Those Germans are at it again! They're kicking our asses environmentally, making the best and most green products, proving they love nature uber alles.
Too bad their isn't some nature symbol they could adopt nationally to represent their country's leadership in Environmentalism.
They're poised to take over the World!
And did you see that Hot Looking Diesel Audi is putting on the roads?
I want one. I wonder if I could put Popeye's fryer oil in it.
The American-born son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor has been ordered to pay more than £14m in compensation to five people tortured during the West African country's civil war.
A judge in the US made the order a year after the same Miami court sentenced Charles McArthur Emmanuel Taylor, known as Chuckie, to 97 years in prison for his role in one of Africa's bloodiest chapters; he was the first person to be convicted by a federal court of committing offences outside the US.
The 32-year-old led the notorious Anti-Terrorist Unit, a band of pro-government paramilitaries nicknamed the Demon Forces who carried out murder and torture during his father's presidency from 1997 to 2003.
Witnesses at his criminal trial in 2008 spoke of hearing him laugh as prisoners were abused and how the Anti-Terrorist Unit "did things like beating people to death, burying them alive, rape - the most horrible kind of war crimes".
A spokesman for United States immigration and customs enforcement said that it was a "clear message the US would not be a safe haven for human rights violators."
In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.
It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.
So forget about the "clear message the US would not be a safe haven for human rights violators."
The real message for the torturers of tomorrow is...
Get some whore of a lawyer (like John Yoo) in your local DOJ to opine that whatever you do is legal, and then you can chop up your victims with no more fear of prosecution than if you were chopping onions.
Below follow several excerpts from the book by Carlos Castaneda Tales of Power (in these excerpts the term nagual means the non-material world):
"The tonal begins at birth and ends at death, but the nagual never ends. The nagual has no limit. The nagual is where Power hovers."
"For the nagual, there is no land, or air, or water. Therefore, the nagual glides, or flies, or does anything it can do in the time of the nagual, which is not related at all to the time of the tonal. These two things do not intersect."
"The tonal and the nagual are two different worlds. In one you talk, in the other you act."
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has posted a very illustrative discussion of the current recession on their website, and for readers confused by the simultaneous decline in jobs and the official measure of unemployment, 20,000 fewer jobs while "unemployment" declined from 10% to 9.7%, one picture may be more informative than so many curiously defined statistics.
The shaded area in the graph shows the upper and lower bounds of all recessions after World War II. The purple line is the current recession.
Carly Fiorina likes to say that shell run things the way she ran her business. And we believe her. As California's next Senator she would undoubtedly run government the way she ran one of our state's biggest companies: right into the ground. -- carlyFAILorina.com
Millionare Politician/CEO Carly Fiorina released a ridiculous new Web video-portraying her primary rival as a demonic sheep-has gone viral, and been viciously mocked. (see above video, sheep video after the jump) [link]
Health care reform -- which is crucial for millions of Americans -- hangs in the balance. Progressives are desperately in need of leadership; more specifically, House Democrats need to be told to pass the Senate bill, which isn't what they wanted but is vastly better than nothing. And what we get from the great progressive hope, the man who was offering hope and change, is this:
"I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on. We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don't, then our budgets are going to blow up and we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance to their families. Those are the core, some of the core elements of, to this bill. Now I think there's some things in there that people don't like and legitimately don't like."
A spending freeze? That's the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?
It's appalling on every level.
It's bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment.
It's bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.
And it's a betrayal of everything Obama's supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view -- and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, "I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy."
"Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view."
And that's the whole story of Obama's miserable Presidency.
GOP rock star Scott Brown's victory train rolled into Southie last night where the senator-elect hoisted a frosty beer with a local radio host to live up to one his first campaign promises.
"We made a bet and they said if they endorsed me and I won then we'd have to get together for a few beers," Brown, a Wrentham Republican, said at The Stadium in South Boston last night. "After it was over, they called and reminded me."
Brown, who drove himself to the pub in his now-legendary green GMC Canyon truck, turned the beer summit with WAAF [website]-FM (107.3) morning man Greg Hill into a charity event, raising $6,000 for Homes for Our Troops, a Taunton-based charity that builds handicapped-accessible houses for soldiers injured in combat.
In a letter written by his legal counsel, Daniel B. Winslow, Brown said he wanted the results certified no later than 11 a.m. Thursday so that he can deliver a copy to the Secretary of the United States Senate in time to be administered the oath of office by Thursday afternoon.
Brown had initially planned to be sworn into office Feb. 11 but, Winslow wrote, "he has been advised that there are a number of votes scheduled prior to that date. For that reason, he wants certification to occur immediately."
Patrick is planning to certify the results tomorrow at 9:30 a.m., which would then allow Brown to travel to Washington for the swearing-in.
And unlike Barack Obama, a "lawyer" who never tried a case in court, filed a brief, or published any legal research except for one lonely little note, Scott Brown actually has a résumé...
Presently serving as the Army Guard's head defense attorney in New England, Brown defends Guard members who have disciplinary difficulties such as positive drug tests,[2] and provides estate planning and real estate advice to those who are about to deploy to war zones.[10]
If Republicans run "GOP Rock Star Scott Brown" for President in 2012...
Jessica Milgroom isn't your typical graduate student. Rather than spending her days in the library of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, her research is done in the field-literally. Since 2006, Jessica has been working with farming communities living inside Limpopo National Park, in southern Mozambique.
When the park was established in 2001, it was essentially "parked on top of 27,000 people," says Jessica. Some 7,000 of the residents needed to be resettled to other areas, including within the park, which affected their access to food and farmland. Jessica's job is to see what can be done to improve resettlement food security.
