Weekly Fireside Chats w/President - Elect

Children of the Sun: Star Nation

Please take a moment to read and witness this message:

http://starnationpeople.blogspot.com/2008/10/there-is-prophecy.html

Obama Acceptance Speech

Watch This Short Film

History of a Sign

CBS's Lara Logan on Media and Iraq/Afghanistan Coverage

Bugs Eat Wast and Produce Petrol

Look at what's new in Silicon Valley. Could this be part of our energy future?



LINK to article

“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.
Related Links

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What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to re engineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.

Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.

For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.

The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-z problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.

....snip....


Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. “I have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this.”

Power points

— Google has set up an initiative to develop electricity from cheap renewable energy sources

— Craig Venter, who mapped the human genome, has created a company to create hydrogen and ethanol from genetically engineered bugs

— The US Energy and Agriculture Departments said in 2005 that there was land available to produce enough biomass (nonedible plant parts) to replace 30 per cent of current liquid transport fuels

The Good News by Rob Brezsny

Excerpts from Rob Brezsny's book *PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings*

Here's an excerpt:

Welcome to the PRONOIA NEWS NETWORK. Here's the news.

The world has become dramatically more peaceful since 1992, according to the non-partisan Human Security Report. Wars, coup d'etats, and acts of genocide have declined by 40 percent. Weapons sales have dropped 33 percent during the same time, and the number of refugees has decreased by 45 percent. The cause of these developments is the unprecedented upsurge of international activism since the end of the Cold War, spearheaded by the United Nations.
Elsewhere, life extension researchers now believe that there is no absolute limit to the human life span. The average life expectancy is 30 years more than it was a century ago, and is steadily climbing.

Literacy and education levels are rising steadily all over the globe. Since 1970, the percentage of students going to secondary school has more than doubled.
The World Health Organization reports that in the next 24 hours, 200 million people will make love on this planet, as they do every day of every year. Experts estimate that the orgasmic energy generated during a single rotation of the planet could, if harnessed, provide enough power to light a
medium-sized city for a month.
Briefly, here's a look at the rest of the top stories.

Accelerating rates of intermarriage are helping to dissipate ethnic and religious strife worldwide.

Acreage devoted to organic farming is rapidly increasing.

Death rates from cancer are shrinking.

Child abduction by strangers has dropped precipitously.

In 60 years, there hasn't been a lower birth rate among teenage girls than there is now.

The number of America's black elected officials has sextupled since 1970.

In recent years, the rivers and bays of New York City have been almost completely cleansed of raw sewage and industrial pollution.

Vast supplies of frozen natural gas lie beneath the oceans, harboring more potential energy for human use than all of the world's oil reserves, and could be mined with the right technology.

If forced to decide between having a bigger penis and living in a world where there was no war, 90 percent of all men would pick universal peace.

You have at least a million relatives as close as tenth cousin, and no one on Earth is any farther removed than your 50th cousin.

The world's largest private bank, Citigroup, has agreed to stop financing projects that damage sensitive ecosystems.

The giant timber company, Congolaise Industrielle des Bois, voluntarily agreed to stop cutting down trees in a virgin rain forest in the Congo.

Every second the sun generously transforms four million tons of itself into energy and bestows it on us free of charge.

With every dawn, when first light penetrates the sea, many seahorse colonies perform a dance to the sun.

Most HMO executives now believe prayer and meditation can expedite the healing process.

Each of the 50 trillion cells in your body can be considered a sentient being in its own right, and they all act together as a community, performing an ongoing act of prodigious collaboration.

A survey of a thousand poets suggests that the five most beautiful words in the English language are "epiphany," "undulates," "luminous," "crucible," and "melody."

Finally in the news, biologists have proved that with each breath, you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and—owing to the wind's ceaseless circulation—over a year's time you have intimate relations with oxygen molecules that have been exhaled by everyone who has ever lived, including Joan of Arc, Gengis Khan, Cleopatra, and Malcolm X.

You have been tuned to PNN, the Pronoia News Network. Our report has been brought to you by the state of mind that the poet John Keats enjoyed when he said, "If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true."

For 1,109 more items of good news, read the book.

