In many nations, threats to our water supplies are exacerbated by urban and agricultural runoff, pesticide and toxic pollution, clearcutting of forests, and by overconsumption of aquifers, rivers and streams.
Recent US federal proposals to relax Clean Water standards, including allowing increases of mercury pollution from power plants while reducing funding to domestic and international water conservation and pollution-prevention measures are only exacerbating the problem at home and abroad.
A recent survey found that clean fresh drinking water is more important to the majority of Americans than any other issue. While we invest billions of dollars in highways, airports and other infrastructure programs (all good things), the Bush administration has proposed cutting the EPA's Clean Water funding.
We must promote political leadership that invests in clean water protection for us and the generations to come..
The Economist just posted an interesting article on capitalism and development.
SOCIALISM and radical environmentalism evidently have the ability to inspire. Capitalism, on the other hand, tends to leave most folks cold, despite the not insignificant fact that it actually delivers the goods.
By perpetually raising productivity, capitalism has not only driven down poverty rates and raised life expectancy, it has also released much of humanity from the crushing burden of physical labour, freeing us to pursue ‘higher’ objectives instead. What Clive Hamilton airily dismisses as a ‘growth fetish’ has resulted in one hour of work today delivering twenty-five times more value than it did in 1850. This has freed huge chunks of our time for leisure, art, sport, learning, and other ‘soul-enriching’ pursuits. Despite all the exaggerated talk of an ‘imbalance’ between work and family life, the average Australian today spends a much greater proportion of his or her lifetime free of work than they would had they belonged to any previous generation in history.
That's Peter Saunders of the Australian Centre for Independent Studies in a new essay in Policy aimed at the arguments of growth skeptic Clive Hamilton. Hamilton, Saunders says, admits that capitalism has opened up heretofore unimagined opportunities. But it has gone too far; we have lost the balance. Capitalism has made us tawdry and small, too obsessed with beady-eyed materialism to use our wealth in the quest for authenticity. Saunders replies:
The attraction of living in a capitalist society is not just that the economy works. It is also that if your version of the good life leads you to turn your back on capitalism, you don’t have to pick up sticks and move away. If you don’t like capitalism, there is no need to bribe people-smugglers to get you out of the country. You simply buy a plot of land, build your mud-brick house, and drop out (or, like Clive, you set up your own think tank and sell books urging others to drop out).
And people do drop out, or at least scale down. A survey conducted by Hamilton’s Australia Institute claims that 23% of Australians between the ages of thirty and sixty have taken a cut in their income to get more control over their lives, spend more time with friends and families, or achieve greater personal fulfillment. Clive calls them ‘downshifters.’
The fact that about a quarter of the population is opting out of the rat race is the best imaginable evidence that it is possible to take command of one's consumption habits and bend them to the service of deeper satisfaction. But apparently this is not good enough for Mr Hamilton, who writes:
The downshifters are the standard bearers in the revolt against consumerism, but the social revolution required to make the transition to a post-growth society will not come about solely through the personal decisions of determined individuals … Making [this] transition demands a politics of downshifting.
But what if those other 77% don't want to downshift. Too bad! False consciousness! They don't know what they really need! This is ominous not only for the implied authoritarianism of a "politics of downshifting" that will no doubt force people to be free, but for its egregiously stunted sense of the human horizon.
Growth skeptics are, among other things, people who think we are at a late phase of material development. But it seems to me the evidence points decisively in the other direction. We are in the infancy of the economic advance, and its humanitarian effects have only barely begun to register. That thought ought to be inspiring. At the end of this century, after lifespans have tripled and average incomes have multiplied many times over, the idea that we had "too much" at the beginning of the century will be seen as the sad absurdity it is.
A UN tribunal is mulling genocide charges against Khieu Samphan. The leader of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge was a patriot who staunchly defended social justice, the regime's former head of state has said.
In a new book, Khieu Samphan says there was never a policy to starve people and no order to carry out mass killings.
Prosecutors are studying the book to determine what defence Khieu Samphan may take if he is ever charged.
Some estimates say up to 2.5 million people died during the Khmer Rouge reign from 1975 to 1979.
Khieu Samphan is one of the few surviving senior figures of the regime.
Four of his colleagues have been charged by a UN-backed genocide tribunal and Khieu Samphan, 76, is expected to be added.
People's well-being
In his book, Reflection on Cambodian History Up to the Era of Democratic Kampuchea, Khieu Samphan says Pol Pot was a leader who "sacrificed his entire life... to defend national sovereignty". Pol Pot was responsible for all policies, right or wrong, Khieu Samphan says.
He writes: "There was no policy of starving people. Nor was there any direction set out for carrying out mass killings.
"There was always close consideration of the people's well-being."
Khieu Samphan says "coercion was also needed" to make people work to redress food shortages.
But analysts say that mass graves and abundant testimonies from survivors paint a picture of a regime that oversaw the deaths of between one million and 2.5 million people through executions, forced labour and starvation.
Millions were forced from cities to communal farms in the countryside until the Khmer Rouge was finally overthrown in 1979 by invading Vietnamese troops.
The UN tribunal was established to seek justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Maoist regime.
The BBC's Guy de Launey in Phnom Penh says Khieu Samphan's arrest was apparently only days away this week when the former head of state apparently suffered a stroke at his home in Pailin, near the Thai border.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen arranged for Khieu Samphan to be airlifted to hospital.
Officials must now decide whether ill health will affect any charges.
In his book, Khieu Samphan also criticises the current regime, saying: "Government officials, military officers, the rich, indulge themselves with excessive spending."
Can it really be argued that analyzing Pol Pot's legacy is just a matter of perspective? I guess in all fairness, I haven't really examined the evidence of "good" things he did during his reign. But I have watched his confessions and they didn't really persuade me.
So many blogs are saying that even if we don't like Hillary, we have to give her her due. I'm sure many will, but I'd rather not. The only due deserving is to the spinmasters behind the scenes who have rapidly turned Hillary into the candidate of "change." Hmmm perhaps it would be good to examine her voting record in the senate and take a close look at who is funding her campaign. Not too much change, I would venture to say. I read on the BBC the other day that Hillary has pulled out all the old political pals of Bill and his original campaign in the effort to boost her in the primaries, looks like it might have worked for now...
After watching Our Brand is Crisis I am much more aware of the spin doctors and marketing that goes into these productions, but I have to say Obama nailed it here. His team of marketers must be a good one because this video really nails: the desire for change, patriotism, hope, etc.
In many nations, threats to our water supplies are exacerbated by urban and agricultural runoff, pesticide and toxic pollution, clearcutting of forests, and by overconsumption of aquifers, rivers and streams. 
