Gambia's President has taken to killing prisoners on death row lately -- nine of them just this past weekend, leaving 38 more at risk of imminent execution by the middle of September. What's the big deal, you say? Well, Gambia has this nasty habit of silencing dissenters by convicting them of "treason" and sentencing them to death, without ensuring that the folks they've killed actually ever committed treason. Furthermore, Gambia joined an African Union moratorium on the death penalty that lasted (among its member states) almost three decades. So why has President Jammeh embarked on this mad plan now? Who knows? All we know is that he wants to "rid the country of all criminals." Better watch what you wish for there, Mr. President. Amnesty International helps you tell Gambia to stop executing prisoners who might well be innocent.
Meanwhile, the Delaware River Basin Commission is, again, mulling opening the Delaware Valley to frackers! Food and Water Watch helps you tell the Commission to abandon this mad plan. You've probably heard (hopefully via Chris Mooney's excellent Scientific American article from November 2011) that the gas drilling industry has no shortage of scientists who tell you hydraulic fracturing is safe. Hydraulic fracturing once may, somewhere, be safe -- but how many gas drilling corporations stop at "once"? And hydraulic fracturing in a state like Pennsylvania with hundreds of thousands of unfilled water wells is a lot less safe. And even if the act of fracturing were safe, the sequestering and storage afterward of the toxic chemicals fracturing uses is most certainly not safe. Of course, it's only our drinking water at risk, and not something really important like some gas drilling CEO's seventh vacation home.
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