Bush tries to intimidate military lawyers

 Another day, another episode of unconscionable political degradation of the judicial/legal system of the United States of America.

Link

The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.

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Your move, Israel….

A bunch of countries are ramping up aid to the non-elected leadership of the West Bank,  while continuing to hold hostage the economies of both Gaza and the West Bank.  Bush, of course, isn’t giving anything, merely repledging money that’s already been pledged. Will Israel do anything positive? of course not.  Just like Bush.

Despite the new aid pledges, the Palestinian Authority’s economy will continue to contract unless Israel eases its blockage of the Gaza Strip and remove key internal checkpoints to allow Palestinians to move freely in the West Bank, the World Bank cautioned in its report.

The World Bank estimated that without such measures, the Palestinian gross domestic product would probably contract by 2 percent annually over the next five years. If Israel does ease the restrictions, and if the Palestinians put promised reforms in place, the economy could grow 5 percent a year, the report added.

Mr. Abbas, in his remarks, appealed to Israel to take a number of concrete measures, including a freeze on all settlements in the Palestinian territories, the dismantling of what he identified as “wildcat settlements,” a halt to construction of Israel’s barrier of separation and the release of more Palestinian prisoners.

Sea levels may rise FIVE feet this century

 Reuters 

The world’s sea levels could rise twice as high this century as U.N. climate scientists have predicted, according to researchers who looked at what happened more than 100,000 years ago, the last time Earth got this hot.

Experts working on the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have suggested a maximum 21st century sea level rise — a key effect of global climate change — of about 32 inches.

But researchers said in a study appearing on Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience that the maximum could be twice that, or 64 inches.

They made the estimate by looking at the so-called interglacial period, some 124,000 to 119,000 years ago, when Earth’s climate was warmer than it is now due to a different configuration of the planet’s orbit around the sun.

…..” Back then, Greenland was 5.4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than now — which is similar to the warming period expected in the next 50 to 100 years, Rohling said.