Bill Moyers Ambush

An Historic Night - John Stewart

EPA Chief Grilled on being a White House Puppet

WASHINGTON, DC, May 21, 2008 (ENS) - The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stonewalled Democratic lawmakers Tuesday, refusing to provide information about the role the White House played in recent agency decisions involving the regulation of greenhouse gases and the finalization of a new federal smog standard. The defiance of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson drew a sharp rebuke from the Democratic chair of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, who said the EPA chief has repeatedly bowed to pressure from the White House and become "essentially a figurehead."

"My concern is decisions at EPA are not being made on the science and they are not being made on the law," said committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat. "They are being made at the White House and they are being made for political reasons."
Congressman Henry Waxman chairs the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee. (Photo courtesy Office of the Congressman)

Waxman said senior EPA staff had told Congressional investigators that Johnson reversed course on the smog standard, abandoning a plan to set a secondary standard designed to protect natural ecosystems from ground-level ozone, the key ingredient in smog.

The investigation by Waxman's committee found that the president weighed in with his opposition to a secondary ozone standard only hours before EPA finalized the new rule on March 12.

The EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, CASAC, had recommended setting such a standard to better protect natural ecosystems from the hazards of smog. Documents show Johnson initially agreed with that recommendation. The final rule did not set a secondary standard.

Waxman also pointed to depositions from agency staff that said Johnson caved to the White House in deciding to reject California's request to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles.

He criticized the EPA chief for a second global warming decision, pointing to agency documents and testimony that indicate Johnson was prepared to push forward last December with an agency effort to begin exploring how to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, only to abandon the plan due to White House pressure.

"Three times in the last six months you have recommended to the White House that EPA take steps to address climate change and protect the environment," Waxman told Johnson. "In each case, your positions were right on the science and the law but in each case you backed down."

Waxman added that Johnson and other administration officials have failed to fill in gaps about how the process for each of the decisions was completed and questioned the legality of the White House's involvement.

"The president apparently insisted on his judgment and overrode the unanimous recommendations of EPA scientific and legal experts," he said "Our investigation has not been able to find any evidence that the president based his decisions on the science, the record, or the law. Indeed, there's virtually no credible record of any kind in support of the decisions."

snip...

Link to Full Article

Coverup Charged in DC Salmon Hearing

West Coast lawmakers blast federal fishery officials over salmon losses
By David Whitney

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats on Thursday angrily accused federal fishery officials of using scientific reports to cover up the depth of the risks to salmon populations from the diversion of river water to farming on the West Coast.

The result, they said during a hostile hearing, was that salmon stocks collapsed, forcing state and federal authorities to ban salmon fishing earlier this year.

"We're devastated, and our communities are devastated," said Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif. "They haven't been using good science. It's sophomoric. People are losing their livelihoods."

Capps' comments came during a break in a House Natural Resources fisheries subcommittee hearing at which a dozen or so West Coast Democrats showed up to grill Rodney McInnis, administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service's regional office in Long Beach, Calif.

The hearing came a day after the House approved a huge farm bill containing $170 million in economic disaster funding for commercial fishermen and fishing communities as a result of the recent closure of the salmon season because of perilously low numbers of fish returning to the Sacramento River to spawn.

The closure followed a sharp reduction in the season two years ago because of low returns to the Klamath River and continuing problems with Columbia River salmon.

Common to all three river systems are NMFS biological opinions some of which federal courts later rejected as failing to use the best available science or otherwise failing to look broadly at the health of the fish in deciding the impacts of diverting river water for farming.

One such report supported a Bureau of Reclamation plan to divert water to farming interests from the Klamath River on the California-Oregon border. But the plan allowed the river's level to drop so low and its water to become so warm that more than 30,000 salmon died in 2002, the largest fish die-off in U.S. history. The full result of that die-off wasn't felt for years, however, when fisheries had to be closed because the fish that had died had not laid eggs and reproduced.

Democrats charged that the failure to predict the impact of such water diversions was part of a pattern of abuse of science by the Bush administration.

"Along with a fishing failure, this is the failure of an agency," declared Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif.

"I worry that science is used to justify a decision," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.

"I assure you, this is not the situation," said McInnis.

