Smokin' Mirrors

Japan: Land of the Rising Target? by Willhemina Wahlin Japan, steeped in a tradition of honor and commitment, must face an embarrassing truth: it has not made a dent in its Kyoto Protocol target emissions, its 6% target reduction soaring to an 8.3% increase by 2003, which essentially puts the target in the vicinity of 15%. So the protocol's redfaced host country is bumping up its involvement in the treaty's three mechanisms: Joint Implementation, the Clean Development Mechanism and Carbon Emissions Trading. Although still in their infant stage, these mechanisms are already big business. Japanese corporations are among the world's largest investors in carbon credits. Strangely, however, there are no plans to require mandatory emission reductions or to create a trading scheme within Japan. While certain government ministries are still debating the best course of action, Japanese corporations have been there, bought that. Environmental groups contend that if Japan is to reach

The Revolution Will be Emailed By Willhemina Wahlin The humble email is a sign of extraordinary times. It acts like a huge chain of information that spreads out across the world in a way that our f orbearers would have thought impossible. Individuals and groups can get their messages out to people in a much more effective way -- particularly when it comes to the petition. I receive so many petitions for this and that via email, but due to the unfortunate lack of space left in my grey matter vaults for the daily intake of info, I often don't remember what those petitions were about 5 seconds after I press send. But one email recently stuck in my mind. It may have simply been its reappearance so many times in my inbox, each new sender compounding upon the urgency of the last, or it could be that I was simply dumbstruck by the tragedy it was telling. More Pic above: A quiet street in the town of San Felix, seemingly unaware of what is to come...the town is known for its tracks of vin

Comics for the politically bent By Willhemina Wahlin Pic: From the 4th espisode of Shooting World by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman. It's 2011. The Iraq war has been going for 8 years, and is spreading. A self confessed enemy of the corporate world, the young and cocky blog journalist Jimmy Burns, unwittingly finds himself at the right place at the right time. More This article was orginally published for the Cheers Magazine's weekly Smokin' Mirrors political column on Friday 9 June, 2006.

School of the Americas: School of Assassins? By Willhemina Wahlin Pic: Fr Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch (SOA Watch) The US military may have changed the name of the School of the Americas (SOA) to the 'Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation' (WHINSEC) and added a few token human rights courses to the curriculum, but shedding the dark and bloody past of the institution responsible for training some of Latin America's most notorious human rights violators, murderers and dictators won't be as simple as a semantic differential. An investigation of the school's history has never been officially undertaken, despite the approximated deaths of hundreds of thousands of people at the hands of its graduates. Now, however, a bill has entered the congressional arena that hopes to shut down the institution dubbed the 'School of Assassins' - this time for good. More This article was originally published in Cheers Magazine on Friday 2nd June, 2006.