GeoBear7

Dec. 2nd was the 25th anniversary of the disaster in Bhopal, India, where a Union Carbide pesticide plant released 27 tons of toxic chemical into a crowded sleeping city, killing 8,000 immediately and injuring over a half a million people. It is widely recognized as the world�s biggest industrial chemical accident ever. The disaster started that night 25 years ago and it continues to this day. Unbelievably, after 25 years, the company still refuses to share its information on the toxic health impacts of the leaked gas, calling it a �oetrade secret,” thwarting efforts to provide medical care to victims of exposure.

Liberals who fought to get women in the military are now horrified to think their efforts have culminated in a generation of women fighting for a Republican empire-building exercise gone bad. Conservatives, who never wanted women in the military in the first place, don�t have much incentive to point out they lost that political fight and mothers and daughters are getting their limbs blown off in a sinkhole war they championed for the last eight years.

Dissociating from the US government is the only rational, moral and humane stance that a citizen can take toward the vast and brutal machinery of the American imperial state in our time. The crimes of this state are monstrous, and mounting. But what is worse is that these crimes are not aberrations; they are the very essence of the system -- they are its goal, its product, its lifeblood.

A University of Chicago researcher, Malcolm Casadaban, died after exposure to a weakened and ordinarily harmless strain of the bacteria that cause plague. This raises inevitable and troubling questions: just how "safe" was the strain of plague studied by Casadaban, and was this research part of a new round of illicit, highly compartmented experiments meant to bulk-up America's first-strike arsenals?

As the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change coincides with Human Rights Day, let�s consider whether our 2009 world calls for amending the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and whether it is appropriate to elevate our basic needs for survival to the level of universal human rights.
Here is a draft proposal to amend the UDHR in honor of Copenhagen. Suggestions, endorsements or strategies for its use are most welcome in comments.

Candidate Barack Obama's audacity and accomplishments gave Americans hope. When Obama reached for the sky he realized what no one thought he could. The electorate was energized. People came to expect the country was in for a change. Now, it seems he is captured by what Eisenhower understood, concerns of the Military Industrial Complex.

As the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change coincides with Human Rights Day, let's consider whether our 2009 world calls for amending the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and whether it is appropriate to elevate our basic needs for survival to the level of universal human rights. Here is a draft proposal to amend the UDHR in honor of Copenhagen. Suggestions, endorsements or strategies for its use are most welcome in comments.