Idaho Rep. Bill Sali, one of the few Republicans attending, charged that Democrats were "using the closure of the Pacific fishery to further a (political) agenda."

But McInnis acknowledged that there had been problems with his agency's work and insisted that steps are being taken to correct them.

Outside, independent scientists are now reviewing the agency's opinions, he said. The agency also is looking more deeply at what it takes to recover endangered stocks.

McInnis said the first results of this broader consultation should appear in September, when the agency releases its draft opinion on California's Central Valley Project and the vast irrigation system's impact on salmon.

"How will they know we've fixed the problems?" McInnis said during a brief interview. "An intermediate step is what the courts will say about us doing our job. But ultimately we've got to get the fish to come back."

The cause of the Sacramento River salmon collapse is still a matter of dispute, with some thinking it relates to water quality and agriculture diversions from the San Francisco Bay Delta. McInnis said his scientists believe the cause is related to poor ocean conditions for the fish.

Source: LInk

Bush, Hitler, The Danger of a Little Knowledge, and Pat Buchanan

Yes, Pat Buchanan. He writes an interesting opinion piece on our President's address to the Israeli Knesset, wherein he flubs history once again and sort of forgets the use of diplomacy that has worked for many of his predecessors...including his own father.





Take a look at this excerpt from Buchanan's piece:

Bush Plays the Hitler Card

Pat BuchananTue May 20, 3:00 AM ET

"A little learning is a dangerous thing," wrote Alexander Pope.

Daily, our 43rd president testifies to Pope's point.

Addressing the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's birth, Bush said those who say we should negotiate with Iran or Hamas are like the fools who said we should negotiate with Adolf Hitler.

"As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement. ..."

Again, Bush has made a hash of history.

Appeasement is the name given to what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich in September 1938. Rather than fight Germany in another great war — to keep 3.5 million Germans under a Czech rule they despised — he agreed to their peaceful transfer to German rule. With these Germans went the lands their ancestors had lived upon for centuries, German Bohemia, or the Sudetenland.

Chamberlain's negotiated deal with Hitler averted a European war — at the expense of the Czech nation. That was appeasement.

German tanks, however, did not roll into Poland until a year later, Sept. 1, 1939. Why did the tanks roll? Because Poland refused to negotiate over Danzig, a Baltic port of 350,000 that was 95 percent German and had been taken from Germany at the Paris peace conference of 1919, in violation of Wilson's 14 Points and his principle of self-determination.

Hitler had not wanted war with Poland. He had wanted an alliance with Poland in his anti-Comintern pact against Joseph Stalin.

But the Poles refused to negotiate. Why? Because they were a proud, defiant, heroic people and because Neville Chamberlain had insanely given an unsolicited war guarantee to Poland. If Hitler invaded, Chamberlain told the Poles, Britain would declare war on Germany.

From March to August 1939, Hitler tried to negotiate Danzig. But the Poles, confident in their British war guarantee, refused. So, Hitler cut his deal with Stalin, and the two invaded and divided Poland.

The cost of the war that came of a refusal to negotiate Danzig was millions of Polish dead, the Katyn massacre, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, the annihilation of the Home Army in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and 50 years of Nazi and Stalinist occupation, barbarism and terror.

In that same speech to the Knesset, Bush dismissed the idea we could ever successfully negotiate with Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them that they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before."

But did not Ronald Reagan's negotiations with the Evil Empire, as he rebuilt America's military might, bear fruit in a reversal of Moscow's imperial policy and an end to the Cold War?

Richard Nixon went to China and toasted the greatest mass murderer of them all, Mao Zedong, when Maoists were conducting a nationwide purge: the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Yet, Nixon ended a quarter century of implacable U.S.-Chinese hostility. Was Nixon's trip to China useless?

Three years after Nikita Khrushchev drowned the Hungarian revolution in blood, Ike had him up to Camp David. John Kennedy ended the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, by negotiating with that same Butcher of Budapest.

Were Ike, JFK and Nixon all deluded fools? For the dictators they negotiated with — Khrushchev and Mao — were far greater mass murderers and enemies of America than is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Bush's father negotiated with Syria's Hafez al-Assad, the Butcher of Hama, and made him an American ally in the Gulf War.

