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Our country remains overly dependent on oil, which has serious consequences ranging from rising gasoline prices that burden every American to global warming that threatens current and future generations. This addiction to oil represents a failed energy strategy, one that ExxonMobil not only supports but has helped to develop. Most disturbing are these facts: ExxonMobil's active support of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; ExxonMobil's efforts to block meaningful action to cut global warming pollution and its funding of junk science to hide the real facts about global warming; ExxonMobil's conscious decision to forgo investment in clean energy solutions despite your record profits at a time of rising gasoline prices; ExxonMobil's failure to pay all of the punitive damages awarded to fishermen and others injured by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. ExxonMobil represents yesterday's energy policy; I would rather spend my money and time moving forward, not backward.
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BANGKOK, Thailand -- Katrina's victims may learn lessons from Thailand's tsunami where DNA and real estate profits have become priorities, and thousands of survivors still cannot cope eight months after rescue.
Unlike impoverished Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka, quake-propelled tidal swells hit Thailand's glitzy tourist zone, killing more than 5,400 Thai residents and foreigners.
It became a crash-course for U.S. and international aid workers dealing with relatively prosperous victims in vicious floods.
Investigators needed to quickly determined the identities of Thailand's tsunami toll -- so relatives could file insurance claims, inherit property, and stay in business.
Interpol tried to ensure criminals did not fake their own deaths to dodge arrest amid the tsunami's chaos.
The uniqueness of popular tattoos became a valuable clue, identifying many Westerners' corpses in Thailand.
Expensive, private, American and other security firms became a growth industry, along with scam artists, clairvoyants and others seeking to profit from the hunt for missing loved ones.
Unlike impoverished Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka, quake-propelled tidal swells hit Thailand's glitzy tourist zone, killing more than 5,400 Thai residents and foreigners.
It became a crash-course for U.S. and international aid workers dealing with relatively prosperous victims in vicious floods.
Investigators needed to quickly determined the identities of Thailand's tsunami toll -- so relatives could file insurance claims, inherit property, and stay in business.
Interpol tried to ensure criminals did not fake their own deaths to dodge arrest amid the tsunami's chaos.
The uniqueness of popular tattoos became a valuable clue, identifying many Westerners' corpses in Thailand.
Expensive, private, American and other security firms became a growth industry, along with scam artists, clairvoyants and others seeking to profit from the hunt for missing loved ones.
At a pre-trial hearing, federal U.S.
district Judge Algenon L.
Marbley questioned FBI Special Agent James Turgal concerning the agency's handling of Nuradin Abdi, the so-called "mall bomber."
The August 26 Dispatch headline read: "Judge questions lack of warrant in terrorism arrest."
Judge Marbley probed the timing of Abdi's arrest on November 28, 2003 ? the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day of the year. Turgal conceded that the agency had "probable cause" to arrest Abdi two months earlier.
Equally curious is the fact that Abdi's arrest, and allegations that he wanted to blow up a mall, were dramatically announced by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday, June 14, 2004. That day marked the eve of John Kerry's first major fund-raising stop in Columbus, Ohio, where Abdi lives. Kerry's two-day visit to Ohio's capital city raised more than a million dollars but was overshadowed by the Ashcroft announcement.
Ashcroft sternly warned, "The American heartland was targeted for death and destruction by an al-Qaeda cell allegedly which included a Somali immigrant who will now face justice."
The August 26 Dispatch headline read: "Judge questions lack of warrant in terrorism arrest."
Judge Marbley probed the timing of Abdi's arrest on November 28, 2003 ? the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day of the year. Turgal conceded that the agency had "probable cause" to arrest Abdi two months earlier.
Equally curious is the fact that Abdi's arrest, and allegations that he wanted to blow up a mall, were dramatically announced by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday, June 14, 2004. That day marked the eve of John Kerry's first major fund-raising stop in Columbus, Ohio, where Abdi lives. Kerry's two-day visit to Ohio's capital city raised more than a million dollars but was overshadowed by the Ashcroft announcement.
Ashcroft sternly warned, "The American heartland was targeted for death and destruction by an al-Qaeda cell allegedly which included a Somali immigrant who will now face justice."
