prize
One of the best blogs on the net is up for a literary award. The book Baghdad Burning, a collection of entries from the blog of the same name, is on the long-list for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize. This is an honour richly deserved.
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u.s. to auction utah canyonlands to oil and gas exploration
On December 19, 300,000 acres of spectacular red-rock canyonlands in Utah will be opened up to oil and gas speculators. Unless Bushco's fossil-fuels gang is stopped, lands near Canyonlands National Parks, Arches National Parks and Dinosaur National Monument, will be turned over to the highest bidder, then turned into an industrial wasteland. Subsequent auctions will follow, until the leases on 6.4 million acres are sold. In an exaggeration of the classic Friday-afternoon news dump, the Cheney Administration announced these plans on Election Day. They didn't even tell the National Park Service until it was a done deal. Frances Beinecke, President of the Natural Resources Defense Council , writing in Huffington Post: I thought I couldn't be shocked any more. After all, the past eight years have taught me that despite the availability of clean energy technology, the Bush administration will always place oil and gas drilling above all other options. But still I was caught by s...
u.s. war resister claims asylum in germany
On November 26, 2008, former US Army Specialist André Shepherd became the first Iraq War veteran to apply for refugee status in Germany. Shepherd, who enlisted in the military in 2004, served six months on a forward operating base near Tikrit. About the Iraqis, Shepherd says, "Some had the look of fear, while others looked outright angry and resentful. . . . I began to feel like a cruel oppressor who had destroyed the lives of these proud people. "Our unit did a lot of good things, giving schools books and bringing clothes to children. These actions helped my conscience a bit, but I kept thinking to myself, 'Had we not invaded, would these people need this aid now?'" Shepherd began researching the causes of the Iraq War, and the wider so-called War on Terror. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, he lost faith in the mission. He says: "Saddam Hussein was admittedly a dictator. However, he was not leading his country to produce any sort of weapon that could be used...
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