A Toxic Shroud: "China is choking on its own success” and endangering neighbors and American cities

 
Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley of the New York Times, on August 26th, produced an excellent story on China’s industrial success/toxic pollution nexus. The situation is dire, and China’s difficulties overcoming the Victorian England-like pollution troubles in order to host an Olympics palpable to the rest of the world are well known, and have been [...]

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AltLaw Beta: Free Boolean-searches of SCOTUS/Federal Courts of Appeal Decisions

AltLaw, the newest and one of the more promising internet legal resources to hit the scene, is now up and running and available for free public advanced searches of case law.
It’s a sort of Google for Supreme Court and Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal decisions, and clearly holds promise to democratize the availability of relevant [...]

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Haditha Update: SJA Recuses Himself After Criticizing LtCol Ware

The Staff Judge Advocate, SJA, – the senior legal adviser, roughly equivalent to in-house counsel for a business – for LtGen Mattis removed himself form the case of LCpl Tatum. The SJA, LtCol Bill Riggs, contacted LtCol Ware and criticized him for holding the government to too high of a standard [...]

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Haditha Update: LCpl Tatum’s Article 32 the Final Day

In the final day of the Article 32 investigation into LCpl Tatum’s role in the action in Haditha, Iraq, both the prosecution and defense gave their respective summations of the case. The defense emphasized that,
You can’t sit back in an air-conditioned room at Camp Pendleton and second-guess these men. It’s [...]

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Quote of the Day

From the BBC:
UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”
Though I think it would have been better if he had said: “Badgers? We don’t need no stinking badgers!”

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Haditha Update: LCp Tatum’s Article 32 Days 6 and 7

LCpl Tatum testified that he did not “know that there was women and children in that house until later . . . otherwise, I would have physically stopped everyone in that room from shooting.” This testimony came during his unsworn statement during an Article 32 investigation in his actions in [...]

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UPDATE: Court of Military Commissions and Review Rules available

The Pentagon has freshly updated and made available to the public a cartload of Military Commissions materials. Earlier this month we noted that the site hadn’t been updated for several months. That’s been remedied. On the site are:

Rules of Practice for the Court of Military Commission and Review

After a very quick perusal, [...]

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P0wn’d!!! (those who think US Defense spending has gone through the roof)

In fact, Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post reports, it’s just the opposite. The real story is the rise of the American welfare state. Whereas in 1956 (see chart) defense spending was nearly 60% of the US budget, now it’s just less than 20%.
In comparison, the roles have switched: in fiscal year 2006, [...]

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Treasure Trove

You may have heard something over the last few days about the discovery of a hoard of Viking treasure in northern England. It has been reported in most major news outlets, and the treasure has recently gone on display in the British Museum. More than 600 coins and 65 other silver and gold objects were [...]

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Islamtube Part II: Turk hacks Islamtube

You might recall my post back in March about IslamTube entitled “IslamTube: Snipers and Destruction.” Bottom line, IslamTube back then (hold on before you excoriate me for not updating my sources) featured such crowd-pleasers as videos of jihadists blowing up Coalition forces, and Zawahiri tapes–much unlike the cheery GodTube.
Well, turns out somebody has now [...]

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American Adults More Scientifically Literate Than European or Japanese Adults

A recent study shows that Americans are more scientifically literate than Europeans or Japanese. But, at 28% we still have some way to go. On the bright side, that figure was 10% in the 1990’s.
yojoe

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Gang Holds Top RPG Gamer at Gunpoint

Folha Online reports that using Orkut, Google’s online social network, an armed gang of four 19-27 year old- kidnapped the world-leading Role-Playing Gamer of the game GunBound (boy plays violent video game; others become violent; psychologists, have at it). One of the gang members’ girlfriends lured the gamer onto a fake date at a [...]

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Haditha Update: LCpl Tatum’s Article 32 Day 5

As the investigation moved into its fifth day Special Agent Micheal Maloney, of NCIS, was called as a witness by the prosecution. SA Maloney testified that 17 bullets had been fired by the Marines that day at Haditha, Iraq. The women were killed first and the children were shot [...]

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POTUS applies Geneva Conventions to the CIA

The President yesterday signed an Executive Order, entitled “Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.”
The White House Press release is HERE, and the full text of the Executive Order follows below my brief analysis.
Note that the Military Commissions Act [...]

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Hamandiya: Cpl Thomas Sentenced

Cpl Thomas was sentenced today, 20Jul07, to a bad-conduct discharge, and reduction to E-1. He was found guilty of kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder. The Government had sought 15 years confinement.
For charges of this magnitude, this seems like a low sentence, as compared with other courts-martial for the same offenses. The members [...]

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