All around the world today people are coming together to call for international action against climate change. The focus has been on the number 350, which is the parts-per-million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that scientists, including the UN's top climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri, believe we need to stay below in order to avert disaster. 350.org has organized a series of events around the world calling attention to the target, and they're giving visitors and participants alike some real time gratification through Twitter feeds and Flickr slideshows. We've blogged about Maldivian officials holding a cabinet meeting underwater to raise awareness of rising oceans, and now the Divers Association of the Maldives is hosting an underwater rally with the goal of having 350 divers stay underwater in teams for 24 hours. You can find out what's going on near you at 350.org.

At Link TV we've been exploring how climate change is already having an impact in the US and elsewhere through a series of short videos called Climate Change Hits Home.

For World Food Day 2009 (which is tomorrow, October 16th!), Link TV is helping to promote a campaign called Stand Up, Take Action, a movement now four years in the running. As part of the framework for the UN Millennium Development Goals adopted by global leaders in the year 2000, worldwide hunger and poverty must be eradicated by the year 2015. A lofty endeavor, you say? Maybe. But millions of global citizens are demanding that this promise be kept, or at the very least, kept a priority. Each year, through events organized by Stand Up, Take Action, attention is called to this ongoing issue, and the movement is growing. Last year, it broke its own Guinness World Record for the largest mobilization around a single cause in recorded history. Click here for events taking place this weekend in your area.

Watch this video and join the countdown to World Food Day!



Link TV has a lot of great food and hunger related programming, that can be found on our ISSUE: Food page, like a new Michael Pollan special called “Deep Agriculture”, and more. Also, learn about the coffee industry and Fair Trade practices that are effecting small farmers in poor countries around the world from Dean Cycon, Founder and CEO of Dean’s Beans.

My colleague Fernando Gonzalez has graciously contributed this exclusive eulogy for Mercedes Sosa who passed away last week. We both agreed that the video of her performance of "Todo Cambia" captures her passion, charisma and the love she elicited from her fans. Thank you, Fernando.

Mercedes Sosa

By Fernando Gonzalez

For an artist, becoming a political symbol is a double edged sword.
Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, who died of in kidney failure in Buenos Aires on October 4, at age 74, was for many Mother Courage, The Voice of the Americas, The Mother of the Americas, The Voice of the Voiceless, and more.
Sometimes obscured by the mythmaking was the fact that she was an extraordinary artist.
A short, stocky woman, with Indian facial features and jet black hair (she was nicknamed La Negra, the black one), Sosa possessed an extraordinary alto voice, rich and powerful but also remarkably expressive. She could go from a whispered love song to a rousing flag-waver with stunning ease. Sosa was not a songwriter. But, quoting an old line, when Sosa sang a song, it stayed sung. She made her own songs such as “Gracias a La Vida,” “Alfonsina y el Mar,” and “Maria, Maria,” even when the songwriters were themselves major figures such as Violeta Parra and Milton Nascimento. 
She performed usually sitting center stage – although before health problems pretty much confined her to a chair on stage, she would also get up and dance, a memory perhaps from when Sosa was a teenager in Tucumán, a province in Argentina’s northwest, and she was a teacher of folk dances.
She started as a traditional folk singer but soon she was part of a group of poets and musicians who were, sometimes literally, rewriting folk music with what became known as Movimiento del Nuevo Cancionero, the New Song Movement, updating the standard folk lyrics to address the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. It set the tone for her entire career.

 “We were looking for a different poetic language, and musically we looked at jazz,” she once explained. “We spoke from truth and poverty, but didn´t forget about the landscape, because we didn’t want to grow apart from the people. They called us communists because any revolutionary act provokes fear and culture is the most important revolution. Governments don’t last. Culture is the greatest power.”
Notably, and especially after her return to Argentina in 1982 after a three year self-imposed exile, Sosa not only maintained a progressive attitude regarding the lyrics but applied it to her music, collaborating, for example, with rockers such as Charly Garcia and Fito Páez, and opening her repertoire to young, sometimes unknown, songwriters.
In recent years, in 1997 and again in 2003, she struggled with various health problems. In ‘97 the situation was so dire that, she acknowledged years later, she wrote her testament. Her problems in 2003, including severe depression, kept her off the stages for two years.
Sosa died after 13 days at the hospital. Her illness canceled plans to present a new two-disc set of duets featuring an all star cast of collaborators including García, Páez, Shakira, Julieta Venegas, and Joaquín Sabina. (It was released in the U.S. as one disc including selections from the two volumes.) It was, appropriately, called “Cantora,” singer.
For all the names she was called, this was the only title Sosa claimed for herself.
"Sometimes, one is made to be a big mouth or some sort of Robin Hood and it's not like that," she once told me, in the 90s. "I am a woman who sings, who tries to sing as well as possible with the best songs available. I was bestowed this role as big protester and it's not like that at all. I'm just a thinking artist."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”), government officials and scientists from more than 100 countries, wrangled for weeks in Brussels  in early 2007 as to whether global warming was a man-made or a natural phenomenon.  They argued over droughts, air circulation patterns, snowfall, icecaps and a thousand other indicators of whether global warming was “likely” or “directly” our fault.  In spite of the strong belief in the scientific community that all of our cars, factories and other activities were speeding up global warming at an alarming rate, the politicians managed to get the official word to be “likely”.

