September 2007
Confessions of an ‘ex’ Peak Oil believer
The good news is that panic scenarios about the world running out of oil anytime soon are wrong. The bad news is that the price of oil is going to continue to rise. Peak Oil is not our problem. Politics is. Big Oil wants to sustain high oil prices. Dick Cheney and friends are all [...]
Burma’s Saffron Revolution
Among the many inspiring photographs to come from Burma in this past week, perhaps one of the most compelling was not of rain-soaked monks wading through flooded Rangoon streets or teenagers and their grandmothers with hands locked together to form protective chains alongside them, but of a small assembly in the north of the country.
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BUSH MEETING UNDERMINING UN CLIMATE TALKS
Brussels, 27 September 2007 - Friends of the Earth Europe has warned that US President George Bush aims to undermine the ongoing UN climate negotiations by hosting a meeting of major greenhouse gas emitters in Washington today and tomorrow. Bush is expected to promote only voluntary targets for cutting emissions, instead of legally binding targets [...]
PCHR Calls the International Community to Act Immediately to Stop Israeli Threats to Attack the Gaza Strip
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) committed several car crimes in the Gaza Strip over the past few hours, which left 11 Palestinians dead, including a child, and injured 33 others, five of them seriously. Some of the injured suffered amputation of limbs. Five of the victims were killed in an extra-judicial execution in Gaza City. The [...]
Clinton’s “New” Fundraising Team Includes Some Old Scandal-Ridden Friends - Judicial Watch
The campaign fundraising scandal involving apparel executive and admitted felon Norman Hsu and Hillary Clinton has the press probing the backgrounds of some of the bigger presidential campaign contributors. And the news just keeps getting worse for Democratic front-runner. According to an article in the Thursday edition of The Washington Post: “A list of the [...]
A country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace
What do you call a country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace. One that’s been at war every year in its history against one or more adversaries. It has the highest homicide rate of all western nations and a passion for owning guns, yet the two seem oddly unconnected. Violent films [...]
Tell Schwarzenegger to sign Clone Labelling bill into law
The California legislature just passed the nation’s first law requiring the labeling of food products made from cloned animals or their offspring. This is great news! Now it’s up to Governor Schwartzenegger to sign the bill into law so that if cloned food hits store shelves, California consumers will know about it. Tell the Governor [...]
USDA Announcement on Conservation Reserve Lands Unnecessarily Threatens Fragile Lands, Habitat at Time of Record Production
Today, Acting Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Conner announced that the USDA is considering allowing farmers to cancel the contracts enrolling their lands in the Conservation Reserve Program up to several years early without penalty. The program, pays farmers to let 34 million acres–much of which is marginal, easily eroded, and prime habitat for wildlife–remain idle. [...]
ECUADOR’S YASUNI-ITT PROPOSAL RECOGNIZED AT THE CLINTON GLOBAL INITIATIVE
New York - Today at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), the Ecuadorian proposal “Leaving Ecuador’s Oil in the Ground” which seeks to avoid carbon emissions and save the Yasuni Rainforest has been selected from among close to a thousand other proposals, to be highlighted in the Energy and Climate Change: Protecting Tropical Forests. At the [...]
The Rebirth of a Nation?
300 is arguably the most racially charged movie since D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. In true post-9/11 form, Zack Snyder’s film turns Brown into the new Black; Persians are depicted as bloodthirsty savages thwarted in the Battle of Thermopylae by a small contingent of freedom fighters - with noticeably paler skin - looking [...]
More Public Accountability Needed in Gene Therapy Death, Says Public Interest Group
The Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC), the federal body dedicated to publicly reviewing gene transfer experiments, met today to discuss a recent death in an experiment, but offered no answers to important ethical questions raised by the tragedy.
Associate Director of the Center for Genetics and Society, Marcy Darnovsky, called on the RAC to take prompt [...]
Will Sri Lankan Buddhist monks intervene to prevent a massacre of their Burmese counterparts?
The Buddhist monks in Burma have been on the streets for several days now, falling upon the last resort under their disciplinary code (Vinaya Pitaka), in calling upon the military regime of the country to step down and to respect the people. The people of Burma are facing extremely difficult times. The cost of basic [...]
UN Warned That Time Running Out to Avoid Climate Crisis,
NEW YORK, New York, September 25, 2007 (ENS) - United States President George W. Bush today told the UN General Assembly that he supports a “strong and vibrant” United Nations empowered to carry out the shared goals of the world body and its host country, from addressing global pandemics to stopping the proliferation of weapons [...]
