Detailed accounts from participants in the recent Copenhagen climate summit are still coming in, but a few things are already quite clear, even as countries step up the blame game in response to the summit's disappointing conclusion.
Like a lot of American corporations that made mind-boggling profits over the last few decades, the Microsoft, IBM and Cisco technology companies have abandoned their own citizen workforce to exploit foreign workers. But this isn't happening in some far off sweat shop, this outsourcing is happening right on American soil. In this case, corporate power, channeled through high-paid lobbyists and fat campaign contributions, strong-armed elected officials into passing laws that surreptitiously squash the labor rights of both US citizens and foreign workers alike.Bill Gates
With nuclear energy, uranium atoms split inside a reactor, and radiation heats water to its boiling point creating steam to spin a giant turbine. It all seems like ingenious, efficient, and clean energy production. So where's the mess? Now consider plutonium, a horribly carcinogenic and highly fissionable substance, radioactive for more than half a million years. If exposed to air, it will ignite. Like little pieces of confetti, very fine plutonium particles will disperse after ignition.Photo: Andy Duback/Greenpeace
On Dec. 18, 1979, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, or CEDAW, making it a watershed day for women around the globe. This international agreement was Eleanor Roosevelt's dream and is one of the pillars of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The global community went on the record to challenge every government to protect the human rights of women and girls by working together.Indian Women's Trade Union Rally
In Copenhagen, President Barack Obama made his pathetically inadequate proposal to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020, which in essence will amount to driving off the environmental cliff at 83 miles per hour rather than 100 miles per hour.
In Burlington, Vermont over 100 people gathered on December 12 to say "No more war in Afghanistan" and to denounce Barack Obama's 30,000 person troop surge to Afghanistan. The rally took place one day after 350 members of the Vermont National Guard departed for training before deployment to Afghanistan early next year. Vermont is sending more than 1,500 National Guards people to Afghanistan - the largest deployment of Vermont's National Guard since World War II. Joseph Gainza, VT Action for Peace
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