EarthPortal
Ken Pollack wrote a book in 2002, “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq” that Newsweek hailed at the time as “intelligent, balanced, and measured; a model of fair-minded analysis” of the Iraq situation. Too bad the book was wrong.
(more…)
Published in The Nashua Telegraph on March 8, 2005 with the title: Scientists Under Stress
To The Nashua Telegraph
Dear Editor:
Regarding the Telegraph article, “Bush said to stifle voice of science” on Monday. As a former Research Scientist for the National Park Service, I find it a sad day for America that our government is intimidating scientists to reach conclusions based upon politics and not facts. Some who have not towed the line have been forced to resign in frustration or have been fired for specious reasons. Which young scientists will choose government service if they know that their future conclusions will be pre-determined by development interests and/or government mandate?
Stephen Nodvin
Nashua, New Hampshire
This post is an abstract of the Easter Island chapter of Jared Diamond’s Collapse. “The Lorax Hall of Shame award, in its purest form, is simply given to those who, face to face with the last of something, take it, even knowing there will be no more.”
In 1722 a Dutchman visiting Easter wrote: “We counted as sand the withered grass, hay, or other scorched and burnt vegetation, because its wasted appearance could give no other impression than of a singular poverty and barrenness.” Diamond traces the research which has shown the path the islanders followed in causing the death of their own society.
http://pratie.blogspot.com/2005/02/lorax-hall-of-shame-easter-island.html
Recently in a class discussion in my Environmental Issues course, a student stated:
According to Paul Krugman “It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action.”
(more…)
This past week, the EPA Inspector General confirmed that the federal government’s environmental “initiatives” are politically motivated.
(more…)
Democrats apparently had considered a filibuster against Gonzales. The Democrats decided Tuesday that they won’t try to filibuster Gonzales’ nomination, but will hold extensive debate over his role in developing the Bush administration’s policies on foreign detainees.
Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont said:“Judge Gonzales is the wrong man for this job.”
Amnesty International is handing out an open letter to Senators today urging the United States Senate to refrain from voting on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the position of US Attorney General pending his full and unambiguous responses to outstanding questions about torture and ill-treatment.
STOP whatever you are doing and call and e-mail your Senators right now and ask them to vote against the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General of the United States. Not only is Mr. Gonzales a man who advised the President that torture was OK because the Geneva conventions were ‘quaint’ and ‘obsolete’ and who basically said that the President is beyond the law, but he also, as Governor Bush’s counsel in Texas, helped shepherd the execution of 150 men and two women in just six years and “repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.”
I am very concerned about the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Atty. General. Mr. Gonzales’ role in drafting Presidential memos sanctioning torture on prisoners was extremely poor judgment.
Defying the Geneva Convention puts our own soldiers at extreme risk and sends a terrible message to the nation and the world.
I urge you to please vote against Mr. Gonzales’ nomination for Attorney General of the United States.
Sincerely,
Stephen C. Nodvin
Nashua, New Hampshire
