitions are peaceful and Russia’s involvement with Iran’s nuclear program.
“I believe he’s taking America down the wrong path,” Samuel J. Wurzelbacher aka Joe the Plumber told POLITICO. “So far every step he’s taken I pretty much disagree with.” Wurzelbacher has been pondering a run for Congress and said, “If I became a congressman I would literally bang people’s heads together and probably get in a lot of trouble.”
Americans For Prosperity (AFP) has released these two 30 second spots claiming that global warming and green energy is a hoax. The spot features John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel. AFP self-promotes as being “committed to educating citizens about economic policy and mobilizing those citizens as advocates in the public policy process.” It purports to be an grassroots organization that “engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state and federal levels.”
According to SourceWatch, AFP was established “in late 2003 as a successor to Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation following an internal rift between Citizens for a Sound Economy and its affiliated foundation.” AFP was also formally affiliated with the Independent Women’s Forum which was founded by Rosalie Gaull (Ricky) Silberman in 1992 as a vehicle to attack Hillary Rodham Clinton and other “secular feminists.”
The AFP is one of the main right wing groups attacking the science of climate change. In 2008, Americans for Prosperity sponsored a Hot Air Tour campaign, a hot air balloon cross-country tour with the slogan, “Global Warming Alarmism: Lost Jobs, Higher Taxes, Less Freedom.” According the the Hot Air Tour website, “Climate alarmists have bombarded citizens with apocalyptic scenarios and pressured them into environmental political correctness. It’s time to tell the other side of the story.” That of the energy companies, apparently.
One of its primary backers is the Koch Family Foundations which is the charitable trust of the Koch family that owns Koch Industries, the nation’s largest privately held energy company, with annual revenues of more than $25 billion. Koch Industries is currently the second largest family-owned business in the country. The foundations are financed via the oil and gas fortunes of Fred G. Koch, a founding member of the John Birch Society. The principal owners are now Fred Koch’s sons, David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch who have a combined personal fortune estimated at more than $3 billion and who have emerged as major Republican contributors in recent years. Both David and Charles are part of the Forbes 50. The Koch Family Foundation is also a major contributor to the libertarian Cato Institute. Finally, David Koch is the chairman of the board of Americans for Prosperity.
The ads are part of a $140,000 campaign and running only in Virginia.
Mexico City is home to one of the world’s largest landfills, but only fifteen per cent of its refuse is recycled. The local government now wants to make the capital greener – by converting toxic waste into electricity. But as Al Jazeera’s Franc Contreras reports, not everyone is welcoming the proposal.
Mexico City is planning to construct four new waste processing plants over the next four years that will hopefully serve to compost and recycle 85% of the city’s garbage. More from the Baltimore Sun:
Mexico City wants to turn one of the planet’s biggest and messiest waste management systems into the greenest in Latin America, if not the developing world.
A newly formed Waste Commission is working to build four state-of-the-art processing centers in the next four years to recycle, compost or burn for energy 85 percent of Mexico City’s trash – compared with about 6 percent recycled today. If it works, it would put this sprawling, polluted metropolis in a league with San Francisco, the Netherlands and other top recyclers, and first among developing cities, where the recycling rates mostly hover around 10 percent.
“The whole concept of recycling is very new in Latin America,” said Atiliano Savino, president of the International Solid Waste Association.
While many places are good at recycling one thing, such as aluminum, Savino said, he’s never seen a city revamp its recycling program on this scale in so little time. U.S. and European cities that now have recycling rates over 50 percent began decades ago.
Given the state of the global economy, it was perhaps fitting that the first foreign leader to visit President Barack Obama in the White House was the prime minister of Japan. The two countries are the worlds leading economic powers, and todays meeting follows Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Japan last week.
As the two men met today, they reaffirmed their strong partnership and its importance in helping the world recover from the grip of a deep recession.
Japans economy — dependent on exports — is shrinking three times faster than the U.S. economy, and Prime Minister Taro Asos popularity is falling even faster. One public opinion poll in Japan put his popularity rating at 11 percent.
The North Korean issue also became more urgent today when the communist nation announced it is preparing to launch what it calls an experimental communications satellite, but which experts say may be a test of a long-range missile that could reach Alaska. In 1998, the North Koreans fired a ballistic missile that flew over Japan.
Ayako Doi, an associate fellow at the Asia Society and former editor of Japan Digest, joins Martin Savidge to discuss how the U.S. and Japan can tackle the economy, the level of threat posed by the anticipated North Korean missile launch and the rest of the meeting’s agenda.
How is it that the GOP continues to shoot itself in the foot with its anti-science crusade? Back during the general election, Governor Sarah Palin, in a moment of horrific ignorance, wailed against fruit flies, not realizing the role that the humble fruit fly plays in scientific research. Then there is Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma who believes that global climate change is “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
Now it’s Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s turn to demonstrate a profound ignorance of the country he lives in with yet another flippant anti-science remark. The United States ranks third, behind Indonesia and Japan, in the number of historically active volcanoes. Most of the volcanoes are found in the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska Peninsula, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest. The remainder are widely distributed in the western part of the nation from California to Colorado. The entire Western United States sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire. A part of this ring of fire is the Cascade Volcanic Arc which includes nearly 20 major volcanoes. Seattle and Portland are both firmly at least until the Earth shakes within the Cascade Volcanic Arc.