Cuba

I'm Home, but Still Haunted by Guantanamo

Posted Sun, 08/17/2008 - 07:53 by mishima
Originally posted Sun, 08/17/2008 - 07:50, giving it a little bump to the top - standingup

So many times in history policy and the inability to deviate from policy has often led to disastrous consequences. World War 1 where for reasons known only to themselves the various governments of Europe believed they fully understood their counterparts when they did not. The Domino Theory and Vietnam is just another example of this. People want to believe that we learn from our mistakes yet governments do not. Given recent revelations it would seem the Bush administration was incapable of learning histories lessons. How does this relate to Guantanamo Bay and the detention center there currently holding almost 500 people without any realistic judicial recourse. Because in both conflicts there were humanitarian abuses that the world supposedly learned from but did not. World War II is the best example. Governments should have learned from the atrocities of Nazi Germany. One could argue that in most cases they did but of course there are many examples where they did not. Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia come to mind.

Making a Market out of Carbon Footprints and the US's not too nice history with water torture

Posted Wed, 02/20/2008 - 06:15 by cho
Some weeks, I just wish everyone could afford a subscription to The New Yorker. Two essays this week seem of particular interest to people who post here. Making a Market out Carbon Footprints: Michael Specter's Big Foot begins by describing Sir Terry Leahy, head of Tesco Supermarkets in Britain, and his pledge that Tesco will be a leader in creating a low-carbon economy.

He announced that Tesco would cut its energy use in half by 2010, drastically limit the number of products it transports by air, and place airplane symbols on the packaging of those which it does. More important, in an effort to help consumers understand the environmental impact of the choices they make every day, he told the forum that Tesco would develop a system of carbon labels and put them on each of its seventy thousand products. “Customers want us to develop ways to take complicated carbon calculations and present them simply,” he said.