In November, much of China watched in horror as work crews struggled to contain a benzene spill that polluted the northeastern Songhua River and disrupted drinking water supplies to about 12 million people in the region for more than a week. But even those watching the event unfold on TV from the comfort of their homes in Beijing weren’t entirely safe… return to article
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Reader Comments (22)Page 1 of 1 pagesThe impeachment movement has hit the new year running. If you consider the following facts, it’s clear that the issue of impeachment has decisively taken off:
1) The People’s Impeachment Lobby is a huge success. Members of Congress received more than 70,000 letters urging impeachment.
2) A new Zogby poll will be released tomorrow showing that by a 52% to 43% margin, Americans believe that Congress should consider impeaching George W. Bush if he wiretapped the people of this country without court approval (and everyone knows and Bush has admitted that he ordered just such huge secret spying operation.) The poll, with a plus or minus margin of error of 2.9%, shows that 66% of Democrats, 59% of independents, and 23% of Republicans support impeachment for wiretapping. Majorities favored impeachment across the country: the East (54%), South (53%), and West (52%), Central states (50%). The significance of this poll can be seen by way of comparison with public attitudes in the months before the impeachment of Clinton. In August and September 1998, sixteen major polls found that only 36% supported hearings to impeach Clinton.
3) Even Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Arlen Specter, who will be convening hearings next month on Bush’s authorization of secret electronic surveillance of Americans, said that if lawmakers find Bush violated the law regarding wiretapping (remember Richard Nixon here), then “impeachment is a remedy. After impeachment you could have a criminal prosecution.”
4) There are now eight members of Congress including John Conyers, the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, who have put their name to a bill calling for a special committee to investigate impeachable crimes by the Bush Administration.
5) Newspaper Ads in the New York Times and other papers will be published again, as well as radio spots in the next few weeks, coinciding with the Bush State of the Union Address and the Congressional hearings on Bush’s illegal wiretapping operation. These ads have reached hundreds of thousands of people and we are planning to run more in the next few weeks. Please help with your contribution.
How many full page newspaper ads and radio spots will appear depends entirely on the generous support and contributions from people who believe passionately that impeachment is absolutely critical to maintaining the integrity of the Constitution. Please click here to donate to help the newspaper ads and radio spots run as many times as possible.
- All of us at VoteToImpeach/ImpeachBush.org
Posted by brian28 on Jan 18, 2006 at 9:33 PM Nuclear power is the only practical way to reduce increasingly higher rates of greehouse emissions. No wonder one of the founders of Greenpeace is such a staunch supporter of it.
Good call with the impeachment thing Brian. We’ll keep our eye on that one. Good luck - believe me, the Dems can’t look like buffoons all the time. Something is going to stick! Hopefully! Let’s just keep seeing how that pans out moving forward everybody.
Posted by InThoseTimes on Jan 18, 2006 at 11:21 PM Anyone else having a problem with asthma?
Anyone else see a 300 foot ceiling of cloud cover so dense and opaque that it looks like a ceiling painted with a roller and flat latex paint?
Anyone else see the air all the way down to the ground? I’m not just talking fog, here—-it makes the eyes feel gritty just to step outside sometimes. Near a busy intersection, the eyes burn. I’ve been holding a scarf in front of my face.
I’m starting to hear other people talking about these effects and attributing them to the air. People are saying are also saying, ‘at first, I thought I had a flu, but it’s not going away’.
I’m near the West Coast, and I don’t know if knowing the pollution is coming from China helps, but it certainly makes me want to root for those NGOs. It has been raining for 21 days, and the air is anything but sweet smelling. I’ve been watching for signs of pitting in glass, plexiglass, and metals. None so far.
I’ve heard that street people in a city north of this one were dying from the air pollution. Whoa.
Don’t care for nuclear power myself—-I would absolutely veto unregulated nuclear power, if I had the power; but this pollution is heinous. I’ll consider supporting it, and that’s a big step for me. I guess it’s the plutonium that concerns me most, and the fact that there is no way to safely dispose of it for all the time that a grain of it can cause lung cancer and birth defects.
