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A new report proves that the fed’s environmental watchdog has knowingly allowed toxic e-waste to be shipped overseas

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) knows that most of the 1.9 million tons (1.7 million metric tons) of discarded cell phones, computers and televisions, among other electronic goods, went into landfills, because those are the agency’s own figures.

The EPA also knows that this so-called e-waste contains cadmium, mercury and other toxic substances, and it is responsible for making sure that lead-laden monitors and television sets with cathode-ray tubes (CRT) are disposed of properly and the parts recycled. But congressional investigators charge that the EPA has failed to even attempt to clean up the mess—or keep it in check. The agency has “no plans and no timetable for developing the basic components of an enforcement strategy,” concludes a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’s investigative arm.

GAO official John Stephenson testified at a House hearing yesterday that his investigators had posed as would-be buyers of CRT waste in Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Singapore and Vietnam and found at least 43 recyclers willing to export the toxic e-waste from the U.S. in direct violation of EPA regulations. In addition, unlike the European Union (E.U.), the EPA has no regulations concerning the disposal of other types of used electronic devices, despite their dangers.

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We often read stories of India’s economic miracle, its IT revolution and its Bollywood culture. We’re keen to do business with India, and Indian migrants are regarded as highly skilled and hard-working.

Australia is even considering selling uranium to India, presuming its status as the world’s biggest democracy makes its nuclear programme less dangerous than that of Iran or Pakistan.

But what about human rights? We so often implement double standards when determining how human rights might affect our international relations.

The experiences of India’s religious minorities have generally been ignored by Western Governments and commentators.

India’s majority faith is Hinduism, an inherently pacifist and tolerant religion. Notwithstanding the caste system, Hindu societies have traditionally practised liturgical and doctrinal pluralism.

Yet indigenous Indian faiths also include Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, a deeply religious man, borrowed freely from all Indian religious traditions.

Gandhi’s vision was of a truly civilised and democratic India which zealously protected its minorities. He fought not only the British Raj but also communal extremists who incited bloodshed between religious communities. His assassination occurred at the hands of extremists of his own Hindu faith. In recent decades, these forces have re-emerged in mainstream Indian politics.

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- Was it just last year that pet food from China was laced with melamine and pets died all over the U.S. and there was a huge scandal and backlash? & &

- Well, now the same folks in China, who put making a bigger profit above all else, are at it again.   This time they’ve slipped melamine into the milk that goes into baby formula.  Unbelievable.

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China on Monday reported one more infant death from tainted milk powder, bringing to two the number of babies killed in an expanding scandal that drew an official product recall only after New Zealand blew the whistle.

The latest death blamed on infant milk powder made by the Sanlu Group occurred in Gansu province, a poor region in the northwest that was also home to the only other fatality blamed on chemical-laced milk, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

China has recorded nearly 500 babies falling ill from the tainted milk powder, including 102 in Gansu.

Sanlu, a milk powder producer 43 percent owned by New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra, was ordered to halt production last week after investigators found the chemical melamine in its powder was causing kidney stones in infants.

Farmers or dealers supplying milk to Sanlu may have diluted it with water and then added melamine, used in plastics, fertilisers and cleaning products, to make the milk’s protein level appear higher than it actually was.

Local Chinese officials only acted after the New Zealand government contacted the central government in Beijing, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said on Monday.

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17Sep08 - more…

Failure to take urgent action to curb climate change is effectively violating the human rights of people in the poorest nations, an aid charity warns.

A report by Oxfam International says emissions, primarily from developed countries, are exacerbating flooding, droughts and extreme weather events.

As a result, harvests are failing and people are losing their homes and access to water, the authors observe.

They say human rights need to be at the heart of global climate policies.

Oxfam will be submitting its report, called Climate Wrongs and Human Rights, to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Righting wrongs

“Climate change was first seen as a scientific problem, then an economic one,” explained report author Kate Raworth. “Now it is becoming a matter of international justice.

The global impacts of climate change meant that nations had to be held accountable for the consequences of their actions, Ms Raworth said.

“Litigation is seldom the best way to solve a dispute.

“That is why we need a strong UN deal in 2009 to cut emissions and support adaption,” she added, referring to next year’s key UN climate summit where a future global climate strategy is expected to be agreed.

“However, vulnerable countries do need options to protect themselves. Rich country polluters have been fully aware of their culpability for many years.”

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Moving on is not an option

We have at the present time two government leaders, a president and a vice president, who, according to all available evidence, have carried out grave crimes. Will these two men leave office and live out their lives without being subjected to legal proceedings? Such proceedings will surely release new documents and provide additional testimony important in resolving their guilt or innocence. But the public record is now so elaborate, so detailed, and validated from so many directions that a weight is on the population’s shoulders: does our already existing knowledge of what they have done obligate us to press for legal redress?

The question is painful even to ask, so painful that we may all yield to an easy temptation not to pursue it at all.

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- Research Thanks to PHK

Worldwide corruption driven by mafia-like organizations throughout water industries is forcing the poor to pay more for basic drinking water and sanitation services, according to a new report.

If bribery, organized crime, embezzlement, and other illegal activities continue, consumers and taxpayers will pay the equivalent of U.S. $20 billion dollars over the next decade, says the report, released this week at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

The water sector is one of most corrupt after health and education, added Håkan Tropp, chair of the Water Integrity Network (WIN), an advocacy group and report co-author.

That’s because the poor often don’t have a voice in strategic water policy decisions, said Christian Poortman, head of the anticorruption group Transparency International (TI), which collaborated with WIN on the study.

