Amnesty International helps you tell the Turkish government to repeal laws mandating jail time for things like "insulting the Turkist state." The latest news hook is the impending trial (the latest over over 100!) of Turkish lawyer/journalist Eren Keskin for criticizing the military's killing of a 12-year-old boy; you'd think criticizing that would be a no-brainer, but in Turkey, apparently, the government actually prefers citizens with no brains. Turkey, of course, has a long and storied history of imprisoning journalists for criticizing the government, and that's only gotten worse lately, as an apparent failed coup (or dare I say false flag operation? Now, see, in America I can say that!) has spurred Turkish President Erdogan to be even more repressive than he's been in the past. And of course Ms. Keskin has a long history of speaking out for justice, particularly for Turkey's Kurdish minority -- you know, the same folks who have been fighting back pretty well against ISIS? Sometimes we forget the rest of the world does not have a First Amendment protecting its citizens from being put in jail by their governments merely for speaking out. Still, the Big Stick of Bad PR is not to be trifled with, even by the aspiring Sultan-with-absolute-power of Turkey.
Meanwhile, Environmental Action helps you tell President Obama to ban dumping fracking wastewater into our oceans. The Bureau of Ocean Management now allows this practice, even though fracking wastewater typically contains many toxins and carcinogens, like lead, benzene, and chromium-6. If you're not concerned about the cleanliness of ocean water because no one drinks it, consider two things: one, that San Diego's effort to desalinate ocean water is actually going pretty well, and two, that other creatures live in the oceans, creatures who will suffer because of the crap we're dumping in their habitats, and that we depend on a lot of those creatures in some way, whether for food (and the industries that make them into food) or for controlling other predatory species in the ocean. Consider, also, that we've done a pretty bad job predicting the harm our pollution has done so far. And finally, consider that the only reason we're not moving more quickly to a renewable energy grid, as Ralph Nader has said, is because no one can own the sun or the wind. You'd think owning the technology to convert sunlight and wind into energy would be enough, but some people can never get enough. However, a civilized society ensures those people don't get all the say about everything.
Comments