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 covered recently in similar excellent coverage in the Wall Street Journal. Here’s a brief section of the NYT report:

…it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.

China is choking on its own success

And this is not merely a problem for the Chinese. Acid rain containing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from Chinese coal-fired power plants falls on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. The Journal of Geophysical Research reports that much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China.

The World Health Organization and World Bank independently found that total deaths in China due to pollution have reached 750,000 a year. Chinese experts interviewed claimed that the Western estimates “probably understate the problems.” The World Bank told the NYT that China’s environmental agency asked them to remove this number from the Spring 2007 final report, claiming the numbers could detrimentally impact “social stability.”

The question, of course, is who has the credibility and sway to either guide China toward responsible environmental policies, or model a path forward by example.

Lime

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 and useful case law in the States. LEXIS and Westlaw, of course, have long monopolized the availability of such information in any searchable or useful form, and have charged a pretty penny to those that want to easily search case or other resources (via “Natural Language” or the far more powerful, but underused, advanced/Boolean search engines). AltLaw now makes Boolean searching entirely free.

The catch: at startup, AltLaw’s coverage of SCOTUS case law extends fully only back to May 1991, and the Federal Courts of Appeals in a more irregular spread–the 7th Circuit back only to October 1999, and at best, the 1st Circuit back to 1992. Complete details about AltLaw’s initial coverage are posted HERE.

AltLaw is a joint project of Columbia Law School and the University of Colorado Law School. The site touts, amazingly, advanced searching options akin to LEXIS and Westlaw, including proximity searching, Boolean searches, concentration searches, wildcard searches (my fave), among others. The site also intimates that West Reporter Citations will be added.

Yet another step in making U.S. case law readily available to the citizenry, along the lines of what Cornell’s indispensible Legal Information Institute has done, for example, in making the U.S. Code and Code of Federal Regulations, among LII’s many other items, very quickly searchible and accessible for free.

Thanks to fellow appellate litigator Greg May at The California Blog of Appeal, and Harvard’s Info/Law for the story.

Lime

LtCol Ware was the investigating officer for LCpl Sharratt. LtCol Ware unrecommended no charges against the Marines, and LtGen Mattis concurred with this recommendation and dismissed all charges against both LCpl Sharratt and Capt Stone. LtCol Ware will also be the Investigating Officer for SSgt Frank Wuterich.

yojoe out

More on Haditha

You can’t sit back in an air-conditioned room at Camp Pendleton and second-guess these men. It’s 20/20 hindsight.

While the prosecution maintained its mantra of retribution and a rush to use force,

In an effort to avoid unnecessary suffering of innocents, you are not permitted to go straight to deadly force.

LtCol Ware will likely submit his report within the next ten days.
yojoe

Previous posts: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5. Days 6 and 7

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!”

LCpl Tatum explained that the visibility was very poor during the battle, making it very difficult to identify targets, as anything more than that, targets. He explained that only later did he learn that the targets were women and children. He entered the first house after his squad leader told him the house was “hostile” and continued to the second house because he heard the sound of an AK-47 being made ready to fire.

LtCol Ware expressed some of the same skepticism and reluctance to second guess decisions made by the Marines that he expressed during the Article 32 investigation of LCpl Sharratt, wherein he recommended no charges.This came during testimony from a government witness explaining the briefs the Marines received about the rules of engagement. LtCol Ware stated, “What I’m hearing is a lot of 20-20 hindsight.”

The investigating officer, LtCol Ware, must make his way throughapproximately 200 pieces of evidence in reaching his recommendation,which will be forwarded to LtGen Mattis for a final decision Given the extensive testimony and volume of exhibits, LtCol Ware will likely take up to two weeks to complete his report.

Haditha defendants and current status of their charges:

• LtCol Jeffery R. Chessani – Art 32 completed, recommended charges for dereliction of duty.
• Capt Randy W. Stone – Art 32 completed, recommend no criminal charges, but did recommend non-criminal disciplinary action.
• LCpl Justin Sharratt – Art. 32 completed, recommend no criminal charges.
• 1stLt Andrew A. Grayson – Awaiting Art. 32 investigation.
• Capt Lucas M. McConnell – Awaiting Art. 32 investigation.
• SSgt Frank D. Wuterich – Awaiting Art. 32 investigation, scheduled for Aug 2007

Note: LtGen Mattis has yet to make a final determination on charges for any of the Art. 32 investigations that have been forwarded to him.

yojoe

Previous posts: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5.