But rather than simply recommending intensified agriculture in the park to make better use of less land, Jessica worked with the local community to collect and identify local seed varieties. One of the major problems in Mozambique, as well as other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, is the lack of seed. As a result, farmers are forced to buy low-quality seed because nothing else is available.
In addition to identifying and collecting seeds, Jessica is working with a farmer's association on seed trials, testing varieties to see what people like best. In addition, farmers are learning how to purify and store seeds (see Innovation of the Week: Investing in Better Food Storage in Africa).
Weevils, the farmers tell Jessica, are worse than ever, destroying both the seed and crops they store in traditional open-air, granaries. But the farmers are now building newer granaries that are more tightly sealed and help prevent not only weevils but also mold and aflatoxins from damaging crops.
Today, farmers and breeders alike have a greater respect for Mozambique's indigenous seed varieties. According to Jessica, one of the biggest accomplishments of the project has been getting breeders and farmers to talk to each other. "It's been interesting for both groups," says Jessica, "and it needs to be a regular discussion" between them.
This is the first in a two-part series about my visit to the Kyeema Foundation in Maputo, Mozambique. Cross posted from Nourishing the Planet.
Although avian influenza and H1N1 have dominated the news for the last few years, many other serious diseases can ravage livestock and rural communities. Newcastle disease, which can wipe out entire flocks of chickens and can spread from farm to farm, is especially devastating for rural farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.
Vaccines for Newcastle used to be hard to come by in Africa. They were imported and usually expensive, putting them out of reach of small farmers. And even when they were available, they required refrigeration, which is not common in many rural villages.
Today, however, thanks to the work of the International Rural Poultry Center of the Kyeema Foundation in Mozambique, villages have access not only to vaccines, but also to locally trained community vaccinators (or para-vets) who can help spot and treat Newcastle and other poultry diseases before they spread.
With help from a grant from the Australian Government's overseas aid program (AusAID), Kyeema developed a thermo-stable vaccine that doesn't need to be refrigerated and is easier for rural farmers to administer to their birds. Dr. Rosa Costa, Kyeema's director in Mozambique, explained that vaccinations take place three times a year and farmers are taught-with cleverly designed flip-charts and posters-how to apply the vaccines with eyedroppers.
In addition, according to Dr. Costa, the community vaccinators try to link the control of Newcastle with efforts to address avian influenza because the symptoms of the two diseases-coughing, diarrhea, lethargy, runny eyes, mortality-are often similar.
Community leaders help Kyeema identify people who are well respected in the community to be community vaccinators, who then receive training. The vaccinators aren't compensated by Kyeema, but they can make a small profit from each bottle of vaccination. Typically, women are chosen as vaccinators, says Dr. Costa. Not only do they tend to stay in the villages more than men, but the money they earn usually does much more to help the family because they use it to buy food or schoolbooks for their children.
Because more birds are surviving because of vaccinations, Kyeema is also working with farmers to build better housing for their poultry and to find additional sources of feed.
Stay tuned for more on our visit to Kyeema later this week.
My rent-a-car quit on the road, and a tow-truck dropped me off in this oasis of motels and gas-pumps, nowhere, with nothing but a smart-phone and hope for a better tomorrow.
3:21 AM.
On TV the channel-guide cycles slowly through 100 channels.
McDonald's is hoping to change the way consumers view fast food. In partnership with the E-CO2 Project, an independent U.K. consulting firm, the company is launching a three-year study to assess methane production from beef cows in the United Kingdom, as well as ways to reduce livestock production of the greenhouse gas.
A burger joint famous for drive-thru windows and Happy Meals is certainly not the first business that comes to mind when one thinks about environmental sustainability. But with increasing mainstream awareness of the negative consequences of beef production for both human health and the environment, the fast-food giant is looking to reposition itself as leader of green business models.
McDonald's purchases beef from more than 16,000 British and Irish farmers, who raise their cattle in large feedlots. The methane gas produced by livestock accounts for an estimated 4 percent of the U.K.'s total carbon emissions. McDonald's hopes that the results of the study will help guide efforts to reduce suppliers' methane production. The initiative also will likely help "green" the corporation's image in the minds of an increasingly environmentally conscious public.
Another reprint. Sorry. My source on this one says the trial is still being delayed. It was supposed to be last fall but is still being held up at this time that I'm posting this piece; end of January 2010.
These people got fucked to the wide, in case you find that of interest. I did.
John and Jackie Stower run the Manna Storehouse in LaGrange, Ohio. Last December their organic food coop and homeschool were raided by a SWAT team, who invaded their home with guns drawn, held them and their family captive for six hours, and confiscated a large amount of food. No charges were ever filed. The Buckeye Institute is helping the Stowers sue the The Lorain County General Health District, the Ohio Attorney General's Office and the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The trial will open October 8 and 9 at 8:30 am.
This is a crosspost from DK in response to fairleft's post about Haiti there.
We tell ourselves a lot of stories. There's nothing wrong with that; in fact we need them. But we should always be looking at what the story we're telling is, and what the underlying stories are.
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Jessica Milgroom isn't your typical graduate student. Rather than spending her days in the library of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, her research is done in the field-literally. Since 2006, Jessica has been working with farming communities living inside Limpopo National Park, in southern Mozambique.
Although avian influenza and H1N1 have dominated the news for the last few years, many other serious diseases can ravage livestock and rural communities. Newcastle disease, which can wipe out entire flocks of chickens and can spread from farm to farm, is especially devastating for rural farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.
