Amnesty International helps you tell the Chinese government to stop cracking down on activists there. Apparently the Chinese government has put at least 20 human rights activists in detention over the last month -- for what, exactly, I'm sure they'll figure out later -- and has targeted 200 more. A lot of these activists are lawyers -- think of what this country would be like if a President Scott Walker suddenly started arresting scientists. We may have a way to go before we get to that point, but when we do, our government's excuses will likely be just as laughable as the Chinese government's, which has announced that it's targeted a "major criminal gang" that has -- what, run massive amounts of drugs? Shot good Chinese citizens? No, this "gang" has merely been pounding the drum about "sensitive cases." You'd better be able to accuse a "major criminal gang" of a hell of a lot more than that if you want to run a police state. Thankfully, even the Chinese police state is susceptible to the ravages of bad PR from all over the planet.
Meanwhile, the good news out of Maui is that Trans Pacific "Partnership" negotiators ended talks at the end of July without a TPP deal. Of course President Obama's Trade Representative tried to put his best face on it, but the fact that they haven't scheduled new talks as of yet probably tells us more. And President Obama has suffered one of his worst PR hits with the news that the State Department promoted Malaysia from its human trafficking blacklist, though Malaysia certainly hasn't earned such a promotion -- all to stop a legislative effort to stop fast-tracking of trade deals with nations with horrible human trafficking records. You can go ahead and say that President Obama essentially looked at Malaysia's record of contemporary slavery and just shrugged. Well, we certainly don't have to put up with that, so Friends of the Earth helps you tell President Obama that it's plain wrong to downplay slavery just to get "free" trade deals done. He probably doesn't care what you think, since you're just a "sanctimonious purist." But I wear that label with pride when Our Glorious Elites act like morals are for little people.
Finally, the EPA may be taking our government's most vigorous action ever on carbon emissions from power plants, but there's at least one other important front upon which they haven't acted, and that's controlling carbon emissions from airplanes. Think about it for a minute and you'll see the problem -- if the commercial airline industry were its own country, it would rank seventh in the world in carbon emissions unleashed, just after Germany. But the EPA would rather let the International Civil Aviation Organization take care of it; I know the EPA is a bit tired from all the work it's been doing (and, under President Obama, it's mainly been doing good work), but that doesn't mean the problem's going away. And there's no use saying gosh EPA regulations just won't work if other countries won't do it, because how is that the American can-do spirit? Don't we pride ourselves on how well we lead the world? Or do we only do that when we bomb foreigners? So Friends of the Earth helps you tell the EPA to issue the most vigorous airline carbon emissions standards possible for airplanes.
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