Nature really kicks the door down once in a while and lets us know how humans have made a mess of things. A few years ago, Hurricane Mitch laid waste much of Guatemala and neighboring countries. The hills crumbled and topsoil sluiced into the sea. There were politics, class politics, in that sluicing, same way there's politics in most "natural" disasters. The United States had crushed land reform in Guatemala in the 1950s, with the CIA overseeing a coup against Arbenz and launching decades of savage repression. The peasants had to surrender the good flat land to the United Fruit Co. and scratch small holdings for subsistence into ever steeper hillsides, which in consequence got more and more eroded. Then came Mitch, and the hillsides and the small plots were washed away.
Hurricane Katrina . the aftermath is payback time for decades of stupidity, greed, pillage and racism. My thought is that the tempo toward catastrophe really picked up in the Reagan era. That's when the notion of this society being in some deep sense a collective effort, pointed toward universal human betterment -- the core of the old Enlightenment -- went onto the trash heap.
Hurricane Katrina . the aftermath is payback time for decades of stupidity, greed, pillage and racism. My thought is that the tempo toward catastrophe really picked up in the Reagan era. That's when the notion of this society being in some deep sense a collective effort, pointed toward universal human betterment -- the core of the old Enlightenment -- went onto the trash heap.
Three years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union won a significant legal
victory when a federal district court ruled that the state must follow
strict due-process guidelines before sending prisoners to Ohio's only
supermaximum-security in Youngstown. The number of inmates at the Ohio State
Penitentiary dropped dramatically after a court-ordered review of individual
cases determined that two-thirds of the prisoners did not meet the criteria
for such restrictive confinement. "The supermax was built to hold 504
prisoners," reported Staughton Lynd, the ACLU's counsel on the case. "There
are now roughly 250. So, you can say we've very nearly cut the population in
half."
The future of Ohio's only supermaximum-security prison may hinge upon a related hearing's outcome.
The future of Ohio's only supermaximum-security prison may hinge upon a related hearing's outcome.
Calls for firing Michael Brown are understandable. Aptly described
as “the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA” by columnist Maureen Dowd a
few days ago, he’s an easy and appropriate target.
President Bush met with Brown last Friday and publicly told him: “You’re doing a heck of a job.”
In the grisly wake of the hurricane, Brown’s job performance cannot be separated from Bush’s job performance. To similar deadly effect, the president has brought to bear on people in New Orleans the same qualities that he has inflicted on people in Iraq -- refusal to acknowledge basic realities, lethally misplaced priorities, lack of compassion (cue the guitar), and overarching arrogance.
The Bush administration is guilty of criminal negligence that killed thousands of people last week.
Estimates of the death toll in New Orleans are now in the vicinity of 10,000 people. Whatever the number, many would be alive today if the federal government had given minimal priority to evacuation of those who had no way of exiting the city.
Now, key issues involve accountability and decency.
President Bush met with Brown last Friday and publicly told him: “You’re doing a heck of a job.”
In the grisly wake of the hurricane, Brown’s job performance cannot be separated from Bush’s job performance. To similar deadly effect, the president has brought to bear on people in New Orleans the same qualities that he has inflicted on people in Iraq -- refusal to acknowledge basic realities, lethally misplaced priorities, lack of compassion (cue the guitar), and overarching arrogance.
The Bush administration is guilty of criminal negligence that killed thousands of people last week.
Estimates of the death toll in New Orleans are now in the vicinity of 10,000 people. Whatever the number, many would be alive today if the federal government had given minimal priority to evacuation of those who had no way of exiting the city.
Now, key issues involve accountability and decency.
In the "old days" of the U.S. peace movement, when many people focused on
the threat of a global nuclear "exchange" an organization called
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) postulated what would happen if
a major American city was actually blasted by an atomic bomb.
The doctors described utterly horrific scenarios extending far beyond the numbers of dead and severely wounded. In plain words they described what the few survivors would experience: a landscape that not only had sustained unimaginable casualties, but which had also suffered the destruction of its transportation and health care infrastructure. No ambulances would arrive with lights and sirens to whisk away the suffering. Doctors, nurses, blood plasma, pain killers, antibiotics, bandages - all would be destroyed along with the hospitals and highways.
The doctors described utterly horrific scenarios extending far beyond the numbers of dead and severely wounded. In plain words they described what the few survivors would experience: a landscape that not only had sustained unimaginable casualties, but which had also suffered the destruction of its transportation and health care infrastructure. No ambulances would arrive with lights and sirens to whisk away the suffering. Doctors, nurses, blood plasma, pain killers, antibiotics, bandages - all would be destroyed along with the hospitals and highways.