High in the Sierra Nevada (“Snow-Capped Mountains”) of Colombia, indigenous Arhuaco coffee farmer Javier Mestres had no such doubts.  He did not see things in parts per million.  He had never heard of the Global Circulation Model that tried to measure increments of change in the temperature of the ocean or dynamics of the atmosphere.  He was unaware that the IPCC report stated that Colombia would heat up dramatically in the next twenty years, and lose ninety percent of its glacial snow caps by 2050.  Javier saw the results of a warming planet clearly in the premature flowering of his coffee plants on his four-acre family farm in the slopes above Nabusimake, the capital of the Arhuaco nation. He showed me the smaller, weaker berries that dotted the stems and wondered why the outside world wanted to harm these beautiful plants.  Why were we changing the world? 

For centuries, the Arhuaco spiritual elders, the Mamos, known in their language as the “Elder Brothers”, have carried out monthly rituals in sacred sites throughout the Sierra Nevada, which they call “the Heart of the World”, to insure that the planet is kept in a geo-spiritual balance.  But for the past two decades, the Mamos have been observing rapid changes in the Heart of the World.  They have watched the snow caps on their sacred peaks shrink over time and have seen the plant life change.  They have felt the lessening of the water in the air and soil, and noted the changing migration patterns of the birds and butterflies.  They have shared these observations with the tribe, and increasingly with the outside world, with us - the “Younger Brothers”.

I was in Colombia to learn about the impacts of global warming on the Heart of the World.  I was there to assist the Arhuaco in their struggle for self-determination, supported (and challenged) in part by coffee.  I was there to heal the wound in my heart from the kidnapping and murder of my dear friend, renowned indigenous rights activist Ingrid Washinawatok, in 1999 by the leftist rebel group FARC (“Armed Revolutionary Front of Colombia”).  It was a visit that had been delayed many times by war, weather or fear.

I met with Moises Villafanes, a young Arhuaco whom the Mamos had sent to university to learn to be an advocate for his people in the world of the Younger Brothers.  I asked Moises about how the impact of changing temperatures on Arhuaco lands and coffee production.  Moises talked for a long time about the drying up of rivers due to the lessened snow at the peaks and the erratic rainfall of the past few years, and the movement of plant species up the mountains as a result of greater heat and less water at the lower altitudes.

“It is as if you can see the plants trying to run from the sun and the heat, which should not be so strong in the lower zones.”  Moises spoke with a combination of scientific awareness and poetry that made things incredibly clear.  He introduced me to an 83 year-old Mamo, Don Faumbautista, who shared his insight with me.

“Beyond the Heart of the World, the Younger Brother is changing the whole earth.  I don’t know everything they are doing, but they are changing the whole earth,”

“Are you talking about global warming?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you call it, but, yes, the Mother is getting warmer.  The rain falls differently than before.  It is later, but it falls harder.  It is destructive sometimes when it should be nurturing.  Many of the rivers are dry before they reach the sea.  And the snows on the peaks that replenish the rivers are less each year.  It is all happening very quickly.  First, you took our gold.  Then you took our land.  Now you are taking the water and the air itself.  The Younger Brothers are waging a war on the earth and it must stop!”

There is a lot of other evidence on the impact of global warming on coffee production (and, therefore, producers!) around the world.  The United Nations estimates that 90% of Ugandan low-altitude coffee will disappear in twenty years.  A similar report documents the impacts of erratic rainfall and increased temperature and withering forests on coffee production in India.  But what you have just read comes from the farmers themselves, who are painfully aware of global warming and can’t do anything about it.

We can.

If you watch our premieres and blocks you know Jair Oliveira's songs "Intacto" and "Tiro Onda." Jair was in our studio the other day, and he gave us an exclusive performance of one of the songs off his latest CD, which is dedicated to his two year old daughter Isabella, and is now nominated for a Latin Grammy. The song is a delightful ode called "Showertime." This is just a teaser though.  He sang us five songs in all, so keep an eye out on the blog for a much more extensive interview and more music from this wonderfully sunny Brazilian.

