Image by US Army Korea - IMCOM via Flickrhttp://open.salon.com/blog/behind_blue_eyes/2010/03/25/wikileaks_detained_4_video_of_afghan_civilian_massacre
The State Department/CIA has been tailing and detaining Wikileaks personnel. One person was held for 22 hours. Computers have been seized.
Why?
On April 5th, Wikileaks plans to make public a decrypted video showing an US airstrike that murdered 97 Afghani civilians and journalists.
The Criminal NSA Eavesdropping Program
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/01-4
While torture and aggressive war may have been the most serious crimes which the Bush administration committed, its warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens was its clearest and most undeniable lawbreaking. Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker yesterday became the third federal judge -- out of three who have considered the question -- to find that Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program was illegal (the other two are District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor and 6th Circuit Appellate Judge Ronald Gilman who, on appeal from Judge Taylor's decision, in dissent reached the merits of that question [unlike the two judges in the majority who reversed the decision on technical "standing" grounds] and adopted Taylor's conclusion that the NSA program was illegal).
That means that all 3 federal judges to consider the question have concluded that Bush's NSA program violated the criminal law (FISA). That law provides that anyone who violates it has committed a felony and shall be subject to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each offense.
If we were a country that actually lived under The Rule of Law, this would be a huge story, one that would produce the same consequences for the lawbreakers as a bank robbery, embezzlement or major drug dealing. But since we're not such a country, it isn't and it doesn't.
China's Global Shopping Spree
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/01-5
When it comes to procuring the resources that make industrial societies run, China is now the shopaholic of planet Earth, while the United States is staying at home. Hard-hit by the global recession, the United States has experienced a marked decline in the consumption of oil and other key industrial materials. Not so China. With the recession's crippling effects expected to linger in the U.S. for many years, analysts foresee a slow recovery when it comes to resource consumption. Not so China.
In fact, the Chinese are already experiencing a sharp increase in the use of oil and other commodities. More than that, anticipating the kind of voracious resource consumption that goes with anticipated future growth, and worried about the availability of adequate supplies, giant Chinese energy and manufacturing firms -- many of them state-owned -- have been on a veritable spending binge when it comes to locking down resource supplies for the twenty-first century. They have acquired oil fields, natural gas reserves, mines, pipelines, refineries, and other resource assets in a global buying spree of almost unprecedented proportions.My Canada Includes War, Environmental Degradation and Lost Causes
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/01-2
I was a proud Canadian, smug and self-confident that my country was all mountains, moose, maple syrup and peacemaker in the valley.
Boy, was that ever wrong.
And it’s even more wrong now.
Over the past few years, Canada has been shifting its foreign aid priorities away from Africa to Latin America, where new free trade deals will protect Canada’s business interests in, among other sectors, the mining industry.
Canada’s hands are not clean there are either, as human rights activists insist. They’re documenting how workers and the environment are being exploited and devastated.
It gets worse.
Canada is also heavily into the weapons trade, an industry we hardly ever see covered in the business pages.
According to the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade, between 2003 and 2006, Canadian military exports totalled at least $7.4 billion, mostly to the U.S.Ö, where it went into the weapons used everywhere from Iraq to Gaza.
Wanted: Climate Denial Kingpins and Their Accomplices
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/31-7
( Gee. I merit 'accomplice' these days. How long before the 'T 'word comes out ? I really can't think of much that's scarier than the thought of Palin being Right. Can you imagine the idiot vindication should that be the case ?
And all because I say mudslinging is mudslinging and prevarication is prevarication. It doesn't change because the source has nicer credentials.
In an age when funding is king and results are preordained by the 'research' sponsor - it isn't 'science denial' to doubt the altruism behind rich nations wanting preferential rates for an international scheme to tax the use of fire.
Nor is that evidence the proponents take their own mind swill seriously. )
Scientists vs Deniers
http://thesietch.org/mysietch/keith/2010/03/11/scientists-vs-deniers/comment-page-1/#comment-3846
free, online book Download
Contents For hundreds of millennia, humans connected tightly to the land and the life forms their survival depended upon.This connection has ebbed away from the majority of humanity, in many cases to the extent that people feel nothing for anything humans have not created themselves. But we cannot eat concrete; we cannot breathe television; we cannot drink money.
Rainforest Alliance Certification : Worse Than Useless (Guest Post)
http://thesietch.org/mysietch/keith/2010/03/29/rainforest-alliance-certification-worse-than-useless-guest-post/
Reforming Federal Chemical Policy
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/tsca.php
More than 80,000 chemicals now in use have never been fully assessed for toxic impacts on human health and the environment. The chemical industry should have to demonstrate that a chemical isn’t dangerous before it’s used in everyday products. But the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has no such requirements
Rubber Ducky, you’re the one…fighting to keep people safe from toxic chemicals
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mwaage/rubber_ducky_youre_the_onefigh.html
Tubular clouds defy gravity and explanation
http://www.examiner.com/x-30093-Toronto-Science-News-Examiner~y2010m3d31-Tubular-clouds-defy-gravity-and-explanation
Karl Rove Autographs Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope Book
http://open.salon.com/blog/susanthur/2010/03/24/karl_rove_and_the_liberal_independent
Why Don't The New Homeland Security Rules Protect Me?
http://open.salon.com/blog/garybaumgarten/2010/04/02/why_dont_the_new_homeland_security_rules_protect_me
Progressive Women Bloggers Community
http://www.ringsurf.com/ring/carla/
Toxic waste chokes Louhajang river
http://www.bangladesh-web.com/view.php?hidRecord=311720
Tangail-The Louhajang river, a tributary of Dhaleswari in Tangail, has turned extremely poisonous due to rampant dumping of toxic industrial waste.(The Daily Star )
The water is unusable and pollution is now threatening aquatic life, crops and the greenery, locals said.
The local administration can do nothing in this regard as the industries, responsible for the pollution, have obtained permission from Directorate of Environment (DoE) for dumping waste into the river, they alleged.
During a recent visit to Taratia, Bhatkura, Khudirampur villages under Tangail sadar upazila The Daily Star correspondent saw for himself the smelly and pitch-black water.
People of those villages said they cannot use the water even for washing clothes.
Sahera Begum, a housewife of Taratia, said her three children and she have skin diseases as they have no alternative but to use the river water.
Ripon Miah and Shamim Ahmed of Bhatkhura and Khudirampur said boro paddy fields around the river are dying due to lack of water, as the water cannot be used for irrigation.
Even cattle suffer from diarrhoea if they drink this water, he added.
The industry authorities, however, denied the allegations and said they had already installed effluent treatment plants by spending crores of taka.
They also claimed that the water released from their industries is not at all hazardous.
Sirajul Islam, chairman of the Environmental Science and Resources Management Department of Maulana Bhasani University of Science and Technology, told The Daily Star no crops can grow and no aquatic life can survive in such water.
Ubuntu One Music Store now in public beta
http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/2000
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