Buzz Blog

A historic trial happening in Argentina right now could shed light on “Operation Condor,” a multicountry effort among South American dictatorships that with CIA and U.S. support assassinated leftist dissidents, students, journalists and protesters throughout the continent during the ‘70s and ‘80s.---

Top of the Alty World

“Operation Condor Trial Tackles Coordinated Campaign by Latin American Dictatorships to Kill Leftists.”—Democracy Now!

More people die in Oregon from drug overdoses than car crashes, but the state could also pave the way for the model of preventing the deaths through the dissemination of the emergency overdose drug called Narcan.—Willamette Week

The missing piece of the U.S. gun-control debate is the role of American guns in international arms trading.—AlterNet

Top of Alty Utah

A bill extending discrimination protections in housing and the workplace to LGBT Utahns passes favorably out of a legislative committee by one vote.—Salt Lake City Weekly

A bill to fund preschool programs for at-risk youth is killed on the Senate floor.—Salt Lake City Weekly

A bill that would have directed money from alcohol sales to fund education dies on the House floor.—KCPW

A Senate bill would create a board to help make more government records easily accessibly to the public.—Utah Political Capitol

Rantosphere

Rolling Stone applauds Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, for his 13-hour-long filibuster raising awareness of drones and the killing of American civilians without a trial.

“The core issue of this filibuster – what made it important – is that it targeted the very core of a central premise held in common by both the Bush and Obama administrations: We're keeping you safe, but we can't tell you how. Obama has become the "trust me" president, a leader whose apparent benevolence has allowed him to tap into and expand the creeping authoritarian mindset that has become a greater and greater element of U.S. politics post-9/11. Democrats under Bush were alternately happy to acquiesce to his power grabs and then eager to feign opposition when he was weak. But to think that the Democrats are the party of restrained executive power is a mistake, as this filibuster, not to mention the last five years at least, made clear.”—Rolling Stone

The Long View

Indy Week takes an in-depth look at how climate change is affecting food production now and in the future.

“The results of climate change—hellfire summers, intense hurricanes, long droughts punctuated by deluges of biblical proportions—are already altering the way crops pollinate, mature and produce. Over time, they could change what we eat and when we eat it: Local farmers could grow new types of fruits and vegetables that were traditionally raised farther south, and local food could become scarcer in summer and more abundant in late fall. That's the good news. The bad news was released in a U.S. Department of Agriculture report last month: "Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to U.S. agriculture." The report concluded that while in the short-term farmers should be able to adapt their operations to a changing climate, by mid-century, crop yields are projected to decline because of rising temperatures and extremes between rain and drought. To call it farmaggedon would be overreaching, but unless farmers and consumers rethink how they interact with the planet, there could be less food, and what there is could be expensive.”—Indy Week