Now that I know that lung cancer is the number one cause of death in Beijing, I’m going to work harder at working up the nerve to wear a mask. It isn’t a tin foil hat issue, is it?
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 19, 2006 at 8:25 AM You don’t know if it is coming from China? Well the content of your local land fill probably came from China, but you can, no doubt, look a lot closer to home for the cause of your shortness of breath. Most people don’t have to look much further than their garage.
The blind opposition to effective and comprehensive mass transit systems in most areas boggles the mind. Your city may have an excellent system, but most communities have to fight tooth and nail for a mediocre one. Everything is simply built around the essential notion of a car (and a big one at that).
Nuclear power is one thing, but it too has pollution issues down the road. It is really too bad that the only changes people seem willing to accept are the ones where everything remains the same. (oops - turning off the lights in the other room now)
Posted by GrayArea on Jan 20, 2006 at 3:49 AM Brian,
I think the “post your commments” section is intended to discuss the current articles, not rant on off the wall topics.
Although it is like a Liberal to ignore the current conversation and blame Bush. I know it must be hard for you.
And one more thing, the problem is not the person you HATE, it is the fact that you HATE!PEACE
Posted by think4yourself on Jan 20, 2006 at 4:31 AM Hi, GrayArea. Being an American that doesn’t drive, I do indeed see how hooked on cars this society is. This culture doesn’t even understand walking. I can’t count the times I’ve asked for directions and heard “oh, you can’t walk—-that’s too far” when “too far” was about seven to ten blocks.
So often, people have expressed pity when I tell them I’m walking. My policy for this is to point out to them that if I told them I ran around in a circle every day they might envy me, so why pity me because I walk.
And who hasn’t heard of the woman who was “too hot to be riding the bus”.
Cars have cult status in the U.S. It is a strange dependence. We’ll have to hit bottom before we change.
Nevertheless, pollution doesn’t always express itself where it’s made. And don’t forget jets polluting the skies. Evidently during that three day grounding after the 9/11 attacks, the air quality improved measurably in the U.S.
It would be nice if developing nations didn’t make the same mistakes we have. Perhaps they will learn from our disasters.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 20, 2006 at 6:03 AM Think4yourself, it is possible to impeach Bush without hating him.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 20, 2006 at 6:04 AM The problem with the anti-nuclear environmentalists is they want ABSOLUTE safety. Their standards are basically impossible to achieve. So instead of nuclear power and it’s relatively clean energy, we have the filthy carbon based power.
WileyWitch you ARE right that it’s hard to dispose of plutonium, BUT ONLY if you demand 100% safety.
That’s just not possible, and unrealistic. The solutions presented do have extremely LOW risk factors, like Yucca mountain, but the uncompromising anti-nuclear lobby (no doubt a front for oil-companies) demands 0% risk.
Nothing in life is zero risk, unless you are dead.
If we want a decent, clean environment, liberals, lefties, moderates and centrists have to reign in the Absolutism that defines the envoronmental activists, and demand some compromise.
As it is now the nuclear energy industry is the MOST regulated energy sector bar none. That’s the reason we haven’t seen a new plant built in decades. Yet the anti-nuke absolutist activists would have you believe there are gaping holes in regulation Etc.
In a perfect world they’d be right, but in a world being killed inch by inch by carbon based energy use, the dangers seem far more manageable in comparison.
Posted by johnnyincentx on Jan 20, 2006 at 10:45 PM Well johnnyincentx, I’ll take that into consideration. Still, I’m thinking that lowering our demand and changing our architecture and cityscapes will do more in the long run than alternative energy sources. There is design technology and materials now that will lower electric demands by at least half.
One question about the nuclear industry is how long before we run out of fuel for that? Surely, nuclear energy is no less finite than fossil fuels. Maybe not? I’d put my money on finity. I need to do a little research on that.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 21, 2006 at 7:02 AM WileyWitch: You are right in regards to that.
But instead of thinking either or, how about doing both?
I don’t think there is any energy solution that is NOT finite either in terms of supply or amount.
A better way to determine whether or not it’s a good choice would be to consider the “hidden costs” (something the oil industry never did or does) “environmental impact” “disposal issues” Etc.