Update on the recent Latin Pulse episode, Colombia: Stories That Kill

The Colombian government has been conducting intensive spy operations on opposition members for years. This revelation earlier this year garnered promises of reform from agency directors, but new evidence shows the spy program still seems to be expanding. This expansion comes as President Uribe seeks a third term in office.

Targets of this operation include lawyers, activists, union leaders, indigenous leaders and journalists. Hollman Morris, director of Contravía, recounted his personal experience with the state's intelligence agency to Latin Pulse in July.

The Department of Administrative Security, or DAS, reports directly to the president and works closely with the U.S. The U.S. State Department authorized another $545 million dollars in military aid in September, despite the scandal and a troubling human rights record.

The New York Times also recently reported on this issue, and you can watch Al Jazeera English's report below.

This August, Latin American countries showed their will to dissent from U.S. drug policy, as both Mexico and Argentina decriminalized possession of marijuana and other illicit drugs. 

The decision in Argentina came after a Supreme Court ruling that the arrest of eight men in 2006 for possession of marijuana cigarettes was unconstitutional.  In its ruling, the court concentrated on the defendants' rights to privacy.  As Supreme Court President Ricardo Lorenzetti said, "Behavior in private is legal, as long as it doesn't constitute clear danger."

While Argentina's move is historic, Mexico's decision is far wider in scope. On Friday August 21st, the Mexican government decriminalized "personal and immediate use" of illicit drugs including heroin, marijuana, methamphetamines, LSD and cocaine.  For each of these drugs, the government set legal limits for personal possession.  One can now possess the equivalent of four joints of marijuana, 4 lines' worth of cocaine, .015 milligrams of LSD, 50 milligrams of heroin, or 40 milligrams of methamphetamines. However, the government remains cautious in its spin on the decision.  Bernardo Espino del Castillo of the Mexican attorney general's office said, "This is not legalization.  This is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty."

Instead of arrests, people caught with these small amounts will be told of available clinics and encouraged to enter a rehabilitation program.  One wonders if there will be a Miranda rights-like speech created for this type of encounter.  Rehab will be mandatory when a user is caught a third time.

Mexico became the second Latin American country after Portugal to decriminalize possession of these drugs.  Reactions to the decision have been varied, especially as drug use remains a volatile issue in Mexico.  One recent government survey put the number of Mexico's addicts at 460,000, which was 50 percent larger than the addict population in 2002. Meanwhile, drug use can lead to other public health issues: 67 percent of intravenous drug users in Tijuana, for example, have tested positive for tuberculosis.

Some hope that the decision will lead to a greater focus on drug treatment rather than prosecution, and will help the government focus on the cartels rather than the users.  As Alberto Islas, a security consultant in Mexico City said to the Wall Street Journal, "It helps the government focus on the bad guys and lets state and local governments get involved in drug abuse as a public health issue."

Efforts at fighting drug use through arrests have been unsuccessful in the past.  Since Felipe Calderon took office in 2006, there have been approximately 95,000 people detained for small-scale drug-dealing and possession, but out of those detainees, only 12 to 15 percent have ever been charged with anything.  Many times police officers used the illegality of the drugs to shake down casual users for bribes in order to avoid arrests. 

While the change may make for more focused law enforcement, Javier Oliva, a political scientist at Mexico's Autonomous University, said the law could pose a contradiction for the government's larger anti-drug efforts. "If they decriminalize drugs, it could lead the army, which has been given the task of combating this, to say, 'What are we doing?'"

Julie Myers Wood, former head of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement under President G.W. Bush, said she also had doubts about Mexico's decision. "I'm sympathetic with the Mexicans that they need to find a more effective way to deal with the cartels," she said. "But just giving up, in terms of small amounts of drugs like cocaine and heroin, does not seem to me to be the most sensible approach."

Some Mexican law enforcement and drug treatment agencies also expressed doubt about the change. "You're inviting the young generation to use drugs," said San Juan Police Chief Juan Gonzalez to an online news source.  Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said, "It's street-level use that's destroying society."

The NY Times interviewed a Tijuana drug counselor who said, "With everything that's happening, we need to distance ourselves from the drugs.  Imagine if I told people in here that it was legal for them to have a little.  No way." One of the more interesting opinions came from a Christian Science Monitor forum on the issue.  "Lawrence" wrote, "The Mexican drug laws are not what's causing the cartels to gain power and money-- it is the American drug laws."

There's some support for that notion: FBI figures from 2007 showed more arrests in the U.S. for drug violations than any other crime.  Of the country's 1.8 million drug arrests that year, 82 percent were for possession, not dealing, and of that figure, 42 percent, or 872,721 people, were arrested for marijuana possession.  That figure was a record high for the country, likely indicating record sales for the drug cartels.  The Obama administration's reaction to Mexico's decision has been low-key.  When US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske visited Mexico in July, he said that he would take a "wait-and-see" approach if the law passed.