BURMA: Arbitrary arrest; assault; torture; denial of right to free expression; poverty; un-rule of law
As has been reported throughout the world, riot police began violently attacking protestors in Rangoon today after they refused to obey instructions to not again take to the streets to call for an end to military rule there (UP-125-2007). Meanwhile, protests have also continued in other parts of the country. Here we give a summary [...]
Carbon Offsets Not Welcome Here
Night falls early in the flat landscape outside Raipur, the capital of India’s Chhatisgarh state. Towering above the dry rice fields, factory after factory producing sponge iron for export to China pumps out smoke that dims the setting sun and blackens trees, soil and workers’ faces alike.
Welcome to the frontier of the global ‘carbon offset’ [...]
The Mediterranean Photovoltaic Power Plant Revolution
Costs of photovoltaic power plants in Italy could be recouped in as little as 8 to 12 years because of government subsidies and electricity market. Photovoltaic (PV) power plants could be supplying 26 million households in the Mediterranean with electricity by 2020, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) has said. Boosted by a new law [...]
EXXON EXPOSED FOR TWISTING FACTS
Brussels, September 26th - Friends of the Earth Europe today released The Exxon Files - an animation spoof exposing how oil giant ExxonMobil is working to prevent action on climate change. The cartoon’s website, http://www.exxon-files.eu/, asks people to add their support to a formal complaint about the company’s misleading advertising.
The animation, a satirical version of [...]
BURMA: Lawyers, monks determined to defy “forced politics”
(Hong Kong, September 26, 2007) Lawyers in Burma on Tuesday established a new union to introduce “genuine politics” to the country and defy what they called the regime’s “forced politics” as protests continued for a tenth day despite harsh warnings in the media and through loudspeakers on government vehicles.
In a preliminary statement, a copy of [...]
World Leaders Gather at UN for Climate Change Meeting
NEW YORK, New York, September 24, 2007 (ENS) - National leaders from across the world are gathering at United Nations Headquarters in New York today for the largest ever high level meeting on climate change. The talks are expected to produce a strong call for action to address the planet’s rising temperature that threatens higher [...]
Greenpeace welcomes NZ Hoki and Orange Roughy cuts, but more needed.
Auckland, New Zealand - Greenpeace welcomed cuts to hoki and orange roughy quota announced by Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton today, but warned that wider fisheries closures and more effective management measures are needed to safeguard stocks and marine habitats in the long run.”We´re pleased Jim Anderton has had the courage to make significant cuts to [...]
Thousands of monks and protestors in Rangoon Burma defy threats from regime
Threats from the military regime in Burma have failed to get thousands of protestors of the streets again today, 25 September 2007. Here the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) gives the latest information and some on events of recent days. Please do everything you can to support the courageous struggle of Burma’s people against their [...]
Global Action on Climate Change A Third World Perspective
Martin Khor stresses the need to link development and environment for developing countries and cooperation between North and South especially in the next period of the Kyoto Protocol. Now is the time to clarify the crucial issues for the Bali meetings this December, which we hope will launch a roadmap for global action to combat [...]
BURMA: Protests fast accelerating towards uprising
The protests that began in Burma during August to voice public frustration and discontent over sharp price rises have in the last week fast accelerated–under the guidance of the Buddhist clergy, the Sangha–towards an uprising to end the country’s military dictatorship.
The monks leading the latest events have declared the formal “overturning of the alms bowl” [...]
NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENTS EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME AND THE FAO PROMOTES ORGANICS
FAO Supports Organics [12:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Greenpeace ETS Analysis [13:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Green Party ETS Analysis [13:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadFAO Promotes Organic Agriculture
Greenpeace NZ on Emissions Trading Scheme
Green Party Analysis of ETS
FAO Promotes Organic Agriculture
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) have recently come out in favour of organic agriculture. Its report Organic Agriculture and Food Security explicitly states that organic agriculture can address local and global food security challenges. Organic farming is [...]
Greenpeace guide to greener electronics – one year on: Electronics industry starting to go green.
Amsterdam, International - A year on from the launch of the Greenpeace guide to greener electronics, the industry has made great improvements. Companies are now competing to become the first to go green by eliminating hazardous substances and takeback and recycle their products responsibly. The fifth guide, launched today, sees Nokia continue to lead the [...]
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