Was President Bush's father a deluded fool?

The president's own diplomats negotiated an end to the nuclear program of Col. Gadhafi, who was responsible for the air massacre of American school kids over Lockerbie.

Bush's own diplomats are negotiating with Kim Jong-il's North Korea, a state sponsor of terror. Ambassador Ryan Crocker is negotiating with Iranians in Baghdad. Egypt is negotiating on behalf of Israel with Hamas to retrieve a captured Israeli soldier. Are they all deluded fools?

Bush refused to talk to Yasser Arafat because he was a terrorist. But four Israeli prime ministers negotiated with Arafat. Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin shared a Nobel Prize with him. "Bibi" Netanyahu ceded Hebron to him. Ehud Olmert offered him 95 percent of the West Bank.

Were all four Israeli leaders deluded fools?

True, the Chamberlain-Hitler summit at Munich proved a disaster, as did the FDR-Churchill-Stalin summits at Tehran and Yalta, and the JFK-Khrushchev summit in Vienna. But JFK's diplomacy in the missile crisis may have averted a nuclear war. And Eisenhower, Nixon, Gerald Ford and Reagan all met with foreign dictators with blood on their hands, without loss to America, and sometimes with impressive gains.

What has Bush's refusal to talk to Hamas, Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran done to make either Israel or America more secure?

Okay, I fibbed. That was the entire article.

Here is the link to my source: Link

Pat Buchanan's column is released twice a week.

World Food Crisis

..or "Build your garden now."

LINK

The world is facing a food crisis on a scale that it alarming. And it is reaching all of us. What started it? where will it take us?

The food price shock now roiling world markets is destabilizing governments, igniting street riots and threatening to send a new wave of hunger rippling through the world's poorest nations. It is outpacing even the Soviet grain emergency of 1972-75, when world food prices rose 78 percent. By comparison, from the beginning of 2005 to early 2008, prices leapt 80 percent, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. Much of the increase is being absorbed by middle men -- distributors, processors, even governments -- but consumers worldwide are still feeling the pinch.

The convergence of events has thrown world food supply and demand out of whack and snowballed into civil turmoil. After hungry mobs and violent riots beset Port-au-Prince, Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis was forced to step down this month. At least 14 countries have been racked by food-related violence. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is struggling for political survival after a March rebuke from voters furious over food prices. In Bangladesh, more than 20,000 factory workers protesting food prices rampaged through the streets two weeks ago, injuring at least 50 people.

To quell unrest, countries including Indonesia are digging deep to boost food subsidies. The U.N. World Food Program has warned of an alarming surge in hunger in areas as far-flung as North Korea and West Africa. The crisis, it fears, will plunge more than 100 million of the world's poorest people deeper into poverty, forced to spend more and more of their income on skyrocketing food bills.

"This crisis could result in a cascade of others . . . and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.

White House Authorizes Torture?

In the news today is an article that claims just that. Read on for an excerpt...

The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. Attending the sessions were Cheney, then-Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

....snip.....

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., lambasted what he described as "yet another astonishing disclosure about the Bush administration and its use of torture."

"Who would have thought that in the United States of America in the 21st century, the top officials of the executive branch would routinely gather in the White House to approve torture?" Kennedy said in a statement. "Long after President Bush has left office, our country will continue to pay the price for his administration's renegade repudiation of the rule of law and fundamental human rights."

...snip...

Full Article Here

Go Fox Yourself

Climate Change Happening at a Faster Pace than Previously Thought?

Al Gore's newest presentation (this is the first time he has given it)

Please enjoy.....

UK OKs human-animal embryo research

British authorities have given the go ahead for scientists to use animal embryos in their efforts to make Human Stem Cells. For moi, it isn't a question of whether this will work or whether this will be helpful to people. It is a question of where does it lead? Man, over an over again, proves that he is not capable of acting responsibly with the technology he already possesses, let alone any new technology. As if we are not destroying our ability to endure upon the planet already, what happens when the building blocks of life are f*ck'd with?

We already have genetically modified fruits and vegetables. Many that are overtaking natural species, and many that are designed to die off and not self propagate. We read that cloned meat, from cloned animals who have higher rates of disease and mutations, is in the US food system. Mmm, serve up that steak.