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-A hat tip to The Big Picture Blog for this story: 

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In 1980, the last year of Jimmy Carter’s administration, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) commissioned a series of three 30-minute films about worker safety.  These were real pro productions, with Studs Terkel as narrator on two of the productions.  In 1981, Reagan appointed 36-year old Florida construction executive Thorne G. Auchter, who proceeded to systematically dismantle the agency.  Evidently, the 3 films disturbed Thorne greatly, because OSHA issued a recall, threatening to withold OSHA funds from any organization that did not return their copies of the films, which were promptly destroyed.

But a few union officials defied the ban and “stole” copies so they weren’t able to be returned.  Over the years, they would occasionally show them to their troops, using the fact they banned as a way to get them to watch the films, which have important messages about worker rights and workplace safety.  But, aside from these bootleg showings, the video disappeared.

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- Well, after all these years, these suppressed films have been posted on the Internet for everyone to see.

- In my opinion, the purpose of governement is to serve the people and create an environment that benefits their health, happiness and welfare.   These films are from a time when this POV was actually taken seriously at the highest levels in our government.   But, these ideas died with the advent of Reaganism and haven’t returned since.   Sad.

- Follow this link to go to the Internet Archive where you can see these three films: 

- There’s a lot of folks deeply concerned about Islamic Fundamentalism and I’m not saying they are wrong to be worried.    But, they might just take a look back over their shoulder to see who else might be coming down that road.

“Joel’s Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism.”

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‘Arming’ for Armageddon

 Militant Joel’s Army Followers Seek Theocracy

LAKELAND, Fla. — Todd Bentley has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous “supernatural healing revival” in central Florida. To contain the 10,000-plus crowds flocking from around the globe, Bentley has rented baseball stadiums, arenas and airport hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day. Many in attendance are church pastors themselves who believe Bentley to be a prophet and don’t bat an eye when he tells them he’s seen King David and spoken with the Apostle Paul in heaven. “He was looking very Jewish,” Bentley notes.

Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read “Joel’s Army.” They’re evidence of Bentley’s generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that’s gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other “hyper-charismatic” preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel’s Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian “dominion” on non-believers.

“An end-time army has one common purpose — to aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion,” Bentley declares on the website for his ministry school in British Columbia, Canada. “The trumpet is sounding, calling on-fire, revolutionary believers to enlist in Joel’s Army. … Many are now ready to be mobilized to establish and advance God’s kingdom on earth.”

Oh, definitely you should read more of this…

- Here’s a fine story about Afghanistan - a nation our citizens are dying to defend.   But, sorry to say, their culture is in the stone-age with respect to women’s rights.

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned three men found guilty of gang-raping a woman in the northern province of Samangan.

The woman, Sara, and her family found out about the pardon only when they saw the rapists back in their village.

“Everyone was shocked,” said Sara’s husband, Dilawar, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. “These were men who had been sentenced by the Supreme Court, walking around freely.”

Sara’s case highlights concerns about the close relationship between the Afghan President and men accused of war crimes and human rights abuses.

The men were freed discreetly but the rape was public and brutal. It took place in September 2005, in the run-up to Afghanistan’s first democratic parliamentary elections.

The most powerful local commander, Mawlawi Islam, was running for office despite being accused of scores of murders committed during his time as a mujahideen commander in the 1980s, a Taleban governor in the 1990s, and after the fall of the Taleban in 2001. Sara said one of his subcommanders and bodyguards had been looking for young men to help in the election campaign.

“It was evening, around time for the last prayer, when armed men took my son, Islamuddin, by force. I have eyewitness statements from nine people that he was there. From that night until now, my son has never been seen.”

Dilawar said his wife publicly harangued the commander twice about their missing son.

After the second time, he said, they came for her. “The commander and three of his fighters came and took my wife out of our home and took her to their house about 200m away and, in front of these witnesses, raped her.”

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R.,

A few more thoughts along the same lines I talked about previously.

All of humanity’s history has been a series of incremental advances along multiple paths; business, social organization, military, agriculture, technological, etc. In all of this, the thought has primarily been to advance, empower and grow.

Now, for the first time in humanity’s history, we have filled the planet and have begun to hit various unyielding limits; water, food, oil, pollution, as well as limits having to do with how much impact we can have on the biosphere without causing huge shifts in the demographics of various species and even causing their extinctions.

It is clear, if humanity wants to continue to live indefinitely on this planet, that we are going to have to shift from a growth and advance strategy in all we do to one predicated on establishing a steady-state and sustainable balance with the biosphere around us.

We cannot use renewable resources faster than they can regenerate. We cannot occupy more of the planet’s surface than is consistent with allowing the rest of the planet’s biology to exist and flourish. These both imply that our population has to come down to some sustainable number and be held there. We have to come up with ways to govern ourselves that are consistent with establishing and maintaining these essential balances. Nation against nation, system against system is not compatible with long term survival. The ultimate goal and purpose of government in an enlightened world should be to secure all of our futures (we and all the rest of the planet’s biology) and maintain the balance.

We could, if we cut our population to sustainable levels and learned to live within a sustainable footprint on this planet, exist here for tens of thousands of years and maintain a decent quality of life for all those who are alive at any specific point in time. We do not have to give up comfort or technology - we just have to dial our impact on the planet back to sustainable levels and stay with in those levels.

Anything that the Gates Foundation or any other forward looking organization works on that does not include long term goals like these is likely in the big picture to just be a shuffling of our problems from one place to the other rather than a real indefinite-term planet-wide solution to how our species is going to solve the problem of learning to live here without fouling our nest for ourselves and all the other species that depend on this planet’s biosphere.