My personal favorite is wind power. However the environmental extremists are attacking this everywhere. Their main objection is that birds are being killed by the wind generators. Their second is that it is unsightly. OK let’s say everything they say is true. Is it really anywhere near the # of birds killed by air pollution and various other deadly chemicals introduced into our environment via burning carbon fuels? And I think it’s very subjective to say windmills are unsightly. A little creative thinking and they could be painted to look like works of art. Yet these anti-wind activists are so unyielding, I think that they must be a covert oil industry operation. LOL
Oh and let me say I’m a bird-lover. I spend too much money feeding those winged rascals. After viewing them for years, I also canNOT believe they are that stupid or easily fooled by a moving windmill. heir eyesight is far better than ours to boot.
Don’t quote me, but the last time I heard any info on it, we had hundreds of years of nuclear energy available, and that was based on OLD technology. Newer technology potentially can extend this time.
Additionally the USA has a supply all it’s own. Which if exploited could help a few Native Nations here. Since the supplies are on their land.
The solution is NOT 1 source, but many sources, and having each source of energy tailored to the users. In areas where wind power is abundant it should be used. In areas with abundant easy-to-use Sunlight, solar power should be primary and in other places nuclear. All would be connected as we are now in an electric grid that would take and give power from and to areas based on needs.
Now as far as the changes you suggest. They need to be done starting now, and here and there they are. If added into the above equation, we could do so much more with less energy for more people. ;)
Posted by johnnyincentx on Jan 21, 2006 at 3:34 PM I love birds too johnnyincentx. Just hung up a new birdfeeder full of seed, and I’m waiting patiently with my camera and the zoom lens I got for Christmas. How many wrens would it take to make a stew? ;)
Can I call you johnny?
One of my concerns with nuclear power plants is the bathtub curve. Nuclear power plants are more likely to suffer failures when new or old. I do not remember off the top of my head what constitutes old, and am not going to surf right now because I’m too distractable. My point is, that most of our plants are old right now, and many are not in the best condition. I believe Cheney owns stock in 17 of them.
If we’re going to rely on nuclear power, then I want to see the plants publicly owned. The profit motive, stockholders, and safety aren’t such a good combination. The risks with nuclear power plants and the security risks they pose are profound.
Look at Enron.
I saw the documentary about Enron, The Smartest Guys In The Room last night. It was fascinating, though it does milk pity for vampires.
I like the wind power idea, and the idea of having energy produced as locally as possible.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 22, 2006 at 1:11 AM WILEYWITCH sure call me Johnny. Satan works too though, and might be more appropriate considering how the FRight wingers have demonized all populist types hahaha.
While I totally agree with you, in order to acheive those objectives, a clear path must be laid out.
Like you I am amazed at the fools who believe private business can do everything better. Well hey if the Gov’t. could cut out it’s least profitable or money losing aspects I imagine Gov’t. would do fantastic. Then there is also the need to make a profit, which the Gov’t. does NOT have.
People in Texas are learning how cold-hearted, and calculating utility companies are when it comes to making a profit and taking care of the average person. It has shocked many here to read some quarterly statements from these “private utilties” crowing about how the last 40% or so rate increase guarantees all investors an X dividend or continued high value stock.
Say what, the super-abundant Tx. Repugnicans are in dismay? Amazingly they actually believed that the first priority of a private utility in it for a profit would be to actually charge the lowest price they could. Not likely when you have a captive market. Hahaha. Even more shocking the Repugs. are actually starting to feel a bit nervous about private utilities “spinning” their need for improvements as manditory or absolutely essential. “Improvements” that force the users to pay prohibitive rate increases. Turns out the improvements were not usually dire, and the main reason was to get tax incentives from the Feds, further pumping up their profits.