Where is it all leading to?

British authorities on Thursday approved scientists' use of animal eggs to create human stem cells, a ruling that will boost the supply of stem cells for research.

The decision means that researchers will be able to refine their techniques for producing human stem cells by practicing first on animal eggs, of which there is a steady supply. Similar work involving human-animal stem cells is also under way in China and the United States.

"This is good news for research, but most importantly, it is good news for patients," said Sophie Petit-Zeman of the Association of Medical Research Charities.

Scientists have been exploring the use of stem cells to cure many degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, since the cells have the ability to develop into any cell in the human body.

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority said it had granted conditional one-year licenses to two institutions to conduct research using mixed human-animal embryos. In Britain, all research involving human eggs and embryos must be approved by the authority.

Scientists from King's College and Newcastle University submitted applications last year to create human stem cells using animal eggs.

Link to Full Article

Embryos created with DNA from 3 people

British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases.

Though the preliminary research has raised concerns about the possibility of genetically modified babies, the scientists say that the embryos are still only primarily the product of one man and one woman.

"We are not trying to alter genes, we're just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones," said Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University involved in the research.

SNIP

The genes being replaced are the mitochondria, a cell's energy source, which are contained outside the nucleus in a normal female egg. Mistakes in the mitochondria's genetic code can result in serious diseases like muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, strokes and mental retardation.

In their research, Chinnery and colleagues used normal embryos created from one man and one woman that had defective mitochondria in the woman's egg. They then transplanted that embryo into an emptied egg donated from a second woman who had healthy mitochondria.

Link to Full Article

Legal Battle Over Sonar: Update

A navy ship tests mid-frequency sonar in Washington's Haro Strait, close to a pod of orca whales.


In an email message sent out by the National Resources Defense Council:

Last night, a federal judge struck down a waiver issued by the
White House that would have exempted the U.S. Navy from obeying
a key environmental law during sonar training exercises that
endanger whales.

In doing so, the court affirmed the bedrock principle that we do
NOT live under an imperial presidency. Both the White House and
the military must obey and uphold our environmental laws.

President Bush's waiver was a last-ditch attempt to let the Navy
unleash an onslaught of military sonar off the coast of southern
California -- home to five endangered species of whales --
without taking precautions to protect marine mammals from a
lethal bombardment of sound.

Last month, the same judge -- U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie
Cooper -- ordered the Navy to put safeguards in place during the
sonar maneuvers in order to protect marine mammals from needless
injury and death. Shortly after that ruling, President Bush
issued his "emergency" waiver, attempting to override the
court's order.

In last night's ruling, Judge Cooper called the Navy's so-called
emergency "a creature of its own making," and reaffirmed that
the military can train effectively without needlessly harming
whales.

The Navy's maneuvers would take place near the Channel Islands
-- one of the world's most sensitive marine environments. The
Navy itself estimates that the booming sonar would harass or
harm marine mammals some 170,000 times -- and cause permanent
injury in more than 400 cases.

The far-reaching precautions imposed on the Navy by Judge Cooper
include a ban on mid-frequency sonar within 12 miles of the
California coast -- a zone that is heavily used by migrating
whales and dolphins -- and between the Channel Islands.

This decision will no doubt be appealed by the Navy and/or White House. If you support protections being in place for marine wildlife (hello chain of life that leads back to us), I urge you to check out the National Resources Defense Council's website and get involved and donate to the legal battle.
NRDC Website

Here's a great segment about our victory from today's "Morning
Edition" on National Public Radio: LINK
Sincerely,

Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council

Respite for Environment and Wildlife

Respite for environment and wildlife came today with this news:

The Bush administration has dropped its appeal of a 2007 court decision that had overturned new management rules for 191 million acres of national forests. Opponents to the rules had argued they weakened protection for wildlife and the environment to the benefit of the timber industry.

The Justice Department notified the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week that it was withdrawing its appeal, saying that the other parties, including the timber industry, would do likewise.

"We are glad the Bush administration has thrown in the towel," said Trent Orr, an attorney for Earthjustice, one of the environmental advocacy groups that had challenged the new forest management rules in court.

Link to full article

Score for Earthjustice :)