• Rules of Practice for the Court of Military Commission and Review
  • After a very quick perusal, I notice nothing too remarkable here–they look like, as we were led to suspect, a typical Court of Criminal Appeals’ rules, modified for the Commissions context. Many rules are footnoted “taken from ACCA (Army Court) rule” this or “Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces Rule” that. I will note that Rule 30 states that “The Clerk of Court is authorized to release unclassified filings with the CMCR and CMCR decisions. Filings and decisions will be available at: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/commissions.html.” That openness is certainly welcome, hopefully the link will be continually and timely updated.
  • Admission to practice requirements (as if you’d want to): “to be eligible for admission to the Bar of the CMCR, an attorney must be a member in good standing of the Bar of the highest court of a state, territory, commonwealth, or possession of the United States, the District of Columbia, or of the Bar of a Federal Court.” Proof of good standing is required. Foreign attorneys may gain honorary membership.
• Approval and Promulgation of Rules of Practice

• Multiple recent documents from the Khadr Commissions case that AO has reported on, inter alia, HERE (Khadr and Hamdan dismissal), HERE (reconsideration denial), and HERE (Khadr appeal), including:
  • the 6 June 07 Trial Judge’s dismissal for lack of jurisdiction
  • Prosecution’s 8 June 07 reconsideration request
  • Trial Judge’s 29 June 07 denial of reconsideration
  • Prosecution’s 4 Jul 07 CMCR brief
  • USCMCR’s 11 Jul 07 docketing order, case assignment, and briefing schedule
  • Defense’s 11 Jul 07 delay request and admission request for Canadian counsel
  • Prosecution’s 12 Jul 07 request of permission to file a brief
  • USCMCR’s 13 Jul 07 admission of Canadian counsel and ordering a new briefing schedule

Lime out

In comparison, the roles have switched: in fiscal year 2006, the US Federal government spent $2.7 trillion, of which Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid combined formed approximately $1 billion. Almost $200 billion came from payments to poor, earned-income tax credit and food stamps.

Those who are concerned with the size of the U.S. Defense budget should take a good look at all U.S. government expenditures before spending their talents barking up a sapling: European governments now are largely considering reversing decades of welfare-state policies, and going the American route (and more recently British route) by privatizing state industries and minimizing the welfare state.

So for 50 years, we’ve been striving to be more French. Sacre bleu! Bring on the wine and cheese! If we can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! (What was the quote about monkeys?)

Lime

Without going into too much detail, the treasure trove law (as modified by the Treasure Act of 1996) determines the destination of objects that are found and for which no owner can be determined. Under British common law, if ownerless objects are merely lost (like change falling out of your pocket), they belong to the finder. If they are deliberately stashed (like the hoard in question), then they belong to the crown. The Treasure Act modifies this basic principle to ensure the finder receives just recompense even if title is not awarded. The effect is that if you find a valuable object or objects, you have to report them to a government official. If they are determined to fall under the category of treasure trove, the finder must offer them for sale to a museum, at a price set by a board of antiquities experts. Only if no buyer can be found can the objects be kept by the finder. Under British law the owner of property on which antiquities are found is considered the ‘finder’ in question, unless treasure seekers have come to an agreement with the owner to split the proceeds.

What are the advantages of the law? It provides an incentive for treasure seekers to report their finds and helps ensure that antiquities end up in the hands of public caretakers, who are presumably the most qualified to conserve and display the objects, so that all can benefit.

On the other hand, it also means that treasure seekers have an easy and legitimate avenue for realizing profit from their activities. While this is clearly preferable to illicit excavations of the kind I have reported on in the past, the fact remains that the two gentlemen who dug up the hoard were not archaeologists, and there was no controlled excavation. Depending on the nature of the find, invaluable archaelogical context may have been destroyed. In addition, one can expect the publicity of this find to encourage even more treasure seekers to go digging around the countryside, at unknown cost to archaeology.

Crossposted from Bad Archaeology

Well, turns out somebody has now hacked IslamTube, rendering it useless. Hopefully forever–thanks to good old freedom and democracy, it appears that citizens of fellow democracy Turkey have hacked the abomination. Now appearing on the IslamTube front page: a lovely picture of Turkish nation-founder Ataturk, the Turkish flag, and some music (Turkish national anthem?).

Now to be fair, there were positive Islamic videos on the site: and so, sincere apologies to our reader (named “a person”) who pointed out that IslamTube now directs him to another site (“Islaam.com”).  I also found myself redirected to Islaam.com, before the second attempt that brought me Ataturk.

I’ll take Ataturk over Jihadists anyday. Long live Turkey!

(And by the way: hacking is often illegal.  Don’t do it.)

Lime