Dingell v Pelosi – This is from the Center for American Progress today: “Two senior House Democrats — facing opposition from their party’s top leader, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — have abandoned their legislative effort to block California and a dozen other states from regulating greenhouse gases from cars and trucks.” Energy in the Senate […]
The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals yesterday heard a class action claim against 37 producers and suppliers of the chemical herbicide, dioxin, which was used as a component in the defoliant, Agent Orange. Agent Orange, so named for the markings on its shipping containers, was used as a defoliant to destroy cover by communist forces […]
Photo: Karel Prinsloo – AP There are 12 million refugees, as of 2005, and an additional 21 million Internally displaced persons scattered across the globe today, approximately 44% of which are children. Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 is World Refugee Day, a day set to honor the plight and resilient struggle of refugees around the […]
The same folks who brought you the solar boat that crossed the Atlantic in May (see my post of May 14, Solar Boating and Green Building) have just had the inaugural "World Clean Energy Awards." This prestigious event had worthy folks such as Amory Lovins and Nicky Gavron as jury members (both of whom have […]
A Croatian district court today opened the trial of two suspected war criminals in the first case transferred from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to a domestic court system. Mirko Norac and Rahim Ademi, two Croation army generals, face war crimes charges for atrocities allegedly committed during a land seizure campaign […]
This morning British police after 10 months of investigations, with agencies around the globe, finally broke through an international internet pedophile ring. The internet site was dishearteningly called, “Kids the Light of Our Lives”, and its founder went by the screen name “Son of God”. Membership of the internet pedophile ring was is over 700, […]
BBC: Montenegro has arrested a former Serbian security chief accused by the UN war crimes tribunal of ordering the killing of Kosovo Albanians. Vlastimir Djordjevic is due to be transferred to The Hague where he is one of four Serbian generals accused of crimes in the breakaway province. The arrest may mark another step by […]
Children in Africa are faced with a plethora of human rights violations in their daily struggles for survival. Parents and children in the west often take our freedoms, health and educations for granted, while on the continent of Africa diseases of the past still run rampant, child labor and the use of child soldiers impacts […]
Energy in the Senate – Following up on my last post, on the energy debate in Congress, there were a couple of interesting developments yesterday. In the Senate, an amendment offered by John Warner of Virginia to allow offshore drilling was narrowly defeated. More importantly, an amendment offered by the ranking Republican on the Senate […]
Former U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim died yesterday of heart failure. Waldheim served at the head of the world body from 1972-1981 and later held the largely ceremonial presidency of Austria from 1986-1992. His tenure was tarnished by his service in German high command during World War II. In response, the U.S. Justice Department placed […]
Fear not the power your words have on your children, you are their teachers, idols and role models. Whether a parent or not, their are children out there looking up to you for guidance, be open, be honest and most of all allow children those same rights as they express their own ideas and thoughts.
In September 2003, British soldiers raided a hotel in the southern Iraqi city of Basra during operations there. They had detained several Iraqi citizens, including Baha Musa, a receptionist at the hotel whom British soldiers had suspected being an insurgent. Musa was detained with several other Iraqi's, blindfolded, subjected to stress positions, and beaten over […]
After working in government for 11 years (in a state environmental agency) and having been an environmental and political activist for a fair number of years before, during and after that, I have come to have a healthy skepticism — okay cynicism — about the reach of good public policy in legislation and actual real […]
Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as "Chemical Ali", is expected to be sentenced to death by hanging on June 24, according to the Iraqi high tribunal. Majid is on trial with five other defendants , including several former military intelligence officers and the deputy director of operations for the Iraqi Armed Forces , for atrocities […]