As for now, there's no telling whether the new law will help clean the streets of Tijuana, but it will hopefully lead more addicts to treatment rather than police custody.

President Richard Nixon solicited the help of Brazil's notorious leader Emilio Medici in early talks of overthrowing Chile's President Salvador Allende, according to a secret memo from 1971 released to the public for the first time on Sunday. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote up the meeting, and was asked to act as a back channel between Medici and Nixon.

Two years later Allende was killed in a US-backed coup which put Gen. Augusto Pinochet into power. Pinochet's name would later become synonymous with brutal human rights abuses and "disappearances" in the thousands.

The actions of Brazil's leadership, who were no strangers to torture and assassination, are detailed by the victims themselves in the astonishing contemporaneous documentary Brazil: A Report on Torture [watch here]. The young students and professionals who appear in the film were living in Chile as political refugees when Pinochet came into power, throwing them again into a world of detention and pain. In this interview, filmmakers Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and Saul Landau (Fidel) talk about their time in Chile interviewing the Brazilian victims, as well as US involvement in South American politics. Wexler and Landau were in Chile working on a documentary about Allende when they met the victims.

Link TV also broadcasts the documentary The Trials of Henry Kissinger. Check here for airdates and a clip from the film.

This week as Venezuela shut down its border with Colombia, cargo trucks bringing perishable food sat in park on the highway. It was a perfect image to capture the state of affairs between Venezuela and Colombia: a standstill, with potential for spoiling.

For the last several years, Colombia's Alvaro Uribe has maintained a tricky alliance with both the U.S. and Venezuela, maintaining strong economic and diplomatic ties with both countries. While the U.S. continues funneling military aid to Colombia through Plan Colombia, Colombia has maintained a huge export business with a longtime adversary of the U.S. government, Venezuela. Chavez and Uribe’s friendship has paid off over the years, particularly when Chavez helped broker the release of dozens of FARC hostages back in 2003.

Yet the recent agreement by Colombia to allow seven of its military bases to be used by the U.S. for counternarcotics and antiterrorism operations has soured relations. As of this week, Venezuela has closed its borders for some Colombian exports, and Chavez has pulled his ambassador out of Bogota. Chavez has stated that he will "freeze" relations with Colombia, and that Venezuela is not dependent on the country for imports. In the wake of the report, the Colombian peso fell in value for the first time in a month, after having been the world’s best performing currency for four months.
 
However, even as Chavez says that Venezuela can survive without Colombia’s imports, the standoff seems like it would hurt his country much more than Colombia. Venezuela has been the main market for Colombia’s non-traditional exports in plastics, poultry, textiles, and other exports. In the first five months of ’09, Venezuela absorbed 33 percent of Colombia’s exports, followed by the U.S. taking in 19.6 percent. Analysts quoted by Bloomberg News stated that Venezuela would suffer in worsening food shortages, which would increase the country’s already high inflation and put more pressure on their deficit. Then there’s the effect on Venezuela’s petroleum industry. Venezuela looks to Colombia for imports of 300 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, and that gas is required for the country’s oil reservoirs to increase pressure and boost production, and as raw material for the petrochemical industry.

The question now becomes whether either country will flinch. Uribe has garnered sympathy for the new bases from Uruguay and Brazil. Also, Uribe has built up foreign investment in his country by building confidence in counternarcotics and antiterrorism programs that the U.S. has funded. In 2007, BusinessWeek hailed the new Colombia as the most “extreme emerging market” in the world, because Uribe had successfully changed the country’s image from a haven for drugrunners to a center for investors. If Uribe can find alternatives to Venezuela for the country’s exports, he may not need to continue relations with Chavez.
 
And if so, the Colombian truckers now stalled at the Venezuelan border may find cause to turn around and never look back.

Link's latest episode of Latin Pulse/Pulso Latino travels to Toribio, Colombia, symbol of the indigenous resistance movement following a devastating attack by FARC guerillas in 2005. With their land under attack, occupied by guerillas, paramilitaries, and police, the Naza Indians native to this region in Southern Colombia are struggling to pick up the pieces. The dangers for civilians remain high in Colombia's Cauca region, as FARC guerillas, drug traffickers and police continue to do battle, including this recent attack in Buenos Aires, Cauca, Colombia.

This video footage comes from Colombian TV program Contravia, led by investigative journalist Hollman Morris, who was featured in this previous Latin Pulse interview. The Foundation for a New Iberian-American Journalism, an organization founded by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, awarded this episode of Contravia its highest prize in 2007 for journalistic excellence.