By and large it would take a several more head on blows by bats like this to knock some sense into the Repugnican pro-business anti-people establishment in this state. I doubt if it will happen before there is a groundswell of resentment even here from being lied to so purposefully by those who supposedly represent the best of our capitalist system. In Texas you canNOT blame the Gov’t. anymore. After a few more years of excuse making, they’ll start to wear real thin, and then it will be fun to watch things here ;)
Posted by johnnyincentx on Jan 22, 2006 at 1:59 AM Hmmm. I’m a former Texan. Aren’t central Texans getting their nuclear energy from Kellog, Brown & Root—-a Halliburton subsidiary? I wouldn’ trust that company with a book of matches. I can only wonder why statesmen would trust the people who support them.
Oregon fought Enron long and hard, but eventually Enron won. After the collapse and publicity, judges in this state were wondering out loud if that little trick where PGE and Enron sold energy back and forth on paper, raising the price each time, was illegal. They were smart enough to figure out that it was unethical. Evidently lobbiests have been working hard for years to make legal unethical practices that have been illegal in the past.
My compadre and I have passed on the option of paying more for energy through PGE to help with the development of alternative energy. We figure the electricity is all coming in on the same wire, regardless of how it’s generated, and it’s not like they’re offering us stock in the future. If they hadn’t gotten in bed with Enron, perhaps the stockholders would trust them enough to buy stocks in alternative energy. We’re supposed to pay more for energy for that warm, fuzzy feeling?
Funny where the free market and capitalism begins and ends, isn’t it?
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 22, 2006 at 5:53 AM This article is a wild one. According to this, China is on the verge of making “infinite energy” with a fusion device, there’s just one little catch:
If a device is developed that can withstand temperatures as high as 100 million Celsius degrees and control a deuterium-tritium reaction, it will be as though an “artificial sun” had been created able to supply infinite, clean energy for human beings.
I wonder what the temperature is inside of a volcano?
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 22, 2006 at 11:20 PM Hmmm. Only about 2000 degrees Celsius for lava. How about nuclear blasts?
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 22, 2006 at 11:25 PM Exceeding 300,000 degrees.
Either the Chinese have a terrible case of can-do optimism, or the Angolan press is making fun of them.
Maybe something was lost in the translation.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 22, 2006 at 11:32 PM There is indeed a high rate of lung cancer in Beijing but it is mostly due to smoking which is incredibly heavy in China. The government are doing next to nothing about this because of the money they rake in as a state monopoly. A Chinese friend says they also hope it will help reduce the population!! I am sure the environmentalists are aware of this. But can they do anything?
Bob
Posted by bobynairn on Jan 24, 2006 at 6:59 PM Hmmm. I’m going to look up Hong Kong and lung cancer. Be right back.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 24, 2006 at 10:19 PM Hi, bobynairn.
China, with 1.27 billion people, is home to 20 percent of the world’s population and consumes 30 percent of the world’s cigarettes. The Chinese government is the largest producer of cigarettes in the world.
The study tracked deaths from tobacco in Hong Kong, where the population started smoking about 20 years earlier than the people of mainland China. It takes about 50 years for the full hazard of persistent smoking to emerge.
Researchers said the Hong Kong pattern is seen as foreshadowing that of China because the Hong Kong population was able to afford to smoke decades earlier than people on the mainland.
Whoa. Seems to be the case that China has a smoking problem, however, that does not mean that the air is is not polluted and that that pollution isn’t doing physical harm.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 24, 2006 at 10:27 PM Whoa! By pointing out the disaster from smoking in China I am not in any way seeking to lessen the other impending disaster from polution. Don’t you think that man is the worst thing to happen to the planet earth? If I were a poor deluded Christian I would have to wonder if their creationist God were not really Satan in disguise!!
Posted by bobynairn on Jan 25, 2006 at 4:23 PM We’re interesting. I think we’re doomed, though. Eventually, we will live shorter and shorter lives until we can no longer reproduce, if we are not all killed in a catastrophe or a series of catastrophes.
I was thinking last night, that if, samples of humans taken at a stage in our de-evolution when we have roughly the same life span as prehistoric human—-around sixteen—-could be taken to a new and pristine “earth”, then the DNA of those specimens would carry the message to either start deleting the frontal cortex that designs weapons and toxins, or to modify the lizard brain so that it can’t use weapons and toxins. Otherwise, it will just be the same thing all over again.
Posted by wileywitch on Jan 26, 2006 at 12:30 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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