Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
The post-coup Honduran Regime of Pepe Lobo, elected under questionable circumstances, continues its crackdown against free speech by attacking musicians, adding to its repression of journalists, political activists, and striking teachers, while being welcomed at the UN and having dinner with President Obama.
“In southern Mexico many multinationals have significant interests because there are so many natural resources. Developers want to use those lands for eco-tourism, they want to exploit the natural resources contained in the forests, etc. The pretext is always the ‘war on drugs’ or ‘security’, but there is more behind the justifications and Chiapas is just one example.”
Unsustainable urban sprawl continues to spread through the world responding to massive population growth and poor planning practices, as people clamor to escape the crowded, contaminated, crime-ridden urban miasma like Cairo.
Keep in mind the ongoing scientific research regarding the undersea plume of oil and dissolved methane gas in the Gulf of Mexico from 3,200 to 4,300 feet below the surface. Studies estimated it more than a mile wide, 650 feet thick and at least 35 kilometers (22 miles) long, but probably longer, as the researchers had to break off because of Hurricane Alex.
A non-violent road-block protest by teachers at the National Pedagogical University “Francisco Morazan” in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, calling for increasing the minimum wage, reinstatement of fired workers, and payment of past-due contributions to a pension and benefits fund, ended with teargas, beatings, and arrests.
Called Astana, it is the world’s latest example of a rare but persistent type, the capital built from zero. It is in a line that includes St Petersburg, Washington DC, Canberra, Ankara and Brasilia and like them it provokes a question: can a city, in all its teeming complexity, really be planned? Or does the attempt lead only to a synthetic simulacrum, a kind-of city that is not quite the real thing?